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Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by ricardobeat on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:01PM (#22714959)
The crisis started not even a month ago. What kind of business are people running that go bankrupt in a couple weeks?

At least where I come from, most local farmers can't "go bankrupt" as they are family businesses and have very low operating costs - worst case is sitting idle at home.

Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by ObsoleteNerd on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:15PM (#22715030)
There's "family farming" where you have a plot of land handed down to you and you tend to it yourself. A few tractors with PTO extensions, and handled by your family and maybe a few local workers. You'd sell to local grocery chains and markets.

Then there's "family farming", where you have a fleet of GPS-and-climate-control-equipped John Deere's on finance and invest heavily in automated irrigation and sell to wholesalers who provide to national chains.

The former are probably fine. The latter, who provide food for the country, are generally running on huge credit lines with payments to meet and in uncertain times like this can (and regularly do) very quickly go bankrupt.

Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by hilbertseries on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:18PM (#22715324)
A bill to bailout farmers will pass the house and senate with broad bipartisan support.
Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by bluGill on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:29PM (#22715377)
The later in best off. They are businessmen who know their numbers. Their biggest problem now is low crop prices, a situation that goes back to 2015. An increase in demand is the best things for them.

Agriculture is considered essential infrastructure in the US and not stopped. Except they can't get immigrant labor but that is a problem for the small vegetable farmers who don't need or buy the expensive equipment anyway.

Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by Spooky23 on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:23PM (#22715082)
Farmers have taken the current administration very hard, and the previous administration wasn’t a bright light either, especially if you’re not a Midwest grain farmer.

Between trade policies (Canadian onion farmers, for example, are importing subsidized onions for 25% of the production cost) and the federal government no longer enforcing anti-trust law (groups of grocery wholesalers are now colluding to set prices via reverse auctions) this is one of the most bleak periods for farmers in the last century.

Other operations are like tenant farmers. Chicken producers are a great example of that. They basically own risk.

Many businesses operate on the edge or need lines of credit that may or may not continue to exist.

Re:From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages by s1artibartfast on Sunday March 29, 2020 @09:43AM (#22718940)
Im not sure where you are from, but in general, farming is a cutthroat business with small margins in the US

The exception is rich hobby farmers who have no need to make a profit and some specialty crops.