Iowa Farmers Are Not Impressed By Obama's Meat on Campaign Trail

You learn something new every day! Today, I learned the term “sow liquidation” – I’m totes using it next time I defriend some harpy skank I used to like on Facebook.

Anyhoo, what exactly is the government going to do with $170 million in meat? BBQs at welfare offices around the country? Meat drop flights across the poorest parts of the country with hamhocks and chicken wings falling from the sky like Obama’s delicious meaty manna?

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

President Barack Obama, campaigning
in Iowa today, announced $170 million in government meat
purchases to help farmers struck by drought, helping to send hog
prices to a one-week high.

The purchase of as much as $100 million of pork, $50
million of chicken, and $10 million each of lamb and catfish
come on top of $30 million in assistance announced last week.
Farmers and ranchers are struggling with the worst combination
of heat and dryness since the 1950s, the administration said. 

OK so let me just make sure I have this (I’m kinda dense sometimes for a smart person…), the government’s interference here sent hog prices to a one-week high which means I, as a consumer, am going to then have to pay for that through HIGHER PORK CHOP PRICES later? So up until this, more farmers were having to kill their animals because they couldn’t afford higher feed prices (which are being blamed on drought but might not be so bad if we didn’t burn food for fuel, just sayin) and prices were actually dropping for consumers. DAMN YOU, Obama, stay away from my pig.

Obama said he also directed the Defense Department to speed
up purchases and hold the meat for later use. The buying will
help farmers, and the government will get a better price on
products than if they were bought later, he said.

“We’ll freeze it for later — but we’ve got a lot of
freezers,” Obama told supporters in Council Bluffs as he kicked
off a three-day visit to Iowa, a swing state that is also the
country’s leading producer of pork, soybeans, corn and ethanol.
“That will help ranchers, you know, who are going through tough
times right now.”

Just to put this into perspective, the Defense Department buys about 94 million pounds of beef, 64 million pounds
of pork and 500,000 pounds of lamb annually. And you think the government is too bloated!

The USDA says the meat will go to food assistance programs – anyone else grow up broke like me and remember that “delicious” gubmint cheese? Way to waste $170 million worth of quality Iowa meat, yo.

$170 million worth of meat is only about 10 hours’ worth of the nation’s meat output (ooh, that sounded dirty). Unfortunately for Obama on his little campaign trip, the corn belt isn’t buying it. The issue – as JDA has been saying for yeeeears, come on you guys! – is that farmers are required by the same government kind enough to buy up 10 hours’ worth of meat to use a whopping FORTY percent of this year’s corn crop to produce engine-killing ethanol. Make it stop already, please, and get the government out of our freaking fields, they obviously have no idea what they’re doing. So crops are drying up and prices are going to be insane as a result but meat prices are down so let’s buy some up and freeze it? I honestly don’t understand what these people are thinking.

Instead of buying up an immaterial amount of meat, how about an ethanol waiver? That might lighten up a bit of the pressure on these poor guys – at least a lot better than the government hoarding meat in these giant freezers of theirs. This whole drought thing will not pan out well, even worse with bizarre government ethanol requirements in place. Plus my engine will thank you, Mr Government, for letting my gasoline refiners lay off on the freaking corn fuel for a minute thankyouverymuch. Food not fuel! How douchey are we that kids are starving in Africa and we’re burning 40% of our corn on a “biofuel” that really does nothing but keep lobbyists and car makers/repair shops in a job?! BLEH.

Corn is up 60% over the last two months with no sign of getting any better so we might as well brace for a Fed bacon buying program now or else this is gonna hurt. Get ready for $6 a gallon gas, if we’re lucky. Of course, the government doesn’t think the drought is going to be a problem for gas prices but then again, they’re the ones thinking freezing 10 hours’ worth of meat is going to make the slightest dent in farmers’ bigger issue. Sigh.

The AAA disagrees:

The increase in ethanol prices helped spark a 16-cent jump in the
national average gasoline price in July—the biggest increase for that
month on record—to $3.45 per gallon. Four cents of that increase are
attributable to ethanol, said Michael Green, spokesman for the American
Automobile Association, a consumer travel group.

“If ethanol prices had not increased as a result of the drought,
there would not have been a record increase in the price of gasoline for
July,” Mr. Green said.

OMG wait that is not at all what the EPA said! The nerve! Funny (or maybe not), I blamed corn over a year ago for high gas prices.

Anyone else want a big fat burger after reading all this? Better go get one before the government buys up all the good stuff.