Took a deep dive last night into the costs of farming and the headwinds that are out there. Ended up with two pieces of information that I found useful.
The first is a hypothetical tomatoe farm from UC Davis.
Now, the biggest costs on that listing are equipment, which sounds about right, but with those costs I would assume they are buying used. Which is a touchpoint for another research article that was spurred from my tractor manufacturer asking if I wanted to trade up because they needed the inventory. They apparently can’t make the lower end stuff fast enough, but trading up to a $100k machine is out of line for a poultry operation. All in all this paints a decent picture for a very labor intensive product. I’ve got about a quarter acre of heirloom and specialty tomatoes and it is a very time consuming crop.
Second piece comes from a wheat farmer out of Deaf Smith County, Texas who runs an operation with overhead costs, on average, of $475 an acre. This changes year to year mostly based on fertilizer. I thought water was a bigger problem, but according to him, water is an issue but putting nutrients into the soil is a bigger more costly issue. So if we assume he has a 1,000 acres, he needs to clear a half million dollars each year to break even, including depreciation, and assuming no income tax. Now on average he can harvest around 50 bushels of wheat per acre, and current market prices are at $6.78 per bushel. One May crop nets him $338,950. If he can get in a winter crop that either doesn’t die in the summer heat, or freezes in an early chill, he can make a profit. But the conditions have to line up perfectly, otherwise he is at a net loss of over $150k.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
“The security of our food supply depends more on oil and natural gas than we might realize.”
MS: “…I thought water was a bigger problem, but according to him, water is an issue but putting nutrients into the soil is a bigger more costly issue…”
[My comment on this is that you were correct before you were wrong and you are likely to be correct again, but the web of climate change that is wrapped around heat, water, and petroleum based product cost will likely tighten into a noose.]
… It is impossible … to write about (Donald) Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of defense who died on Tuesday, without writing about his memos. He played a role in making memo-writing the new frontier in governmental accountability. He also pioneered the memo as an obfuscatory instrument. Write one memo saying one thing, write another memo saying the exact opposite. …
In 1966, early in his public service career, Representative Rumsfeld, Republican of Illinois, co-sponsored the Freedom of Information Act, a vehicle for understanding the intentions of high political figures. Then, as a member of President Gerald Ford’s administration — first as the president’s chief of staff, then as secretary of defense — he found a way to effectively undermine it. …
His first stint as secretary of defense (for Gerald Ford) is the start of the story — Team B, in particular. That was an exercise in which a dozen or so defense industry wonks and Russia hawks were given carte blanche to undermine and effectively rewrite the latest National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, which they argued didn’t reflect the true peril facing America. They called it a “competitive stress assessment” — more confusing verbiage.
How does it work? Put simply, you have a body of evidence. You don’t trust it. Or maybe you don’t like it. It conflicts with other beliefs you have. So you create another body of evidence, supporting your alternative view. I’m tempted to say, an alternative view of the facts. But just what the facts are is exactly what comes into question.
I think of Mr. Rumsfeld as the epistemologist from hell. What are the grounds for rational belief? As often as not, the goal for Mr. Rumsfeld was not justifying belief but undermining it. For example, many people believed in the possibility of détente. Team B aimed to show that belief was stupid, or at best misplaced.
When you set up a group of people to look for evidence to justify a prior conclusion, you have opened the proverbial can of worms. It’s not hard to see Team B as a precursor to the Office of Special Plans — the ad hoc group within the Department of Defense that gave us much of the “intelligence” that led the United States to war with Iraq. And arguably there’s a progression from there to the current-day justifications for re-examining the 2020 election. …
Remember back in the good old days when Rummy, Cheney, and W launching a global war on brown people was our worst worry? Of course we can really blame Bin Laden for starting that, but then it took on a death spiral all its own.
“Former president Donald Trump lashed out at Manhattan prosecutors Saturday night for indicting his organization and its chief financial officer for tax fraud, calling it ‘prosecutorial misconduct’ in his most extensive comments on the charges since they were unsealed Thursday,” the Washington Post reports.
“As Trump criticized the investigation, he appeared to acknowledge the tax schemes while questioning whether the alleged violations were in fact crimes.”
Said Trump: “They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car. You didn’t pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is. You didn’t pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don’t even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?”
Former President Donald J. Trump held a Fourth of July-themed rally on Saturday night in Sarasota, Fla., across the state from where a tragedy has been unfolding for more than a week as firefighters, search dogs and emergency crews search for survivors in the collapse of a residential building just north of Miami Beach.
The political rally in the midst of a disaster that has horrified the nation became a topic of discussion among aides to the former president and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Trump ally whose growing popularity with the former president’s supporters is becoming an increasing source of tension for both men, according to people familiar with their thinking. …
as he took the stage, Mr. Trump quickly launched into a castigation of cancel culture and of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
He dismissed charges filed this week against his business, the Trump Organization, by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as “prosecutorial misconduct.” And while he appeared to deny knowledge of any possible tax evasion on benefits, he also seemed to acknowledge that those benefits occurred.
