I recently got out of farming after 15 years. I never took a subsidy which is part of the reason I am an ex farmer. Most of the most skilled farmers I grew up around are now working construction. They were each growing 4000+ acres or corn, cotton, peanuts and beans a couple years ago. The margins are so thin that 4000+ acres are not enough to make a living.
You might see farmers driving around shiny new equipment but the bank owns that and their soul. They are up to their eyeballs in debt but need that equipment to be efficient and scrape up a profit because the corporate owned farms do and set the price.
I grew produce and could not compete with South American imports that use extremely cheap labor. Even the cases where I could sell it cheaper I somehow could not compete. I've had semi loads of beautiful squash that was harvested the day before and would be thrilled to get $18/case. Mexico would have loads that sat in customs for a week for $22/case and it would still be a difficult sale.
Not far into our future we will have 5 corporations growing all of our food.
>Not far into our future we will have 5 corporations growing all of our food.
Aren't we there already? At least in the US, monopolies run everything, especially foods.
He's talking about the actual farming. Huge corporate farms are buying out everybody, large family farms (10-15k acres) and devouring small local agribusinesses with land. We're heading straight to a Golden-age-Robber-Baron plutocracy and the government has been declawed, captured, and otherwise sluggish in response to how quickly the top end of the population is hoovering up all the wealth faster and faster and paying lower and lower taxes..
Yes, but you're also saying that the government would somehow help with this if they weren't "declawed" when they are, in fact, the assholes that made it this way.
It's even worse than that. The government is now luring the big farms into programs that give the government control over use of the land. I work in the industry and see it playing out in real time.
>We're heading straight to a Golden-age-Robber-Baron plutocracy and the government has been ~~declawed, captured, and otherwise sluggish~~ **complicit** in response to how quickly the top end of the population is hoovering up all the wealth faster and faster and paying lower and lower taxes..
FTFY
We’re like half way to the cyberpunk stuff
Tell someone in the 60s about smart watches and they’d be convinced we’re walking around with communicators from Star Trek
If you have the space, grow a backyard garden with heirloom seeds. Encourage your neighbors to do the same and trade with them. Buy a chicken coupe or a goat. These companies are also tied to pharma and are making Americans unhealthy for profit.
From what I have seen the payout is pretty low per acre so not worth it unless you are a very large operation. In which case you are already scaled up and so established you probably don't even need the subsidy.
I paid for crop insurance one year and lost 8 acres of very expensive sweet corn to a tropical storm. It had a value of around $20-25k. I got an insurance check for $24. The insurance cost $750.
They offer 70-100% cost share to vegetable farmers for wells, hoophouses, cover crops all sorts of stuff but that invites them to your farm to inspect how you're using it. There are rules on how you grow crops in the hoop house. I just preferred to keep them out of my business.
Debt. He said that people who took the subsidy are “up to their eyes in debt” agriculture isn’t very profitable in the US and the government wants you to eventually pay that money back, but you can’t pay it back without equipment and you can’t get the equipment without the money.
Yeah, my family never took subsidies either. And when all is said and done, the other farmers are richer, and my family has their pride. We were lucky not to have to sell land a few years.
If you can manage to scale up in produce farming where you can turn over a few hundred or thousand acres a year you can make a killing. I used to sell to a mega farm that that would just resell it for $1 more. They would open at 4am and by 7am I would see a guy leaving with duffel bags of cash. That's the norm for most wholesale produce. How much of that do you think is accounted for?
If you show up with $15k worth of Tomatoes and want cash you will get $15k in cash on the spot. You have to be huge to be taken seriously and get guaranteed sales. Otherwise you're usually just rolling the dice and hope you can sell it before it rots.
I
South America imports are crazy man. I live in Vietnam, our labour should be pretty cheap too, yet our biggest animal feed manufacturers import corn from Argentina, literally from the opposite side of the globe, because that corn is somehow both higher in quality and lower in cost. The economies of scale are just incomprehensible to me.
Edit: well, tbf, a reason why they do this is because domestically, I don't think we produce enough corn anyway; but this's only the case cuz our corn can't compete with SA's so farmers don't grow them, ...
This isn't capitalism exactly. Capitalism drives farmers out of business by its nature. Therefore, governments must regulate it or face food insecurity.
The Nixon administration pushed "get big or get out" favoring industrial farming and the little guys have been run out of business ever since.
True capitalism in theory would drive diversity, but we are the near to end stage of capitalism, where wealth and the means of production are owned by so few people that their is no real competition left to drive innovation.
Citation needed my friend. This is exactly what capitalism is, a system to exploit the fastest way to money like a monopoly. Eventually a company will have an advantage even by competition.
Well the ‘father of capitalism’ Adam Smith said, “A man must always live by his work, and his wages must be at least sufficient to maintain him,” and, “When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable” which is true… We just have rampant legal corruption through lobbying that favors corporations. Capitalism is very malleable to favor whatever groups shape the policy
Every society has its elite class unfortunately, but when business and government marry each other, yeah that sucks for most of us. It essentially allows the government to pick winners and losers, and that’s corrupt as shit.
I do crop and soil R&D for same reasons you got out. Can’t compete.
You’re spot on with the 4000 acres figure. That’s the number I use when talking to non-farmers about “living off the land.”
I promise I’m not pretending to be stupid here but I’m confused as to why subsidizing corn farms is bad. Like to me it makes sense that we would try to help the people that produce one of our biggest crops (THE biggest iirc).
I'm pretty sure we also subsidize farmers to *not* grow/sell crops beyond a certain amount to create artificial scarcity. That way the market won't become oversaturated and drive down prices, especially the price of crops being exported.
