The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: September 30, 2008

228 comments on DrumBeat: September 30, 2008

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airdale on September 30, 2008 - 9:42am

Credit and the farmer?

Most all farmer/operators I know are way way way heavily into CREDIT!!!

They simply cannot..repeat cannot...operate without very large lines of credit.Period. Exclamation point..etc.

So what will happen? I think its already starting to happen with the commodities market being the first portent of whats to come.

Right now the farmers around here have a huge amount of credit taken out to plant this crop. If the prices fall then they will be in a huge bind.
Many scenarios are possible.

We are currently bringing in a fairly large harvest. Corn is almost done and soybeans are in process..here in the upper Mississpi Valley area.

I personally elected to NOT drive grain trucks this harvest season as I intend to spend more time preparing my own 'life boat'. That means 'hoarding'.

The tea leaves are telling me that this is but a small time frame window of opportunity. Why?

Weekend before last my son and I drove to his last residence in Raleigh , NC. The gas crisis had hit this whole area. Getting back home was a nightmare. Previous to that the remains of the last hurricane came all the way up thru Mississippi and Tennessee to strike this area with the fury of unleashed hell. Huge tress were snapped off at about the 20 foot level. We experienced 4 days of blackout.

It was just a warning..followed by the preview of no gas.

And then??? Well the credit and financial crisis hits!!!!s

I think this country/nation is starting rapidly down the road to destruction..What here on TOD has been discussed many many times. Well its here now and its going to be a killer.

So my plans are to burrow in. Visit Sam's and stock up before everyone else gets the same idea. Finalize the plans I have been making ever since I started reading TOD many long months ago( 2 or 3 years at least)..

I still have my 'strike anywhere' wooden matches left over from Y2K even. Yet I am going to once more lay in a bigger supply. Fill all my propane tanks. Get my garden plowed and ready for spring planting since there may be very little fuel by that time. Plans and more plans.

Its going to get crazy out there.

Airdale

PS. The story of the mystery boy from 1908? My father was born around that time. Around here boys did NOT leave the farms or were not kicked out. They stayed to provide needed labor. The farmer who had many sons was lucky. Not so those who were childless. Children were made to mind and were put to work. With WWII most did leave and never came back..this is what started us off to where we are now IMO...the beginning and now demise of the Great Amerkun Dream....sleep walking into chaos...stead of staying on the land and prospering...BTW some acreage up north in Middle Illinois just sold at over $9,000 per acre!!!I sold some two years ago for $4,000...about 10 times what I paid for it.

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Leanan on September 30, 2008 - 9:55am

Around here boys did NOT leave the farms or were not kicked out. They stayed to provide needed labor.

You've said that before...but surely some had to leave, eventually. The land can only support so many people, and a farm can only be subdivided so many times.

This is what's happening with the Amish. Most no longer farm. With their large family sizes and small farms, there isn't enough farmland for them all. (Though that may change, with the mortgage meltdown.)

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sendoilplease on September 30, 2008 - 10:47am

"Amos Jackman", a fictional story written in the 1950's illustrates both of your views - how the changing world economy disrupted the then "normal" lifecycle of farming families.

It follows the fate of a family farm that has been their's for several generations, as they experience the tug-O-war between the desire and need to stay on the farm, vs the stability offered by regular employment in the cities (as well as greater consumer comforts like indoor toilets).

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shargash on September 30, 2008 - 11:00am

The Amish do have a lot of children. I suspect the too-many-sons phenomenon applies to non-Amish farmers as well, but it is probably much less of a problem. It is also easier for the "English" to merge into normal society and get non-farming jobs.

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ViewFromHere on September 30, 2008 - 12:18pm

The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are moving out here to the prairie. One of the young women, who worked in a local greenhouse, said that they woke up one morning in PA and God had told them to move to Milbank, SD. They'd never heard of Milbank- but they packed up and moved out here and appear to be thriving.

A couple weeks I was talking with a 90 year old man who was from a large farming family. During the Depression they couldn't feed all the kids so the older boys drew straws to see who would leave the farm. He and another brother drew short straws and left the next morning with a loaf of bread each. He slept in culverts, was hungry (he started to cry as he recalled a woman who saw he was hungry and gave him cornbread). He walked 82 miles before he found a farmer who took him in to milk 17 cows. He worked for two years for room and food and one pair of coveralls.

