Just Another 20 Million, Bro

To be fair, killing farming in the USA wasn't a difficult task. Most countries importing any American food products have had major restrictions on them for years due to safety and hygiene concerns. The EU, for instance, pretty much only imported some soy and grain, because anything else doesn't meet our quality standards. There only had to be a single minor inconvenience here to end the imports from the USA.

And in all honesty - wonderful news for Europeans. I don't think any of us will miss American products. Personally I'll happily pay a tiny bit more for soy from Brazil or China.

What a bunch of welfare queens. They should have planted crops people want to buy.

Americans are learning the hard way that elections have consequences, and I’m loving it. Sadly, most still won’t learn. I said it before and I’ll continue to say it that Trump, Elon and their lackies are anarchists. They are destroying the government because they hate government (because it gets in their way) and they’re not going to put any of it back. He’ll be gone and we’ll have some broken, ghetto, incompetent government that can’t put the pieces back together and it’s what we’ll be stuck with for generations to come while other countries progress.

Yea, elon (and presumably many other super rich) want(s) cyberpunk ultra capitalism
no rules, just money…
Trump is just a corrupt puppet making it possible somehow
Americans are learning the hard way that elections have consequences, and I’m loving it.
You think? I tend to doubt it. Seeing as these are the same lessons since Reagan and they've only gotten more popular. They don't know why they hate government. That's the real lesson they won't learn.
It's the lesson the rest of the world will need to learn super, super quickly, too. It's about media. And therein is the clue as to why no one will learn it without a big effort.

I would MUCH rather LITERALLY LOSE MY ENTIRE INDUSTRY AND WAY OF LIFE then to have ONE Trans Kid NOT feel suicidal!

-LITERALLY all Republican Voters!

This is hilarious and I upvoted. But it's also not accurate, and presenting it this way makes Trump look like a giga chad tricking bullies into punishing themselves, when he's more like just king of a mentally ill cult. I won't take my upvote back because I voted for Trump one time 9 years ago and I can't take that back
- I regret your use of the word "gigachad", but "Tricking bigots into punishing themselves" is the precise description of the Republican party.
  That's not a good thing. The theme of American history is "Rich whites convinced poor whites to destroy their own public goods out of fear that someone not like them might benefit too."
  It's not mental illness. It's not economic anxiety. It's not ethics in gaming journalism. It's white supremacy.
- If you're committed to unlearning the fascism, you should know that the narrative that it's just "mentally ill" people that voted for him is also not accurate and is infact ableist. White affluent Americans have been primed to endorse these values for centuries, it isn't new and it isn't disabled people's fault.

When this shitshow is over It would be nice if we could reconstruct our farming practices to focus more small local and sustainable farming instead of corporate conglomerates that damage our environment and wipe out biodiversity.

Lol might as well ask for the wholesale dismantling of all capitalism...
(Yes please)
- I think Europe has better farming practices

Big thanks from Brasil. Our soy exports are up like 30%

Corn and soy are about the only agricultural products that aren't extremely scarce this year...
Guess what the US exports instead of buying from Brasil? Nature wants them to fail too.
I just wish I could find soy milk in the supermarket. I hate that we don't prioritize our internal market first.
- As a brasillian its the exact same thing here sadly. With tariffs our meat exports got crippled badly so I expected to have a lot of high quality cheap meat at the market but... Yup, the producers prefer not to lose their product than to sell domestically and bring down the prices, fuck those guys

Actually Argentina got $20 Billion so it's like 1,000x worse

And no those customers don't want to buy our crops anymore BECAUSE WE WERE GIANT ASSHATS so we better put our big boy capitalist pants on and find new ways to earn a living

I thought it got doubled to 40 billion.
- You're right
  So it's actually 2,000x worse
- What's an extra 20 billion between despots? Like a rounding error eh? Actually unsure on the Argentina side but if Trump okays billions I think that says enough.
i'm sure if we all hit the pavement and go country to country we'll find someone willing to buy our exports. there's plenty of money out there for people who are willing to work for it
"Guys, could you help me kill US farming? I'll give you money?"
- they should be GRATEFUL that tyson, perdue, foster farms or any of the large farms corporation allows them to work for them.
it went to 40bn, its also alot worst, because that 40bn is going to bessenets friends who invested badly in argentina, so they are getting profit off of that aid.
:::

And now JD Vance’s Acretrader can come buy up all the land for cheap and sell it to foreign interests!

