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> a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities My immediate reaction to this is: it's probably a wewlth transfer to the few landlords owning th

> a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities My immediate reaction to this is: it's probably a wewlth transfer to the few landlords owning the land and probably charging higher rent, not to the communities. Of course I haven't analysed the data. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will feel compelled to correct me.

b112 1mo ago
My understanding is that it caused the price of corn to go way up, meaning the poor in Mexico found food far more expensive. International markets and all that...
- stevenwoo 1mo ago
  NAFTA and successive treaties forced Mexico to allow much cheaper corn from the USA to displace many smaller corn farms in Mexico, only larger farms could survive that and farming of corn is declining in Mexico. Also inexpensive processed food displaced traditional diet goods at the same time for the same reasons, probably contributing to obesity epidemic that only started in Mexico after those treaties.
  - WarmWash 1mo ago
    Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. People constantly repeat this, but it's flat out wrong. The best way to apologize for people who, is to say that they don't have enough time to cook between all the jobs they have.
    - Retric 1mo ago
      > cheaper than heather options Due to spoilage concerns grocery stores price food based on shelf stability not just production costs. Processed foods are generally shelf stable enough for this not to be a major concern. Similarly economies of scale apply in many situations. Slow cooking beans takes more energy the smaller the batch size due to surface area to volume ratios etc. Combined with the opportunity costs associated with cooking + cleanup means there’s very few healthy options that can compete with highly processed foods.
      - WalterBright 1mo ago
        I bought over a pound of steak the other day for $5. (Yes, it was on sale. But it is frequently on sale.) Along with a potato for 50 cents, that's cheaper than a bag of Doritos. Oh, and I bought a banana for $.22. Cooking a steak takes about 10 minutes. Microwaving a TV dinner ($7.50) takes more time.
        mike50 1mo ago
        And the time for cleanup?
        nosmokewhereiam 1mo ago
        Wait til you find out what's in a $5 steak! Our cheapest grass-fed tenderloin is $10 for a half pound cut. One. In a poor northern state. We had that cow two years and didn't supplement grain. Cheap as you can grow them. With a $5 steak, it might as well be corn chips.
        WalterBright 1mo ago
        The $5 steak is the steak that's on sale. It doesn't affect the food value or the taste. A pound of steak is good for 4 meals for me. You can have your corn chips. No thanks.
        asgraham 1mo ago
        Microwaving takes less attention and less skill, though. And less cleanup. And you don’t need to own a pan. And you don’t need to own spices (steak is a bad example ofc). And you don’t need to think about the side dishes. And you don’t need to agree on what’s for dinner. And I think it’s worth repeating, you don’t need any skill and can’t really screw it up. And you don’t need to worry about it going bad because you were too lazy to cook it. Etc. Processed food may not be cheaper, but the flavor:effort ratio is waaaaaay higher.
        WalterBright 1mo ago
        Throwing a steak in a frying pan is about the same effort as a microwave frozen dinner, and is objectively cheaper. There's no universe where processed food is cheaper.
    - jrflowers 1mo ago
      > Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. I have bad news for you about flour
      - fragmede 1mo ago
        I have some good news for you about insects! https://3cricketeers.com/products/pure-cricket-powder https://3cricketeers.com/products/pure-cricket-powder
        jrflowers 1mo ago
        Only fifty dollars per pound for crickets? That’s a steal
  - b112 1mo ago
    Likely, and then... after Mexican farms went out of business, they added biofuels, the price spiked, and Mexico had no domestic corn people could buy. It's sort of what they want for Canada. They keep trying to attack our protected agricultural sectors, and no sane country doesn't protect their food supply. Amusingly, they want 10% of our dairy market (as a start), and they already have a few percent. Yet we're 1/10th the size of them. So they make a massive fuss, over 5 additional percent of our market or so, which for their market size is 0.5% of its overall size. The US economy won't even notice, but the Canadian market will 10x as much. It's just petty.
    - snayan 1mo ago
      Yeah, but our dairy quota system is kinda fucked imo. We've created a market where the quotas are estimated to be worth somewhere between 40-45 billion. This financialization and the fact that banks have leant heavily against the quotas is part of the reason we're unwilling to move on this aspect in negotiation imo. I'm not saying that there's not value of protecting our food supply. But, in an affordability crisis, kinda feels this should be on the table for discussion given our supply chain management costs the average consumer an extra $250 a year or so.
