Notices by Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online)

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."

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?

"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."

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!"

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/

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."

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!

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.

And why?

Most people who are talking about this blame it on either trade policy, "too many regulations," or both. US farms & food companies just can't compete, you see. Therefore we must have trade barriers to food imports and drop labor & environmental protections.

The thing is... none of that is true.

The US is becoming a net importer of food.

Which is wild, because the US has probably the most high-quality farmland per person of any country on the planet. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE FOLKS???

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-trade

Every day I find a brand-new little horror that's been happening in US agriculture. After a lifetime of collecting ag horrors. ok throw it on the video essay pile with the other 200 that are waiting I guess

Anyway here's today's fresh horror! I think you will like it!

5-10% avg annual return for farms isn't a hard & fast rule either.

Here's someone complaining on how poor lil Great Plains wheat farms, notoriously spotty on profit, "only" made 11.8% avg annual returns for 10 years.

That's competitive with housing development! Why are we complaining?

"So development must be more profitable than food & farming, right?"

Not necessarily! Well run farms should make 5-10% annual profit when you average out good & bad years. That can be less than real estate (10-15%). But it's a hedge against recession in a way that building homes isn't.

I'm a logistics consultant for farms & food facilities. And I'm telling you making food is VERY profitable! Already!

So what's the real problem?

People who have the land & capital to make food would rather be real estate developers.

That's it. That's the whole problem.

Anyway, I'm thinking a lot about how foodies spent the last 30 years lecturing poor people on "making wise choices with their food dollars."

They should have been counseling landowners on making wise choices with their property.

So the problem with farms & food isn't profit.

It's that you gotta work. Every year you have to just keep running that farm or food handling facility.

And to run a farm or food facility at profit, you have to know what you're doing.

Farms & food is a real job! That's the problem!

Meanwhile putting in the work every day & knowing wtf you're doing, those aren't as much of a barrier in real estate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The egg industry knows how to recover from bird flu outbreaks! Raise *more* birds to replace culled ones.

But they're doing the opposite.

They're cutting down the parent flocks that replenish egg-laying birds.

It's not just that "this bird flu is super bad. They're also deliberately avoiding recovery.

If you've wondered "Everyone's saying there's price gouging in eggs but WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN," this article is for you!

It's a consolidated industry with very few hatcheries.

They can restrict the # of egg-laying birds they raise to keep prices high. And that's exactly what they're doing.

An extremely good deep dive into egg price gouging by Basel Musharbash!

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-big-investigation?utm_medium=ios

Hatching a conspiracy: A BIG investigation into egg prices.

"More hens, less income!" So said the United Egg Producers' economist Donald Bell in 1994. The industry has gotten more consolidated ever since.

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!