I realize I've really been sucking at the blogging. For this, I blame Trump. Sure, harvest has been taking up a decent amount of time, and we are still screwing around trying to get done. We've had some breakdowns, some elevator closings over the last couple of weekends, and a little bit of inclement weather, but we've got about 4-5 days left, and I'm not going to get too stressed out about that considering it's Halloween (this is probably a few run-on sentences, but I'd like to see it diagrammed nonetheless). Yes, the forecast does look like shit, but we are a lot better off than last fall. Mainly, it is that the dysfunction of the Trump presidency (I still cringe typing that phrase) is constantly in the news, but everywhere I turn there are people who not only don't think the Donald is a complete fuckup, they actually think he's doing a good job. While alone, I constantly think that Trump supporters are stupid or evil, and then I remember that they are my neighbors whom I otherwise respect. The festering anger is challenging to handle. Anyway, I'll give you a little warning-I'll be live/drunk blogging/tweeting the election next Tuesday if we aren't shelling corn that day. The current forecast indicates I'll be drunkenly ranting come midnight Tuesday/Wednesday.
My former roommate, fellow amateur boxer, occasional commenter here, and Townie was featured at halftime of Notre Dame's loss to Georgia on Saturday. This video reminds me that maybe I should have gone and studied at the library with him instead of staying back in the dorm and watching TV. However, if I'd have done that, I'd have missed countless Big Ten basketball games and quite a few good episodes of the Red Green Show. Anyway, enjoy:
About 40 percent of levees along the Mississippi River in the Army
Corps of Engineers district north of St. Louis are built higher than
their authorized heights, according to the agency’s own findings.
The
Corps’ Rock Island District, which covers an area beginning about 60
miles upstream from St. Louis, reports that about 80 out of 202 miles of
levee systems it surveyed are improperly high, based on data yet to be
publicly released.
“Some of those were between 2 and 4 feet above
their authorized elevation,” said Scott Whitney, the Corps’ Rock Island
District flood risk manager and chief of project management. “The
revelation is out there that levee districts throughout this region have
taken, in some cases, some pretty extreme measures to protect
themselves.”
That
protection, he notes, has come “at the cost of others,” with the added
levee height leaving other areas more vulnerable to redirected
floodwater. Whitney said the district is still developing a hydraulic
model to understand how far-reaching the levees’ combined impact on
flooding has been, including whether the St. Louis area has been
affected....
Complicating matters further, stronger flood protection is
increasingly coveted, with an unusual number of major floods taking
place in recent years — a symptom consistent with more erratic trends in
precipitation predicted by climate change.
“We’re in an extremely
wet period,” said Whitney, noting that several of the region’s top
flooding events on record have occurred in the last decade. “We’ve had a
number of those in the last several years. People think, ‘My God, I’ve
had three 100-year flood events in the last five years.’”
Expect more frequent floods, more damaging winds, more violent tornadoes and hurricanes, and other dramatic weather events in the future. And expect communities that can to try to protect themselves, even as it hurts their neighbors. Things are going to be difficult in the future.
Alex Pareene goes over many of the things that make the Republican Party such a dysfunctional governing party:
If you want to understand intra-GOP warfare, the decision-making process
of our president, the implosion of the Republican healthcare plan, and
the rest of the politics of the Trump era, you don’t need to know about
Russian espionage tactics, the state of the white working class, or even
the beliefs of the “alt-right.” You pretty much just need to be in
semi-regular contact with a white, reasonably comfortable, male retiree.
We are now ruled by men who think and act very much like that ordinary
man you might know, and if you want to know why they believe so many
strange and terrible things, you can basically blame the fact that a
large and lucrative industry is dedicated to lying to them....
The bottom-feeding amorality of the sorts of people who sponsored the
right-wing press, and the crummy nature of the products and services
sold, shows exactly who was supposed to be consuming it: suckers. Or,
more specifically, trusting retirees, with a bit of disposable income,
and a natural inclination to hate modernity and change—an inclination
that could be heightened, radicalized, and exploited....
