The solution to all of this nonsense is a slashing of government at all levels back to its Constitutional role. The increasing entitlement mentality to OPM is getting out of the realm of sanity.
The fact is, that food is NOT cheap. Yes, the U.S. it is cheaper than other places in the world, but it is being held at an artificially cheap cost through various types of subsidies, incentives to mega corps that produce increasing low quality food, increasing regulation on small farmers to benefit the mega corporations that don’t pay inheritance taxes and who get an increased market share, and an artificially strong dollar. At some point the musical chairs game of fiat money and (more importantly) deficit spending is going to stop. At that point people are going to come to realize that when God stated “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” it didn’t mean by the sweat of someone else’s face. We may not all turn into farmers, per se, but living off of someone else at the point of government robbery won’t stand much longer.
“Democracies are as short in their lives, as they are violent in their deaths.” We ceased to actually be a Constitutional republic 100 years ago, and the wind down is coming to a close. There will be a revival or the final nail in the coffin, but either way, big government never, ever, ever, lasts.
What began with good ideas had mission creep. At one time we would carry over half to a full year of production through commodity loans, it was called the reserve program. Now if we don't use up the last bushel of it on the day the new crop comes in it is a disaster. The GOAL is to carry over no new crop. Do you see the disaster coming?
We haven’t had a good drought in Iowa for several years, LUCK or MGT? When my parents farmed, it was more years of bad crop than good.
As the result of the great depression, programs were implemented to carry a reserve and store the grain on the farm, THE GOAL BEING A HEALTHY RESERVE.
WWII came along and the GOAL WAS MAXIMUM PRODUCTION.
After the war we had a lot people to feed and didn't worry about the reserve. THE GOAL WAS FEED THE WORLD.
The 60 came along and the reserve began to get quite large and expensive so the GOAL WAS LIMIT PRODUCTION and thus paying farmers NOT to grow crops.
The 70’s and Carter came along to eliminate exports and the reserve really grew, so we paid some farmers to bid in their whole farm and grow NOTHING. By the way those were not very profitable years because the farmer had more time to spend money and made some not so good decisions. We always manage the past and this is the image you are objecting to.
In the 80’s direct payments to farmers was HUGE, cant have that to THE GOAL BECAME TO ELIMINATE DIRECT PAYMENTS TO FARMERS. Thus through lobbying the idea of crop insurance grew and we won't have to pay the farmers, but we will subsidize the corp insurance for a few years. Well, 20 years later we are still subsidizing crop insurance and have driven the small farmers out because the big operations grew because they had no risk.
The morel of the story: the original goal was a GOOD ONE but we are so far away from that we have a good opportunity to starve.