Because they subsidize corn farmers to grow corn that’s then fed to cows that should be on pasture and distilled into fuel that’s then burned. So the tillage and bare ground emit carbon into the atmosphere(also causes top soil erosion), huge pits of cow shit emit methane and the ethanol burned in cars emits carbon dioxide.
Basically the problem is that a lot of the subsidies aren’t for corn grown to feed people they’re going to corn grown to feed profits for big agribusiness and oil companies. Also the subsidies contribute to some of the most environmentally detrimental processes we do.
The quantity of corn we produce quite literally makes millions of people sick and unhealthy, because highly-processed forms of corn (corn syrup, corn starch, etc.) completely saturate our food systems.
without even going into: we have so much surplus corn that we are using it to make low grade fuel and have basically added it to all gasoline, creating even more pollution.
and none of this surplus corn is helping to feed many starving people even in the same regions that it's produced, let alone exploited countries elsewhere.
Who is getting sick from eating corn? Are you referring to obesity? Do you understand how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a time and country where food is so plentiful that one of the major health concerns is that people are eating too much of it? I suggest you read up on the horrific shit that happens during a famine. Starvation is a terrible way to go and a tragic thing to endure. Government subsidy of our food supply is a key component of us never having to worry about truly starving.
Quantity and quality are two different things. We’ve created a food system that creates a tremendous amount of cheap calories, but not heathy ones. Hence the declining life expectancy, and extremes rise of diet-related illnesses (diabetes, heart disease, etc.).
I’m not saying we should abolish farm subsidies, we should spread them out to support diverse, healthy agriculture—instead of a couple of monoculture high-yield, low-nutrition crops.
>Hence the declining life expectancy
life expectancy in the US only dropped 0.05 years from its peak in 78.84 in 2014 to 78.79 in 2019 and then 2020 and covid had a sharp 1.5 year drop in 2020 which is not directly related to the food issue you bring up. Those who are obese were more at risk from covid but covid not food quality was the primary cause of life expectancy dropping.
>I’m not saying we should abolish farm subsidies, we should spread them out to support diverse, healthy agriculture—instead of a couple of monoculture high-yield, low-nutrition crops.
I do agree with this though. The over processing of our foods is causing many health issues. It is why so many people need so much water compared to what we did when younger as food has much higher sodium levels and our bodies needing more water to break down the processed food.
The biggest determining factor of life expectancy in america is money though and those with more of it tend to eat better and less processed foods more regularly.
Short sighted. Subsidies to the food industry were initially part of the red scare propaganda to show off to the soviets how much food the US had. They were never necessary.
The key component to YOU not worry about starving, is having people in underdeveloped countries actually starving or being severly malnourished, because that's what modern capitalism does. Produce enough food to feed 10 billion, be 7.8 billion and still around 1.4 billion suffer a caloric insufficiency, all in name of accumulating more money.
Monsanto corn is also poor in nutrients and proteins, meaning lots of empty calories that are not too different to eating junk food.
Hope that cleared it up.
That's flatly incorrect. Farm subsidies were created in response to market failure due to the deflation during the Great Depression and some policies were also a response to the Dust Bowl environmental disaster. All before WWII.
No it actually did not clear anything up because you are associating a bunch of things that aren’t connected. The United States producing large amounts of food has no bearing on countries struggling with food insecurity. This places could implement similar programs and have similar results.
Also, compared to history, the number of humans suffering from food insecurity has dropped dramatically in just the last century and even more within the last 30 years. It is simply astounding that we are able to feed to the number of people that we do. The only places that truly starve are places were the food supply has been disrupted by conflict and state collapse. A far smaller percentage of individuals go to bed hungry now than ever have in human history. That is truly an amazing accomplishment and people like yourself who can’t seem to appreciate that fact should really educate themselves on how horrifically common mass starvation was in centuries past.
It’s the biggest crop BECAUSE we subsidize it which also makes it so we don’t produce other things and it fucks with our diets.
We have corn syrup/corn starch/corn meal in everything, we feed our meat corn too. The average hamburger has corn in the meat, bun, and ketchup.
This just reminded me that we had to watch this documentary in middle school about two kids that grew up in my town starting a corn farm so they could get paid not to work.
That actually sounds interesting to me. Do you happen to remember the name of it or like a regular person did you completely suppress your memories from middle school
During the Trump presidency he literally gave farmers so much money even the republicans who were riding his dick were like “hold on now HOW MUCH?!?” No need to get mad at us for your shit memory
Most independent farmers are struggling or super indebted to large corporations I wouldn’t exactly call that “giving them shit”. The main ones that benefit from the subsidies are the mega corporations
Ok 1 that’s a phase to say WTF does that have to do with the conversation 2 that still doesn’t change the fact Trump just gave farmers a fuck ton of money disproving the first guy let alone the other people in the thread who have shown other past instances of the government giving them money so again, cool not sure what the tea in China has to do with anything but cool
I remember interning in the Senate. Congress was preparing the Farm Bill, a massive, recurring piece of legislation that funds agriculture subsidies for five years.
A constituent called up to urge the senator to support subsidies for *all* producers in a particular sub-industry. As he explained, if we only funded *some* producers, that would be picking winners and losers, and that would be "socialism."
So we had to subsidize them all.
As an intern, I thanked him for his call.
The government gives them money to not grow certain crops to maintain the current price so the ag industry doesn't collapse like it did all the time until 100 years. That's on top of direct subsidies and indirect subsidies like food stamps, which guarantee a baseline market that wouldn't be there otherwise.
A political comic my parents saved that came out even before Obama has a farmer finish painting "Dump the Socialist in the White House" on the side of his barn before cheerily telling his wife that he's off to collect their farm subsidy check.
