Food got so stupidly cheap it makes no sense to grow it in the US anymore. So farmers demanded that people in cities pay for their lifestyles out of our taxes. And then they go around being entitled about it.
I've had enough of farm welfare queens. Get farmers off of welfare and let us import food from places that can grow it competitively. If we can't make up the other 85% from somewhere else, that's great, then US farmers will show that they can grow food at a reasonable place without welfare.
These hateful people that survive on the welfare handouts from cityfolk and then turn around and vote for Republican idiots like Trump have gone too far. Time to cut them off.
It would be better if the subsidies were limited to smallholders on ~100 acres or less, which would resolve the rural depression issue.
if the US stopped growing food, hundreds of millions of people would die just from the famine. many governments would be toppled, probably even a few first world countries.
The unfairness of farm subsidies is that there’s also essentially no _controls_ on the output. The government can’t turn around and mandate particular growing practices, in part because farming companies and larger farmers have gotten used to the subsidies and how they work.
In Canada, at least, subsidies are also tied to production controls and standards.
Don’t get me wrong: I am in _favour_ of most farm subsidies; there is a lot of benefit to it. But the taxpayer should get a bit more control on what’s being spent on. IMO, small farm subsidies should probably increase so that more people have opportunities to work the land if they wish to do so and pay their seasonal workers a living wage so that they don’t have to use undocumented workers. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to see a couple of F35 fighters scrapped in favour of fair farm wage payments.
#2) The US isn't just a net exporter of food, its one of the dominant food producers (in exports) in the world. A country like Canada only became a net exporter of food in ~2019. These US exports are primary stables like corn, beef, pork, etc.
#3) f-35 funding is tangential to the conversation. bringing it up only makes you sound un-informed and polarizes your argument for the issue at hand.
2. They are _American_ staples. They are not necessarily staples in receiving countries, and as noted above, may actually be distorting local markets and foodways. I would also argue that subsidies for American farmers should _not_ be applied to export crops, as noted above.
3. Not tangential at all. America could divert a small fraction of its military budget into meaningful wage subsidies for farm workers that could make farm labour more attractive to more people. America spends more money on its military than the next ten biggest military spenders in the world.
Yes, I exaggerated that a single F-35 could provide this sort of subsidy. My point, however, stands.
Food production is a modern solved problem. The politics of it is not.
No country is giving up food security and voter messaging to the invisible hand of a global market. No one likes corn as much as Americans do, yet its one of your greater exports, simply because of American economic and diplomatic ascendancy.
>I never said subsidies aren't necessary: I don't know how you can infer that point from what I wrote.
Didn't you just tell us that you weren't arguing against subsidies and then you reply with that? Make your mind up you're all over the place. Sounds like I inferred correctly.
The rest of your argument is laden with all sorts of cognitive dissonance. Subsidies are given for things like food because if a society doesn't of have food it's a really bad thing so the government props up the industry in bad times (in this case during the Great Depression) and we don't starve. It's not an altruistic handout, it's way of keeping you from starving to death genius.
The fact that you think it's a generous handout from the "elites" and government indicates that you think it's unnecessary which means the farmers are profitable on their own and your entire asinine "hypothetical" comment about them starving to death without it gets thrown out the window. The subsidies cannot be both necessary and considered a generous handout from the coastal elites. Pick one.
We import about 15% of our food supply right now. Good luck making up the other 85% with cheaper imports. Relying on external food supplies is a massive security risk and disadvantage as well.