Well thanks for the elaboration. From what I understand subsidies were established because of the complexity of the agricultural economy and its stragetic importance. If a farmer or farm goes under, it is not an immediate fix. If a farmer loses his crop due to weather or politics (neither of which he has much control over), not only the farmer, but the nation is in peril. Subsidies were established to ensure a more consistent food supply as a matter of national security—sort of like petroleum reserves, purchase of govt. cheese etc. Of course, given the way our governmment has behaved, I am sure we are not meeting the mission reaquirements any more. That said, I believe that the Cali farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are being victimized by the EPA over a 2” fish, the Delta Smelt.
From the articles I have and local Cali radio programs I have heard in addition to Sean Hannity, the EPA that has been putting the kaabosh on the livelihood of the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. Sorry, but I tend to agree with Hannity & other posters’ assessment that water from the area was damned up. They had been promised irrigation. From Hannity’s most recent program and google research, it seems like perhaps that the salmon fisherman had an in with the EPA the some Pacific fisherman federation and got them to turn off the water. Since the EPA wants land to return to non-tillable status, they worked with the fisherman. Fisherman seem to want to return the land to delta status, so salmon can be more easily fished up north as their industry has been hurting—some say due to over fishing.
So it seems that this whole issue is ripe with politics—not just economics
It is an economic issue through and through, and I’m not debating whether or not water was dammed or wasn’t dammed, or what motive the EPA had.
No offense, but it seems like you don’t fully understand the economics of the situation. Frankly, the issue is impossible to understand without a solid understanding of prices based on supply and demand and how they coordinate the entire economy. We have farmers growing crops on land that—were the actual cost of the irrigated water passed onto them and not the tax-payers—they wouldn’t use. Rather, resources would be put into farming elsewhere. Or, instead of growing those crops domestically, they’d be imported. In the absence of subsidies, farming would be done according to the dictates of market forces, which is to say, they’d be done efficiently.
No single person, and no committee, can say what the “right” amount of food production is or the “right” amount of food storage ought to be. Thanks to the market, we don’t have to worry about what would happen if for whatever reason American farming suddenly stopped—we’d just import what we need. Many nations have not produced enough food by themselves to feed themselves for decades if not centuries—they import. If this concerns you, it shouldn’t. Importing wheat from Argentina is no different from importing crops from California to whatever state you are in. The economic principles don’t change because of lines on a map. Greater scarcity of a good in one area leads to higher prices, which leads to greater importation to that area, which then results in a lowering of prices. Prices guide resources to where they are valued most.
Many famines have been *avoided* because the price system was allowed to work, that is, no direct price controls, tariffs, subsidies, etc. were in place to disrupt the natural workings of the market. By the same token, many crippling shortages of food were created because prices were not allowed to rise. Price freezes after disasters are a popular government policy, they are also catastrophic in the effects they can have. The Siege of Leningrad could have gone better for the Russians had they not frozen the prices of food. Cities under siege that allowed price to rise to stratospheric heights did not suffer massive food shortages.
Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics is an excellent layman’s primer for econ, no jargon or graphs or nasty ol’ math.