At year end, I always make a point of talking with some of my family and friends that are still farmers. Not Agricorp, these are families and couples that work several thousand acres making a living – not a killing – being the most productive growers on the planet.
In case you think the rising price of corn is making family farmers across the Midwest rich, think again. The new energy bill, which passed with support from both sides of the aisle, ladles out hundreds of millions to Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill (along with Monsanto and others, contributors to many reasons why we, as a country, are fat and stupid), and nothing of note at all to the family farmers on the front line. The family farmer is locked into a race to try and grow just enough more in order to survive the plundering they endure every year by Agricorp, led by ADM, Cargill, and Monsanto.
Let me repeat that so there is no misunderstanding: the Midwest family farmer, not agricorp, is the most productive grower on the planet. Agrocorp, however, controls three critical aspects of a farmers daily life:
Seeds.
Back in the day, a farmer put up part of his crop in a crib so there would be seed for planting next year. Nowadays, if they still even exist, they are empty weatherbeaten cribs, relics of a practice that began with the onset of agriculture.
After decades of continual assault and misinformation by seed producers (mainly Monsanto)and the Department of Agriculture, almost all seed is now patented. You can’t just set some aside for next year, you have to buy it every year. That corn seed, for example, is touted as disease tolerant, or weed tolerant. What it really is, is pesticide tolerant. In return, corn is now almost all sugar and starch, making it a relatively unhealthy food staple. Seed, which used to be free, now cost farmers by the bag. Oh, and if you are silly enough to think "heritage seed" (non-patented free seed), seed companies have engineered their seed so it will contaminate nearby fields, and they will then sue you for using their product. That’s a big reason why US seed product was kept out of the EU and other parts of the developed world for decades; they don’t want their seed stock contaminated by a patented seed, and they didn't want to be at the mercy of merciless Monsanto (and others).
Ammonia (nitrogen) and potash.
These are the two main fertilizers used. Here in the Midwest, it used to come up the rivers in barges, get stored along the way, and farmers had a ready supply. No more. Guess which hurricane blew that away, never to be fully replaced by the feds despite it's critical need? Almost all of those up-river storage facilities have disappeared, too. Farmers are on their own to either store their own year’s + supply on site, trust that a broker can find a barge loaded with what they need when they need it nearby (within a couple hundred miles) that they can go get themselves (sorry, not much delivery and pickup anymore either, that’s why farmers own semi’s and trailers), or watch their output drop below the break even point. Fertilizer costs have escalated slightly more than the price of corn.
The market.
ADM and Cargill? If you want to sell your crops, you have to go through them. Those two, by virtue of their size and ability to set pricing, are the gate keepers. ADM kept the price of corn artificially low for over 30 years, and once they killed off farmer coop attempts to produce ethanol from corn in the 80’s and 90’s (if you thought fuel from crops is recent, think again), cornered the conversion process, hired a petro company exec to be ADM president, , another to head up thier new Industrial Chemicals Group, and lined the pockets of both sides politicos (here's just a single example), then ethanol got the bug bucks push from the feds.
This recent "energy independence bill" had almost nothing to do with energy independence, and everything to do with government and big agricorp business feeding at the trough: the feds give away hundreds of millions, the grateful ADM’s and Cargill’s give back tens of millions to politicos who support them. Talk about a money laundering scheme!
There's more, much more to talk about here. The US government has singlemindedly pursued subverting diversified, economical food production and is handing the reins over to a handful of US based Agricorps, along with billions in free handouts.