“You didn’t pay tax on the car, or the company apartment,” he said, adding, “Or education for your grandchildren. I don’t even know, do you have to put, does anyone know the answer to that stuff?”
Much of what followed was a familiar list of his grievances, but he drew an enthusiastic crowd that waited for hours in pouring
… four leading experts discuss the possible first case that reportedly may lie ahead shortly—and conclude that Trump is at risk of eventual indictment even if he is not named in that initial filing. This reportanalyzes the potential charges both the Trump Organization and Trump himself may face. The report also goes in depth into the defenses that may be available in response to any indictment …
The debate over how American schools should teach about race and racial history has reached a curious juncture, in which it’s becoming hard to tell what the argument is about.
On the one hand you have conservative state lawmakers taking aim at progressive ideas with scattershot legislation, whose target depends on which bill you read and how you interpret vague or sweeping language.
On the other you have progressives, until recently breathing the sweet air of revolution, suddenly denying that they are interested in anything radical at all. In particular, after conservatives began using “critical race theory” as an umbrella term for educational strategies they oppose, progressives began insisting that C.R.T. is either academic and irrelevant (just high-level graduate school stuff) or anodyne and uncontroversial (just a way of saying we should teach kids about slavery and racism).
So let’s try to give the debate a little bit more specificity. What is the new progressive agenda, and which parts have led to backlash? There are two answers, related but distinct, so this will be the first of two columns. …
… In this column I will try to describe the part of the controversy that concerns how we teach about racism today. It’s probably the more intense debate, driving both progressive zeal and conservative backlash.
Again, I want to start with what the new progressivism is interested in changing. One change involves increasingly familiar terms like “structural” and “systemic” racism, and the attempt to teach about race in a way that emphasizes not just explicitly racist laws and attitudes, but also how America’s racist past still influences inequalities today.
In theory, this shift is supposed to enable debates that avoid using “racist” as a personal accusation — since the point is that a culture can sustain persistent racial inequalities even if most white people aren’t bigoted or biased. …
Took a deep dive last night into the costs of farming and the headwinds that are out there. Ended up with two pieces of information that I found useful.
The first is a hypothetical tomatoe farm from UC Davis.
http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/pubs/Family_Farm_Series/Farmmanage/prodcost/
Now, the biggest costs on that listing are equipment, which sounds about right, but with those costs I would assume they are buying used. Which is a touchpoint for another research article that was spurred from my tractor manufacturer asking if I wanted to trade up because they needed the inventory. They apparently can’t make the lower end stuff fast enough, but trading up to a $100k machine is out of line for a poultry operation. All in all this paints a decent picture for a very labor intensive product. I’ve got about a quarter acre of heirloom and specialty tomatoes and it is a very time consuming crop.
Second piece comes from a wheat farmer out of Deaf Smith County, Texas who runs an operation with overhead costs, on average, of $475 an acre. This changes year to year mostly based on fertilizer. I thought water was a bigger problem, but according to him, water is an issue but putting nutrients into the soil is a bigger more costly issue. So if we assume he has a 1,000 acres, he needs to clear a half million dollars each year to break even, including depreciation, and assuming no income tax. Now on average he can harvest around 50 bushels of wheat per acre, and current market prices are at $6.78 per bushel. One May crop nets him $338,950. If he can get in a winter crop that either doesn’t die in the summer heat, or freezes in an early chill, he can make a profit. But the conditions have to line up perfectly, otherwise he is at a net loss of over $150k.
Petroleum in Real Life: Food, Fertilizer and Fuel – Context Magazine by CAPP
“The security of our food supply depends more on oil and natural gas than we might realize.”
MS: “…I thought water was a bigger problem, but according to him, water is an issue but putting nutrients into the soil is a bigger more costly issue…”
[My comment on this is that you were correct before you were wrong and you are likely to be correct again, but the web of climate change that is wrapped around heat, water, and petroleum based product cost will likely tighten into a noose.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/opinion/errol-morris-donald-rumsfeld.html?smid=tw-share
Remember back in the good old days when Rummy, Cheney, and W launching a global war on brown people was our worst worry? Of course we can really blame Bin Laden for starting that, but then it took on a death spiral all its own.
https://politicalwire.com/2021/07/04/trump-appears-to-acknowledge-tax-schemes/
(Perhaps Trump – and his children – and his CFO are just ignorant about tax laws.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/us/politics/trump-rally-desantis-florida.html?smid=tw-share
https://brook.gs/3hkifhw
Critical Race Theory
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/opinion/critical-race-theory-schools-history.html?smid=tw-share
(The second column)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/opinion/antiracist-education-history.html?smid=tw-share