There's still a chance to dig some wisdom out of his brain! Just need to get lucky on the seat assignments!
This has been going on since Franklin Roosevelt signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933. And you'd be very hard pressed to find an advanced economy that doesn't provide elaborate price supports and subsidies for agriculture. You also need to understand that quite a few of the food assistance programs like Food Stamps and WIC are run by the USDA. The only real change has been the advent of large scale corporate farming - which has only made things much tougher for the family-owned farms.
I kind of have a problem with this whole idea that the family owned farm is inherently good/better and something the rest of us as Americans should have to sacrifice to preserve. I mean what happened to all the family owned auto manufacturers. Or the family owned power companies. Or even now the family owned search engines or social media sites. Producing commodities is simply more efficient at scale, and from an economic standpoint it's horribly inefficient to prop up subscale small farms. Plus, in almost all cases this mythical family farmer is a millionaire and by definition of the "family" part they were handed it for free from their parents. If there's someone we should be propping up its the poor kid who scrabbled their way up, not these guys who have been living off the government teat for generations. That said, I happen to like the idea that my food comes from a small farm where the animals are treated better and the crops aren't covered in herbicide and pesticide and where I get the food days after its harvested. I'm happy to pay extra for that. If family farms want to thrive, they need to learn branding and build that market. Same as the rest of us who run businesses have to do.
If we don't cry for the mom and pop shops killed off by Walmart and Amazon, then why do we subsidize the family owned farms? Slightly changing the subject, but the line of thought is the same: when poor people get "free" paychecks from the government, they spend it and that is good for the economy. When corporations get tax breaks, they buy their stocks back. Not particularly an economy boosting policy...
1. I was not making a value statement, and 2. Taxpayers are subsidizing the corporate large scale farmers as well.
I've seen my mother's side of the family go from 80 acres to 4200 acres and 30 cattle to 3000-plus cattle - all courtesy of ridiculously insanely low interest rate/repayment term USDA farm loan programs and subsidized price floors on milk and milk products. So here's a business where you can buy out your competitors with next-to-free government loans and your product has a guaranteed profit margin and Uncle Sam will buy your product if the open market won't meet your price.
The chemicals will only get worse. One word Sig...and its not "plastics". (famous quote you robinhood folks. look it up) One word we're gonna hear a lot more of... Erosion. Wind and water. Climate change in our bread-basket. Its real. I guess we can pull a China, and expand New Orleans to the south. Not sure that'll make up for the lost acreage higher north however. We need unlimited electrical power. That'll solve everything. I sure wish Elon would give up on friggin Mars.
The way this is going, we are all going to want to go to mars to get away from this hell. Trumps been the 1 blocking " The Great Reset ", Biden won't so full speed ahead he'll likely help it along. A lot of the basis of " The Great Reset " is Green Agenda, Fuel's going to be so expensive only the rich will drive, Travel LOL, even the food you can buy will be restricted to plant based and meats as an occasional treat Small businesses are all closed, we'll all have to work for the state and to fund they'll take your house and rent it back to you, "you'll own nothing, but you'll be happier" If it's not Green, then no can't have it Save the planet ?? maybe, not that anyone will want to live here hence Mars.
Tech will save us Turv. Not sure where we'll land in comparison to the last 70 years, less freedom of self expression for sure. Less freedom for everything really. But the human race on earth will survive. I'm 100% convinced, Moore's law will apply to AI going forward. It already has really, and we're just getting started. Scary but true.