4 ms·

So does the US Federal Government, which is the main reason why farm subsidies, although wasteful, are absolutely necessary for National Security. The quickest

by pm90 8y ago

So does the US Federal Government, which is the main reason why farm subsidies, although wasteful, are absolutely necessary for National Security. The quickest way for a country/civilization to fall is by interruptions in food supply. The US is a large country with many people. If the food price increase sharply or if there's food scarcity, it will most certainly lead to social unrest of the kind we've never seen before.

PorterDuff 8y ago
It seems to me that if the point (or at least part of it) of government farm policy is to produce oversupply, you could argue that they set up subsidies to favor small operators. A large quantity of small farms, with slightly different approaches to problems, slightly different crops, different sources of financing, local ownership sounds like it might be more reliable in the long run. Admittedly, the efficiency of the system would suffer a bit.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  You're mostly hedging against weather. One region gets flooded or hit by a drought, and then produces essentially nothing. So you want N+M regional redundancy, where you can lose the output of M regions and the remaining N can produce enough for the whole.
pjc50 8y ago
Imports? Amartya Sen's work on the huge historical famines argues that they were essentially economic phenomena where there was enough food but not enough money to buy the food. In both the Bengal and Irish famines there were even food exports happening during the crisis.
- ben_w 8y ago
  I’m of the opinion that all national security goods and services should be supplied/funded/organised (delete as appropriate) by the government, even when doing so is unnecessarily expensive, as it’s bad to give a different government the power to crush your own.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Maybe so, but that does rather revert to mercantilism. Or, depending on how you interpret "supplied/funded/organised", nationalised agriculture which has pretty much only been seen in Communist states! (also for most countries oil is a national security good that they have to import ... this has been a defining problem of the 20th century.)
    - saalweachter 8y ago
      There's like, a bunch of interconnected issues in agriculture. For instance: 1. Our [read 'us' as being either 'my country' or 'human civilization'] food supply needs to be sufficient to provide adequate nutrition to all living humans. 2. Our food supply needs to be robust against failures in production, transportation and distribution which could be regional, widespread, and last several months or years. 3. Our food supply needs reach all individuals, so that no individual person lacks adequate nutrition. 4. Our food supply needs to grow at a sufficient pace to match population growth. 5. Our food supply needs to be 'sustainable' [used in the sense of 'our agricultural practices shouldn't lead to future shortfalls' rather than 'environmentally friendly']. 6. Our food supply needs to be 'environmentally friendly' [as in, minimizing pollutants, energy costs, land use, and damage to native plant and animal species]. 7. Our food supply needs to be 'ethical' [as in, the moral rights of the individuals who participate it and the animals which constitute it need to be respected; what moral rights the people and animals possess is left as an exercise to the reader]. 8. Small Farmer Proposition: Individual farmers as well as corporations and state-owned organizations should be able to participate in agriculture. 9. Mercantilism Proposition: Rich countries should not be able to crush the agricultural sector of poor countries through protectionism. This isn't intended as a strict ordering of priority, but I personally care a lot more about making sure everyone is fed than some of the other issues, and I'll note that if we're not producing enough food, the inadequacy of our food distribution and feeding programs is kind of a moot point. My very-controversial opinion is that that famines are very, very bad and that we should heavily over-invest in preventing them. There are obviously limits to all investments, but it's one of the Four Horsemen for crying out loud. Unsurprisingly, fixing all of the problems with agriculture is a complex problem, or else we wouldn't be talking about it because it would already be solved, and it's probably going to require many solutions, policies, regulations, technologies and programs to fix, and many of those are going to create more problems that will have to be addressed in turn. But policy-wise, I think you really want the biggest, dumbest, least likely to fail solutions for the biggest problem of "no famines". Encouraging over-production creates other problems, like depressing wages for farmers and farm workers, both domestic and internationally, but it does a really, really good job of keeping famine at bay, at least domestically. Even in the ways it is prone to gaming or corruption, it still provides a more than adequate food supply. [This is a risk with provisions built on stockpiling; it is much easier for corrupt individuals associated with the program to just not stockpile and pocket the money, or sell stockpiles, or otherwise not do their job, and it can go on for years without being discovered, until you need those stockpiles and it turns out they never existed.] So even if over-production creates other problems, or is "economically inefficient", I'd much rather see over-production continue, and additional policies, regulations and programs be added to address other concerns, both the problems over-production creates, and the problems it doesn't address, like the adequate distribution of food.

