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Zippyjuan
10-02-2019, 07:04 PM
and Trump Trade Wars are making things worse.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-s-agriculture-secretary-family-farms-may-not-survive-n1061381


MADISON, Wis. — President Donald Trump's agriculture secretary said Tuesday 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.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters following an appearance at the World Dairy Expo in Madison that it's getting harder for farmers to get by on milking smaller herds.

"In America, the big get bigger and the small go out," Perdue said. "I don't think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability."

Perdue's visit comes as Wisconsin dairy farmers are wrestling with a host of problems, including declining milk prices, rising suicide rates, the transition to larger farms with hundreds or thousands of animals and Trump's international trade wars.

Wisconsin, which touts itself as America's Dairyland on its license plates, has lost 551 dairy farms in 2019 after losing 638 in 2018 and 465 in 2017, according to data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. The Legislature's finance committee voted unanimously last month to spend an additional $200,000 to help struggling farmers deal with depression and mental health problems.

Jerry Volenec, a fifth generation Wisconsin dairy farmer with 330 cows, left the Perdue event feeling discouraged about his future.

"What I heard today from the secretary of agriculture is there's no place for me," Volenec told reporters. "Can I get some support from my state and federal government? I feel like we're a benefit to society."

Getting bigger at the expense of smaller operations like his is "not a good way to go," said Darin Von Ruden, president of Wisconsin Farmers Union and a third generation dairy farmer who runs a 50-cow organic farm.

"Do we want one corporation owning all the food in our country?" he said to reporters.

Perdue said he believes the 2018 farm bill should help farmers stay afloat. The bill reauthorizes agriculture and conservation programs at a rough cost of $400 billion over five years or $867 billion over 10 years. But he warned that small farms will still struggle to compete.

"It's very difficult on an economy of scale with the capital needs and all the environmental regulations and everything else today to survive milking 40, 50, or 60 or even 100 cows," he said.

Perdue held a town hall meeting with farmers and agricultural groups to kick off the expo. The former Georgia governor seemed to charm the crowd with his southern accent and jokes about getting swiped in the face by a cow's tail.

Jeff Lyon, general manager for FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in Madison, asked Perdue for his thoughts on Trump's trade war with China.

Trump's administration has long accused China of unfair trade practices and has imposed escalating rounds of tariffs on Chinese imports to press for concessions. The administration alleges that Beijing steals and forces foreign companies to hand over trade secrets, unfairly subsidizes Chinese companies and engages in cyber-theft of intellectual property. China's countermoves have been especially hard on American farmers because they target U.S. agricultural exports.

According to a September analysis by the U.S. Dairy Export Council, U.S. dairy solids exports to China fell by 43 percent overall in the 11 months starting in July 2018, when China enacted the first round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. dairy products. About 3.7 billion pounds of U.S. farmers' milk had to find other markets during that span, the analysis found.

parocks
10-02-2019, 07:11 PM
things always getting worse.

However, in Maine, they have a pretty wide variety of raw milks. Expensive, but raw milk is much better than pasteurized, it's like it's a different thing. But a half gallon costs $4, or more.

Zippyjuan
10-02-2019, 07:20 PM
things always getting worse.

However, in Maine, they have a pretty wide variety of raw milks. Expensive, but raw milk is much better than pasteurized, it's like it's a different thing. But a half gallon costs $4, or more.

Part of the problem may be its short shelf life- seven to ten days from harvesting. If it takes a day or two to get it to a store, they may have five days to sell it before they have to throw it away. Higher amounts discarded means they have to make more money off the amounts they do sell. Pasturized milk usually has a couple weeks to sell.

parocks
10-02-2019, 07:29 PM
Part of the problem may be its short shelf life- seven to ten days from harvesting. If it takes a day or two to get it to a store, they may have five days to sell it before they have to throw it away. Higher amounts discarded means they have to make more money off the amounts they do sell. Pasturized milk usually has a couple weeks to sell.

I pay it, and it's more than $4, more like $4.69 for a half.

It's a better product. Also, it's Maine, and Maine things tend to be expensive. A half gallon is quite a bit of milk though.

Fancy coffee like Starbucks didn't exist 40 years ago.

Microbrews didn't exist 40 years ago.

And those are 2 areas where small but noticeable differences in quality lead to big differences in price. The difference between raw milk and pasteurized is pretty severe, as they're almost 2 different products with 2 different sets of health benefits.

With beer, especially, with so many local brewers, everywhere, you could have a similar thing with raw milk. It really kind of does happen already in Maine, if I can find 4 different raw milk seller labels, from 4 different raw milk sellers in Maine, that's almost like a real industry to me at least.

Zippyjuan
10-02-2019, 07:33 PM
I pay it, and it's more than $4, more like $4.69 for a half.

It's a better product. Also, it's Maine, and Maine things tend to be expensive. A half gallon is quite a bit of milk though.

Fancy coffee like Starbucks didn't exist 40 years ago.

Microbrews didn't exist 40 years ago.

And those are 2 areas where small but noticeable differences in quality lead to big differences in price. The difference between raw milk and pasteurized is pretty severe, as they're almost 2 different products with 2 different sets of health benefits.

With beer, especially, with so many local brewers, everywhere, you could have a similar thing with raw milk. It really kind of does happen already in Maine, if I can find 4 different raw milk seller labels, from 4 different raw milk sellers in Maine, that's almost like a real industry to me at least.

I have never had the chance to try it. My Mom's uncle had a dairy farm but I was quite young when I visited it so don't remember much about it.

r3volution 3.0
10-02-2019, 07:42 PM
Deep State's taking over agriculture by tricking Stable Genius into starting trade war with China that hurts small farmers?

acptulsa
10-02-2019, 07:48 PM
Deep State's taking over agriculture by tricking Stable Genius into starting trade war with China that hurts small farmers?

