Big words from people who can’t grow their own food. Obesity will not be a problem in the future.
Ag subsidies are as good a place as any to start the cutting. Eliminate all of them. Do it now.
I agree with cutting Ag subsidies but one has to realize that the Senate’s intent is not to stop spending this money but rather to give it to more fascism friendly industries.
“No American industry has been so persistently coddled as agriculture, helping out niche groups and special interests in the short term but making us all worse off in the long term.”
That’s all lies. Farmers did not want the federal government to control their business in the first place. The feds seized control of food prices as the first item in their agenda of total progressive control of the economy.
Any farmer will tell you, they will be happy to give up these federal government subsidies that were forced on them if the government will stop setting the price they can receive for their product.
you know, it would be interesting to find out what everything is worth without bailouts and subsidies and false propping.
Disappointed?
... and should be.
I’ve been advocating this for 40 years.
Quit paying people to “not grow stuff”, and let the market determine prices.
We can feed the world if the population control crowd gets out of the way.
Just make sure we’re not undermining the farmers in the 3rd world who need to make a living and provide an economic foundation in their culture.
how about we just do an across the board cut of all government subsidies.....
This is a tool to prevent people throwing the POLS out of office. Hungry people do that type of thing. Cheap food is soothing to the masses.
Farming is a high risk business. And the current subsidized insurance program has lots of flaws. And you must sign up for the insurance program, or you get no subsidy.
My family have always been farmers. Going back to well before the Civil War. In this county in TX since 1889. The subsidy programs began in the 1930’s. Many farmers refused the subsidy for several years after they began. That was a long long ago.
Cut the crop price supports, ethanol subsidies and all agricultural related controls and subsidies at the same time or it won’t work.
Ethanol is causing the Amazon rain forest to be chopped down to grow the soybeans that would otherwise be grown here.
Eco-wacko-ism and economic cronyism is causing actual ecological destruction.
Depression-era leftover, when technology drove down the prices so it wasn’t worth the farmer’s time.
Replace agriculture with the service industry, and you have the same governmental interference leading to prolonging, if not intensifying, market shock.
Many solid conservatives support farming subsidies. The supposed alternative is market-driven prices alone. I prefer a different approach to subsidies or pure market forces when it comes to the nation’s food supply. My opinion is that federal and state governments would be wise to buy and stockpile American agricultural and livestock products when they are plenty, and allow market forces to work when they are scarce.
Our food supply chain is incredibly short. Today, if we found our nation in a depression, the death toll would be catastrophic. Fewer people are capable of growing their own food. And the efficiency of the supply chain brings with it the weakness of running out quickly when supplies are depleted.
Subtotal, Farming Subsidies in United States, 1995-2010
Subsidy Recipients 1 to 20 of 2,852,063
Recipients of Subtotal, Farming Subsidies from farms in United States totaled $167,331,000,000 in from 1995-2010.
(* ownership information available) Location Subtotal, Farming Subsidies
1995-2010
1 Riceland Foods Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $554,343,039
2 Producers Rice Mill Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $314,028,012
3 Farmers Rice Coop Sacramento, CA 95851 $146,174,314
4 Harvest States Cooperatives Saint Paul, MN 55164 $48,259,465
5 Tyler Farms Helena, AR 72342 $34,611,595
6 Missouri Delta Farms Sikeston, MO 63801 $25,280,578
7 Due West Glendora, MS 38928 $21,319,485
8 Dublin Farms Corcoran, CA 93212 $20,017,036
9 Dnrc Trust Land Management - Exem Helena, MT 59620 $19,794,841
10 Balmoral Farming Partnership Newellton, LA 71357 $19,706,445
11 Kelley Enterprises Burlison, TN 38015 $19,688,705
12 Gila River Farms Sacaton, AZ 85147 $19,038,126
13 Colorado River Indian Tribes Farm Parker, AZ 85344 $17,916,374
14 Perthshire Farms , MS 38746 $17,456,519
15 Bruton Farms Partnership , MS 38748 $17,130,031
16 Morgan Farms Cleveland, MS 38732 $16,726,985
17 New Hope Farms Schlater, MS 38952 $15,951,384
18 Soudan Farming Co Marianna, AR 72360 $15,739,779
19 Hansen Ranches Corcoran, CA 93212 $15,640,472
20 Tohono O’odham Farming Authority Eloy, AZ 85131 $15,526,042
* USDA data are not “transparent” for many payments made to recipients through most cooperatives. Recipients of payments made through most cooperatives, and the amounts, have not been made public. To see ownership information, click on the name, then click on the link that is titled Ownership Information.
$1.3 Billion to People
Who Don’t Farm
The largest annual subsidy, called direct and countercyclical payments, is given to farmers regardless of what crops they grow — or whether they grow anything at all. The Post found that, since 2001, at least $1.3 billion was paid to landowners who had planted nothing since 2000. Among the beneficiaries were homeowners in new developments whose backyards used to be rice fields. (July 2, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
Mark F. Rockefeller, a
fourth-generation industrialist, probably had taxes on his mind when he
purchased roughly 5,000 acres of farmland in Swan Valley, Idaho, and
started receiving subsidy checks at his capitalist lair in the
Rockefeller Plaza. Starting in 2001, the federal government has been
giving him $54,500 a year to not farm his land.
But rich subsidy queens
don’t need to travel far to filch their fair share of taxpayer wealth;
they can do it right where they live and work. Failed dot-com
entrepreneur Craig Winn lives in Albemarle, Va., and paid $1,000 in
taxes on a $3.5 million estate by converting its 50 acres into conserved
farmland. All his rich neighbors, including pop culture hacks Dave
Matthews and John Grisham, enrolled their land in the tax saver program,
too. Hell, even Walt Disney World became a farmer by putting some cows
to pasture on its land in Orlando to shave millions off its tax bill.
Hewlett-Packard opened up a Christmas tree farm on its massive Houston
campus, which saved it (and cost Houston) half a million dollars a year
in taxes.
“Subsidized insurance programs for when the weather goes bad or prices go south” sound to me like the camel’s nose under a potentially even bigger, more senseless tent.