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That's generally seen as a misguided attempt to maintain artificially high grain prices that ultimately yields almost zero benefit to farmers or consumers (serv
by rch 9y ago
That's generally seen as a misguided attempt to maintain artificially high grain prices that ultimately yields almost zero benefit to farmers or consumers (serving only the ethanol producers and politicians).
- Brendinooo 9y agoI'm not well-educated in this stuff, so feel free to correct me. My understanding is that artificially high grain prices are maintained so that factory farms don't completely run the family farms out of business. Is this correct? If that is correct, and you are okay with artificially leveling the playing field, wouldn't it then make sense to find ways to actually put the product to use?
- boreas 9y agoI don't think that assumption is correct. Why would subsidies help family farms over "factory farms"? In fact, Big Ag is one of the biggest advocates for the entire constellation of Ag subsidies. It's not a good idea to artificially inflate prices. The article mentioned the food riots in third world a decade ago. There are real consequences to this sort of crony capitalism, and in this case very poor people actually can starve when the prices go up. Not to mention that growing crops is incredibly energy intensive, so it turns out that ethanol really isn't good for the environment. In my opinion, terrible policy all around. Edit: made my comment a little less confrontational :)
- kbutler 9y agoIf that were correct, they'd limit the size of the subsidy to only the first N bushels of grain. Instead, the large farms get the vast majority of subsidies. http://www.heritage.org/agriculture/report/how-farm-subsidies-harm-taxpayers-consumers-and-farmers-too http://www.heritage.org/agriculture/report/how-farm-subsidie...
- mirimir 9y agoMaking ethanol from corn isn't a very efficient path. Using the land for PV arrays, and displacing petroleum with electricity instead of ethanol, is much more efficient.