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scottie on 01 August 2011
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Crazymann said:
scottie said:
Crazymann said:
spurgeonryan said:

Don't be so quick to assume ignorance in anyone who disagrees with you. I grew up on a hobby farm, and we frequently had holidays to an actual farm. The guy who ran the place hated government subsidies, was making bank (as the phrase goes) without them. He paid his workers well (most were family, the rest became like family, my dad worked there for a year, and I grew close enough to consider this guy as an uncle)

 

If you are making a loss in the agriculture sector, you are farming wrong. Here's a checklist of things you might be doing

1) Overloading your fields - sure, you can squeeze 10% more now but you will fuck up your land and thus your future. If you consider farming to be risky, this is certainly what you are doing wrong.

2) Planting the wrong thing. If you grow rice in Australia you are a moron.

3) Using outdated and inefficient methods.

Perhaps you should take your own advise concerning assumptions and consider that your experience does not exptrapolate well to all farming operations.  What if you are growing properly, rotating crops as you should etc. but then a hail storm decimates your crop, but you still have bills to pay?  Insurance does not cover it all.  What about smut (assuming you know what that is) because some idiot down the road was not careful.  You cannot tell what the weather will do, and it IS a gamble.  Now, hopefully you have enough finanaces in reserve to weather the storm (pun intended), but that only goes so far. 

Also, if you know even half as much as you claim to, then you know how expensive modern farming equipment can be.  Those are some heavy bills to pay in hard times, and not all farms are even large enough to hire and pay workers. 

So kindly stop acting as if you know everything about agriculture.  Not all struggling farmers are doing so because they broke one your overly simplified rules.  Sometimes, luck and nature do fall into the equation.


I never claimed to know everything about agriculture. That is why I say things like "Using outdated and inefficient methods." instead of perfectly describing what the worst and best methods are. I do, however, know enough to be carrying on this conversation. You were rude to crazymann for no good reason and are being kind of rude to me. 

 

If a hail storm decimated a farmers crops, as you say, they should be able to cope very easily  - 1/10th of your crops wouldn't be all that significant. Regardless, how frequent are hailstorms of that severity in an area in which it's sensible to grow crops without planning for it?

 

As for your assertion that there is some capital cost associated with opening a farm. This is true, but not particularly important. There is capital (and risk) associated with any business. If you farm properly, the risks associated with it are fairly minimal. One such example of good practice is the planting of trees in and amonsgt your crops. These have many advantages, such as providing the crops with protection from wind (and even hail), vastly reducing soil erosion (ie making you need much less fertiliser), and they can be used as a source of sustainable timber, providing income even after a hailstorm or something. Other ways to diversify can also help to minimise risk.

 

Bookstore owners don't get taxpayer funding to sell unpopular books, and they don't get taxpayer funding if they overload their shelves and the books all fall down. I don't see why you would want farmers to get these things.