Skip to main content

American centric trade policy

The benefit of having a strong and comprehensive trade policy should fill me with dread as a farmer.   Truthfully, the Americans are a useful catalyst to force some long overdue farming reforms in the United Kingdom.   The bucolic idea of the small family farms is ridiculous in the 21st century.  It was mostly ridiculous in the 20th too.   The united Kingdom has created (with Europe) a policy to support the smaller farms as a superior good, against the overwhelming benefit of concentrating on the modern industrial farm.   

There are even Youtube videos of morons cutting hay as in the 15th century, by hand...really.   A good portion of farming in Britain is back breaking low paying jobs.   20 years ago, an American company invented a machine to pick strawberries.   I saw their latest model, it is 10x better than hand picking, more gentle and only picks ripe fruits.  One of thousands of examples.   Robots to muck stalls or even feed the animal. entirely automated milking process, that reduces some stress on the heard.

British farms need to consolidate.  The European union stopped that natural trend in favour of perpetuating poverty.   Yes farmers are conservative, and will often continue to chase a dream long after they should have given up.  The death of the European subsidy is the best thing that ever happened to the farming community.  Marginal players are being consolidated.  the death of the sub 100 acres farm should be welcomed.   It will make food production more cost effective, and be a better allocation of our limited farming resources.  Also lets not forget that labor shortage is a real thing.   

Note:  I know I sound callous about all these tiny farms, but Europe has ossified the natural trend to mechanize farming.   40 years of misguided farming policy is being reversed quickly, and very painfully for some participants.  One good trend is that land prices have been rising, it will make the pain of exiting the business a little easier to swallow (I get the heartache of losing a multigenerational farm...)   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more