• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Many of those farmers don’t own land, they lease it. Maybe they own one field because they come from an old farming family, but not the rest of the fields they need to even break even. And a tractor needs to be driven and you need to get up early even if it is GPS-enabled and can micro-dose fertiliser into the exact spots the field needs.

    Don’t bring your US “one farm from horizon to horizon” POV into European agriculture. That’s pretty much the case pretty much nowhere over here.

    Lastly, I never said “those workers”. Did you even reply to the right comment.

    • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Many of those farmers don’t own land, they lease it.

      Of course, the rentiers are worse. I agree with that.

      And a tractor needs to be driven and you need to get up early even if it is GPS-enabled and can micro-dose fertiliser into the exact spots the field needs.

      Right, because they’re not workers. The farmers are managers and owners of technology. And they’re becoming unnecessary.

      At least try to understand the role of fossil fuels and technology in all of this.

      Here, start with Luddites: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Of course, the rentiers are worse. I agree with that.

        Rentiers which receive agricultural subsidies, btw.

        Right, because they’re not workers. The farmers are managers and owners of technology. And they’re becoming unnecessary.

        Petite bourgois are by definition workers. Those farmers very much can’t live from capital income alone. They’re folks who studied (in one way or the other) agriculture, they are making decisions as to what to grow when and where, they’re out there in the fields grabbing dirt and inspecting roots and making decisions about when to fertilise, when to harvest. They’re farmers, doing farmer stuff. That doesn’t change just because they hired the neigbour’s son to drive the tractor over one field while they’re inspecting another. Or, once every year, a bunch of Ukrainians come along and help with harvesting stuff that needs harvesting by hand.

        And no they’re very much not unnecessary. What’s it with vegans and being city kids completely alienated from how their food is grown.

        At least try to understand the role of fossil fuels and technology in all of this.

        It’s not just fossil fuels, import-dependent agriculture is generally a problem and those issues also include, say, phosphates. Not a climate change issue but a general sustainability one (those mines won’t last forever), with further impacts on the local environment (overfertilisation and everything).

        Meanwhile saying “your diesel is going to cost more” to farmers who couldn’t afford to buy electric tractors if those even existed in the first place is tone-deaf as fuck.

        Do you think organic farmers have it easier than conventional ones? Or don’t drive diesels? Boy oh boy. The prices you get for produce are higher, yes, but it’s also more work. Which wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t saying “farmers don’t work”.

        • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Petite bourgois are by definition workers.

          No, they’re not. They’re always blurring the lines. Clearly class traitors in this context.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            So they don’t produce surplus value that is siphoned off by capital?

            All those contractors that went bankrupt because Trump doesn’t pay his bills, do you intend to say that to their face? That because they own a literal hammer, they can’t get fucked over?

            Even fucking tankies, at least some of them, acknowledge this: In the GDR tradespeople, from baker to electrician, owned (as in actually owned) their business. Hiring a journeyman and having a trainee doesn’t bourgeois make.