We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Leading up to this year, farm incomes had been trending lower for most of the past decade, and meanwhile farm debt levels have been absolutely exploding. So U.S. farmers were desperate for a really good year, but instead 2019 has been a total disaster. As I have been carefully documenting, due to endless rain and catastrophic flooding millions of acres of prime farmland didn’t get planted at all this year, and the yields on tens of millions of other acres are expected to be way, way below normal. As a result, we are facing the worst farming crisis in modern American history, and this comes at a time when U.S. farms are drowning in more debt than ever before. In fact, the latest numbers that we have show that the average U.S. farm is 1.3 million dollars in debt…
Debt-to-asset ratios are seeing the same squeeze, with more farms moving into a ratio exceeding 80%. Barrett notes each year since 2009 has […]
The Chaos-in-Chief continues to inflate “the bubble”. The only question is will it burst before or after the elections? Would it be worse to have a Democratic administration stuck with the massive collapse or should them who created the mess be stuck with it? Is 2020 going to be as 1929 with a trump win based on a booming economy leading to an FDR style savior in 2024?
On the other hand America is a much, much different place 100 years later. His lordship has already made an unholy mess of things terrifying to imagine what another 4 years could bring. The dark gift of trump will either provoke a profound renewal of the USA and/or the disintegration of the cruel profit-driven empire we have sadly devolved into. Will the USA go the way of the USSR?
Coming from a farm family I am conflicted about the long suffering farmers. They from the beginning have been big supporters of trump and his cruel programs to win against the evil Chinese. Except their income has been lifted by trade with those evil folk. What could they expect to gain by a trade war? I think they loved his America first bs, flag waving and wall talk. Not many using their heads just following their trumpian gut.
Part of me says suffer the results as you helped saddle us with the great ass but we all need to eat and everyone makes mistakes so how do we help each other recover from this national disaster. It looks too much like pre-great depression America when farm prices were in free fall even as the stock market continued going up.
What people think of as small farms do not exist. The idea of a farner living on their land, eating from their garden and the few pigs, chickens and cows they have is a picture from an era long ago. Although many hobby farms, tax-deduction farms and truly small organic farm to farmers market farms exist…the vast, underline vast, majority of our food is grown by large agro-industry farming companies.
Please note the article does not say the the average farm has a negative net worth of over a million only that it carries over a million in debt. That could easily be related to the consolidation in the industry where today a “small” wneat or corn grower likely grows thousands of acres.
There are tremendous food insecurities coming due to the climate emergency. But it is critical to remember that famine is a result of political/economic decisions and is not not driven by crop failure. Almost universally, from the biblical famines through the Irish famines, the Indian famines and the regional famines of today…the millions that die are not because food is unavailable but that they lacj the money to buy it.
This is a good time to review the work of Amartya K. Sen, the Nobel winning economist who first studied the relationship between wealth and famine.
You are lucky, Stephan, to be able to grow garlic. My wife and I used to grow the most wonderful garlic until we developed a disease which the Pa. Dept. of Agriculture called “yellow root” if I remember correctly, and it spread to all of our gardens, so we can never grow garlic again. Almost everything else grows great in our gardens but not garlic, which we used a lot when making our tomato sauce. Now we have to buy it from Amish farms which still are able to grow it. Our Tomatoes are not growing well this year either, even though they grew great last year, so we will have to buy the tomatoes from the Amish also. I like most of the Amish produce, but I know you cannot always trust them to have organic foods. They sometimes use methods which are non-organic if they have to, because they rely o their crops for their income, as well as food for their families. I learned this from Amish farmers whom I have known for decades. They do try to only use organic methods, but do whatever they have to in order to survive.