Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:44 JST Sarah Taber

   So that $10B bailout for farmers.

   Is it a payout for political support? Yeah. Bold move for an industry that talks so much about hard work & independence!

   But it's also worse than that. This is a US food crisis in the making.

   https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/03/18/usda-expediting-10-billion-direct-economic-assistance-agricultural-producers

   Let's talk about the payoff part first?

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:41 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     Think about it. To cope with trade wars, logically, US farmers should grow way less grain. They should grow more of the things that we currently import, like fruits & veggies, for domestic consumption.

     I mean come on. Even Trump knows that.

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:42 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     Now "other benefits" can mean a lot of things: tax cuts, deregulation, etc.

     But tax cuts & deregulation only help so much. They're useless if you lose your farm to trade wars!

     What *does* keep your farm afloat during a trade war, though? Free money!

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:42 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     So that's the "payoff" part of this $10B farm bailout.

     Now the wild part isn't that an industry would agree to a cash-for-support deal. That's corrupt. But it's ~politics as usual.

     The wild part is how this payout says "Policymakers & the farm sector have given up on actually growing food."

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:43 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     Trump's trade wars will push fert & fuel prices up- for ex, 80% of the US's potash fertilizer comes from Canada. Trump just tariff'd it.

     And US farmers will lose lots of sales as trade wars shut off their export markets.

     Farmers knew this bc he ran on it!

     https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-canadian-farmers-face-soaring-fertilizer-prices-amid-trump-trade-war-2025-03-07/

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:43 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     Last year I had a sit-down with a major farm lobby rep.

     I said "Hey, we both know Trump'll stab you in the back. You know he doesn't care if your farms are viable or not. He'll wreck your livelihood just because he's feeling mad about China that day."

     And he said "Yeah, we know!"

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:43 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     "So why do y'all keep supporting him?"

     He mumbled something about how there are "other benefits" to being in the Trump coalition that his farmers & industry group members "didn't want to miss out on." So they prefer to "support Trump in public, and negotiate out their differences quietly."

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 07:26:44 JST Sarah Taber

     in reply to

     For context: if you remember 2022 when I kept saying "The global wheat shortage is not real. Stop panic-buying & driving up prices" & I was right? (Foreign Policy does! https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/12/russia-ukraine-war-wheat-global-food-supply-panic/)

     This is me telling you "the US farm situation right now is very bad. We SHOULD worry about this."