Will US politicians ever take a stand against agricultural subsidies?

[Josem]

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"The U.S. Agricultural Department is required by law to subsidize over two dozen commodities. Between 1996 and 2002, an average of $16 billion/year was paid by programs authorized by federal legislation dating back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, the Agricultural Act of 1949, and the Commodity Credit Corporation, among others."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy

That is a riduculous amount of money being spent on a program that virtually any intelligent person realizes is [censored].

It is amazing that this program has survived for so long without virtually any opposition. This seems like an issue that both Democrats (help poor people in Africa) and Republicans (free market) should in theory be able to unite against. Is there a large portion of the population that is strongly in favor of agro-subsidies? Or do the vast majority of people just not know or care?

I guess lobbists are just that strong. It's really sad, because I think this issue could be solved with a lot of popular support if a couple of politicians were willing to take a principled stand against it and bring the issue to the forefront.

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Are you calling for other nations to end their agricultural subsidies as well and are you equally as critical of those countries subsidizing their agricultural products out of curiosity?

EU Common Agricultural Policy

Here's one example of how these things go alot. The U.S. has offered to make concessions to the EU regarding subsidies to certain of it's agriculural products if the EU is willing to open up it's markets to various U.S. farm products. So far there hasn't been that much agreement and thus certain farm subsidies remain in existance. Basically trade agreements between countries are negotiated and when trade agreements can't be reached countries resort to subsidies in battles over trade. Certainly some subsidies in the U.S. are directed towards special interest groups solely. However, to believe that the U.S. is the only country subsidizing it's agricultural products is completely naive.

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...and meanwhile, people in third countries (eg, Australia and the rest of the Cairns group of agricultural exporting nations) suffer.

Australia is in the midst of its worst ever drought (literally no irrigation for the country's largest river system next financial year) and still we produce food more efficiently and at a higher standard with lower cost than US and EU farmers (and Japanese and Korean and so on...)

[Dr. Strangelove]

It's a national security issue. We don't want to depend on other countries for something as basic and essential as food. Bad things have been known to happen which disrupt supply, like world wars, giant volcanoes, etc. It's insurance against such events.

[SNOWBALL]

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It's a national security issue. We don't want to depend on other countries for something as basic and essential as food. Bad things have been known to happen which disrupt supply, like world wars, giant volcanoes, etc. It's insurance against such events.



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EVIDENCE??????

[John Kilduff]

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It's a national security issue. We don't want to depend on other countries for something as basic and essential as food. Bad things have been known to happen which disrupt supply, like world wars, giant volcanoes, etc. It's insurance against such events.

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I think this is a good point, and that it is probably a wise basic strategy. A country which can be food self-sufficient if necessary, is in a far stronger long-term position.

Of course, there might be abuses of the programs, or of the implementations, which should be examined - or perhaps the program needs an overhaul.

Now, if only America could find some way to become energy self-sufficient as well...

[tolbiny]

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I think this is a good point, and that it is probably a wise basic strategy. A country which can be food self-sufficient if necessary, is in a far stronger long-term position.

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Its really not a good point not cultivating land in the US doesn't make the land useless all of a sudden (in fact letting land lie fallow is good farming) and we wouldn't be depending on other countries to trade with, we would just be doing it out of preference over wasting money farming ourselves. Short term there could be a pinch if we lost our overseas supply, but switching the farming back on would take less than a season. Besides that the pinch is very unlikely to happen as there will almost always be a country or two willing to trade with us.

[bobman0330]

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It's a national security issue. We don't want to depend on other countries for something as basic and essential as food. Bad things have been known to happen which disrupt supply, like world wars, giant volcanoes, etc. It's insurance against such events.

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Seriously? Do you think the Central Valley and Iowa are going to close their doors and call it a day without subsidies? With or without subsidies, the US food supply is about as secure as our supply of dirt.

[Josem]

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It's a national security issue. We don't want to depend on other countries for something as basic and essential as food. Bad things have been known to happen which disrupt supply, like world wars, giant volcanoes, etc. It's insurance against such events.

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Seriously? If this was BBV, I'd assume this was an attempt at "levelling."

