John, yeah there are still 1 or 2 million more of us than we could start an effective cartel with 🙂 so until then we`ll have to be "price takers". I`m layed up with a touch of the flu and watched a Rifleman episode where the rifleman`s son Mark is hanging off the edge of a cliff, a outlaw played by Michael Landon rescues Mark, but breaks his leg. The Rifleman knows that he and the gang are outlaws but is beholding to their saving Mark, he doctors up the Michael Landon character and even tells the marshall that he hasn`t seen them, when he comes a lookin`. That`s kind of where production agriculture is in world trade, we are one of the sole domestic benneficiaries, so when the marshall comes around looking we are beholding to the trade policies that we feel we need to stay the course.
We have fear that doing the right thing might turn our individual opperations into decades of unprofitabilty. The easiest avenue is to keep doing what we`ve been doing, even if our heads only occasionally come above water to temporarily catch our breaths. But as a boy that used to hunt cottontails with a .22 if they quit running, that is when you could shoot `em, so long as they ran, they had a chance to get to cover, but sitting still was deadly.
The world has gotten used to this free trade way of doing business, where the US is the "patsy at the poker table". There isn`t any guarantees of will things be better or worse for agriculture if we demand fair trade? But I do know that 100% of the cottontails that stopped running got shot, because I saw `em. The world needs our ag products or their people might rebel if their protein diet is cut short, we sure can do without their plastic, pink flamingoes.
Altenator went out on my buddy`s Dodge pickup, drove him to OReilly and it had a big ol` sticker "Made in China"...seriously, we can`t make a altenator in this country as cheap and good as one 10,000 miles away?? It cost him $130. I look at the 1980`s when things got tough, many farmers got off farm jobs at the factories to get by, and must`ve thought it was was good because they stayed and never went back to their farm. Today, some of those factories are gone, off farm jobs available are sorting nuts and bolts at Bomgaars...not that that`s a bad job, but you`d have to work there 3 days to buy one bag of seedcorn.
I typed this post on alot of medication...let`s just say, don`t post when on drugs
I lost this nice post on wheat that basically disputed Darrins issues on wheat -------- this process is goofy.......
and I aint going back through it
It was my best post ever so remember it
With this chart i questioned usda claims that wheat yields raised 21 % nationally in one year. And not a good year...in Ks or Okla.
That would be the equivilent to raising corn yields national average by 35 bushels per acre.....
And several other interesting issues spiced with a spot of humor and simmering now in my head because I took too long to research the details.
But it was great ............... IT WAS A TRADE DEAL great.... 🙂
Hobby you hit it on the head..... as usual...
When you have finished 4 out of 5 tough years...saved only by a beautiful spasm in the market.... and now finish a demoralizing year when world trade and at least half the country (plus three million dead) 
don't care about those water poluting rich farmers who can only be saved by the organic life preserver that is built to hold 6.
Everybody loves a commentator who steps up and says "YOUR DOOMED"------ in January
