JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Bad year for some farmers.

I know this has nothing to do with music but we all must eat.LOL

I watched the Canadian news last night and they mentioned potato farmers in Manitoba and P.E,I that had to leave much of their crop in the ground. After a bad spring that slowed planting and a dry hot summer which slowed growing, we had a wet cold fall which made harvesting almost impossible. Heavy equipment would sink into the ground. Also much of the crop in storage is starting to rot. Could be a shortage of potatoes available in Canada this year. Processers of potatoes already heading to the USA to get their supply. Also I understand that Europe lost a lot of their potato crop. Apple growers in parts of Canada lost much of their crop to late spring frost which hit the blossoms.

My son got about half the normal production off his farm this year, due to a hot but very dry growing season and fall weather that made it difficult getting the crop harvested. Prices are up a bit but not enough to cover lost production. What kind of growing season have farmers in your area had to face? farming is a risky business at the best of times, and with weather patterns changing so much it makes it all the more risky.

Farmers, much like songwriters... face uncertainty and financial headwinds with every passing season. Life is a gamble and a challenge but it does not diminish my appreciation and sympathy for those who farm... and write... to feed the masses with sustenance for the body or the mind.

My family tree is deeply rooted in the furrowed fields of farming. Hope is always on the horizon but the risk is real.

Everett, my friend... the two are somewhat intertwined. Thanks for sharing. My best to your son and his family as they struggle with the elements of Mother Nature.

Aw, Humm, Well,
This reminds me of a story in the Bible, I think. Can't remember exactly but it may have been a King of the people. He had a dream about 7 fat cows and then 7 lean cows. He went to a dream person to see what it meant. The dream person told the king or whoever it was that there would be 7 years of plenty and seven years of much less. Well, we can't have it all, all the time can we?

It is always so sad to see the plight of small and moderate sized farms in this last decade, selling out to larger farming entities or just quitting. Here in Ohio, many dairy farmers are just saying its not economically worth their efforts--as milking cows is a lot of work seven days a week, and what they're getting for their milk is peanuts. I spoke to an old classmate who was a 3rd generation dairy farmer, he's done He said he's not going to spend the next few years at retirement age spinning his wheels. I'm no expert on this subject, but from a general perspective I find it disappointing that our farmers are having a tough go of it-and hate to see the farming industry being controlled by large elite farming corps--which means another part of Americana or Canadacana gone with the wind...

As a kid, your could take a drive down a country road and marvel at the beautiful farms; I used to wonder where one farmer's property ended and another's started. Of course in areas further from cities there still are these wonderful landscapes, but many of the farmers over the past couple of decades have sold their road frontage to "land sharks" who divide it and re-sell the lots to many city folks who purchase these lots and build their box ranch homes that line the country roads--Ahh yes, they now can say they "live in the country." I really can't blame the farmers that may need the financial gain or the suburbanites that want a little more space..........but in the larger picture its still a bit sad. But (as my family called them) those beautiful scenic "Sunday buggy-rides" gone! You can't over regulate a free society on all matters, we all have the right to sell our property for financial gain for sure. I do hope that we can begin to find programs to better to insure our farming industry doesn't disappear for the individual proprietors.

America's town's small business has already suffered through the "Walmartarian" invasion, and now the "Ebaynian & Amazonian" influence is further removing opportunites for small biz. Small biz will always have certain niche's, and certain affluent areas of the country will continue to thrive with small biz. Progress however, can be a double edged sword for the romantic Americana minded souls--those of us that grew up with the 50's & 60's influence of the post WWII boom that remember how small town or even neighborhood stores existed. The younger adults don't really know what they missed--yeah the world continued to have its share of problems, but as an American culture we conducted much of our daily biz with friends and acquaintances--life was just more more sweet......Perhaps when my generation is all dust, these concerns will be not even matter--sad to me but probably a truism.

steady-eddie

E Swartz, you are right, big farms, big businesses are ruining the chances of small farms and small business of surviving. I actually wrote a book pointing out that this is happening, though I never published the book, which I called "big fish eat small fish". I am seeing it happen in all forms of business and enterprises. The small fisherman and farmers are being squeezed out and bought out by the large operators, small businesses of all kinds are treated the same way, even smaller oil companies get bought out by the giants companies. Pretty soon there will be only a few giant companies selling what ever commodity there is, and if you want that commodity, you will have very few places to buy it, so you will have to pay what ever price they ask. It is fast becoming the survival of the fittest or greediest, once they control the market, watch out for price gouging.

I pay special attention to the news to see who is buying out whom, or merging with whom, and how that will affect the price that I will have to pay down the line for their product. Have you noticed food packages are shrinking in size but the price is staying the same. Just a sly way of getting a price increase with out raising sticker prices and not affecting inflation. Union try to get raises from the employer to keep pace with the increase in the cost of living, but this way the inflation rate does not show the actual increase in the cost of living, especially on food items. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

The rich are never satisfied, they always want more. Someone once said " greed is good because it creates jobs". Ambition is good but where does ambition stop and greed begin.?

I live in Mid-Tennessee /Southern Kentucky area and we are probably 90% farm land even if you include Nashville. Nobody's getting rich but nobody is going broke.

What variety of crops do they grow in that area Sue? We grow mainly root crops, like potatoes, cabbage , turnip and carrot.

Mostly Soy, Corn and Hay. but Cattle and chickens (broilers) fit between soy and corn as farm products. Flip the corn and soy and that's Kentucky's main crops -- I live on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky and our new home is in Kentucky literally just a couple hundred meters from the Tennessee border (Ft Campbell)

Nashville just got to citified for us