1) The so-called "Farm Bill" provides hundreds of billions of dollars in what is essentially farmer socialism, incredible sums of money to protect farmers livelihoods from the free market. Prices too low? Government will pay you to not grow anything to inflate prices. (This doesn't include Trumps tens of billions in more farmer socialism to help protect them from his trade wars)
2) Welfare in general, generally speaking blue/liberal states and cities pay astronomically more into welfare programs (food stamps, unemployment, social security) than they draw, while red states/conservative states draw astronomically more in benefits from the federal gov than they pay.
So in two hundred-billion-plus ways, the liberal cities subsidize the rural farmers and their farms.
And then we buy our produce from central and south america anyway...
All of those farms are just one season away from producing food no matter who we pay transfer payments to. Considering many of those fields are left without any crops anyway, I think you overstate how reliant we are on them
Australia mostly leaves food to the market, in the sense that it has some of the lowest agricultural subsidies in the developed world, and it's a net exporter of food with no famine and no civil unrest.
I'm not sure that subsidies are the best government intervention, either. Strategic grain reserves are probably more useful and less distortionary.
You might be right that strategic reserves would be a better policy. I'm definitely not a fan of what corn subsidies have done to the food supply.
Interesting re: Australia. I was mostly looking at the history of the US before the subsidies. There were a few extremely tough times for farmers. And in other countries' history, most revolutions seem to start with a bad year or two for crops.
> most revolutions seem to start with a bad year or two for crops.
This is the main thing. The farm subsidy can be considered an exorbitant, market distorting subsidy. But food is too important to the very fabric of society, that it has to be available at reasonable prices at all times.
1) The so-called "Farm Bill" provides hundreds of billions of dollars in what is essentially farmer socialism, incredible sums of money to protect farmers livelihoods from the free market. Prices too low? Government will pay you to not grow anything to inflate prices. (This doesn't include Trumps tens of billions in more farmer socialism to help protect them from his trade wars)
2) Welfare in general, generally speaking blue/liberal states and cities pay astronomically more into welfare programs (food stamps, unemployment, social security) than they draw, while red states/conservative states draw astronomically more in benefits from the federal gov than they pay.
So in two hundred-billion-plus ways, the liberal cities subsidize the rural farmers and their farms.
And then we buy our produce from central and south america anyway...