5 ms·

article somewhat addressed it but I'd say demographics are the biggest factor, with an older male population and high gun ownership rate The other issue is str

article somewhat addressed it but I'd say demographics are the biggest factor, with an older male population and high gun ownership rate The other issue is stress, family farmers are now competing directly with foreign government and hedge fund backed corporate farms, so it's almost impossible to compete when they can just write off losses. And getting squeezed by monopolies for seed production and selling to monopolies for meat processing and grain buying. Many are working on land owned for generations and feel the pressure to not fail, I know several who became alcoholics as a result of having to sell their land after going broke, you can tell they feel a lot of shame over it due to their identity being so tied to what they do

bamfly 3y ago
> article somewhat addressed it but I'd say demographics are the biggest factor, with an older male population and high gun ownership rate Right, how much of this is explained simply by what we'd expect to see in a population of older men with a ~100% rate of easy access to firearms, compared with the rate of easy access in the general population of folks otherwise fitting that demographic? [EDIT] For those not familiar with these kinds of areas, this isn't because farmers are especially likely to be "gun nuts" (maybe they are? I kinda doubt it though, probably not at a rate much higher than the general population, anyway) but because hunting and recreational shooting are more popular in rural areas (citation needed, but I'd be very surprised if that's not true) and because even farmers who don't engage in those hobbies tend to have one or more firearms for varmint control, protection from dangerous animals, or simply because they inherited or were gifted some, if nothing else. I'd expect that nearly 100% of US farmers could have a loaded firearm in-hand within an hour, if they wanted to, without having to put much thought into how to get it.
- dageshi 3y ago
  Nearly every farmer who has livestock is likely to have a gun to put animals out of their misery should it be necessary.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    Good point, another common reason that slipped my mind. Dogs can get snake-bit or horribly mauled by any number of things, for farmers who don't even deal in livestock but do have dogs. Horses, obviously (though you don't necessarily shoot one just because it broke a leg, like in Hollywood westerns). Cows can get up to some really stupid shit. Wild animals can get hurt by machines, and getting close to them may be dangerous. Yeah, that's another big reason.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  I think you're right about farmers' ownership and access to firearms, but I don't think it's that much greater than older men generally. 30% of US adults own a gun and another 11% live with someone who does. 39% of all men own a gun. 46% of all adults in rural areas own guns. 48% of white men own a gun. Sure, those numbers drop a lot in the cities and heavily Democrat voting areas, but it's pretty easy to get a gun in those places, legally or not. More than ownership or access, I think this is a mindset issue -- same as why rural areas have high rates of ownership and access to firearms, but don't experience the violent crime rates found in cities. It's not the guns, it's who has the guns.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/Guns-Report-FOR-WEBSITE-PDF-6-21.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads...
  - bamfly 3y ago
