They are not necessary. Farmers of unsubsidized agricultural products and producers of non-agricultural products get by with market-based tools such as diversification, private insurance, futures, options. Those that don’t get by go out of business, as is proper.
Yeah, that’s a little weird. Disagreement I understand. Non sequiturs, however, make constructive discussion a little harder to achieve.
FWIW I am not nor have I ever been a farmer but I have relatives who were/are (many have retired or stopped farming for various reasons; a few still farm). I don’t claim to be an expert on farming or farmers but neither am I completely ignorant of the needs and challenges of their world.
What I want to know is did anyone make an unusually lucky bet on soybean futures in the week when Donald Trump was playing Yank The Chain?
And political action against the sailor will only result in [insert hackneyed boating metaphor]!
I’m not sure anyone in the U.S. could time such an investment so precisely. The U.S. imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, and China responded by putting tariffs on U.S. soybeans. I’m not sure how much time elapsed between those events, or what other options China had besides soybeans. It was predictable that China would retaliate, but when and how may not have been known in advance, at least not enough to make such a targeted investment.
Not talking about sneaky Chinese Commies, talking about wing-tipped American greedfreaks.
Yeah, I get that. Someone with inside information on a coming market shift, like soybean tariffs, that’s not known to the market could make investments that would net them a tidy profit.
My question is, how would the wing-tipped American greedfreaks have known about the coming soybean tariffs? Those were imposed by the Chinese government. Even if the WTAGs suspected some Chinese retaliation for American tariffs, they wouldn’t have known which products they’d be on or when they’d be announced.
Their sneaky Chinese Commie friends will tell them.
My impression of a trade war is that the goal is not to help the other guy get rich.
97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States are family-owned operations.
The U.S. government presently pays about $25 billion in cash annually to farmers and owners of farmland.
producers of meat, fruits, and vegetables are almost completely left out of the subsidy game
The International Trade Commission lists over 12,000 specific tariffs on imports to America. Hundreds of agricultural, textile, and manufacturing items are highly protected.
Subsidy by Earned Income
2012 — 28.2 million returns $65.4 billion payments
Subsidy by Tax credits
Subsidy of illegal aliens
The Federal government spends a net amount of $45.8 billion on illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children. This amount includes expenditures for public education, medical care, justice enforcement initiatives, welfare programs and other miscellaneous costs.
https://www.fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers
Agricultural products and producers of non-agricultural products may not be subsidized with direct payments but are subsidized using tariffs and/or tax credits.
Your statement is FALSE!
Your post is irrelevant!
Farmers produce food
Sailors do not.
Another non sequitur. Who said anything about food?
Also: fish.
“Farmers” is in the title of this thread.
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for ****food ****or raw materials.
Oh you meant to say fishermen.
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.
But maybe you meant to say aquaculturist
the cultivation of freshwater and marine resources, both plant and animal, for human consumption or use
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/aquaculturist
A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who navigates waterborne vessels or assists as a crew member in their operation and maintenance.
You are Wrong! Another non sequitur. Another irrelevancy! Another gyration!
Preciseness in a debate is required to win points.
you reap what you sow
Your actions dictate the consequences.
I predict,the elimination of farm subsidies and tariffs on agri products will result in massive shortages in the food industry and massive unemployment and increase in food producing conglomerates and commensurate increase in food prices and the US food supply could be held hostage by embargoing countries.
Why stop at eliminating farm subsidies, let us rid ourselves of all subsidies, tariffs, and tax credits. It would result in a smaller government and that is a good thing right?
See my post RE subsidies, tariffs, and tax credits
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21121070&postcount=210
No sneaking needed, it was in all the papers that China intended to retaliate against red state exports, soybeans being at the top of the list. So if a wing tipped grredfeeak knew the timing of the tariffs on our side, he should have been reasonably confident of the Chinese response. Not sure what kind of timing 'luci’s twirly mustache scenario tequires though.
Yeah, but under the headline much of this reported mass of pastoral activity isn’t the real McCoy.
54.4% of US farms are smaller than 100 acres.
