First of all, the corn / ethanol thing. That gets thrown about a lot, but it's not true. Only about 2% of the world's crop yield is used for biofuel production.

First of all, the corn / ethanol thing. That gets thrown about a lot, but it's not true. Only about 2% of the world's crop yield is used for biofuel production. So that by itself can't explain the current food crisis (which is real, but only if you live in the third world). Second of all, I should have been clearer that I meant that third world farmers should be subsidized. It's the only way for them to survive the onslaught of western multi billion agricultural companies like Monsanto, which for a large part of their production certainly are not subsidized at all (though you're right about American corn/wheat/soybean farmers : American agriculture combines the worst of the European system - aggressive subsidies - with the worst of commercial aggriculture - inefficient production - from a nutritional point of view). Third, American food is in fact produced by free market forces. It's the export to the rest of the world that is subsidized. Locally, small American farmers have been, for a large part, replaced by large agricultural conglomerates simply because those can create a large profit and buy up farm land even if the quality of their produce is at the very least debatable. European subsidies, on the other hand, go directly to farmers, allowing them to at least supply their home markets with plentiful food of often reasonably high quality. The drawback of both systems is that food exports from the west (be they subsidized directly the way American food exports are or indirectly, the way European farm produce is) is that it destroys third world agriculture, which the IMF does not allow its governments to subsidize, either directly or indirectly by slapping import tariffs on food imports to offset the subsidies of the western governments. Seeing as that this is the case (and a major reason for the food crisis) it seems to me not unreasonable to allow third world governments to subsidize as well to make the playing field somewhat level again. A better idea would of course be to not subsidize at all but I don't see the US give up its export subsidies and, especially, the EU give up its farm subsidies anytime soon.