Sarah Taber
::sigh:: Guess we gotta talk about this now.
This looks like "trying to get US farmers to grow food for domestic US market, instead of for export."
It extremely remains to be seen what he means by "tariffs on external product" or if they'll even happen. This admin likes to tweet first, retract later.
Sarah Taber
Growing fruits & veggies at commercial scale, by contrast, doesn't work so well as a side hustle. You, the farmer, have to personally commit your own time & resources.
You have to invest a lot of $$ up front into wells. Irrigation. Fencing. Pest control is more intense. You need infrastructure off the farm too: nurseries, refrigerated warehouses.
Sarah Taber
That's why the US farm sector is mostly about grain & livestock.
Farm policies did not make US farmers into a grain-and-livestock farmers.
We have the policies we have, BECAUSE our farmers prefer to be grain-and-livestock farmers.
Sarah Taber
At this point, due to that preference, the grain & livestock industries are pretty well entrenched politically.
And much of their profits come from exports. They've been working to get the whole world hooked on US meat for a long time! Isolationist food policy is not good for them!
If they ever figure out how to hit Republicans, we could have quite the show.
Sarah Taber
Anyway, pivoting farms & entire regions from grain/livestock is not a "tell people to do it & it's done" endeavor!
It's a multiyear investment for entire regions!
And it's a radical lifestyle change for a lot of farmers! Who are pretty content with how they're already doing things!
Good luck buddy!
Sarah Taber
Why?
Well, dollar for dollar, grain & livestock take way less labor to grow than fruits & veggies do.
So you might think that's about labor costs. But not really!
Even when labor is dead cheap (e.g. slavery, sharecropping), US farmers still prefer big field crops & livestock over produce.
Sarah Taber
It comes down to *management labor.*
Fruit & veggies are detail oriented & time sensitive. If there's a pest problem, or they're ready for harvest, you have to deal with it NOW.
Big field crops usually have more wiggle room. They fit into your busy schedule.
Sarah Taber
Livestock customarily fit into an evenings/weekends routine most of the year. You can have livestock & still have a standard work & school day.
Generally by the time there's enough animals to need extra help, there's enough income to pay hired hands.
Sarah Taber
Anyway, this extremely well thought out policy announcement would roughly boil down to "lots of US farms will need to switch from grain & livestock to fruits & veggies."
Funny enough, when I suggested some farms might wanna move acreage from grain & livestock to veggies, parts of the farm lobby got REAL mad.
This will be fun to watch! 🤠
Sarah Taber
The thing you gotta understand is US farmers don't focus on grain & livestock because of subsidies.
The US was already a grain/livestock country before subsidies were a twinkle in anybody's eye!
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