Rather rapidly, two things happened: First, Republicans realized
they’d radicalized their base to a point where nothing they did in power
could satisfy their most fervent constituents. Then—in a much more
consequential development—a large portion of the Republican
Congressional caucus became people who themselves consume garbage conservative media, and nothing else.
That,
broadly, explains the dysfunction of the Obama era, post-Tea Party
freakout. Congressional Republicans went from people who were able to
turn their bullshit-hose on their constituents, in order to rile them
up, to people who pointed it directly at themselves, mouths open.
The radicalization of the base actually occurred earlier than Pareene lets on. He pinpoints it to the election of Obama, but, at least around here, it occurred before that. I ran for office in 2006 because I saw a Republican party being taken over by know-nothing idiots who believe all kinds of non-factual bullshit. That year was an election year for all of the statewide executive offices, and when there is a contested Republican primary election for Governor, my county's Republican party holds a County Convention. As one of the candidates for office, I was invited to speak, or I otherwise wouldn't have attended. The opening address was given by John Boehner, who, at the time, was House Majority Leader (he would become Minority Leader after the 2006 election). He rolled out a lot of red meat, but over the course of the day, his speech was one of the tamer ones given. Also present was House Freedom Caucus founder and do-nothing government paycheck thief Jim Jordan, who was leaving the Ohio Senate to run for Congress that year. I don't think he spoke, but if he did, it was while I was trying to keep from puking due to nerves before my speech. I gave my speech, which didn't stick to my script, but generally focused on the need for more spending on education. Not surprisingly, I was the only speaker who didn't mention guns, terrorism or abortion, and the only one who mentioned additional spending for education.
The delegates to the county convention were a mix of elected officials (especially township trustees), party volunteers and business people. To best illustrate that the base had already been radicalized, all but two of the right-wing loon candidates for statewide office (State Attorney General candidate Betty Montgomery and Mike DeWine, who was the most sane candidate for U.S. Senate present-how times change) was endorsed by the delegates present. Later that week, I stopped by the county Recorder's office. He was the county political boss, and he confided to me that he and the other political wheel, the county Prosecutor, were terrified by how radical the base was, and how willing they were to back the morons who professed the greatest faith in the old-time right-wing media bullshit. Those two were more in it for the power and the ability to hand out patronage, and they were shocked that the majority of the local party was drinking the Kool-Aid.
As Pareene points out, one of the main problems is that the true believers are now a substantial minority in Congress. The problem is that they were already holding most of the positions at the state level. Jim Jordan was, at that moment in 2006, making the leap from the state-level stage to the national stage. My goal was to convince people that they shouldn't be electing morons like Jim Jordan and my opponent to government positions, but instead be electing people who were smart enough to vote for positions outside of the conservative dogma. Unfortunately, I had a hard time telling my friends and neighbors that they had a lot of stupid political beliefs. Instead, I tried to work my way around the edges of political discussions, and ended up absorbing a brutal shellacking from a rather dumb incumbent I ran against.
Pareene focuses on Trump's position as the Fox News viewer-in-chief, and how dangerous that is functional government. The unfortunate thing is that this movement has been building for almost 40 years, and it has taken completely unqualified dumbfuck being elected President of the United States for most folks to realize that stupid people have gradually been filtering up from the grassroots, and now they control almost all the levers of power. We've had plenty of time to realize what's happening, and the fact that I ran for office is evidence that it was completely obvious back in 2006. Now we have to reap the whirlwind.
A study
published last year in the American Journal of Psychology collected
“data about the emergence of adult like swearing in children.” The
authors, Timothy Jay and Kristin Jay, recorded observations of children
ages 1 through 12 and adults using taboo utterances, which “were
described as offensive words and phrases (e.g. fuck), insults or name
calling (e.g. douchebag), and clinical terms (e.g. penis), as well as
abusive expressions (e.g. I hate you).”...
