Ag welfare

Having grown up in a farming family, I'm all for the family farm. Industrial farms, on the other hand, are another thing altogether.

Consider this from Reason:

Ninety percent of all subsidies go to just five crops: corn, rice, cotton, wheat, and soybeans. Two thirds of all farm products—including perishable fruits and vegetables—receive almost no subsidies. And just 10 percent of recipients receive 75 percent of all subsidies. A program intended to be a “temporary solution” has become one of our government’s most glaring examples of corporate welfare.

U.S. taxpayers aren’t the only ones who pay the price. Cotton subsidies, for example, encourage overproduction which lowers the world price of cotton. That’s great for people who buy cotton, but it’s disastrous for already impoverished cotton farmers in places such as West Africa.

U.S. farm programs cost taxpayers billions each year, significantly raise the price of commodities such as sugar (which is protected from competition from other producers in other countries), undermine world trade agreements, and contribute to the suffering of poor farmers around the world. It’s bad public policy, especially in these troubled economic times.

I'm reminded of something I wrote about a farm that Michael Pollan described in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

The best part of the book for me was the section about Polyface Farm, a family-run and nearly self-sufficient small scale farm which produces an amazing bounty of food by operating as a "grass farm." The grass feeds cattle and chickens, which in turn fertilize the grass with their manure and support a complete and self-contained ecosystem on the farm, needing only some chicken feed as an input. This style of farming requires thought and careful planning and is far more labor intensive than large scale monoculture farming, but it actually produces more food per acre than the latter. I found myself again with that tug at the heart: call Dad and start a farm on the model of Polyface!

Original post and a link to the book here.