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Comment by wnevets | Hacker News Reader

Can we wean oil & farm companies off of government support first?

Without enough domestic farms and oil fields the US would be extremely vulnerable to foreign sanctions etc. in times of conflict. The subsidies are intended to keep some of these unprofitable operations running domestically.

Maybe that would be an incentive against conflict ?

Only if everybody in the world did it. Otherwise, it makes whoever did do it vulnerable to anyone who didn't.

Unless of course one subscribes to rather silly and naive notions like that the USA is the primary source of conflict in the world.

> Without enough domestic farms and oil fields the US would be extremely vulnerable to foreign sanctions etc. in times of conflict.

By treating agriculture as a free market, without protectionism and subsidies, we'd allow the developing world to actually develop, reducing the frequency of "times of conflict."

As a practical matter, the argument you've given is just a (common enough) red herring. Stopping the United States from trading with its primary trading partners would be somewhat less practical than trying to keep Rome at its peak from importing grain from Egypt.

I would not consider it a red herring. There are very few places in the world that can sustain large scale agricultural out put. For clarification I speak of the Nile Delta, Ukraine, Mekong Delta, and the Midwest of the United States. This is nothing new, this has been true since the dawn of human history. With the exception of the Midwest of the Unite States those areas have also been fought over continuously since the dawn of human history.

Your comment seems to indicated that it is less develop countries that are to be feared in times of conflict. This is not the case, with very few exceptions it has been the more developed countries that seek to exploit those regions. As a policy I am for the United States keeping it agricultural engine online and working as I don't wish my countries food supply to be dependent on, nor easily manipulated or controlled, by others.

I'd love to see the subsidies instead given to small urban farmers to help push more local food sources.

Probably would conflict with the massive agri/farming industry lobbies

40% of the earth's land area is currently used for agriculture. This is the kind of scale required to feed the population the world has now. Comparatively "small urban farmers" ability to produce foodstuffs is, and always will be, a rounding error when compared to the scale of industrial farming.

I don't know about farming, but where's the evidence that oil companies are on some kind of special Government support? This StackExchange answer[0] goes into a decent amount of detail on exactly what "subsidies" Shell is receiving and why.

[0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39112/does-shel...

Policies of foreign governments contrary to US oil companies' interests (and in fact the interests of many large corporations) have a strange tendency to attract the attention of the US military.

Hey! I really like my cheap produce.

You'd still get it cheap it just wouldn't be US grown

Cheap meat is more likely to take a hit if we cut farm subsidies; feed crops are the biggest beneficiary (mostly corn).

The data on wikipedia[1] is from 2004, but I haven't heard of any major reforms since then. From greatest to least, subsidies went to: corn, cotton, wheat, rice, soybeans, dairy, peanuts, sugar, minor oilseeds, tobacco, wool and mohair, vegetable oil products, and honey. Anything else is in the remaining 2%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St...

EDIT: Note that sugar and onward are individually <2% (smaller than the "anything else" bucket)

Mohair?

Most of the government ag subsidies go towards meat, dairy, and corn. Gotta keep that bacon and high fructose corn syrup flowing into Americans, and corn flowing into the animals.

You understand that subsidies create a price floor.

Your produce would be cheaper in their absence.

Why the downvote? Am I wrong?

It'd be nice if it wouldn't let you downvote unless (1) you also reply as to why you disagree or (2) upvoted someone who already posted a reply. A downvote by itself isn't helping anybody.

Historically, yes. Food is cheaper now than it has been pre-subsidy. Naturally, prices fluctuate violently.

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