      - b112 1mo ago
        That's quite cheap then. You see, the Americans are liars, as you may well know. They get upset at supply management, but they do it too. Instead of controlling production, and setting fair prices for producers, they handle it, like a bunch of nitwits, on the backend. They buy up excess milk, make cheese out of it, to artificially keep the market price high, and then store it for decades as it rots, in large underground limestone caverns. They buy out herds if production levels are too high. They have bought out large numbers of farms more than once, spending enormous sums, to reduce the supply. In fact, the American government has cost the American consumer far more than a measly $250 per year, for they force higher pricing too. And to do it? They spend like crazy, they spend tax money like crazy. But here's the thing. Every single government handles food production in some way. Every one. And the result is upward pricing pressure, almost always. We act responsibly. Sanely. The Americans just shrug their shoulders, blather on about not interfering, then do it anyhow regardless. Do not fall for their lies. It's all they do these days. The only goal they have, is to make us far more dependent upon them.
  - stinkbeetle 1mo ago
    This chart https://statbase.org/data/mex-prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults/ https://statbase.org/data/mex-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad... Says that obesity was shooting up in Mexico before that. The obesity rate doubled in the 15 years before NAFTA. After NAFTA the rate doubled again in about 30 years. I can't really see any obvious change after 1994. Are these numbers incorrect, or were you meaning some other metric of obesity or obesity epidemic?
    - stevenwoo 1mo ago
      Good point. I should have written something like correlated with urbanization and other factors. But ever increasing percentage is a correlation. The USA obesity rate has stabilized for a year iirc, but those of Mexican heritage have some unique vulnerabilities to obesity as well so a multi factorial issue.
- ALLTaken 1mo ago
  [flagged]
bawolff 1mo ago
Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). How common is farm landlords?
- mapt 1mo ago
  Depends on the area, but the vast majority are owner operated. The question begs some other questions though. One is more about what fraction of the economic production of the farm industry is owner operated; There is a long tail of now-tiny farms that are not economical to actually sow and harvest, which nobody could actually earn a living from. If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it really a farm? Conversely, there are a lot of very productive 5000+ acre farms comprised of many older properties combined together that are "owner operated" in one sense, but demand many farmhands and a lot of machinery to manage. The vertically related industries have also seen a lot of consolidation. There are ~four seed companies, only a few pesticide companies, two main tractor companies, only a few slaughterhouse companies, etc. There are long-term contractual arrangements with some of these entities. Is an owner-operator farmer who controls so little of the business directly they may as well be a sharecropper really counted as a farm?
  - defrost 1mo ago
    > Conversely, there are a lot of very productive 5000+ acre farms comprised of many older properties combined together ... I can't speak to US farm practices but note that 5,000 acres is 2,023 hectares and a bit less than half the average size of farms in our local farming cooperative (CBH, Western Australia). today they are still mostly extended family farms formed from buying up and joining together many smaller post war farms. > that are "owner operated" in one sense, but demand many farmhands and a lot of machinery to manage. The "mean farm" of 4,500 Hectares (11,000 acres) here is typically managed by three full time workers and machinery, along with a network of mechanics, seed suppliers, pooled harvest hands etc. > Is an owner-operator farmer who controls so little of the business directly Again, I have no comment wrt US practices - here owner operators formed their own cooperatives to build out and co-own their rail, port, silo, seed storage, agronomy, facilities and via bulk production of > 20 million tonnes of grain per annum have leverage to make demands of equipment manufacturers. > If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it really a farm? I know people that own 10 to 15 acres, live in very old farmhouses that have been fully overhauled to current standards and lease their cropable land out to form large thousand acre paddocks which receive back enough money to cover rates and improvements. They own the land, they often tun AirBnB as a side earner, the land is farmed at a profit.
xp84 1mo ago
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s more of a massive subsidy to enormous agribusiness operations. But yeah I’m sure some of the pork makes its way to some normal farmers too.
salynchnew 1mo ago
Yeah, it's not like the few remaining small, family-owned Indiana farms (which are either very specialized away from corn or basically lifestyle businesses at this point) are benefitting from this in a meaningful way.

