On defense of farmers

ALLOW me to hold forth on something….actually, this is my BLOG so I will damned well do as I please.

Hopefully you have all heard of Mike Bloombergs arrogant comment that he could teach anyone to farm.  You know the one…”It doesn’t take smarts, you dig a hole, plant the seed, cover it with dirt, water it, and up comes the corn.”  The ignorance and arrogance in that comment are both monumental.

I live in farm country, have for years, and I know farmers, I am related to farmers, and I am NOT a farmer because…..quite frankly, I ain’t that smart.  Listen, if you are anything above a subsistence farmer, you have to know a lot, I mean A LOT, about the following.

A.   Banking and economics.

B.   Agriculture and horticulture.

C.  Weather.

D.  Soil.

E.  Mechanics (mechanical).

There is no bank in the world that is going to loan a farmer the money he needs to operate unless the farmer can reasonably assure the banker that he can repay that loan……and we are talking about HUGE loans.  I saw, in a local paper, a combine that sold at auction, used, for $350,000.00 dollars.  That is ONE farm machine…..that doesn’t include your basic tractor, trucks, the cost of renting or buying your own elevators…..that is ONE vehicle.  No  frigging, uneducated dirt farmer is getting a loan from a bank for that sort of money unless he can lay out a plan showing that he can pay it back…..that farmer has to understand banking, bankers and economics.

Which leads me to agriculture and economics.  I have family members that own significant amounts of land, and they are older and do no farm it; they lease it to local farmers.  Some of the details of the lease require the farmer to rotate crops, leave fields fallow as needed, and replace the nutrients of the land following each harvest.  In order to do this, the farmer, if he wants to continue his lease, must no the horticultural and agricultural approach to the land.  I am not REAL smart, but I know I could not pull that off.

On the issue of weather…..the only certain thing about the Midwest is that you are going to have some.  When to plant and when to harvest is dependent on temperature and, where I am at, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, the rain…..and it rains a lot here.  And I am not talking about listening to the dude on channel 2 at 0600….I am talking about KNOWING weather, weather patterns, etc.

Soil?  To me soil is sand or dirt….okay, I am from the south, so clay as well.  I have no clue what soil is suitable for anything, what is appropriate for planting anything…but if you are a farmer, you have to know what is suitable for what crop and what nutrients should be added for maximum yield.

On the mechanics and the mechanical…who do you think does user level maintenance on that $350K harvester?  You got it…..the farmer.

And the same thing goes for dairy, cattle and pig farmers….hell, fish farmers……far more goes into farming than digging a whole and dropping seeds in it.

Bloombergs’ comments are typical of the coastal elite.  This nation, or farmers feed a significant part of humanity.  What they do is hard….they work day and night, seven days a week…….and the disdain Bloomberg has shown them is not worthy of the farmers of this nation, and Bloomberg is not worthy of their vote.