Summary
Trump’s move to defund USAID is causing unintended consequences for American farmers and businesses.
The Washington Post reports that USAID purchases billions in U.S. agricultural products, with American farms supplying 41% of its food aid.
The funding freeze has already halted $340 million in food shipments, leaving tons of wheat stranded in Houston.
Experts warn this decision directly harms American jobs and businesses, as much of USAID’s aid is administered through U.S.-based organizations employing American workers.
I think that would affect the rest of us, because that means family farms might be taken over by corporations, which is already a huge problem. Because of the downstream effects on the nation as a whole, I sincerely hope they learn their damned lesson.
Do they deserve to lose everything for their stupidity? Sure. Do the rest of us deserve to pay for their stupidity with an increasingly corporatized or weakened agricultural base? No.
Most small farms die when the next family member in line to take over doesn’t want to do it. This is personal for me because my father was a farmer and died when I was a teenager. My family now just rent out the land we own and I ended up not becoming a farmer because I don’t want to die young like he did. Farming is a stressful as hell job and it’s getting more expensive to even get into it anymore unless you got investors or inherit everything like my father did. If you don’t, then you’ll be in debt forever.
Wait until they cut crop insurance subsidies.
Hopefully, they lose it to agricorps, and then get pissed about being exploited, and come back on the side of the working class.
Just sit back, plan for famine, plagues and war. Find your community. Buy used, buy from locals and cut way back on vacations, eating out and travel. Grow a garden, it’s like printing money. Hunt, fish, forage or get into inexpensive but useful new hobbies.
The violent right is dumb but they will finally out who is screwing them and it isn’t immigrants, gays or DEI. They can’t blame Democrats either because Republicans control everything now. They created this monster, let them fight him.
I once thought it was that simple so I understand where people on here are coming from on all this. But after ten years in the San Joaquin valley, ag central, I can tell you, having grown up in Seattle and thus seeing the contrast, there is a distinct power in fundamental formal education and when that is lacking it doesn’t matter what happens to them, the powers-that-be always know how gullible they are and will mold them like playdoh. I think the schools need to be funded by the central government not local governments. Big city liberals should have to put up frankly with their local neighborhood schools being taken down a few notches through evenly spreading education funds across jurisdictions if they don’t want schools way out in the boondocks to be as vapid as one finds them. If you won’t pay for their education my attitude is don’t complain about their politics and try your best not to complain about their intelligence. I find that hard myself - I get frustrated all the time with the people in this small town, but I still try to remind myself what I’ve learned about education itself and I try to have compassion. Maybe that’s what ten years out in the boondocks teaches a Seattleite.
Well, if they don’t turn around, they become far less effectual when dirt poor, thanks to the system they created. And the poorer they are, the faster they die off.
We already do pay for their education. What do you think the Department of Ed does? Title IX funding? It comes from blue states.
I’ll have compassion for them, once they stop being class traitors.
My understanding is that it’s the taxes from the surrounding neighborhoods where homes are located that fundamentally pay for schools.
Partly, they do. Mostly, it’s title ix funding.
Gosh that all sounds ghastly. So big city liberals pay bookoo bucks in property taxes, show up to PTA meetings, school district meetings, talk about what they pay, kids get better educated, become liberals mostly, grow up, repeat; meanwhile, rural kids get little more than dirt to learn with, worse education, pity allowance from big city liberals working their magic in congress, getting them some money from the department of education, at least something more, but it’s not enough, so they grow up poorly educated, become wide open to the sophistry and propaganda of the far right, and now they get picked clean off the countryside, ushered into a voting booth, they vote for a fascist who now moves to eliminate the department of education thus further threatening the quality of their education and what little extra money they get. Am I getting that right? I’m green party so I just find this all very disorienting.
Right? Reap what you sow lol