    > same as why rural areas have high rates of ownership and access to firearms, but don't experience the violent crime rates found in cities. It's not the guns, it's who has the guns. You may be surprised about that, actually. Cities often make headlines or rankings under things like "Xth most violent US city" with some implicit assumption behind it that larger cities are more violent than rural areas, towns, or smaller cities under whatever threshold is being used in that analysis, but that's not actually true. Absolute numbers are high in big cities (they're denser—duh) but rates may surprise you. [EDIT] This is a shitty site, but it's the general kind of thing you can expect to find, if you dig into this: https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/ https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-... Highest-murder-rate counties yields about 60/40 small cities or rural, and the usual suspects for violent big cities (Baltimore, DC, STL, New Orleans—notably absent: Chicago, NYC, LA) You'll see similar results for crime in general. Most big US cities aren't remarkably-horrible dens of crime—not relative to small cities and rural counties, anyway, and not when looking at the per-capita rate and including those lower-pop areas. The safer half or so of large US cities are safer than large swaths of rural and small-town/city America. Big-city doesn't necessarily equal higher crime, violence, or murder rate than small cities and rural counties. It only seems that way because, for some reason, crime in cities is usually highlighted and presented in ways that suggest that's true.
dkarl 3y ago
Corporate farms seem inevitable, even if they aren't desirable. How does it make sense to put the burden of managing fluctuations in costs and yields on a single person or family, farming in a single area? The financial side alone must be complicated enough to be a full-time job. Then you have the questions of predicting demand for different crops, staying up-to-date with farming techniques for different crops, organic and other certifications, learning different techniques and products as the climate changes, hiring and managing labor, managing employee benefits, how could a single person do all that and still do a competitive job compared to a company with specialists handling all of those roles, not to mention that they can hedge against fluctuations in local conditions by diversifying across geographic areas? Imagine trying to succeed as a one-person company against Google or Amazon in the production of a literal commodity.
- phil21 3y ago
  > Then you have the questions of predicting demand for different crops, staying up-to-date with farming techniques for different crops, organic and other certifications, learning different techniques and products as the climate changes, hiring and managing labor, managing employee benefits, how could a single person do all that and still do a competitive job compared to a company with specialists handling all of those roles, not to mention that they can hedge against fluctuations in local conditions by diversifying across geographic areas? Centralized planning of food production has never gone well in human history as far as I'm aware. I'm not certain I'd like 2 or 3 giant corporations deciding how much corn will be grown next season to maximize profits, each eroding those safety margins a couple percentage points ever year for decades until something unexpected happens. 50,000 smaller corporations, sure. But that's just another form of family farming.
  - mywittyname 3y ago
    > I'm not certain I'd like 2 or 3 giant corporations deciding how much corn will be grown next season to maximize profits, There are several sectors of the agricultural industry that are monopolies/oligopolies. And those tend towards making more money via producing more rather than artificial scarcity. If orange prices rise too much, then some other commodity will replace it. So instead of artificially restricting orange supplies, the industry spends tons of money researching and bringing to market more products that use oranges. Diversity and vertical integration are the name of the game here. Even the pervasive corn industry isn't immune to being replaced by competition if prices go up.
TuringNYC 3y ago
>> Many are working on land owned for generations and feel the pressure to not fail How does this work? Wouldnt you end up with more and more descendants and inheritors over time, thus splitting the farm n-ways?
- sparrish 3y ago
  Usually just one kid will stay home and farm while the other head to cities. That kid will have to buy the others' share of the farm when the parents die, which puts them back in debt.

