
Rural America Doesn’t Have to Starve to Death - lazerpants
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/big-agribusiness-finance-farming/
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SQueeeeeL
This seems like the same Grapes of Wrath style argument we've been seeing
since the 50s. Except the author re-frames it as if the CAFOs, greedy banks,
and tax havens are completely to blame for the collapse of small farmers. But
to me this seems like an inevitability of the market; these small farmers are
operating inefficiently, that's why they can't compete with the factory farm
prices...

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alfromspace
Nothing is inevitable. We're not slaves to the market. If the market means
small farmers can never be as efficient as factory farms and finance, and may
not have any place in the economy at all without contracting out all aspects
of their farms and losing their standards of living - then F the market.

Sometimes we need to step back from these abstract principles and ask
ourselves if we want to live in that kind of world. I'd rather have a country
where normal people can farm, animals can live good lives, and we have values
other than prostrating ourselves before the altar of GDP.

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gizmo686
Why should the rest of the country subsidize people who want to live the
farming lifestyle?

Btw, hobby farms are a thing. If you want people to be able to pursue hobbies
in liu of work, you need a UBI. (Although, a smaller UBI would be suffient to
allow for nearly viable hobbies like farming)

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pixl97
Why should the country subsidize suburban areas?

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gizmo686
It shouldn't. Suburban sprawl was one of the major "blunders"[0] of domestic
policy in the US. There is even less of an argument to be had here. At least
rural subsidies can be thought of as the government paying for an overcapacity
of food.

[0] scare quotes because it was fairly succesfull in its goal of segragation.

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michaelbrave
I've lived in small towns most of my life, I know more farmers and ranchers
than anyone, and in short there isn't much that can be done. They vote for
politics that support large corporations and deregulation which allows them to
be beat up by larger conglomorates. They fight innovation to the point that
new technology isn't adopted till a son takes over. But most of all, the one
thing that would likely make them more profitable would be to go towards a
higher quality but lower quanity crop (like going organic) but they fight that
too.

Right now rural america is basically subsidised by the cities and has 3x the
voting power of those who live in them. This model isn't sustainable unless
the three things listed above start to change. But they won't.

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pyuser583
Politically, the solution is to offer them candidates who are are conservative
on all issues except corporate regulations.

This is what FDR did: went left on economic issues, and right on everything
else: law and order, pro-military, anti-civil rights, etc. His “brain trust”
and bureaucratic supporters came from the upper class (something rural
citizens support).

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downerending
Despite the clickbait title (no, no one is starving), makes some good points.

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OrangeMango
This article suggests that the answer is to regulate/break up Big Finance and
then the farming problems will just take care of themselves, and farmers will
stop doing "unsavory" things like voting for Donald Trump. Right.

