The Bobcat Nation

This seems like a good forum to find some experts who can speak to the merits (or lack thereof) of this article:

http://www.reason.com/0602/fe.dg.six.shtml

I am not from a farming family, but I have many in my extended family that make their living off of farming. While it may hurt many families and we will see the end of many multiple generation farming operations that are simply to small to be profitable I agree that it is time to let the market forces work.

The one point in the article that I don't agree with is the environmental impacts will be less. It is true that many crops are grown in areas that aren't suitable to that crop so we use many chemicals and other means to get the crop to grow. However when families live on that land they do what is best for that land to make it sustainable. If the subsidies are removed economies of scale will create massive farming operations that I believe will be more harmful to the land then the smaller family farms.

Overall, I am a free-market guy so anything that allows the market to work is a good idea in my mind. However I do see how harmful the removal of subsidies will be for a generation or two of some farmers.

I had a problem with the environmental impact part as well. These writers obviously have never been anywhere near a farm or ranch and are regurgitating something they heard from some radical environmental group. No legitimate or respected environmental organizations believe this.

The other part I had a problem with is the lower land prices. I'm not sure where they got this from but if they think land owners are simply going to sell there land off to become parklands or preserves rather than get the most for there money (development) their nuts. Also stating that farmland wastes water resources is awfully shortsighted.

I also can't agree with them saying it will lower food costs either. I don't like corporate farms anymore than the next guy but without them our commodities would be even more expensive, not less.

My last point is that we have the safest food supply in the world, and I don't know many people that would rather get there produce from a third world country with no safeguards rather than the food in our country with the safeguards.

I'm curious as to what the authors of this article's take is on foreign oil. I'm guessing they are demanding we become less reliant on foreign oil...why...so we can become more reliant on foreign food?

I'm overall not a fan of subsidies but the arguments against them presented in this article don't make sense to me.

I guess without subsidies, however, our governor would be about a million a and a half dollars lighter in the pockets a year.

For added fun, there is also a discussion group on that site for each article. Here's the particular thread for this article:

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/02 ... tml#012656

I think this statistic is off a bit, American Crystal has 5, Western Sugar has at least 4 I know of, and Amalgamated still has a couple.

In the last two decades, the number of sugar refineries in the U.S. has dwindled from 23 to eight, largely because of the doubled price of domestic raw sugar.

Still reading, though.

Ok Soap Box here....

1. If we took away the subsidies to farmers it will become a corprate buissness in america, which it is on its way anhow in the future.
2. American produce is top quality, Other countries use more chemicals that leave residues they are not monitored like our american farmers are on the chemicals. I see a rise in cancer in a generation!
3. for the over grazing and over use of land that is why the us goverment has agencys that deal with soil erosion
4. America has always been a producder country which is going down hill right now, do we really want to set our self up to stop procucing as much which brings allot of money to the country and start depending on subquality products? And have those products used as a hold on us by other countries, political nightmare prices on allot of products could go up the way I see it mabey not over night but in time the countries would start to stick it to us...
5. A dog is more faithful that the person that wote that artical a dog will n ot bite the hand that feeds it good quality food.
6. If america stops producing raw goods we are in a wold of Sh** ecpecialy at war time which may just be coming, we could go completley corprate and still produce but the corp. is more interested in the$$ alot of times than the goods, Small farms still have Pride in america and the subsitdies for allot of farms dose not even cover the property taxes. American farmers are getting prices like they got in the late 50's for the goods if you look at grain... someone else is getting the money for the prices being hire on allot of goods...

Oh and the water thing if we were not using it for food and other raw material let it go to the ocean. or pipe it to the large cities so they have fresh water but sarve because ther is no food being grown, One thing the person did not look at is how much food the world had to spare not much many people are already starving her in the us we grow our own and are wastefull with it comared to other places.... Less produce grown here that much less food in the world more poeople starving, food prices go up because of compitition...

Sorry for the spelling and the leght of the post just hit a sore spot with me now everyone on here can give me a public flogging for my views.... MSU is an Ag school also....

Now let my beating begin!

From a personal perspective, I think the one and only really compelling argument to maintain the subsidies is for national security purposes. I don't know if we would ever get to a point where we didn't grow enough food for our own purposes if we let the free market run its course, but if we did, I would definitely support the notion of using government resources to assure that we weren't subject to the whims of foreign nations for our food supply.

