This year my little farm had cotton planted, part of a rotation of crops my farmer employs to keep the soil healthy and happy. Soy beans, corn, and cotton, beans three years, corn one year followed by cotton. This year was cotton's turn. It is the most expensive of the three to plant and maintain and this year the price is marginal and many farmers are only one bad year from serious financial ruin. They make lots of money, but spend lots of money in this process.
I was talking to my farmer, whose family I have known all my life and who are 5th generation farmers in our little world and they plant about 3,000 acres of a mix of corn, cotton and beans in their way of playing the market to their advantage, if beans are good they have beans, if corn is good, they have corn, if cotton is good they have cotton, if all three are bad they have cattle, 500 mother cows who could be sold to provide the seed money to plant next years crop. If all three crops are good they buy more cows.
Well, we got into a discussion about Trump and I asked if he liked him and he said yeah, but he did not sign the farm bill to subsidize cotton this year. The congress and senate had put together a bill that would have given a payment to every farmer who planted an acre of cotton $50 to help with expenses. These crops have imput costs that are fixed and I know from personal planting of soybeans I spend about $130 per acre to plant and harvest my beans and in a good year I make a few dollars off each acre. Corn costs $350 per acre to plant and harvest and at $3.50 a bushel break even yields are 100 bushels per acre and drought corn is often 50 bushels an acre or less. Big risk. Cotton is costly to plant for it needs constant spraying for insects and a good dose of fertilizer and is relatively drought resistant as its roots dive deep for the water it needs to come to bloom. Corn and Beans are shallow root systems and need about an inch of rain per week to perform optimally.
Anyway back to Trump and the $50 dollar per acre cotton allowance. They brought the bill to his attention and he said: If cotton is such a bad deal why is there 20% more in crop this year than last?" Well the reasons are varied, and related to the above calculations American farmers must make each year, playing the market, the government, and the weather, it is a risky business, the farmer has no real control over any of these items, so from a business perspective Trump did not sign the farm bill as it pertained to cotton.
My farmer buddy understood, but still thought the payment would have been a good shot in the arm for his operation, but he has cattle to back up his crop plays this year. He said his share of the payment would have been about $50,000, enough to plant 200 acres of cotton or 400 acres of beans, or 150 acres of corn, so it is not chicken feed. I said Trump did not understand that farmers do not have yachts and sail the Carribean in the winter, to which he wisely intoned, " I just sailed my yacht across your cotton field picking your cotton."
His cotton picker cost $450,000 used. He has had it for 5 seasons and is needing to replace it soon.
Guess his yacht and Carribean sailing adventure will have to be put off another year. But for me I am delighted he loves to sail his cotton picker across my fields of white fluffy cotton.
And we both praise President Trump for his good work. Now can Trump get this mess of a congress motivated to stop playing grab-ass most of the day and legislate for the sake of the country!
I personally feel these fools have been playing slow down against Obama for so long they do not know how to legislate. All the old bulls are dead, Kennedy, Byrd, off to that greatest legislative body in the sky.
Trump is not to be triffled with. Pocahontas was just trolled and fell for it hook, line and sinker. He never mentioned her name but her screams of indignation spoke heap big trouble for Warren, the fake Native American who falsely claimed Native American status to become a Harvard professor for diversity. How petty! How dishonest! How scheming!
And this is how she greets every one: "How?"
Senator Elizabeth Warren is worse than Senator Al Franken, aka the groper, and the democrat hacks have rounded up the wagons in an attempt to "win one for the groper!", and now we learn of a slut fund to pay off all the sexual harassment claims in congress, $17 million in pay outs they admit to so far. Money wasted that could have been earmarked and sent to 340,000 acres of cotton so our farmers could sleep a little easier at night. My money is on the farmer. I have all but given up on congress.
Trump should get what he wants or send them home. I believe he has the balls to shut it down and the nerve to take the daily barrage of fake news outrage and spend the government shut down at the winter white house in Florida.
Let Nan, Chuck, Mitch, and Paul stay in DC and figure out what to do. After all it is in their job description, right after playing grab ass with the interns.
Godspeed President Trump. We got your back! Give em hell!
Maybe Trump should refer to the Democrats as "Nanchuck" and the Republicans as "Mitchpaul".
I am,
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
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