Today I watched a show on farming, and there were some people warning that the farm industry may be headed the same way as the housing industry in America. They were saying that borrowing in farming is going unchecked, and that the cost of land is not in line with the projected yealds. Meaning the price of land does not reflect the yeald from the intended use, weather that be a crop or building a house. I believe the show I was watching was Ag Canada or something like that, and I think they have archives of the show for people to watch. My question is do you think we need to look at the farming sector in particular the unchecked borrowing and overinflated land prices, are we truly headed for a huge crash? Is America and Canada headed for more trouble and will forgen investors snap up all our land if there is a crash, is there limits on what foreigners can buy? I would really like to hear the opinions of others on this. Should government and Banks be taking action now?
Well as it stands now farmers only make money because prices are inflated by the government. Americans farmers otherwise could never compete with foreign ones.
The agribiz and housing are nothing alike, dont' even compare the two. Plus if you knew anything about farming/borrowing, CSA's and Co-ops are basically farmer-oriented (rather than consumer oriented) solutions to fixing the problem. Let's see...... farmers have to spend a shit ton of money to get the growing season started, and get no return until after they hopefully sell all of their product. It's not simply a $$$ issue, it's a social issue too. If our prices plummet low enough,foreign investors just might start buying up our land. But when our economy crashes, I promise you that resort towns are going to be okay. The weak American $$ will mean America will be more attractive for vacationing. Rich foreigners are going to do to America what America did to the Bahamas. But that's quite okay in my opinion.
yup farmers are the dung-beatles of our society and they arent taken for granted enough. if the gov were to intervene, that'd just be a mess. but on a sidenote, there is a business that is monopolizing in seed production that is going unnoticed besides in the movie "Food Inc.". just shows how much the norm is ignorant.
That's a two sided coin tho. The common man is partly to blame. Nobody wants to farm, so we resort to large mono-farms to raise our produce. THe only reason mono farms can exist is because of pesticides, fertilizers, and gmo crops. Because the common man doesn't take charge and decentralize food production (by either growing crops, or supporting the local economy) we have to resort to the alternative. So I don't blame Mosanto 100% for doing what they do, its a necessary evil for what we choose to be as a society. Patenting life is kind of a touchy issue with me though, which means you can have a monopoly on life itself. Which is crazy.
Fresno County applied 27 million pounds of various chemicals to crops in 2009. When crops fail,the farmers farm the government to get taxpayers money to continue. Very few use their own money. Some are selling their water rights to LA for millions.
Ahem I am from a farming family people want to farm but it is the governments intervention and mutual ass kissing with Monsanto, the WHO and, the FDA that is taking down the farming system. The people of the world need to get together on this and force these powers out of our food. They are not considering our health I don't care how they scream that they are doing it for our benefit.
American farmers as it is only exist because of government intervention. Sure on a small scale some would still exist as people would be into the whole buy American thing, but prices for farm goods are horribly artificially inflated by both tarries and government subsidies so farmers can actually compete and make money, otherwise a farmer in Nebraska could never compete against once in Tanzania for price.
Go on, face it, both American and EU farmers exists solely on the basis we provide then with hundreds of millions of dollars a subsidies a year. You really think an American can compete price wise with a farmer in Angola? This is why we get lambasted constantly for preaching free trade but not actually doing it, and why the farm bill in America is one of the most contentious bills there is, and why farm subsidies consume nearly 1/2 the EU budget. this on top of important tariffs of course. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html Like forget the actual subsidies to actual farmers, we spent $1.3 billion in 5 years paying farmers who weren't even farming
The problem they talk about frequently is the "squeeze" effect, whereby input costs and output costs of farming are becoming greater and greater - and crushing the actual work involved in harvesting a crop, or raising livestock. It's one of the reasons why people are moving away from grain-fed to allow their livestock to graze naturally again - besides the bad shit they put into grainfeed. But a family farm can't survive and compete any longer. Something like 80% of family farms in Canada also take up second jobs because they can't live off the farm. What are we doing if we can't live off the earth? Working ourselves to death in this system, and I do foresee a collapse.
That's not fraud, farms get paid all the time to do this, same with milk, meat, and dairy products, the prices of such are artificially high, a gallon of milk would never cost near $4 if the market for such was actually free.
The thing is, the farming industry in American is over-subsidized by the government already - and it's structured that way on purpose. Now, in Canada we subsidize farming as well, but not to nearly to the extent that goes on in America, however we are going further and further down the same path.
