Could it be instead that the cartoon is about the scale of the difference? There is an actual number in the punchline.
[Edit: Nebraska native, by the way.]
Furthermore, I think you missed a level of insight about where the earning power is. That land may come with a mortgage and other liens. The trick is scrounging enough money to pay the mortgage every month on that land. Only after a lifetime of paying off the mortgage, does the typical farmer or rancher have enough equity in the land to make it a cash windfall when they sell.
I think the cartoon was commenting on the difficulty of making the farming business model work because of the tiny incoming cash flow from raising crops and being the frontline person working the land.
In New Zealand, our main agricultural outputs (dairy and meat cattle) have recently gone into the unprofitable territory and it was only land speculation that kept the farms producing at the current level.
> There is a general idea that somehow the fate of the United States is somehow bound to the fate of the agricultural community. There is a romantic appeal to the family farm as the symbol of the good life in this country. It stands for democracy in its purest and most classic form. This belief persists despite evidence to the contrary. [0]
> The agrarian myth is the belief that the most desirable form of community is found in rural, specifically agrarian, village life. In the agrarian village, fundamental Western values such as a strong work ethic, independence, and integrity are supposedly fostered and passed from one generation to the next. Consequently, declines in the value of agrarian life and agrarian villages are seen as signals of an even larger decline of society itself. For those who believe in the agrarian myth, community type and morality become inseparably connected in the rural agricultural village. All other contemporary manifestations of community are incomplete or counterfeit. [1]
[0] http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/36568/1/sp02re01.pdf
Why shouldn't CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies earn more than
farmers
"There is. In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers."
Note 'combined'.
Yeah, I know, pedantic, but it takes something away from the point for me.
That 2129 of them are doing very poorly shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I'd be surprised if at least 3% of them aren't actually losing money!
There is something to be said about income distribution, but it didn't make it accurately through the comic strip.
␄
† https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwS...
So, the CEOs of a few multi-national corporations make more than some undefined subset of farmers in Iowa. Are the 2129 the least successful farmers? The most? A random sampling? I assume the cartoonist meant something like 2129 * [average farm revenue] = sum(coo salaries)?
1 - https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwS...
But... having known a lot of farmers they are indeed usually quite well off. And many of them are not aweshucks salt of the earth types people often perceive, but rather more like a sort of spoiled generational semi-duke or noble type thing looking down upon the little non-land owning commoners who they often pay very little and sometimes wantonly abuse.
That being said.. what was the guy thinking? He has to know who financially supports the paper. Maybe he was ready to do something else.
It's not that they were bad people or unkind (although some are... bordering on abusive), but it's the attitude of inherited big landowner. It absolutely exists.
In retrospect I suppose "spoiled" (in the sense a gulf state prince might be) probably isn't the right term. Every farmer I've known has worked hard and paid attention to their task. But the attitude I speak of is pervasive. The landed nobility and the little people. At least in my experience. And I found it unpleasant.
> Every single farmer I've ever met is very well off.
Maybe you're in an area where the crops are in demand and your view is heavily biased.
Making $5-50MM per year is a lot, but some make in excess of $1B per year and pay almost nothing in taxes. This money doesn't come from nowhere, and these multi-billionaire hedge fund managers are often squeezing it out of things like managed pension funds and other investment pools.
The guy in that "My-little-farm"-book you've read, might never have smiled so happy, and it might never have been his "little-farm". I know a lot of people who wont accept this though. You got to be rich, living the good life out there- else, where to daydream-escape towards from a day in the city.
I imagine losing Monsanto (or whomever's) ad revenue will be very painful to Iowa Farm News... Anyway, it's clear that Iowa Farm News would never intentionally and will never again speak against a major ad source like Monsanto/DuPont/John Deere, and every other news source has been put on notice.
That's the newsworthy item - the illusion that news outlets aren't on a leash.