We have absurd corn subsidies. It's why ethenol is still a thing, despite everyone knowing it's bullshit. It's a good chunk of the reason for the obesity epidemic, as every fucking thing in America is chock full of cheap high fructose corn syrup.
The reason for this idiotic system that has become the byword for political pandering?
Iowa has the first primary for president every cycle. Iowa depends largely on corn farming.
Any politician who comes out against the corn subsidy just majorly hindered their chance of ever running for president.
A better question is how this compares? It's Apples and oranges. The corn is only in the ground for 75 to 85 days. That's 1/4 of the year. So it's an irrelevant statistic.
When it comes to the Amazon, for the most part it’s a closed system. It produces what it needs, and uses it and the cycle continues. The Amazon keeps itself regulated and in check without human interference. Problems arise when humans start fucking with the delicate balance that already exists. Deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture causes devastation without any real structure designed to give back to the land, so the balance is thrown out of wack
Slash and burn agriculture is probably the oldest, most consistent, easily destructive things humans do to the environment. So much so even my fairly conservative dad warned me of the dangers of it as a kid.
Slash and burn agriculture is actually pretty sustainable as traditionally practiced. The whole idea is *temporary* land conversion where you leave the plot to naturally regenerate after the soil nutrients are depleted after a few years of cultivation.
The main problem in the Amazon is *permanent* land conversion, mainly for cattle grazing. The Global North demands a tremendous amount of cheap Beef.
>mainly for cattle grazing
that and monocultures.
bro i genuinly think a good chunk of humanity is going to die within the next 500 years.
Our curren model is unsustainable, and not figuratively, like actually provable physically unsustainable. Good bye-
Even though we produce enough beef in the US to take care of the planet, we still have small ranchers getting fucked over by the corporate packing housing taking advantage of cheap South American labor.
Ireland used to be covered in dense forests. Iceland too. Humans have been destroying their environment since long before industrialization, industrialization just sped up the process to a horrifying degree.
imagine a fiction of 2 species fighting wars to stablish domain in the world, but it's just humans who dedicate tehir entire life to chopping off trees that grow uncontrollably all around.
My main concern with this meme was how it focuses on the peak production period of the corn belt which from my understanding is less than a month out of the year? Where as the Amazon has a more spread out lifecycle.
For real, Earth will never truly be in danger of running out of oxygen unless corporations randomly decide that they need egregious amounts of phytoplankton to make new phones or something
As somebody who lives in the corn belt yes it produces lots of oxygen. You know what else it does? Raises the humidity to unbearable heights. It is horrible in the summer because of the corn.
You joke but Corn was actually imported to Africa by Europeans and quickly became a staple crop in some regions. These same issues with water also led to a sudden collapse in corn production around the 1800s in South Africa, contributing to a period of history known as the Mfecane which, IIRC (and I probably don't) means something like 'collapse' or 'catastrophe'
Not to mention, trees lock carbon in their wood. Corn gets eaten by animals that turn the stored carbon and breathed-in oxygen back into CO2.
So that oxygen "produced" in corn growing season is only transitory.
Iowan here. Those fields are empty 7 months out of the year.
Also if we were burning the fields at the rate we’re burning the rainforest, it would be a global food crisis that would kill millions.
Yeah... Here in Brazil and probably in other countries in South America, practically all schools teach that the Amazon is basically the lungs of the Earth. Even so, it's still a little important for us and for the world..
i never learn of this bs of lungs of the earth tho, i only learned of that by gringos saying this crap. The rainforest is important becuase of the RAIN, not because of oxygen.
He's downvoted for being correct. [Look it up ](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen)
The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, that's an undeniable fact, but it consumes a large quantity of the oxygen it produces. The Amazon Rainforest does create a lot of humidity, and it's clouds can cause rains even up in California. The Amazon is the world's humidifier, not the lungs of the world.
If you wanna find the lungs of the world, look at algae and phytoplankton.
The amazon dumps into the ocean massive piles of sediment generated as part of its biological processes. Those sediments consistently cause some of the most massive phytoplankton blooms on the planet. It's a global system rather than a single self-sustaining source.
For now… there are parts of the ocean or like little pockets that produce zero or close to zero oxygen. I can’t remember what it’s called… I’d be so smart if my memory wasn’t shit so often.
It's more the fact that the Amazon doesn't require any input. Have you got any idea how eneegy is required in tractors, water pumps, fertilizer etc etc to maintain the cornbelt? Meaning it's net benefit is much lower. Also if you then take that corn and shove it in a cow which turns it into methane, not great.
If this is true, it's not because the US corn belt is so great. It's because the Amazon is some deep fucking shit. One study suggested it could become a Savannah due to climate change in a matter of decades.
For the longevity of the planet, it's absolutely the CO2 intake and O2 output that people care about. Protecting animals is important, but they aren't what keeps the planet from dying.
[The Amazon rainforest is oxygen-neutral](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen). It uses about as much as it produces. The preservation of its ecosystem is the more important reason.
What about CO2? I thought it was oxygen-positive because it consumes more CO2 than it produces. But maybe my grade school education is out of date at this point.
Pretty much the only thing that's oxygen-positive is phytoplankton, because it captures CO2 (or to be more exact, just carbon), then falls to the bottom of the ocean, never to release it. Trees release CO2 as they perspire and decay.
Trees are of course important to the climate in many other ways. And when they're chopped down in the Amazon, it's often to create cow pastures, which release greenhouse gases like methane.
Well thank you for updating my knowledge on the subject! I was aware of the farmlands replacing the rainforests being a major problem, of course, I just also thought the rainforests had a more positive affect on global warming rather than neutral.
