Let me state some basic facts from the perspective of a small farmer. I see here so many odd notions about why TSC’s stance seemingly doesn’t matter much. Too many buy into the stereo type of rural = straight, white, male and that somehow small farms that might tend to shop more at TSC don’t count for much.
- 89% of all farms in the US are small family farms.
- 63.5% of young farmers in the US identify as female, nonbinary or a gender other than cis male. 24.2% identify as a sexuality other than heterosexual. Source: https://www.youngfarmers.org/resource/nationalsurveyreport2022/. Story covering that if you don’t want to signup: https://edgeeffects.net/queer-farmers/
- One in five Gen Zers identify as LGBT
- TSC’s customer demographics - you might be surprised to hear - do actually cover a lot of small-scale farms. This report says they average $43k in farm income and are about 441 acres - I acknowledge they are just taking USDA numbers here and extrapolating but this accords with my own experience as a small farmer. A few of us up here prefer to hit the more specialized ag stores in the Central Valley but the TSC is closer and so for a lot of immediate needs we buy there. I’ve even purchased tractor implements at TSC.
- The stereotype of the rural butch lesbian (hi!) is not without substance. Over 3 million LGBTQIA+ people live in rural areas of the US.
conservatives bullied the company for its inclusive policies for close to three weeks
Ooh, were they bullied for an entire three weeks, during Pride month? Poor babies!
These queer farmers
“Got a nice lookin’ crop o’ queer this year, Merle.”
“Yep, plus we got 12 acres o’ weird in the back 40.”
Hell I put 60 dicks in the dirt last Tuesday and the got damn cum beetles eat em up already. Make me so mad, I could spit stead of swaller
Continue never spending a dime there, got it.
Yeah this gonna be easy to support
Yeah, I’d happily boycott them, but apparently I’m not rural enough to even have one close by.
Still, I wish all those queer farmers the best of luck. Fuck bigots.
This town isn’t massive, but the population is about 60,000 with 100,000 in the metro area so not super rural either- but we still have a TSC. I don’t think it’s about how rural you are.
My family literally bought some construction supplies from them a couple of weeks ago. It’s still unused, so we’re taking it back for a refund, and currently boycotting.
What a moment for the small local agricultural supply stores to get some pub and show their hometown roots over the nameless corporate coprolite that has overtaken an entire nation’s value system.
What local agricultural supply stores? I’m only half joking (I live close to one) but there aren’t a ton left
ITT: people who dont buy tractors
I think you are forgetting that there are a lot of hobby farms that were using TS to get their chickens and feed. Lots of gay hobby farms. These people were the profit margin for TS.
Lots of gay hobby farms.
I know you didn’t mean it that way but I kinda want to see what that would look like.
You’ve never seen a gay hobby horse?
No one ever falls out of the saddle, I don’t know why. Must all be great riders.
They also sell rubber horse stall mats which are way cheaper to buy than actual flooring if you’re building a home gym. There are other places to get horse stall mats though.
Tractor Supply sells much more than tractors though
TSC doesn’t sell tractors.
Wow ig I always just assumed. Never actually been inside, just walked by
It’s in the name, Tractor Supply. So if you have small tractors…they supply parts for them. Lot of the stuff I see is for small operations & at a high enough price, for what it is.
Additionally, there’s clothing, some gun stuff, hunting/fishing, animal feed, and a bunch of lawn decorations made in China.
They sure do, but it’s all overpriced.
Tractors and tractor accessories?
Ok Hank
Even it’s name is a lie
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Dog food.
They generally have a lot of animal supplies, for pets, farm animals, and wildlife. Food, medicines, etc. Lemmy folks seem to really like animals.
Lemmy folks seem to really like animals.
…Like most humans.
The one near us has a self serve dog wash. I can take my dogs and use their water, their shampoo, their towels, their dryers, and not have my bathroom covered in dog hair for $10.
Boots and tools
Dog treats, toys, meds
Pet food.
Pet food, equipment, repair parts, tools, livestock feed if you’re a homesteader or farmer or whatever, they sell lots of different stuff.
Construction stuff for home remodeling.
To be fair, that’s the case in the VAST majority of Lemmy threads…
If there ever needs to be a ramen boycott, our voices will be heard!
Never was it that easy for me to take a stand. None of my money will ever go to Tractor Supply.
(I never even heard of them before and had to google if we have them here. They are US only)
They’re right down the road from my house, if you were in the market for baby chickens or ducks they’re the only place to go.
Check your regional Craigslist, mine’s full of them. This is also why the fair exists (besides funnel cake).
You could try a local farmer
You could try a local farmer
LOL. Doesn’t especially work that way city boy.
