August 19, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:At last
A Guardian cause we can all get behind:
Kick into oblivion All Agricultural Subsidies: KickAAS The Blog.
A round of applause to The Guardian, and a reminder to readers that now is a great time to phone the White House, your senators, and your congressman to let them know you want real progress on eliminating agricultural subsidies and tariffs in Cancun.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 19, 2003 10:53 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksBut don't hold your breath while you're at it...
Hey -- in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, we need those subsidies. And, we get them because each of us has three electoral college votes. Red or Blue, the aspiring presidential contender gets them in return for the subsidies.
Marvin, those states don't need ag subsidies. There are farmers who are making a profit (or at least a living) without subsidies. Let those who need subsidies take up some other productive use of their time (i.e. get another job) and sell their farms to the effective farmers.
Ryan,
They may not need them but try getting their vote on a platform of eliminating farm subsidies. This is one of the reasons that the free state project is doomed to fail. Most of the states they are considering are farm states and once they get in there and start talking about eliminating the farm dole they will be shot or worse.
PJ O'Rourke said it best (paraphrasing), "During the Whisky Rebellion Farmers didn't want to pay their taxes, Mr. Washington's solution was to shoot farmers, and this was the last time the US had a coherent farm policy."
The Guardian's come out for free trade? My.... we really are living in the Wierd Times.
The Guardian's come out for free trade?
It is the same Guardian (then the Manchester Guardian) whose then publisher/editor was one of the founding members of the Amti Corn Law League in the 1840s. It was dedicated to abolishing high agricultural tariffs because of the effect they had on the poor. It has been described as the first successful single issue political pressure group in England. If only we could do it again
With your help . .. .
Thankls very much for your interest
Vic Keegan
Agriculture is a severely cyclical industry. The unpredictability
of what the weather will do and the consequently high stakes
gamble of planting crops means that over time without buffering
aid from the government the industry would rapidly
consolidate into a few mega farming corporations. Especially
given that the barriers to entry -- for one simply the cost
of buying a farm -- are so high that hardly ever does anyone
new enter the business.
Because of this I do think there is a legitimate rationale
for giving farmers subsidies in years where their crops
do not come in. The problem with this is that when
large and small farms are treated equally, this buffering
of bad years turns out to be of greater advantage to
the large farms so that the consolidation is still
occurring albeit at a slower rate than in the absence
of buffering.
What I would prefer is that crop disaster aid be restricted
to a moderate amount per farm, so that smaller farms would
be completely covered and the larger are encouraged to break
up in bad years.
We also have a problem with lands that are marginal for
farming or grazing. These are areas that if intensively
farmed rapidly erode (say on the order of decades). Even
so it is still in the farmers short-term interest to
farm them, because the damage becomes overwhelming on
a longer time scale than the farmer's life.
In this situation, paying owners not to farm, as the
agricultural department does, is perhaps a reasonable
option.
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