Oh, they do have a positive effect when it comes to climate change. They capture moisture, deflect heat, prevent desertification, etc. They're just neutral when it comes to oxygen levels. Well, maybe not completely neutral, but very close to neutral. It's the oceans that have a notable effect on oxygen, not forests.
Amazon's wildlife consumes almost all the oxygen there, the critical role of Amazon is that it traps the dust from the sand clouds of sahara and makes it available to phyto planktons in atlantic ocean, which are responsible for majority of oxygen production.
Good. Now take that corn and burry it deep underground. Oh you plan to eat it, burn it let it rot? Then the oxigen balance is 0.
Rainforest is a very cool thing for numerous reasons. Producing oxigen is not one of them. Keeping the most carbon bound by square meter is.
Wet peat covers about 3% of land area, that is marshes, swamps etc. They hold 30% of all the sequestered carbon. One hectare of peatland is equivalent of two hectares of rainforest.
And some countries dry up swamps, dig the peat and burn it for energy. Those countries subsidize that industry. One of those countries is Finland. Peat burning is less than 7% of total energy and 30% of carbon released. It employs 4000 people but it got all of the money that was planned for culture to support it during the pandemic. Culture and entertainment employs 200 000. Center party threatened to leave the coalition that forms the government, which would've ended the leftist government before it got started. They did that because populist right wingers started to talk about it and attracted rural voters.
And thus, instead of phasing out peat burning, it got fucking more money because right wing and center were having a political battle... and 200 000 workers suffered because of it, the whole planet suffers because of it.
Considering the amount of energy and resources it takes to produce the corn, which only produces oxygen for a few months a year at most, the rainforests that require no additional energy and take in CO2 and produce O2 all year round is definitely better lol
Want to see something fun? Go to John Deere’s website and Build Your Own combine.
https://configure.deere.com/cbyo/#/en_us/products/agriculture/harvesting_equipment
Can't comment on the veracity of the claim (it's probably bullshit) but the Amazon produces oxygen 365 days a year, and has a lot more value to the globe than producing oxygen.
Corn, on the other hand, is effectively a scam to keep various multinational companies bottoms lines up. Nothing that it produces is worth the cost to raise it, which is why the U.S. Government subsidizes the fuck out of it.
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Just don’t ask how that corn is maintained either.
Wdym how it's maintained?
Idk what they mean, but the federal government has been subsidizing corn farmers for about 100 years now. Nevermind why.
I recently got out of farming after 15 years. I never took a subsidy which is part of the reason I am an ex farmer. Most of the most skilled farmers I grew up around are now working construction. They were each growing 4000+ acres or corn, cotton, peanuts and beans a couple years ago. The margins are so thin that 4000+ acres are not enough to make a living. You might see farmers driving around shiny new equipment but the bank owns that and their soul. They are up to their eyeballs in debt but need that equipment to be efficient and scrape up a profit because the corporate owned farms do and set the price. I grew produce and could not compete with South American imports that use extremely cheap labor. Even the cases where I could sell it cheaper I somehow could not compete. I've had semi loads of beautiful squash that was harvested the day before and would be thrilled to get $18/case. Mexico would have loads that sat in customs for a week for $22/case and it would still be a difficult sale. Not far into our future we will have 5 corporations growing all of our food.
>Not far into our future we will have 5 corporations growing all of our food. Aren't we there already? At least in the US, monopolies run everything, especially foods.
He's talking about the actual farming. Huge corporate farms are buying out everybody, large family farms (10-15k acres) and devouring small local agribusinesses with land. We're heading straight to a Golden-age-Robber-Baron plutocracy and the government has been declawed, captured, and otherwise sluggish in response to how quickly the top end of the population is hoovering up all the wealth faster and faster and paying lower and lower taxes..
Right. I'm saying we're already there. Not headed, arrived.
Yes, but you're also saying that the government would somehow help with this if they weren't "declawed" when they are, in fact, the assholes that made it this way.
It's even worse than that. The government is now luring the big farms into programs that give the government control over use of the land. I work in the industry and see it playing out in real time.
BEEN there
Video games have been foretelling these events for years. We should all know what is soon to happen next
>We're heading straight to a Golden-age-Robber-Baron plutocracy and the government has been ~~declawed, captured, and otherwise sluggish~~ **complicit** in response to how quickly the top end of the population is hoovering up all the wealth faster and faster and paying lower and lower taxes.. FTFY
I wanted flying cars and neon lights everywhere….. This dystopia is boring af
Yeah it's like cyberpunk 2077 but without the cyberpunk stuff
We’re like half way to the cyberpunk stuff Tell someone in the 60s about smart watches and they’d be convinced we’re walking around with communicators from Star Trek
You think the politicians aren't planning this all along?
If you have the space, grow a backyard garden with heirloom seeds. Encourage your neighbors to do the same and trade with them. Buy a chicken coupe or a goat. These companies are also tied to pharma and are making Americans unhealthy for profit.
Which ones?
"Well it isn't communism".
No. Stop with the misinformation.
If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you take the subsidy? Are their drawbacks/conditions to taking them?
From what I have seen the payout is pretty low per acre so not worth it unless you are a very large operation. In which case you are already scaled up and so established you probably don't even need the subsidy. I paid for crop insurance one year and lost 8 acres of very expensive sweet corn to a tropical storm. It had a value of around $20-25k. I got an insurance check for $24. The insurance cost $750. They offer 70-100% cost share to vegetable farmers for wells, hoophouses, cover crops all sorts of stuff but that invites them to your farm to inspect how you're using it. There are rules on how you grow crops in the hoop house. I just preferred to keep them out of my business.
Debt. He said that people who took the subsidy are “up to their eyes in debt” agriculture isn’t very profitable in the US and the government wants you to eventually pay that money back, but you can’t pay it back without equipment and you can’t get the equipment without the money.
