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I record people telling their life stories. Most of my clients are farm families. I have a podcast: The Ag Tribes Report

Never heard of it- thanks. Looks like Will does a lot of interviews too- will check out

One thing not discussed: the bureaucracy of the US government is run by unmarried men and women.

When a young person goes to DC, finally meets someone and has children, they can’t afford to live in DC, the commute from outside the city become onerous so to avoid divorce they move to other cities and take different jobs.

However gay men and career women- don’t have the constraints of marriage and children. So they stay in DC, earn high income and continue to get promoted.

So the upper levels of the bureaucracy they are disproportionately represented. These are the staffers and upper level management that essentially run the US system.

When they leave government they also go into trade organizations- and become lobbiests. It has a profound impact on the point of view of the bureaucracy.

Christmas ham is an interesting part of Christianity. All other major religions have restrictions on pork- but the Christians have it as a centerpiece of their holiest days.

Also back when we pasture raised hogs, late November is a good time to harvest and by Christmas the curing would be perfect.

So what book are you reading these days?

I think the first step is move the USDA to Kearney Nebraska- all the lifetime bureaucrats would quit. Then get rid of all federal inspections and lower food regulations and liabilities

I didn’t know about the government cheese caves! Fascinating

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.

I used to work for Monsanto. I have a relatively strong understanding of the issues in agriculture that keep the system from changing. I’d like to have a sophisticated discussion here about it.

I’ve been gone for a while. Interested to see how things have gone.

What is the best resource to introduce someone to Austrian economics?

You think if you have a bunch of private land, you have privacy. You don’t. Your cameras can be seized, your photos looked at and they don’t have to even tell you they did that, let alone get a warrant https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/game-wardens-steal-private-landowners-trail-camera-lawsuit-explodes

Nostr- this is the kind of farmer we need to bring into the Bitcoin community. He knows big scale agriculture but is creating systems for backyard chickens and pasture raised livestock inside the rows of corn.

https://fountain.fm/episode/nMzVlfs8RDf0m60dkHwd