JBD

ONLY OBAMA CAN END FARM SUBSIDIES

Since the Depression, our federal government has taken a portion our tax dollars and redistributed them to farmers. The reasons are basic and easy to understand:

The industrial revolution started the trend of farmers moving to the cities for a better life based on proven wages rather than iffy crop margins. As a consequence, cities became ever more dependent on fewer and fewer farmers to feed the growing non-farm population, and crop failures had an increasing impact on city and state politics.

To soften that impact, city dwellers started subsidizing farming through water projects, electrification, railroads, highways, etc.  This was more logical 75 to 150 years ago when farming methods were still fairly primitive, and the combination of drought, soil erosion and a bad economy could force farmers to abandon their farms and look for better land, sending food shortages rippling through the country.

By the 1960s, farming was primarily a capital-driven business, and rapidly disappearing as a subsistence-level family occupation. The holy "family farmer" was mostly a myth by the 80s. The advent of modern industrialized farming and globalized food sourcing meant historically low food prices and abundant fresh fruits and vegetables of all kinds without regard to season or local crop successes. The era of price-driven (as opposed to scarcity-driven) food markets was here to stay, and the definition of malnutrition went from hunger to obesity in a generation.

For the past 25 years or so, subsidies have been nothing more than bribes handed to farm state politicians by non-farm state politicians to get them to vote for things the non-farm state politicians want. The most recent 5-year plan (I love the Soviet cachet of that term) was pure pork, and Obama had a chance to join with President Bush to reduce or eliminate many subsidies. Obama talked like he was going to oppose subsidies, then missed the actual votes, so he had no record of either supporting or opposing. Then he went on the campaign trail to selectively bash whichever side was most advantageous to him at the time.

Now that he's looking for cash anyplace he can find it, watch for him to reverse his rhetoric and cut off all the subsidies to anybody who doesn't actually live on the land they farm, and to set a very low income cap, and to tie all subsidies to green initiatives or volunteerism. This is a fairly accurate description of a Soviet-era collective farm.

Possibility of this actually happening: 95%. This one should be a no brainer. And about time, too. As I review in this post, there is no reason to think that agricultural commodities will suffer from a low Dow or fewer Chevys.  We should have ended subsidies in the 80s, but with all the Farm Aid whiney-butts, it was just too hot a political topic, and the log-rolling effect of Wall Street to Main Street to dirt road farm subsidies are too tempting for Congress to pass up.

Obama doesn't need farm votes or agribusiness campaign contributions to get re-elected. On the contrary, the farm state politicians will have to drink ethanol, plant wind farms, and plow solar panels to get any dough out of Obama. Will BHO actually end farm subsidies, or simply transfer them to his socialist agenda? Depends on how bad the economy gets, and how good a job the Republicans and the press do in exposing the soon-to-be-rampant corruption of the Obama administration.

Barring some natural disaster like mad cow, hoof & mouth, or wheat blight, once we get rid of farm subsidies, like welfare, they will be nearly impossible to reinstate,  I'd settle for that for now, and work at picking off the other mini-soviets as they fail.

Posted by: JBD at 10:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 701 words, total size 5 kb.