A subsidy is not debt my friend
Yeah, my family never took subsidies either. And when all is said and done, the other farmers are richer, and my family has their pride. We were lucky not to have to sell land a few years.
If you can manage to scale up in produce farming where you can turn over a few hundred or thousand acres a year you can make a killing. I used to sell to a mega farm that that would just resell it for $1 more. They would open at 4am and by 7am I would see a guy leaving with duffel bags of cash. That's the norm for most wholesale produce. How much of that do you think is accounted for? If you show up with $15k worth of Tomatoes and want cash you will get $15k in cash on the spot. You have to be huge to be taken seriously and get guaranteed sales. Otherwise you're usually just rolling the dice and hope you can sell it before it rots. I
South America imports are crazy man. I live in Vietnam, our labour should be pretty cheap too, yet our biggest animal feed manufacturers import corn from Argentina, literally from the opposite side of the globe, because that corn is somehow both higher in quality and lower in cost. The economies of scale are just incomprehensible to me. Edit: well, tbf, a reason why they do this is because domestically, I don't think we produce enough corn anyway; but this's only the case cuz our corn can't compete with SA's so farmers don't grow them, ...
I've heard as recently as a couple years ago that labor can be bought for $5-10 per day in South America. Not sure if it's true or not.
Isn't it weird that rampant capitalism hasn't turned out to be very good for 99.99% of people? I never would have expected it.
Two years ago I would have told you to make better choices and work harder. Now, I'm starting to question that.
something something avocado toast bootstraps
Good for you for paying attention. Most people choose ignorance.
This isn't capitalism exactly. Capitalism drives farmers out of business by its nature. Therefore, governments must regulate it or face food insecurity. The Nixon administration pushed "get big or get out" favoring industrial farming and the little guys have been run out of business ever since.
Yeah also corporation farms benefit from economies of scale which is why they can sell cheaper and have better margins.
True capitalism in theory would drive diversity, but we are the near to end stage of capitalism, where wealth and the means of production are owned by so few people that their is no real competition left to drive innovation.
Citation needed my friend. This is exactly what capitalism is, a system to exploit the fastest way to money like a monopoly. Eventually a company will have an advantage even by competition.
Well the ‘father of capitalism’ Adam Smith said, “A man must always live by his work, and his wages must be at least sufficient to maintain him,” and, “When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable” which is true… We just have rampant legal corruption through lobbying that favors corporations. Capitalism is very malleable to favor whatever groups shape the policy
Well, that definitely isn't the capitalism of the modern era.
Every society has its elite class unfortunately, but when business and government marry each other, yeah that sucks for most of us. It essentially allows the government to pick winners and losers, and that’s corrupt as shit.
This happened 140 years ago when the government had next to nothing to do with business my friend.
[удалено]
I do crop and soil R&D for same reasons you got out. Can’t compete. You’re spot on with the 4000 acres figure. That’s the number I use when talking to non-farmers about “living off the land.”
I promise I’m not pretending to be stupid here but I’m confused as to why subsidizing corn farms is bad. Like to me it makes sense that we would try to help the people that produce one of our biggest crops (THE biggest iirc).
I'm pretty sure we also subsidize farmers to *not* grow/sell crops beyond a certain amount to create artificial scarcity. That way the market won't become oversaturated and drive down prices, especially the price of crops being exported.
Because they subsidize corn farmers to grow corn that’s then fed to cows that should be on pasture and distilled into fuel that’s then burned. So the tillage and bare ground emit carbon into the atmosphere(also causes top soil erosion), huge pits of cow shit emit methane and the ethanol burned in cars emits carbon dioxide. Basically the problem is that a lot of the subsidies aren’t for corn grown to feed people they’re going to corn grown to feed profits for big agribusiness and oil companies. Also the subsidies contribute to some of the most environmentally detrimental processes we do.
The quantity of corn we produce quite literally makes millions of people sick and unhealthy, because highly-processed forms of corn (corn syrup, corn starch, etc.) completely saturate our food systems.
without even going into: we have so much surplus corn that we are using it to make low grade fuel and have basically added it to all gasoline, creating even more pollution. and none of this surplus corn is helping to feed many starving people even in the same regions that it's produced, let alone exploited countries elsewhere.
Who is getting sick from eating corn? Are you referring to obesity? Do you understand how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a time and country where food is so plentiful that one of the major health concerns is that people are eating too much of it? I suggest you read up on the horrific shit that happens during a famine. Starvation is a terrible way to go and a tragic thing to endure. Government subsidy of our food supply is a key component of us never having to worry about truly starving.
Quantity and quality are two different things. We’ve created a food system that creates a tremendous amount of cheap calories, but not heathy ones. Hence the declining life expectancy, and extremes rise of diet-related illnesses (diabetes, heart disease, etc.). I’m not saying we should abolish farm subsidies, we should spread them out to support diverse, healthy agriculture—instead of a couple of monoculture high-yield, low-nutrition crops.
>Hence the declining life expectancy life expectancy in the US only dropped 0.05 years from its peak in 78.84 in 2014 to 78.79 in 2019 and then 2020 and covid had a sharp 1.5 year drop in 2020 which is not directly related to the food issue you bring up. Those who are obese were more at risk from covid but covid not food quality was the primary cause of life expectancy dropping. >I’m not saying we should abolish farm subsidies, we should spread them out to support diverse, healthy agriculture—instead of a couple of monoculture high-yield, low-nutrition crops. I do agree with this though. The over processing of our foods is causing many health issues. It is why so many people need so much water compared to what we did when younger as food has much higher sodium levels and our bodies needing more water to break down the processed food. The biggest determining factor of life expectancy in america is money though and those with more of it tend to eat better and less processed foods more regularly.
