Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).
It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smaller the farm), or have been designed to favor farms in specific regions (where the majority of farmable land is already owned by a few large farm corporations).
This is one of the better sourced articles on the subject I could find in a quick googling (interestingly, it comes from a libertarian think tank, which makes them interesting bed fellows with the food justice and local farms movement): http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies
Here's one from another, more left-leaning, source (but with almost no references, just opinion): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agr...
The Michael Pollan books (specifically, The Omnivores Dilemma) do actually cover this in some detail, as well, and with good references, though it is a small part of the book.
I'm surprised so many people on HN think it is even a little controversial to suggest that large farms are favored by current regulation, enough that several people are requesting references. I kinda thought it was widely known. So, that's an interesting bit of news for me.
Can we just stipulate that commodity crops are indeed locked up structurally for giant agribusiness cartels, and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about? I feel unprepared to discuss the public policy implications of wheat and cotton farming.
Certainly. I think I've been making that argument all along. And, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that being a problem (I think it probably is, if that wasn't clear).
"and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about?"
So, we should exclude everything that supports the notion that big agribusiness has significant anti-competitive advantages, and only talk about the miniscule segment of the market that has not yet been eaten by big agribusiness and still has a few small farmers able to scratch out an existence?
Also, I'm not arguing that the author of this article should expect to make a great living off of a 10 acre farm. Obviously, that's silly (though I know people who do think that a small farm on that scale can be some sort of sustainable existence, and this article is probably useful for them from the perspective of bringing a little reality to the fantasy of retiring on a little farm).
But I think many readers would have an intuitive sense that if you're going to try to go into business selling products whose prices are set not by local buyers like restaurants but rather giant exchanges --- and for commodity crops, that's been the case for much of the last century! --- you're going to need all the economies of scale you can get, because your only axis of competition in those markets is "price".
It's for similar reasons that we tend not to be as concerned with the plight of small family oil well operators.
This article isn't lamenting the fate of small family cotton farmers, or even small alfalfa farmers. They're outraged that it's impossible for small vegetable farmers to make a living.
What moved me to comment is that I think they're wrong about that, and, in the fashion of many Salon-featured essays, are substituting the experiences of "mid-20s-to-early-30s" dilettantes for those of family farmers for whom this is a life-defining vocation.
This article doesn't claim that large farms are subsidized disproportionately, which is the claim you made when you said,
I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market
Are you claiming that large farms are being subsidized non-linearly? I.e. out of proportion with their size and output? That is certainly not the claim that's being made by that Cato article, and its not born out by the USDA page that the Cato article links to.
I'm surprised so many people on HN think it is even a little controversial to suggest that large farms are favored by current regulation, enough that several people are requesting references. I kinda thought it was widely known. So, that's an interesting bit of news for me.
Agriculture is subsidized - I think that much is well known. Perhaps I wasn't clear - I was asking for sources that would indicate that subsidies favour large farms. In many other places around the world, like in Europe, agricultural subsidies are perceived as helping to protect small farms.
Most California farmers, who grow mainly fruits and vegetables, do not get direct subsidies from the Depression-era programs, which remain largely targeted at grains, cotton, dairy and a handful of smaller crops.
In fact, these subsidies are handed out based on land area, and seem to have a penalty against large farms which operators have been circumventing by legally subdividing their farms to collect more.
Anyways, I think we can agree that these subsidies aren't relevant to the farmers in the article, who have chosen not to grow grains and other subsidized crops and are not in competition with these large farms.