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[DJ]

OK, as I understand it countries subsidise their farmers so they can sell their products cheap enough to compete with imports. What I don't understand is why. If farming is too expensive in a country wouldn't it be more efficient to import the farm products and let the domestic farms die? Sure, there'd be some jobs lost, but AFAIK farming isn't that big of an employer anyway. And the money that goes into subsidies could be used to create new jobs in more competitive sectors. Plus, the local environment would substantially improve as farms revert to wilderness and pesticides stop leaking into rivers.

[Aqizzar]

As long as I'm up, I'll take a whack at this.  I can only speak for the United States here, but I imagine at least two of these answers apply to agricultural policy in general.

One is security of supply.  Sure, the industrial nations that have sophisticated enough governments for this stuff to matter can (and often do) import any food their markets want, but the government will still want to ensure that there's a healthy enough farming industry in the country to make sure there won't be critical shortages should there be a breakdown in imports.  Even if it means paying farmers just to stay in business above market pressure, at least they'll be there when necessary.

Two is market price control.  If the agricultural department thinks its important to effect the price of a commodity, it'll pay the relevant farmers to raise or lower production.  As is often criticized in the US, farmers might be paid market-equivalent to stop farming completely, so that the price of whatever they would be farming won't be lowered by the increased supply.  Since agriculture has its own particular pressures like seasons and such, farm commodity prices are very easy to destabilize (and hence crash, which would lead to abandoning that sector in the long term), which governments don't like.

And third, particular to the US at least, is how our Congress is apportioned.  About half of the Senate represents the most rural 1/6th of the population (and most farming is done by massive conglomerates with lobby money to burn).  Anything that passes into law has to pass through them, and whatever they want to attach to stuff they get no questions asked, up to and including free money.

[sneakey pete]

You really do need to reform the electoral district (insert US name for it) system you guys have in that regard.

[Jackrabbit]

I'm interested in how this relates to Australia. Supporting Australian farmers has always been a massive point of contention in politics over here.

[chaoticag]

It probably relates in the same way. Food security and food supply are always something you want to have, particularly if some disaster hits.


Plus any democracy/republic is going to have people representing farmers, due to shear amount of farmers.


Lastly, you can say that farming is subsidized because... farming is subsidized. If farmers lose their jobs, then you have a lot of unemployed people, and in general, unemployment tends to lead to crime, so better to have people busy doing something economically unfeasable rather than have them lose their jobs (although sometimes, the jobs themselves cause a drain in the economy, it's one thing to have these farming subsidies, but until recently, or maybe even still, China has had factories whose sole purpose is to provide jobs for workers. Since production was at an all time low, this was... a bad idea.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In the US at least, farming subsidies are important because of there being so much food produced here. If farming subsides in the US are removed, impoverished people the world over may very well starve to death as local food prices increase to to the lack of US imports. For less food-production intensive regions of the planet, the purpose of farming subsides is the same, it just doesn't have as dramatic of an effect to have them or not.

[Leafsnail]

Lastly, you can say that farming is subsidized because... farming is subsidized. If farmers lose their jobs, then you have a lot of unemployed people, and in general, unemployment tends to lead to crime, so better to have people busy doing something economically unfeasable rather than have them lose their jobs

Why farming though?  If you're gonna be paying people to do non-economically viable, shouldn't you be, perhaps, building something worthwhile (public parks?  Railway lines?) rather than paying people not to grow food on their land?

In the US at least, farming subsidies are important because of there being so much food produced here. If farming subsides in the US are removed, impoverished people the world over may very well starve to death as local food prices increase to to the lack of US imports. For less food-production intensive regions of the planet, the purpose of farming subsides is the same, it just doesn't have as dramatic of an effect to have them or not.

I'm not so sure about this.  Aren't farm subsidies mainly about reducing the amount of food make?  In any case, farmers in other countries often aren't too happy about having their own food undercut by cheap subsidy-created food from abroad.

[PsyberianHusky]

I wrote a huge(read 15 pages) research paper on this

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).

And alot of the farmer's political power comes from collective bargaining with organizations such as the grange movement.

Most of the reason I have gleaned we support farmers is that importing from the forgiven market is just to unstable, the pricing can be all over the place and is not practical, so we attempt to ensure some will alwas be available here.

