#agri.

[bestagriculture]

Step-by-Step: The Comprehensive Process of Agriculture

Welcome to a detailed exploration of the fascinating world of agriculture! In this article, we will take you on a journey through the step-by-step process of agriculture, uncovering the intricate techniques and practices that cultivate the food we enjoy every day. From seed selection to harvest, each stage plays a crucial role in producing high-quality crops.

Welcome to a detailed exploration of the fascinating world of agriculture! In this article, we will take you on a journey through the step-by-step process of agriculture, uncovering the intricate techniques and practices that cultivate the food we enjoy every day. From seed selection to harvest, each stage plays a crucial role in producing high-quality crops. Importance of Agriculture in…

[mispelled]

Scary dog privilege

[ninjastormz]

THE BUNNIES 🥺

[agried]

saw an edit by @fishyizm and really wanted to draw it so i did. behold, ikea

there are many errors and it's low quality but i need to get working on other things so i'm throwing this out here now

[socctime]

he's cute, just a silly lil guy

[rosewind2007]

So ridiculously excited!!!

System Collapse coming soon! (November 2023)

Argh!!! Agri-bot!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

For 40 years, Big Meat has openly colluded to rig prices

On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Noted socialist agitator Adam Smith once wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Smith was articulating a basic truth: when an industry grows concentrated, it grows cozy. Cultural differences between dominant firms are homogenized as top executives move from company to company, cross-pollinating attitudes and approaches. Ambituous, firm-hopping workaholic top brass make all their friends at the office, and so their former colleagues from one or two jobs back remain in their social circles.

Once an industry consists of half a dozen firms, the people running those companies constitute an incestuous financial polycule. They are executors of one anothers' estates, best men and maids of honor at one anothers' weddings, godparents to each others' kids. They play on the same softball teams and take family vacations together.

It would be heartwarming if it wasn't so costly to the rest of us. Remember Smith's maxim: "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Class solidarity among corporate executives forms a united front to screw us in every conceivable way, from corrupting our politicians to maiming and cheating workers to gouging buyers.

That's the basis of American antitrust law. When Robert Sherman was stumping for the passage of the Sherman Act, America's first major antitrust law, he thundered "If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

Or rather, that was the basis of American antitrust law – until the Reagan era, when the fringe theories of the Nixonite criminal Robert Bork were elevated to a new orthodoxy. Under Bork's conception of antitrust, monopolies were evidence of excellence. If a company puts all its competitors out of business, that must mean that it is "efficient."

In Bork's fantasy world, the only way a company could attain dominance is by being so beloved by its customers that every competitor withers away. Governments that bust monopolies aren't protecting the public from "autocrats of trade"; they're overthrowing the winners of an election where you "vote with your wallet" to pick the best company.

But Bork and his co-fantasists couldn't quite manage all that with a straight face. They grudgingly admitted that a certain kind of bad monopolist could hypothetically exist, one that used its "market power" to raise prices or lower quality. Only when these offenses against our "consumer welfare" occurred should the state step in to protect its people.

This may sound good in theory, but in practice, it was a dead letter. The consumer welfare test isn't as simple as "If prices go up after a merger, punish the company." Instead, the government had to prove that the price raises came from "market power," and not from an increase in energy or labor costs, or some other "exogenous factor," like Mercury being in retrograde:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as

And wouldn't you know it, it turns out that the mathematical models prescribed to distinguish greed from unavoidable circumstance inevitably "prove" that the monopolist wasn't at fault. Surely, it's just just a coincidence that the priesthood that understood how to make and interpret these models were Chicago School Economists who sold model-making as a service to companies that wanted to raise prices.

Pro-monopoly economists insist that this isn't true, and that their theory still has room to prosecute bad monopolies and cartels where they occur – more, they say this is already happening. In particular, they insist that "greedflation" can't be real, because it would require the kind of conspiracy that Smith warned of, and that their sickly antitrust enforcement is sufficient to prevent:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

This strains credulity. After all, the CEOs of giant companies in concentrated industries openly boast to their shareholders about how they've used the covid and Ukraine invasion shocks to hike prices to increase their profit margins – not just cover their additional costs:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

While excuseflation is new, open, naked price-fixing by industry cartels is not. Take the meat-packing industry, dominated by a tiny handful of giant corporations whose executives literally ran a betting pool on how many of their workers would get covid each week while working in their cramped, unventilated factories:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55009228

These companies have seen their margins soar – up 300% over the lockdown – while their payments to ranchers and growers cratered:

https://www.reuters.com/business/meat-packers-profit-margins-jumped-300-during-pandemic-white-house-economics-2021-12-10/

All this might leave one wondering whether there isn't something a little, you know, "conspiracy against the publick"-y going on in Big Meat?

