Farmer Rant: The Great Disconnect
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- čas přidán 10. 11. 2023
- One of my motivations for starting this channel was to help bridge the gap between the divide of farmers and non farmers. This video I share my thoughts on the recent disconnect and talk the realities of farm subsidies, herbicide usage, are farmers rich, and so forth.
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Great video, covered a lot of good points. Good attitude as well, grew up on a farm of similar size to yours, I know how frustrating it can be to have your livelihood attacked by people that are frankly just ignorant and misinformed, not necessarily bad people. Glad to see you getting the social media growth for all the work you put in. Liking the 80s themed intro too.
I really appreciate the support and you're spot on. It gets incredibly old getting told constantly that we're killing everyone and poisoning the earth. It truly is ignorance at it's finest. I'm hoping I can shed a little light on it and push back against some of it. Thank you!
Love the new intro!!
Thanks! Channeled my 80s lol
No one person has it all correct. Take the best from the profitable farms that will work for your context, resources, skills, interests and work toward being more regenerative in your farming journey. The health of your soil microbes, plants, animals, and bottom line ($) will demonstrate your success.
I am from a family farm which uses all the chemicals, petroleum,.. we milked cows and shipped a tanker load ever 23 hours, bought in lots of trailer loads of inputs for total mixed rations. You are correct that numbers are misleading: gross income is not profit! Income - expenses (often) = loss on most farms. Banks own a great portion of the family farms across our nation. Financial stressors are one of the reasons there are so many suicides, mental health issues, and children who choose to leave the farm. That is where farmers need to learn to build relationships with consumers and market their goods directly, becoming price makers not price takers. Like Joel Salatin, Greg Judy, Gabe Brown, Richard Perkins have shown in books or on youtube.
Growing up, my grandfather, father, and uncle milked 112 cows. More recently, my father and brothers milked 650 to 800 cows; 2, 3, or 4 times per day. They own, with the bank, about 600 acres and lease about 600 more. Recently sold dairy cattle and went to beefers. Unfortunatly for the soil, plants, animals, and bottom line; they are still giving their money to BIG AG for their "joy" of running tractors. I hope that someday they will see the healthier regenerative way, but am not holding my breath. May the consumers vote with their dollars and may farmers see the benefits of going regenerative!
Leasing is wise to get into farming, opens up capital to invest in portable fencing, solar charger, and water portability. Custom graze until you can purchase your own cattle, sheep, goats. Sheep and goats have a shorter turnaround, than cattle.
Crop insurance is a subsidy, but the farmer does pay in to it. It can cover a portion of yield loses as well as income loses as a result of prices collapsing. Different levels of coverage can be purchased by the farmer.
The money paid out to the farmer is more of a money laundering scheme. It passes money through the farmer to the multi national corporations who buy commodities. They pay nothing for the very products they sell, and can keep their boots on our throats due to the programs that barely keep farmers scraping by.
I’ve taken plenty of money. I couldn’t get any starting out, because I am organic. I couldn’t even get a loan for that matter. Their are programs now that encourage better farming practices and I get what I can.
We’re doing the Holy Grail. Organic, no till, cover crops, planting green, almost no inputs, not even one’s allowed by the organic program. Biology, not chemistry is the key. It’s not the right way to farm, but it’s the right way for me to farm. I don’t recommend it to anyone, because if your not as obsessed with it as me, you’ll fail. I always recommend more your way of running a farm. A much better way, very much regenerative in nature, not idealistic to a fault. I have my reasons for being me. That doesn’t mean everyone else should share them.
My thing is that I think the money used to support ag should come directly from the companies buying the product, not from tax payers or debt piled on the unborn.
Well said man, like I've said many times there's more than one way to skin a cat! Lots of different ways to farm and whose to say one is right and one is wrong. Thanks for watching!
Calving when the fawns drop makes sense on so many levels. Why fight the way God created animals to survive.
For a farm to be truly profitable, the farm cannot accept government payments.
Regenerative farming uses animals fueled by today's solar. Using petroleum is not regenerative. Check out Greg Judy, Will Harris, Gabe Brown, Steve Kenyon, Ray Archuleta, Allen Williams, Elaine Ingham, Richard Perkins, Joel Salatin, Allan Savory. Look at who pays for the research. Understanding Ag can guide you, if you wish to be profitable and regenerative. Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown; Comeback Farms, How to Think Like a Grazier, and another title by Greg Judy. Both guys turned their financials from broke to profitable by going regenerative.
No Risk Ranching is other Greg Judy book title.
I'm curious where you got the $75 billion in agriculture figure? It's bogus, but I'm wondering where it came from. The actual number depends on how you define subsidies. Take crop insurance. In 2022, the RMA spent a total of $12.4 billion. That's producer claims, administration costs, salaries, etc. If you count the salary of the RMA employees as subsidy, then $12.4 billion was the crop insurance subsidy for 2022. Livestock programs spent around $1.5 billion.
Maybe agriculture got $75 billion one of the COVID years, when Washington was shoveling money out the door as fast as they could. But it's not average.
It's not bogus. I'm referring to total subsidies across the board of agriculture. Here's the website with the Rundown on it: sentientmedia.org/why-are-farmers-subsidized/
And here's a snippet from that website: "According to data from “Meatonomics”, the U.S. spends $50.17 billion on animal agriculture every year (including state, local, and federal subsidies) while plants for human consumption receive about $24.69 billion. The meat industry dodges between $80 and $200 billion in environmental costs (the conservative estimate is included in the graph above). According to EWG, alternative proteins net around $30 million (too small to be seen on the chart).
That means the U.S. spends an estimated $75 billion per year, from all levels of government, on direct agricultural subsidies."
@@LHFarmsTN
Ah, that explains a lot. Have you ever read Meatonomics, including the notes?
It does things like taking the total value of LDP's paid in 2005 and adding it to the total crop insurance indemnities paid in 2012. Then claims that those are annual averages.
Except that those years were rare peaks for their respective programs and there were no LDP's paid out in 2012.
They draw heavily on a Canadian lawyer's report that counts food stamps as farm subsidies, and says that farmers should pay as much for irrigation water as city residents pay for drinking water. Then it claims that the difference is a subsidy.
Etc, etc.
Those aren't average annual subsidies by any stretch of the imagination.
@42base13 the food stamp program is part of the total ag bill. Not saying I like that but it is the truth. I'm sharing that total because I want to share it all. I would venture to say most public also don't know that a large percentage of the farm bill funds go to SNAP.
@@LHFarmsTN Yes, food stamps are part of the farm bill, but I doubt that's what people are thinking of when you say "farm subsidies".
And it's still dishonest and incorrect to lump different years together and say that the total represents some kind of "average"
But, you answered my question, so thank you for that.
@42base13 I can't read their minds and as this commenting shows people will find anything to debate. If I had shared a lesser amount that didn't include the total SNAP amount as well someone would say that's dishonest. For the previous year 75 billion was the total. If you wanted an average across multiple years including the highs and lows it would still be around 30 billion. What we're discussing is pretty irrelevant to the base point of the video. It wouldn't matter if it was 10 million or 100 billion. The fact of the disconnect exists.