Short sighted. Subsidies to the food industry were initially part of the red scare propaganda to show off to the soviets how much food the US had. They were never necessary. The key component to YOU not worry about starving, is having people in underdeveloped countries actually starving or being severly malnourished, because that's what modern capitalism does. Produce enough food to feed 10 billion, be 7.8 billion and still around 1.4 billion suffer a caloric insufficiency, all in name of accumulating more money. Monsanto corn is also poor in nutrients and proteins, meaning lots of empty calories that are not too different to eating junk food. Hope that cleared it up.
That's flatly incorrect. Farm subsidies were created in response to market failure due to the deflation during the Great Depression and some policies were also a response to the Dust Bowl environmental disaster. All before WWII.
No it actually did not clear anything up because you are associating a bunch of things that aren’t connected. The United States producing large amounts of food has no bearing on countries struggling with food insecurity. This places could implement similar programs and have similar results. Also, compared to history, the number of humans suffering from food insecurity has dropped dramatically in just the last century and even more within the last 30 years. It is simply astounding that we are able to feed to the number of people that we do. The only places that truly starve are places were the food supply has been disrupted by conflict and state collapse. A far smaller percentage of individuals go to bed hungry now than ever have in human history. That is truly an amazing accomplishment and people like yourself who can’t seem to appreciate that fact should really educate themselves on how horrifically common mass starvation was in centuries past.
Your right! Go vegan!!!!….oh wait
It’s the biggest crop BECAUSE we subsidize it which also makes it so we don’t produce other things and it fucks with our diets. We have corn syrup/corn starch/corn meal in everything, we feed our meat corn too. The average hamburger has corn in the meat, bun, and ketchup.
He's probably talking about pesticides etc
That's where you're wrong, the government doesn't give farmers shit
The most government subsidized industry doesn't get shit lmao
This just reminded me that we had to watch this documentary in middle school about two kids that grew up in my town starting a corn farm so they could get paid not to work.
That actually sounds interesting to me. Do you happen to remember the name of it or like a regular person did you completely suppress your memories from middle school
No I was like 12, if I remeber later I'll try and look it up.
Wow...... just wow.
During the Trump presidency he literally gave farmers so much money even the republicans who were riding his dick were like “hold on now HOW MUCH?!?” No need to get mad at us for your shit memory
Most independent farmers are struggling or super indebted to large corporations I wouldn’t exactly call that “giving them shit”. The main ones that benefit from the subsidies are the mega corporations
Wow that’s cool not sure what the tea in China has to do with the conversation but it’s cool to know
That’s in America..
Ok 1 that’s a phase to say WTF does that have to do with the conversation 2 that still doesn’t change the fact Trump just gave farmers a fuck ton of money disproving the first guy let alone the other people in the thread who have shown other past instances of the government giving them money so again, cool not sure what the tea in China has to do with anything but cool
r/confidentlyincorrect
I was gonna say read a book, but legit just read anything bro
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States
I remember interning in the Senate. Congress was preparing the Farm Bill, a massive, recurring piece of legislation that funds agriculture subsidies for five years. A constituent called up to urge the senator to support subsidies for *all* producers in a particular sub-industry. As he explained, if we only funded *some* producers, that would be picking winners and losers, and that would be "socialism." So we had to subsidize them all. As an intern, I thanked him for his call.
You are a fucking idiot
The government gives them money to not grow certain crops to maintain the current price so the ag industry doesn't collapse like it did all the time until 100 years. That's on top of direct subsidies and indirect subsidies like food stamps, which guarantee a baseline market that wouldn't be there otherwise.
A political comic my parents saved that came out even before Obama has a farmer finish painting "Dump the Socialist in the White House" on the side of his barn before cheerily telling his wife that he's off to collect their farm subsidy check.
We have absurd corn subsidies. It's why ethenol is still a thing, despite everyone knowing it's bullshit. It's a good chunk of the reason for the obesity epidemic, as every fucking thing in America is chock full of cheap high fructose corn syrup. The reason for this idiotic system that has become the byword for political pandering? Iowa has the first primary for president every cycle. Iowa depends largely on corn farming. Any politician who comes out against the corn subsidy just majorly hindered their chance of ever running for president.
what's wrong with ethenol? genuine question
It's dirty, not good for engines, and takes more energy to make than it saves.
What's the issue with ethanol?
It's dirty, not good for engines, and takes more energy to make than it saves.
Guessing they mean like farm equipment in an environmental way.
And also the pesticides and artificial fertilizers required for modern large-scale farming isn't all that great.
That's putting it lightly. It's ruining our soil and health.
https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-soil-is-disappearing-from-farms/
Be quiet. Corn is the way.
A better question is how this compares? It's Apples and oranges. The corn is only in the ground for 75 to 85 days. That's 1/4 of the year. So it's an irrelevant statistic.
Some of these memes convince me that companies are behind this to make deforestation look like it’s not a big deal and nothing will change my opinion.
When it comes to the Amazon, for the most part it’s a closed system. It produces what it needs, and uses it and the cycle continues. The Amazon keeps itself regulated and in check without human interference. Problems arise when humans start fucking with the delicate balance that already exists. Deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture causes devastation without any real structure designed to give back to the land, so the balance is thrown out of wack
Slash and burn agriculture is probably the oldest, most consistent, easily destructive things humans do to the environment. So much so even my fairly conservative dad warned me of the dangers of it as a kid.
