Agriculture and a Devil’s Bargain.
July 3 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, EconomicsWell, any thoughts on this one?
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Victor Davis Hanson writing at townhall.com, June 23:
The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead, it is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion—a sum far greater than the nation’s net farm income this year. In fact, the more the Agriculture Department has pontificated about family farmers, the more they have vanished—comprising now only about 1% of the American population.
Net farm income is expected in 2011 to reach its highest levels in more than three decades, as a rapidly growing and food-short world increasingly looks to the United States to provide it everything from soybeans and wheat to beef and fruit. Somebody should explain that good news to the Department of Agriculture: This year it will give a record $20 billion in various crop “supports” to the nation’s wealthiest farmers—with the richest 10% receiving over 70% of all the redistributive payouts. . . . Free-market conservatives don’t dare touch the Department of Agriculture, given the senatorial clout of Midwest farm states . . . Don’t expect left-wing Democrats to object either. In a brilliantly conceived devil’s bargain, the Department of Agriculture gives welfare to the wealthy on the one hand, while on the other sending more than $70 billion to the lower income brackets in food stamps.
Pull a Ron Paul: Shutter the Dept. of Ag (as well as others) and let the market work. If farmers can’t make it on >$6/bu. corn and wheat, and >$12 soybeans, they never will. BTW: Love the new look of andersonsgrain.com (wish I’d copyrighted the pic of DK, though, that’s still being used – ha).