commentary – Page 10 – grouchyfarmer

Catching Up

Brazil Scandal

I haven’t heard much about the meat scandal going on in Brazil on the main stream media but it’s been all over the ag press since the story first broke. According to reports, Brazil’s meat exporting companies have been involved in bribery scheme where government inspectors and auditors were bribed to permit the companies to ignore sanitary regulations and inspections, falsify medical records and certificates, and ignore tampering with products to disguise problems with the meat. It’s also alleged the producers used ascorbic acid and other chemicals to disguise rotten meat, injected water into meat to inflate the weights. It’s just nasty. The whole story sounds like something straight out of “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.

There are now reports of large numbers of arrests as the government tries to do damage control. Brazil is the largest exporter of beef and poultry in the world, and the scandal has decimated the industry. Many countries instituted outright bans on importing Brazilian meat and meat products or instituted much stricter inspection protocols. Things are slowly starting to get back to normal, but the Brazilian meat industry really took a hit on this one and it could take some time for it to recover.

The really scary part about this is that meat processing companies had allegedly been bribing the country’s federal meat inspectors for years before this was discovered.

Does No One Remember?

Does no one remember what things were like before the EPA came along and environmental laws were finally brought on-line? It seems not, judging from the stuff I’ve been hearing coming out of the “new” EPA and the new administration. If you read the laundry list of things the new administration is planning on doing when it comes to the environment, it seems none of them do.

And what’s up with this fixation on coal that this administration has? Pruitt just put on a staged event with coal miners in full gear standing around him to try to spin how the gutting of environmental regulations is going to somehow create massive “economic growth”. All things considered, coal is a very, very minor cog in the energy machine. For many years coal has been becoming increasingly irrelevant in the energy world, and not just for environmental reasons. It’s expensive, dangerous, dirty, inefficient, produces huge amounts of waste material when burned, it’s hard and dangerous to mine, and the coal industry doesn’t really employ all that many people.

When I remember what it was like back in the 1960s, and think that we might be going back to those days of cities being entombed in clouds of toxic smog, rivers that were so polluted they actually caught on fire, where if you fell into a river you’d probably die from poisoning before you drowned, and all just so a few politicians can pose for pictures with a handful of miners from an industry that was starting to fail even before they were born, it makes me wonder what the hell is going on.’

Rather than spending all this time, energy and government money propping up the coal industry allegedly to “protect” the jobs of a few thousand miners as the politicians claim they are doing, wouldn’t it make more sense to invest those resources in training the miners for other types of work, giving different types of businesses incentives to move into those areas, etc?

Canadian Dairy Fights Back

The Canadian dairy industry is pushing back against claims that it and the Canadian government are at fault in Grassland cutting off 75 dairy farms here in the state. As I pointed out previously, the story being pushed out by the company about why it abruptly cut off 75 farms, forcing them to scramble to try to find new processors to buy their milk, seems to be a bit disingenuous. Especially when Grassland is claiming it had to cut off those farms because it can’t sell the milk while the company itself is seeking permits to build it’s own 5,000 cow dairy farm.

The Canadians are pointing out that the real culprit is the US’s overproduction of milk. And they’re right. The market for dairy products is utterly saturated. Despite an increased demand for butter, the US domestic market has been flat for years, with some sectors, such as consumption of liquid milk, actually declining despite heavy marketing and various gimmicks. And while demand is shrinking, prices falling, the diary industry responds by drastically increasing production?

Even one of the farmers dropped by Grassland agrees as is noted in the story linked above.

One of the biggest problems with the whole dairy industry in the US is government intervention in the market. Political manipulation of the market has resulted in a maze of rules, regulations, laws, marketing schemes, surplus buys and I don’t know what all else, that has left us with a marketing system that is convoluted, irrational, and so outdated that parts of it go back 75 or even a hundred years.

There is More on the Dairy Farm Story

I mentioned previously that a short time ago Grassland Dairy Products here in Wisconsin, which makes mostly butter, sent out letters to 75 dairy farmers telling them that as of May 1 Grassland would no longer be buying their milk. This left those farmers in a terrible situation. They now have no place to sell their milk. And the way the market is right now, finding a new processor to sell to is almost impossible.

