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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/...li=BBnb7Kz
This goes back to greed... greed by the consumers, greed by the farmers, greed by the ag companies. in a drive to get more bushels per acre, or getting a feeder beef to fat quicker the farmer/rancher at some point became less a steward of the land and their livestock and more a production generated business. low prices have forced their hands with 3rd world beef, pork, and grains getting dumped in the US market in the 90s and 00s really gave them the option to push the envelope of technology with the animals/crops, or simply get by while their neighbors took that path and squeezed them out.
we all want cheaper food so we opt for that Argentinian beef or that Canadian wheat products instead of the more expensive, but better/safer produced American products, as a result the American farmer looks for a way to produce more with less inputs ( genetic science and other methods which IMO will prove long term to be a poor decision) so the ag companies invest billions in research to make corn grow where it should never have been planted, make cattle get to weight in half the time...etc as a result the American farmer had some short term wins, but of course these ag technologies would get sold to other farmers all over the world as well, so now we have even more, even cheap south american beef, even more corn wheat and beans flooding the US markets from foreign sources... so what do our American producers do to survive? they drain the wet lands, the tap our precious ground water aquifers for irrigation, and the break up highly erodible soil that should never be used for crops, cattle are pushed even harder and more short cuts are taken and where are... right where we started, cheap food and an American food production system that is bankrupting the people at the base of the pyramid, while some paper pushers in Chicago or NY get rich.
yet another example of how our broke system is failing the working class American. at what point does our country wake up and realize that these core industries are the base of the US economy. its the stuff we can produce from our own resources that will keep the US at the top of the world economies and we cant turn our back on them for easier bucks. they need to be protected, not be used as pawns in political games.
Why isn't Chuck Foreman in the Hall of Fame?
Quote: @JimmyinSD said:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/...li=BBnb7Kz
This goes back to greed... greed by the consumers, greed by the farmers, greed by the ag companies. in a drive to get more bushels per acre, or getting a feeder beef to fat quicker the farmer/rancher at some point became less a steward of the land and their livestock and more a production generated business. low prices have forced their hands with 3rd world beef, pork, and grains getting dumped in the US market in the 90s and 00s really gave them the option to push the envelope of technology with the animals/crops, or simply get by while their neighbors took that path and squeezed them out.
we all want cheaper food so we opt for that Argentinian beef or that Canadian wheat products instead of the more expensive, but better/safer produced American products, as a result the American farmer looks for a way to produce more with less inputs ( genetic science and other methods which IMO will prove long term to be a poor decision) so the ag companies invest billions in research to make corn grow where it should never have been planted, make cattle get to weight in half the time...etc as a result the American farmer had some short term wins, but of course these ag technologies would get sold to other farmers all over the world as well, so now we have even more, even cheap south american beef, even more corn wheat and beans flooding the US markets from foreign sources... so what do our American producers do to survive? they drain the wet lands, the tap our precious ground water aquifers for irrigation, and the break up highly erodible soil that should never be used for crops, cattle are pushed even harder and more short cuts are taken and where are... right where we started, cheap food and an American food production system that is bankrupting the people at the base of the pyramid, while some paper pushers in Chicago or NY get rich.
yet another example of how our broke system is failing the working class American. at what point does our country wake up and realize that these core industries are the base of the US economy. its the stuff we can produce from our own resources that will keep the US at the top of the world economies and we cant turn our back on them for easier bucks. they need to be protected, not be used as pawns in political games.
I know this is older. I'm just kinda cruising the ST page and read this. Very good post. You would know better then me. I was listening to a guy on a your health show talking about this mass production approach to agriculture. He made comments like you did. More bushel per season. His example was apples. He stated that through speeding up the growing process we've made them far less nutritious. Got me thinking. I remember a Red Delicious when I was a kid was hard like bitting into a rock and snapped when you took a piece off. Now its like eating Styrofoam. He said you would need 10 apples today to equal one in nutrition from 1950. He said alot of the health problems we'll face in the future are going to be a direct result of this type of thing. The problem is the world has too many mouths to feed to go back to 1950s way. I buy at the farmers market. I don't know its any better but at least it looks real. Not all waxy and "vine ripe" like they sell at the grocery store.
