I have wondered what Ag would look like in the US without subsidies.
Would farmers grow crops the market wanted to buy, instead of crops attached to subsidies?
Subsidy info here> https://farm.ewg.org/

My wife is a kindergarten teacher in Scott county Indiana and you won't believe how many kids in rural areas around the county don't know where their food comes from . They have a farm trip every year to show the kids where their food comes from. My father in law was born on a farm , his dad raised a few head of cattle and row crops , even had a huge garden , but guess what , he lives at his old home place rents the ground out to another farmer , he won't raise a garden or nothing , but he will mow around 2 acres of yard. Oh yeah he has a 2 acre lake and won't even fish it , he don't hunt , but he use to. But I'm the one he thinks that Is stupid.

There is roughly 900 million to 1 billion acres in farm and ranch land in the USA today. This is down about 100 million acres from the 1950 or 1960s. About 300-350 million of those acres are crop acres for mostly corn, beans, wheat, cotton, sorghum, milo and specialty crops like fruits vegetables etc. Another roughly 30-40 million acres in some type of legume or grass hay that is cut multiple times per year. A huge amount or roughly 400 million acres are in permanent grass or prairie be that long or short grass prairie. Most of the cow-calf beef herds come from the west prairie or the grasslands of he southeast. Much of the southeast has lateritic type soils similar to tropical forest soil and thus due to lower organic matter and more clay don't do well with tillage so they are grazed. We all know what the prairies became during the dust bowl so there are millions of acres not suitable to production other than livestock be that beef or sheep. About 25-35% of the corn in the USA depending upon yield and gas demand is used in ethanol production. Only the either extracted from the corn is used in ethanol and thus a very high percentage of the dry matter of corn is fed back to livestock either in the wet or dry form. Hogs and poultry utilize a lot of corn and soybean meal as they have high dietary needs and need complete proteins but they are far more efficient in converting feed into human food than is beef. The main reason so much grain is fed to livestock is we want higher quality cuts with more fat and thus less forage is fed to beef. However be it beef or dairy and hogs and poultry these animals eat a lot of by-product feeds that would need to be land spread if they were not used by the livestock industry. just as fur farms consume large numbers of deceased cattle and material from slaughter plants that would otherwise need to be appropriately land filled. We don't live in a perfect world by any means but our current system comes pretty close to completing a sustainable circle with the exception of water, which is a huge issue worldwide for quantity and quality.

Bryce

I like the subsidy portion of the thread as a discussion point. Yeah or nay on farm subsidies? Why/why not?

ALL WELFARE IS CORPORATE WELFARE !

Without subsidies milk would be$ 6-10 per gal . And meat would reall go up as well due to gain prices. In reality we are paying for it anyway through taxes. But currently the Government pickes the winners and losers

As a beginning small farmer I won't get or apply for an any subsidies so if they went away and prices climb to reflect actual production cost my farm would benefit.

The Elites already have a population control plan in place so you don't have to worry about it. Its called Agenda 21.

If milk went to $10 a gallon without subsidies It wouldn't take long and we would be awash in milk.

If the milk police would not arrest me I would have no problem selling raw milk today for $6 -8 per gal for cow and $6 per half gal on goat milk. I turn down offers to supply families every week.

It store prices went up it would make it around the same price.

It would be a shock to many and people would consume less but it would still sell.

I would love to see the reaction if they did away with subsidies for a while. People would get a dose of reality and realize there’s a reason for them. They sure aren’t ideal, but without them a lot of people couldn’t afford to eat. The percentage of our paychecks we spend on food would sky rocket.

Where do the subsidies come from? Just free $? No you pay for it through taxes. You just don't get a say in where they go or to whom.

What is causing Farm Bankruptcies and Farmer Suicides?

Lack of subsidies?

I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer but will give my. 02 opinion.

The same thing tha causes other sectors to become insolvent. Leveraged to much debt and not enough income.

Its multi faceted from farmers buying expensive equipment, taxes, land prices international competition, foreign
currency manipulation, other foreign governments subsidizing, government regs, and on and on.

But it boils down to farming big agriculturally only works on a big scale. All in on a few crops and little diversification. The get locked in and cant get out. Loosing the family farm that part of their identity is to much for them.

A little diversification goes a long way. Example most US farmers are happy making $240 an acre on corn. Yes that's it. Now take an acre of blueberries at$ 24000- $30000 per. Yet they are more labor intensive and take more time to mature but a few acres could really help off set a bad year in other crops.

