More on farm subsidies
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that federal agriculture subsidies benefit wealthy mega-farmers at the expense of smaller, middle class family farmers - and create severe market distortions in the process.
Democrats in Congress are thinking about ways to fix the problem. Says Earl Blumenauer of Orgegon: "It currently is not serving most states, it's not serving most farmers, it's not fiscally conservative."
The take away point from Jonathan Rauch's excellent article:
No one, not anyone, would sit down today and design the current farm programs. Although much revised in their details, they remain a paradigm of New Deal heavy-handedness, distorting markets in a way that accomplishes little at high cost. Subsidies are absurdly lopsided: 93 percent of payments flow to five crops (corn, cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat), which together account for only a fifth of U.S. farm receipts. Meanwhile, 60 percent of farmers and ranchers get nothing.
Leave a comment