Pennsylvania Leads the Way in Promoting Agriculture.

[Ernie]

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/2 ... s-00147753

I found this article interesting. I've never given much thought to the challenges a young person might face if they want to get into agriculture with no prior experience.

[JohnHurt]

Ernie,

This article by left wing "Politico" is very "political" in nature. It is a response to the huge amount of political support given to Amos Miller in PA by Rep Massie and Robert Kennedy Jr, and everyone else.

It is a brazen attempt to make the public believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the PA Dept of Agriculture. That anyone can farm and make a profit, and we just need more farmers in PA.

The only way to make a living farming today is to sell directly to the customer, otherwise you won't make a dime. The Establishment has a system to bankrupt the farmers and give them nothing to live on. The only people that make money farming are the big food processors and the big box grocery store chains.

The other group that makes money off the farmer are the members of of the Chicago Commodities Exchange, where "pork belly futures" are traded like stocks are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. They present one uniform low "buy" price to the farmer, but if there is a shortage and the price rises, the members of the Commodities Exchange get rich and the farmer gets nothing.

Ask yourself, who is richer? The food processors, the large grocery store chains, the members of the Commodities Exchange, or the farmer?

The other reason a farmer cannot make money selling through commercial channels are all of the onerous regulations. These regulations are not to "protect the public", as most of what passes for "food" in the commercial food sector is not at all healthy. No, these regulations are to keep the small farmer from selling to a local customer.

Not many years ago, every farmer had a cow and sold milk to their local customers and friends. They can't do that now, as there are regulations against raw milk.

These regulations have been put into place by the largest milk producers to stamp out competition by making the production of milk so expensive that only the wealthiest companies can do it. And these companies have the distribution locked up, so you won't be selling your milk in the grocery store unless you go through them.

So when you read something by "Politico", you are reading something written by the liberal Elite Banker Establishment that wants to keep the farmer poor. Note that in the article, they said their was a "doughnut hole" where some small farmers were being left out of the "subsidy gravy train." Yeah, like a subsidy from someone else's taxes can fix this problem.

No, the only way to fix the problem is to go around the current system and sell your products directly to the consumer. And a Private Membership Association makes that possible. That is what is behind the Amos Miller case, whether we will have the freedom to buy and sell food to others in our groups and make a living, or be forced to sell only through the commercial food system and go broke. It has nothing to do with "protecting the public."

Thanks,

John

[Ernie]

This article by left wing "Politico" is very "political" in nature.

A person can focus on the leftist aspects of the article, or they can read the article for the benign information that is in it. This is what I try to do whether I read a leftist article or a rightish one.
I am aware that some folks can't appreciate an article if its publisher has the opposite political persuasion as themselves. But if I were to only read articles that do not have a political slant or a "kingdoms of this world" slant, there is not much for me to read.

[Ernie]

Please keep partisan comments/debates out of this thread - avoid comments that reflect negatively on either right-leaning or left leaning political persuasions or characters. Please keep this thread focused on the topic.

[Ken]

Ernie,

This article by left wing "Politico" is very "political" in nature. It is a response to the huge amount of political support given to Amos Miller in PA by Rep Massie and Robert Kennedy Jr, and everyone else.

Nonsense. Not everything is a conspiracy John.

And Pennsylvania has been promoting agriculture and supporting young people getting into farming LONG LONG before anyone ever heard of Amos Miller and his motley opportunistic band of supporters like Massey and RFK Jr. I can promise you that Pennsylvania doesn't adjust its statewide agricultural policies in response to the likes of Amos Miller, Massey, or RFK Jr. In fact, neither Massey nor RFK Jr. are Pennsylvanians or have any connection to the state. Massey is a politician from Kentucky and RFK Jr. is from Los Angeles.

I found it to be a very interesting article. And as someone with roots in Pennsylvania, I'm glad to see the state is trying to recruit a new generation of young people into agriculture. Only good things can come from that.

[Ernie]

Please keep partisan comments/debates out of this thread - avoid comments that reflect negatively on either right-leaning or left leaning political persuasions or characters. Please keep this thread focused on the topic.

[JohnHurt]

Please keep partisan comments/debates out of this thread - avoid comments that reflect negatively on either right-leaning or left leaning political persuasions or characters. Please keep this thread focused on the topic.

The topic you created is to review an article you found written by "Politico" which actually means "Politician". Nearly every paragraph in your article referenced some politician from either party. Next time, use an article from "Mother Earth News" or something focused on just agriculture, and not how agriculture relates to politics if you want to keep politics out of the thread.

Here is what I think after reading your article, without any political comments, and I hope I have written in a way that allows us to have a good conversation.

How a young person gets into farming without land and capital is nearly impossible, even if it were given to him. And it takes a LOT of money to start up a new farm. But what a new farmer lacks the most is the generational knowledge of his ancestors.

My grandparents were farmers, but my parents lived in the city. I am 66 years young, and been farming for 40 plus years. To answer the questions of what works in farming, I still have to ask my neighbor, whose family has farmed for generations.

Generational farms create things like a "landrace" plant, a type of corn that has been grown on their farm for decades. Each year they select the best ears of corn for seedstock for the next year. The corn is perfectly adapted for their area, and that is one reason why they are successful where a newcomer would fail.