bamfly 3y ago

> article somewhat addressed it but I'd say demographics are the biggest factor, with an older male population and high gun ownership rate Right, how much of this is explained simply by what we'd expect to see in a population of older men with a ~100% rate of easy access to firearms, compared with the rate of easy access in the general population of folks otherwise fitting that demographic? [EDIT] For those not familiar with these kinds of areas, this isn't because farmers are especially likely to be "gun nuts" (maybe they are? I kinda doubt it though, probably not at a rate much higher than the general population, anyway) but because hunting and recreational shooting are more popular in rural areas (citation needed, but I'd be very surprised if that's not true) and because even farmers who don't engage in those hobbies tend to have one or more firearms for varmint control, protection from dangerous animals, or simply because they inherited or were gifted some, if nothing else. I'd expect that nearly 100% of US farmers could have a loaded firearm in-hand within an hour, if they wanted to, without having to put much thought into how to get it.

dageshi 3y ago
Nearly every farmer who has livestock is likely to have a gun to put animals out of their misery should it be necessary.
- bamfly 3y ago
  Good point, another common reason that slipped my mind. Dogs can get snake-bit or horribly mauled by any number of things, for farmers who don't even deal in livestock but do have dogs. Horses, obviously (though you don't necessarily shoot one just because it broke a leg, like in Hollywood westerns). Cows can get up to some really stupid shit. Wild animals can get hurt by machines, and getting close to them may be dangerous. Yeah, that's another big reason.
brightlancer 3y ago
I think you're right about farmers' ownership and access to firearms, but I don't think it's that much greater than older men generally. 30% of US adults own a gun and another 11% live with someone who does. 39% of all men own a gun. 46% of all adults in rural areas own guns. 48% of white men own a gun. Sure, those numbers drop a lot in the cities and heavily Democrat voting areas, but it's pretty easy to get a gun in those places, legally or not. More than ownership or access, I think this is a mindset issue -- same as why rural areas have high rates of ownership and access to firearms, but don't experience the violent crime rates found in cities. It's not the guns, it's who has the guns.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/Guns-Report-FOR-WEBSITE-PDF-6-21.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads...
- bamfly 3y ago
  > same as why rural areas have high rates of ownership and access to firearms, but don't experience the violent crime rates found in cities. It's not the guns, it's who has the guns. You may be surprised about that, actually. Cities often make headlines or rankings under things like "Xth most violent US city" with some implicit assumption behind it that larger cities are more violent than rural areas, towns, or smaller cities under whatever threshold is being used in that analysis, but that's not actually true. Absolute numbers are high in big cities (they're denser—duh) but rates may surprise you. [EDIT] This is a shitty site, but it's the general kind of thing you can expect to find, if you dig into this: https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/ https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-... Highest-murder-rate counties yields about 60/40 small cities or rural, and the usual suspects for violent big cities (Baltimore, DC, STL, New Orleans—notably absent: Chicago, NYC, LA) You'll see similar results for crime in general. Most big US cities aren't remarkably-horrible dens of crime—not relative to small cities and rural counties, anyway, and not when looking at the per-capita rate and including those lower-pop areas. The safer half or so of large US cities are safer than large swaths of rural and small-town/city America. Big-city doesn't necessarily equal higher crime, violence, or murder rate than small cities and rural counties. It only seems that way because, for some reason, crime in cities is usually highlighted and presented in ways that suggest that's true.

dkarl 3y ago

Corporate farms seem inevitable, even if they aren't desirable. How does it make sense to put the burden of managing fluctuations in costs and yields on a single person or family, farming in a single area? The financial side alone must be complicated enough to be a full-time job. Then you have the questions of predicting demand for different crops, staying up-to-date with farming techniques for different crops, organic and other certifications, learning different techniques and products as the climate changes, hiring and managing labor, managing employee benefits, how could a single person do all that and still do a competitive job compared to a company with specialists handling all of those roles, not to mention that they can hedge against fluctuations in local conditions by diversifying across geographic areas? Imagine trying to succeed as a one-person company against Google or Amazon in the production of a literal commodity.

phil21 3y ago
> Then you have the questions of predicting demand for different crops, staying up-to-date with farming techniques for different crops, organic and other certifications, learning different techniques and products as the climate changes, hiring and managing labor, managing employee benefits, how could a single person do all that and still do a competitive job compared to a company with specialists handling all of those roles, not to mention that they can hedge against fluctuations in local conditions by diversifying across geographic areas? Centralized planning of food production has never gone well in human history as far as I'm aware. I'm not certain I'd like 2 or 3 giant corporations deciding how much corn will be grown next season to maximize profits, each eroding those safety margins a couple percentage points ever year for decades until something unexpected happens. 50,000 smaller corporations, sure. But that's just another form of family farming.
- mywittyname 3y ago
  > I'm not certain I'd like 2 or 3 giant corporations deciding how much corn will be grown next season to maximize profits, There are several sectors of the agricultural industry that are monopolies/oligopolies. And those tend towards making more money via producing more rather than artificial scarcity. If orange prices rise too much, then some other commodity will replace it. So instead of artificially restricting orange supplies, the industry spends tons of money researching and bringing to market more products that use oranges. Diversity and vertical integration are the name of the game here. Even the pervasive corn industry isn't immune to being replaced by competition if prices go up.

TuringNYC 3y ago

>> Many are working on land owned for generations and feel the pressure to not fail How does this work? Wouldnt you end up with more and more descendants and inheritors over time, thus splitting the farm n-ways?

sparrish 3y ago
Usually just one kid will stay home and farm while the other head to cities. That kid will have to buy the others' share of the farm when the parents die, which puts them back in debt.