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Comment by quxbar | Hacker News Reader

Well, another $12 billion subsidy is coming their way, I'm sure. But nobody would dare call farmers welfare queens...

( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/us/politics/farming-trump... )

There is a documentary called king corn which basically showed that all profit in the corn industry is basically from subsidies. Without the subsidy, corn is not profitable to grow in the United States. Also the bigger beneficiaries are actually larger AG companies that benefit from being able to buy artificially low value corn to make their products. In essence, the corn subsidy is a welfare program not for the "family owned farm" it is for large corporate food processors like coca-cola, pepsi, cargil etc.

That was a good movie. The corn syrup producer was especially creepy.

My guess is that corn syrup only even exists because of subsidies that make it profitable to grow corn.

It's not their fault every government in the world subsidizes food and makes prices artificially low so it's impossible to farm for a profit. What's your alternative? No farmers because its not profitable? Only enough food being grown where people can make profit from? This isn't a bad system we have now, the subsidies are fairly small and food is really cheap because of it. Those farmers also work quite hard and lives suck in general. Farm subsidies are an example of the government actually doing it's job for once.

I agree, the one thing we could and probably should change is the diversity of crops we subsidize. We want food stability, but we don't need to base that stability on pure corn syrup.

Not to mention crop monoculture is terrible for the quality of the soil, forcing farmers to use (literally) tons of synthetic phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium just to get acceptable yields. It results in lower quality crops than those that result from polyculture, as well.

A comment in the top thread mentioned The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan as a good introduction to this issue and I'll second that. A fun read, too. He investigates hunting and amateur mycology as well.

How do the costs of managing a multiculture field compare to a monoculture one?

I'd imagine the planting, maintenance and harvesting procedures benefit significantly from the crop being a single type.

I guess you're right, but only for so long - different crops add and remove different nutrients from the soil, so if you keep planting the same thing you will eventually deplete the soil of the nutrients to grow that crop.

We're not subsidizing to get crops grown, were subsidizing to keep approval ratings high.

> Farm subsidies are an example of the government actually doing it's job for once

I'm curious to hear more about this idea. To me, it seems to be "subsidies are fine for me, but welfare is bad for thee".

I literally grew up living in a house rented in an almond orchard. I have experience with the entitlement of farmers firsthand, I don't feel the same way you do.

Plenty of people complain about corporate welfare all the time? The current administration is the far from small government/low spending so you can't expect it to come from them, unless it somehow benefits some of the mega-firms who have tentacles into the government, as is tradition at this point. They can't wait to raise the debt ceiling even higher.

I entirely expect the next administration will similarly be full-bore on corporate welfare too, especially if we have a recession. Just like the last one did.

It's now been totally normalized after the big banks paid TARP back after they used it on M&As buying up smaller weaker banks with cheap gov debt that few other financial companies had access to in the down market, which also had nothing to do with the original TARP plan but thats another story. Pretty much everyone brings up how they paid it back so it's totally okay for a select few billion-dollar companies to get bailed out with treasury loans and grants every time their industry tanks.

At least these are a direct consequence of gov policy, not indirect like pushing the idea of mortgages to every person and low interest rates.

Democrats also do the same thing except it is just different industries. Republicans will subsidize corn....democrats will subsidize renewable energy etc. This basically how each party does the political spoils systems. Only way to make it stop is to overall stop funding the system. Vote for lower taxes etc.

>Only way to make it stop is to overall stop funding the system. Vote for lower taxes etc.

Trump cut taxes last year. How's that working out?

Guess what collected from Chinese tariffs now goes to the farmers directly, apparently. /s

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