This man said "Things are going to be worse in our future here than anything I've lived through." Gave me chills.

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Leanan on September 30, 2008 - 12:36pm

They're moving everywhere. Their population is doubling about every 16 years, so they kind of have to.

Interesting story about the old man. Someone posted here once about some relatives who traveled across the country during the Depression with only a roll of nickels. When they stopped to buy food, they'd take out one nickel, and pretend like it was all the money they had. They'd be given the food for free, out of sympathy. Only one shopkeeper took payment, and to this day, they gripe about the stingy guy who took their "last" nickel.

I wonder if people might become kinder as times get tougher. Now, there's a feeling that someone who isn't working is either lazy or has a substance-abuse problem. If it really gets impossible to find even low-paying work, that might change.

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moabite on September 30, 2008 - 1:10pm

Everyone has a Hollywood image of what farming was like "years ago". The reality is that just like today, there was a small percentage of wealthy landowners, and a bunch of people hiring in to the wealthy farms, or sharecropping. My grandfather leased 40 acres in Southern Illinois. From the 40 acres, tended by him, a couple of jennies and my father who was a small child at the time, he made just enough to survive, as long as he supplemented his income and the larder by shooting rabbits and doves (the only game left around there at the time), running a sawmill, and doing odd jobs for other ranchers. He was in his 50's at that time. He made it to his 80's, a quite advanced age for someone who was born in 1872. He had five wives(all of whom preceded him in death) and fourteen children, all of whom he sent to live with others at various times because he couldn't afford to feed them all. This was not considered scandalous, either. Men worked, and women took care of children, and if the woman was gone, the children belonged somewhere else. My mother came from a similar background.

The problem now, of course, is that there are so many people(due to people like my grandfather having fourteen children!) that even leasing 40 acres is an impossibility for all but a small fraction of the population. And the relative prices have been pushed so low by mechanization and commercialization that it would be even tougher to survive today, even if you supplemented with other work.

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rainsong on September 30, 2008 - 4:34pm

One farmer wrote it costs $4.00 a bushel to grow corn and he was expecting costs of $5.00 a bushel next year.

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sendoilplease on September 30, 2008 - 1:47pm

"Now, there's a feeling that someone who isn't working is either lazy or has a substance-abuse problem."

That mirrors Orlov's opinion - the poor are "robbed" of their dignity in the US. And, as you note, as the entire middle class gets becomes poor it will likely change.

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Samsara on September 30, 2008 - 4:59pm

Leanan

The Population around 1900 was much smaller. Much Land was still to be had. Amish today are "Fenced in" by subdivisions and such.

My father, simlar to Airdale's was born in 1900 and worked on the farm while young.

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airdale on September 30, 2008 - 8:37pm

Some leave????

No most all leave and that is part of the farmers dilemma.

They don't want to farm. They want the exciting buzz of the yuppie world. They want to be branded with jailhouse artwork on their bodies. They want to drive fast cars and pickups. They want what they see their city cousins having and doing.

I know one farmer here who alone must drive the combine, run the planter and do all the various and many hard jobs. He puts in about 2,000 acres. Both his sons left some time ago.

The last one was finishing the combine work in the last acreage as I was in the field with my semi to haul it off. He came over and we chatted. H e said "soon as this field is done and I shut off the combine I leave right off for Nashville...No more stupid farm work for me.",,,,He hasn't been back either.

My buddy has to hire 8 workers seasonally and 4 fulltime all year. He has one son..Guess what...that son left this year.He was a bad worker and you could tell his heart was not in it. He was a fumbler and broke a lot of equipment too.

So the problem is really that we 'can't keep em down on the farm'...even though they stand to inherit a huge amount of assests in land and equipment. They don't want it.

Thats the way I think it is in most farming areas.

Airdale....

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Leanan on September 30, 2008 - 10:33pm

We're not talking about now. We're talking about 100 years ago. Obviously, things are completely different now.

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karlof1 on October 1, 2008 - 1:24am

I've met a lot of campesinos over the years who would love to have the opportunity to farm the land in your region. And I know there are a lot of down-and-out folks here in Oregon who'd very much like to work in the farm belt. IMO, economic hard times will solve the problem of "keeping them on the farm," but while they're absent, they're missing out on a whole lot of learning, the sort of learning you can never get from a book or website.

