[HN Gopher] Farmers' Suicide in the United States
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Farmers' Suicide in the United States
Author : nativeit
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-11-18 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| blueyes wrote:
| The US Congress lost its last farmer-representative when Jon
| Tester (D-MT) lost this month to Tim Sheehy, a Republican who
| parachuted in from Minnesota.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It's a tough life and an isolating one. You have to live in wide
| open spaces with no one else nearby, but it also isn't the
| idyllic land you think of. Economics means getting cornered into
| maximizing what you can get out of the land. Think tearing it up
| with machinery and planting giant areas with monocultures of high
| yield GMO crops. A lot of people have a fantasy version of
| farming in their head, where you have small plots of land, with
| diverse crops, wildlife, streams, and natural landscapes around
| you. Instead what you end up with is sort of a harsh outdoor
| factory for converting local resources (water, soil, etc) and
| additives (seeds, fertilizer, etc) into a very low margin
| product. All you can see from your modest home that you went into
| debt for is giant plots of land that are dusty and ripped up or
| covered in a single crop as far as the eye can see. Meanwhile,
| everyone from seed companies, to fertilizer companies, to John
| Deere, to insurance companies, to buyers of crops are squeezing
| you into nothing.
|
| Our system as a whole is problematic. We allow big companies to
| bully small players due to their capital or control over
| distribution or anti competitive practices or whatever. And
| farmers who are doing the actual work are in a place in the
| supply chain where they can be marginalized. Food is also
| insanely cheap for what it takes, when in truth it should cost
| more and reward these people for their hard work, which often
| leaves them with broken bodies. But when you are struggling to
| survive financially, and have a broken body, and have no
| community near you, and things are getting worse every year - it
| isn't surprising where it leads.
| kiba wrote:
| One of my relative complained about high food price. Then I
| expect imposition of tariff to spike food price even higher,
| ditto with immigrant deportation if it's actually implemented
| as the president elected suggested.
|
| You're right that the people who's making the literal food on
| our table should be well compensated, from farmhands to the
| farmers who own their land. However, what you're suggesting is
| putting people between a rock and a hard place.
|
| It would be easier to deal with if housing and transportation
| costs weren't so expensive though.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I am not sure why you're getting downvoted, as I think you
| raise some good points. Personally I think tariffs against
| China are valuable for geopolitical reasons, and think that
| might be a higher priority at a time when the CCP is
| unstable. But it will cause at least temporary pain for
| consumers, yes. I also don't know the effect of deportation
| of illegal immigrants - my understanding is we have a (legal)
| way for seasonal agriculture workers to work in the US on
| some special visa. I'd be curious how many workers use or
| don't use that program.
|
| As for putting people between a rock and a hard place. I
| guess I feel that all the companies abusing their positions
| of power are where I want money to come out of. For example,
| just because Walmart controls distribution to shoppers in
| their stores, they shouldn't be able to bully farmers into
| zero margins. That cost should come out of Walmart's bottom
| line (and therefore from owners and shareholders of Walmart).
| Likewise for the other big players in this ecosystem. But we
| have no laws or ability to do any of this. Just thinking out
| loud...
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| If you switched the players it reads like the story of a tech
| worker.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Part of me wonders if we will see rising suicide rates among
| software developers if we have a recession in the middle of what
| is already the worst hiring environment in decades.
| tptacek wrote:
| In decades? Can you express that quantitatively? You can just
| look this up on FRED and see that it's unlikely to be true.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| FRED doesn't factor in the v i b e s
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| FRED gets employment data from DOL, which keeps down revising
| its lofty employment estimates. Additionally not all job
| postings reflect actual openings. The companies post tailored
| job postings to help their employees who are applying for
| green cards. Others just post to influence the perception of
| stock analysts.
| tptacek wrote:
| Look at the graph of total software engineering employment
| over the last 20 years and tell me the magnitude of both
| the market shift and the measurement error that would be
| required to justify the argument upthread.
| wnevets wrote:
| > Soybean exports to China dropped 75% from 2017 to 2018.
|
| Time to prepare for part 2
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Tariffs against Chinese/Mexican goods and the ensuing trade war
| along with deportation of large parts of their work force are not
| going to help their economic situation at all.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| There are several interesting paragraphs buried in "Assistance",
| especially starting with "As of August 2021, if a farmer wants to
| sue[...]". tl;dr, there's an antitrust angle here.
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(page generated 2024-11-18 23:01 UTC)