The only real crisis is that you need to be a millionaire to start. This is why government is starting to freak out about not enough young people wanting to farm. I'm right here, ready willing and able. Its not that we don't want to, we literally can't afford to start. People like bill gates and investment groups should not be allowed to buy farmland. The reason we have over production is because GMO seeds have essentially perfect yields only increased by fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. What's actually needed is to reduce yields not maximize. This will push prices up.
What’s missing is China is finding new partners to import grains. Overproducing plus no exports is going to be a bigger disaster than previous farm crisis’s.
All very concerning but must we bail out every industry that produces too much? Pork prices are in the tank and yet massive new pig farms are built every year. Every hog owner wants more sows. Should we reward them for their gluttony?
You understand that we inflict these factors on ourselves. We do no obey market signals, we bid up rent and land prices and we generally have little discipline on the business side. In the 80's we demanded legislators (lawyers with no business experience) take over our businesses. Govt just makes things worse. I enjoy farming, but it's a business and it has new challenges every year. Unfortunately the folks that go crazy with debt because they think they can, end up on the cover of farm magazines then crash. Yet folks want to be like them. Sustainability of ag isn't the problem. It's very sustainable except for our lack of business discipline. New systems need time for the bugs to be worked out (ie. notill or versions of it are very common now but seed and equipment needed to catch up). Forcing us to adopt someone's dream of sustainable farming will result in the opposite and worse problem of shortage. Consider that agriculture works because it's 2M different farmers adjusting our businesses and practices just about every year. We certainly learn from each other (experience matters) and consider input from other sources. Thinking that a relative few folks with no business or ag experience can come up with better solutions is foolish (ask Stalin)
The problem is that the Cabal has been taking the money out of the farmers pocket through costs of equipment and fertilizers. Farmers are enslaved through debt
Do you think a better method than pure direct payments could be tying direct payments to a do-not-cultivate order (requiring farmers to either only grow crops for their own-use, or lease land to people in towns for UK-style allotment gardening for a couple seasons, or just straight up put the land in cover crops or native vegetation)?
Yes. We have a program called STAR that sets up a step by step method for farmers to become better land stewards. It should be mandated to get any government payment to be enrolled (it's free) in this program. I did a video on this as well. Thank you for your comments. I'm working on a follow up.
You sir just summarized 3 generations of grinding farm work and experience into 10 minutes. Kudos and may it help more people understand. Do we as a country want large conglomerate foreign ownership of our farm lands or support family farming in meaningful ways?
Are you perhaps suggesting that we, as a country, want large "domestically" owned conglomerates to have ownership of our farm lands who employ/use family farmers in all kinds of ways?!? Isn't this the case at present? Shouldn't we be questioning ALL types of conglomerate farmland ownership/management/involvement?
Why it isn't important is this: hubris, and ignorance. They think it couldn't happen. Maybe they're captured. Maybe they just think you're some loon, which is not true.
Rapid technology advances render a sizeable portion of existing farmers obsolete. The problems come from government programs attempting to support the excess farmers. The solution is to allow the market to work by allowing the excess farmers to fail, thereby reducing farmer debt load and overproduction. We need less govt interference, not more.
@paulanderson3349 I used to be like you, thinking less gov. involvement is the right idea. But, from experience I can say the gov. plays a super critical role in farming. Every agricultural product on the market is a direct result of some type of government regulation, period. Without it we risk famine, poisonings, monopolies, etc. Wise government policies is the way to go, not absurd deregulation. Overproduction can be simplified by tightening restrictions on unsustainable farming practices and focusing on exporting what we don't consume as a nation.
@@christianmama2441 I was talking about subsidies that attempt to prop up in-efficient farms. I didn't say that there shouldn't be minimum food standards.
@@paulanderson3349 I don't know about you, but the way they grow the major crops like soybean and corns should totally alarm you for two reasons: quality very poor, completely unsustainable for the land. It's not good for anyone, the profits are not even worth the trouble, hence the subsidies. I'm in favor of them getting rid of seed patents (no more GMO stuff) and encouraging organic and sustainable farming instead. US has way more farmland than it needs to feed it's entire population and could produce quite a bit for exporting. Efficiency and sustainability are often at odds with one another, you can't usually have both, one will always suffer.
Land prices are huge. Everyone who wants to go into farming can't afford to, and everyone who can afford to go into it is getting out of it. Meanwhile, it seems as though the land itself is dying, as tends to happen in the latter stages of a declining civilization, as well as when there are abrupt, no-analogue shifts in climate.