US Government Has been Stealing Raisins for Decades!

[breadisfunny]

so is this why the government keeps RAISIN our taxes?

[Orlong]

He also thinks farmers should pay a $20 min wage to attract american workers and it'd work, so i wouldn't try too hard with this subject.

No, I think they should pay what Americans are willing to do the work for, which would likely be around $20, but I never said the government should force them to pay it. I dont think they should be able to say Im hiring illegal aliens because there arent any Americans willing to do the job, when in fasct many Americans would do the job, just not for $5 an hour

[Flutterguy]

It will be interesting to see how this case gets used in other cases regarding government subsidies.

[Orlong]

Grape vines take several years to start producing. You can't expect all the farmers in the country to have exactly the right amount to hit the demand exactly right every year. Same goes for many other crops. They're over-produced in good years so in bad years there's less of a shortage. And when there is a bad year, farmers are compensated with crop insurance. Crop insurance isn't like car insurance, it's provided by the government.

We, as a nation, have a huge interest in farms and crops being managed well. When they're not, food supplies can collapse or we can have a dust bowl or people are unable to afford food. And as a nation, we have a group of people we hire to manage crops and farmland in as fair a way that we can figure. That group of people that we hire is called the government.

Maybe we shouldnt have so many mega farms. Where I live there are many farms that plant a few acres of corn, a few acres of watermelon, a few acres of peas, etc... Then they take their goods to one or more local farmers markets and sell them. I think that should happen more often as the food is fresher, cheaper, and tastes better than the stuff you buy at Walmart

[Cradyz]

Sounds suspiciously like a socialist, Muslim, Kenyan plot of Obama to destroy American capitalism to me. Might also just be the govenment being a greedy dick whenever they can, like you can expect them to be.

[The One Percent]

It's funny that people think this is funny.

[Deleted]

It's like the Government has something against these farmers' raisin d'etre.

[Rukh]

11/10 greatest anti government thread.

LEL Genn got banned. Neener neener Genn!

With regards to the thread. You would be a lot more credible if you didn't have a kneejerk habit of adding scare words like "STEALING" when it's not.

[Ornerybear]

the gubberment took my raisins!!! WHAT WILL MY OATMEAL COOKIES DOOOOOOOOO


For real though. do they do this with any other agriculture?

[Imnick]

first they came for our guns, now our raisins.... when will the lies end

[Belize]

Raisin farmers...

Raisin farmers...

Raisin farmers...

Raisin farmers...

Raisin farmers...

Raisin farmers...

Didn't you know Raisins came from the great Raisin Bush, naturally found in the U.S. southwest and Philippines?

[Lolretadin]

This thread should have been called "Raisin The Prices"...

[Orlong]

LEL Genn got banned. Neener neener Genn!

With regards to the thread. You would be a lot more credible if you didn't have a kneejerk habit of adding scare words like "STEALING" when it's not.

Why is it not stealing? They were being forced to give a percentage of their crops without compensation

[Zeras]

This should have been posted somewhere senior citizens regularly visit, if you wanted an outrage. :P

[Rukh]

Why is it not stealing? They were being forced to give a percentage of their crops without compensation

They have agreed to it. They know it's happening. It's not stealing. "The Government" doesn't come in the night with big bags for their raisins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Raisin_Reserve

Note that the committee is actually the farmers themselves who agree what to do with the profits from the raisins, including sometimes just giving it back.

[Orlong]

They have agreed to it. They know it's happening. It's not stealing. "The Government" doesn't come in the night with big bags for their raisins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Raisin_Reserve

Note that the committee is actually the farmers themselves who agree what to do with the profits from the raisins, including sometimes just giving it back.

They didnt agree to it, thats why they refused to give them to the government and refused to pay the fines. Then they sued the government and the Supreme Court said the government was stealing them and if they take them they must pay them market prices for them. (also a waste of taxpayer money. Farmers should be left the hell alone)

[Alydael]

I am not surprised by this at all. I am willing to bet there is a lot of stuff like this going on. Nothing the degenerates that constitute our government do would surprise me. Actually, that is not true. If one them told the truth and conducted themselves with dignity and honesty, I would be completely stunned!

[Kaleredar]

Maybe we shouldnt have so many mega farms. Where I live there are many farms that plant a few acres of corn, a few acres of watermelon, a few acres of peas, etc... Then they take their goods to one or more local farmers markets and sell them. I think that should happen more often as the food is fresher, cheaper, and tastes better than the stuff you buy at Walmart

Yeah and those farmers make diddly bupkis compared to what megafarms haul in. And those megafarms are responsible for the majority of crop production in the United States.


Let's do some fun math. According to the EPA, 2.8 billion bushels of soybeans were harvested in the US. Now, according to this website, a bushell of soybeans is equal to 60 pounds. Meaning that 168,000,000,000 pounds of soybeans were produced in the year 2000. Now, what were the total cash receipts from sales for Soybeans in the year 2000? Well, checking back with the EPA, that figure is 12,500,000,000 dollars. So how much did a pound of soybeans sell for? How much would a farmer expect to make? Divide 12.5 billion dollars by 168 billion pounds. (You can see where this is going I'm sure.) That happy figure is a little over seven cents. Seven cents per pound of soybeans.

And so the next natural question is, well, how many beans does it take to make a pound of soybeans? 50 beans? 200 beans? No, try about 2,000 soybeans to a pound. And how many beans does a soybean plant produce in a year? Approximately... 50 beans. So a farmer, in order to make seven cents, has to plant and harvest roughly 400 soybean plants. Now, you can feasibly fit 150,000 soybean plants per acre, meaning that, for an acre of land, a farmer pulls in 26 dollars. (that, versus the medium square footage of a price of a home in the midwest in the year 2000, 1,971 feet, compared to the average price per square foot, 73 dollars, compared to the average acreage of a plot of land in the midwest in the year 2000, which was roughly 1/4 acre, meaning that that quarter of an acre with a house on it was worth on average 143,000 dollars, or 5,500 times more than the whole acre of soybeans)

So let's add another layer onto that. How are soybeans harvested? Well, Soybeans are harvested by combine. In the year 2000, through my research, I found that combines went for about... 160,000 dollars. On the cheapest side. So in order to make that investment back, you'd have to plant and harvest 6,153 acres of soybeans.. That is almost ten square miles of nothing but soybeans. You can't even see that far before the earth begins to curve.

And that's not considering taxes, fuel for the Combine, labor wages, water, fertilizer, and all of that stuff we call "reality."


So you can "think that things should be this way," but that doesn't make them that way, nor does it make them practical for them to be that way. We have to deal in facts, not in "well in magical christmas bootstrap land..."

And to that effect, crops are subsidized and the government effectively pays farmers to produce less than they are capable of producing to ensure that the farmers actually make enough money to keep producing.