7 ms·

It'd be nice if the government just stayed out of all this so that people could decide for themselves what food they wanted to support. Right now the real costs

It'd be nice if the government just stayed out of all this so that people could decide for themselves what food they wanted to support. Right now the real costs are all hidden and incentives directed in all the wrong ways. The food that is cheap isn't actually cheap it just looks that way because the price signal has been so badly distorted. I don't want a "smarter" farm policy. I'd like no farm policy. It's clear that both parties don't actually care about this issue besides making sure that agribusiness is happy.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago
Food is tied to a nations security. If you haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma (http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals/oclc/62290639 http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-hi...) I highly recommend it. Michael Pollan, the author makes a much better and convincing argument. Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. Personally, I try to buy/eat as much local organic food as I can and experiment by growing food indoors.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. I can imagine. After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor. And I really wish we had a Consumer Electronics and Computers policy; I'm really jealous of the country that produced the iPhone and the Macbook because of those attributes. Fortunately, the country I live in does have a Real Estate Policy and a Banking System policy, and they're willing to put my money where their mouths are! It's working out about as well as one would expect.
  - senthil_rajasek 17y ago
    "After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor." So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. Just because policies fail does not mean that we do not need any. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. As time goes on, more and more areas will "matter" in this way. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,? Well, we could try using markets and speculation, since that's what they're good at. Radical, I know.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      Prices are information. The best guarantee that we don't have food shortages is to use prices to communicate our desire for food, and insurance to guarantee it. That should both encourage food production and inventive ways of securing that production (e.g. diversification in crop, geography, diversity, etc.). But policies do not communicate information very well. They don't respond as fast as markets do, to changes in demand or supply. They are liable to political interference, as different sectors of the economy capture policy-making bodies and extract rents: the people who know most about an industry come from the industry, so there tends to be a two-way door between policy-makers and the industry, warping incentives. So I would argue that to secure more certainty for food supplies, we would be better off looking at insurance-based mechanisms, rather than direct government involvement in food production, subsidization, etc.
      - 0x44 17y ago
        I think it could be argued that for certain classes of good, efficient markets can be a net detriment to all involved. In the case of agriculture, the inefficiency created by government interference and planning helps flatten fluctuations in staple production, meaning that fewer people move into non-potable cash crops and the market as a whole is better served because people don't starve.
      - crpatino 17y ago
        The problem with the food supply is that there is a long funnel that the demand feedback has to go in order to change it. If your community suddenly realizes it needs more food, there is no way that the food can come to existence in days or even weeks. To some degree, other communities will be more willing to sell more of their food surplus to you if prices go up (after of days or weeks of delay to have the whole thing sorted out), and that would pick up some of the slack. But in the short and middle term, what will happen is that the poor will simply get priced out of the market. An intelligent policy would be to provide a food buffer, a margin of safety, that gives the price signal enough time to travel through the markets. In this case, you get the benefits of a free market, but prevent the worst side effects of it.
  - MartinCron 17y ago
    Pure capitalist libertarianism like that works really well if you live in a society willing to stand back and let people die as a result of different decisions or even circumstances outside their control. History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to live in.
    - eru 17y ago
      I would just take the grand-parent post as a satire of the grand-grand-parent post about the need for a farm policy. There are good arguments for having some services provided by the state (though we may argue whether they are good enough arguments). I did not take the grand parent as making the argument that everything the state does is evil.
    - koanarc 17y ago
      It might not be the world we want to live in, but that's life. Natural selection is the name of the game. It baffles me that people think social development can be somehow exempted from evolutionary processes. Call it callous or compassionless, if you want, but there will always be less fit members of a species/society. Humans didn't get to this spot on the food chain by subsidizing failure. If we want to increase prosperity, we should stop encouraging the propagation of actions/ideas/genes that would otherwise be unsustainable without throwing short-sighted policy and/or tax money at it.