If you’re wondering about how the frequency of words in a child’s
vocabulary can decline, the breakdown provides some clues. For 1- and
2-year-olds, the most frequently used taboo word was “poop” or “poopy,”
but it quickly falls in usage as children become older. The researchers’
data showed that “the taboo lexicon emerges early and shifts over time”
in such a way that as kids age, they have more bad words in common with
adults.
I think I was in third grade when I got in trouble for first dropping an F-bomb. Slightly ahead of schedule, I guess.
I just cracked a beer and I'll be here all night. So check in regularly.
5:59 The Farmer News Network has breaking news: We are projecting that Indiana, the Alabama of the Midwest, will award its electoral votes to Donald Trump.
6:35 Just finished some leftover wings, and now ready to get to work. First off, I'll make a prediction for the results for my home county. I think it will be 65% Trump, 31% Clinton, 4% other. Check back about 9:30 for the actual totals.
6:41 I would expect that the Indiana Senate race won't be declared for a while, but the first results I saw had Todd Young's current lead being smaller than Trump's. That can't be a good sign for him.
6:49 Honestly, I think several election cycles from now, whatever takes the place of the Republican Party will look back at 2016 and curse the fact that the GOP base selected the candidate who doubled down on favoring the dying demographics while attacking growing populations in the country. Much of the age group that will most strongly support the GOP will be dead in 2028.
6:54 I'm not sure how farm state Congressmen will be able to go to their colleagues in the next 2 years leading up to the renewal of the Farm Bill, and make the case that despite the fact that farmers don't think anybody else deserves welfare, farmers deserve welfare. And, most likely, it will be at a time when farmers really need welfare. We'll see what happens there, but I think farmers will be depending on the kindness of liberals.
6:56 Frank Luntz, father of labeling the estate tax the death tax, is calling the election for Hillary.
In case I wasn't clear enough from my previous tweets:
Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. #ElectionNight
7:06 Hopefully this isn't a domestic terrorist attacking our election process.
7:08 I haven't seen anything about this shooting on CNN or Fox News, nor heard it on NPR.
7:26 Lots of interesting ballot issues voted on today. I'm watching the death penalty referendum brought by Governor Pete Ricketts to overrule the legislature's ban on the death penalty. The Ricketts family is a major reason I was rooting for the Cubs to lose the World Series.
7:29 If Clinton wins Florida, this race is over.
7:31 The FNN calls the congressional races for Jim Jordan and Warren Davidson in Western Ohio. The do-nothing caucus secures 2 wins.
7:37 Trump needs Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and someplace else. He's probably going to do pretty good with the first four. Apparently, though, Frank Luntz must have different information.
7:42 It's kind of hard to gauge anything about the races soon after the polls close. The crazy conservative rural areas tend to turn in their results quicker, since it doesn't take long to count a dozen votes, skewing the early projections.
8:03 A growing rural-urban divide, combined with greater representation by do-nothing jackasses like Jim Jordan bodes very poorly for rural areas. We are kind of baking in further decline and greater dysfunction like the current heroin epidemic.
8:06 It will depressing if Florida goes for Clinton but Ohio goes with the Donald. Ohio, don't make Buckeyes look like jackasses.
8:10 Honestly, this election make Obama look so much better than a decent election would.
8:17 Thank God
Police in Azusa, CA believe a shooting that happened there today was focused on a residential area, not nearby polls https://t.co/OPkSTlip3o
8:22 Florida is ridiculously close. Trump has to win this to have any chance. Clinton is leading Ohio. Western Ohio results must not have been tallied yet.
8:27 We could use a marijuana referendum result to lighten things up a little.
8:33 Looks like Evan Bayh may blow the Indiana Senate race. Governor may still be interesting. It would have been more interesting if Pence was still in it to reap the whirlwind from "defending religious freedom" to hate gays.
