Victor Davis Hanson: Taking the high ground on food subsidies

jewishworldreview.com ^ | Nov. 3, 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

The European Union says it's now considering reducing agricultural subsidies for farmers (if the United States does as well), and our government, to its credit, is calling the E.U.'s bluff. The U.S. has proposed cutting farm subsidies here by 60 percent if Europe makes its own significant cuts.  

It is an embarrassing issue for the E.U. Usually idealistic Europeans may lobby for the poor of the Third World, chastising the United States for its insensitivity to the "other" on issues ranging from global warming to the use of military force in Iraq.  

Yet Europe's state-subsidized agriculture makes the exporting of targeted Western food to poorer nations easy — and the importing of produce from these countries hard. Since agriculture is the most basic of industries in developing nations, the barriers caused by state subsidies are especially ruinous to these countries' fragile economies. Europe spends more public tax money on the daily feeding of its cows than Third World nations do on their own people.

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[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links: FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson 
His website: http://victorhanson.com/     NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

[Mike Darancette]

First, at a time of record budget deficits, we are borrowing money to subsidize agribusinesses that are not poor.

Let's make our Agribusiness poor so we can borrow money to buy food?

[Cuttnhorse]

Hanson knows what he is talking about when it comes to agriculture. He was raised on a farm in central California.

You may know of it, but his book, "Fields Without Dreams" is an excellent treatment of farm subsidies, farm co ops and growing up barely making it on a true family farm.