Oddbean new post about | logout
▲ ▼
shane | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Not in rural America. Sense of local community and common defense maybe but still relatively self reliant compared to much of the world
▲ ▼
Matthew D | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 Self reliant in principle, but often times farmers and ranchers play crop insurance games and look for government handouts. 

Turtles all the way down.
▲ ▼
Rune Østgård | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Yep, been like that for 3-4 generations now
▲ ▼
Matthew D | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 The statistics around on farm income in the US are sad. It's no wonder people end up automatically trying to juice the system each year.
▲ ▼
shane | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Drop some knowledge for me! Interested in learning more about this. Yeah subsidization from the US gov is prevalent in so many industries so no doubt it’s the same for farming
▲ ▼
Matthew D | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 An overwhelming % of family farms in the US derive their income from on farm and off farm income sources. I'll spare you the specific statistics, because I can't recall them at the moment and I don't want to lead anyone to believe something that isn't true. 

The last 30-50 years in American agriculture has been dominated by the "get big or get out" mantra. Basically farms are coerced by current system incentives to take on massive piles of debt and/or make one sided deals with big agriculture. I can tell you a number of anecdotes about families selling their farms or being forced to rent out their land because they just can't cut the margins any longer. 

The commodity crop insurance racket is another massive rabbit hole to talk about. But simply put, producers are aware of this subsidized safety net..so they can make year to year decisions and take the path of least resistance when managing their crops. This leads to crop failures, rampant disease spreading, soil erosion, reduced water quality, and food deserts..the management of the farms natural resources take a back seat to squeaking out another year of funding chemical inputs, seed bills, and farm loan payments. 

When you stack it all up you have a seriously fragile food system. Bitcoin represents a massive opportunity to restore conservation of energy on farm business operations. A shift where natural resource management decisions would not take a back seat, but would be in the driver's seat. An ecologically productive farm is a profitable one.