8:39 Virginia is really showing the exploding rural-urban divide. Not good for rural areas long-term.
8:48 Being out-of-touch with the rest of the country is not a good thing
Trump running well ahead of Romney in rural America. It will keep Michigan and Pennsylvania close. pic.twitter.com/lQ1nMFpW27
8:52 Fox News is cheerleading right now, really building up the rural landslide for Trump. I think the population centers will win out, but Fox will keep the rubes locked in.
9:04 Early on, Pete Ricketts is winning his campaign to bring back the death penalty, according to the Omaha World-Herald. I sure hope that asshole loses.
9:12 My county went 68% Trump, 27% Clinton, 5% other.
9:18 If Trump holds leads from rural votes in Virginia and Ohio, but urban votes come in to top him, the Fox News viewership is going to lose its shit about voter fraud.
9:21 It may come down to Nevada.
9:23 If Trump wins, expect the market to to take a shit tomorrow. And for weeks afterwards.
9:27 Virginia is the biggest surprise so far.
9:29 If you are actually reading this and want to add something, please comment.
9:36 Now Michigan and Wisconsin become interesting. There may be a lot of people with hangovers tomorrow.
9:39 There is panic in the liberal Twitterati. Bad news for Clinton, but maybe just a major scare for them. Pretty early yet.
9:45 Oops, more votes still coming in in my county. More going for Trump.
9:47 If Trump wins Virginia, this may be over. Revenge of the rural voters. W may be off the hook as the worst president of the century.
9:49 I'm into the can beer. May as well start saving money. My stock portfolio is going to get pretty ugly. I doubt that this will inspire corporate America, either.f
9:54 Checking Fox News to see how giddy they are.
9:58 Wow, Fox just called Virginia for Clinton
10:03 Wow, Trump is winning 80% of the vote in Mercer County, OH, 79% in Auglaize and 78% in Shelby. That is crazy, even for extremely racist areas. This is heavy government farm payment country.
10:14 Trump vote totals in West Central Ohio are insane.
10:17 Brexit 2.0? The whole lesson of 2016 may be that rural areas can fuck entire nations at will.
10:19 In other words, showing up matters, even if you are crazy.
10:23 Ohio is probably gone. Clinton is done without Michigan and Wisconsin. If she wins those, everything comes down to Nevada.
10:33 NPR is reporting that evangelicals are going 80% for Trump. WTF? Christianity is dead.
10:37 If you thought W was bad, you haven't seen nothing yet. If you thought W was good, you were wrong, and now you are even more wrong.
10:52 Holy shit. Ron Johnson won easily. The man is a bump on a log in the Senate and never should have gotten elected in the first place. I honestly think Clinton is done now. It looks like the Midwest is going to carry Trump to the Presidency. We are going to get punished for this stupidity.
10:59 It is over. Trump wins.
11:02 Wow.
11:04 This is Brexit 2.0, and it will be a disaster.
11:10 Fox is talking about the ins versus the outs, and how people are voting for Trump because they don't like the establishment. This is true. The thing is, the outs are pissed off because the ins weren't sharing productivity gains. And yet, Trump's tax plan is to reward the ins for stealing the productivity gains. The outs are going to continue to be pissed off, and even worse, the Trump crew will slash the social programs that keep the real poor from getting completely pissed off about how badly they get fucked. This is the worst possible outcome.
11:18 My prediction at this point is that Trump will win Wisconsin, Michigan and the presidency. The stock market is going to crash tomorrow.
11:24 My point isn't that a Hillary Clinton victory would save America from disaster. My point is that the economic and tax policies Hillary Clinton would support would be more likely to counter-balance the inequalities that are causing working-class people to be pissed off. Cutting taxes and regulations will not improve the standing of the working-class. These policies will only make their standing worse. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.
