Money flows through the food system from people who eat to landowners who personally live in places like Beverley Hills and Pebble Beach. Food production in America in 2020 has nothing to do with salt-of-the-earth farmer-models they put on packaged food labels.
Agree that US farming financially is kind of messed up. Most subsidies go to big farms. Small farmers constantly go out of business. The price of land keeps going up at the same time. There's little profit, it's received up in the chain going to consumer stores.
Americans can buy food from anywhere. There's an oversupply that is difficult to deal with because the farming industrial complex constantly improves yields. We already get food from Mexico, south america, Canada, fish from the ocean all over. We stupidly subsidize ethanol, we should get rid of that. We need to keep some food production going, both for national security but also because the rural areas are already decimated with job loss and lack of opportunities for people. Every town is full of closed shops and the nearby Walmart supplanted all local things, except maybe a bar.
My family has farms in the south and midwest, I want to support farming and those farmers. The US govt pays us not to plant part of our crop. And they also have price supports on crops which basically sets the price. Of course we all benefit from cheap food. Much of the profit is gone from farming. Most young people take outside jobs because you can't make a living unless you have very large mass scale (this is not exactly a new discovery).
My dad lives in a big city in Texas and inherited his mom's farm. Someone else farms it, he doesn't have anything to do with it. 30 years ago there were some salt of the earth farmers but they all sadly died, at least in my family.
