6 ms·

It's a reasonable argument that government subsidies for farmers reduce prices for the consumer, but I don't think it's necessarily a correct assumption. Subsi

by ascar 6y ago

It's a reasonable argument that government subsidies for farmers reduce prices for the consumer, but I don't think it's necessarily a correct assumption. Subsidies help the local farmers to compete with farmers in low cost countries. Transportation costs are usually insignificant. So without subsidies the consumer might pay the same price, but the store just ends up sourcing the product from a different country. However, having a significant amount of food production locally has obvious strategic benefits (and I don't mean just war, even a draught could create sufficient shortages)

adrianN 6y ago
Meat subsidies in Germany are so successful at helping farmers compete with low cost countries that Germany is one of the biggest exporters of pork.
- thejynxed 6y ago
  To be fair, Germany provides some really high-quality pork products to the world market in exchange for those subsidies.
danShumway 6y ago
Taking your argument at face value and assuming you're right, I still want to point out that those subsidies are applied primarily to a subset of foods, especially feed crops for animals. Our government isn't spending nearly the same amount of time and money trying to subsidize fruits and vegetables. Shouldn't we be just as worried about those products being sourced from other countries? Why are we treating animal feed so specially over other crops? If you take the point of view that we're just trying to keep food production domestic, then it's still pretty clear that we care mostly about keeping some foods domestic -- primarily the ones that are necessary for a thriving beef and dairy industry.
- ahartman00 6y ago
  Calories per acre. "That means corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre" "wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million" "Other vegetables, while much more nutritious than corn, wheat or potatoes, are far less energy-dense. Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million" https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...
- Sevii 6y ago
  From a strategic perspective grain is the most important thing in a food shortage. People can live a year or two without fruit or vegetables, but without the calories in grain things will get violent fast.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    I'm not going to dismiss it outright, but I am mild-to-medium skeptical of this theory. Take a look at some of the recent years of subsidies listed on https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2019 https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr.... It's not just that we prioritize feed crops more than oranges, we also prioritize feed crops more than potatoes and root vegetables. Our corn subsidies are on average over twice as high as our wheat subsidies, and over 7 times as high as rice subsidies. Even dairy consistently gets more subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Are we really just optimizing for a worst case scenario where we literally run out of food? Does it really make sense for us to say that during a famine or a drought that milk will be an efficient use of resources? Nobody is baking bread with canola seeds, is it really more important during a famine that we have canola oil than potatoes? Maybe this is the result of a highly researched government program about how to survive a worldwide famine. But the numbers I'm seeing aren't doing a lot to convince me that famine planning is a more likely cause than lobbying.
    - watwut 6y ago
      > t's not just that we prioritize feed crops more than oranges, we also prioritize feed crops more than potatoes and root vegetables Root vegetables don't have much calories. So this would actually make sense.
      - xupybd 6y ago
        Root vegetables absolutely do have high calories.
    - xupybd 6y ago
      I think you'll find it's largely due to historical precedent and lobbying. Very much the government altering the free market. Corn subsidies are not without their consequences. Cattle do not live healthily on corn. People don't do so well on corn syrup either. I'm not a huge fan of reducing my own meat consumption but think the government should stop subsidizing these industries.
asdff 6y ago
Some of the subsidies are entrenched and strongly lobbied. There is no reason at all to be wasting water on almonds or cotton in California, for an example.
- thejynxed 6y ago
  The farming industry in California would be non-existent without constant subsidizing both of the crops and the extraordinarily wasteful and expensive importing of water from numerous other states to prevent the farmland that was originally desert from reverting back to it's natural state.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Importing of water from other states? Most of that is just diversion of naturally occurring water streams to where it’s needed. “Importing” is an odd way to put it.
bushbaba 6y ago
You could also just have large import tariffs on food. I’m honestly suprised the us doesn’t just have a 25%+ import tariff. Would quickly cause more domestic manufacturing. Like why do we even import garlic from China. We have plenty of domestic ability to produce.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  Tariffs are complicated as fuck. Trump tried to half-ass it off the cuff and fucked up a lot of industries. People import and export the weirdest shit with China. Even a small adjustment on tariffs might cause unseen ripple effect on businesses.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  I think the game is that you also want to convince countries to not do that to US exports
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  Same reason everything else that is imported is imported - comparative advantage. Take the logic of "grow all your food at home" too seriously and you end up like this guy: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-scratch-took-man-six-months-180956674/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-sc...
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given? Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo. However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems without stopping to consider what impact it will have on that part of society is an incredibly rose tinted view of the world.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    I'm skeptical about tariffs and I'm not necessarily opposed to subsidies (although I do kind of question whether they are actually an efficient way to help income-challenged Americans) -- but we could still distribute those subsidies differently in order to cheapen healthier food that's in our better interest to encourage. We could also, if we're getting rid of subsidies, consider giving income-challenged people money directly, which may or may not be comparatively cost-effective to working directly with the industry. So there's a lot of avenues that we could take, and yeah, eliminating food subsidies entirely and not giving any other kinds of aid would probably be a mistake. I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just... there's a lot of things we could change or try that wouldn't leave people to starve. Recognizing that meat is subsidized opens up doors for us to talk about whether our current system is efficient, about what behaviors our current system incentivizes. If nothing else it at least acknowledges that we are currently messing with the market, that meat prices aren't naturally low, and that we if we're comfortable with that kind of intervention, then we could at least mess with the market in different ways to promote more diverse foods. Right now, we are artificially boosting a few segments of the food industry to frankly unhealthy levels of consumption (at least in most of the US) in order to help people afford food. It is worth considering if it is possible to help those people without propping up industries that are at least indirectly responsible for a nontrivial number of health risks and environmental challenges in the US. I don't think most people here are saying we should leave income-strapped Americans to starve (or at least I'm not), but like you said, the current status quo isn't really working, and it has some some pretty big downsides. Even if you don't want to touch subsidies at all, at the least we could talk about stuff like checkoff programs. I find it much harder to argue that government intervention into how food is advertised is for the benefit of low-income Americans, and I think the advertising that comes from that forced tax on food is responsible for some increase in consumption.