11:35
Over and done. Election 2016. American century. Whatever else you want to add.
11:48 The problem throughout the economic struggles, especially those felt in the manufacturing field, over the past 40 years has been that the U.S. had to deflate an economy that saw 5% of the population consuming 15 to 20% of the world's resources. What we needed was a fairly equal sacrifice amongst the wealthy and the working class. We didn't get anything like that. Hell, we haven't even quit consuming that 15 to 20% of the world's resources. We just quit sharing the gains from that economy. This election will make that tension worse, even if the working class feels like it won. That is what scares me. Well, that and Donald Trump as President.
11:56 God, this just makes things worse for rural areas
1:30 Fasten your seat belts. Come January 20, the Republicans will control the House, the Senate and the White House. And soon enough, the Supreme Court. This will not work out well for average people.
Harvests are under way of what are projected to be the largest corn
and soybean crops in U.S. history, which soon will hit a global market
already sitting on the largest-ever grain stockpiles.
Indeed,
some farmers are hoping for a weather hiccup somewhere in the world to
curb yields and breathe life into crop prices that recently hit
multiyear lows.
They may be waiting a long time.
It
is a dramatic turnaround from four years ago, when prices for many
commodities were soaring to the highest levels U.S. producers had seen
in their lives. Back then, extreme drought slashed production of major
row crops, forcing ranchers to cull cattle herds as feed costs soared.But now farmers face a problem of the opposite sort. Prices for some
crops are hovering near multiyear lows as storage facilities bulge with
farm goods.
To make space for crops like corn after a massive
wheat harvest last summer, Frank Riedl, general manager at Great Bend
Co-op, a Kansas grain elevator and farm supplier, bought and leased
extra land on which to build bunkers the size of football fields where
he can heap millions of bushels of overflow grain.
“There’s an
abundance of corn out here in the country and we don’t have the storage
base for it,” he says. “Farmers are trying to find any place they can to
dump their crops.”
Things are going to get ugly. Farmers are still passably optimistic, but I think the next few years will probably beat that out of us. Luckily for me, I've never been optimistic.
Illinois farmer David Erickson admits that what he and many U.S.
farmers are about to do doesn’t seem to make much sense. With bulging
stockpiles of corn and soybeans left over from last year’s harvest,
they’re planting more in 2016 -- even though the crops probably won’t be
profitable.
“It’s hard to get your head around the idea of doing
something that you know will lose money, but I don’t have much choice,”
said Erickson, who plans to sow 1,740 acres of soybeans on his farm near
Galesburg, up from 1,590 last year. He can’t afford to leave land
fallow and needs revenue to pay bills.
After record prices in 2012 sparked a boom in output, corn and soybeans
in the Midwest now fetch less than the cost to produce them, and U.S.
farm income is headed for a 14-year low. While the market has improved
in recent months, researcher AgResource Co. still estimates a $50 loss
for every acre sown on average. As they seed more, growers have cut
spending and hope better-than-normal yields will help them at least
break even.
Farmers in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower, will expand corn
planting to 89.998 million acres, up 2.3 percent from a six-year low in
2015, and soybeans will be sown on 83.07 million acres, the second-most
ever, a Bloomberg survey of 33 analysts showed. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture will disclose its planting and stockpile estimates on
Thursday...
Bigger harvests may compound a global surplus that sent prices plunging
during the previous three years. Domestic corn inventories on March 1
were at 7.798 billion bushels, the highest for that date in 29 years,
while soybean stockpiles touched 1.557 billion, up 17 percent from a
year earlier and the most since 2007, according to a separate survey.
7.798 billion bushels? Holy fuck! So what are farmers thinking? Well:
With few appealing options, David Seil chose to expand corn planting on
his 1,300-acre farm near Gowrie, Iowa. Rather than sacrifice productive
land by using it as pasture for his cattle, he’s cutting back on
spending for seed and fertilizer and hoping that weather damages crops
somewhere else so that prices go up. The arrival of La Nina weather
patterns may increase the drought risk in the Midwest, and the
government is forecasting higher temperatures this year.