Edit: Apparently I need to explain. I’m a farmer. Not one farm - not one single farm - I know will sell you either chicks or full grown chickens as some part of their regular operations. Mainly because it’s a pain in the ass and not profitable unless you are highly specialized and only producing chicks, in which case you are probably contracting with someone like TSC, using the cheapest feed imaginable and likely not making much money.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to this. There are probably hobby-ish farms around that will sell you a few chicks for random reasons. And you might get lucky and some farm has an excess for some reason, but generally any farm that’s producing eggs or meat birds needs to keep those chicks. I mean, I’m not kidding, it’s a real struggle to make any money at all even with eggs at $7-8 a dozen.
But you are not, typically, just going to go down to your “local farm” (remember those?) and buy chicks. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me call around.
Uhhhh what? It sure as fuck does, in many regions of the world, and HAS for centuries. It even works that way in the US, in a lot of places - unless you happen to be in a weirdly cutthroat-capitalist area somehow.
I’ve edited my original post to explain why I say this. It boils down to this: it doesn’t make financial sense to raise chickens for sale to random people. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that farms simply can’t afford to do things that don’t make money.
But go ahead and try it. Call the 5 farms nearest you to ask if you can buy chickens or full grown hens (roosters don’t count!) and report back. If you are lucky there is some hobby farm that doesn’t care about making money… but that’s gonna be the exception.
Wtf are you talking about? We often rent out or sell our layers all the time. We contract with Miller’s for our broilers and fryers as well. I’d be happy to sell someone who calls a setup. All they have to do is build their coop as that’s out of my purview. I’m not a hobby farmer either as my contracts pay my mortgage and fund my retirement savings and the kid’s college fund.
Well good for you, you are either solely or primarily a chicken operation although I suspect by USDA definition you are in fact a hobby farmer - no offense here, just pointing out the economics of it matter. The original comment here asserted people could just go to any random farm, show up, and buy chick(en)s. I don’t know a single commercial operation that would do that. And the funny notions people get about ag in general are, well, mildly annoying.
I tend to hope they were meaning getting accidentally fertilized chicks, which happens. I bet they could get a free cat or two while they’re there.
I tend to hope they were meaning getting accidentally fertilized chicks, which happens. I bet they could get a free cat or two while they’re there.
I assume you mean fertilized eggs or… just chicks? I suppose some might give them away. I don’t know why you would though. For anyone I know, myself included, chicks mean income. You are replacing expired layers. Or you feed them to the cats.
That’s OK. I’m in the US and have never seen one. Fleet Farm is the king of that type of store in my state
God fucking damnit. TSC is the closest ag supply to our new play farm. They’re high compared to Rural King or a co-op, but they’re convenient. Fuckers.
I’m lucky that I’m near enough to the central valley in california to have real ag supply stores. They even typically have actual supplies for tractors.
We just bought an old farmhouse in Pennsylvania that still has 9 acres, includes a small orchard and vineyard. My girl wants chickens and rabbits. I’m thinking a couple of steers next spring when I’ve had time to get good fencing up.
I grew up with cattle and worked on a tater farm through highschool.
We mostly just want to produce our own meat. Venison should be much easier.
The apple trees need a lot of TLC as does the vineyard.
I’ll be in the market for a small tractor. As long as it is running, I should be able to fix it up and keep it going.
Best of luck to you. We are on an old homestead and although none of the original buildings remain we did get several 100 year old apple trees. Not great producers (usually every other year is good) but tasty.
How many openly queer farmers and ranchers are there? Does sexual orientation have any relevancy at tractor supply? I use a co-op most of the time because tsc is overpriced on majority of stuff
I don’t think large-scale farmers are shopping at Tractor Supply. Outside of emergency situations.
However, rural homesteaders suburban “backyard farms” certainly do. And there’s a lot of queer and allied gardeners and backyard farmers.
There are, also, a lot of queer farmers (raises hands emphatically). More than you might think, apparently. I have other options but I have spent a lot of money there because it was convenient - in the same area as a farmer’s market we used to sell at.
It’s funny though how you discount small-scale farms. 89% of farms in the US are considered small-scale.
Not discounting small farms at all. Honestly thought anyone on more than a few acres wouldn’t shop at TSC unless they had to. But I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about that life.
Not surprised there are vastly more small farms than large farms, but what does it look like in terms of acres?
As bad as it sounds (in response to the “more than you might think, apparently”), it’s not as if the stereotypes have much overlap.
Not surprised there are vastly more small farms than large farms, but what does it look like in terms of acres?
