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You'd be right, if farmers were free actors.

For poultry farms, farmers are essentially sharecroppers. They are paid a fixed fee to grow chickens owned by Tyson/Perdue/etc.

For beef farms, ranchers birth and keep cattle for a specific period of time, at which point they are sold to feedlot operators. The feedlots have thousands of cattle are where many of the nasty issues with disease/etc come from.

Farmers are not very politically powerful anymore. The next layer up in the agribusiness chain can control pricing and have all of the power.



Surely the same argument applies - mass agri-business can see the coming apocalypse too.


Sorry, you'll need to speak up. I can't hear you over next quarter's share price hitting the floor.


I said "You will have to merge your agri-business with the daily delivery of fresh food to my house, making around 20x the profit on your produce if you capture the end to end market"

Hell, I agree but there has to be some solution - look at Mr Money Mustache. I know what he says is sensible. But I still have an unaffordable mortgage (my kids need a good school!) and buy lattes each day (I like them)

This is just exactly the same thing.

You know what, I like a Nanny state. I need more Nanny.


Sorry, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I'm here to do something for you.

Excuse me, my shareholders are calling me.


No, that's the bell, tolling

:-)




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