This is why farmers shouldn't monocrop. Even if a farmer doesn't care about the environment and soil health, monocropping makes a farmer vulnerable to the volatile nature of geopolitics and the global economy.

They don't? Afaik soy is an off season crop to balance nitrogen(?) in the ground. But not being able to sell your harvest 50% of the time is still pretty bad.
This.

Canada, Russia, Belarus and China are the major players in potash mining and production. The US doesn't mine or produce any in a substantial number. The US has huge import tariffs on China, and can't currently buy from either Russia or Belarus.

Canada needs to put a 50-70% export tariff on potash. That would crush US farming.

If Trump wants to play, let's burn them to the ground. Here is your 51st state you cunt.

This is idiotic. You are literally suggesting Canada follows Trump example and try to use tariffs to hurt another country.
Canadian potash producers have no reason to be punished with tariffs.
Tariffs damage your own country. Not the enemy. This is literally what you're complaining about.
- Tariffs damage your own country. Not the enemy.
  Read what I said. I said EXPORT tariffs. These are taxed at the border, by Canada, to the buyer exporting - IE; the farmers and supply chain in the US. These aren't like Trump's import tariffs but they have the same effect to Americans.
  The only effect this would have on Canada is MAYBE some reduced sales, but US farmers don't have a choice with this product. They literally can't buy it from anywhere else in the numbers they need.
  And yes, the design would be to cause even further damage to US farming because of Trump. It's a huge power play Canada has. They want to reduce our added tax on potash? They need to drop or reduce tariffs on their end.
- You can have sensible tariffs that do the intended job of encouraging a domestic market, but you need to have both supply and demand available domestically.
  For example, Canada has an import tariff on milk and other dairy because we produce and consume our own dairy products. If some giant US milk conglomerate could start imprint on the cheap it would legitimately harm the Canadian economy.
- Its not universally true that tariffs harm your own country.
  If the US really is dependent on a specific thing from a specific country then that country can absolutely harm the US by applying a tariff to it.

If only people could have seen this coming, especially the farmers who dealt with the same shit last time they elected Trump.

Sucks to suck.

If only they knew it was their own votes that bent them over the barrel.

Common clay and all that. Morons.

I think ‘morons’, while technically accurate is missing the nuance that conservative media deserts are where these voters live. They’re not on Lemmy, they’re not even on reddit. They’re on facebook and they watch Fox News. Their local paper is written by and for others who watch Fox News. That’s “the world” afatk.
The Left has zero plan to combat this, and even less money and interest in doing so.

Dear US Farmers, You wanted America First... Enjoy being America Alone. Have the day you voted for.

kind regards, The rest of the world

Most farmers voted to burn their own fields... again. The same man who nearly crippled American agriculture last time was welcomed with open arms. Tariffs, trade wars, and labor shortages wrecked their profits before, but somehow they lined up for another round. It is like watching someone hire the same man who burned down their house and expecting him to rebuild it this time.

in his first term, i read an article where the farmers were hopeful he would turn things around despite him putitng the tariffs in the first time. theres no helping these people.
After his Trade War on the first term, Trump gave major subsidies and bailouts which really benefited large farmers. Trump promised similar subsidies for this term, and Trump actually delivered on that in his spending bill; but farmers were expecting more than what was promised, and they haven't gotten that.
- This really needs to be higher up. Farmers are millionaires who got massive bailouts and tax breaks the first Trump term. They were expecting the same thing this time around which is why they voted for him again. They voted for their bank account over human suffering and the destruction of America

Hey there woah ... if you say something bad about djt, he'll dump on you from an F35 so EVERYTHING is PERFECT no matter what you say.

Couldn't even ask AI to recreate that video with correct mask placement lol. Trump is a huge fucking loser.
Actually, shit is a great fertilizer. If he had dumped it on the farm fields that need it, it would have been a better video.

"Temporary" my ass. They are going to beg for those evil socialistic handouts for the coming years. Simply because it is unlikely to get better.