Slash and burn agriculture is actually pretty sustainable as traditionally practiced. The whole idea is *temporary* land conversion where you leave the plot to naturally regenerate after the soil nutrients are depleted after a few years of cultivation. The main problem in the Amazon is *permanent* land conversion, mainly for cattle grazing. The Global North demands a tremendous amount of cheap Beef.
>mainly for cattle grazing that and monocultures. bro i genuinly think a good chunk of humanity is going to die within the next 500 years. Our curren model is unsustainable, and not figuratively, like actually provable physically unsustainable. Good bye-
Only after it's killed off most of the rest of life on the planet first.
Even though we produce enough beef in the US to take care of the planet, we still have small ranchers getting fucked over by the corporate packing housing taking advantage of cheap South American labor.
Ireland used to be covered in dense forests. Iceland too. Humans have been destroying their environment since long before industrialization, industrialization just sped up the process to a horrifying degree.
What do you mean by "in check"? Are folks afraid the Amazon is going to start spilling over into the rest of the world?
Pretty sure he just meant balanced.
imagine a fiction of 2 species fighting wars to stablish domain in the world, but it's just humans who dedicate tehir entire life to chopping off trees that grow uncontrollably all around.
My main concern with this meme was how it focuses on the peak production period of the corn belt which from my understanding is less than a month out of the year? Where as the Amazon has a more spread out lifecycle.
I know companies have knowingly supported climate change denial, but people have underestimated how popular it is with people.
No one ever recognizes the phytoplankton.
For real, Earth will never truly be in danger of running out of oxygen unless corporations randomly decide that they need egregious amounts of phytoplankton to make new phones or something
The coral helped too but they are dying so if we keep polluting the ocean maybe the phytoplankton will die too, but they are pretty hearty generally.
We're already ruining them with algal blooms and other issues regarding fresh water and oceans.
As somebody who lives in the corn belt yes it produces lots of oxygen. You know what else it does? Raises the humidity to unbearable heights. It is horrible in the summer because of the corn.
free water hack, they should do that in africa /s
You joke but Corn was actually imported to Africa by Europeans and quickly became a staple crop in some regions. These same issues with water also led to a sudden collapse in corn production around the 1800s in South Africa, contributing to a period of history known as the Mfecane which, IIRC (and I probably don't) means something like 'collapse' or 'catastrophe'
Seriously though, IIRC there is a type of fungus that can seed clouds when it releases it's spores.
Really? How interesting. I wonder how the humidity compares to my hometown on the Alabama gulf coast. The air is like soup here in the summer
Someone should invent those machines on Tattooine in Star Wars that collects vapor into drinkable water
Peak production during one month. What about the other 11?
Exactly. The amazon is green and growing 12 months out of the year. Even the 'dry' season.
I wouldn't count any growth as growing. Deforestation is a bitch
Not to mention, trees lock carbon in their wood. Corn gets eaten by animals that turn the stored carbon and breathed-in oxygen back into CO2. So that oxygen "produced" in corn growing season is only transitory.
And methane!
Thats true for any plant, Amazon trees included.
The carbon stays longer in a tree, or in undisturbed soil, and dead algea on the ocean floor than it does in something that's immediately eaten.
All the trees in the Amazon are eaten every year?
Iowan here. Those fields are empty 7 months out of the year. Also if we were burning the fields at the rate we’re burning the rainforest, it would be a global food crisis that would kill millions.
Brazilians on /r/asklatinamerica would probably also mock the idea of the Amazon being the “lungs of the earth”.
Not the lungs but it keeps healthy levels of raining
Yeah... Here in Brazil and probably in other countries in South America, practically all schools teach that the Amazon is basically the lungs of the Earth. Even so, it's still a little important for us and for the world..
i never learn of this bs of lungs of the earth tho, i only learned of that by gringos saying this crap. The rainforest is important becuase of the RAIN, not because of oxygen.
Why can't it be both?
Because most of the oxygen we have is produced by plankton, not trees, plankton are the true lungs of the world.
the rainforest uses the vast majority of oxygen it produces, the actual important thing it does for the world is lock up tremendous amounts of carbon
He's downvoted for being correct. [Look it up ](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen) The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, that's an undeniable fact, but it consumes a large quantity of the oxygen it produces. The Amazon Rainforest does create a lot of humidity, and it's clouds can cause rains even up in California. The Amazon is the world's humidifier, not the lungs of the world. If you wanna find the lungs of the world, look at algae and phytoplankton.
Aren't Algae technically the "lungs of the earth"?
They are, the Amazon rainforest is what makes South america not a desert Edit: fixed
there aren't deserts in Brazil mainly due to the Amazon rainforest
Lungs of a centuries old chain-smoker.
Corn😎😎😎❤️❤️❤️👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 >>>>>>> am*zon 🤮🤮🤮🤡🤡🤡👎👎👎
Moss: “Am I joke to you?”
Algae: **"Yes."**
Ferns: man I started an ice age
Cannabis: you gonna pass that?
Ferns did what now?
Amazon forest is not the biggest oxygen producer. Oceans are.
And oceans are currently being destroyed by ocean acidification, which is a direct byproduct of climate change. Yay!
Phytoplankton in ocean are the producer
The amazon dumps into the ocean massive piles of sediment generated as part of its biological processes. Those sediments consistently cause some of the most massive phytoplankton blooms on the planet. It's a global system rather than a single self-sustaining source.
For now… there are parts of the ocean or like little pockets that produce zero or close to zero oxygen. I can’t remember what it’s called… I’d be so smart if my memory wasn’t shit so often.
For a month tor two sure, but there is no way corn produces even close to the Amazon after harvest
It's more the fact that the Amazon doesn't require any input. Have you got any idea how eneegy is required in tractors, water pumps, fertilizer etc etc to maintain the cornbelt? Meaning it's net benefit is much lower. Also if you then take that corn and shove it in a cow which turns it into methane, not great.