May your weather be fine and few pests come your way.

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zurisee on October 1, 2008 - 8:22am

Same story everywhere in the industrialized world. in my hometown (well, if you call a cluster of villages with a population today of a few
hundred total a 'town') it's just the old folks left, and of them its just the ones who don't have an apartment down in the city to
spend the winters.. Maybe a dozen farmers still out there, and only 2 younger than 40. Their kids are all off to the bright lights & the big city,
and the rest of the work gets done with immigrant labor. In my parents generation people mostly stopped planting crops and were switching to
pasture.. and during my time even that is declining.
A positive side effect is the remarkable recovery of the forest and the natural environment. Lots of land is now totally reforested where it
had been planted in wheat 50 years ago and grazed down to the rocks even just a couple of decades ago.. The land has more water, the wildlife
is flourishing, to the point where there are even rumors of bears once in a while- there had not been a bear heard of in that region for generations.
It does make it tough to even find who owns what, if like me one is trying to actually buy some land out there, though.
good luck to all in preparing shelter from this mess.. the first drops of this storm have already been falling.

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AlanfromBigEasy on October 1, 2008 - 10:57am

How much of this change in farming to forestry was driven by depletion of the topsoil ?

My observation is that marginal lands are going back to trees not for social reasons, but fundamental agricultural reasons.

Alan

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Earthbound Misfit on September 30, 2008 - 10:21am

So my plans are to burrow in. Visit Sam's and stock up before everyone else gets the same idea. Finalize the plans I have been making ever since I started reading TOD many long months ago( 2 or 3 years at least)..

Our brand-new saw mill arrived yesterday. We plan to put it to use in building an "underground" home (actually partially underground, with the north side buried in a berm). The mill will also be useful in providing fence posts, lumber, etc. for barter with neighbors.

A small indoor fish farm is also in the works. Tilapia are quite hardy, they breed prolifically, and they don't taste too "fishy."

I just hope we can have it all put together in time...

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hummingbird on September 30, 2008 - 10:27am

So Airdale, where do you get strike anywhere matches? I've looked everywhere and concluded they must have made them illegal because they "strike anywhere."

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Geckolizard on September 30, 2008 - 10:30am

I think they strike at bowling alleys, home plate at baseball games and when the union is given a bad contract.

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sendoilplease on September 30, 2008 - 10:51am

Try camping/sporting goods stores. Dip the match heads in candle wax to make them waterproof until used (put them in a tin with some dryer lint for emergency fire starter ;).

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sgage on September 30, 2008 - 11:53am

I get them right at the grocery store. I like "Ohio Bluetips".

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hummingbird on September 30, 2008 - 1:36pm

Thanks for the information.

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Ignatz on September 30, 2008 - 12:38pm

Hello Airdale,

How is your stock of poly rolls? Instead of ploughing the vegetable garden I've been covering in black poly winter over a straw mulch or wire frame for ventilation and the darkness and worms do the rest. As well where I am there is an over abundance of rain, so doing this also keeps more nutrients in place. Am trying fall rye this year and then will cover before the winter rains hit and see how that works.

BTW, any time you want to send me an acre or two of your land I will be glad to pay you 9000 dollars, very gladly, as prices here for a rock and stump farm in the bush run about 4 times that.

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airdale on September 30, 2008 - 8:48pm

Covering the garden?

IMO its best to plow or break up your garden in the winter...after the frost has heaved it and broken it down. This results in a very nice workable friable soil in the spring.

Most work the ground in the spring but that doesn't always work out well. First too much moisture from spring rains and you can't plant soon enough. Also if you happen to work it without just the perfect amount of moisture then it clods up and will be cloddy for a long long time.This is not good.

I throw wood ashes and chopped up branches,spoiled hay and all the rest after I have achieved enough moisture in the fall for it to work properly. Then cover it or whatever.

The problem is getting it ready early enough to get potatoes and early crops in.

I really don't moldboard plow my ground. I run a chisel plow over it and then a disk. If I didn't have those I would just use the rototiller. If not that then one of those handy grubbing thype hoes that are so popular and advertised as the best tool going.

Airdale

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