the reality of farm life.

Well, that conspiracy theory is busted: No, someone isn't killing off cattle in Kansas. 

The modern Jeremiah, Ann Barnhardt, who is usually ahead of the curve in reporting conspiracy theories that later turn out to be true, has some expertise in the cattle business, and she explains why this conspiracy theory is bunk:

The reported “epicenter” of this heat event was Ulysses, KS. That’s my old stomping grounds, and I would take a spitball guess that within a 100 mile radius of Ulysses, KS there are close to a million cattle on feed in confinement feedlots, maybe more. So 10,000 deads, statewide, really isn’t a “massive die-off”....
This has happened before – much worse, in fact- and will happen again. Heat death loss is a calculated and accounted-for risk in cattle feeding. As is death loss from blizzards and ice storms. It’s part of the deal.

Yes, farming is a high risk occupation, be you small farmers or running a huge farm.

As noted in earlier posts, there are major problems for farmers all over the world from the Ukraine war and from the post covid supply chain problems, which have resulted in the shortage and increased price of fertilizers, and the increase in the price of fuel has made things worse.

Agri sites have a lot of information out there, but the MSM reporters often get things wrong: one wonders if their rural knowledge comes from Green Acres.

I have noted here on my blog the problems of our rural area, including African swine flu that led to some of our friends who raised a few pigs for extra income to lose them to disease. 

And the problem of bird flu is big in Asia, but not so much a problem since we are off the bird migration routes, but we do have times when chickens develop disease and are lost (not to mention typhoons which destroyed our chicken farm a couple years ago, luckily at a time between "grows" so we didn't have to bury a couple thousand chickens).

We grow rice, and other farms in our area grow vegetables or have chicken farms. We didn't rebuild our chicken farm because the profit margin was minimal and our nephew who ran it decided to move to the UK and work as a caregiver, where his children, now proud UK citizens, have made a life for themselves.

Sigh.

All that romantic blather about mother gaia and the wonderfulness of traditional life is bunk: trying to make a living on a small rural farm requires hard work and has a lot of times when you lose the crop. Which is why ten perecent of Filipinos migrate to work or live overseas either as migrants or contract workers.

thanks to land reform, many of our family's farm fields were bought by the farmers who cultivated them.  But many of these farmers are now old and since land reform made them more prosperous, they sent their kids to school, and the kids got jobs elsewhere, so many of our farmers are from Joy's family's town in the Visayas.

This report in the Inquirer has a lot of the technical details.

A lot of people moved back to our area when they lost their jobs with covid, but a lot of them don't know how to plant and harvest rice like their parents and grandparents, and they are now hoping to get their jobs back. 

We are slowly mechanizing our farms (our remaining fields and the fields of the farmers who we subcontract to grow rice).

But now the price of fertilizer (both ordinary fertilzer and the organic chicken manure for our organic fields) has skyrocketed. And the price of diesel to run the machines and irrigation pumps has also gone up.

the small farmers who no longer want to farm their land sometimes have sold portions of land to outsiders (returning OWF for example, who subcontract someone to farm the land). Others, especially near the roads, have sold plots to people who want to own a rural house.

This has been noticed by our mayor who is trying to make our city diversify from rice and sandle making into a tourist area since with the new expressways we are only two hours from Manila, and there are many urban attractions and nearby nature areas. 

And we also have a lot of motocycle rallies that go through here on weekends.

I am hoping all of this will improve the economy and supply local jobs.

Kuya had renovated some of our upstairs guest rooms for BNB tourism shortly before covid hit, so hopefully we will be able to take advantage of tourism if things continue to improve.