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South Central Iowa | You should change your name to Bootstraps.
Go ahead and cancel your crop insurance, return any payments, reimburse the tax payer for any subsidized loans for bins, operating, or farm ownership loans you have ever received at any point in your life or your parents, and ditto crp, dcp, or set aside payments. Go on, get independent!
I'm fine if people don't want a farm bill, but do you or many else think you could stand in the winds that would blow then? I don't think many of you could handle it. 2012 would not be a boon, it would be a disaster. You wouldn't buy crop insurance because it would be 3 times as expensive. There would be no increased usage without ethanol support received in the past. The market volatility from disaster bankruptcies and shortfalls and surpluses would destroy people. Agriculture is the closet thing in the world to perfect competition. Perfect competition with large numbers of market participants becomes a bloodbath. Even people who survive would find difficulty expanding because they would notice everyone who sticks his neck out gets his head cut off in time. The country doesn't need that sort of food volatility either. We need affordable food, it's a necessity for life. The government tries to make sure that the average farmer doesn't fail so everything gets planted and raised again next year.
In perfect competition with no government intervention, 10's of millions of acres would be fallow this year. Then if we have a drought this summer, prices would soar but only those who aren't hit would profit. The ones who lost out would struggle and numerous ones would go bankrupt. Because of the high prices, the follow land would be picked up. But in 2018 when great weather occurs and near record yields prevail, everyone who picked up ground would find themselves on the short end of this stick and numerous ones of those would go bankrupt. All the while things like the price of hamburger would go from $3.50 up to $9.00 and down to $2.00. It would be havoc on the consumer market and devastating to farmers. Bankruptcies from shortfalls, bankruptcies from surpluses, and massive consumer price fluctuation.
The government is involved to help smooth out production because it is a life, wellness, economic, and national security issue. Food is important. Don't know why that is hard to understand Bootstraps?
Edited by Conan the Farmer 2/23/2017 12:39
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USDA Outlook Acres
