On 6/9/2019 5:53 PM, Shadow wrote:
No, Bolsonaro won't export to the Chinese because they're
"communists". The silos are full of soy beans. Farmers are going
bankrupt paying for storage. On the upside, soybean oil is half-price,
and it doesn't contain the more dangerous chemicals because it's made
from a 1-2 year old harvest.

The US sometimes has soybeans up the ass too. All the doom and gloom is
rhetoric. One of the few things to get bipartisan support is the
agricultural bill, aka welfare for farmers. By farmers I don't mean Old
MacDonald. Most family farms were forced out it the '70s by Earl Butz'
'Get big or get out!' plan.

iirc Brazil took the US to the WTO over the cotton subsidies. The real
kicker is when you realize the subsidies and related publicly funded
massive water projects means you can grow cheap cotton in the deserts of
Arizona.

Until the water runs out that is. There was a flourishing Indian
civilization in that area around 1000 CE with an extensive network of
irrigation ditches. Unfortunately desert irrigation tends to increase
soil salinity and eventually your civilization goes back to living on
lizards and cactus tunas. Of course since agriculture tends to support
population increases there's a bit of a die off when it fails. And so it
goes...