In it’s press releases and comments to the media Grassland blames Canada. Canada, according to Grassland, changed their dairy import policies almost literally overnight, making it impossible for Grassland to continue to sell almost a million pounds a day of ultra-filtered milk, used in cheese making, to Canada. According to some of the information that came from the company, they received only two days notice before the change was implemented. The company had no choice but to cut back on the amount of milk it purchases. Grassland claims that it cut off those farmers that the company felt would have the best chance of finding a new market for their milk elsewhere.

But some people started to do some digging, and as is often the case, what’s been coming out in the press releases and statements from the company seems to have some problems. I ran into an op-ed piece over at Wisconsin Agriculturist that points out numerous problems with the whole story as it’s being presented by Grassland, and if true, there is a lot more going on here. You can read it here.

First of all, allegedly Grassland was not blind sided by this as they seem to be claiming. This didn’t happen overnight as the press releases seem to claim. This has been in the works by Canada for a long time. Grassland allegedly knew about this back in November already, and may have known as much as two years ago according to the editorial piece. Governor Walker actually wrote a column about it back in November.

Then there is the issue of which farms they cut off. The company claims it picked farms that it believed would best be able to find markets for their milk. But almost all of the farms being cut off are the ones that are the farthest away from the company’s processing facility in Clark County. Cutting off the farms that are the farthest away from their processing center would save the company a small fortune on shipping costs.

There there is this little tidbit: At the same time the company is cutting off 75 dairy farms, it is trying to get the permits to build it’s own 5,000 cow company owned mega-farm.

There’s no doubt that the company lost significant sales of product to Canada, but there seems to be a lot more going on here than just a trade squabble with Canada.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

As of this morning the ag futures markets are listing corn at 3.67 a bushel, soybeans at 9.46, and wheat at 4.33. But as if often the case, out in the real world, at the farm level, the situation is far different. If you’re a farmer trying to sell, you don’t get the futures prices, you get farm gate prices, what a buyer will actually pay to a farmer. And that is often much, much less than what that commodity is trading for on the floor of the Chicago exchange and other commodities markets.

Out in the real world, farmers are looking at farm gate prices for corn of as little as 2.90 and wheat around 3.15. Those prices are well under the cost of production for most farmers. US farmers are looking at a fourth straight year of increasing costs, declining income, and increasing debt.

The problem is we’re growing too much food.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Especially when we’re hearing about mass starvation in some parts of Africa and other parts of the world. But the problem isn’t a lack of production. We’re producing more than enough to keep everyone fed. The starvation is due not to a lack of food, but to government corruption, incompetence and war, not to any kind of shortage of food.

Overproduction has become a very serious problem. Most of the grain producing nations are looking at massive surpluses of product. Storage facilities are packed tight. In Kansas they’re actually renting runways at decommissioned military airbases and parking lots to pile the stuff up because there’s no place to go with it.

Meanwhile countries like China and Russia are trying to dump old stock in storage in order to make room for new production, resulting in prices being driven down even farther.

And there seems to be no end in sight. USDA is estimating that corn, wheat and soybean production in the US alone could be the biggest ever since they started keeping records.

Icons and Nostalgia

An icon of my youth is, I’ve been told, going to be torn down in Manitowoc, the old Penny’s building.

This is one case where I heartily approve of the decision if does indeed happen. As you can see the building looks like it’s ready to fall down all by itself. The two upper floors have been abandoned for years, windows broken out, covered up with plywood. The main floor was remodeled, if you can call it that, into small shops that now house, well, basically they’re junk shops except for a small art studio and resale shops that sell rummage sale items, a few antiques, on a consignment basis.

Saturday I was talking with a shop keeper downtown who used to rent space there and she told me that while it was cheap, she got out years ago because she was afraid the building was going to fall down around her ears. She told me that there were plans in the works to tear it down and replace it with a parking structure. We went in to look around and I can understand why she got out of the place. It’s pretty bad in there.

Going to Manitowoc’s downtown, the old shopping district, is a kind of bittersweet experience for me because I find it nostalgic, sad, exciting, interesting and hopeful all at the same time.

When I was a wee lad we did some of our shopping there in the downtown. At the time it looked like this. I found this image on-line somewhere.

Screen Shot 2017-04-10 at 7.30.15 AM.png Downtown was the hub of the city, where everyone went to shop. Penny’s was there, as was Sears. Woolworths had a store there, the old “five and dime” store. Kresge’s, another 5&10 store was down there as well. The elegant and upscale Schutte Bros. department store with it’s pneumatic cash tube system. Dozens of smaller shops all running down 8th street and going down the side streets. It was a thriving, bustling place. Just over the bridge was the Boston Store, and Sears.

