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[Aqizzar]

Previously Senators were elected by state legislatures instead of the electorate. Now they are elected by the electorate directly. In both cases, two senators per state, regardless of population, means that they are representing each state's interests. This was specifically crafted to keep small, rural, agricultural, or inland states from being politically powerless against the populist crush of the House.

Yes, I graduated middle school as well.

Regardless, you're still wrong about food subsidies existing because of massive conglomerates voting the Senate to give them free money, no matter how you try to distract discussion from your bad assumption.

That was one third of explanations I offered, in my apparent attempt to distract a thread in the second post.  As Criptfiend pointed out, plenty of "family-owned" farm production is privately owned land that's rented or leased to agricultural companies.  I'll concede that "corporate" was a misnomer, since family-owned doesn't imply any particular size - a company can be as family-owned as anything.  As your own graph pointed out "Very Large Family-Owned" farms account for about 3% of arceage but 35% of production.

And if you're actually trying to say that agribusinesses don't lobby the Senate for bills they want, well we can just let that hang in the air on its own.

[PsyberianHusky]

Ninety-eight  percent of American farms are considered to be family farms meaning they are counted as a sole-proprietary or partnership business of varying scales(EPA 2002).

I take it this means family-owned farms account for 98% of reporting farms by number?  What do they account for by land area, or yield?

Well here is where the numbers get a little hard to interpret cause any unit receiving more then 1000$ of income a year is considered by the government a "farm".

He is a table
http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html

Here is the table, I can't seem to find anything in my bibliography about the corporate farmers.
I am sure the numbers are out around somewhere, and I am sure that 2 Percent is making a ton of money.

Funny thing that the Environmental protection agency seems to have better publicly usable records then the National Institute of Agriculture.

[Nikov]

You've begun your condescending "your level of understanding is a middle schooler's" routine again, so pardon me if this sounds terse.

Yes, you distracted the thread. We were supposed to be discussing farm subsidies, you derailed into incorrectly blaming it on the Senate handing out "free money no questions asked" to "massive conglomerates" and managed to do that on the second post. You raised a whole false point that the US has farm subsidies based on how our Congress is apportioned. This is a non-sequiter. Monarchies, communist autocracies, direct democracies, and even the Roman Empire have had farm subsidies. It is entirely unrelated to bring up how Congress or the Constitution functions in the United States.

Lastly, any family farm can be a company. It is the preferred method of doing business to declare yourself an LLC. Furthermore additional data on land use, if you had bothered to look at the USDA site, demonstrates owner-operators are the primary farm type.

Land tenure describes the farm operator’s ownership interest in the land farmed. The major land tenure categories are (1) full owners, who own all the land they operate, (2) part owners, who own some and rent the remainder of their land, and (3) tenants, who rent all of their land or work on shares for others. The majority of farms in the 1996 Agricultural Resource Management Study (53 percent) reported full ownership of the land they operated, while 38 percent owned part and rented part of the farmland they operated. Only 9 percent of operations reported that they rented all of their land.

Acedotal evidence isn't as good as a statistic. You should know that of all people.

Besides, why does it even matter how farms are organized? Aside from correcting your error in assuming "most farming is done by massive conglomerates with lobby money to burn", which frankly doesn't matter unless you wanted to derail us into your opinions of injustices in constitutional law and the evils of lobbying, why would it matter at all? The answer is it doesn't. Farm subsidies exist for the reasons I detailed and your first point, not for your third point. Your second point is still flawed because they're not paying people to increase or decrease but paying to offset price crashing, but whatever. You're not the son of an agronomist, so I'll forgive that misconception.

[Grakelin]

Rudeness to Nikov in this thread. I, personally, did not learn about the history of the American Electorate system in my middle school. Thank you for explaining, Nikov.

In a world suffering from famine, why are the left wing posters lambasting farm subsidies, while the right wing poster promotes a protectionist system? Here are some reasons nations give their farms subsidies:

1) Because crop and livestock production is not an immensely profitable business, but it is an immensely important one.

2) Nations like to be as self-sufficient as possible, and it is actually cheaper in the long run to produce something in your own territory on a regular basis than to frequently import it from somebody else.