Well yeah, farm subsidies aren’t new.

I hope we all like soy beans because that is going to be the only affordable thing in the grocery store.

Soy is great, you can make some really good-tasting, high-protein food with it for very cheap. But I'm afraid there won't be a lot of cheap soy in grocery stores, instead those farmers will just go bankrupt.
More likely feedstock for bio-fuels, which also gives Republicans heartburn because the only proper fuel for their SUV is sucked out of the ground under pressure from toxic chemical-laced fracking mud, like the Good Lord intended.
Which is super hilarious because the same idiots who support Trump are the same idiots pushing Soy memes about how too much soy makes you gay/trans.
Except it won't be, because without a buyer the crops are going to rot in the fields.
- That's what farm subsidies are for.
Turns out the conservatives were the ones making America into soyboys all along.
I do! Been making and selling tempeh to my friends, also fried tofu is amazing.
Does that include edamame? If so, I don't see a down side...

Trump is bankrupting America like he bankrupted all of his businesses.

I couldn't believe how many people don't realize that a country literally CANNOT be run as a business.
- It can, but it doesn't mean it will be good or useful at all lol but I get what you're saying. Government is for people, business is for profit. People and profit are not compatible as the purpose of the entity. Just look at the US Healthcare "Industry" for the most glaring example of this.

Trump killed America, with massive help from American citizens and criminals.

I'm going to end up emigrating from this fucking country primarily so I can stop bailing out dumbfucks.

This is absurd.

We're going to bail out "bootstrap" assholes after they were warned they were going to kill their own livelihoods. Fuck that clown shit.

The US government has been doing this forever. For example, meat and dairy farmers are heavily subsidized. They couldn't survive if they weren't subsidized.
- For example, meat and dairy farmers are heavily subsidized.
  They're subsidized to regulate productivity. You don't want large fluctuations in the supply of staple goods, so you offer a price floor that's cost of production + vig to guarantee a certain volume of retail surplus.
  If you want to get extra fancy, you turn the excess into a good that you can preserve for long periods (excess milk turned into Government Cheese) that you can then store in the event of a supply contraction or dole out abroad for goodwill as material aid.
  The only real caveat is that you need the agricultural property owned by actual working people, rather than some enormous private conglomerate or trust. The goal is to guarantee a steady supply of his that still offers gainful employment, not to create a massive shareholder give away for folks who will still fuck with the supply chain
But where are you gonna go? Most countries don't want more refugees
- Australia here.
  I've been saying all along that we'd happily exchange some fuckwits for some lefty seppos.
  Chuck another shrimp on the barbie mate strewth.

Yes, but now the US can use all the water to train chatbots that invent facts wholecloth. Checkmate, China.

and still growing water hungry alfalfa for the middle east.
I think they might try to move us farmers to farm for in country consumption instead of exporting. Not that other countries already do that for much cheaper with healthier soil.

IMO there's a good chance that Trump's second term will mark the end of the United States as a super power.

Speed running the collapse of an empire.
- It really feels like that, doesn't it?
It's guaranteed because it's basically already happened. The ramifications just take time to be felt
- Farming is .8% of the GDP
A has-been empire with a massive military and an aggressive desire to get back to the days when everyone respected them.
They'll probably decide, fear is as good as respect...
- What massive military? Militaries only exist as long as they are paid.
If only there were signs that a spoiled, deranged imbecile, pedofile who bankrupted so many companies that he ended up as a game show host wouldn’t be a great leader
At this point that’s barely and opinion
The dismantling of NATO, all of the "soft power" has gone down the drain, the US being subservient to Russia. It has basically already happened. We are just waiting for everyone to acknowledge it, because every leader in the Western world are desperately clinging to a world view which no longer exists.
The US needs a German style constitutional court to make sure you can’t have a dictator again.
- ...
  Enforced by a foreign occupation after half of the tyrant's supporters got killed, but the occupation doesn't bother killing or at least keeping the rest of them from running the state and corporations like nothing happened?
In the grand scheme of things maybe not So bad
and destroy the republican base, gop too. hes taking everyone down with him, at the behest of putin.

Well… you know, if you have a farm, there’s options other than soy beans.

More generally, VOTERS killed farming in America.