The old Kresge’s building is still there. It now holds a rather nice coffee shop that seems to be doing well. The corner shop has been a succession of different little stores mostly trying to sell tourist trinkets.

Sears is long gone. Kresge’s closed down. The Boston Store closed. Schutte’s closed, and eventually the other shops, the jewelry stores, tailors, shoe stores, all of them closed or went bankrupt as shopping patterns changed.

The old Boston store property. The area with the trees on the far right is the site of the old Sears building.

The elegant and upscale Schutte Bros. store is in a sad state. It looks like this now.

It’s been standing empty for I don’t know how long now. There have been attempts to do something with it. A half dozen different restaurants have tried to make a go of it on the main floor, but none of them have worked well, and it’s been empty now for years, slowly deteriorating.

Somehow this old building has managed to remain almost as elegant and beautiful as it was when it was first built probably almost a hundred years ago.

DSCF2053

If memory is correct, and there’s a good chance it isn’t, this building originally belonged to the International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization that was popular back in, oh, the early 1900s. They spared little expense in the design and construction, and thanks to owners who cherish these old buildings, they’ve restored it and kept it in pretty good condition, and it’s one of the finer buildings downtown now.

Another fixture of downtown, the huge old malting/beer facility right on the lakeshore, is going to be hanging on, too.

It had been owned by few different beer companies, the latest being Budwiser. Budwiser moved out of the facility a few years ago and we were afraid it would fall derelict like so many others. But it was purchased by Briess Malting of Chilton, a major producer of malted grains for the brewing industry that’s been in business for over a hundred years now.

The old imposing bank downtown is still there too, looking just as impressive and intimidating as it did when it was first put up.

I don’t think it’s a bank anymore. Someone told me they think city offices are in there now.

The old Mirro Aluminum building is finally coming down at last. After being abandoned by it’s new owners when Mirro Aluminum was bought out and shut down, it sat empty for ages, gradually falling apart.

Screen Shot 2017-04-10 at 7.18.45 AM.png — Not my photo, found this online

After years of the city squabbling with various owners, various schemes for getting rid of it, the city itself finally had to take over the property to get it demolished.

Catching Up

Time to catch up again, so let’s get on with this, shall we?

Lots of stuff has been going on in the farming world, some of it unpleasant.

Canadian Milk Export Headaches

Grassland, a large milk processor, sent notices to 75 dairy farmers here in the state that the company will no longer accept their milk as of May 1, leaving the farmers scrambling to try to find someone, anyone, to buy the milk they’re producing. Over the last couple of

Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 6.54.41 AM — Ooo, butter… Yummy yummy butter

weeks Canada has rejiggered its milk classification/pricing system which has effectively prevented Grassland from exporting up to 1 million pounds of milk a day to Canada, and apparently with only 2 days notice. Grassland had no choice but to notify the farmers that they could no longer buy their milk because the company has no way to sell it now. A lot of people in the US dairy industry are claiming that Canada’s actions are nothing but a way to try to curtail the imports of US dairy products and are actually illegal under international trade law. Where are those farmers going to go with their milk? I have no idea. This is a bad time of year to try to find a milk processing company because we’re about to enter into what’s known as the “spring flush”, when dairy cows normally begin to produce even more milk, so there’s going to be a glut of milk coming on the market as it is and few processors are looking for more.

Corn Finances are Wonky

A recent survey by the Farm Journal indicates that the average cost of raising a bushel of corn for most farmers is about $3.69 per bushel. Corn briefly flirted with the 3.70 range for a while, but mostly it’s been in the 3.50 – 3.65 range for months and months now. It makes one wonder why anyone bothers to raise corn in the first place. Granted, some have lower costs than that and do make a bit of money off the crop, but still.

Sometimes the farming business reminds me of the old joke about the two guys from Milwaukee who decided to go into the fruit business. They bought a truck, ran down to Georgia and bought a load of peaches for $1 a pound, and came back to Milwaukee to sell them at $1 a pound. When they realized they hadn’t made any money on the deal and were trying to figure out why, one of them looks at the other and says “I know! We need to get a bigger truck.”

