Missed Opportunity in Agricultural Subsidies
Dr Barnett comments on the damage created by our ag subsidies.
Our ag subsidies are destroying agriculture in Africa, scattering farm families. The myth that ag subsidies protect the “family farm” here in America is absurd beyond words. Those farms, to the extent they still exist, receive only a tiny fraction of such subsidies, the vast bulk of which go to huge farms and ag corps.The family farms we destroy systematically are found overwhelmingly in the Gap. As the president of Ghana’s Peasant Farmers Association says, “Our family are scattering. It’s not surprising people are getting angry against the West.”
Our rice costs $240per ton. We subsidize the cost internationally down to $205. It costs $230 in Ghana to raise the same ton, but they lost out on the market shares as a result of our trade distortion. One American business consultant puts it this way:
U.S. farmers have gotten too greedy. Until there is some change in this, you’ll have a huge part of the population in poor countries trying to leave and raising hell.”
This is why the Doha round matters so much. We can Sun Tzu ‘em today, or Clausewitz ‘em years from now.
If we want to thwart the spread of Islamic Radicalism and promote peaceful economic growth then not undermining the poor throughout the world would yield a terrific return on our investment.
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4 Responses to “Missed Opportunity in Agricultural Subsidies”
You know what’s ironic?
Remember that post about Marijuana being the highest cash crop in the US?
The funny thing is that Marijuana is pretty much the only non-subsidized agricultural product in the US (if you don’t count price inflation caused by its illegality) and it still out does all of the other subsidized crops…
Priceless…
Paul–
In my opinion, this is the great unappreciated story of our time. We could be fixing the future right now. Or we could keep ignoring it, with–I believe–results that will eventually become similar to what is happening with oil. “We can Sun Tzu ‘em today, or Clausewitz ‘em years from now,” as Barnett puts it.
The Washington Post has been running a series of articles called “Harvesting Cash” for several months. The archive of those articles is HERE.
Thanks so much for covering this.
I agree that this is just one of many under uses of our resources and clout to make the world safer and more prosperous.
One of my frustrations with the Blogosphere is the lack of action oriented discussions to sort through the pros and cons of various remedies.
I think subsidies should be eliminated while a viable system for true crop loss insurance is maintained. That way if a profitable crop can be produced in good weather a farm can get along without any assistance. Natural disasters of any type that cost a farmer his crop (or drastically reduce it) would be covered so he wouldn’t be driven out of agriculture by them. In addition if biofuels take off you’ll see a major resurgence of agriculture although it might just be proper harvesting of switch grass or other crops more effective at producing ethanol than food. Since these wouldn’t be food crops they should be less expensive to produce because of reduced need for insecticide.