#Feudalism chart united states gov Patch#

Small farms, defined as those bringing in less than $350,000 a year before expenses, accounted for just a quarter of food production in 2017, down from nearly half in 1991. Roecker estimates he’s losing $30,000 a month.Įven large companies are facing unprecedented challenges Dean Foods, a global dairy producer that buys milk from thousands of small farmers, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, November 12, and is seeking a sale, a move that could further hamper farmers looking for places to sell their milk.įarmers have always talked of looming disaster, but the duration and severity of the current crisis suggests an alarming and once unthinkable possibility - that independent farming is no longer a viable livelihood. “It hits you so hard when you feel like you’re the one who is losing the legacy that your great-grandparents started,” said Randy Roecker, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who has struggled with depression and whose neighbor Leon Statz committed suicide last year after financial struggles forced him to sell his 50 dairy cows. Farmers aren’t the only workers in the American economy being displaced by technology, but when they lose their jobs, they also ejected from their homes and the land that’s been in their family for generations. Suicides in farm communities are happening with alarming frequency.

More than half of all farmers have lost money every year since since 2013, and lost more than $1,644 this year. Now they’re less focused on their legacy than about making it through the week.įarm debt, at $416 billion, is at an all-time high. Mary, 79, and John, 80, had hoped to leave the farm to their two sons, age 55 and 50, who still live with them and run the farm. “What do you do when you you’re up against the wall and you just don’t know which way to turn?” Rieckmann says, as her ancient fridge begins to hum. Two bill collectors have taken out liens against the farm. There are weeks where the entire milk check goes towards the $2,100 monthly mortgage payment. The Rieckmanns receive about $16 for every 100 pounds of milk they sell, a 40 percent decrease from six years back. But it’s harder than ever to make any money, much less pay the debt, Mary Rieckmann says, in the yellow-wallpapered kitchen of the sagging farmhouse where she lives with her husband, John, and two of their seven children. The Rieckmanns are about $300,000 in debt, and bill collectors are hounding them about the feed bill and a repayment for a used tractor they bought to keep the farm going. But they’ve never seen a crisis quite like this one. Mary and John Rieckmann, who now run the farm and its 45 cows, have seen all manners of ups and downs - droughts, floods, oversupplies of milk that sent prices tumbling.

#Feudalism chart united states gov Patch#

For nearly two centuries, the Rieckmann family has raised cows for milk in this muddy patch of land in the middle of Wisconsin.