Farmers Rally at White House to Protest Monsanto's GMO Empire

[librabear]

25. It's hard to say.

The payments to farmers have to stop. They go to the wrong people anyway.

Other than that: the biggest problem is volatility. If I plant in may there's no telling what will happen between then and September. I've got a cost of maybe $100/acre to plant and I am planning on getting more than that. Fuel prices are huge. I might spend 5-8 gallons of diesel per acre just planting and getting my field ready. That's on soybeans. Corn can cost twice that to plant.

The burden to entry is the fact that labor is expensive and so is equipment. My tractor cost about what a used car does but it's pretty limited. It'll get the job done but a bigger one would be helpful. I hire someone to come in and do my harvesting so I don't need a combine, same with spraying. My small tractor wouldn't be a big deal if I could hire somebody to run it, but good farm labor is non existent. So, I try to fit it in when I can, but I may only have half a dozen good days to get all my planting done.

What will completely destroy small farmers is our lack of a comprehensive monetary policy. Most people don't realize that all these loans to buy land are on ARM's. There's no choice. If rates raise due to inflation and the economy suffers, many of us are sunk. I'm saving my money to buy land when that happens. Land is too expensive right now. It can only stay there with cheap interest rates and high commodity prices.


All the rest of that stuff is manageable, but high interest rates will cause a lot of small farmers to lose the farm. It happened in the 80's and it will happen again unless we stop having all these crisises. If you want to do something to help make sure that congress is keeping our money stable.