[MCN] 'They're Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.' Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction

[Lance Olsen]

TIME magazine NOVEMBER 27, 2019

'They're Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.' Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction 
https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/ <https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/>

BY ALANA SEMUELS / FREMONT, WISC.  <https://time.com/author/alana-semuels/>

Excerpts

In the American imagination, at least, the family farm still exists as it does on holiday greeting cards: as a picturesque, modestly prosperous expanse that wholesomely fills the space between the urban centers where most of us live. But it has been declining for generations, and the closing days of 2019 find small farms pummeled from every side: a trade war, severe weather associated with climate change, tanking commodity prices related to globalization, political polarization, and corporate farming defined not by a silo and a red barn but technology and the efficiencies of scale. It is the worst crisis in decades. Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies were up 12 percent in the Midwest from July of 2018 to June of 2019; they’re up 50 percent in the Northwest. Tens of thousands have simply stopped farming, knowing that reorganization through bankruptcy won’t save them. The nation lost more than 100,000 farms between 2011 and 2018; 12,000 of those between 2017 and 2018 alone.

A perfect storm of factors has led to the recent crisis in the farm industry. After boom years in the beginning of the 21st century, prices for commodities like corn, soybeans, milk, and meat started falling in 2013. The reason for these lowered prices are the twin forces upending much of the American economy: technology and globalization. Technology has made farms more efficient than ever before. But economies of scale meant that most of the benefits accrued to corporate farmers, who built up huge holdings as smaller farmers sold out. Even as four million farms disappeared in the United States between 1948 and 2015, total farm output more than doubled. Globalization brought more farmers into the international market for crops, flooding the market with soybeans and corn and cattle and milk, and with increased supply comes lower prices.
******************* Climate, a definition ******************

I’ve often defined climate as "a set of conditions." For more detail on those conditions, the 1938 definition below works as well as many, and demonstrates that definition of climate is an old, old topic in human affairs. 
Lance

Funk & Wagnalls NEW STANDARD DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1938. By arrangement with Collier, a publisher

“Climate. Noun 1. The sum total of the atmospheric conditions of a locality, esp. affecting health and comfort: the average weather of a place or region, as regards temperature, moisture, and prevailing winds: as, a hot climate, a rigorous climate. 

2. A region of the earth, especially one considered in relation to its temperature, moisture, etc: a clime: as we live in a capricious or rigorous climate.  

3. [Archaic] In early geography, a zone of the earth’s surface comprised between two specified latitudes: the original meaning. The old geographers reckoned 7 climates; the later ones 24, from the equator to either of the polar circles, each representing an increase of half hour in the length of the longest day. At the present day the earth is divided into various irregular regions, each differing as to temperature, rainfall, moisture, pressure, the inclination of the sun, and the amount of cloudiness. “

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