Tag Archives: Michael Smith

Planters have been running all out over the last few weeks as the envelope to get spring planted before summer heat and drought sets in even further. We will start with what the market was expecting yesterday and the results of the USDA Planted Progress Report as of yesterday. Discussed at length on yesterday’s Go Farm Yourself spaces meeting via Ag Twitter, the hosts, commodity traders, and the listeners, mostly agriculture producers, farmers,...

Harvest season has sprung upon us in a hurry. We had to spend a few evenings in the fields collecting squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and even dug up all of the potatoes, among the multitude of other things we planted this spring and continue to plant. It’s been a busy few weeks that have been hard both physically as well as mentally due to market conditions but we will get to that. Current Macro ag is coming in hot. Commodities futures are up...

Outside of agriculture there is a feeling of vast quantities, that farmers produce too much corn, soybeans, cotton, and other monocrops in a habitat destroying, bee killing, rural, backward, government sponsored enterprise that is slowly adding to climate change and environmental destruction. Agriculture is largely reactionary and heavily influenced by capitalism. If the need is there, and the price is right, the crop will be produced. One of the...

Green grass is growing finally down south as some rainfalls are being received east of the Colorado River, not that Colorado River, the other one that moves through Austin, and has very little to do with it’s namesake. Grass growing in the spring brings on the grazing and let’s the ranchers get off the expensive feed. Now is also the time to sow sorghum for the herds to clear in the next few months. Net, net it’s still an expensive business to be...

As winter has begun to subside (finally) the real flurry of activity has to happen in short time, as in an every ray of sunshine has to be captured kind of thrust into the growing season. This is also the poorest time you will see farmers as they dump their entire wealth into yet another growing season. I can confirm; we’ve been running for a week straight and have committed the kids toothfairy money to compost, with no end in sight. My son will...

There has been quite a lot of news over the past few years regarding agriculture specific to governmental assistance, from providing crop subsidies during the Trump Trade War to the Biden Administrations attempt to tamp down inflation via meat processing capacity increases, as well as an attempt to revive a few ideas that had been tabled by previous administrations. The largest focus for the USDA is without a doubt the SNAP food assistance program...

Bloomberg News reports an outbreak in Kentucky and Virginia after initial outbreak discovered at Indiana facility last week. Avian flu is nothing new, and as we continue to keep large quantities of poultry in ever increasing numbers in concentrated operations around the poultry processors, the occurrences are likely to become more severe and often. This is mostly because commercial poultry operations look like this: The amount of birds grown...

All throughout the Midwest, Plains, pretty much anywhere that doesn’t get adequate rain you can look on Google maps and see square fields with bright green circles in the middle. These are pivot fields that are irrigated from aquifers below. The corners of those fields are usually left barren. No, these are not the corners I am referring to. The square fields of corners I am referring to go back to biblical days. Some years back I was having...

American capitalism has an everpresent desire for increased profits. Over the course of history, corporations had increased profits largely due to increased population growth. As we have seen from new data coming from the 2020 Census, population growth is beginning to stabilize and flatten, yet corporations are still expected to perform regardless of market conditions, and if population growth is no longer the cosmic funnel of operating revenues,...

“I Quit” Micheal Smith, The Ethics and Economics of Farmers Markets It is early, frosty mornings such as these where I would love to sleep past 6am, enjoy a cup of tea, watch the news and think about what is on the ‘has to get done list’.  These days I think about fence work, discing in compost and turning over weeds and then hitching up the kuelevator to hill up and top off planting rows for February planting. But alas, the market...