And the people who pointed out this would happen were laughed at or told we were being overdramatic
Congrats republicans, you MAGA'd your way to the downfall of America. Maka America Garbage Again
- Let's not give them all the credit. All the dumbass nonvoters deserve their fair share of responsibility too.
Well the alternative was voting for Harris and I think she would have gone around and personally shot the farmers.
- I definitely heard her say she was going to do this
Farming in America has been in decline as small family owned farms go under and get bought out by large multinationals and the elites.

My wife said this tonight and it really hit me: China will be eating burgers and America will be eating soy

they are also eating soy and burgers.
- I bet they'd love soy burgers?

That's one way to get the farms into the hands of billionaires for cheap.

This was the goal all along. They want all that land in the hands of private equity. The farmers can lease it back if they want to try again. Serfdom.
- So the us is just going full Great Depression again huh?

They voted for this and it's going exactly to plan, they just wish the plan was faster.
The plan is to remove everyone undocumented and then bring them all back as H-2A visa labor paying them pennies on the dollar.
- That doesn't make sense. Adding paperwork isn't going to lower labor costs.
  Undocumented workers are already the least paid, least protected category of worker.
  They'd be switching from workers with no minimum wage to ones that have a minimum wage, need to be properly tracked by the IRS and all that.
- I think it's better understood as many different factions with their own desires:
  Those who want raw power for the sake of power. Trump is almost certainly personally in this category. This is probably the primary motivation behind the Project 2025 stuff, tearing down the guardrails that limit their power.
  Those who are trying to enrich themselves: Trump's family is probably here, and Trump himself and his inner circle do seem to be motivated by financial gain to some degree.
  Those who want to use the Trump administration to make the U.S. whiter by expelling non-white people and restricting immigration of brown people (while increasing white refugees admitted).
  Those who want to assert dominance of certain types of Christianity (with some internal tension on whether that extends to Catholics/Protestant/Mormon/other beliefs)
  Those who want the government to pursue business friendly policies like lower taxes and lower business regulations.
  Those who want to leverage the government's power to win a culture war (bullying schools, libraries, Hollywood, the media, etc., into supporting right-wing cultural principles).
  There is tension between all of these things, and there's tension within the Trump coalition. The business interests and the immigration hardliners jockey for position with Trump and his inner circle. The religious groups and the war hawks and the cryptocurrency scammers are all trying to advance their own agenda, too.
  Not everything is going to make coherent sense. Not every idea is going to win, either. And if anything, the business side of things is less powerful than in the typical administration with several areas that are actively hostile to traditional Republican business interests (immigration, tariffs, pardoning securities fraudsters, shaking down corporations for donations or tribute).
  It's important to recognize the tensions because those are also weak spots in their coalition. Defeating fascism will involve fomenting some internal tensions and peeling off different factions.
- Lol.
  The plan is slave labour

That is the result of a hyper individualist society, USA is literally the cancer of the world and now it's hurting itself

You know which country? Argentina. Who are we aiding with currency transfers and trade deals for meat? AREGENTINA

I'm hoping this means low soy-food prices. And other beans. Beans are the best.

cries in IBS
- Dude I have some form of severe ibs. Going whole-foods plant-based was the best thing I ever did for my gut. Like I am literally on the verge of complete remission, held back only by occasionally eating things that throw a wrench in it like using too much salt, and occasionally eating processed foods containing industrial emulsifiers (it's hard to give up sriracha ☹️).
  And yes, beans and particularly soy beans are a large part of that diet, and have been hugely beneficial.
- Sure, beans are rough. Is there something worse than McDonald’s chicken though?

What I don't get is how come this hasn't translated to more plentiful and cheaper soybeans here for the local market. You can't buy fresh soybeans at my local grocery store. You can only get them frozen and they're about four bucks a bag. Which isn't hugely expensive but it's not exactly cheap either.

