# What's wrong with agricultural subsidies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 30, 2010, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636 "2010-09-30T18:08:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2010, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/21 "2010-10-01T14:27:24Z")
Water subsidies for agriculture have been pretty destructive. Water is diverted from people and environments that need it for crazy things like rice paddies in the arid parts of California. It’s especially bad since we are using up more fresh water than is sustainable; we are relying on deposits of water from the last Ice Age that will inevitably run out. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/22 "2010-10-01T14:30:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Also, argricultural subsidies are mostly a way for politicians from the agricultural midwestern states to cater to their constituents. And the western states, and the southern states, and the northeastern states. That’s partly why they’re so entrenched. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/23 "2010-10-01T14:51:05Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Unfortunately, farm subsidies rarely go away, because of the “Peter and Paul” principle - if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can be quite sure of Paul’s support no matter what. And if you rob enough Peters so that you don’t take too much from any one of them, they will care about being robbed less than Paul cares about his subsidies. It’s even more insidious than that. Agricultural subsidies started with the best of intentions, specifically, to preserve excess perishable goods (grain, dairy, meat) production capacity in fallow so that if you have a lean year you still have enough production to meet demand. This also (in theory) helps protect the market against monopolization and cartels by allowing smaller, “less efficient” farming operations be viable against massive corporate and collective agriculture, so it is intended to protect the consumer and the economy as a whole as well as smaller farms. The reality is that such protections are used by the agricultural industry as a whole to artificially raise the price of perishable goods well beyond what a healthy market would demand, and actually result in considerable wastage, primarily benefiting the large corporate and collective farming enterprises that can produce greater yields. It has also led to homogenization of crops (both species and variations within species) that leave yields vulnerable to infection and parasites and markets as a whole subject to higher level manipulation, which has resulted in driving smaller farming operations either out of business or toward low-duration boutique crops of lesser gross caloric value (basically the antithesis of the Green Revolution). It also encourages the tragedy of the commons: I’ll produce as much product as possible in order to use or obtain the maximum subsidy, even if it is more than the market can bear. Similarly, resource subsidies, particularly water usage, encourage use of precious and non-sustainable resources without limit or consideration for future effects. Price protections and limited-life subsidies are probably necessary to protect the diversity of the agricultural industry over the long term, as immediate responses to short term fluctuations in the market of a pure _laissez-faire_ approach can’t see beyond the next peak, but the truth is they get hijacked by the self-serving interests they are intended to protect against. A long-term inflexible system of agricultural subsidies only serves to create a highly artificial marketplace that doesn’t benefit the consumer. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2010, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/24 "2010-10-01T15:30:58Z")
Well, I can see the value in having a secure domestic food supply but as the world’s largest exporter of food, I am not sure that this should be very high on our list of concerns. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/25 "2010-10-01T16:30:29Z")
Better still you can get farm subsidies and not even farm a thing: > [@](#): > > **Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm** > > \ > > Most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, but they are under no obligation to grow the crop being subsidized. They can switch to a different crop or raise cattle or even grow a stand of timber – and still get the government payments. The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards. > > The payments now account for nearly half of the nation’s expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare. > > SOURCE: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html) ---
**Author:** ![figure9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@figure9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/figure9)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/26 "2010-10-02T00:51:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Unfortunately cows weren’t designed (by God…5000 years ago) to eat corn so they have to inject them with all sorts of antibiotics and chemicals and whatnot so they can digest it. Cows do not need any help digesting corn. Hormones and antibiotics are sometimes overused, but they do not help a cow digest corn. Cows can digest corn just fine. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636/27 "2010-10-02T14:41:57Z")
This could be one of those rare issues on which left and right agree - from which only the lobbying and political classes actually benefit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-agricultural-subsidies/555636.md?page=1)