More than half of the continental U.S. is facing drought conditions. But other parts of the country are facing the opposite problem. Extreme weather conditions can have major impacts on farmers and their crops at a time when they’re already facing high production costs. Paul Solman recently traveled to southern Georgia to hear from some of those farmers. It's for our series, Tipping Point.
I don’t know dawg. I talk to farmers and they’re vile people. I give credit to the working class by default but farmers are just so consistently genuinely bad people that I retract that one credit for them specifically.
I’m sorry that you have had such poor experience with farmers. The ones I know are lovely people. But even still, would it not benefit us to instead wish only the best for farmers and advocate for them, even if they are ignorant and hateful? Would that not still be of great benefit to the countless innocents involved with the lives of these farmers? If they see people care about them, how could they ever believe the lies that they are hated?
To a point, but in Denmark we’re past that. Most farmers are rich and they keep whining about everything and they demand compensation for the tiniest little things. The vast majority are currently poisoning our ground-water supply and are demanding a ransom to stop doing it. If I have to drink poisoned water because they are too lazy to care about managing their spillways or, you know, not using souped up fertilizers and fucked up pesticides, then I have no reservations for them and I hope they get everything they deserve.
I want to flip farming upside down. I think it should be run by people who want to be farmers and not by people who have correctly realized that farming is possibly one of the easiest jobs in Denmark if you can get a foot in the door. These people are vile capitalists who vote against their own interest to spite everyone else and I just don’t see a future where they are allowed to keep strangling society like this.
6000 farmers own 2/3rds of the landmass in Denmark and have the most disproportionate amount of political influence per person. If they wanted to do good things, they could.
Firstly, let me say thank you for such a thoughtful response. Second, I had no idea farming in Denmark was so lucrative. In America, they are poor, usually on government assistance, and strong armed by a corporation for quotas, or certain agricultural practices. E.g. One of my friends cannot let it get out that they have been working on a pest resistant crop for a certain area, because the “start” was a seed that is the IP of some corporation.
A lot of the farmers I know in America hate the pesticide and fertilizer industry. My friend has tried sustainable growth and natural pest deterrents and was sent a cease and desist, because they used some land for crops to do it. Even though their yield was, I believe, equal to previous years.
The farmers I know, and that they know, for into it for the love of it, but they have just been consistently screwed on all fronts by Congress and corporations.
Again, thank you for such a thoughtful response. I learned so much and I’m so sorry that it has gotten that way in Denmark. I know not enough, to argue against you and I apologize if any of my responses came across as ignorant.