You think things are going to get cheaper just because there's an excess of it? No, no, that's not how that works here. You're used to paying $4 a bag, therefore you will continue paying $4 a bag or more until the heat death of the universe. I'll be surprised if it isn't $6 a bag by this time next year.
Anything not sold will, obviously, be destroyed. Can't have anyone trying to eat it for free.
Most soybeans grown in the US aren't food grade. Something like 95% of US grown soybeans are grown for livestock feed and soybean oil, not for human consumption - the GMO varieties they grow don't taste good as edamame and may not be safe to eat due to the high levels of pesticides used.
The soybeans China imports from the US are used for soybean oil and livestock feed, just like most of the US soybean crop. You might see cheaper jugs of soybean oil as a result of China bowing out of the US market, but you're not going to see cheaper green soybeans in your grocer's freezer.
They don't usually harvest and store them fresh. Most are harvested and stored dry, but generally need additional processing to be used... there's just not the domestic capacity to use it all. They can only supplement feeding farm animals and unless processed beforehand, are just like cooking any other dry bean.
Do you mean edamame? I think mature soy beans are normally dried for storage, but maybe I'm wrong?

Padme: this will mean cheaper soy products for U.S. domestic market, right?

I eat quite a bit of soy because I'm meatless.

Right?
...Right... ?
We all gonna be meatless soon, insect meat maybe
- Insects actually taste pretty fucking good, man.

Ok, ultra corrupt and all, but at least from environmental pov (especially water) killing soy where USA grew it en masse is a really good thing afaik.
\ It was too forced & unsustainable.

I dont know if country's in south America are filling the gap the US created, but if yes its probably much worse than farming in the US.
I once had the chance to hear a lecture from a Brazilian professor about how soy gets grown in Brasil and that shit was terrifying. Slavery like working conditions. Corruption, massive landgrabs, insane use of pesticides (they literally used to apply them with airplanes until it got banned due to health "concerns" (it actively destroys your health) for the civilians) and mono cultures all the way through. It was very informative, but fucking scary. Due to the fact that massive sizes of land are not really listed and nobody owns them. So farmers are literally creating their own documents, that say they own certain land, put them in a drawer with crickets, so the paper looks older than it is, go to the local government and surprise, they now own even more land.
- Very true.
  \ Tho that is true for any industry in such countries.
  And it's not like fairly similar things don't happen in USA farming.
- So farmers are literally creating their own documents, that say they own certain land, put them in a drawer with crickets, so the paper looks older than it is
  Wait, what?
USA: "let's try beef instead"
- Well, I mean, if the price skyrockets & the purchasing power keeps falling finally y'all gonna get into veggie patties. Non-soy veggie patties (which sux anyways).

This is why a responsible government is slow to change. Because move fast and break laws doesn't work for a democracy.

Another nail for the coffin of US society. Keep it going USA you can do it.

All bailout money is earmarked for the corporations. We need to save the banks and the auto industry! Again!! /s

The European colonial empires fell sixty years ago, and it wasn't even out of sheer stupidity that America is doing right now. China is laughing out of sheer happiness that they are filling the vacuum that US is leving due to plain stupidity.

No the farmers that voted for Trump killed farming in America.

Aren't farmers who are among the most conservative voters worldwide?

Hard to say. Currently it seems so, but historically, even in the US, famers are often at the forefront of socialist sentiments. Even if they look different from what one expects.

The "we" in the "we walled ourselves in" is not a fucking "we", buddy, it is a "you"

We’re fucking attack on Titan now
- Foreshadowing for what happens next.

You've heard of government cheese? Wait until you hear about government rotten tofu

Mmmmm government seitan.

And this on X? Man people ARE waking up… a handful of years or two too late but still.

I wonder what their pitch to the "soy boys" will be.

Store seed grow your own food if your in a city idk bro

What about food deserts in the USA? 🏜️

They tried exporting those, demand has been markedly lower. I think America might be stuck with em
- I was actually thinking planting some vegetables and selling them to people who live in a food desert. But it’s questionable anyone would eat them unless deep fried I assume

Does it actually matter though? If you export more than you eat, no one is going to starve. At least they wouldn't in a sensible country.

But the purpose of modern American agriculture isn't to feed people, its to profit landlords.
If landlords can't profit, they won't produce a surplus. And without a surplus, our economy contracts, forcing more workers into unemployment. Without employment, they can't afford food, utilities, or rent. And that leads to malnutrition, poverty, and eventually death.
Ireland would like a word
- There wasn't a sensible country in charge of it
- How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?

Fuck em'!