Midwest US farm bankruptcies are soaring

[essentialsaltes]

Farm Belt Bankruptcies Are Soaring
Trade disputes over agriculture add pain to low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years

A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping the U.S. Farm Belt as trade disputes add pain to the low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years.

Throughout much of the Midwest, U.S. farmers are filing for chapter 12 bankruptcy protection at levels not seen for at least a decade, a Wall Street Journal review of federal data shows.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Thanks, Obama!

 

[Nithavela]

I'd love to know how many of them voted Trump in 2016. I bet it's close to 80% at least.

 

[Snoder]

Thanks, Obama!

Which policy of Obama is responsible for this?

And not Trump's trade war with China?

 

[SummerMadness]

So much winning?

 

[Snoder]

I'd love to know how many of them voted Trump in 2016. I bet it's close to 80% at least.

He's going to make us all rich. He's so rich he didn't even release his tax returns to the public. It is sad what people will do in desperation.

 

[Desk trauma]

<insert>congratulationsyouplayedyourself.gif</insert>

 

[SummerMadness]

<insert>congratulationsyouplayedyourself.gif</insert>

 

[Speedwell]

I'd love to know how many of them voted Trump in 2016. I bet it's close to 80% at least.

I'll bet he is counting on them all being right-wing Christians who will vote for him no matter how badly he treats them. Good luck!

 

[Tanj]

Which policy of Obama is responsible for this?

The @iluvatar5150 posted a very commonly used on this site satirical meme policy.

 

[Nithavela]

I'll bet he is counting on them all being right-wing Christians who will vote for him no matter how badly he treats them. Good luck!

Remember. Abortionjobstrickledowntaxbreaksbutheremails.

 

[High Fidelity]

Don't worry. They can get jobs in the booming coal industry instead.

Oh wait.

 

[cow451]

A poster was told trade wars are easy to win.

 

[essentialsaltes]

A poster was told trade wars are easy to win.

A poster must reset his reality. China gave Trump no choice. There was no other course of action that he could take other than to just start a trade war out of thin air.

 

[usexpat97]

I guess Monsanto will be throwing a nice, snazzy Christmas party this year.

 

[Nithavela]

I guess Monsanto will be throwing a nice, snazzy Christmas party this year.

They're not doing too well thanks to the glyphosat trials.

 

[essentialsaltes]

In Trump Country, a season of need on family farms

When Anne and her husband, Andy, took over his parents’ 305-acre dairy farm in 2013, they made a good living. But years of falling milk prices, complicated by President Trump’s trade wars, have left the couple nearly $200,000 in debt.

These days, Anne has only about $175 each month to spend on food, beyond the eggs, milk and meat that her family’s dairy operation supplies. So this has become her monthly ritual, going through several drafts to create an affordable meal plan that keeps her husband and five kids from going hungry.

“We’re supposed to be feeding the world, and we can’t even put food on our own table,” Anne said.

She has had less and less money for groceries each month, until one day in October when there was hardly any food in the house, and she started to investigate options she never would have considered before, like food stamps and food pantries.

“This is what need feels like,” she told her husband.

At one point she looked up from the grocery list and frowned.

“Is that your second sandwich?” she asked Brooke, 9. She was thinking about the only loaf of bread in the house — about her husband and her 15-year-old son, Jason, who had yet to come in from the barn and needed their lunch too.

Chastened, Brooke put the top back on the Miracle Whip.

And then there’s Paige, rarely a complainer, who vaulted to the eighth-grade honor roll for the first time recently by tuning out the stress at home and doing her homework in study hall. Anne has noticed that Paige doesn’t eat half what she usually used to eat, but she hasn’t asked her daughter about it. Some things are private.

Anne couldn’t bring herself to tell [her husband] what she was about to do. She’d quietly asked for a Christmas basket from the local community center and learned about a mobile food pantry in a nearby town where she won’t be recognized.

Now she was going to apply for food stamps.

...farmers say they sometimes find it difficult to qualify because of complicated rules governing self-employment income. And the Trump administration has long-term plans to tighten SNAP eligibility for many.

But Anne had hoped to get her benefits before Christmas, which might free up a little extra money for simple gifts for the kids, like gloves or a dinosaur toy for her youngest, Levi, 6. Now it didn’t look like that was happening.

In this part of New York — older, whiter, poorer than other parts of the country — voters chose Donald Trump in decisive percentages during the 2016 presidential race, the Lees among them. Like many farmers, they think their taxes are too high, their creeks and streams are over-regulated and that Trump still has their best interests at heart.

“We’ve had unfair trade for years and years. Somebody had to fix it, and he’s trying to fix it,” Anne said.

“I know a lot of people don’t like it but, you know, this was going to have to happen in order to make U.S. products become more competitive,” said Andy. “It’s going to hurt for a while.”

 

[Nithavela]

They're still going to vote republican because the democrats support abortion.

 

[essentialsaltes]

They're still going to vote republican because the democrats support abortion.

That's not the only terrible thing; the democrats also support government handouts and food stamps for people who just can't succeed.

 

[iluvatar5150]

They're still going to vote republican because the democrats support abortion.

That, and the fact that most of the state government in NY is run by Democrats, even though many aren’t as fiscally liberal as the stereotypes would suggest. Their misfortune gets associated with Democratic state government despite it likely being the case that things would be even worse with conservatives running the state.

Either way, these stories break my heart. I grew up near there and it seems like most anybody who didn’t live right in town was a small time farmer of some sort, often dairy. I don’t know how you fix this. I haven’t heard of anybody proposing anything resembling a fix for it (aside from fracking). These farms are unnecessary and mostly uneconomical, but dealing with that involves having people just walk away from everything they own since the land is basically worthless.