Yes. Domestic food production is important to our national security.
We also have a lot of fat farmers. The feed business where I buy my horse feed is a hangout for about a dozen farmers, most of whom are around 300 pounds. Point is, these guys are almost always there, good weather and bad, just hanging out. I recently checked that web site that shows farm subsidies by county, some of these guys are getting up to $800k a year in crop subsidies to not grow tobacco.
If and when the day arrives when Richman goes to the grocery store, or to the restaurant, and discovers they have no more food, he can always fall back on his, what, farming skills? Hunting skills? Fishing skills? One almost hopes that such a day arrives, if only for his comeuppance, but that would mean no food for the rest of us, either.
People need food. They do not need magazine editors. It is that simple.
More important if a farmer is hit with bad weather destroying his crop he's likely done for an entire year...Can this "magazine editor" dole out thousands of, maybe tens of thousands of dollars only to have it all be ruined in one day and survive untill the next year?....
In other words if every year over the last 2 centurys a farmer went out of business we would not only be dependent on Arabs for oil we'd also be dependent on, worse yet, someone for or food.
It's nitwits like this "magazine editor" who has no problem with the government going in and shutting off irrigation water to farmers to save bottom feeding sucker fish.
I'll bet this same "magazine editor" would object to letting the farmer sell his farmland for development but have NO problem with the government taking it to save the environment or some phony "endangered species".
The tenets of the New Deal era farm supports are no longer needed. Bring in gigantic corporations and Nafta, plow under family farms, and allow "guest workers" from Mexico to pick all the veggies that can't be harvested by hand.
Individual families aren't needed.
The only reason the price supports exist is because there is currently a policy to have non mega-farms supplying the food chain. If you want mega-farms and corporations, get rid of the supports. If you don't want mega-farms and corporations, keep the supports.
It's a policy decision.
Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?
Can you say idiot? Where does this moron thinks food comes from? I guess this pinhead never heard of drought, taxes, environmental regulations, hail, tornados, floods, et. al. American Farmers Feed the WORLD! How much More taxpayer dollars goes to welfare, People producing nothing? This guy whining about overweight people? That's the farmers fault? Sheldon Richman should spend a year in Ethiopia, then pop off.
What a Clymer.
< /RANT >
See who is getting the pork and who is getting porked
he would quickly learn that it is votes. The politicians are using your tax dollars to buy the votes of farmers. Just roam around that site. It will make you sick. I checked out one county in Nebraska and it looked like about 95% of the people in the county were getting farm welfare - uh, excuse me "farm security payments".
The Amish and Mennonites can farm without government subsidies and also have enough to sell outside of their communities.
Why not suggest to Congress to ask them how it's done? LOL
The Country backs republicans. The city backs democraps. That simple.
Had fun at the Ag Expo.
That being said, farming is one of the noble occupations that a nation needs to perpetuate to keep it's self identity.
If a historian goes back and tries to decide at which point the noble Roman Republic began it's decline, he will find that the decline began when the independent small farmers were wiped out during the Punic Wars. The widows of the citizen farmer soldiers could not meet the debt on the farms. Roman farms became "latifundias", large farms owned by the rich (read corporations). The bedrock of the Roman Republic was thus destroyed.
The U.S. subsidizes firms that build submarines and military aircraft because they are vital to the health of our nation.
So should it be with the independent farmer.
If you want the free market to dictate the farm economy, that's fine. However you must realize that it is going to cost you. You can either pay subsidaries in taxes, or pay higher prices for your food. America has the cheapest food for a reason. If you would rather use 30% of your pay check to feed yourself and your family, allow all subsidaries of the American farmer to stop.