by ascar 6y ago

adrianN 6y ago

Meat subsidies in Germany are so successful at helping farmers compete with low cost countries that Germany is one of the biggest exporters of pork.

thejynxed 6y ago
To be fair, Germany provides some really high-quality pork products to the world market in exchange for those subsidies.

danShumway 6y ago

Taking your argument at face value and assuming you're right, I still want to point out that those subsidies are applied primarily to a subset of foods, especially feed crops for animals. Our government isn't spending nearly the same amount of time and money trying to subsidize fruits and vegetables. Shouldn't we be just as worried about those products being sourced from other countries? Why are we treating animal feed so specially over other crops? If you take the point of view that we're just trying to keep food production domestic, then it's still pretty clear that we care mostly about keeping some foods domestic -- primarily the ones that are necessary for a thriving beef and dairy industry.

ahartman00 6y ago
Calories per acre. "That means corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre" "wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million" "Other vegetables, while much more nutritious than corn, wheat or potatoes, are far less energy-dense. Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million" https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...
Sevii 6y ago
From a strategic perspective grain is the most important thing in a food shortage. People can live a year or two without fruit or vegetables, but without the calories in grain things will get violent fast.
- danShumway 6y ago
  I'm not going to dismiss it outright, but I am mild-to-medium skeptical of this theory. Take a look at some of the recent years of subsidies listed on https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2019 https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr.... It's not just that we prioritize feed crops more than oranges, we also prioritize feed crops more than potatoes and root vegetables. Our corn subsidies are on average over twice as high as our wheat subsidies, and over 7 times as high as rice subsidies. Even dairy consistently gets more subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Are we really just optimizing for a worst case scenario where we literally run out of food? Does it really make sense for us to say that during a famine or a drought that milk will be an efficient use of resources? Nobody is baking bread with canola seeds, is it really more important during a famine that we have canola oil than potatoes? Maybe this is the result of a highly researched government program about how to survive a worldwide famine. But the numbers I'm seeing aren't doing a lot to convince me that famine planning is a more likely cause than lobbying.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > t's not just that we prioritize feed crops more than oranges, we also prioritize feed crops more than potatoes and root vegetables Root vegetables don't have much calories. So this would actually make sense.
    - xupybd 6y ago
      Root vegetables absolutely do have high calories.
  - xupybd 6y ago
    I think you'll find it's largely due to historical precedent and lobbying. Very much the government altering the free market. Corn subsidies are not without their consequences. Cattle do not live healthily on corn. People don't do so well on corn syrup either. I'm not a huge fan of reducing my own meat consumption but think the government should stop subsidizing these industries.