Some days I feel like the entire agricultural system is being run by those two…

Chickpeas

I love chickpeas, or garbanzo beans as they’re sometimes called. I use them in salads, soups, but they’re mostly known for their use in hummus and in middle eastern cooking. A member of the legume family, they’re tasty, very nutritious and high in protein and, well, they’re just yummy and very useful in most types of cooking.

Chickpea planting in the US has more than doubled since 2013. We’re only planting about a half million acres, almost insignificant when compared to corn and soy acres, but interest in the chickpea has been climbing steadily. They’re being grown mostly in the north western states. Farmers are always looking for an alternative to low profit crops like corn and wheat, and right now chickpeas look pretty good, profit wise. They aren’t that easy to grow, though, mostly because they’re susceptible to disease. But the prices have gone up about 23% over the last year, and with consumption and interest increasing, and farmers looking to try to find some way to make a profit, I won’t be surprised if acres planted keeps on growing significantly.

Butter Butter Everywhere

Butter consumption in the US is at 50 year record high, and there seems to be no end in sight. Butter price is one of the few bright spots in the dairy industry right now, with the price creeping up despite a decrease in butter exports and an increasing stockpile sitting in warehouses. Wholesale prices for butter were pushing $2.23 at one point and have only declined a few cents since then, despite increases in milk production.

Butter has become a marketing tool for a lot of food companies. A lot of restaurants, even the fast food ones, are switching out margarine in favor of butter, and a lot of companies that make processed foods are now hyping that they’re using real butter instead of margarine or vegetable oils.

Why this increase in demand for butter? Part of the reason is that dairy products are no longer linked to increases in cholesterol levels. Over the last five or eight years new studies indicated that contrary to previous beliefs, moderate consumption of fats from dairy products seems to have little or no effect on cholesterol levels. And there have even been some studies that indicate moderate consumption of full-fat dairy products may even have some health benefits.

Another thing that’s been driving an increase in butter consumption is that it’s been found that hydrogenated vegetable oils, long the primary ingredient in most margarines, are utterly horrible for you, health wise, causing significant increases in risk of heart disease and other problems.

But despite all of that, we’re still producing way too much milk. In many areas of the country there isn’t even the plant capacity to handle all of the milk being produced. There are reports of milk being dumped or being used for animal feeds in some states. With the ‘spring flush’ now arriving, a lot of milk processing plants are at full capacity already. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to milk prices over the next month or two.

Amateur Radio Stuff

If you’re interested in agriculture and don’t give a fig about AR, you can stop reading now if you like.

QRZ

Just got the notice that my subscription to QRZ.com is about to expire. QRZ is known as being the place to go if you’re looking for information about a particular call sign, want to buy or sell radio equipment or if you’re a grouchy old fart who likes to complain a lot, hang out in the forums and, well, complain a lot. Most people just use it as a way to easily look up information about an amateur radio operator. If you have the person’s call sign, you can find names, addresses and other information about them on QRZ’s database. You don’t absolutely need to be a paid subscriber, but it’s helpful. It gets rid of the annoying advertising, gives you access to things the freeloaders don’t see, that kind of thing. You get your own web page, email, log book and other goodies. It’s not an essential service by any means, but it is indeed handy to have.

Just stay out of the forums unless you have a thick skin.

Terminology

The other day someone I was talking to remarked that I never, ever use the terms “ham” or “elmer”. And they are right, I don’t. While the term “ham” when used to refer to an

Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 8.44.03 AM — A ham. *Not* an amateur radio operator

amateur radio operator has been in common use for probably a hundred years, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I have no real desire to be referred to by a term that means “cured pig meat” to 99% of the population of the country. Am I being ridiculous? Pedantic? Of course I am. Don’t care.

I also loathe the term “elmer” when used to describe describe someone who assists a newcomer to amateur radio learn about the technology.

Now, before you go off the deep end and launch into a rant down in the comments section about the tradition behind the term “elmer”, I understand that “elmer” refers to a very nice fellow who once helped newcomers to the hobby learn about it. I’m sure he was a very nice person. He was an utterly delightful and nice fellow I’m sure.

But I don’t care. There is already a perfectly

Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 8.46.13 AM — An Elmer. *Not* a mentor.

good term for that: mentoring. And to be perfectly frank, the term “elmer” is not exactly complimentary outside of the amateur radio community. It refers to the character Elmer Fudd from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. An “elmer” for a large percentage of the population is a person who resembles Elmer Fudd, someone who is a bumbling, idiotic fool. It is not a complimentary term.