For the OP link. I read that as well. I always feel very sad for this form of extreme despair or desperation. Suicide touched my life a couple of times and it's never easy for the ones left in it's wake. The unspoken words that should never be surrounding a death are unavoidable in a suicide. Even how people try to talk to the loved ones or just dont try. Leaves a very lonely situation for the living victims.
This is a very unpopular line of thought, but has modern medicine really helped the human race or only hastened it's demise?
God's plan for nature includes disease and other limiting factors to help control the population of our planet to keep us from screwing ourselves out of house and home. The counter arguement is that through science we can now feed these millions and millions of extra people in places that nature never wanted them, but in order to feed them we have genetic engineers messing with nature's core blue print and I have always thought that will someday lead to a global failure to our species. Something will happen that the brightest minds never accounted for in their labs and our engineered foods will no longer have the genetic coding to handle it because somebody didn't know what it was so they took it out of the sequencing to make room for a redder apple, or a juicer pork chop.
Quote: @suncoastvike said:
For the OP link. I read that as well. I always feel very sad for this form of extreme despair or desperation. Suicide touched my life a couple of times and it's never easy for the ones left in it's wake. The unspoken words that should never be surrounding a death are unavoidable in a suicide. Even how people try to talk to the loved ones or just dont try. Leaves a very lonely situation for the living victims.
I've been around it plenty myself...and it pisses me off. I know that those who do it are hurting inside aND they likely have left a lot of clues, but there are always other options if they would look for them and or just swallow their pride and take them...because in the end their selfish decision to end their own pain really only causes so many more people to feel that darkness and those tortured thoughts about what they could have done differently to save that person. So people its really a demon, but some make that concious decision and that to me is a cowards way. Even on the edge of a cliff with a pack of wild animals coming at you...you have a choice. For some fighting just gets to be to scary of an option I guess.
Suicide is something that no matter how many times it hits me personally I will never understand it.
Quote: @JimmyinSD said:
@ suncoastvike said:
For the OP link. I read that as well. I always feel very sad for this form of extreme despair or desperation. Suicide touched my life a couple of times and it's never easy for the ones left in it's wake. The unspoken words that should never be surrounding a death are unavoidable in a suicide. Even how people try to talk to the loved ones or just dont try. Leaves a very lonely situation for the living victims.
I've been around it plenty myself...and it pisses me off. I know that those who do it are hurting inside aND they likely have left a lot of clues, but there are always other options if they would look for them and or just swallow their pride and take them...because in the end their selfish decision to end their own pain really only causes so many more people to feel that darkness and those tortured thoughts about what they could have done differently to save that person. So people its really a demon, but some make that concious decision and that to me is a cowards way. Even on the edge of a cliff with a pack of wild animals coming at you...you have a choice. For some fighting just gets to be to scary of an option I guess.
Suicide is something that no matter how many times it hits me personally I will never understand it.
I don't disagree about the cowards way or they should have swallowed their pride thing. You and I think alot alike there. I dealt from a position of anger myself. Thats the unspoken part I referred to. You couldn't say that to the widow or the children. Not that you would you're not an ass. Whispers are the silence that destroys. That's what I heard someone once say about suicide to the loved ones left behind. That is a great view. Speak to them or just listen but don't avoid them because it's uncomfortable for you.
Now that I think about it the fact that this sat here for months and nobody commented kinda makes my point maybe. Nobody wants to talk about it. Oh well I still liked the post. Well written, good job.
this doesnt bring up the terrible prices on commodities right now.
mom and dad will be lucky to work all of 2018 and break even. dairy is at or below cost of production.
we keep letting canada and new zeland flood our markets.
Quote: @AGRforever said:
this doesnt bring up the terrible prices on commodities right now.
mom and dad will be lucky to work all of 2018 and break even. dairy is at or below cost of production.
we keep letting canada and new zeland flood our markets.
I don't blame the foreign markets on dairy, it's the creameries, they are building amd building funding new markets all the time and they artificially suppress milk prices to boost their profits. I think it's by design. I've watched milk prices and creamery growth and they will suppress prices until their little producers are selling out and then when it starts to hurt their big producers significantly they will boost prices to keep other buys out of their markets. Once in a while they will really boost prices to encourage those left to expand which then creates a new batch of operations that aren't as efficient to buy from that they will cull with the next batch of low milk prices.
The costs of the goods in the stores never fuctuate near as much as what the producers see on their end.
I would love to see a return to producer owned co-ops.
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