Acres don’t actually matter, especially for people who (a) have little idea what an acre is; (b) have little idea what an acre can produce. It’s not uncommon for a small farm that sells direct to consumers to net > $25k per acre while a commodity farmer might be lucky to hit $1k. And that’s the problem with the USDA numbers around “production value” in that report - I need to find a source for this but when last I dug into it, it turned out they treat everything as commodities at wholesale value and don’t use the actual retail sale value because they don’t have that data. IOW if I sell potatoes for $2/lb cash they will tend to see it as maybe $0.75 / lb. Meaning production value for direct-to-consumer is vastly under-reported.
All this said, 45% of all agricultural land in the US is “small family farms”.
Yeah sounds about right. All Christianity can do is bully.
Ah shit. The local TS is the only place that reliably stocks the duck feed I use. Other feeds don’t give my birds the exact nutrition they need, and my one bird needs the right nutrition because she’s prone to vitamin issues. -_-
I usually use TSC wood pellets as cat litter since they’re cheap and just break down into sawdust with use. There’s other brands I can shift to, but I’ll pay a bit of a premium for it
I have a small farm supply in my area that makes their own feed and stocks a huge variety of brands. Their house feed is cheaper than TSC and my girls love it.
I only found out about it because I picked up a bunch of pallets to build a coop off of a guy who also raised chickens and we got to talking.
Rural general stores may as well.
I actually just googled “farm stores near me” and found 2 others that are still closed than either of my TSCs.
Local feed store doesn’t sell duck feed. Their “all flock” feed is what I fed my birds until the one got vitamin issues that crippled her. The other local stores closed because the TSCs moved into the area
Can you find it online and set up automatic deliveries? That’s how I get my cat’s hard to find food.
I had that set up with the last brand of feed I used, but the orders kept getting delayed because the product just wasn’t getting restocked. Had to switch brands because of it.
Maybe see if you can figure out their source? Less markup too…
Done! I went there exactly once and never went back because their prices are fucking ridiculous. You’re welcome queer farmers.
If you don’t shop there to begin with, continuing to not shop there isn’t boycotting.
So I have to start shopping there before I can boycott it? Sounds counterproductive.
I’ll take up smoking and then give that up!
Well yeah, I’m not a farmer. I don’t need to shop for seeds and tractors and other farmer shit. But if I did I wouldn’t buy it from them. So maybe it’s not a boycott. Call it what you want.
You’re taking a moral stand, call it a Mancott.
I’m glad someone has said it… Should be obvious.
I wonder how many of these companies that choose to participate and welcome diversity, or choose to reject it, do so only for optics and economics. What does Tractor Supply actually believe about the different groups affected by this decision? Do they even care?
They’re a corporation. Of course they don’t care.
Hey, corporations are people, too.
they have feelings!
To paraphrase Mark Stanley, corporations only have three rules: get the money, get the money, and get the money.
Don’t think they do things like supporting Pride because they care; it’s only a sign that they want to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But, in that same vein, when they’re supporting a topic is a good sign of is the majority of society’s feelings on the subject.
Polls can be gerrymandered to hell and back, talking heads on the news can make all kinds of claims. But since corporations chase money above all, they spend a lot of money getting very accurate ideas of what our society likes/dislikes.
Think about it. 50, hell even 30 years ago, no corporation worth their salt would have claimed to be in favor of Pride, because it would have been suicidal for the business. Society’s majority take on LGBTQ+ back then ranged from hate and disgust to ‘eww, fine, but not in public!’
Now, corporations fly the Pride flag all over the place. It definitely shows that society is much more supportive of LGBTQ+ and minorities.
If it’s a publicly traded company the answer is that they likely don’t believe in anything. They just do whatever the leadership believes would generate most profit, since that is what shareholders (usually) care about most.
If appearing to support progressive goals gets people to spend money in the store, then that is something that makes sense for a company like this to do. But if they stand to lose more money than they gain, for instance through boycotts, they will drop the pretence pretty quickly.
Personally I see the stance such companies take more like a reflection of general acceptance in society as a whole. If a company promotes progressive values then that would indicate that society as a whole is on average leaning more progressive.
Similarly, if companies stop supporting these values that indicates a worrying trend with regards to societal acceptance.Just don’t fool yourself into thinking that the company itself (as an entity) really believes in anything.
(Note: This doesn’t hold for companies that aren’t publically traded. If there are no stockholders to please the leadership can let their personal view affect the company’s policy quite a bit)
Probably all of them. Not that I really care. It’s enough that companies are doing the right thing, if they want to secretly do the wrong thing it is their concern. Sincerity is for lovers not for business relationships
