General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If The Dems Made A Concerted Effort To Appeal To Rural Voters What Would You Recommend They Do?.... [View all]OmahaBlueDog
(10,000 posts)I meet many farmers and ranchers. This is my experience. YMMV.
They like Big Agra -- especially if they are corn farmers. Corn farming is simple (I won't call it easy). Round-Up and GMO seed have made for big harvests. Modern farm machinery makes it easy for 2-3 people to farm anywhere from 500 to 2000 acres. Ethanol has created a huge guaranteed market for that corn, so $5-7 a bushel looks to be around for the foreseeable future. High corn prices help soybean farmers, because so many farmers are growing corn, that it reduces acreage planted in beans and creates price support..and the beans help the land for planting in corn the following year. And the same mechanical advantages apply for beans as well -- 2-3 guys farming 500-2000 acres. What about the ranchers? Back in 2006, they HATED the ethanol plants. That was before they discovered that cattle love WDGs (the bi-product of ethanol distilling), and gain fast eating it. Faster gaining cattle mean faster cycles through the feedlots and more trips to the packing house.
Pretty much everyone is happy with things as they are.
They dislike the Government and particularly despise the EPA and the Interior Department. They think programs to reintroduce predators that will attack their cattle are laughable and brain dead. They shake their head when, on one hand, they are told to "go organic" and, OTOH, get citied by EPA and state DNRs for too much coliform bacteria in streams on their property when there is excess manure on their property. They are nervous that the government is coming to take their Round-Up along with their guns. Unless one is in honey production, one generally thinks GMO seed is swell.
OTOH, they are business people, and they will pretty much do whatever you want, as long as you pay them. If you want organic, they'll grow organic -- but don't bitch at them for the higher prices you'll see at the store when the prices go up due to lower yields because they couldn't use insecticide or herbicide. You want grass fed antibiotic free cattle -- they can do that, but they gain slower, and they can't be treated for diseases because you can't feed them anti-biotics.
They dislike liberals in no small part because they liberals tend to look down on them and give a lot of advice from a viewpoint of ignorance. Recall, if you will, Mike Dukakis's admonition that Indiana farmers should plant Belgian Endive. They just love when urbanites tell them how to do business.
The HATE, HATE, HATE PETA. Their view is that they aren't raising pets, they are raising food animals. They keep the animals in the conditions they do to get them fatter faster, with a minimum of fighting or unintentional injury, until they can be taken to the packer or the livestock auction. Artificial insemination and IV fertilization are common practices. PETA is a large part of why they feel they need to keep their guns (OK -- that's a joke -- sorta).
Most corn & bean farmers I know do something other than farming. That is to say they run a mercantile or manufacturing or repair business when they are not planting, tilling, or harvesting. Most livestock operators I've met, OTOH, are fully engaged in that activity. It's a lot like work.
I have personally witnessed just about every phase and aspect of what I've written about, whether it is planting and harvesting; test weighting the corn and beans and unloading them into dump pits at elevators; grinding corn into powder to make beer to distill into ethanol; sending out the WDGs on specialized dump trailers to livestock plants; and making soybean oil and soybean meal. I've been to turkey farms; seen sows in gestation crates; been to semen harvesting facilities (don't ask and don't giggle); been to farrowing barns; seen cattle in the kill box; seen hogs dehaired scalded and skinned; and seen the carcasses split and fabricated and deboned. I've even been to rendering plants (don't ask). To a city dweller, it's a mostly a disgusting, smelly spectacle. To farmers and livestock operators, it's their living (or at least a big part of it).
What do they want from the Government? Mostly, they want the government to get out of their way and let them do their thing. They don't understand, in a general way, why food stamps are tied to the farm bill. They want to pass their holdings to their kids, so they don't like inheritance tax (most found ways around that years ago). They want people to understand that while small, organic, and local are nice, the methods used in mainstream farming are what puts cheap food on the shelves of WalMart and Super Target. Of course they want the subsidies, and the money for putting unproductive land in the CRP, and the drought relief, and they want the Government to continue to work to expand their markets.