scottie said:
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. |
Whoa, that wasn't what I was implying at all. I happen to be a libertarian, so I don't support such subsidies, and neither do the farmers in my family. However, while the ideas you bring up about diversification are really good... in an ideal world. They are quite simply not able to support themselves ONLY with farming as seems to be implied in your post. Granted this is a small operation and a WHEAT operation, so they don't enjoy the support of the lobbyists pushing HFCS and ethanol on everyone - vastly driving up the cost of corn and starving the poor. I don't exaggerate, as there have been corn riots in Mexico because of the inflated price of corn. IF you had enough land and capital to use new equipment with modern conveniences, then I'm sure that a farm can do well consistently, but there are a LOT of farms in the midwest that are simply too small. Much smaller than the one you visited apparently.
As it is most farming people have moved on to other trades (law and dentistry seem to be the most popular for some reason) because is just isn't that easy to make a living ONLY farming. Not for small operations, anyway. Now, am I saying that there isn't risk in every profession? Certainly not. However, ask the wheat farmers of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas about there fortunes this year, and they will tell you how bleak it really is. The majority of all of those crops have literally scorched and the entire region has been declared a loss - crop wise. If they were able to properly invest and diversify then they might have enough to survive a summer like this (and family's area, THREE consecutive summers). But that simply isn't always possible for a variety of reasons.
Me... I got out and found much more stable and lucrative employment, but I just don't agree with implying that farming is always easy. Bigger operations may be insulated, small (family) farms that at one time made up the majority of the workforce mentioned in the OP are a dying concept because they are most certainly not.
As for me being rude, I was no more rude in spirit than someone implying that "farmers make bank" without the well needed qualifiers of "some" or "the ones I know." As I said, not all crop farmers have ethanol (which is worse for the environment than standard fossil fuel) and HFCS (which needs to go away) to prop up prices. You know it's bad when the corn lobby has to run propaganda on television assuring the sheep that HFCS is truely absorbed the same as cane sugar.... ah but that's another topic.
