BBLISA: Re: Overqualified?!?!

[ron.peterson at yellowbank.com (Ron Peterson)]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 08:31:32PM -0400, Alex Aminoff wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Dean Anderson wrote:
> 
> > Farmers don't have this capability. If you don't sell the cattle, you
> > don't have room to raise more, and you have to keep feeding them. If you
> > don't sell the grain, it rots.  You have to keep selling. If the price
> > drops, you lose. There is nothing you can do, but hope it doesn't last too
> > long.  The markup from Farm to Supermarket is about 1000 percent. The
> > farmer is at the mercy of the food chain. pun intended.
> 
> Several farms are trying to escape this trend by eliminating as much of 
> the chain as possible. We belong to a Community Supported Agriculture 
> farm, where we pay a yearly fixed fee, and in exchange get a box of fresh 
> organic vegetables delivered each week. We pay the farm directly and they 
> own and drive the truck that delivers the vegetables.

Way OT, but a fun thread nonetheless (to me, anyway)

I grew up on a 3000 acre hard grain farm in the midwest.  We have a
whole bunch of houses.  Not because we're rich from farm subsidies, but
because farms (and the equipment used) are getting bigger and bigger.
The only farmhouse standing is the family farmhouse.  The rest of the
farmhouses, along with their associated outbuildings, are long abandoned
and collapsing.

Speaking of subsidies, most people I talk to around here don't like
them.  Most farmers I know would rather not need them.  There are a
couple of problems with saying "Well, that's just the way the free
market works.  Maybe some people need to go out of business."  Without
subsidies (or something) there's little incentive for farmers to leave
farmland fallow.  Also, conditions that are out of your control (muddy
springs for fours year running, say) can put even the most astute hard
working farmer out of business.  Farmers who can't make money when
conditions are good typically *do* go out of business.

Unionize farms?  Sure, if farmers could collectively decide to reduce
production they could drive prices higher and make more money.  But who
could enforce such an edict over such a huge sparsely populated region?
The only way to prevent the scabs from taking advantage would be to pit
neighbor against neighbor.  Well, when ya ain't got many neighbors, you
often need their help, and they're your friends (who else?), that's not
such a good idea.  Won't happen.

Many family farmers complain about farm corporatization.  The middleman
making the profits from processing, packaging, and distribution may own
land and hire wage laborers to do the work.  You might be surprised to
know how far north you can find migrant workers from Mexico.  It also
works the other way.  Some farmers, sugar beet farmers, say, form
collectives, purchase processing plants, and distribute processed goods
rather than beets out of the ground.  Some people don't own land, just
equipment.  One guy I know starts combining down south in the spring,
and works his way north as the season progresses.

Umm, so what's my point?  I dunno, let me think a second... ;)

Farm industrialization improved efficiencies.  This did not make things
easier for farmers.  There are fewer farmers.  Although I'd rather sit
in an air conditioned cab rather than harvest wheat with a sickle.

Could the same thing happen in computing?  Probably there are pressures
in that direction, but there's a diversity of computing applications for
which there's no farm analogy.  It's more analagous to the foot
processing industry - make money figuring out a million things to do
with the raw materials.

There are any manner of ways for groups of people to collectively
accomplish things.  Unions are one.  There are others.  Judging by the
shine on the tractors and the quality of the driveways, my seat of the
pants conclusion would be that the farmer who belongs to a
co-op/collective which owns a piece of the production stovepipe does
better than the other types of farmers I know.

The main reason I'm writing all of this is because I have to prep a room
for painting and I'm doing everything in my power to proscrastinate.

-- 
Ron Peterson                   -o)
87 Taylor Street               /\\
Granby, MA  01033             _\_v
https://www.yellowbank.com/   ----