59.8% of US farms have sales less than $10k
That would seriously stretch any definition of a viable, working farm. They are hobby farms, country lifestyle, rural retreats and “our five acre in the country weekender” plots.
And these don’t get production subsidies because they are producing virtually nothing.
Some people might have. Political folk close to the decision who may have known in advance it was coming and traded on it. But if they did, what are you going to do about it?
In their infinite wisdom, our be-suited overlords, led by Eric Cantor, have decreed themselves immune to insider trading. It’s only a crime if plebes do it, not if they do.
Glad to see that you read the cite.
The posts on this thread seem to focus on the real MCCoys as you say
But
there is an elephant in the room! And of course that makes your statements WRONG!
More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans
So eliminating subsidies of largest producers of commodities like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice then would result in much higher prices for chickens, pork, beef, turkeys, milk, cheese, eggs, and T-shirts.
You cannot dismiss the 59.8% of US farms have sales less than $10k.
That could be a viable $6B industry. Maybe as high as a $23B industry
(see “other crops” here Cash receipts by commodity ")
Small farms correlate well with 62 percent of farms in United States did not collect subsidy payments. EWG Farm Subsidy Database || the United States Conservation Database
BUT
Of course, they receive a subsidy indirectly when purchasing grain feed stocks in the upstream supply chain.
AND
many are protected from foreign competition through tariffs.
25 American Products That Rely on Huge Protective Tariffs to Survive
They agri system in the US has worked well for nearly 100 years and messing with it is ill advised unless you really know the puzzle.
It is the responsibility of the US government to defend the nations food supply and hopefully reason will prevail and the desire for certian people here to disrupt the food supply for no other purpose other than farmers vote republican today!!!
During the boll weevil political era a large portion of farmers voted democrat.
This might be an “everybody gets subsidies” argument, although it’s hard to tell because the post primarily comprises a serious of questionably relevant* factoids. Remember, we’re talking about price supports being “necessary to protect the farming infrastructure from price drops resulting from bumper crops in”. These price supports primarily manifest in the form of effective price floors, e.g. via ARC, PLC, etc. Not tariffs (that have a trade-weighted average tariff of only 2% on industrial goods and that don’t even apply to half of industrial goods, cite.) Not broad tax policy that doesn’t discriminate based on business sector or product
So tariffs, on average, are low, when they even apply at all. Or at least they were until our dear president started…helping. And any business can depreciate capital equipment, be it a tractor or a ceramic slurry tape caster.
But we have a price floor for peanuts.
Agricultural price supports are in a class of their own that we just don’t see for most products. And which we don’t need for any products.
*I mean seriously, how does the percentage of farms operated as family businesses (like ours) have anything to do with price supports being necessary? How does the EITC have anything to do with price supports being necessary? Illegal aliens?
I’m not sure why people are so interest in family farms or small farms in this thread, but it’s good to remember that while small family farms (where “small” means having an annual gross cash farm income of less than $350k (!!!)) comprise about 90% of farms by number, they only farm about half the acreage and are only responsible for about a quarter of the production: USDA ERS - Large Family Farms Continue To Dominate U.S. Agricultural Production
And the farmers receiving most of the federal money are certainly not poor: USDA ERS - The Evolving Distribution of Payments From Commodity, Conservation, and Federal Crop Insurance Programs
Outside of the hypocrisy surrounding government funds and the trade war issues stable food prices are a pretty important thing.
Most forms of anti-subsidy arguments are rooted in bias meant to rally supporters or protect factions…often aligning with subjects that can leverage implicit biases all people have to inflame bigotry.
In recent history xenophobic causes seem to be the most visible options but neither side is immune from violating others rights to try and game the system to their benefits.
With noting I am a progressive, the left has been pretty vocal about trying to advocate for rules which will cause someone to lose their other rights by exercising another right. Primarily around rules intended to disenfranchise people by restricting their freedom of speech when they decide to leverage the rights to association and assembly. My side has always been bad at organizing, and it sickens me when people fall for these rhetorical tricks.
But we will all suffer both economically and environmentally if we get rid of farm subsidies. Everyone should have expected this bailout as soon as China made it clear that they were going to target agriculture in response to the unnecessary trade war.