Wasn't Monsanto and ADM taking over the Breadbasket of the World a keystone of the Deep State's little Agenda 21?

Swordsmyth
10-02-2019, 08:04 PM
Deep State's taking over agriculture by tricking Stable Genius into starting trade war with China that hurts small farmers?
Propaganda, here's the truth:

Anti-Trumpers agree: The president’s trade battle with China is hurting our economy and, in particular, America’s farmers. We are told that the tariff tiffs have caused a collapse in U.S. agricultural exports to China, and consequent heartbreak in our heartland.
It isn’t true.
As with most criticisms lodged against the Trump White House, this oft-repeated narrative is way overblown. Turns out, far from suffering what CNBC recently described as “a devastating year for farmers” (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/10/trump-is-ruining-our-markets-farmers-lose-a-huge-customer-to-trade-war----china.html) the farmers of America overall are doing quite well.


The Department of Agriculture recently forecast (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-income-finances/highlights-from-the-farm-income-forecast/) that net farm income will rise nearly 5 percent this year, to $88 billion. That growth comes on top of increases in both 2017 and 2018 and is, just for the record, faster than the overall growth of the economy.
For sure, times could be better. The forecast for this year means that real net farm income would come in 36 percent below its peak of $136.5 billion in 2013 and slightly below its 2000-18 average ($90.1 billion). Farmers suffered a severe drop in total revenues (https://www.statista.com/statistics/196099/total-us-gross-farm-income-since-2000/) during the Obama years, collapsing from $484 billion in 2013 to $412 billion in 2016. Weirdly, I don’t remember the media paying much attention.


Perhaps most startling, the DOA forecasts that the average farm will see net cash income increase more than 11 percent this year, “the first annual increase after 4 consecutive years of declines.” Moreover, the median income of farm households will be up almost 4 percent this year.
At the same time, farmers are getting richer; the net worth of the farm sector is likely to rise slightly this year, to $2.7 trillion, mostly because of higher real estate values.


In short, it turns out that as a whole our farmers are doing ok, or maybe even better than ok.
None of this prevents the liberal media from hyperventilating about farm-belt misery. A recent headline from an industry journal blares (https://www.agweb.com/article/usda-slashes-us-corn-soybean-export-estimates-china): “USDA Slashes U.S. Corn, Soybean Export Estimates To China.” Indeed, the USDA predicted that, thanks largely to a drop in corn and soybean shipments, total agricultural exports will decline 6 percent this year, to “the lowest level recorded since 2016.”
That sounds ominous, and seems to bolster the notion that Brazil is swooping in to supply Chinese soybean demand, thanks to the trade spat. But the story is not quite so simple (https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/agriculture/090419-brazils-augsoybean-exports-to-china-down-40-on-year). Brazil’s soybean exports to China, as it happens, are also falling, down 40 percent in August and off 14 percent through the first eight months of the year.
The reason? The dreaded swine fever, which through June had killed some 22 percent of China’s pig herds, the major consumers of soybeans. Some analysts are projecting (https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/as-swine-fever-spreads-asian-countries-cull-millions-of-pigs/2019/06/28/d507d6bc-984d-11e9-9a16-dc551ea5a43b_story.html) that as much as half of China’s pig population could die. Fewer pigs, less soybean demand.
The real story is that even as soybean exports to China have dropped, pork exports have increased, due to the swine flu. Overall, the USDA projects (https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/94837/aes-109.pdf?v=4424.3) that U.S. agricultural exports will be up slightly in the current fiscal year.
So how are America’s farmers responding to these fluctuations in markets and tariffs? The media would have us believe that the trade battle is sabotaging support for President Trump (https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump) in farm country, throwing his reelection in jeopardy.
The Hill recently ran a story (https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/459933-nebraska-farmers-union-president-calls-trumps-approach-to-china-a-huge-unforced) pumping that notion and quoting John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, who, the article states, “ripped President Trump (https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump)" over his escalating trade war with China, calling it a “huge unforced error.”
The piece failed to mention that the Nebraska Farmers Union is a chapter of the National Farmers Union, a left-wing organization that donates money exclusively (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000027842ID=D000027842ID=D000027842 ID=D000027842&party=D&chamber=S&type=P&cycle=2018) to farm-state Democrats and is committed to green energy and federal price supports for farm products. It opposes (https://nebraskafarmersunion.org/policy/) large-scale corporate farms and President Trump.

More at: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/...tle-with-china (https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/460208-farmers-prosper-in-spite-of-trumps-trade-battle-with-china)

The dairy industry has been deeply in bed with the government for a very long time so they are not in a position to cry even if defending the US from Chinese trade warfare actually does cause them some pain.

oyarde
10-02-2019, 08:39 PM
Uh , I do not need any advice from an ag sec. I am OK .

parocks
10-03-2019, 01:27 PM
Wasn't Monsanto and ADM taking over the Breadbasket of the World a keystone of the Deep State's little Agenda 21?

That sounds about right.

euphemia
10-03-2019, 01:30 PM
This is not Trump’s failure. It is Obama’s. He’s the one who signed the Food Safety Act of 2011 into law. This is the law that outlawed selling anything from a home garden and gave Monsanto the monopoly on GMO seed.

I posted about this before the law was passed in 2011 with links to the bill. I also went to a town hall meeting with Bob Corker to talk specifically about this. The unions were there to talk about their issues, so I never got my chance to speak. I was sitting with Matt Collins, so that may have had something to do with it. ;)