Traditional farmers work, worry, borrow, and pray. At the end of the year after expenses ther is little left after expenses a lot of years. At the end of the year you sell for what the markets gives you.

In a smaller sustainable farm you have more flexibility and can diversify more. Say a few acers of blueberries, strawberries, apples, asparagus some pasture poultry, raise a half dozen cows and a few pigs. Add a market garden teach a few classes, have a pumpkin patch and corn maze. All can compliment each other add in your producing 80% + of your family food and that's a lot of security.

Add in it can all be done in around 100 acres vs the thousands a farmer needs to roll crop. At least it my plans and dreams. I will let you know how it works out in 20 years.

rv sask was well on target with his first post re some commodities unfit for humans (ie all that corn in eastern N.D. that was still standing in March ) although I suppose that variety was intended for livestock anyway . good points rv sask .

I like the way you said it. Donnersurvivor.

Bankruptcies are what owners do to creditors, foreclosure is what creditors do to owners. In the modern era filing bankruptcies became much easier and more common after the Bush administration loosened the business filing rules. Now most bankruptcies now are more Chapter 11 (general businesses) (chapter 12 more farm specific) so they can do a reorg. When it comes to Ag or farming many owners delay filing for too long and thus many 12s soon become Chapter 7s or foreclosures. Almost all bankruptcies and foreclosures involve significant indebtedness with 1st mortgage holders having the most security and 2nd and non secured (mostly unpaid bills and expenses) usually not getting even small fractions of what is owed. The other hidden part of the farm crisis we hear little to nothing about are the multitude of smaller farms with little debt that just fold up due to not generating enough revenue to cover expenses and family living costs. During low prices years low debt small farms suffer significantly as many don't have the leverage or equity to borrow enough funds to stay in business for several months or years of low prices. Several farms have 2,3 up to 6 generations of families in ownership and losing a farm is not just losing a business it is losing a legacy, your home etc. and thus suicide is seen as a way out for some of the more depressed.

Bryce

I really like this song, it is about a ranch, listen to it and I think you will get a general idea of why so many farmers end it when they lose the place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruHK8wgSOoc

It would be good if you were going to sermonize to actually post the data, instead of making broad statements. Farmers plant soybeans, because they were enticed to do it, because China was buying beans as they use that crap for hog feed. Corn is not a food crop. It was an oil crop and is now an ethanol crop.
For the sake of facts, I would not quote an Indian priest, as the reason people do not eat barley is the taste. Indians eat the paddy. Barley is primarily used for beer. The Minnesotans figured out what to do with beer malt and put it into hot cereal to get people to buy it.

Vegetarians live in cities. They do not eat meat. Country people eat meat, but are eating less of it, as ranchers were driven out of business by drought low prices. Most American beef comes from Canada with Brazil selling Americans the toxic low end. Beef speculation hit record highs and now the lows are hitting cattle, and it is getting hard to raise calves and lambs with the government raising all those large predators, instead of poisoning them.

Your generalization about Americans living high, reflects a number of people who post here, but not all. I read the posts about the new ten to fifty thousand dollar toys people have, and that is not me, and not the 25 million Americans on unemployment in this lockdown, because they have such crappy jobs they can not afford anything and it makes more sense to stay home and not chance the plague. The reason their jobs are low paying is because those Indians flooded into America in high tech jobs, replacing Americans,just as the Mexican flooded into the jobs Blacks once held, and now the Mexican is pushing out into the higher paying jobs American labor once held. Indians work cheap, but they also do not know a thing about writing programming, as all they do is cut and past what Americans wrote, and that is why sites crash due to Indian IT work, which companies learn and have to resort to Americans to fix things.

You are going to not like the getting back to our roots, as our roots were conflict, suffering, poverty and war. The Pentagon is planning a war with China. We are experiencing what their germ labs are manufacturing. There are around 100 million listed and non listed foreigners inside the United States, without any loyalties, and hidden in the Corona data, they are the ones spreading the virus in mass to their groups, costing states millions of dollars. US meat supply is being destroyed due to the plague carriers. Nebraska is the newest hot zone. This pandemic is only the start of the good olde days. As you want to cut your meat eating back, there are piles of soybeans for tofu as China just quarantined another region in having successfully controlled this virus.

The problem is not Americans eating meat. The problem is Americans have been debt inflated out of being able to afford beef. America needs more Americans eating piles of meat, not less of it. (Asian cults discovered the easiest way to brainwash people as to put them on meatless or low protein diets, as people's reasoning capacity is dimensions and they are more readily influenced.)