b112 1mo ago

My understanding is that it caused the price of corn to go way up, meaning the poor in Mexico found food far more expensive. International markets and all that...

stevenwoo 1mo ago
NAFTA and successive treaties forced Mexico to allow much cheaper corn from the USA to displace many smaller corn farms in Mexico, only larger farms could survive that and farming of corn is declining in Mexico. Also inexpensive processed food displaced traditional diet goods at the same time for the same reasons, probably contributing to obesity epidemic that only started in Mexico after those treaties.
- WarmWash 1mo ago
  Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. People constantly repeat this, but it's flat out wrong. The best way to apologize for people who, is to say that they don't have enough time to cook between all the jobs they have.
  - Retric 1mo ago
    > cheaper than heather options Due to spoilage concerns grocery stores price food based on shelf stability not just production costs. Processed foods are generally shelf stable enough for this not to be a major concern. Similarly economies of scale apply in many situations. Slow cooking beans takes more energy the smaller the batch size due to surface area to volume ratios etc. Combined with the opportunity costs associated with cooking + cleanup means there’s very few healthy options that can compete with highly processed foods.
    - WalterBright 1mo ago
      I bought over a pound of steak the other day for $5. (Yes, it was on sale. But it is frequently on sale.) Along with a potato for 50 cents, that's cheaper than a bag of Doritos. Oh, and I bought a banana for $.22. Cooking a steak takes about 10 minutes. Microwaving a TV dinner ($7.50) takes more time.
      - mike50 1mo ago
        And the time for cleanup?
      - nosmokewhereiam 1mo ago
        Wait til you find out what's in a $5 steak! Our cheapest grass-fed tenderloin is $10 for a half pound cut. One. In a poor northern state. We had that cow two years and didn't supplement grain. Cheap as you can grow them. With a $5 steak, it might as well be corn chips.
        WalterBright 1mo ago
        The $5 steak is the steak that's on sale. It doesn't affect the food value or the taste. A pound of steak is good for 4 meals for me. You can have your corn chips. No thanks.
      - asgraham 1mo ago
        Microwaving takes less attention and less skill, though. And less cleanup. And you don’t need to own a pan. And you don’t need to own spices (steak is a bad example ofc). And you don’t need to think about the side dishes. And you don’t need to agree on what’s for dinner. And I think it’s worth repeating, you don’t need any skill and can’t really screw it up. And you don’t need to worry about it going bad because you were too lazy to cook it. Etc. Processed food may not be cheaper, but the flavor:effort ratio is waaaaaay higher.
        WalterBright 1mo ago
        Throwing a steak in a frying pan is about the same effort as a microwave frozen dinner, and is objectively cheaper. There's no universe where processed food is cheaper.
  - jrflowers 1mo ago
    > Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. I have bad news for you about flour
    - fragmede 1mo ago
      I have some good news for you about insects! https://3cricketeers.com/products/pure-cricket-powder https://3cricketeers.com/products/pure-cricket-powder
      - jrflowers 1mo ago
        Only fifty dollars per pound for crickets? That’s a steal
- b112 1mo ago
  Likely, and then... after Mexican farms went out of business, they added biofuels, the price spiked, and Mexico had no domestic corn people could buy. It's sort of what they want for Canada. They keep trying to attack our protected agricultural sectors, and no sane country doesn't protect their food supply. Amusingly, they want 10% of our dairy market (as a start), and they already have a few percent. Yet we're 1/10th the size of them. So they make a massive fuss, over 5 additional percent of our market or so, which for their market size is 0.5% of its overall size. The US economy won't even notice, but the Canadian market will 10x as much. It's just petty.
  - snayan 1mo ago
    Yeah, but our dairy quota system is kinda fucked imo. We've created a market where the quotas are estimated to be worth somewhere between 40-45 billion. This financialization and the fact that banks have leant heavily against the quotas is part of the reason we're unwilling to move on this aspect in negotiation imo. I'm not saying that there's not value of protecting our food supply. But, in an affordability crisis, kinda feels this should be on the table for discussion given our supply chain management costs the average consumer an extra $250 a year or so.
    - b112 1mo ago
      That's quite cheap then. You see, the Americans are liars, as you may well know. They get upset at supply management, but they do it too. Instead of controlling production, and setting fair prices for producers, they handle it, like a bunch of nitwits, on the backend. They buy up excess milk, make cheese out of it, to artificially keep the market price high, and then store it for decades as it rots, in large underground limestone caverns. They buy out herds if production levels are too high. They have bought out large numbers of farms more than once, spending enormous sums, to reduce the supply. In fact, the American government has cost the American consumer far more than a measly $250 per year, for they force higher pricing too. And to do it? They spend like crazy, they spend tax money like crazy. But here's the thing. Every single government handles food production in some way. Every one. And the result is upward pricing pressure, almost always. We act responsibly. Sanely. The Americans just shrug their shoulders, blather on about not interfering, then do it anyhow regardless. Do not fall for their lies. It's all they do these days. The only goal they have, is to make us far more dependent upon them.
- stinkbeetle 1mo ago
  This chart https://statbase.org/data/mex-prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults/ https://statbase.org/data/mex-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad... Says that obesity was shooting up in Mexico before that. The obesity rate doubled in the 15 years before NAFTA. After NAFTA the rate doubled again in about 30 years. I can't really see any obvious change after 1994. Are these numbers incorrect, or were you meaning some other metric of obesity or obesity epidemic?
  - stevenwoo 1mo ago
    Good point. I should have written something like correlated with urbanization and other factors. But ever increasing percentage is a correlation. The USA obesity rate has stabilized for a year iirc, but those of Mexican heritage have some unique vulnerabilities to obesity as well so a multi factorial issue.
ALLTaken 1mo ago
[flagged]