Use both terms if you wish. I don’t care. I won’t object or even comment. But as far as I’m concerned, a mentor is a mentor, not an “elmer”. An amateur radio operator is an amateur radio operator, not processed pig meat.

Not a fun way to wake up :/

So I get up about 3:45 this morning, something that, alas, is not unusual for me these days, then go back to bed and…. Oh shit, here we go… SVT, or supra ventricular tachycardia, a situation where electrical signals to the heart get out of whack and the heart starts beating at around 190 and… well it’s not pleasant. I’ve had this going on for about 10 or 12 years now and it’s — annoying.

Wake up my poor wife and she has to drag my sorry old butt down to the ER where most of them remembered me from the last time this happened about a year ago. SVT won’t kill you, generally speaking, unless it goes on for a long time, but you can faint, get weak, and if it goes on for too long it can cause heart damage so it is not a good thing.

Sometimes it will convert back to normal rhythm by itself, but for me generally not. They usually have to give me a drug called adenosine which is just nasty. It basically kills you. Sort of. Or at least it feels that way. They defibbed me once and being shocked was preferable to getting adenosine, really.

This time it converted on its own, amazingly. The nurse was trying to put in an IV and missed and this horrible burning went up my arm, I half sat up, gasped, and bang, it converted to normal. So that was something anyway.

It’s weird, though… this seems to happen every spring for some reason. Last year it was in Feb. The year before that in May…

What’s the most irritating about it is the symptoms of this starting feel exactly like a gas bubble is moving through my abdomen, which, when you get to be my age, is something that happens a lot. So every time I have indigestion or gas or or something like that I go into panic mode because I think the SVT is starting again…

Anyway, not a fun way to wake up.

Catching Up

Catching up with what happened this past week.

Sleep

As in I wish I could. I occasionally suffer from insomnia and it’s been pretty bad the last Screen Shot 2017-03-25 at 10.20.56 AM few days. I’m not sure why. Which is why I’m writing this at two in the morning instead of being asleep. I know, I’ll try looking at photos of, oh, blossoming apple trees. That will put me to sleep!

Ah, well, apparently not. Didn’t work. Still it’s a really pretty tree.

Spring!

Spring is coming! I hope. Getting so tired of cold, wet weather, and especially the lack of sun. So I’m going to drop in some photos of spring and summer flowers in an attempt to lure spring a bit closer.

Agriculture Secretary Hearings

The senate ag committee hearings and questioning of the administration’s nominee

Screen Shot 2017-03-25 at 10.17.47 AM — Sunny Flower, not Sonny Perdue

Sonny Perdue finally took place on March 23. Unlike the hearings for most of the administration’s nominees, this one was relatively short, cordial and even pleasant for the most part. Mr. Perdue is perhaps the least controversial nominee put forward by the administration. He is also unusual in that he actually seems to know something about the agency he would be running.

Brazil Beef Scandal

The government of Brazil arrested 38 people involved in an alleged scam where inspectors were bribed to permit rotten and tainted beef to be passed for sale at a beef exporters JBS

Screen Shot 2017-03-25 at 10.18.35 AM — Wouldn’t you rather look at chive flowers than diseased beef? I know I would.

and BRF. Several countries have instituted temporary bans against beef imports from Brazil. Here in the US some government officials are calling for a ban as well but there is none as yet. USDA says it is stepping up inspection of meat coming from the country. But USDA also certified Brazil’s inspection system as being as good as that here in the US, so who knows…

Addendum: Since the US was forced to repeal the Country Of Origin Labeling law (known as COOL) US consumers no longer have any idea where their food comes from. But there is nothing to prevent beef processors, wholesalers, etc. from doing it voluntarily.

The Great Water Fight

It seems to have slipped under the radar of most media, but there is a rather nasty (and expensive) fight going on between the state of Mississippi and the city of Memphis, Tennessee. At the core of the fight is the question of exactly who owns the water being pumped out of wells.

Memphis sits on the Mississippi river but gets it’s water from wells that draw from the

Screen Shot 2017-03-25 at 10.20.12 AM — I wish I could remember where I took this picture

Memphis Sand Aquifer that stretches under Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. And like most aquifers, water is being pulled out of the ground far faster that it is being replaced.

Back in 2005 Mississippi demanded that Memphis pay for the water it was withdrawing from the aquifer, claiming that the city was actually sucking up Mississippi water. The state is demanding over $600 million from the city.

