9 ms·

Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. What I mean is that if we removed the

by gklitz 2y ago

Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. What I mean is that if we removed the subsidies the farmers wouldn’t farm their land, the market just doesn’t work to support their production. So we are essentially saying “if you pretend to farm your land we’ll make sure you profit” but even at that they of cause need to try to keep the pretend farming profitable enough that the entire charade pays off, but that means dumping a ton of fertilizer on the land, which tends to run off and ruin streams and seeps into the ground water. Most recently this has led to the agricultural industry competeley and likely semi permanently destroying the fishing industry around one of the major pars of Denmark. So at this point the farmers have to stop. There’s a natural way of doing that, which is to cut subsidies and let the market handle it. But the farmers have political power because they have a lot of money because of the policies they’ve set up back when they had political power because they had a lot of money… Anyways, so what is actually happening is that the farmers have decided that if their land is unprofitable then the government needs to pay a hefty price to them for it. The government could just cut the subsidies which means we would use less money, then buy the land in bankruptcies, likely just with the money we spend less. Instead we’ll see a lot of additional spending to buy the land, and then down the line subsidies will increase to “make up” for all the land they “lost”.

panick21_ 2y ago
In New Zealand the believe that if they removed farm subsidizes, their farmers would quite. Now they are a massive farm product exporter.
- mmooss 2y ago
  So the public gives them their hard-earned money via taxes, and the farmers reap more money from exporting?
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    No, the public gives them no money and they make money for the country by exporting.
- geoffmunn 2y ago
  To be more accurate - by removing subsidies, NZ farmers became more efficient and sell their products at the world price, which is quite often overseas. Subsidies and/or tarrifs always distort the market and have unintended consequences.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    Not sure why you say 'more accurate'. What you state is what I implied. I hope this was clear. What removing subsidies do is unleash the potential. Lots of farming communities that live with subsidies are convinced that removing them is a dooms day scenario. However evidence often doesn't support this. Japan used to protect its market for beef. Then this was forced to be opened by the US. Japan farmer then realized that their specialization was high quality beef. And now Japan is globally famous and exports lots of high quality beef. Removing subsidies can lead to structural changes and consolidation, but it can also have lots of positive effects.
    - asdff 2y ago
      Does it pencil out though? You go from more farmers making less profit and getting subsidy to smooth things over and then they go ahead and spend most of that back in the economy running the business presumably. And the other situation is no subsidy, fewer players as they have to take what little profit there is and spend it more on overhead, and presumably less money reinvested in the local economy overall because of less economic activity from fewer players as well as that subsidy no longer being available to spend back on overhead and recirculate into the economy. And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people who spend even less proportionally in the local economy than someone with less means.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        That's only true if you ignore that the government can spend that money on something else. And the successful farmers are actually net tax payers. Compare subsidies to farmers, all farmers are highly inefficient farming with no exports. No great public transport system and roads with potholes. To: No subsidies. Highly efficient farmers that export. Fantastic bus connection and roads in the whole countryside. > take what little profit there is Before there was no net profit at all, it was a net lose to society. You were moving profits from other sectors to the farm sector. > And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people If a farmer is successful, they should make money, just like people in all other sectors in the economy. Nobody makes the argument that we should subsidize all manufacturing, so that we can have lots of small relatively poor manufacturing sites that lose money. This if course doesn't necessarily work for every country, but the general doom and gloom about subsidy is often proven wrong.
0xy 2y ago
Do you think food production has national security implications or do you think "the market" will be happy to sell you food during another global conflict while their own citizens are starving? Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout. Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies. Denmark set aside DKK 53.5 billion for green subsidies in 2022. But this isn't market distortion to the same degree as farming subsidies, is it? That's the flaw in your argument. It's inconsistently applied based on politics, isn't it?
- awjlogan 2y ago
  There’s a big difference between supporting food security and subsidising otherwise unviable land usage and farming practices. In the UK, there are subsidies for upland farming for sheep with produces a negligible amount of food at high cost (monetary and environmental) for next to no return for the farmers even after the subsidy. Re. green subsidies that is better characterised as investment in technology of the future. You might also like to compare subsidies to the fossil fuel sector as well.
- _w1tm 2y ago
  How does having such a large surplus that you’re an exporter of food jive with national security? It sounds like they already produce more than enough. Exposing food production entirely to market forces is, as you point out, a bad idea.
  - mollerhoj 2y ago
    Sounds like you’ve fallen for some farmer rhetoric.. How is growning crops to feed 28 million pigs to 6 million people? We’d have to eat 5 pigs each.. If it was really about food security, we’d surely plant crops to eat ourselves, which is much more efficient in terms of calorie per m^2. Meat has many more negative externalities than plants. Thats the argument for substituting green farming. Of course it’s political.. anything is to some degree.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
chipdart 2y ago
> Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. This is a particularly ignorant and clueless opinion to have. The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a strategic asset. Europe's strong economy and huge population density, coupled with cheap access to agricultural production from south America and Africa, renders most agricultural activity economically unfeasible. The problem is that this means Europe is particularly vulnerable to a blockade, and in case of all out war the whole continent risks being starved in a few months. The whole point of EU's common agricultural policy is to minimize this risk. Owners of farmland are provided a incentive to keep their farms on standby even if they don't produce anything exactly to mitigate this risk. It would be more profitable to invest in some domains such as, say, real estate. Look at the Netherlands: they are experiencing a huge housing crisis and the whole land in Holland consists of dense urban housing bordered by farm land. It would be tempting for farmers to just cash out on real estate if they didn't had an economic upside. You would do better if you educated yourself on a topic before commenting on it.
- credit_guy 2y ago
  With this type of argument you can demonstrate that lots of things have strategic importance. Steel? Check. Textiles? Check. Asphalt? Check. We should subsidize everything. Yet, when the military threat actually materializes and you need to manufacture 155mm shells, all the strategic planning seems quite useless.
  - vorpalhex 2y ago
    In the US, we have sextupled 155mm shell production. If war breaks out, you need to feed people, maintain roads, build vehicles, etc.
    - credit_guy 2y ago
      Europe has a huge coastline, it's impossible to blockade. If war breaks out, it's better to shift workers from agriculture to war-related production, and import food from places that are not at war, such as South America. Food produced in Europe is basically a luxury. For every kilogram of beef produced in Denmark, you can buy 2.5 kg of Argentinian beef.

