One thing worth understanding is that it isn’t the old fashion concept of “farm subsidies” that make the system so unfair- although the new FARM act certain just sends money to land owners for no reason other than they own land…

The bigger issue is subsidized crop insurance. If you can show what your average farm yielded when planting the core commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat, cotton, rice) over 5 years you can get insurance subsidized by the government that makes it so basically you CANT lose unless you really fuck up.

The insurance also makes it very risky for farmers to try different crops or different styles of growing because you NEED that average crop yield to stay high. If you miss a year, you may not be able to get subsidized insurance the next year and that makes you vulnerable to loosing.

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I could see how the small size of farms would also limit the amount of risk that can be taken to innovate.

If a massive company probably does not even want insurance. Talking that risk seems like a core thing. A massive company could probably also develop a more systemic approach, instead of buying "cures and fixes".

they also don’t allow farmers to own their own seed or else they will be sued. did u work at the chesterfield or creve couer location?

I think it’s more complicated than that. Farmers don’t want to keep their corn seed now that they use hybrids and the trade off of having GMOs and well bred soybeans is that you either have to pay for all of the R&D with the first (and last) bag you sell or you can have them agree to not regrow the seeds and space the costs out year after year.

There are drawbacks to this decision but that’s why they did it that way

interesting