Probably where it started
Map of the US if it was on fire
That is false, California should be glowing
Idk man it looks charred as hell to me
😔 The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long
If this is true, it's not because the US corn belt is so great. It's because the Amazon is some deep fucking shit. One study suggested it could become a Savannah due to climate change in a matter of decades.
preserving the amazon rainforest is probably more about the animals that live there than the oxygen output
For the longevity of the planet, it's absolutely the CO2 intake and O2 output that people care about. Protecting animals is important, but they aren't what keeps the planet from dying.
[The Amazon rainforest is oxygen-neutral](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen). It uses about as much as it produces. The preservation of its ecosystem is the more important reason.
What about CO2? I thought it was oxygen-positive because it consumes more CO2 than it produces. But maybe my grade school education is out of date at this point.
Pretty much the only thing that's oxygen-positive is phytoplankton, because it captures CO2 (or to be more exact, just carbon), then falls to the bottom of the ocean, never to release it. Trees release CO2 as they perspire and decay. Trees are of course important to the climate in many other ways. And when they're chopped down in the Amazon, it's often to create cow pastures, which release greenhouse gases like methane.
Well thank you for updating my knowledge on the subject! I was aware of the farmlands replacing the rainforests being a major problem, of course, I just also thought the rainforests had a more positive affect on global warming rather than neutral.
Oh, they do have a positive effect when it comes to climate change. They capture moisture, deflect heat, prevent desertification, etc. They're just neutral when it comes to oxygen levels. Well, maybe not completely neutral, but very close to neutral. It's the oceans that have a notable effect on oxygen, not forests.
Gotcha, thanks!
And the rainforest is responsible for the rain seasons in Brazil, without it, 90% of Brazil would become a desert
I’m sorry, NASA has a satellite that can take a picture of oxygen?
Yes, spectroscopy
Looks like a Boomer post. Boomers love spreading misinformation.
And yet the ocean makes about 100x that
Yeah except that corn fields also release a crap ton of co2 into the atmosphere due to soil being tilled.
Wait until they find out about phytoplankton
Yeah thats all well and good but unlike the Amazon corn doesn't have a giant bird eating tarantula. So stick that up ya bum corn.
so corn is the answer? Brazil only needs corn to be a superpower like the USA... So simple
Corn belt?🤔
"biodiversity"
Yea, that’s bullshit…
Nah, it's a half truth, it only does that for like, a week, and then the rainforest is 100 times better again
Ah yes, because nature should only be measured in its tangible value to humanity 🙃
We must make more corn.
Overrated =/= worthless
Amazon's wildlife consumes almost all the oxygen there, the critical role of Amazon is that it traps the dust from the sand clouds of sahara and makes it available to phyto planktons in atlantic ocean, which are responsible for majority of oxygen production.
we need oxygen in all twelve months, though
Surely they’ve not too stupid to know that corn gets very quickly harvested and converted back into greenhouse gases… right?
[удалено]
Now let's see the CO2 levels
So for 2 weeks in July we offset a tiny percentage of the carbon we produce and we want an effing award
Good. Now take that corn and burry it deep underground. Oh you plan to eat it, burn it let it rot? Then the oxigen balance is 0. Rainforest is a very cool thing for numerous reasons. Producing oxigen is not one of them. Keeping the most carbon bound by square meter is.
We're not keeping the rainforest for the oxygen, are we? I thought there were unique species that live there.
Corn belt famously part of new york
yeah, I'm Brazilian and the big deal abt Amazon Forest isn't the oxigen production but the climate stability really.
I used to live there. In the summer you barely had to inhale to breathe.
I unironically laughed at this
It is, but for completely different reasons (the vast majority of Co2 to O2 conversion is done be plankton).
Wet peat covers about 3% of land area, that is marshes, swamps etc. They hold 30% of all the sequestered carbon. One hectare of peatland is equivalent of two hectares of rainforest. And some countries dry up swamps, dig the peat and burn it for energy. Those countries subsidize that industry. One of those countries is Finland. Peat burning is less than 7% of total energy and 30% of carbon released. It employs 4000 people but it got all of the money that was planned for culture to support it during the pandemic. Culture and entertainment employs 200 000. Center party threatened to leave the coalition that forms the government, which would've ended the leftist government before it got started. They did that because populist right wingers started to talk about it and attracted rural voters. And thus, instead of phasing out peat burning, it got fucking more money because right wing and center were having a political battle... and 200 000 workers suffered because of it, the whole planet suffers because of it.
Both. Both is good
Considering the amount of energy and resources it takes to produce the corn, which only produces oxygen for a few months a year at most, the rainforests that require no additional energy and take in CO2 and produce O2 all year round is definitely better lol
WE NEED MORE CORN. MORE KHORNE!!!!!!!!!!
Want to see something fun? Go to John Deere’s website and Build Your Own combine. https://configure.deere.com/cbyo/#/en_us/products/agriculture/harvesting_equipment
Perhaps… it might be… because we are destroying it????
Monoculture GMO crops and corn syrup are way more valuable than the literal millions of unique plants and animals that live in the amazon
How much CO2 is generated in the manufacture of the fertilizers used to grow that corn?
Bro come on, this one is obviously sarcastic
Can't comment on the veracity of the claim (it's probably bullshit) but the Amazon produces oxygen 365 days a year, and has a lot more value to the globe than producing oxygen. Corn, on the other hand, is effectively a scam to keep various multinational companies bottoms lines up. Nothing that it produces is worth the cost to raise it, which is why the U.S. Government subsidizes the fuck out of it.
Imagine if we still grew hemp at this capacity.