So, basically, capitalism is killing the hand that feeds us
Our neck of the woods in the 70s used to have 25 farms where now 1 family farms the entirety. If you're good at what you do (to the degree you can control), you'll survive and keep growing.
Biggest issues are your kids getting taxed to oblivion on land they inherit (this kills the farm) and outside investors bidding land way above where it reasonably cashflows because it's "cheap".
But don't feel bad for farmers. To inherit $10 million+ in land because your family's had it 100 years is a blessing most people don't get in life.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyl...
How much is the inheritance tax?
The rest would vary state by state and depend on the relation to the deceased, but I'm pretty sure it'd be $0 or negligible in most cases, on a $10m estate, for spouse or children at least, even with minimal advance preparation.
But the general strategy today is set up a generation skipping trust so that in the event the gov't decides to enact strict step up basis laws it doesn't blow the whole thing up.
... I still think this is pretty sad. I married into family involved with farming and seeing this dilemma is not heartening. One of my in-laws is currently in farming proto-retirement (renting out land now and not actively farming), and I can vividly see how selling out is basically not an option for him. If you spend a lifetime cultivating practices of living modestly and working towards the ideal of the small family farm, a big pile of money:
1) does not interest you very much, since you've built your life around hobbies like going to the bar and socializing with a dwindling crowd of other people who have your lifestyle. Nouveau rich family farmers seldom seem to do much better with a windfall than lottery winners.
2) further, selling out really is the antithesis to what you spent your life doing. Basically you're saying that your lifestyle has outlived it's usefulness in the spirit of "Death of a Salesman" is worth more dead than alive.
I'm probably being overly harsh sounding because I'm not an expert and I've been exposed to the idealist perspective in person quite a bit. But I do have pity for those who have been put in a hard place when they are suddenly surrounded by "game of thrones" and skepticism that massive consolidation will work out well in the long run.
edit: and yeah, I get that adapting is also an option but by definition it's an option for increasingly few.
It just increases the isolation of Farmers and other rural people. Strong Towns actually has a stated goal of reducing the interstate system! (Strong Towns, weak country, should be their new name.)
We need to reverse this trend - more people back into tiny cities, and yes, even suburbs.
Sure, looked at only from a money point of view, cities do a lot - but it's all services, and very little actual good people need in order to live. There's more to a strong country than just money.
No no. It's all working to plan. Consolidation leads to bigger, more efficient farms. Or so the big land owners think... That much land requires ever more sophisticated technology, which big corporations are happy to provide and make people dependent on, all while collecting farm level data to allow someone to play the futures markets.
There is a pecking order. Whom do you serve and to what end?
And now I've reached my cynical threshold for the day and need to unplug and go outside ;-)
If you sell a commodity and your competitors are far more efficient, you will lose in the end. Change the commodity from wheat to mining silver and nobody has their heartstrings pulled for you.
Ultimately people aren’t siding with family farms for economics or fairness reasons - they are doing it to support the losing underdog or anti-modernism nostalgia.
Efficiency creates fragile systems.
Farms also shape rural communities, literally and figuratively.
>Ultimately people aren’t siding with family farms for economics or fairness reasons
What would you call Community supported Agriculture? (https://www.kneehighfarm.com/what-is-csa)the farm to table movement? Farmers markets?
Meaning it's a perishable good, it's a different market. It's good to have a lot of small farms to not have monopolies and as a stopgap to massive crop failures/blight or just bad management.
Like corn: the existence of extra corn (currently making ethanol) to turn into food in case of emergency/war, so it's subsidized.
Meaning no one has a personal reason to care about the plight of a silver mine
Similarly I don’t care if it is a 5 acre family farm or a 100k acre corporation that supplies the corn I eat.
Is anyone here old enough to remember that telecoms were a plurality? Now they are consolidated into a few, or couple, I haven't checked lately. When they wanted to merge or buyout it used to be big news and regularly got denied to protect the market. But the last few monumental mergers have largely gone under the radar, a series of boxes checked and completed forms, and they're done. It's because people friendly to the entities are in the positions of decision.
We know capitalism has flaws and is imperfect. It used to be our regulatory agencies would tell companies like Monsanto to take a hike. But now, they permit anything the corporations want to do. With that glaring of a problem, are we really talking about an economic framework called "capitalism"? No, we're not.
Were this a Communist country then the oligarchs would be friendly to the regulatory agencies. Same issue, different economic foundation. Do you see where the problem lies now? It's not "capitalism". That's a nonsensical critique parroted by consuming inflammatory rhetoric, a waltz down the sidewalk of extremism from hateful social and news spaces online. Stop it, please.
Family farming has always depended on cheap/free labor of children (and slaves / serfs / indentured servants / illegal immigrants). Corporate farming at least makes those transactions more honest and transparent.
the only thing they do is obfuscate the particular human individuals exploiting the workers.
Farming associations actually help here, since they can negociate like a union, but not sure how much the US would approve of this "communism".