The Issues, No. 48 - Farm Subsidies

For the life of me, I just can't understand farm subsidies. Maybe they made some sense when farms were small and subsidies were used to prevent farmers from giving up their farms in times of drought or other disasters that ruined their crops. Maybe back then we needed to pay the farmers in order to keep farming going so that America would have the food it required.


Today, with the majority of farm products in America produced by the large corporate farms, subsidies don't make much sense. Subsidies appear, more than anything, to be a government attempt to control the business of farming. The government pays farmers to grow crops or not to grow crops and through its control of what is and is not grown controls prices for farm goods and thus prevents the market forces of supply and demand from being the true determinants. So America gets what the government wants it to have and at prices the government wants it pay.

To some degree, it may be good that we don't necessarily have to pay what we might have to pay in a free market situation but I think, in the case of farm subsidies, we are paying more than we think we are because we, the American taxpayers, are paying for the subsidies. And, I suspect there are a whole lot of "farmers" out there getting paid for not farming who are simply living a good life from their subsidies or taking their subsidies and working other jobs to pay for their fancy cars and big houses.

I think farm subsidies need to end, at least as we know them. I don't want our government controlling business in our country. I don't want our government paying anyone to do nothing or paying anyone (other than government employees) to do what the government wants them to do. I think if any aspect of farming needs, or could use a subsidy, it is in agricultural research not agricultural welfare or agricultural bribery.