Let me tell you about Agri Stats. Agri Stats has been around since 1985. Every large meat packer pays to be a "member" of Agri Stats, and they each submit weekly, detailed statistics about every aspect of their business: all their costs, all their margins, broken out by category. Agri Stats compiles this into phone-book-thick books that each member gets every week, telling them everything about how all of their competitors are running their businesses:

https://www.agristats.com/history

The companies whose data appears in this book are anonymized, but it's trivial to re-identify each supplier. Tyson execs hold regular "naming process" meetings where they go through new books and de-anonymize the data. A Butterball exec confirmed that he "can pick the companies for rankings with 100% certainty."

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, these books are incredibly detailed: "bird weights, freezer inventory, and 'head killed per operating hour.'" Within the cozy meat cartels, Agri Stats acts as a clearinghouse that allows every business in the industry to act in concert, running the entire meat-packing sector as a single company:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-10-03-lawsuit-highlights-why-meat-overpriced/

As interesting as the list of Agri Stats members is, the groups that don't get to see Agri Stats' "books" is just as important: "farmers, workers, or retailers." Agri Stats also offers consulting services to its members. As an exec at pork processor Smithfield put it, Agri Stats advice boils down to four words "Just raise your price."

Agri Stats ranks its members based on how high their prices are – they literally publish a league table with the highest prices at the top. Meat packers pay bonuses to their execs based on how high the company's rank is on that table. Agri Stats meets with its members throughout the year to discuss "price opportunities" and to advise them to "exercise restraint" by restricting supply to keep prices up. When one Agri Stats member considered leaving the cartel, Agri Stats wooed them back by telling them how to make an additional $100k by raising bacon prices.

The reason Dayen is writing about Agri Stats now is that the DoJ Antitrust Division has brought an antitrust suit against them. This is part of a wave of antitrust actions brought by Biden's DoJ and FTC, who, along with his NLRB, are shaping up to be the most pugnacious, public-interest force against corporate power since the Reagan administration:

https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/29124-doj-sues-agri-stats-for-complicity-in-meat-market-manipulation

All this enforcement isn't a coincidence. It comes from an explicit rejection of neoliberalism's core tenets: inequality reflects merit, monopolies are efficient, and government can't do anything. In Biden's DoJ, FTC and NLRB, they're partying like it's 1979:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

What's amazing about the Agri Stats conspiracy to raise prices is that it's been going since the Reagan administration. It's a smoking gun proof that "consumer welfare" never cared about price-fixing and robbing the public (can a gun still smoke after 40 years?). There was never a time when consumer welfare antitrust cared about consumer welfare. It was always and forever a front for "a conspiracy against the publick," a "contrivance to raise prices."

Big Meat has been robbing America for two generations. Some of those stolen funds were used to corrupt our political process. The meat sector gets $50 billion in public subsidies and still gouges us on prices and rips off its suppliers:

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/02/usda-livestock-subsidies-near-50-billion-ewg-analysis-finds

Which means that it's possible that we're simultaneously being ripped off with meat prices and that meat prices are artificially low. Try and wrap your head around that one!

The do-nothing, pro-monopoly neoliberal antitrust is a virus that spread around the world. The EU's antitrust laws were reshaped to mirror American laws after the war through the Marshall Plan, but since the late 1970s, European lawmakers and enforcers have ignored their own laws (just like their American counterparts) and encouraged monopolies as "efficient."