by gklitz 2y ago

panick21_ 2y ago

In New Zealand the believe that if they removed farm subsidizes, their farmers would quite. Now they are a massive farm product exporter.

mmooss 2y ago
So the public gives them their hard-earned money via taxes, and the farmers reap more money from exporting?
- panick21_ 2y ago
  No, the public gives them no money and they make money for the country by exporting.
geoffmunn 2y ago
To be more accurate - by removing subsidies, NZ farmers became more efficient and sell their products at the world price, which is quite often overseas. Subsidies and/or tarrifs always distort the market and have unintended consequences.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Not sure why you say 'more accurate'. What you state is what I implied. I hope this was clear. What removing subsidies do is unleash the potential. Lots of farming communities that live with subsidies are convinced that removing them is a dooms day scenario. However evidence often doesn't support this. Japan used to protect its market for beef. Then this was forced to be opened by the US. Japan farmer then realized that their specialization was high quality beef. And now Japan is globally famous and exports lots of high quality beef. Removing subsidies can lead to structural changes and consolidation, but it can also have lots of positive effects.
  - asdff 2y ago
    Does it pencil out though? You go from more farmers making less profit and getting subsidy to smooth things over and then they go ahead and spend most of that back in the economy running the business presumably. And the other situation is no subsidy, fewer players as they have to take what little profit there is and spend it more on overhead, and presumably less money reinvested in the local economy overall because of less economic activity from fewer players as well as that subsidy no longer being available to spend back on overhead and recirculate into the economy. And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people who spend even less proportionally in the local economy than someone with less means.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      That's only true if you ignore that the government can spend that money on something else. And the successful farmers are actually net tax payers. Compare subsidies to farmers, all farmers are highly inefficient farming with no exports. No great public transport system and roads with potholes. To: No subsidies. Highly efficient farmers that export. Fantastic bus connection and roads in the whole countryside. > take what little profit there is Before there was no net profit at all, it was a net lose to society. You were moving profits from other sectors to the farm sector. > And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people If a farmer is successful, they should make money, just like people in all other sectors in the economy. Nobody makes the argument that we should subsidize all manufacturing, so that we can have lots of small relatively poor manufacturing sites that lose money. This if course doesn't necessarily work for every country, but the general doom and gloom about subsidy is often proven wrong.