3) In poorer nations, it is sometimes common practice to sell the food to other people (such as the people reading this post), oftentimes as opposed to actually feeding the people in the producer's nation.

4) Food is good for us, and some scientists claim it is essential to our survival as a human race.


Farms aren't getting charity handouts to keep the farmers busy and employed, nor are they being subsidized solely because some agricultural corporations have political clout. They're subsidized because they are the basest part of our society.

We also subsidize our agriculture in Canada. We do not use an American political system.

[Nikov]

1. Excellent point to raise. Remember total sales is not the same as net profits. After seed, spray, machinery, and loans are paid for, most farmers scrape for cash on the average year. Two choice quotes. My late cousin used to say, "Farming is the business of losing money as slowly as possible," which rang true with the rest of the very agrarian clan, and another saying, "You can tell how good a farmer's day job is by the number of cows he has". Midwestern dairy farms are notoriously unprofitable and probably less dependable than playing Blackjack.

2. Although most people think this, its actually false. True free markets would be better because less expensive commodities from abroad traded for the things a country can best produce locally profits both trade partners. However most countries are still protectionist, particularly with regards to food, because of the political or even military power that arises when peasants revolt. The semi-automatic rifle is the new billhook, and in the democracies they can all vote. In countries with very large numbers of small farmers inefficiently producing small surpluses, leaders have to tread lightly.

3. Mao did this to China and caused the largest artificial famine in history. A lot of poor nations grow higher-value fruits and vegetables specifically for export to wealthy nations (Chile, Argentina), and the people have less food for it. However they do have money, and getting farmers from cash-poor subsistance to cash crops is the fastest way to improve overall farm productivity. Strawberries from a province pay for gravel roads to the strawberry fields and a highway to the village, which then gets used by the staple crop-carrying trucks to get to market. Improving infrastructure is key to improving nutrition in many places around the world, not an actual lack of food itself.

4. Those scientists are Marxist hacks trying to produce global communism, don't listen to them. People can live just fine off really heavy beer and vitamins.

[alway]

2. Although most people think this, its actually false. True free markets would be better because less expensive commodities from abroad traded for the things a country can best produce locally profits both trade partners. However most countries are still protectionist, particularly with regards to food, because of the political or even military power that arises when peasants revolt. The semi-automatic rifle is the new billhook, and in the democracies they can all vote. In countries with very large numbers of small farmers inefficiently producing small surpluses, leaders have to tread lightly.

To elaborate upon this point, not only is it more viable from an economic perspective, it ends up actually being more environmentally friendly, despite emissions and such due to shipping. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4162

4. People can live just fine off really heavy beer and vitamins.

Hmm... This may actually work so long as you had sufficient supplements. With typical cans of beer, the internets say its between about 150 and 200 calories, so about a dozen per day to get sufficient caloric intake. Assuming the required nutrients could be acquired from supplements, the main question remaining would be whether the solids-free, fiber free diet would result in horrible diarrhea or not. Though my guess is the results would be similar to other all-liquid diets; which I don't think are too bad. So yeah, you probably could live off beer and supplements, though you would probably die from liver failure after about 2 months.

[Grakelin]

Uh, good luck making heavy beer without farmers, guys.

[optimumtact]

Just though I'd put some links up to provide an alternative view, it seems a number of posters take the point of view that the subsidies are required for a farm to be profitable/successful at all.

http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/features/0303/newzealand_subsidies.shtml
http://www.freetrade.org/node/493
I'll admit these links are old, but they still contain compelling arguments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies

[Leafsnail]

4) Food is good for us, and some scientists claim it is essential to our survival as a human race.

Doesn't this apply to a lot of other things (heating, construction, water supplies...) that aren't necessarily subsidised?

[Bauglir]

Uh, good luck making heavy beer without farmers, guys.

Clearly, we will simply genetically engineer algae to produce beer from various... waste products, let's say.