Compare raising tested landrace corn that to new farmer that buys GMO seed from a catalogue. If they try to harvest seedstock, they will find there is a "terminator gene" in the GMO corn that keeps it from producing for more than one year, so they will have to buy more seed every year.

Some of the GMO corn is creating its own BT (bacterium thuringiensis) as a "GMO bug spray" produced by the corn itself. This is really nasty stuff, and nobody should ever plant it or eat it, but a new farmer might fall into this trap.

Urban farming makes a lot of sense, except...

Where do you find the mulch for the plants, or the potting soil, or fresh water for irrigation that does not come out of a tap with so much chlorine that it kills your plants?

Yes, you can mulch newspapers, but not the comics as they have chemicals in the color print that causes problems. You can mulch cardboard, but it has glue inside that will end up in your crops.

I think an urban garden that is 100% organic is nearly impossible. Instead of shipping in the mulch from the country, you would be better off growing the vegetables in the country and shipping the vegetables in, and leaving the mulch in the country where it belongs.

There are some successful urban farms on small lots, but only in areas where the Codes Enforcement is friendly, and the neighbors don't mind the various smells. I don't know. I don't see many of them, and if it were a really good idea, there would be more people doing it.

I did set up my own Aquaponics garden, and that might work in an urban garden. I used the Media Bed and Nutrient Film Technique, and it grew a lot of vegetables on a small space. I raised bluegill instead of tilapia.


The worst part of the article is the idea of taxing everyone to give a subsidy to some new farmer that has never done it before. This is not going to work. But it will employ a lot of people to oversee the grant money and to write new regulations on how these farms are run. The regulatory part will work very well, and it will also require even more tax money and subsidies to improve these new inexperienced farms and farmers, as these new farmers probably won't be successful the first few times. But with more money and more new farmers to get in on the gravy train, I am sure it would. It just needs a little more money. It will always need more money.

There are two kinds of farmers, and people for that matter. One is entirely independent and can be successful if left alone, without being regulated to death.

The other type of farmer is often a hopeless failure at farming, but believes that everyone should assist them in their ventures, and demands tax money to help them achieve the same success as those that are successful and independent. Otherwise, they say farming is not "fair."

Where is Darwin when you need him?

There is a very famous person that did not work a job until they were 40 years old. They tried to become a carpenter, and found that they could not drive a nail in straight. Nobody wanted to employ him. So he became very good at preaching "income redistribution", and has run for president several times.

That is the same problem when you try to attract new people to farming by giving them grant money. People that really should not farm will try to farm, and will cost everyone a lot of money. Then they will preach to you why it is not fair, or even "racist", if you don't give them more money.

Yes, keep politics out of farming.

So what are your thoughts on the article?

Take care,

John

[Ernie]

So what are your thoughts on the article?

I mentioned one thought in the OP.

I think it is interesting that it is hard to get young people or their relatives interested in the family farm.

I think it is interesting that Pennsylvania (as compared to many states) is thinking ahead as to how they might get people interested in farming. (I have no opinion on whether PA's ideas will make much difference or not.)  

I like that some young people are taking an interest in this. In many countries, being a farmer is the considered one of the lowest socially acceptable occupations. I'm glad that in the USA, and particularly here in PA. There is fairly good respect for farmers.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Would that my state had a program like that. There are so many unfilled needs.

Friend of mine from Nebraska, we were in language school together. Family had like 1600 acres, in corn. He put 10 or so acres in middle eastern vegetables. Some of them are quite different than our own. On Friday, he would load up his truck, and drive into Lincoln, and park near the Mosque. He was besieged by people trying to buy a taste of home. Soon, he had a business going. Being able to speak Arabic helped, but he felt it was not totally necessary.

Last I talked to him, family was making more money from the vegetables than the corn.

[Ken]

Would that my state had a program like that. There are so many unfilled needs.

Friend of mine from Nebraska, we were in language school together. Family had like 1600 acres, in corn. He put 10 or so acres in middle eastern vegetables. Some of them are quite different than our own. On Friday, he would load up his truck, and drive into Lincoln, and park near the Mosque. He was besieged by people trying to buy a taste of home. Soon, he had a business going. Being able to speak Arabic helped, but he felt it was not totally necessary.

Last I talked to him, family was making more money from the vegetables than the corn.

That is the problem in agricultural parts of this country.

We have an enormous infrastructure built up for commodity crops like corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, and hogs. So if you are a farmer in Nebraska you can grow those sorts of crops or livestock and you have a ready market in every single town where there is a grain elevator or stockyard. No farmer in Nebraska has to worry about whether or not he can sell wheat or corn. He only has to worry about the price.

By contrast, growing anything else is a huge undertaking because you have no ready markets. You have to create and cultivate them yourself and that is both an enormous amount of time and effort but also risk.

100 years ago the plains were much more populated and farms were smaller and less mechanized. So one could actually grow more diverse crops and find markets for them. The consolidation and industrialization of agriculture basically changed that. And in a very real way it has trapped farmers.

Pennsylvania has the enormous advantage of being close to lots and lots of population centers. So there is more potential out there to be creative when it comes to agriculture. And small farms with eclectic arrays of crops are more likely to find markets than a farm in say western Nebraska.