bawolff 1mo ago

Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). How common is farm landlords?

mapt 1mo ago
Depends on the area, but the vast majority are owner operated. The question begs some other questions though. One is more about what fraction of the economic production of the farm industry is owner operated; There is a long tail of now-tiny farms that are not economical to actually sow and harvest, which nobody could actually earn a living from. If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it really a farm? Conversely, there are a lot of very productive 5000+ acre farms comprised of many older properties combined together that are "owner operated" in one sense, but demand many farmhands and a lot of machinery to manage. The vertically related industries have also seen a lot of consolidation. There are ~four seed companies, only a few pesticide companies, two main tractor companies, only a few slaughterhouse companies, etc. There are long-term contractual arrangements with some of these entities. Is an owner-operator farmer who controls so little of the business directly they may as well be a sharecropper really counted as a farm?
- defrost 1mo ago
  > Conversely, there are a lot of very productive 5000+ acre farms comprised of many older properties combined together ... I can't speak to US farm practices but note that 5,000 acres is 2,023 hectares and a bit less than half the average size of farms in our local farming cooperative (CBH, Western Australia). today they are still mostly extended family farms formed from buying up and joining together many smaller post war farms. > that are "owner operated" in one sense, but demand many farmhands and a lot of machinery to manage. The "mean farm" of 4,500 Hectares (11,000 acres) here is typically managed by three full time workers and machinery, along with a network of mechanics, seed suppliers, pooled harvest hands etc. > Is an owner-operator farmer who controls so little of the business directly Again, I have no comment wrt US practices - here owner operators formed their own cooperatives to build out and co-own their rail, port, silo, seed storage, agronomy, facilities and via bulk production of > 20 million tonnes of grain per annum have leverage to make demands of equipment manufacturers. > If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it really a farm? I know people that own 10 to 15 acres, live in very old farmhouses that have been fully overhauled to current standards and lease their cropable land out to form large thousand acre paddocks which receive back enough money to cover rates and improvements. They own the land, they often tun AirBnB as a side earner, the land is farmed at a profit.

xp84 1mo ago

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s more of a massive subsidy to enormous agribusiness operations. But yeah I’m sure some of the pork makes its way to some normal farmers too.

salynchnew 1mo ago

Yeah, it's not like the few remaining small, family-owned Indiana farms (which are either very specialized away from corn or basically lifestyle businesses at this point) are benefitting from this in a meaningful way.