This has been dragged through the courts ever since, with Mississippi losing at every level. But now the state of Tennessee has been dragged into the case as well giving it new life, and it’s going to the Supreme Court.

This case has the potential of setting off a hornet’s nest of problems if the SC rules in favor of Mississippi. It could cause major legal problems wherever large aquifers are used for water supplies and could even extend into international disputes. it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Screen Shot 2017-03-25 at 10.21.07 AM

There, now I’m going to try to get some sleep!

Fish Oil – The New Snake Oil?

So I ran across this item this morning at Agrimoney.com.

Source: Agrimoney.com | Crop farmers may become fishes’ best friends

Apparently this company has developed a type of canola that contains relatively large amounts of an oil with omega-3 that is similar to that produced in fish. The GM seed has been produced by adding in genes from microalgae which make omega-3 oils. The claim is that this microalgae is the source of the omega-3 oils that are found in fish. About 2.5 acres of this canola is supposed to produce s much omega-3 equivalent as 10,000 kilos of fish.

The new canola (rapeseed) is still in testing and hasn’t yet received approval from USDA or from other canola growing countries. But everyone is excited about it because this could go a long way to fill the ever increasing demand for omega-3. In the US alone omega-3 supplements are a billion dollar business and people by the millions gobble down the capsules. Food processors are adding it to a wide variety of foods like yogurt, cereals, juice, even cookies for heaven’s sake. So it is hoped that a product like this may help to reduce overfishing that has driven some of the most popular types of fish in the oceans to near extinction.

But there are problems. And everyone seems to have been completely Screen Shot 2017-03-23 at 7.03.24 AM ignoring them. And the biggest problem seems to be that no one seems to be really sure that omega-3 actually works. Even worse, there are some indications that taking omega-3 might actually be detrimental for the health of some people.

The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a report a year or so ago that indicated that linked eating a lot of oily fish or taking fish oil supplements to a 50% increase in the risk of prostate cancer in men, and a 70% increased risk for aggressive prostate cancer.

Taking omega-3 supplements is supposed to improve heart health, of course. But studies are indicating it doesn’t do that, either. A study published in 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that taking omega-3 supplements did nothing to reduce heart attack, stroke or death from heart disease.

Why all this confusion and conflicting information? Because how food and it’s components affect the body is an extremely complex subject and often still largely a mystery. Using supplements for anything other than to treat an actual deficiency is generally something you should do only with caution and great reluctance.

Eating a diet that has fish in it is considerably different from gulping down a handful of omega-3 pills because no one seems to be able to prove beyond a doubt that omega-3 is the only thing at work when there is an improvement in health. It’s more likely you need everything in that fish, all of the vitamins, minerals and other substances that are in the fish itself, not just a single component of that fish.

Even though we have hundreds of companies trying to sell you fish oil and omega-3 supplements, adding it to other foods as a marketing gimmick, there are a lot of studies out there that indicate that taking fish oil and omega-3 supplements to reduce heart problems doesn’t work any better than taking a placebo. Like this one. Or this one. Or… Well, you get the idea so why go on.

Unintended Consequences

Everything we do has consequences, things that happen as a result of our actions. Some of those things are planned and are desirable. Some are unintended and can be undesirable or even catastrophic. And as many business owners, farmers and others can tell you, the current climate of antagonism towards immigrants, both legal and non-legal, is already having consequences that are starting to ripple through the country both socially and economically.

I’m not going to talk about the social consequences of what is going on now, there are already people who are doing that far more eloquently than I could. Instead I want to talk about the economic consequences of what is happening now and what will happen if the current administration continues down its present path.

Like it or not, large sectors of the economy are dependent on immigrant labor. The hotel/motel industry, food service, including restaurants and institutional food service, the tourist industry, child care, elder care, custodial and janitorial services, agriculture, all of these industries and more are dependent to one extent or another on immigrant labor. In Wisconsin, state wide about 50% of all agricultural employees are immigrants, mostly from Mexico or Central America. In some parts of the state that number is closer to 80% or even more. And because of this, the crackdown has already started to effect the ag business here in Wisconsin and around the country. (If you want to read about how serious the situation is, jump over to a Wisconsin Public Radio article here.)

Since this blog is (occasionally) farming related, let me stick with the agricultural sector and leave the effects of all of this on other industries to those more qualified to discuss them.

