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OK Panhandle | Yeah, could see this coming from a thousand miles away. All the push for food security a few years back, and no one thought having a handful of organizations controlling seed, chems, fertilizers, and even grain marketing/logistics was a bad idea? Amazing.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed in the article, but what they left out is that farmers aren't innocent in all this - at least in my area they aren't. If you go buy (or lease) land at inflated prices, having to finance the down payment using equity in other ground as collateral, to grow crops that have a negative return using operating notes at high interest rates, there's a reckoning to be had.
This storm has been brewing for the better part of two decades, we've just been coasting, in my opinion, on the appreciation of assets for borrowing power and low interest rates. It certainly hasn't been on the fundamentals, and IF this is allowed to play out, it could get very ugly - for rural ag, at least. The corporate guys won't care, they'll just sell to someone else in the world. | |
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AgWeb Farm Monopoly article