There's a clip going around with MSNBC interviewing North Carolina farmers about why they still support Trump, even though he keeps kicking them in the face.
As yet another North Carolina farmer, I would love to add some context!
Kim Possible reshared this.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •To understand US agriculture right now, you have to start with their wealth situation.
Most of US farmers today are quite well off financially, thanks to inherited wealth. And a lot of them are way more skilled at complaining on TV than they are at running the farm they inherited.
I don't know Batten, but Kim Kornegay in particular is one of the least reliable narrators you could hope to find on agriculture.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Kim once cornered me at a meeting to complain about how she "tried to make more money, she really did" by farming asparagus.
But she had no idea how. Didn't make any effort to learn how to grow & sell it properly before starting. Failed. And blamed everyone but herself.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Trying to be diplomatic, I said "Yep that's why we always start with a small trial plot, right? So we don't lose too much money if it doesn't work."
I meant, like, 1/8 - 1/4 acre. You want to start SMALL w produce bc it's always more work than you'd ever think possible.
She said "But I did! I only planted 15 acres!"
Her family's got so much land (they farm multiple square miles of NC), she thought 15 acres WAS a small trial plot. 💀
15 acres is more property than most Americans will ever own!
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •By the way this conversation happened in a large arena/convention hall with her family's name on it.
"Poor salt of the earth" these folks are not.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Some more context for this interview: NC farmers used to make $$$ on tobacco thanks to a New Deal program.
It was a top-down federal quota that limited who could grow tobacco. Drove its price up WAY beyond what a free market would ever support.
That was in place until 2004.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •So for nearly a century, most NC farmers didn't have to deal with a free, competitive market for their products.
Including the families that produced the fine people interviewed here! That's how they built their wealth & learned everything they know about farming.
Taxpayers!
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •And here we see the result: People who get born into wealth that was built on the taxpayer dime.
They never develop the entrepreneurship skills needed to survive on their own.
Of course they're begging for handouts. It's the only life they've ever known.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •"85% of what happens on a farm is up to God" I'm sorry, no.
YOU own the land. YOU decide what you plant.
When YOU choose to keep raising things like cattle & tobacco, that have been known for decades now for unreliable income even in a good year- you can't blame God for that!
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •NC has some of the best farmland in the country. You can grow just about anything here. It's truly special.
If I had hundreds or thousands of acres of NC farmland & still couldn't figure out how to make money, you better believe wild horses couldn't drag that info out of me!
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •To wrap it up, here's some important info on US farmers & wealth.
Most US farmers today are millionaires- yes, small family farms too. They make way more take-home pay, AFTER farm debts & expenses, than non-farmers.
It's been like that since 1998.
ps. The $1.2M median net worth for US small family farms? Yeah that puts you in the top 10% of Americans for wealth.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Agriculture in the United States has some real, deep, & sticky problems.
But "farmers are poor" ain't one of them.
Sarah Taber
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •I want US agriculture to succeed.
And success starts with getting out of the "poor lil me" mindset, understanding that we're grownups with a business, and dealing with markets like an adult.
Not shooting ourselves in the foot, over & over, and crying for mama every time.
Dan Sugalski
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Sarah Taber reshared this.
Isaac
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Sarah Taber
in reply to Isaac • • •Isaac
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Sarah Taber
in reply to Isaac • • •Isaac
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Sarah Taber
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in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Old Fucking Punk
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Rob Vincent 🎙️
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Alison Wilder
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •ater
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •I try to bring this up whenever locals talk about property tax - it's not your average joe's property they are trying to tax. Landowners have a huge amount of wealth tied up in their arbitrarily divided plots.
Moffat County in Colorado has 461 farms encompassing nearly a million acres (nothing exciting - it's all hay and livestock). The median farm size is 161 acres; the mean is over 13X higher at 2158 acres.
The best breakdown I can come up with is: 80% of farms are less than 1000 acres. Only 90 individuals own "more than 1000 acres" - but somehow the average farm size is over twice that. This is a huge amount of disparity in wealth distribution. I don't even have the data for land ownership that *isn't* productive.
And they're all *still* landowners. Most of the people I have to explain this to rent their homes.
Sarah Taber
in reply to ater • • •@ater YEP
Every time you look at agricultural statistics, something wild like this jumps out! It's amazing how we have a whole cottage industry writing about the plight of the farmer, and none of the writers ever actually look at the data.
Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •LJ
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •I wouldn't describe these folks as "small family farmers." I live in a tiny town in Central MA. Many of my neighbors *are* small family farmers who own modest amounts of land. Most of them are only able to afford to farm because the state has tax programs that keep prime ag land affordable. (Relatively, this is MA!)
The crime is that these folks you're describing have co-opted the term & are basically grifters.
(A homestead farmer anxiously waiting for her asparagus!)
Sarah Taber
in reply to LJ • • •@LJ So the cool thing is I did not describe these people being interviewed as "small family farmers." Because they're not. If you read down the thread, I actually point out that Ms. Kornegay's family is operating thousands of acres.
That being said, the majority of small family farmers in the US today *are* millionaires. That's also discussed downthread. As a small family farmer who's *not* a millionaire, I think that's really important for people to know & make sense of agriculture with.
LJ
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •That's true - my error - I would say, at least w/ the several dozen farmers I know well, their assets are the acres they own & farm. Which partly is because of development pressures here in MA. They could sell their land. Our town could become yet another suburb complete w/sprawl & we'd lose something very precious. The irony is even w/ a million dollars in hand, it's hard to afford housing in most of the state. Which only gets worse as farmland is developed.
Sorry for the rant!
Bill, organizer of stuff
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •blaue_Fledermaus
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •"85% of what happens on a farm is up to God"
They need to be asked if they are following God's commands about crop rotation and letting the land rest every 7 years.
okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •katfeete
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Oof YEAH. Giving me flashbacks to the guy we bought our 2nd farm from. He’d inherited it. Gorgeous piece of property, ~250 acres, never broken up.
He had one field he was growing corn on (same field year after year, ofc) and the other ~220 acres he was running a whole 30 beef cattle. 🙄
The land was his wealth — he could borrow against it for anything he wanted. Money from FARMING was mere pocket change.
(Had the hell of a time making him sell but that’s a different story…)
Sarah Taber
in reply to katfeete • • •Rob Zazueta
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •@katfeete What I'm getting from these stories, really, is that the wealth in farming is not necessarily from the crops grown and food produced, but from the fact they outright own the land and can borrow off or otherwise make money simply by owning it. That about right?
I've also heard that many poultry farms basically lease their land to Tyson et al, who build and run their own facilities on the property, effectively cutting the "farmers" out completely. Is that widespread?
okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Sarah Taber
in reply to okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin • • •@Okanogen Yes! And Biden famously set up a big fat program giving out grants for climate-smart agriculture. It's one of the first things DOGE cut. And then that dude has the nerve to complain about "whaaaa people want farmers to fix climate change but they don't wanna pay for it"
We literally tried to you the money for it, you absolute cartoon of a farmer
okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
in reply to okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin • • •okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
in reply to okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin • • •Sarah Taber
in reply to okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin • • •lolcat
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Out here on the high plains, no-till practices preserve water and topsoil and can make dry-land wheat profitable even with our meagre rainfall. It can take a decade to develop sufficiently thick vegetation cover and healthy soil, but only one season to undo it all. As a result, there's not much farming up here anymore - wealthy, landowning families collecting CRP checks instead.
There's some hope that hemp might revive farming here if it's ever approved for livestock feed.
Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •clew
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •riffing on this, I wish there were more big garden/small farm systems meant to automate *recordkeeping* not *control*.
@sarahtaber @ohmu
Sarah Taber
Unknown parent • • •@kevinhippert No, most farmers actually lose money on the farm.
But if you look at the amt they lose (at least in the small farm category), it's weirdly consistent- roughly $1,000 on average every year, no matter what the weather or markets are doing.
That's not "farms are hard." That's creative accounting. That's "millionaires owning farmland & losing money on it on purpose as a tax shelter." And that's the bulk of US farmers. Something like 50-75% of US farms are family-owned tax shelters.
Catherine is not complacent
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •I worked as a loan officer for Farm Credit for years, you aren’t lying.
The “family homestead” farmers with acreage you can’t walk in a day were ALWAYS complaining about how they wanted to rewrite their loan terms.
Alison Wilder
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •☝️ interesting thread about North Carolina agriculture culture
@sarahtaber
Robin Barton
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •felis_catus_domesticus
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •@ohmu
easier still..
felis_catus_domesticus
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •felis_catus_domesticus
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •Kim Possible
in reply to Sarah Taber • • •This eye-opening and informative. Thank you for detailing it all for us. I hope that Chris Hayes' team pays careful attention to what you've said.
I had assumed that only corporate giant factory farms were making money and that the rest were small family farms that were often in debt. Boy was I wrong.