I was at a family reunion a few years ago. My family is mostly farmers. I mentioned my opposition to farm subsidies, and I was subjected to a long family diatribe about how necessary they were, how hard it was to compete, how they would never survive without subsidies, etc.
Parked outside the family home were the cars my poor family arrived in - Cadillacs, mostly.
I think the point was that the guns would be needed in a defensive manner-- to avoid being shot at first.
Sam, your anecdote would be a lot more convincing were it not for the fact that (A) farmers with excess cash drive loaded pickups, not Caddies. (Pickups are tax writeoffs, natch.) and (B) the Canadian government has provided bugger-all in the way of direct farm subsidies for several years now. Now, there is a bit of government support - you’ve got the CWB and such things as the dairy quota system, though there’s very little government spending in that. There’s NISA, but that’s more like an extra-sweet RRSP deal than it is a direct subsidy. Government incentives to save up for bad years. Anyways, the various regulations make it largely useless. Dad’s never used NISA because it has never worked out to be financially advantageous. He’s probably gotten more money from the government in the form of CPP in the past year since he turned 65 than he had in farm subsidies in the past 10. And then there’s been a tiny, tiny little trickle of emergency relief, largely in the form of guaranteed loans, in the face of the worst drought since the 30’s compounded this year by the BSE fiasco. Like any other vital industry wouldn’t have received a far more extensive bailout during similar trials. :rolleyes:
Oh, they have new pickups, too. But you take the Caddy when you’re going on a road trip with the wife and kids.
Frankly, I don’t know the state of farm subsidies today. This was a few years ago, as I said.
I am dead set against farm subsidies, tariffs, controlled pricing through the Wheat board and other price fixing structures, and all the other government programs that ‘protect’ farmers and other industries, or attempt to control agricultural production through fiat.
I agree that farm subsidies are nasty, nasty little things, as are tariffs, price controls, etc. Of course, the lobby FOR such things is much stronger than the lobby against, and generally much better funded. So I suspect it will be quite some time before a leader actually goes against the farmers and ends these horrible little things.
Now, onto the main arguments. I feel that a certain degree of flexibility with regards to labor conditions is needed when trading with developing countries, simply because each improvement will generally have economic consequences. Now, in our country we’ve decided (mostly correctly, IMHO) that the sacrifices are worth the gain, but we hadn’t decided that when WE were in their position. Some things just seem to be a natural part of how a country develops, and we shouldn’t put up barriers simply because we developed faster. In fact, those barriers will make things worse. Less money will be flowing into the country to help develop it, and the countries that put up the barriers will be at a disadvantage to those that don’t, and will be shut out of the opportunity to buy things created there.
Right now, the United States needs to move AWAY from tariffs and unfair policies, not to a policy of CREATING these inequalities.
I wish!
(Matt, European, 20 days’ paid leave per year)
20 work days is 4 weeks, more if you get a long weekend thrown in there. Most Americans/Canadians get 10-15 days and that’s after 5-7 years of work.
If and when the UK decides to become a part of Europe, they will have to raise their standards to a more humane level. 
No, I won’t contradict you, but it’s a bit like saying a woman is svelte compared to Kate Smith…
Sam, I’m dead set against them too. (As well as handouts to any industry.) But the sad fact is that Canada, by itself, cannot simply end farm subsidies or else the absolutely inevitable result will be that we will have almost no agriculture at all, and will be totally dependent on imports. It’s not the same situation as, say, an industrial handout. If Canada doesn’t give away billions to Bombardier, or Reagan doesn’t give a zillion dollars to save Chrysler, then Bombardier or Chrysler die and their remnants are picked up by other industries and life goes on. Farm subsidies, however, would pretty much destroy every farmer in the country, since in the face of foreign subsidized competition they’d be blown off the map. (Unless you banned food imports in some way. Which is just a subsidy by proxy.) That would make Canada dependent on external food sources. I am willing to pay a little more in taxes to prevent that from happening until such time as the First World can get its shit together around farm subsidies and end them all.
Canada’s farmers are arguably the LEAST subsidized farmers in the industrialized world - far less so than American farmers, and not even in the same league as farmers in many European countries, where in some places they’re basically welfare cases.
The end of farm subsidies would do absolute wonders for the world’s economy, especially in improving conditions in the Third World. Hundreds of thousand if not millions of lives would be saved. But the net effect of Canada going it alone would be pretty much nothing. We’re in a prisoner’s dillemma. The First World has to do this more or less as a unit.
Agreed. That’s why I suggested shooting all the farmers.
What is so special about food? If Americans want to subsidise Canadian food imports (by subsidising American farmers), you should jump for joy. Certainly in a modern, industrialized society importing food is no different from importing steel. Unless you are thinking along the lines of: “Well, if we lose all our industry, we can still go back to being an agrarian society similar to Europe in the Middle Ages.”
The effect of American agriculture subsidies is to depress global commodity prices, which in effect robs income from Canadian farmers and gives it to American farmers. Not, imho, something for Canadian farmers to jump for joy about. I’m basically in agreement with RickJay. I’d be perfectly happy to see all agricultural subsidies nixed, but just doing away with Canadian subsidies will have (and to the extent they’re already gone, which is substantial, has had) bugger all effect on global commodity prices. Anyways, most of the money from farm subsidies ends up in the hands of companies like Monsanto and Archers Daniel Midland, and not in the hands of farmers.