Outside of that, I think the ideal situation is to get rid of them ASAP (but only if/when we can get the rest of the world to do so as well, so everyone is on a level playing field). If US farmers couldn't compete on a world level, then I don't think we should be using tax money to prop them up. My true suspicion, though, is that with a level playing field (no subsidies for any nations), that U.S. farmers would do very well competitively (in large part due to the advances in technology developed by places like MSU).

I would expect that in the not-to-distant future that our agriculture philosophy will be blending into our energy supply philosophy (ethanol, etc.), so that could well be another avenue to justify subsidies (again, only if necessary) in order to promote our weaning off of foreign energy sources.

Look at the source. All three authors are from the Cato Institute. Have these guys every left the think tank and saw the real world?

http://www.cato.org/people/griswold.html

You can google the two.

BobCatFan wrote:Look at the source. All three authors are from the Cato Institute. Have these guys every left the think tank and saw the real world?

http://www.cato.org/people/griswold.html

You can google the two.

They are a Libertarian/free market/small government think tank. In other words, they are a fiscal conservative group. They probably haven't worked on many farms, but they probably do have at least some valid perspectives on economic issues.

you will never get the rest of the world on a leval playing field unless their is a world goverment and i don't want to see that hapen it would be post wwIII. The american producers are already growning produce for Bio fules. We are so dependent on inported oil it is sad but if you look we have not hardley touched some of the richest oil country here in the us which i belive is in part the country with the oil in the end will rule the world.... Sorry going off subject... BOBCATFAN I agree they don't know what the real world is...

Townsendcat wrote:you will never get the rest of the world on a leval playing field unless their is a world goverment and i don't want to see that hapen it would be post wwIII. The american producers are already growning produce for Bio fules. We are so dependent on inported oil it is sad but if you look we have not hardley touched some of the richest oil country here in the us which i belive is in part the country with the oil in the end will rule the world.... Sorry going off subject... BOBCATFAN I agree they don't know what the real world is...

I just don't accept the argument that somebody saying that U.S. businesses shouldn't get subsidies/welfare are somehow detatched from the "real world." Their "real world" is just detatched from making a living on the government payments in question, I assume (as it didn't appear that any of them were in the farming profession).

That being said, I agree that we should be exploiting our domestic resources to the degree practical while developing new technologies and expanding our bio fuels capacity. And I think that we should work within our current international framework (treaties, WTO, etc.) to reduce subsidies worldwide so that everybody can compete fairly, and may the best producers come out ahead!

So for those who don't take good notes or conveniently forget a lot ... let me point out that I am taking the fiscal conservative/true Republican position on this issue, so you can't call me a "liberal" without being specific!

A lot of it comes back to the "extras" that we expect and need to live here. Health care, retirement, etc. I would be willing to bet that actual production does not cost more here, since we tend to have leading technology.

So, we begin relying on some underdeveloped country where the workforce works for about $30 a month. After they start to see a little bit of comfort from increased demand for their product, they slowly work into a similar society as ours, and cost of production rises from them. From a humanitarian view, it's a very good thing. Unless, of course, they are under a dictator, then he benefits and grows richer while the workers remain destitute.

What I'm trying to say, supply and demand will bring prices back up. If we drop subsidies (which I'm not totally against phasing out) the price of food may drop for awhile, but I can't think that they would stay low for too long. But by then, we've lost our infrastructure for farming and supporting ourselves, and then we are dependant one a foreign market, just like oil currently.

Does anyone know (maybe more appropriately have an opinion) how this would affect trade balances? Don't we export a fair amount of food?

I'm kinda torn on this issue. I must admit that philosophically I'm fairly free market, but family farms are one of those issues I have a harder time with.

I think another aspect of the farming equation is that land is so expensive that it seems the only ones able to buy land and then keep it in production are those that don't need to pay for the land with the income. I see lots of the ranches/farms around here bought by those who want a vacation home on a ranch, and all they need is to make enough to pay for the operation costs, not make an income (i.e. the classic example, Ted Turner). Conservation easements are common with these people, too, because it reduces the taxes, therefore making the breakeven point lower.