Even the most crazy optimist farmer is hoping somebody else has a weather disaster. We're screwed.
Who renewed his professional engineering license 26 hours before it expired? This guy! Why? Probably because he completed his 30 hours of continuing education about eight hours before that.
Remember this next time Mike Pence claims to be a Christian:
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy welcomed to his state Wednesday a
family of Syrian refugees diverted from Indiana because of security
concerns raised by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
"It is the
right thing, the humane thing to do," Malloy told reporters. "Quite
frankly, if you believe in God, it’s the morally correct thing to do."
The
family of three fled from Syria to Jordan when their 5-year-old son was
less than 1 and is the first family to be redirected after 26 governors
objected this week to accepting Syrian refugees, according to The New
York Times.
The status of a family of four that
was supposed to arrive Dec. 10 in Indianapolis, where they have friends,
is in limbo as Catholic Charities weighs how to respond to Pence's
request that the family be directed elsewhere.
"There’s
still just a lot of information that we’re all waiting on," said Heidi
Smith, director of refugee services for Catholic Charities Indianapolis.
"In the meantime, there’s refugees that have no control of their lives
and no place to go and nobody wants them. And we have to think about
what it would be like to be in their shoes."
The
state Division of Family Resources sent a letter Tuesday to Exodus
Refugee Immigration and to Catholic Charities Indianapolis asking that
all Syrian arrivals be “suspended or redirected to another state that is
willing to accept Syrian placements until assurances that proper
security measure are in place have been provided by the federal
government.”....
Pence tweeted Wednesday that he will "maintain this policy
until the Administration and Congress acts to ensure the security of our
Hoosiers."
Malloy told reporters Pence doesn't have legal authority to reject Syrian refugees.
"But
this is the same guy who signed a homophobic bill in the spring
surrounded by homophobes," Malloy said, referring to Indiana's Religious
Freedom Restoration Act that critics said would allow discrimination
against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. "So I’m not
surprised by anything the governor does."
Pence is an embarrassment, but I expect nothing less from Indiana. I can't believe how supposedly tough guy Republicans are such bed-wetting chickenshits (which is actually an insult to bed-wetters and chicken shit).
The two-year budget deal produces savings from one of the most popular
programs in farm country — federally subsidized crop insurance — and
farm state lawmakers are furious.
Senators and House members said Tuesday they weren't notified of the cut
before the deal was struck, with Republican leaders pushing for a vote
this week on the budget pact. The crop insurance companies that depend
on federal subsidies said in a statement that the proposed $3 billion in
cuts over 10 years could be devastating to the industry.
Budget-writers in Washington have long eyed the crop insurance program,
which costs more than $9 billion annually, as a pot of available money.
But farm-state lawmakers have fought to protect it, saying it makes more
sense than other farm subsidies since it pays out when farmers suffer
losses.
Congress got rid of other types of subsidies in a wide-ranging farm bill
last year, including payments that went to farmers regardless of crop
yield or crop price. In turn, they increased federal support for crop
insurance.
The budget deal would create the savings by lowering the rate of return
for companies that sell crop insurance to farmers. The federal
government partially subsidizes those companies and insures some of
their losses.
The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, Texas Rep. Mike Conaway and Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts,
issued a joint statement along with the top Democrats on the panels
objecting to the cuts, which they said would "undermine a critical
risk-management tool for American agriculture producers and consumers."
Both said they would vote against the bill.
I'm sure I'll hear some farmers complain that these cuts make it hard to do long-term planning or some other crap, but I'm also sure I've heard some farmers complain that the government subsidizes health insurance premiums under Obamacare. I'm not sure I see the differences in those subsidies. Anyway, farm state legislators who are ready and willing to target government spending they think goes to minorities in cities ought to consider whether the rural voters who elect them aren't the real minorities. I can guarantee that if blacks, Hispanics and other city voters turned out for elections, many conservatives would have to look for jobs outside of the public sector.