      - DannoHung 17y ago
        The late 19th century called, they want their rationalized institutional cruelty back.
        koanarc 17y ago
        Heh, I'm not suggesting institutional anything. Precisely the opposite. I'm saying that in the bigger picture, welfare and subsidies and coercive interference in general hurt more than they help. E.g., aid to North Korea might keep impoverished North Koreans alive longer, but it will do nothing for their long term prosperity. It just gives them a chance to give birth to more impoverished North Koreans. Farm subsidies, etc, are arrogant, over-simplistic meddling with extremely complex natural systems that will have -- as the article in question was pointing out -- any number of unpredictable consequences. I just don't buy the idea that the short-sighted whims of politics can make the world a better place. [edit: adding for clarity: "stop encouraging" DOES NOT translate as "start discouraging"]
  - yellowbkpk 17y ago
    Ok, there might be no "Plate Policy", but there are FDA rules that say your plate must be clean when you eat at a restaurant and that the plates you eat from at home (surely imported from China) can't have poisonous heavy metals in them.
- mseebach 17y ago
  > Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages There is little doubt that agricultural policy in the west is all about protecting a specific industry from the realities of globalization and not about securing the food supply. Being a small country, not having a farm policy and also going to war with your neighbors might lead to food shortages. The agricultural policies of the EU and USA do way, way more harm than good.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    Indeed - they're a major contributory factor to poverty in the third world, along with aid. Yes, aid causes poverty: it warps economies and cultures them to be dependent on outside help; food aid depresses local food prices, drives farmers out of business, etc.
  - jshen 17y ago
    "The policy have now is problematic, therefore we shouldn't have any policy". This is a non sequitur, but it's common fair in the libertarian world view.
    - timwiseman 17y ago
      Yes, that is a non sequitur, fortunately that is not what those proposing we abolish the farm policy are saying (at least not the thoughtful ones.) They are rather laying out problems with any farm policy. Any farm policy will distort the economics of food production. Any farm policy will influence individual consumers choices in a non-market-based manner. Any farm policy will have international implications, and any farm policy that looks anything remotely like ours at all will harm less developed countries. I personally am inclined to think we should have a farm policy. If we are going to have an intelligent discussion about it, we should start by acknowleding that those that disagree with us might have valid points that are at least worth considering. Really trying to understand the viewpoint of someone you disagree with is far more productive than tilting at strawmen.
      - jshen 17y ago
- eru 17y ago
  > Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. Please check when the British had their last famine, and when the times they used farm policies.
  - joeyo 17y ago
    Very apropos. Many of the worst effects of the Irish famine of 1846 can be attributed to British farm policy, such as an unwillingness to block the export of grain from Ireland after the famine started.
    - eru 17y ago
      Also see the repeal of the Corn Laws, and (unrelated) the earlier improvement of farming methods that lead to the industrial revolution and who did the improving.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
julio_the_squid 17y ago
Given the amount of money that the agricultural corporations would be happy to throw in, and the public's demonstrated weakness for propaganda and inability to actually decide anything for themselves, I don't have much confidence in people coming to a reasonable, considered conclusion.
bitwize 17y ago
Fidel Castro brought Cuba back from the brink of starvation precisely with a "smarter" farm policy. For decades Cuba relied on Green Revolution techniques that required huge petroleum inputs. When the SU collapsed, Cuba lost its main source of oil. Castro's plan was to encourage local, organic farming techniques including urban agriculture. The result is that not only are Cubans not starving, they are eating healthier than Americans.
- crpatino 17y ago
  For what I have read, Cubans brought Cuba back from the brink of starvation. The main merit of Fidel was turning his eye to the other side when people began to break the official policies and do what needed to be done in order to keep themselves fed.
enjo 17y ago
We need to stop letting Iowa vote early in the primaries. So much of what's wrong with subsidies stem from the retarded level of influence that Iowa has in presidential politics.
- jackfoxy 17y ago
  Shouldn't that be "exagerated level of influence"? If their level of influence were retarded, I don't think you would have made this point.
  - FlorinAndrei 17y ago
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retarded http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retarded 6. Retarded Having really good qualities about yourself; havin a banging body; somethin that is just that thang! "He so retarded wit it!" "Them shoes is retarded!"
jackfoxy 17y ago
In an ideal world I'd like no farm policy as well, but all western countries are democracies today, and all democracies respond to special interests. This is the democrat's (small "d") dilema. Everywhere else is some flavor of dictatorship, and they have farm policies too. (This was just a lame attempt to explain reality.)

senthil_rajasek 17y ago

Food is tied to a nations security. If you haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma (http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals/oclc/62290639 http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-hi...) I highly recommend it. Michael Pollan, the author makes a much better and convincing argument. Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. Personally, I try to buy/eat as much local organic food as I can and experiment by growing food indoors.

byrneseyeview 17y ago
Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. I can imagine. After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor. And I really wish we had a Consumer Electronics and Computers policy; I'm really jealous of the country that produced the iPhone and the Macbook because of those attributes. Fortunately, the country I live in does have a Real Estate Policy and a Banking System policy, and they're willing to put my money where their mouths are! It's working out about as well as one would expect.
- senthil_rajasek 17y ago
  "After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor." So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. Just because policies fail does not mean that we do not need any. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. As time goes on, more and more areas will "matter" in this way. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,? Well, we could try using markets and speculation, since that's what they're good at. Radical, I know.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    Prices are information. The best guarantee that we don't have food shortages is to use prices to communicate our desire for food, and insurance to guarantee it. That should both encourage food production and inventive ways of securing that production (e.g. diversification in crop, geography, diversity, etc.). But policies do not communicate information very well. They don't respond as fast as markets do, to changes in demand or supply. They are liable to political interference, as different sectors of the economy capture policy-making bodies and extract rents: the people who know most about an industry come from the industry, so there tends to be a two-way door between policy-makers and the industry, warping incentives. So I would argue that to secure more certainty for food supplies, we would be better off looking at insurance-based mechanisms, rather than direct government involvement in food production, subsidization, etc.
    - 0x44 17y ago
      I think it could be argued that for certain classes of good, efficient markets can be a net detriment to all involved. In the case of agriculture, the inefficiency created by government interference and planning helps flatten fluctuations in staple production, meaning that fewer people move into non-potable cash crops and the market as a whole is better served because people don't starve.
    - crpatino 17y ago
      The problem with the food supply is that there is a long funnel that the demand feedback has to go in order to change it. If your community suddenly realizes it needs more food, there is no way that the food can come to existence in days or even weeks. To some degree, other communities will be more willing to sell more of their food surplus to you if prices go up (after of days or weeks of delay to have the whole thing sorted out), and that would pick up some of the slack. But in the short and middle term, what will happen is that the poor will simply get priced out of the market. An intelligent policy would be to provide a food buffer, a margin of safety, that gives the price signal enough time to travel through the markets. In this case, you get the benefits of a free market, but prevent the worst side effects of it.
- MartinCron 17y ago
  Pure capitalist libertarianism like that works really well if you live in a society willing to stand back and let people die as a result of different decisions or even circumstances outside their control. History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to live in.
  - eru 17y ago
    I would just take the grand-parent post as a satire of the grand-grand-parent post about the need for a farm policy. There are good arguments for having some services provided by the state (though we may argue whether they are good enough arguments). I did not take the grand parent as making the argument that everything the state does is evil.
  - koanarc 17y ago
    It might not be the world we want to live in, but that's life. Natural selection is the name of the game. It baffles me that people think social development can be somehow exempted from evolutionary processes. Call it callous or compassionless, if you want, but there will always be less fit members of a species/society. Humans didn't get to this spot on the food chain by subsidizing failure. If we want to increase prosperity, we should stop encouraging the propagation of actions/ideas/genes that would otherwise be unsustainable without throwing short-sighted policy and/or tax money at it.
    - DannoHung 17y ago
      The late 19th century called, they want their rationalized institutional cruelty back.
      - koanarc 17y ago
        Heh, I'm not suggesting institutional anything. Precisely the opposite. I'm saying that in the bigger picture, welfare and subsidies and coercive interference in general hurt more than they help. E.g., aid to North Korea might keep impoverished North Koreans alive longer, but it will do nothing for their long term prosperity. It just gives them a chance to give birth to more impoverished North Koreans. Farm subsidies, etc, are arrogant, over-simplistic meddling with extremely complex natural systems that will have -- as the article in question was pointing out -- any number of unpredictable consequences. I just don't buy the idea that the short-sighted whims of politics can make the world a better place. [edit: adding for clarity: "stop encouraging" DOES NOT translate as "start discouraging"]
- yellowbkpk 17y ago
  Ok, there might be no "Plate Policy", but there are FDA rules that say your plate must be clean when you eat at a restaurant and that the plates you eat from at home (surely imported from China) can't have poisonous heavy metals in them.
mseebach 17y ago
> Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages There is little doubt that agricultural policy in the west is all about protecting a specific industry from the realities of globalization and not about securing the food supply. Being a small country, not having a farm policy and also going to war with your neighbors might lead to food shortages. The agricultural policies of the EU and USA do way, way more harm than good.
- barrkel 17y ago
  Indeed - they're a major contributory factor to poverty in the third world, along with aid. Yes, aid causes poverty: it warps economies and cultures them to be dependent on outside help; food aid depresses local food prices, drives farmers out of business, etc.
- jshen 17y ago
  "The policy have now is problematic, therefore we shouldn't have any policy". This is a non sequitur, but it's common fair in the libertarian world view.
  - timwiseman 17y ago
    Yes, that is a non sequitur, fortunately that is not what those proposing we abolish the farm policy are saying (at least not the thoughtful ones.) They are rather laying out problems with any farm policy. Any farm policy will distort the economics of food production. Any farm policy will influence individual consumers choices in a non-market-based manner. Any farm policy will have international implications, and any farm policy that looks anything remotely like ours at all will harm less developed countries. I personally am inclined to think we should have a farm policy. If we are going to have an intelligent discussion about it, we should start by acknowleding that those that disagree with us might have valid points that are at least worth considering. Really trying to understand the viewpoint of someone you disagree with is far more productive than tilting at strawmen.
    - jshen 17y ago
eru 17y ago
> Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. Please check when the British had their last famine, and when the times they used farm policies.
- joeyo 17y ago
  Very apropos. Many of the worst effects of the Irish famine of 1846 can be attributed to British farm policy, such as an unwillingness to block the export of grain from Ireland after the famine started.
  - eru 17y ago
    Also see the repeal of the Corn Laws, and (unrelated) the earlier improvement of farming methods that lead to the industrial revolution and who did the improving.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

julio_the_squid 17y ago

Given the amount of money that the agricultural corporations would be happy to throw in, and the public's demonstrated weakness for propaganda and inability to actually decide anything for themselves, I don't have much confidence in people coming to a reasonable, considered conclusion.

bitwize 17y ago

Fidel Castro brought Cuba back from the brink of starvation precisely with a "smarter" farm policy. For decades Cuba relied on Green Revolution techniques that required huge petroleum inputs. When the SU collapsed, Cuba lost its main source of oil. Castro's plan was to encourage local, organic farming techniques including urban agriculture. The result is that not only are Cubans not starving, they are eating healthier than Americans.

crpatino 17y ago
For what I have read, Cubans brought Cuba back from the brink of starvation. The main merit of Fidel was turning his eye to the other side when people began to break the official policies and do what needed to be done in order to keep themselves fed.

enjo 17y ago

We need to stop letting Iowa vote early in the primaries. So much of what's wrong with subsidies stem from the retarded level of influence that Iowa has in presidential politics.

jackfoxy 17y ago
Shouldn't that be "exagerated level of influence"? If their level of influence were retarded, I don't think you would have made this point.
- FlorinAndrei 17y ago
  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retarded http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retarded 6. Retarded Having really good qualities about yourself; havin a banging body; somethin that is just that thang! "He so retarded wit it!" "Them shoes is retarded!"

jackfoxy 17y ago

In an ideal world I'd like no farm policy as well, but all western countries are democracies today, and all democracies respond to special interests. This is the democrat's (small "d") dilema. Everywhere else is some flavor of dictatorship, and they have farm policies too. (This was just a lame attempt to explain reality.)