This Made-in-Europe oligopoly, combined with energy and grain shocks from Russian invasion of Ukraine, created the perfect storm for European greedflation. As food prices spiked across the EU, Austrian hacktivist Mario Zechner set out to investigate Austrian grocers' pricing. Using the grocers' own APIs, he was able to compile and analyze a dataset of prices at Austrian grocers:

https://www.wired.com/story/heisse-preise-food-prices/

When Zechner open-sourced his project, collaborators showed up to expand the project across other EU countries, and an anonymous party donated a huge database of prices stretching back to 2017. The data reveals clear collusion among the grocers, who raise prices in near-lockstep, and use gimmicks like cyclic price drops to hide their collusion:

https://github.com/badlogic/heissepreise

Not every grocer has an API, and even the ones that do have APIs could easily block Zechner and co from accessing their data. When that happens, they could – and should – turn to scraping to continue their project. They should also scrape grocers elsewhere, including in Canada, where grocers rigged the price of bread:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/25/deep-scrape/#steering-with-the-windshield-wipers

Because Big Meat's "conspiracy against the publick" isn't unique to meat. It's in all our food, it's in all our goods, it's in all our services. The fact that the meat industry was able to rob American buyers, ranchers and farmers for two generations under a 200' tall neon sign that blinked "AGRI STATS AGRI STATS AGRI STATS" night and day is frankly astonishing.

But there's never just one ant. If the meatheads running Big Meat were able to do this in broad daylight since the NES years, imagine what all the other industries were able to get up to in the shadows.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[shizuchansmilk]

12.08.2024 rkgk

[ninacarstairss]

this episode is going straight into my favorites list. not only was it full of little domestic tarlos moments because you cannot tell me carlos didn’t design the napkins and obsessed over every little detail from the menu to the music, but also the top tier owen and tk moments. there’s this layered relationship that is unfolding little by little and now we’ve gotten a new piece of it, small glimpses in the life of a young tk and the trauma that those years were for both tk and owen, the difficulty in admitting that people are not only good or bad and they can sometimes make mistakes that weigh on other people, how owen struggles with seeing enzo and tk together knowing well that he was absent for many years and also being grateful that someone was present for tk when he couldn’t be, and tk having to face the fact that maybe enzo isn’t who he thought he was but also that person who was with him for ten years was good to him back then. and then nancy becoming captain. i cannot wait to see our bisexual icon nancy become captain. and the 126 will be so happy and proud. but also destroyed at the same time. getting to see that journey these last few episodes with nancy and tommy was very healing and very heavy at the same time. it felt like a punch in the guts and a hug at the same time. and again lone star has this really great way of showing different traumas and responses to it that somehow come to a common closure even when they come from very different sources.

[salatelit]

[neptunesailing]

happy birthday! hope you had a good day. if your requests are open... i've been thinking about your hades game niki art recently, so could i ask for a matching rinne doodle...?

(cw blood)

o goddess of victory, lend me your boons (let me find a way to repay you)

[bestagriculture]

Tools for Growth: Agriculture Accessories in Modern Farming

In the dynamic world of modern farming, it’s essential for agricultural businesses to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and accessories. These innovative solutions not only streamline operations but also promote growth and increased productivity. From cutting-edge machinery to smart irrigation systems, the right tools can make a tangible difference in the success of a farm. In this article, we delve into the realm of agriculture accessories and explore how they contribute to the overall growth of the industry.

In the dynamic world of modern farming, it’s essential for agricultural businesses to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and accessories. These innovative solutions not only streamline operations but also promote growth and increased productivity. From cutting-edge machinery to smart irrigation systems, the right tools can make a tangible difference in the success of a farm. In this article,…

[betweenblackberrybranches]

I swear to god, every fucking 4 weeks i sit there at some point and think "huh why do i suddenly feel so depressed?" Just to then realize that its time for the monthly blood sacrefice and my body decides to make me not enjoy things anymore

[ca-dmv-bot]

Customer: I LOVE CATS AND ANGRY HELLO KITTY DMV: ANGRY WOMAN/VAGINA? Verdict: DENIED

[agried]

"aira! i-" "you need to go! right now!"

(the queen of the wilis spares no mercy.)

YIPPEE it's done. i can now stop tearing out my hair over it (joking) i've never painted before so this was uhh. a challenge! but i really really like the ballet giselle so i wanted to capture at least a bit of the ethereal quality that it gives off... and i thought using painting brushes would help with that. eugh big mistake i had to redo all my colors in the middle of drawing and it was a whole thing but oh well.

thank you @kittysquire for enabling me, i kept randomly talking about the au out of the blue with friends but barely worked on it, so your very excited reaction spurred me to actually draw more for it!

(as an aside... i wonder if anyone can guess who i put in the place of the wilis queen...? hehe)

[cephalos]

hi