Ag-state lawmakers, farm
groups and the crop-insurance industry were flexing their muscles
Tuesday to push back against plans to cut $3 billion from crop-insurance
companies over eight years.
The budget bill would reverse a provision in the
farm bill and effectively require USDA to renegotiate the Standard
Reinsurance Agreement with crop insurance companies in 2016. The bill
also sets a hard cap of 8.9% as the overall rate of return
crop-insurance companies can receive. Under current law, the overall
rate of return is 14.5%.
The bill doesn't make any changes in crop insurance the cost of policies or protection levels for farmers.
Several congressmen and senators took to social media to vent as details about the budget plan made the rounds on Tuesday.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., @SenatorHeitkamp
-- See statement on how I'm looking 4 path to prevent cuts to
#cropinsurance & avoid reopening #FarmBill in #BudgetDeal http://1.usa.gov/…
Senate Ag Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas,
@SenPatRoberts -- I will oppose the budget deal. Farmers should not be
forced to shoulder the nation's financial burdens. http://goo.gl/…
The battle immediately raised the profile of
crop insurance in the budget arguments with Republicans loudly defending
higher spending for a government program.
Roberts, along with Sen. Debbie Stabenow,
D-Mich., House Ag Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Rep. Collin
Peterson, D-Minn., issued a joint statement, "Ag Committee Leaders State
United Against Reopening Farm Bill to New Crop Insurance Cuts."
Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., placed the blame for
the crop-insurance provision on the White House with the "intent to
re-open the Farm Bill and create a single payer 'Obamacare of Crop
Insurance,' " which Cramer said was unacceptable. Cramer then stated he
was "committed to working with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike
Conaway and his committee to find the $3 billion in savings in other
areas of the government."
Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, also issued a
statement that included, "While this is unacceptable, it is of
particular concern for cotton producers in my district as crop insurance
is now the sole means of risk management available. Furthermore, the
House Agriculture Committee was not even consulted during this process,
and the Committee has overwhelmingly rejected similar proposals at every
recent occasion—America’s farmers deserve better."
Now, if one were to listen to conservative talk radio (and not suffer brain damage), that person would probably be told that the solution to any problem is less government subsidy and more free market. I'll just throw a rhetorical question out here and ask why that wouldn't be the case here. I'll be interested to hear if any of the GOP candidates for president reference this while campaigning in Iowa.
Growing strawberries in California is 9796% more profitable
than growing corn in the Midwest, Gladstone Land said, in the latest evidence
of underperformance in row crop land.
High value fruit and vegetable land was "more profitable and
less volatile than those growing commodity crops", Gladstone said.
Based on data for 2013, the most recent year with verified
data, the US land investment company said the an acre of price corn land
yielded gross revenues of $757, while the gross revenue of an acre of prime
California was $53,067, assuming a market price of 80 cents a pound for
strawberries.
The difference in rent, meanwhile, was more modest. Based on
2014 figures, Gladstone pegged the average rent for prime Midwest corn land at
$201 an acre, compared with around $4,000 an acre for strawberry land.
And since 2013, corn prices have been weakening, while
Gladstone says that prices for strawberries have actually "risen modestly".
Gladstone saw net profits per acre for strawberry farmers in
California at $4,570 an acre, compared to just $48 an acre for Midwestern corn
farmers, excluding crop insurance and government payouts.
"A farmer with 10,000 acres in corn in the Midwest would
only need approximately 143 acres of strawberry ground in California to generate
the same amount of revenue," Gladstone said.
Of course, this comes from a company pushing investment in leasing land for fruit and vegetable production, so they are just talking their book. However, the numbers are pretty amazing, and corn production budgets will be even uglier for the next few years.
