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It is strategically important for a country to be able to feed itself (vs importing food). Farm subsidies are the current method that enables this. At least th

• thehappypm 6y ago
  It’s less about importing food but ensuring that food is cheap enough that the entire populace can cheaply access food.
  • saalweachter 6y ago
    Also, enabling overproduction. Farmers get it coming and going. If it is a "bad" year, and the crops fail, you don't get money and might not be able to afford to keep going next year. If it is a "good" year and a "good" year for everyone else, it becomes a "bad" year again -- overproduction means that your prices drop and you might not be able to afford to keep going next year. But while both situations are equally bad for the farmer, it's really bad for civilization if you don't produce enough food -- in fact, you want to ensure that even in multi-sigma off-years, with flooding everywhere that floods and drought everywhere else, you still produce enough food to feed everyone. That means that you have to build in a lot of overproduction -- every year should be a "bad" year for the farmers. (As an aside, you'll never see more concealed glee than a couple of farmers in one state talking about a flood in another state that produces a similar slate of crops, knowing that's going to bump crop prices by 20-30% while also not wanting to be happy about others' misfortune.)