1) Don't consumers benefit due to lower prices ??
Do they? Was food more expensive in the 50s to 70s when there was very little contract growing and packers bought direct from the producers. I talk with contract pork growers almost daily, they wish they could go back to owning the pigs and selling then at auctions or buying stations. They contract grow because they already have the confinements but no place to sell pigs, so they contract grow. This means Tyson owns the pigs and feed, the farmer provides the confinement, does the chores and handles the manure. I know a lot of farmers who would like to raise a 25-50 pigs are additional income, but there is no place to sell them. Packers what semi loads of 230# pigs guaranteed on a certain day.
2) Agree, .gov should do any lending. But at some point someone that It Was A Good Idea to have .gov do loans because those stingy local bankers weren't giving farmers money/had too strict requirements to lend.
Local lending causes people to come to smaller towns and cities, allows for local businesses to thrive.
3) Since we have decided to privatize profit and socialize losses (16 or 17 times now, after banks have f'd up, the .gov has bailed them out and we have "too big to fail"), good luck with that. Trump could be just the one to end it, but he's got an uphill battle in Congress. ANd the D's are more beholden to Wall Stree and big banks more then the R's.
why we need to throw all the incumbents out on there asses on Nov 6, they are the problem.
4) Where are the monopolies, and why to do you want to break up family farms. (Trusts and the like are the only way to prevent the fire sales of family farms.) Plus with Ag prices so bad at the moment, you'd think that you could get Ag land fairly cheap.
Ag land is not drastically falling with low commodity prices and extremely narrow profits or losses, average Iowa price is still $6500 per acre. Some areas going for a lot more, other areas not so much. Going to take a crisis like the one in the early 80s, I'm reluctantly waiting for the almost daily equipment auctions that happened in the early 80s. Cash rents have been starting to drop, but not enough to be profitable, inputs are still high too (seed, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel). Farmers always complain about not making money, but it is getting a bit scary the last 2-3 years, not sure . Used pickup truck prices are really high now, mostly because the Ag community isn't buying new trucks because they can't afford them and not trading their old ones in.
Why do you think I want to break up family farms, have I ever said that? You assume too much. In most family farm corporations, the land is not owned by the corporation because if the corporation had to fold, then the land would have to be sold. Don't sell land because you'll never get it back. Land is usually owned by different members of the family (active farming or renting from a relative) the rest is rented from other landowners, many 3 generations removed from the farm. Think 80 acres inherited/owned by someone in California who's great parents was the last relative that farmed it. Those are usually in a perpetual trust and never will be sold.
I'm taking about companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Koch Industries, Alphabet, Johnson and Johnson, Dupont/Dow/Pioneer, Monsanto/Bayer, Tyson Foods Inc, Smithfield Foods, Cargill, ConAgra, etc. Start getting over a 15% market share, perhaps it is time to start breaking up the company, more competition would be a good thing for consumers and workers.
