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    Quasar FunkHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:41am

    At the same time, we’re importing a lot of corn, because the cost of shipping by rail actually make it cheaper for many American livestock producers to bring in corn from South America than to ship it from other U.S. states.

    Fucking capitalism at its finest.

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      la-federaleQuasar Funk
      4/13/16 10:02am

      The huge federal corn subsidies, not mentioned here presumably because gawker is a trash, are the real problem.

      So, fucking government at its finest.

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      Quasar Funkla-federale
      4/13/16 10:08am

      That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about logistics and the capitalistic drive for profit.

      This isn’t about corn. We see it with every “Made in China” sticker on every...everything we buy. Some suits on Wall Street crunch the numbers and realize that an already profitable company can be slightly more profitable because closing a domestic factory down and paying kids in China pennies then shipping containers across the fucking ocean to get here will save a few cents per unit.

      It’s mind-bogglingly stupid, and it’s the inherent risk of living in a corporatocracy.

      Are corn subsidies stupid? Maybe, maybe not, but that has nothing to do with what I was talking about, which is shipping something across an ocean to get here, when it can be made here for slightly more money.

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    Low Information BoaterHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:41am

    If only we could make trains out of corn, than ran on tracks made of corn, over bridges of corn, through cornfields. ETA: Great, now I want elotes.

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      curiousLow Information Boater
      4/13/16 9:44am

      We can do it. We have the technology.

      Make America Corn Again!

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      bipitybopLow Information Boater
      4/13/16 10:01am

      It pretty much already exists in North Dakota.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Pala…

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    BobbySeriousHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:40am

    This is one of the areas where NAFTA has had seriously negative consequences for Mexican farmers and led to millions of Mexicans flooding to America desperately looking for work.

    http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/…

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      Bon MorteBobbySerious
      4/13/16 9:45am

      Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law, Hillary was beside him the entire time.

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      Dat010203Bon Morte
      4/13/16 9:56am

      My god, you’re right!! If only there was someone who could solve this problem by shouting in a monotone!!

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    Scoop KHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:38am

    I’m amaized

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      PoimanentlyPuckeredScoop K
      4/13/16 9:42am

      Ew. That one shucked.

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      EvenBaggierTrousers4PoimanentlyPuckered
      4/13/16 9:53am

      Let’stalk about it.

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    benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:50am

    One way to look at it is that rail is too expensive, but another to consider that shipping is too cheap. My husband works in the industry, and these ships are making $5000/day. That’s not much, to pay the crew and fuel from, and it used to be as high as $20,000/day. You pay not for the distance, but for the amount of time your grain is on the ship. Now, it’s so cheap that sellers choose to leave their grain sitting on the ship in the harbor rather than paying overtime for workers to unload it. That’s a very strange economic situation for the industry. It’s caused in part by too many ships being built.

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      SoniaGbenjaminallover
      4/13/16 10:09am

      wtf? Can’t we turn those shipbuilders into bridgebuilders or something we need? the hell

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      benjaminalloverSoniaG
      4/13/16 10:17am

      Well, they are coming primarily from Asia, so those governments are the ones deciding that they wanted to enter the market when they did. This is exacerbated by low fuel costs, and aging rail systems.

      This is one more reason why growing globally traded commodity crops is less economically stable than growing food for domestic consumption, not to mention worse for the land and the farmers and the hungry in America. These surplus crops are heavily subsidized, too, and most government money goes to giant producers, not family farms.

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    Vitamin VHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:44am

    President Trump will put a stop to this. No corn comes over the wall. In fact, we’ll build a trench near the wall and any corn that arrives at the border will be shoved right into the corn hole.

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      wpwVitamin V
      4/13/16 9:47am

      All non-orange foods will be banned!

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      MFEJAL grey because who knows...Vitamin V
      4/13/16 9:48am

      and with the summer heat, we will have a popcorn wall. We will use helicopters to pour syrup, and use the wall to watch movies with HUGE projectors.

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    justachickHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:40am

    there was a time where farmers were being paid to grow it because the gov wanted to make lots of ethanol fuel. is that still a thing?

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      Misteaks were madejustachick
      4/13/16 10:14am

      Unfortunately yes. Hopefully the unwanted ethanol in my gasoline will soon go away forever and ever. I could use the mpg’s back.

      It is getting better since the EPA’s ludicrous 15% ethanol requirement got the smack down by Congress.

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      PeeEssAyjustachick
      4/13/16 11:22am

      Yes, all but one of the people running for president thinks we need more corn subsidies and higher ethanol mandates. Ted Cruz is the lone voice of reason on this issue.

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    Cylontater: Genital WhispererHamilton Nolan
    4/13/16 9:45am

    I just wanted to post this:

    GIF
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      WhuhtHamilton Nolan
      4/13/16 2:57pm

      America’s relationship with corn is an interesting commentary on how both capitalism and the government can be misused and result in something the purists for each group say their system prevents. From what I understand it began in response to the Great Depression, when the government started farm subsidies to keep farmers afloat. Which is good in the short run, but these subsidies never ended, and became so substantial that lobbyists entered the game. For whatever reason corn lobbyists were the most effective, and this resulted in America producing vastly more corn than it knew what to do with. They even came up with new alternative uses for it that are actually worse than their alternatives - High Fructose Corn Syrup (a replacement for sugar that is worse for people than real sugar) and corn ethanol (okay, it’s a fuel alternative, which is good, but Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is 7x more efficient than corn ethanol - it’s a really bad choice if you’re going with a fuel alternative).

      Economically, it’s idiotic - a tremendously inefficient allocation of resources to overproduce a commodity with little to no nutritional value at the expense of whatever else the land and resources could be used for. Ugly supply vs. demand, ugly resource efficiency. But good luck putting that behemoth down. So much for the “invisible hand” of the market or government resulting in the best use.

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        Michael ZaiteWhuht
        4/13/16 4:57pm

        It’s also an interesting example of how a complex organism can behave in patterns resembling a virus or other infection.

        Grasses (grains are grasses) are some seriously creepy fuckers once you look into them. They get in the collective brain, spread like a plague and make us completely dependent on them.

        We may not have developed Agriculture without them, we may not have ever started roaming the savana if there wasn’t tall grass to stand and look over/hide below. Evidence even shows very early mammals (Gondwanatherians) may have only developed a foothold in the Jurassic Period because of that fancy new grass plant showing up and creating an exploitable niche that spread across the still connected supercontinent.

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      Dave Hamilton Nolan
      4/13/16 9:39am

      There is a poop joke here...but I am not the one to make it. Take it away Kinja:

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        MBCockDave
        4/13/16 9:43am
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        TTotallerDave
        4/13/16 9:53am

        One day in the future, as we stand to wipe, we will wistfully look down into the porcelain bowl, remembering the days when there used to be corn in our poop and not the other way around.

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