liberazing agriculture

Originally Posted by Shin

All the farmers over here bleat on about how they're abused by the supermarkets

If the UK wholesale situation's anywhere near as fuckfail as ours then they're entirely right to complain about the supermarkets, actually.

At least Tesco and the rest of them aren't able to get their mits into petrol retailing.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

As much as people like to see farmers as some salt of the earth Americana BS, they basically amount to a landed gentry with lobbying power way beyond what their voice should be in a pluralistic democracy. Even worse now that corporate farms are on the rise with their massive teams of lawyers and lobbyists. They also get farming subsidies.

Farming subsidies are bullshit, especially while using the World Bank and IMF to tell third world countries that they can't institute similar programs while we force them to buy our subsidized surplus.

Agreed on all points, Brady, but my loathing for Big Agri's tempered by my bigger loathing for the reality of market concentration. I can only speak from an Australian perspective, obviously. The fact is, most growers here wouldn't complain of trading in a fair, open market at all, but such is the position of the only two buyers that can guarantee growers' viability on any scale, subsidy or not, that they behave in a way which makes fair, open markets a total pipedream.

That the rentseeking is invariably honoured comes as much from governmental pragmatism as industrial lobbying: no nation wants to export its foodbowl to a foreign jurisdiction and bottom line simply because either the foodbowl's buyers won't play fair, or because poultry's ten cents cheaper wholesale at the moment from fucking Chile or somewhere.

There's nowhere I can't reach.