Today I read a story that was, to put it mildly, disturbing. Farmers in the United States are killing themselves at more than double the rate of our war veterans. The war veteran suicide rate is already much higher than the general population. The author asks the question, why is this happening? In fact, farmer suicide rates worldwide are astronomical.
Reasons given span a wide range of causes. Farmers want to provide, but can't pay their bills, can't hold onto their land, can't afford to feed their own families. They have rallied in Washington, DC to raise awareness for their cause and help those in need with help hotlines and therapists who understand the farmers problems. Therapists who don't understand farming may tell a suicidal farmer to take a vacation. Vacations aren't on the list for farmers facing the markets of today. The farmers have apparently not received funding to help treat those in need and create stronger farming communities.
What are these markets? Selling a bushel of wheat for $3.70. That's 60 pounds. Enough to make 70 one pound breadloaves. That price in commodities markets doesn't cover the costs the farmer put out to create it. One loaf of bread costs more than the wheat to create 70x it's output.
Why are these prices so deformed? Why is the farmer told to go bite it, while commodity prices remain lower than the cost of production? The article was written very well. The author was a farmer at one time and focuses on farming. Nowhere was the question posed as to why commodity prices are so low that farmers are ending their lives. With interest rates where they are and households already at the limit of what they can afford in food, rent or mortgage and health insurance, rising food costs would immediately stimy economic growth. We feed our families first, then buy the other things.
If we are looking at any contraction in the real economy, it seems farmers, the ones who feed us through actual human production, are forced to eat shit, first. Perhaps they should have rallied in front of Wall St. instead of at the White House. It seems like the root of this problem comes from Central Banks around the world. It comes from manipulated interest rates. Stock markets getting Central Bank funded tailwinds that cause investors to turn their backs on commodities that are kept artificially low. Stock markets, pushed ever with fake money injections from banks will always take precedence over a market that no one wants to see go higher except the people actually producing for it. Thus, commodities languish and farmers suffer. Until when?
Could the farm community benefit from it's own token? Buying Bitcoin is probably lower on the priority list for farmers than going on a vacation they can't afford. Is there a way for people of a nation or anywhere in the world could help farmers where their own governments won't? Or is it better to let free market forces take effect. Where farmers just stop producing until they get what they want. When politicians have to face a population that's growing hungrier by the day.
For those interested, here is the story I'm referencing: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas-farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers