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Note that farm subsidies don't go to crops which are labor intensive. They're for "row crops" that are fully mechanized.
by greglindahl 10y ago
Note that farm subsidies don't go to crops which are labor intensive. They're for "row crops" that are fully mechanized.
- jrowley 10y agoExactly! >But only 9% of California's 74,000 farms have actually received subsidy payments and nearly two-thirds of the money since 1996--$1.8 billion--has gone to fewer than 3,500 farms. Most of the crops that fuel the state's $29-billion farm machine--grapes, peaches, plums, nectarines, strawberries, almonds, walnuts and vegetables of every hue--don't get a penny of aid. They aren't eligible. Rather, the bulk of the money goes to support giant fields of cotton, rice, wheat and barley--crops that exist in surplus. Of the top 20 recipients in California, seven are big cotton growers and 11 are big rice growers. On average, they take in $596,000 in crop subsidies a year. http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/10/local/me-subsidy10 http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/10/local/me-subsidy10
- bluejekyll 10y agoYes. And the corn subsidy in particular has really thrown off the market, encouraging huge numbers of foods in the US to be made with some sort of corn byproduct. We quite literally are subsidizing the fattening of the US with Coca-Cola getting a cheap sugar.