Perdue Suggests Small Farms Can't Survive

[applegrove]

Perdue Suggests Small Farms Can’t Survive

October 1, 2019 at 10:32 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 89 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2019/10/01/perdue-suggests-small-farms-cant-survive/

"SNIP....

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said during a stop in Wisconsin that he doesn’t know if the family dairy farm can survive as the industry moves toward a factory farm model, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Said Perdue: “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out. I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”

.....SNIP"

But subsidies for big farma or big dirty oil are fine.

[dawg day]

1. My very agricultural state went big for Trump-

So far Trump has ruined a lot of farmers because of the China tariffs.
Now his Ag Secy is dooming on family farms.

And the farmers will probably vote for him next year. I don't get it.

[applegrove]

2. They need to be informed. "3 Billboards" in each state and such. The noise machine is

huge that hides announcement like this but it can be overcome. Maybe leaflets on local ossues that can be printed off at home and handed door to door around one's block. That should save time for busy parents and get the word out.

[NCLefty]

7. Here's some links on farmer woes:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-farmer-bailout-more-than-double-obama-automaker-payout-2009-2019-9-1028545235

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/farm-state-fury-creates-pressure-for-trump-as-trade-ethanol-pain-collide/2019/10/01/74a94d4a-df16-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html

Share "liberally."

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Alas, that's probably true.

I know very little about farming, although I spent part of my childhood (ages 7 to 14) in the dairy farming country of Upstate New York, just a bit north of Utica. Many of the people around us were farmers. Small family farms. Their cash crop was milk, and the going price of milk was enormously important. Most of them depended on the labor of the children in the family. Many of the dads drove a school bus for our local school to earn a bit of extra cash.

I moved away more than 50 years ago, and while I've been back a handful of times for brief visits, I've never connected with any of those farming families, and I haven't a clue if any of them are still raising dairy cows.

[rampartc]

4. time for agrarian reform

nationalize agribusiness by civil forfeiture of any farm employing undocumented labor.

homestead appropriately sized parcels to families willing to farm. maybe bonuses to black, native American, and interred Japanese families as reparation.

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. Years ago I heard an interview with a dairy farmer....

and when it was mentioned that he was looking after a farm that had been in his family for several generations, he was asked why it was that so few new people get into the business. Why was it that one never hears of a young person buying a dairy farm and beginning what this mans great, great grandfather had done?

He said something to the following effect ;

"Just try and convince a 25 year old, fresh out of Agricultural college, to take on a multi million dollar mortgage for a property and a job that requires 12 or more hour workdays, 365 days a year, regardless of weather, milking a herd twice a day, EVERY day, growing his own food for the animals and tending to every other aspect of a complex operation for what will essentially amount to a rate of pay of about $1.25 an hour... IF he is lucky and the markets for his products are good"

homestead appropriately sized parcels to families willing to farm. maybe bonuses to black, native American, and interred Japanese families as reparation.

Yeah. Best of luck.

The trend line for milk consumption has been headed down for years and the number of independent, family owned dairy farms needed to supply the demand for what is essentially a bespoke portion of the overall dairy products market is dwindling.

{And by "bespoke portion" I mean that segment of the dairy farming industry that caters to the likes of Land-O'-Lakes and Sargento and Kraft Cheese and specialty yogurts, etc.}

The large commercial operations in the central valley of California, as an example, are milking several thousand head on a daily basis and they are milking 24 hours a day. They basically have the herd sorted out into groups that are ready to be milked every few hours.

The small, traditional, family owned operation of 200 or so head just simply can not compete against that scale.

[Kaleva]

8. Average herd size in Wisconsin is 140 cows so a herd of 200 is on the large side.

Info is found on pages 17 and 18 in the link below:

https://release.nass.usda.gov/reports/mkpr0218.pdf

[moondust]

6. Interestingly,

the farm crisis of the 1920s and early 1930s occurred during the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Then came Democrat FDR in 1933 apparently to save the day.

The farm crisis of the 1980s occurred during the Republican administration of Reagan. Many family farms were lost and corporate farming took off.

And yet many farmers continue to vote for Republicans.

[Kaleva]

9. A majority of the large "corporate" farms are family run enterprises.

A link to data for the state of Wisconsin

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2012/Online_Resources/Typology/typology13_wi.pdf

You'll see that the number and average size, in acres, of non-family farms is less then that of mid-size to very large size family farms. Another interesting fact is that in Wisconsin, there are 167 family run farms that average $5 million or more in sales but only 45 non-family run farms that average $5 million or more in sales.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. This should dispel any myth about Washington being protective of small farms and

small business in the tradition of Adam Smith and the celebration of capitalism.

If I were Michael Moore, this would be the subject of my next documentary.

[ck4829]

12. +1

[ck4829]

11. K&R