Additionally we are a net exporter of alot of food types.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not so sure about this.  Aren't farm subsidies mainly about reducing the amount of food make?

No, it's about making it so the farmers can sell their product for less money due to having government support, thus increasing food production.

In any case, farmers in other countries often aren't too happy about having their own food undercut by cheap subsidy-created food from abroad.

While unfortunate, that's a far better situation than (more) people starving to death. This sort of thing is a necessity. There is enough food to feed the world, but some people just can't get to it, and that needs to be fixed even if it means undercutting local farmers who can't feed a region.

[Aqizzar]

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?

[Criptfeind]

I also know that several farming families on my dads side no longer actually farm, but rather rent out the land to corporations that than farm on it. I have also heard this is becoming more and more common, so I wonder how that is reported in the numbers.

Also:

You really do need to reform the electoral district (insert US name for it) system you guys have in that regard.

You might be talking about the gerrymandering issue, which that is not really part of. Except for Michigan obviously.

[Nikov]

The main reason for US farm subsidies is to ensure a minimum price each year. When there's low yields, prices rise due to scarcity. A productive farmer profits, an unproductive farmer scrapes by. When there's high yields, prices fall due to abundance. The problem is the price can fall enough to make it unprofitable to even harvest if crops were sold at true market rate, so the USDA buys what it must to keep farmers from bankruptcy. Remember, each year involves tremendous outlays in seed, machinery, fuel and chemicals. Farmers usually manage to predict the market, but nobody can really predict the weather. So when there's a record-breaking harvest of corn, which has minimal margins to begin with, the government has to buy up the surplus or else farmers will lose more money harvesting (and thus feeding people) than they will not harvesting (and thus not feeding people).

The USDA also pays farmers who let acres go fallow because it reduces their need to subsidize the crops which might have grown, reduces fuel, seed and spray demands, and also to continue the general reforestation of the United States. I'm surprised this is under criticism here, being a very enviromentally friendly idea and less expensive than subsidizing further planting. It basically amounts to the USDA paying people who allow forests and meadows to reclaim their underproductive fields.

I'm afraid you're all quite wrong about what would happen globally if the US stopped food subsidies. The price of US grown grain, currently kept up by subsidies, would plummet during good years. The price of US meats, which depends on US grain, would plummet as well. The US would actively try to sell abroad to keep its farmers from going bankrupt, but the US agricultural machine (now replanting their once-subsidized fallow fields) would be producing food so much cheaper than foreign developing farmers that other countries couldn't afford to allow US food into their market, for fear of destroying their own agricultural sectors. Refusing cheap food means a populist riot during a famine, accepting cheap food means a peasant revolt. This is what happened to Somalia. A mild famine, everyone threw food aid at them, and the farmers couldn't sell what they grew next year because the people could just get it for free from UN camps. Most countries prefer to feed their people internally and export cash crops as an agricultural policy to avoid this, limiting food imports to what cannot be produced locally or their own farmers can still compete with. Its a very protectionist enviroment abroad and the US has difficulty finding markets in the developing world for exactly this reason. Our current subsidies keep farmers from going bankrupt and foreign farmers able to develop. It isn't ideal, but it is worth the money.
 
Aqizzar's third point is entirely moot since the Senate represents states, not people. Congress represents people. So if the Senate disproportinately empowers 1/6th of the country who happen to be in half the states, its working as intended. Furthermore, the majority of farming is not done by huge conglomerates but large family farms. From USDA.gov:

[Leafsnail]

 
Aqizzar's third point is entirely moot since the Senate represents states, not people. Congress represents people. So if the Senate disproportinately empowers 1/6th of the country who happen to be in half the states, its working as intended.

I've heard the bolded phrase quite a lot.  It always seems to have the assumption attached that "Therefore it's the correct and right way to do things".  Well... would you mind explaining how you get from the bolded to that assumption?

[Aqizzar]

Aqizzar's third point is entirely moot since the Senate represents states, not people. Congress represents people. So if the Senate disproportinately empowers 1/6th of the country who happen to be in half the states, its working as intended.

So, the people that populate a state and elect their Senators are not the state itself?  That's an interesting interpretation.

[Nikov]

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.

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.