0xy 2y ago

Do you think food production has national security implications or do you think "the market" will be happy to sell you food during another global conflict while their own citizens are starving? Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout. Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies. Denmark set aside DKK 53.5 billion for green subsidies in 2022. But this isn't market distortion to the same degree as farming subsidies, is it? That's the flaw in your argument. It's inconsistently applied based on politics, isn't it?

awjlogan 2y ago
There’s a big difference between supporting food security and subsidising otherwise unviable land usage and farming practices. In the UK, there are subsidies for upland farming for sheep with produces a negligible amount of food at high cost (monetary and environmental) for next to no return for the farmers even after the subsidy. Re. green subsidies that is better characterised as investment in technology of the future. You might also like to compare subsidies to the fossil fuel sector as well.
_w1tm 2y ago
How does having such a large surplus that you’re an exporter of food jive with national security? It sounds like they already produce more than enough. Exposing food production entirely to market forces is, as you point out, a bad idea.
- mollerhoj 2y ago
  Sounds like you’ve fallen for some farmer rhetoric.. How is growning crops to feed 28 million pigs to 6 million people? We’d have to eat 5 pigs each.. If it was really about food security, we’d surely plant crops to eat ourselves, which is much more efficient in terms of calorie per m^2. Meat has many more negative externalities than plants. Thats the argument for substituting green farming. Of course it’s political.. anything is to some degree.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago

chipdart 2y ago

> Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. This is a particularly ignorant and clueless opinion to have. The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a strategic asset. Europe's strong economy and huge population density, coupled with cheap access to agricultural production from south America and Africa, renders most agricultural activity economically unfeasible. The problem is that this means Europe is particularly vulnerable to a blockade, and in case of all out war the whole continent risks being starved in a few months. The whole point of EU's common agricultural policy is to minimize this risk. Owners of farmland are provided a incentive to keep their farms on standby even if they don't produce anything exactly to mitigate this risk. It would be more profitable to invest in some domains such as, say, real estate. Look at the Netherlands: they are experiencing a huge housing crisis and the whole land in Holland consists of dense urban housing bordered by farm land. It would be tempting for farmers to just cash out on real estate if they didn't had an economic upside. You would do better if you educated yourself on a topic before commenting on it.

credit_guy 2y ago
With this type of argument you can demonstrate that lots of things have strategic importance. Steel? Check. Textiles? Check. Asphalt? Check. We should subsidize everything. Yet, when the military threat actually materializes and you need to manufacture 155mm shells, all the strategic planning seems quite useless.
- vorpalhex 2y ago
  In the US, we have sextupled 155mm shell production. If war breaks out, you need to feed people, maintain roads, build vehicles, etc.
  - credit_guy 2y ago
    Europe has a huge coastline, it's impossible to blockade. If war breaks out, it's better to shift workers from agriculture to war-related production, and import food from places that are not at war, such as South America. Food produced in Europe is basically a luxury. For every kilogram of beef produced in Denmark, you can buy 2.5 kg of Argentinian beef.