asdff 6y ago

Some of the subsidies are entrenched and strongly lobbied. There is no reason at all to be wasting water on almonds or cotton in California, for an example.

thejynxed 6y ago
The farming industry in California would be non-existent without constant subsidizing both of the crops and the extraordinarily wasteful and expensive importing of water from numerous other states to prevent the farmland that was originally desert from reverting back to it's natural state.
- refurb 6y ago
  Importing of water from other states? Most of that is just diversion of naturally occurring water streams to where it’s needed. “Importing” is an odd way to put it.

bushbaba 6y ago

You could also just have large import tariffs on food. I’m honestly suprised the us doesn’t just have a 25%+ import tariff. Would quickly cause more domestic manufacturing. Like why do we even import garlic from China. We have plenty of domestic ability to produce.

theshrike79 6y ago
Tariffs are complicated as fuck. Trump tried to half-ass it off the cuff and fucked up a lot of industries. People import and export the weirdest shit with China. Even a small adjustment on tariffs might cause unseen ripple effect on businesses.
GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
I think the game is that you also want to convince countries to not do that to US exports
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
Same reason everything else that is imported is imported - comparative advantage. Take the logic of "grow all your food at home" too seriously and you end up like this guy: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-scratch-took-man-six-months-180956674/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-sc...
VBprogrammer 6y ago
While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given? Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo. However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems without stopping to consider what impact it will have on that part of society is an incredibly rose tinted view of the world.
- danShumway 6y ago
  I'm skeptical about tariffs and I'm not necessarily opposed to subsidies (although I do kind of question whether they are actually an efficient way to help income-challenged Americans) -- but we could still distribute those subsidies differently in order to cheapen healthier food that's in our better interest to encourage. We could also, if we're getting rid of subsidies, consider giving income-challenged people money directly, which may or may not be comparatively cost-effective to working directly with the industry. So there's a lot of avenues that we could take, and yeah, eliminating food subsidies entirely and not giving any other kinds of aid would probably be a mistake. I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just... there's a lot of things we could change or try that wouldn't leave people to starve. Recognizing that meat is subsidized opens up doors for us to talk about whether our current system is efficient, about what behaviors our current system incentivizes. If nothing else it at least acknowledges that we are currently messing with the market, that meat prices aren't naturally low, and that we if we're comfortable with that kind of intervention, then we could at least mess with the market in different ways to promote more diverse foods. Right now, we are artificially boosting a few segments of the food industry to frankly unhealthy levels of consumption (at least in most of the US) in order to help people afford food. It is worth considering if it is possible to help those people without propping up industries that are at least indirectly responsible for a nontrivial number of health risks and environmental challenges in the US. I don't think most people here are saying we should leave income-strapped Americans to starve (or at least I'm not), but like you said, the current status quo isn't really working, and it has some some pretty big downsides. Even if you don't want to touch subsidies at all, at the least we could talk about stuff like checkoff programs. I find it much harder to argue that government intervention into how food is advertised is for the benefit of low-income Americans, and I think the advertising that comes from that forced tax on food is responsible for some increase in consumption.