Another Example of How The U.S. Does Not Believe in Free Markets
America is the land of subsidies. Nothing better illustrates that than aid to farmers.
Small farmers, large farmers, industrial farmers, and family farmers. If you are a farmer, you probably are entitled to some form of subsidy. That makes farming one of our largest non-free market sectors in the country.
There are many reasons given for why the U.S. government needs to continue throwing tax money down this hole. We need to keep the small family farm going. Local rural economies would disappear without the family farm. Producing blank (insert the crop of your choice) would no longer be cost effective. And best of all we need to make sure we can have food independence from foreign producers.
All of those may have a grain of truth to them. Yet American agriculture has never produced more or fed more people than today. It just does it differently now than it did in the past.
About 2% of Americans are laboring on farms. California by far, with $58 billion in crops, is the largest. Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, and Illinois round out the top five. My home state of Florida leads in sweet corn production at $219 million. Florida ranks 21st in the country in production and Martin County’s (where I live) agricultural production is 26th out of 67 counties in the state while right next door is Palm Beach County whose rank is first in production.
Texas ranks first for farm subsidies followed by Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas. The top 10% of recipients raked in 79% of total subsidies in the past 25 years. Florida leads in sugar subsidies with Florida Crystals and U.S. Sugar Corp. as the leaders. The first is controlled by the Fanjul family and the latter by its employees and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
The small family farmer is not high on the list of the amount of subsidies received. According to the USDA, 23% of farms with yearly incomes of less than $100,000 receive federal subsidies. Another 70% go to larger farmers. Does that mean those really small farmers would go out of business without subsidies? Probably. Is that a bad thing? I don’t believe so.
According to the Locke Society, a think tank, those subsidies give large producers an advantage. In 2020, 39% of farm income came from government subsidies setting up American’s dependence on growing the same old crops instead of experimentation to change to meet today’s needs.
For example, why stop being a small dairy farmer who receives a government check and instead tries growing other crops. Farming is a business with risk and reward. The government is taking the risk out and leaving many in a subsistence state. The small farming business can’t prosper, and the larger ones grow bigger because of reliance on government handouts. It becomes a perpetual cycle reminiscent of failed socialist societies.
If the point of subsidies is to have an inexpensive food supply, then I would let the market determine who is a producer and who is not and what they produce. Americans who can’t afford adequate food should be the ones subsidized. The SNAP program is part of the U.S.D.A. If anything, that should be expanded and let the market take care of the producers.
Like any other free market, food producers will battle for market share. Competition will keep prices affordable. Perhaps we should go back to a time when an entire industry was not receiving a check from the taxpayers who then paid a fair price for the product because of competition.