by pm90 8y ago

PorterDuff 8y ago

It seems to me that if the point (or at least part of it) of government farm policy is to produce oversupply, you could argue that they set up subsidies to favor small operators. A large quantity of small farms, with slightly different approaches to problems, slightly different crops, different sources of financing, local ownership sounds like it might be more reliable in the long run. Admittedly, the efficiency of the system would suffer a bit.

saalweachter 8y ago
You're mostly hedging against weather. One region gets flooded or hit by a drought, and then produces essentially nothing. So you want N+M regional redundancy, where you can lose the output of M regions and the remaining N can produce enough for the whole.

pjc50 8y ago

Imports? Amartya Sen's work on the huge historical famines argues that they were essentially economic phenomena where there was enough food but not enough money to buy the food. In both the Bengal and Irish famines there were even food exports happening during the crisis.

ben_w 8y ago
I’m of the opinion that all national security goods and services should be supplied/funded/organised (delete as appropriate) by the government, even when doing so is unnecessarily expensive, as it’s bad to give a different government the power to crush your own.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Maybe so, but that does rather revert to mercantilism. Or, depending on how you interpret "supplied/funded/organised", nationalised agriculture which has pretty much only been seen in Communist states! (also for most countries oil is a national security good that they have to import ... this has been a defining problem of the 20th century.)
  - saalweachter 8y ago
    There's like, a bunch of interconnected issues in agriculture. For instance: 1. Our [read 'us' as being either 'my country' or 'human civilization'] food supply needs to be sufficient to provide adequate nutrition to all living humans. 2. Our food supply needs to be robust against failures in production, transportation and distribution which could be regional, widespread, and last several months or years. 3. Our food supply needs reach all individuals, so that no individual person lacks adequate nutrition. 4. Our food supply needs to grow at a sufficient pace to match population growth. 5. Our food supply needs to be 'sustainable' [used in the sense of 'our agricultural practices shouldn't lead to future shortfalls' rather than 'environmentally friendly']. 6. Our food supply needs to be 'environmentally friendly' [as in, minimizing pollutants, energy costs, land use, and damage to native plant and animal species]. 7. Our food supply needs to be 'ethical' [as in, the moral rights of the individuals who participate it and the animals which constitute it need to be respected; what moral rights the people and animals possess is left as an exercise to the reader]. 8. Small Farmer Proposition: Individual farmers as well as corporations and state-owned organizations should be able to participate in agriculture. 9. Mercantilism Proposition: Rich countries should not be able to crush the agricultural sector of poor countries through protectionism. This isn't intended as a strict ordering of priority, but I personally care a lot more about making sure everyone is fed than some of the other issues, and I'll note that if we're not producing enough food, the inadequacy of our food distribution and feeding programs is kind of a moot point. My very-controversial opinion is that that famines are very, very bad and that we should heavily over-invest in preventing them. There are obviously limits to all investments, but it's one of the Four Horsemen for crying out loud. Unsurprisingly, fixing all of the problems with agriculture is a complex problem, or else we wouldn't be talking about it because it would already be solved, and it's probably going to require many solutions, policies, regulations, technologies and programs to fix, and many of those are going to create more problems that will have to be addressed in turn. But policy-wise, I think you really want the biggest, dumbest, least likely to fail solutions for the biggest problem of "no famines". Encouraging over-production creates other problems, like depressing wages for farmers and farm workers, both domestic and internationally, but it does a really, really good job of keeping famine at bay, at least domestically. Even in the ways it is prone to gaming or corruption, it still provides a more than adequate food supply. [This is a risk with provisions built on stockpiling; it is much easier for corrupt individuals associated with the program to just not stockpile and pocket the money, or sell stockpiles, or otherwise not do their job, and it can go on for years without being discovered, until you need those stockpiles and it turns out they never existed.] So even if over-production creates other problems, or is "economically inefficient", I'd much rather see over-production continue, and additional policies, regulations and programs be added to address other concerns, both the problems over-production creates, and the problems it doesn't address, like the adequate distribution of food.