[DJ]

1. Excellent point to raise. Remember total sales is not the same as net profits. After seed, spray, machinery, and loans are paid for, most farmers scrape for cash on the average year. Two choice quotes. My late cousin used to say, "Farming is the business of losing money as slowly as possible," which rang true with the rest of the very agrarian clan, and another saying, "You can tell how good a farmer's day job is by the number of cows he has". Midwestern dairy farms are notoriously unprofitable and probably less dependable than playing Blackjack.

Obviously this means that food is under-priced. And the first thing that comes to mind to blame for the low prices is the subsidies. So if they were cut food prices would go up and farming would actually be profitable. Of course, nobody likes more expensive food, but the money saved on subsidies could be used to cut taxes a bit. The end result would be equal food purchasing power, but less money going through the government, and I think we can agree that this is a desirable thing. Of course, in reality food would become more expensive for the poor and cheaper for the rich, but this can be neutralized with progressive taxation.

[Phmcw]

Huuu, hey guys, Satan just called and he's freezing his balls. Stop it.

Seriously, why do I agree with Nikov here? Obviously like all subsidies policies, due to the nature of our government, there is bias, but basically, food production must be regulated to avoid possible shortage, and subside to a classical privately owned model are the safest way to do it.

Btw it's the exact same argument I use for heavily subsided education and heath-care. Those are too big to fail.

[counting]

1. Excellent point to raise. Remember total sales is not the same as net profits. After seed, spray, machinery, and loans are paid for, most farmers scrape for cash on the average year. Two choice quotes. My late cousin used to say, "Farming is the business of losing money as slowly as possible," which rang true with the rest of the very agrarian clan, and another saying, "You can tell how good a farmer's day job is by the number of cows he has". Midwestern dairy farms are notoriously unprofitable and probably less dependable than playing Blackjack.

Obviously this means that food is under-priced. And the first thing that comes to mind to blame for the low prices is the subsidies. So if they were cut food prices would go up and farming would actually be profitable. Of course, nobody likes more expensive food, but the money saved on subsidies could be used to cut taxes a bit. The end result would be equal food purchasing power, but less money going through the government, and I think we can agree that this is a desirable thing. Of course, in reality food would become more expensive for the poor and cheaper for the rich, but this can be neutralized with progressive taxation.

But do remember tax rates are always > 0. So when increasing the essential costs(prices) for basic things, low income groups will still feel their lives become harder. Unless you are willing to cut tax to a level where a lot of current middle-low income tax bucket into 0% (A lot of people don't pay taxes will cause some serious social issues), and also raise the Social Security expenditure for the near 10% unemployment people. In the process, the richer class will have to endure extremely high tax rate + essential product prices increase as well. I think this move will upset too much current political balance that no one is willing to take it. (Especially when political campaigns are mostly funded by large donations). Over all it's not like cutting tax, but more like tax reform. (Possibly social structure reforms as an end result as well)

Also when the subsidies are removed, it will further concentrate capitals into monopoly agriculture enterprises in a state or national level. And that will upset the price even further. So who control the large food productions will gain tremendous political powers. Maybe create a new class of mass land owner "nobles". I don't think it will be a pleasant view of the future.

[DJ]

The government could still regulate the industry without subsidies. Like setting maximum prices, and fining unused fields so they can't reduce production to mess up the market.

[Nikov]

DJ, the subsidies buy up surplus to guarentee a minimum bottom price. This raises prices, not lowers prices. The reason food is under-priced is America has enormously productive and heavily capitalized farms and, for whatever reason, other countries are trade protectionists. We are as well.

In a perfect world, the protectionism would be gone and the United States would be the Saudi Arabia of corn and corn derivatives. If that happened we wouldn't need subsidies. It requires everyone else to cooperate with us against internal protectionist pressure. I don't anticipate that happening.

Speaking of private ownership being good for farming, my father has cleverly been planting white corn instead of the usual yellow for some time now. The Central American market needs their tortillas and pays more for it. By following the price points, ten thousand farmers all trying to predict the market ensures demands are met relatively well, while a centrally planned system with quotas never works.

Oh god DJ posted about maximum prices and fining unused fields. No no no!  I cannot stress how dangerous that is! Go play Hidden Agenda if you need a hands-on lesson!