The lobby organization that does the bidding of Kansas Farm Bureau apparently believes high fuel prices, high chemical costs and other profit killing farm input expenses are good for KFB members and for the rest of the country in general. Why else would it endorse Biden Administration vote-in-the bag Sharice Davids for another term in congress?
The basic economics of farming are only slightly different than they are for any other business. If costs of production exceed sales of product, you lose. Someone needs to explain that to VOTE FBF- the political action committee of Kansas Farm Bureau.
Imagine a local retailer who purchases inventory from a wholesaler then resells it from his downtown business storefront. Different profit models apply in different industries, but a typical method or price setting is cost of the product plus a multiplier to cover additional non-inventory costs like payroll and taxes and insurance and upkeep of facilities and equipment. Equipment wears out, so a prudent profit model includes a percentage set aside to replace that equipment when it’s no longer serviceable. The whole idea is that business operators have more costs than simply the obvious ones in inventory and production, and if you don’t cover those costs over the long term, you go out of business. Literally hundreds of businesses outside the farming industry fail every year in Kansas because they don’t accommodate these costs and manage themselves accordingly. Staying in business, particularly in a rural state, is a tough job – and entrepreneurs don’t need bad government giving them additional hurdles to clear.
Farmers operate under a Catch 22 – they always have a market for their wares, but they have only limited control over their pricing. Any farmer will tell you that he’s felt the squeeze in the last couple of years under the Biden economy – which has been supported and exacerbated at every turn by Sharice Davids’ near perfect voting record in support of failed Biden/Harris policy.
If you’ve bought groceries or gasoline or car insurance or virtually anything else anytime in the last three years, you know exactly what’s going on. Biden’s awful, socialist-focused monetary policy of printing borrowed dollars and pumping trillions of them repeatedly into the economy, long after the challenges caused by government Covid shutdowns had passed, spawned inflation and high prices not seen in a generation.
Flooding the economy with all that cash is only part of the problem. Sharice Davids supported Biden in his quest to curtail petroleum production in the U.S., causing the massive spike in prices we’ve all been enduring since 2021. And that cost didn’t just impact fuel; it jacked up costs of anything containing petroleum – fertilizers and weed suppressants and insecticides; rubber for tires and hoses and overall costs of shipping, not to mention fuel that powers the tractors and the combines tilling soil, planting and harvesting crops.
Couple those price increases with the disastrous political climate which has been allowed to explode due to poor American leadership on the world stage – a war in Europe, another one in the Middle East, OPEC oil production cuts and the resulting fears of geopolitical risk among world markets – and the reduction in commodity prices farmers have endured is a natural response.
And with every bobble, dropped pass, lost opportunity and incompetent judgment of the Biden Administration, Sharice Davids has been right there to vote in favor of it. Her voting record is clear and recorded in black and white.
Somehow Kansas Farm Bureau PAC thought this disastrous record and Davids’ serial enabling of it justified an endorsement to convince Kansas farmers in the Third District they should vote for her. Apparently even with everything she’s done to help put Kansas farmers back into debt or ruin them completely, KFB thought the time was right to go hat in hand to her just because she holds a seat on the House AG Committee, where a new U.S. Farm Bill always seems to be under discussion no matter when the last one was passed.
Although the majority of the vote in the Third District Congressional race will come from the population masses far removed from agriculture in Johnson and Wyandotte County, farmers across the Sunflower State should demand an explanation of this move by the state’s leading farm organization which is so counterproductive to their interests.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