Trying to find people to work on farms and in agriculture in general has always been difficult. The days of being able to hire high school kids to help with the milking or baling hay or whatever are long gone for a variety of reasons. And let’s face it, even back then it wasn’t easy to find farm help. As is generally the case, these so-called ‘golden ages’ when everything was find and dandy before XXXX (insert your favorite conspiracy theory here) got involved and ruined everything, well, those golden ages never existed in the first place. The fact of the matter is that finding reliable help on a farm has always been difficult, and over the years it’s only gotten worse.

Right now about 50% of all workers employed on dairy farms are immigrants. Here in Wisconsin that number is even higher. Around here and in a lot of counties in the state that number is closer to 80%. I know of farms where almost all of their employees are immigrants.

There is an argument that these immigrants are taking jobs that would otherwise have been filled by citizens. But where are these citizens? Even when unemployment was at it’s height during the recession, farmers told me that they never got job applications from local people. None. Even when unemployment was pushing double digits, the only applicants they got were immigrants.

(The fact that us ‘real Americans’ feel that farm work is so demeaning, so degrading, so — so nasty, that we don’t want to work on a farm even as a last resort, is more than a little troubling, and one of these days I might look into that farther, but for now I’ll skip over that and stick to the topic at hand.)

The situation now is even worse when it comes to finding employees. Now the unemployment rate is down to around 3.9% or even less in some parts of the state. Employers at all levels of the economy are having trouble finding employees. And as for agricultural labor, it’s almost impossible to find new employees at all. The idea that there are hundreds and hundreds of ‘real Americans’ waiting in line for these jobs is false. They aren’t. They never were.

While the get tough rhetoric of the current administration makes for good PR in certain political sectors, out here in the real world it’s a different story. Without immigrant labor, the dairy industry here in Wisconsin and in other states, indeed the whole agricultural sector, would collapse. You can’t produce milk without labor. You can’t harvest food without labor. You can’t… Well, you get the idea. Without immigrant labor thousands of farms would have to shut down, food prices would skyrocket, and the whole economy would be disrupted.

So be careful what you wish for. There are often unintended consequences.

Stuff In Ag: Catching UP

I was going to talk about farming less often here but there’s been so much going on and it’s hard to do that. So let’s see what’s going on, shall we?

Bird Flu – We haven’t been hearing much about bird flu since 2015, but it hasn’t gone away just because it’s fallen off the news media’s radar. There have been some serious

DSCF1905 — I don’t have a photo of a bird flu, so how about a cat instead?

outbreaks in China, including at least 84 human deaths from one form of the virus. China either already has or is in the process of shutting down live bird markets and putting other rules in place to try to curb the spread. In France the government was forced to slaughter all of the ducks in an entire region, and it’s popping up in the US now. An outbreak of a very nasty strain of the virus was found in Tennessee. A mild version of the virus was found at a turkey operation here in Wisconsin. And as a result a lot of people are very nervous indeed.

What about a vaccine? Well, vaccines are out there for some, but not all versions of the virus. Flu virus evolves very rapidly, which is why it’s necessary for us to get vaccinated every year, and even then the vaccine may not do much good. A year or so ago they estimated that the vaccine that was distributed for human use was only about 30% effective because the type of flu sweeping the country was different from the one the vaccine was developed for.

Even worse, a lot of farmers raising birds are reluctant to vaccinate their birds because the tests that are required on poultry being exported to other countries will flag vaccinated birds as having virus because vaccination gives the bird the same antibodies as if it had the actual disease. So it’s complicated.

Labor – Trying to find reliable, intelligent farm labor has always been difficult, and it’s become especially bad since, oh, the 1970s or so. The days of being able to hire a couple of high school students to stack bales, pick rocks or milk cows are long gone for a variety of reasons, some legal, some economic, some social. Even though wages and benefits have risen to the point where they are often competitive with the manufacturing sector (starting wages at some of the farms around here are higher than they are at most of the local manufacturing companies) it’s still almost impossible to find employees unless the farm is willing to employ immigrant labor, usually from Mexico and Central America. Something like 80% of the farm jobs here in Wisconsin are now held by immigrant laborers, either legal or undocumented. While it is illegal for a US employer to hire undocumented workers, the penalties for doing so are often little more than a slap on the wrist. So when a worker presents a slightly dodgy looking set of papers to prove he or she is in the country legally, well, let’s just say it’s really easy to overlook problems with the paperwork when your choice is to either hire that person, or go out of business because you can’t get people to do the work. Besides, with modern technology it’s possible to crank out very official looking documents that can fool almost anyone except the experts.

