Farm$: “Rome” Burned…We Fiddled… by farmerchuck

Cross posted with some edits from the DailyKos:

Let me also insert a bit of a disclaimer at this point. This diary is not a plea for pity or a solicitation for funds. No animals were harmed during the making of this diary, but people harmed are real, and probably couldn’t afford analgesia. All examples in this diary are based on true stories, and names used have some basis in fact.

First some Facts…cause an argument without them is just a sophistry pie fight.

The price/availability of wheat (and most other food ingredients)is an impending crisis, a bare 10% of which has thus far been revealed to the American people through the wonder of the “free” marketplace.
world socialist

Sunday Herald

The government and the corporations are already responding to the crisis that people are barely aware of by making the portions smaller, and advocating “meatloaf rather than steak”…for those of us who have already gone to offal cuts, the suggestion is probably to chew on old shoes. Vegetarians who are now rejoicing, take a look at your commodities, the rises are substantially steeper, and you are going to be in the same hole with the rest of us.

The average age of farmers in the US is now in excess of 57 years. how much in excess we won’t know until the 2007 ag census figures are released. This represents a large part of the knowledge base that will be necessary if local food production is to be transited to…and also gives some idea how conservative this group is likely to be (most have survived all this time on a wage that most of you seem to associate with unskilled labor).

The typical farm mortgage is an ARM currently at 9.4% (2 years ago it was already at 8.9%…These are loans that are guaranteed (to the lender) at 90% of face value. given that land values over the past few years within 300 miles of a major city (one defined distance for local food) have been in excess of $1000/acre, it’s easy to see why there is a dearth of new farm start-ups….That’s ignoring the 100′s of other factors that make small scale farming an act of devotion or desperation rather than the the mainstay it should be.

The much vaunted and efficiency of large and super-scale agriculture is based on 2 precepts.
1) mechanization with extensive use of fossil fuels is the only viable method of agriculture.
2)The only measurement of efficiency is financial efficiency.
(and the only measure of healthcare is profitability….’nuf said)

I have seen several stories, and comments here, about what a boon the higher prices are to farmers…Not even a little bit.
The current higher prices reflect what is being paid for grains, commodities, etc that have already been purchased from the producer and represent what the speculators/traders/agribiz companies are realizing. The amount of grain held for sale outside of the trading system represent less than 10% of the total US supply (how much less is dependent on the date, and almost impossible to find or define. Currently small, and especially diversified farms are facing a crisis of astounding magnitude…after 5+ years of miniscule profits, ignoring construction and maintenance, and “making do” we are now seeing feed prices increase by 15-20%/month, and energy prices increase by 100%/year. At the same time, larger companies (Walmart, cargill, etc) are holding down apparent price with smaller packaging, loss leadering, and bulk offshore purchasing. (my personal theory is they hope to push off a crisis until they get a favorable [to them] farm bill in place.)

It has now been a year since I said food prices were going to increase by 50%, on these very pages. I am afraid I can no longer be so optimistic (and if you read my past diaries, you will see that optimist is not a word one applies to me lightly). The time during which we could have succeeded with incremental changes/improvements is, sadly, past. If we are to preserve any vestige of a hope of feeding ourselves, any hope of preserving dignity for people, rather than profits for corporations and those who own them, we must make immediate and radical changes to how we :

a.) Do business—-The Ferengii were NOT the good guys.
b.) Raise food—–The end result of farming should be feeding people, just like the end result of health insurance should be health care…not dollars in either case.
c.) Deal with each other and the environment—-This should be self-explanatory but obviously isn’t. Unless the dream is for a culture of lone survivalists, sustainable communities of people banding together to feed, clothe and help each other has got to become the norm, not a subject celebrated in the MSM do to it’s unusual nature.

We must free up time and resources to support those folks who are trying to come up with answers and methods to benefit all of us…Folks like Stranded Wind, Orange, Gmoke, E2M.org, and I suppose, Me. People who are spending all of their time surviving are not likely to have the additional resources to come up with the silver beebee’s we are going to need yesterday. If I sound like a scaremonger, you probably got that right…the situation we are facing is much more dire than a simple terrorist attack, and given social inertia, and lack of a cause celeb, much harder to fight. I realize that this is disjunct, and do apolagize for that, but like the rest of non-rich folks around here, I’m not getting near enough sleep, but that is a subject for tomorrow…If you would like me to stop writing these, fix the situation…tomorrow will be what Me and my community and friends are doing.