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The way modern farming works, it's not very easy/quick to rapidly expand farming into non-farming lands. Farming takes expertise, infrastructure, equipment, la

The way modern farming works, it's not very easy/quick to rapidly expand farming into non-farming lands. Farming takes expertise, infrastructure, equipment, labor, and a fair amount of biological systems to work together. The idea of the dumb hick farmer is popular, but not entirely accurate. War isn't the only reason it's bad to get most of our food supply from other countries, though it is a pretty good one and it can be hard to tell in advance when war is going to break out. Food is the foundation of any population of people. Without it, even more so than oil, people start dying. What farm subsidies do is keep farming profitable enough so that there is a surplus of food every year. If for some reason yields are low we simply have a smaller surplus instead of being required to look elsewhere for food. I can't cite my sources, but I've heard a compelling argument that most/all great empire collapses happen during times of drought or famine. This isn't to say that drought or famine are sufficient or even required for a collapse, but it sure helps. Also, all it can take is one bad year (without subsidies) for an independent farmer to go under. Farming is very expensive. The equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and property taxes on 100k+ acres of land is a lot of money.

Prrometheus 18y ago
The way modern farming works is that huge corporate farms open up lobbying offices on K street, which they use to get politicians to increase their subsidies year after year until the payments are larger than any logical purpose could justify. When the production subsidies get too large and environmentalists start to complain about all the marginal land that is being converted to farm land, the farming industry gets the government to pay them to leave acres alone as well. Fly over a desert state and you will see occasional large patches of green. Those patches of green are farms that are phenomenally expensive and resource intensive to produce, but the subsidies make it worthwhile. Some of the fallow land you see is also owned by the farms and they are being paid by the government to leave it alone. Whether agricultural giants are being paid to farm or not farm, taxpayers foot the bill, of course. To keep them from getting upset, politicians from farm states blow patriotic smoke about how important farms are for a nation. >Also, all it can take is one bad year (without subsidies) for an independent farmer to go under. In the old days, this is what crop insurance and futures contracts were for. Crop markets were the original source of many financial innovations that were meant to lessen the risk of participating in a volatile industry. Now I suppose that it is the government's job to guarantee people's livelihoods. Software startups are a very volatile industry as well. Should the government start subsidizing them to keep them from going under? Perhaps it could start with 10 cents per year per line of code written. The first bill will cost $50 billion/year and most of the subsidy will go to Microsoft. After all, we can't allow our software industry to go overseas in case war breaks out. We need American programmers available to write guidance programs for our satellites, unmanned drones, and missiles. Now I just need to switch my startup from Ruby to something more verbose to rake in those LOC subsidies.
- dejb 18y ago
  I don't think the argument is that the current system of subsidies is well organised. It is simply that the over-production of food probably has some significant national security advantages. Running out of food is even worse than running out of oil, steal or microprocessors. This would only be likely happen in a wartime scenario and it would force you to invade another nation to secure access to food or surrender. Having to do this (invade) when you are already obviously streched to the limit would be a significant disadvantage.

Prrometheus 18y ago

The way modern farming works is that huge corporate farms open up lobbying offices on K street, which they use to get politicians to increase their subsidies year after year until the payments are larger than any logical purpose could justify. When the production subsidies get too large and environmentalists start to complain about all the marginal land that is being converted to farm land, the farming industry gets the government to pay them to leave acres alone as well. Fly over a desert state and you will see occasional large patches of green. Those patches of green are farms that are phenomenally expensive and resource intensive to produce, but the subsidies make it worthwhile. Some of the fallow land you see is also owned by the farms and they are being paid by the government to leave it alone. Whether agricultural giants are being paid to farm or not farm, taxpayers foot the bill, of course. To keep them from getting upset, politicians from farm states blow patriotic smoke about how important farms are for a nation. >Also, all it can take is one bad year (without subsidies) for an independent farmer to go under. In the old days, this is what crop insurance and futures contracts were for. Crop markets were the original source of many financial innovations that were meant to lessen the risk of participating in a volatile industry. Now I suppose that it is the government's job to guarantee people's livelihoods. Software startups are a very volatile industry as well. Should the government start subsidizing them to keep them from going under? Perhaps it could start with 10 cents per year per line of code written. The first bill will cost $50 billion/year and most of the subsidy will go to Microsoft. After all, we can't allow our software industry to go overseas in case war breaks out. We need American programmers available to write guidance programs for our satellites, unmanned drones, and missiles. Now I just need to switch my startup from Ruby to something more verbose to rake in those LOC subsidies.

dejb 18y ago
I don't think the argument is that the current system of subsidies is well organised. It is simply that the over-production of food probably has some significant national security advantages. Running out of food is even worse than running out of oil, steal or microprocessors. This would only be likely happen in a wartime scenario and it would force you to invade another nation to secure access to food or surrender. Having to do this (invade) when you are already obviously streched to the limit would be a significant disadvantage.