So in today’s political climate, a lot of farmers are very, very nervous about the real possibility that they are going to get up one morning and find that most of their employees are gone and they can’t replace them.

If one adheres to the ideas of the far right, then the belief is that these immigrants are taking away jobs from “real Americans”, and the reason unemployment is so high and people aren’t making money is because the immigrants are somehow stealing our jobs…

But wait a minute. Right now Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is under 4%. Almost every time I turn on the radio I hear businesses claiming they can’t find employees. Now granted a lot of the people who are employed are under-employed, that is they are working at jobs below their qualifications, at pay rates less than they really would like to have. Many, far too many, are the working poor who, despite working one or two or even three jobs, are just barely hanging on by the skin of their teeth. But the claim that we have huge numbers of “real Americans” unemployed because of immigrant labor is not really true.

And most of the jobs the immigrants are “stealing” are jobs those “real Americans” don’t want to do in the first place: like shoveling manure out of calf pens, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, the backbreaking work of picking fruit or vegetables…

Uncertainty – Right now one of the biggest worries in agribusiness isn’t climate, isn’t flooding, isn’t weed or insect infestation, isn’t drought, it’s politics. Everyone in any kind of business associated with agriculture right now is nervous about the new administration and for very good reasons. Between threatening to institute huge tariffs on imports that would decimate the markets and cause massive retaliation by trading partners, to immigration policies that would cut off badly needed labor, to renegotiating long standing trade agreements that would open the country up to restrictions on our exports, the current administration has done little or nothing to curb the nervousness in the ag sector. The commodities markets have been churning, prices refuse to stabilize making planning difficult. No one knows what the FDA or USDA is going to be like under the new administration. Some farm operators I’ve talked to are terrified they’re going to wake up one morning and find their entire labor force has fled out of fear of the immigration authorities. One fellow I talked to said even people who are here legally are leaving because they’re hearing rumors that anyone who looks or sounds even vaguely “un-American” is going to be rounded up and deported or put in concentration camps somewhere.

Scandal – Everybody loves a good scandal, so let’s wrap this up with a nasty and expensive scandal going on in the University of Wisconsin system at the Oshkosh campus.

Apparently former UW-O chancellor Richard Wells and vice chancellor Sonnleitner, both now retired, are accused of funneling university funds to the private UWO-Foundation, a separate nonprofit that supports UWO projects through fundraising and other activities. Under state law the university is not permitted to support a private organization like the foundation in any way.

But it is alleged that Wells and Sonnleitner gave university money to the foundation and issued “memorandums of understanding” in which the university promised to cover the foundations debts in order to help the foundation procede with several multi-million dollar building projects that included two biomass digester systems, one on a private farm, a new hotel, a conference center and a sports complex. In addition it’s alleged that Sonnleitner gave money amounting to well over a quarter of a million, and signed a $700,000 a year lease agreement with the foundation to use one of the digesters.

In all it seems to have cost UWO around $11 – $12 million.

The head of the foundation has been fired, the foundations accountant was put on “administrative leave”, and everyone is wondering how the hell this happened in the first place and how they’re going to keep it from happening again Investigations by the DOJ and law enforcement are going on, lawsuits are already in the works, and the whole thing is a massive mess.

What’s that got to do with agriculture? I said this post was going to be about agriculture, didn’t I? Well, the digester, of course.

One of the projects was a massive biodigester system built on a farm in Rosendale not too far from Oshkosh that was backed by the foundation. The system cost $10 million. Manure digesters use bacteria to produce methane which is then burned in generators to produce electricity. The idea is that it reduces pollution from spreading manure (it doesn’t), it produces methane (which it does, although not very well and methane has some serious problems in the first place) which is then burned to produce electricity which, apparently, none of the utilities actually want because they don’t want to pay more than a token amount for it. For reasons I won’t go into right now, manure digesters are a “solution” to a problem which doesn’t actually solve anything and which creates a whole new set of problems.

I’m not exactly sure why the foundation got involved in this project in the first place, but it’s in it up to its neck. As of June the foundation still owed almost $7 million on the thing. The university itself dumped over $4 million into the project via illegal funds transfers to the foundation. And while some of the money was repaid, the foundation still owes the university almost one and a half million.