Yes, you are right, the humor is rather bleak if not black..

Current policy is designed to force smaller farmers out of the market. This began back in 1971 under a Secretary of Agriculture who essentially said, "Get big, or get out". Earl Butz had a rather colorful political career which is almost entertaining. His policy was aimed at "Food Security" in that it was supposed to drive down the price of food by forcing efficiency through economy of scale. The side effects have been rather dismal.

All that aside, for me, farming is about more than just $$. It is an exercise requiring many skill sets, and rather humbling in its nature. I honestly would rather farm than do anything else. But making a living at it requires a lot more farm than I have(234 acres). Thus, I do other things on the side, like have full time jobs...

A lot of folks are in that situation.

Agriculture is like writing good code, it takes a number of skill sets across a number of knowledge domains to do it even half well. I am much better at agriculture than at coding, but I do find that coding informs some of those other skill sets...

Probably a lot more than you wanted to hear, but then, that is farming; it gets in the blood and when it does, one does tend to go on about it... :-)

...the majority is always wrong, and always the last to know about it...

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...

A solution is nothing more than a clearly stated problem...otherwise, the problem is not a problem, it is simply an inconvenient fact

wjw

In reply to Re^6: For retirement, I am banking on: by wjw
in thread For retirement, I am banking on: by chacham

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