I just finished picking some pears and table grapes from our little orchard (vs a row crop farm). Existing vineyards and orchards in hilly areas were not designed for automated picking.

It’s been 25 years since I spent time in Beijing so I don’t know if the new generation of technical, and governmental, elites still think the cultural revolution was worthwhile in terms of ensuring the lives of the poor are considered in developing plans/strategy.

Ref point 10 and 11 https://creativeconflictwisdom.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/strategy-by-any-other-name-would-sound-as-unacceptable/

What is a small farm?

Required to charge more -> less sales.

they seem to not mention that a typical large scale farm these days (as most farms are) is a multi tens of millions of dollars business sitting on enormously valuable land. /blockquote>
Yup, and they screw over smaller farmers at every opportunity.
Many of the large scale “farmers” now wear suits and live in mansions, while sending others out to do the work.
Subsidies have majorly screwed up what food production and farming should earn, as well as costs to consumers. Government subsides severely distort food costs – and why are we subsidizing products like high fructose corn syrup anyway?? They are very damaging to health.
ugh

That’s what I said. My primary point was to counter the idea that NAFTA did not influence this, because that isn’t what the data says.

The secondary point was that the system of subsidies simply makes the problem worse.

Dean I was speaking only of cheese. Wisconsin exports a lot of things to Canada, some of which is agricultural, and some of that is dairy, and some of that is cheese. Wisconsin makes about 3 billion pounds of cheese a year, and over half of that goes to Mexico. A bunch goes elsewhere in the US. Canada does not take over half of Wisconsin cheese. If so, that has changed in just a few months and it is not recorded anywhere obvious.

But yes, you are correct in that we can expand the argument without damaging it at all, to include all dairy from Wisconsin or all agriculture from Wisconsin, and we find that NAFTA, which applies to both Canada and the US, keep Wisconsin from becoming West Virginia.

A bigger issue is what removing NAFTA agreements could do to the general economy in WI, where a good percentage of the workforce is tied to the dairy industry. Big hits to dairy could translate to big losses — not a simple thing to predict, however.

This is even more complicated by the absurdly high subsidies paid to (dairy and non-dairy) farmers to keep prices low. (The same issue applies to subsidies paid to fossil fuel suppliers.)

Yes – Eau Claire I believe.

Government price fixing at its finest.

It hurts Wisconsin farmers and helps California farmers (who get to charge much more for their milk).

Totally unfair in the modern world, with refrigerated vehicles.

They should get rid of that law and let the market decide what the price of milk is.