> Farm subsidies are there basically to prevent the collapse of the farm > industry and keep farmers in business, because the farming business is > so economically anomalous the normal economic rules don't apply to it > very well at all. And we are talking about our *food supply* here ..
The standard rational one always hears - supporting farmers is supporting food security. But it generally isn't true because a vast proportion of farm subsidies do not actively support the growing of staple crops but merely the corporate profits of companies. A considerable amount of farming subsidies perversely discourage actual farming. In many places where production is supported by subsidies it's often extremely detrimental to the long term ability to sustain production. If Jared Diamond is to be believed in 'Collapse' for instance Australias agriculture has long been actively funded by its government to essentially destroy and exhaust their fragile soils. I've recently read many reports that small scale farming is demonstratively more productive than agribusiness and vastly better at protecting soils from exhaustion and erosion. Unfortunately, as I read them, it seems to rely on farmers and their families being poor and providing plenty of free labour. The two main reasons the Doha round of WTO talks have failed (after some seven years of negotiations) is that the rich countries are not delivering on their promise of removing farm subsidies and opening farm trade poorer nations can actually provide. The other stumbling block is rich countries insistence that others remove all barriers to the free flow of the insane and bizarre financial instruments that are coming home to roost right now. I rather imagine plenty of nations are glad they didn't acquiesce to that nonsense now. Speaking of managing food - our seas are bcoming depleted with voracious nations moving from fishery to fishery as they exhaust them. some 40% of the worlds protein is currently taken form the sea at unsustainable rates while, agains according to Jared Diamond, expert opinion is a well managed fishing industry could sustainably take perhaps twice the current amount. Imagone trying to convince the world to accept a global fisheries management and police orgainsation. It's hard to conceive of the nationalistic divisions accepting such a thing, much easier to imagine war for rsources instead. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
