I also pointed out that industrial ag is a commodity, which means you pay commodities market price and that's it. This contrasts w/owning entire value chain from field to customer where you have more control over how product goes to market which means more control over pricing.
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It means more control over distribution. It means more control over presentation and relationships. Just because the state interferes and raises prices *doesn't mean* that a local grower w/local market has less control over prices they fetch than Dad who gets paid what CBOT says.
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Already with the unfollow? We can't have a discussion? I didn't even know we were arguing.
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1/ your stance is, I think: * FDA and USDA make agriculture into a commodity, and that means that a small family farm that sells to its neighbors is uneconomical * while there are economies of scale, there are diseconomies, like large tractors and feedlots
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2/ my stance is: * agriculture has ALWAYS been an economy, going back as far as Rome, and certainly in the US from the 1830s through the 1840s, and this is reflected in politics (blockades of southern cotton exports in Civ War, "cross of gold" politics in 1880s"
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3/ * the FDA and USDA aren't great, but don't significantly make the problem worse. I can sell my neighbor a half pig, or I can send my entire pig to the local butcher and have it processed for less than I could butcher it myself,
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4/ so the "buy pork and beef from neighbors" argument falls down because we can ALREADY DO THAT. * economies of scale from train transportation of live animals, refrigerated transportation of cut meat, etc. was revolutionary 140 years ago. Far pre-FDA / USDA.
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You really can't, though. You can't sell single cuts and processing has to go through USDA facilities which are designed by industry for industrial throughput.
@RepThomasMassie introduced a bill to address this. https://massie.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/reps-massie-and-pingree-introduce-bill-to-revive-local-meat-processing …1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
You're ignoring what I just said. Local farmers use local butchers who ARE USDA certified. I've (legally) purchased single cuts from local farmers. Processing at the local butcher is 68 cents per lb http://lemayandsonsbeef-bbq.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lemaypricing.pdf … so if a neighbor will sell me steak at $10/lb ...
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you're saying that the USDA requiring him to use a USDA inspected facility at an additional $0.68 instead of his own facility at, say $0.50, is going to make this uneconomical and force me to shop at Walmart and support factory farming instead?
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted ./agstover.exe
Has the result been that beer prices fell? No. What happens is that there's innovation (good!) but then economies of scale mean that small providers either grow and/or are acquired. There are not 200,000 local brewers.https://twitter.com/AGStover/status/1119960693208485890 …
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs added,
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