A budget cut? Subsidies are a form of "silent taxation" on those not getting the subsidy.
Here’s an Easy One for Congress - NYTimes.com
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A discussion of policy, politics and culture in government and society.
I certainly agree with the author of this article. Farm subsidies, in my opinion, do more harm than good. This was supposed to be a temporary fix for small farmers during the great depression, and now it's an $11 billion cost to our nation. How do we even know it's going to the right people? From what I have read, most of the subsidies go to large mega-farms and not even the smaller farmers that need them.
ReplyDeleteThis is just one instance in which the government should be run like a business rather then a constant investor in which the return is questionable at best. To me it sounds like a waste of money. While easy to see for an outsider (that does not count on votes and campaign contributions from these groups), congress would have a huge battle to cut these funds. It would be much easier to cut from education and social programs.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author of the article. According to the Congressional Budget Office in 2005 the United States gave nearly $2 billion dollars in subsidies to tobacco farms. I thought the government was supposed to promote good health, not promote an industry whose product causes the opposite . With the economy the way it is I have to believe that this subsidy money could be more useful elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteFarming subsidies should be given more consideration by Congress in terms of “cutting.” I agree with this NY Times Editorial. It is alarming and disheartening to think (as the article states, however this is on “The Opinion Page) that $5 billion in direct payments might be going to waste. It is in my opinion that farmers should be protected by Congress to some extent, but government should be investigating to make sure subsidies are truly being allocated properly. Being that it is that scores of farms are government ran and own, it’d be nice if they had integrity and not overcompensate for selfish reasons. The results of farming subsidies are controversial. I hope it is given more consideration when determining where and what cuts will be made. While it may appear easier to the Congressional majority to cut from education and social programs, it is so cliché for them to do so...I really HOPE they don't.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with the author that these farm subsidies have gotten out of hand. The goverment is continuing to act as lenders to these big farmers instead of investors. Our deficit is continuing to rise as we hand out these tax cuts to large farms while small farms are continuing to go out of business as they can not compete with the large farmers and their prices. The set crop prices hurting small time farms that simply cant compete on the large scale.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very shocking article. I had no idea that much money was provided from the government to support the farming industries each year. I agree with the previous posters, that this seems to be a tremendous amount of wasted money. Playing devil's advocate though, it would be interesting to see how much each farm actually gets - maybe it doesn't amount to all that much considering how many farms are in the United States. Also, I can understand subsidizing farmers in their bad years, but I don't understand why they would subsidize them when they are producing crop and making money. My husband works 100% commission and there are certain seasons where the business is more lucrative and he is EXPECTED to save his own money to compensate for the seasons that are not going to produce revenues. Shouldn't we hold farmers to the same accountability? Changing that one policy would save the government millions of dollars. I agree with "erikeli", the government should be run like business in this regard, because it seems as though they are currently way overcompensating the farming industry...
ReplyDeleteWhen most of think of farms, they imagine a red barn, a guy trolling along on his tractor and chickens running around the yard. But the modern reality is that that image in the United States has seriously transformed. Farming today is so industrialized and mechanized that many modern farms are like factories. I think it is important to remember that the federal subsidies are going to mainly enormous agricultural factories:
ReplyDelete"The government spends $10 billion to $30 billion a year subsidizing mainly large-scale farmers. That includes: $5 billion in direct payments that are delivered regardless of what or even whether farmers plant; up to $7 billion in “marketing loans” that effectively set a floor on crop prices; up to $4 billion to protect farmers in bad years; about $4 billion in subsidies to buy crop insurance — which lead to higher premiums; and more."
This is a business model guaranteed to fail. But it is also a system in which the United States has seriously invested taxpayer money.
In this factory farming model, a single corporation can own/control all aspects of production - from the genetic engineering of the seed to the gigantic planters that put those seeds in the ground to the creation of synthetic food products to the marketing schemes that make you buy it. Therefore, a lot of people, jobs and money are dependent upon this structure remaining in place, regardless of how efficiently it is working.
The federal government and the agribusiness lobby has essentially cut the legs out from under farmers. With increased USDA and FDA regulations, small-scale farmers have become rare creatures, often being bought out to subcontract under the company model described above. It has become harder and harder for smaller farms to get their product into grocery stores. And, with subsidies almost exclusively going for the factory-scale farms, there is no way for smaller farms to compete when they have to deal with the natural probability of a down year or a bad harvest or fluctuations in supply-demand. Factory farms have the luxury of a federally-supported mattress to fall back on.
But we, as consumers, are also to blame. We demand inexpensive food that is unvarying in quality and taste. In response, the food industry looked for ways to produce food as uniformly and efficiently as possible. Though cheap in price, the costs of this model are incredibly high - yet often invisible to the uninformed.
Agriculture in the United States - and specifically the highly entropic factory farms - compiles nearly 25% of our energy use (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR94/ERR94_ReportSummary.html). An additional energy use break-down within agriculture is as follows*:
31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
19% for the operation of field machinery
16% for transportation
13% for irrigation
8% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
5% for crop drying
5% for pesticide production
8% miscellaneous8
*Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.
Factory farming creates a massive amount of water and air pollution, can - and is in many cases - be detrimental to public health and relies heavily of government subsidies to continue its by definition insane practices and methodology. All these costs our society bears.