..and will check out the clips later. I've got a quiche in the oven. I enjoy raising a bit of our food and preparing it myself.

My ag background involved cropping. Primarily looking at winter legume cover crops and no till summer grain sorghum (milo). However these days I lean toward converting crop land to pasture/diverse grasslands and raising animals for high quality nutrient dense meats, eggs, milk, and so on. The idea would be to emulate all the bison that once maintained our native grasslands. Lots of small producers would be ideal, but not likely. Oh well I can dream.

Thanks for the story and the OT. Hope your holidays are going well!

for new things or new plans. Don't have any, or perhaps far too many at this exact moment, depending on what one means by a plan. We have a half-day break in the weather so my wife threw in a load of wash in the early pre-dawn which we then jointly hung up outside in the hopes that it'll get dry before the rain returns. Now, today, it is mostly a day off, but really not, just no serious pressure on any given task. It's time to maybe spend less time on the news and shit and more on doing stuff, that way there will be sless stuff to do in the spring. (does anybody really believe that kind of shit?) Ah well,

be well and have a good one

sounds like you had parents who were dedicated to respecting nature while supporting a family. Lucky you!
The last time I had cattle, from 1988 to 1999, I saw a lot of graft at auction barns. Rich ranchers got their cattle in the ring first, and by the time ordinary people got their cows in the pen, people with money had come and gone. Instead of barns 20 miles away, we hauled 85 miles away. Cattle lose weight in transit, and the longer you haul them, the thinner they get. When my husband at the time passed away, I sold out the herd. I sold the hay field. I retained by agricultural tax exemption by switching to raising horses. I could sell one colt and make enough to fund the whole operation for 2 years. I bred German and Belgian warm bloods. I also bought the occasional thb or thb/quarter horse and trained them, made really good money selling them to English equestrian event competitors.
My younger first cousin was a big rice farmer. He managed to buy a water company that supplied rice farms in the center of that huge East TX commercial ag area, and he immediately cut off the water supply to his competitors. I occasionally practiced in those counties, and the local judges always gleefully showed me the law suit injunction orders that stopped his crooked operation in its' tracks. Very embarrassing. You pick your friends, you are stuck with your relatives.
It is difficult to cut out TPTB from the food supply chain. Meanwhile, seems plants and trees emit molecules that are very healthy for humans. A long walk in the fields and forests does much more than soothe the soul.
Thanks for the OT, dear friend!

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Although I am streamlining my own views on predatory capitalism with a focus on different human endeavors, I think it is pretty clear that 'food' is going to suffer greatly — just like other Human Rights such as health care, affordable housing, and higher education. They have all suffered severe compromises from being forced down hard into the mold for predatory-capitalist-profit-taking.

The purist, anti-social rules of Western Capitalist Ideology siphons off extreme profits to the Top during the business cycle — (including systemic wage theft) — supposedly for later trickle-downs in the form of tax credits, fantasy deductions, or dividends from maturing risk-based investments. Political lobbying comes first off the top along with industry-level dividends and distributions.

The wage theft issue is endemic due to very sad psychological programming. The numbers are huge and turn the wage gap between classes into an abyss. All those involved in production have learned to justify the theft and devaluation of their work time. Their savings and investments are risk-based and are basically self-insured. They are rewarded with tax breaks that they can use if they ever earn enough money to do so.

Not only is the Western Capitalist Ideology undermining and cheating the future of Western civilization — it is doing so very rapidly. Meanwhile, a broad geopolitical audience is quietly watching this happen across many commercial endeavors to the detriment of US society.

US citizens consent to this economic system when they vote in Federal elections, where the will of the People means nothing. The political mechanism for reform does not exist. Without reform there is only revolution — but the people are too divided for revolution. Thus, lifestyle sacrifices and voluntary population drop-outs are the methods people use to cope from the bottom-up. Some wait for the collapse. This sounds pessimistic, but the collapse of empires ushers in many new opportunities, including the enlightened opportunity to do the right thing for fellow human beings.