You might be right that I’m lumping it incorrectly. The subsidies are the biggest problem, and I am suspecting that the subsidies fund this research, the Harber-Bosch process is the biggest driver for high crop yield as far as I know. Even without any of these institutions the US had never had a famine, so I don’t see their benefits I am saddened that they oppress native crops and also prioritize yield over long term farming such as wasteful crop rotation, and I haven’t seen signs of their benefits. I’m not against government intervention or “public good” but when I don’t see any signs of it, I’m suspicious of it as not only wasteful but harmful.

Fresh milk is wasteful, we could move to powdered milk, ultra pastuized, or the Canadian model but as long as subsidies exist they will continue this non green and wasteful spending. My point is the market choices are only existing as subsidies exist.

I don’t disagree with your general concerns around subsidies; however, I am from, and reside, within an agricultural region - and count among my family and friends conventional, urban, and permaculture farmers - and I do believe you are taking an incomplete and too narrow a view here.

Do you care to explain or show me a resource I can get a better understanding of? I know friends of friends who are farmers and the only thing I know are that farmers are pretty high tech and educated, they grow according to subsides, and a lot of their friends growing up died in random accidents around the farm.