
Betting the Farm on the Drought (2015) - axiomdata316
https://longreads.com/2019/08/22/betting-the-farm-on-the-drought/
======
pgrote
They seem to be doing well in the years after the article.

[https://www.facebook.com/coxlandandcattleinc/](https://www.facebook.com/coxlandandcattleinc/)

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chicob
_" Ethan didn’t think much of the liberals’ point of view. But he didn’t think
much of his neighbors’ unbounded optimism either."_

Feels good to read this.

As a liberal-leaning farmer, I feel myself in between two worlds: many farmers
around me see me as a depressing doomsayer, and insist in business as usual
and are not really interested in adapting farming practices or leveraging
conditions for long-term insurance; "city people" see me as a bunny killing,
biodiversity ravaging agro-capitalist.

~~~
davidw
As a city dweller who is fond of "eating food" from time to time, I'm happy
there are people out there trying to figure out better, more sustainable ways
of producing it.

I don't think all of those are going to be pretty or quaint, or look like the
family farm of my mind's eye.

I liked this article; it shows some nuance and insights that typical, shorter
articles do not.

~~~
bluedino
The corn fields here in Michigan are the shortest I have ever seen.

We had a drought this summer but our spring had way too much precipitation. So
amny crops were basically ruined by floods.

Corn is in short supply. The grocery stores have it for 2 ears for a dollar,
and it's very poor quality. It's usually so cheap you can hardly give sweet
corn away. The fields have huge spots where nothing grew.

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chrisco255
This is from 2015. The U.S. is NOT currently in a drought and in fact arguably
had too much rain and precipitation this year:

"The U.S. just had it's wettest 12 months on record"

[https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-us-just-had-its-
wettest-12-...](https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-us-just-had-its-
wettest-12-months-on-record)

Meanwhile blaming every weather anamoly on climate change is rather tiresome.
The climate has never ever been static, period.

~~~
anarchy8
Really sad that the top comment here is from a climate change denialist.

~~~
basementcat
Why is it sad? Just because voters on HN and the USA agree?

~~~
dragonwriter
Neither US national elections nor top position in an HN comment thread
represents simple # of votes from voters.

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crdrost
Beautiful article, I don’t have too much to add except to the unexpected
conclusion:

> “So why is it,” I asked, “that when I hear people talking about you, and you
> hear people talking about me, the only thing they ever talk about is that 5
> percent?”

I feel like this is a solved question. There is a mathematical pattern present
in our political system which says that a political party must either
spinelessly focus on that 5% or die. The pattern says that few folks in the US
are truly “conservative” or “liberal”, most are “terrified of those crazy
liberals” and “terrified of those crazy conservatives”—this farmer seems to be
an example of the former. Focusing in the 5% allows you to do this; if you
don’t do this for Deep Principled Reasons then you lose your voters to a
Spineless party which focuses on those 5% issues to demonize that other party.

The “spoiler effect” present in first-past-the-post voting and could be
changed by building political support for moving to a proportionate House of
Representatives: rather than endless gerrymandered districts, every state
becomes one big multi-representative district: you vote for a party, not for a
representative; your state’s parties each publish a list before the election,
“here are our representatives that we will put in the House in order.” This is
a very standard electoral approach in many parliamentary democracies; there is
no reason that we couldn’t use it here to relax some of this internal tension
and actually get work done on that remaining 95% that we want to solve.

~~~
anarchy8
"terrified of those crazy conservatives" \- people who want to deny me my
rights as a human being, including the right to life.

"terrified of those crazy liberals" \- people who want to ensure I have my
rights protected, and my wellbeing.

Please don't pretend that both sides (or even the "extremes" of the sides) are
the same.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>people who want to ensure I have my rights protected, and my wellbeing.

That's a funny way of saying "deny you of different rights you just don't
happen to care about exercising so you're blind to the fact they want you to
lose them".

Both parties cater heavily to the "there ought to be a law" type of jerks and
only ever pay lip service to individual liberties and human rights.

~~~
anarchy8
What rights are you referring to? Are those actual rights, or make-believe
rights specifically conjured up to discriminate against minorities and groups
you don't agree with?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
"All rights are made up" \- Thor