Protectionism delivers exactly the opposite result that you seek. Protectionism allows domestic producers to be less good than foreign producers. If you want producers to be as good as possible during an emergency, you would presumably support policies forcing producers to be as good as possible outside emergency times.


If it was genuinely about "national security," the US Government would reduce tariffs, thus forcing farmers to be as efficient and competitive as possible. In a national security emergency, the community would presumably feel that efficient farmers would be better than inefficient farmers.



I think this is further evidence that people can bandy around the term "national security" and expect unwavering support for a policy, no matter what the underlying truth of the matter is.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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Protectionism delivers exactly the opposite result that you seek.

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The goal is to overproduce food domestically. We overproduce food domestically.

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Protectionism allows domestic producers to be less good than foreign producers.



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Irrelevant even if true.

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If you want producers to be as good as possible during an emergency, you would presumably support policies forcing producers to be as good as possible outside emergency times.


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The goal is not to relocate production to the area where it is cheapest if that place isn't here. The goal is to massively overproduce food domestically.

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If it was genuinely about "national security," the US Government would reduce tariffs, thus forcing farmers to be as efficient and competitive as possible.

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Nope, efficiency is less important than producing too much, and here. You'd of course want both, but if that isn't feasible, efficiency goes first.

You must be close to OD'ing on Koolaid.

You are probably one of those people that think the guy on let's make a deal that takes a guaranteed $450k instead of choosing between a $1 and $1 million box is an idiot.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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I think this is a good point, and that it is probably a wise basic strategy. A country which can be food self-sufficient if necessary, is in a far stronger long-term position.

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Its really not a good point not cultivating land in the US doesn't make the land useless all of a sudden (in fact letting land lie fallow is good farming) and we wouldn't be depending on other countries to trade with, we would just be doing it out of preference over wasting money farming ourselves. Short term there could be a pinch if we lost our overseas supply, but switching the farming back on would take less than a season. Besides that the pinch is very unlikely to happen as there will almost always be a country or two willing to trade with us.

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How do you feel about countries we've dumped on to the point that they are almost entirely dependent on imported food? Consider only countries that are perfectly capable of producing enough food to sustain themselves domestically.

Are they more or less secure?

Are they being extra specially cunning by letting their domestic agriculture wither while the stupid americans wastefully sell them food below the price at which they (stupid americans) produce it?

[Josem]

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Protectionism delivers exactly the opposite result that you seek.

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The goal is to overproduce food domestically. We overproduce food domestically.

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I see your point now. I think I may have misunderstood previously.

However, I doubt that agriculture has a sufficiently large lead time to prevent growth in domestic supply in a more competitive, unprotected market.


A disaster that stopped food supply chains faster than one season of production would be so rare, and so horrific, that they are likely to have a significant impact on the population level of the US anyway (eg, nuclear holocaust - in such a scenario, the US would likely be a major target, and thus, have significantly lesser food requirements)


In the event of a large scale conventional war, I doubt if food supplies (if, indeed, the US would even be a net importer of food under a zero tariff scenario... I don't know) would be stopped so fast that domestic producers would be unable to expand their current production.

Incidentally, I believe a less protected market is less likely to be threatened by war as a result of improved trading relationships.

It's important to remember that the abolition of tariffs would probably also result in agricultural production within the US, for export to Europe and elsewhere.


Other disasters, such as earthquakes, droughts, floods, volcanoes, etc., are unlikely to be sufficiently widespread across a variety of US food sources (eg, Canada, Australia, South America)

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You must be close to OD'ing on Koolaid.

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No idea what Koolaid is. Thus, I suspect I'm not overdosing on it.

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You are probably one of those people that think the guy on let's make a deal that takes a guaranteed $450k instead of choosing between a $1 and $1 million box is an idiot.

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No. I'm a big fan of recognising that in life, like in MTTs, the value of each additional dollar (or chip) lessens in useful value to the user.

For example, the difference between $0 and $5 is huge if it it represents your total assets - it is the difference of whether you eat or not tonight. However, obviously the difference between $1,000,005 and $1,000,000 is insignificant.