I know quite a few farmers, and while there are still a few driving new pickups, a higher percentage of them are selling out, going under, or making more and more desperate arrangements with the bank. Established guys with no land payments are largely staying out of the red, but anyone still trying to pay off the entry costs is in trouble.
At least they are buying American (made in Mexico). 
Gorsnak:
My point is certainly not that farm subsidies are good. I’d like to see all subsidies ended. My point was in contention to RickJay’s thesis that agrigulture is somehow more strategically important to a country than other industries. Note his statement that he didn’t care if Bombardier goes under. Explain to me why agriculture is important to save if other industries aren’t.
Because ultimately, we could live without computers, without steel, without gas, without plumbers, without doctors, but we couldn’t live without farmers and food.
Not the way farming is done today, you couldn’t. How did a place like Hong Kong become a financial powerhouse? They sure as heck didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about growing food. Do Candadians feel they are so politically vulnerable in the world that all their agricultural trading partners would blackmail them with some sort of embargo? I don’t see it.
As soon as one industry becomes “strategically significant” all the rest just line up for their subsidies.
Hong Kong has a population of less than 7 million people.
It also has substantially different strategic interests than, say, Canada or the United States. The fact that agricultural production is a less significant concern for Hong Kong than it is for America in no way implies that modern agriculture is strategically insignificant in general.
Dependence on third world sources of food admits the possibility of the use of food as a political weapon. This is unacceptable. While it would be a massive inconvenience with serious economic consequences if certain other industries failed, the domestic consequences of agricultural failure are more severe by orders of magnitude.
I am by no means defending the economic evil that is farm subsidies, mind you, just clarifying the argument and responding to an objection that I find inadequate.
What strategicall different intersts? The only one mentioned so far is “eating”. If you’ve ever been to HK, you’d know how important eating is to those 6M people!
Seriously, though, can you elaborate?
The US is a 3rd world country? If, for example, Canada ended farm subsidies, it’s unclear that all farming would cease. Whatever did cease could easily be picked up by the US. And if farming is “strategic”, then how is farm machinery not also “strategic” and then steel to produce farm machinery, etc. etc. etc. In a modern society, any basic commodity can be used as a politcal weapon. Oil? It’s just as likely, perhaps even more so, that oil could be used as political weapon against Canada. I’d be interested in seeing how the ag business would operate without oil.
All you have done is state that farming is strategic. I actually gave an example (HK) of a place that has virtually no farming and yet thrives. You need to do more than simply dismiss it. Can you provide an example of a modern country whose ag business whithered away and which had catastrophic consequences? If not, then all you have is an unproven theory.
Can you elaborate on your argument? No disrespect intended, but you’ve really only made a few statement without any supporting evidence.
BTW, I am using Canada simply as an example and by no means intend to single out that country. The discussion about ag subsidies started with Canada, and I’m just continuing that line of thought.
Canada has terminated most of its farm subsidies. There’s still some - primarily NISA (Net Income Stabilization Account), which I mentioned above. It works this way: in years where it can be afforded, farmers deposit money into their NISA account, and the government matches the deposit 1 to 1. Then in years when your income drops precipitously, you can make a withdrawal. It’s not particularly popular because it’s heavily regulated and often useless. Just for example, if memory serves, your income has to drop more than 10% from the previous year in order to make a withdrawal. So if your income drops 9% for 5 years running, you can never take money out of your NISA account, even though you’re most probably pushing the limits of your credit. In addition to NISA, there’s various marketing boards, most notably the CWB. These do not involve any government money being given to farmers, but are rather more or less the creation of artificial marketing monopolies resulting in slightly higher commodity prices. And finally there’s occasional disaster assistance. For example, 2001 was the driest year on record in Saskatoon. Yes, that’s right. Worst drought ever. Worse than the 30’s. A lot of crop yields in this area were barely higher, and in some cases lower, than the amount of seed planted in the first place. I believe Dad got something like $1000 in drought aid, which is basically nothing. Doesn’t even pay for a tank of fuel.
The result overall of the lower subsidies hasn’t been as negative for the agriculture sector as one might think. There’s been a shift to crops that aren’t subsidied in the US - notably canola (though the most recent farm bloat package from the US congress does have canola subsidies, iirc), and also a shift to more livestock as a sort of “value-added” version of oats and barley (which has made the BSE crisis even more painful). However, there’s been a very noticeable squeeze on farm finances, and those with a high debt load are largely losing ground and many will likely end up losing their land to creditors.
How is this a bad thing? Well, in the grand scheme of things it’s not terrible if some farmers go bankrupt. Farmers have been going bankrupt for years. It takes a heavy toll on the economy of rural areas, however. Personally, I just think it’s rather frustrating to see the family farm do no more than break even (that is, farm income is no greater than farm input costs - my parents and my brother and his family are living on off-farm income - a very common pattern) when you know perfectly well that it could be the source of a reasonable income if commodity prices weren’t artificially depressed.