Owned by Hong-Kong-based conglomerate WH Group (CCP controlled????), Smithfield is the largest pork processor in the country by volume.
Largest Pork Company in the US Shuts Down California Plant Due to High Costs
Submitted 1 year ago by admin@exploding-heads.com to food_security@exploding-heads.com
squashkin@wolfballs.com 1 year ago
honestly, the economics of farming to me sounds kind of like a concerning problem
the whole "great resignation" thing going on now is also a bit concerning; let me explain my thoughts:
I imagine a lot of kids were constantly told they don't want to be "losers" and be so "backward" as to do lesser necessary chores in society. It's better to be a "winner", make more money, be the boss, earn passive income, make money from "thinking smarter rather than working harder", all this, right? At least I sadly heard plenty of hate on farmers in schools I attended.
Well then literally who is going to want to work the "lesser" jobs? They're selling envy and entitlement to like every kid now, or were, especially because our world is globalizing.
And the diamond water paradox idea notes that things that are plentiful but necessary, like water, are often economically undervalued, but things that are rare but perhaps not necessary like diamonds are valued. (I suppose today we may have some industrial applications that give diamonds practical value).
So basically this envy and greed and devaluing of necessities in the economy seems like a looming threat to the food supply. It's possible that the economics will adjust and food value simply goes up enough when supply goes down to make farming profitable. But I guess my concern is that economics almost makes farming unprofitable in itself, which seems like a destructive force going forward that needs to be dealt with someone.
One solution I think we may move towards is people simply making farming in to a nonprofit thing, funded by profitable non-farming activities. So someone might sell "useless" trinkets that make lots of money in order to be able to fund an operational local farm where they pay much more for food than it would be worth by the price set by pure market forces, but they are paying a premium for food security locally basically.
I guess another factor might be that farm technology could continue to improve and maybe it could become more profitable if even more automation comes in to play.
admin@exploding-heads.com 1 year ago
I went to school with a lot of farm kids, a good portion of who wanted to escape the isolation and head to the city.
But I wonder if technology will attract these kids back as they grow older to escape the crime ridden cities and a better place to raise kids.
Technology makes it easier to stay in touch with friends, shop, educate your kids, etc.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 1 year ago
To me, the reality of these extremely important jobs is one of the core problems that capitalism does eventually solve, and that communism never really does.
In order to get food on your table, somebody needs to spend an awful lot of time hanging out alone in a field. There really isn't much else to do there. It isn't fun, it isn't glamorous, it's just somebody getting their hands dirty and doing the right thing and making society work.
In order for a lot of the stuff that that farmer needs to happen, you need to have a miner. Somebody needs to head into a god forsaken hole in the ground, and do incredibly dangerous things as safely as possible, and usually those minds are off in the middle of nowhere that no one actually wants to be.
For most of these things, you're also going to need to do some processing and that's going to be some very unglamorous work, probably some dirty work, probably some unpleasant work, probably some dangerous work.
So capitalism's solution to these problems of jobs that nobody wants is to pay more. Make sure that farmers are well compensated, make sure that people going into that mine are making enough money that they're going to choose to go to that stinking hole in the ground rather than sit at a desk. It absolutely means that there are people with different classes. The world needs miners and farmers. The world can mostly do without fast food chefs. The world for the most part can do without more poets. The answer for most of these is the things that are required will have the wages go up until people want to do them, and the things that are not required will go down in wages until people decide to do something less nice.
Of course, there's a few factors corrupting that process right now. We obviously have Labor movements that think that all labor is equal when it isn't, and so you have it legislated so that all work requires a certain minimum wage. We have forces trying to bring in a bunch of cheap labor to dump the market, so companies don't need to pay the appropriate wage for jobs nobody wants to do. Finally, we have the rise of megacorps that are absolutely supported by governments, and those megacorps end up distorting the market because their overwhelming resources can effectively cause regional monopolies.
Ideally, this is what happens: the kids hate living out in the country where there's nobody else, so they go off and see the world and find out what the world is like, but eventually the reality of cities filled with people who aren't doing anything in particular hits, and they realize that the situation back at home really wasn't that bad, so they come back and take on the family business. This can only happen if taking on the family business is properly compensated.