Farm Subsidies: A Bad Idea All Around

I have what may be called a irrational hatred for farm subsidies. Though their actual impact may be a small part of the entire economy, they strike me as something that are so ill conceived, with so little actual benefit to anyone, that its incredible to me that there's any support for them at all, let alone the kind of widespread support it enjoys from Congress.

1. It's a tax. Why are people are are normally very anti-deficit not supporting a tax cut that will save us 100 billion dollars a year? That would be a nice chunk towards deficit reduction. Supporters of the subsidies sometimes argue that the cost of food would increase, but that would be offset by having to pay less taxes for most of us. The biggest victims of this would be the poorest Americans, who do make enough of an income to pay taxes, but would still have to deal with increases in food prices. However, we could still set aside some of the extra tax revenue to more directly aid low income families with food purchases, and there would still be greater economic efficiency in the marketplace.

2. It's regressive taxation. The way the subsidies are set up actually help the wealthiest farm owners (many of them corporations) much more than the poorer ones who actually could use the help. At the very least, the delivery of subsidizes should be changed go towards small and independent farmers more.

3. They are corporate subsidies. Most of our tax subsidies do not go to Old McDonald. They go to multinational, highly profitable agribusinesses like ADM and Dupont who would still be highly profitable without the tax break coming from taxpayer's wallets, and would become more efficient through better market competition.

4. It's unhealthy for our diets. The particular foods we subsidize are mainly grains, fats and oils, and meat (by feeding animals subsidized grain)with almost none towards fruits or vegetables. This is why a cheeseburger often costs less than a salad, despite all the value added processing the cheeseburger undergoes. This especially hurts the poorest Americans, since they must be more conscious about the cost of food, and often must choose highly unhealthy, artificially cheaper processed food over more expensive healthier alternatives.

5. It hurts our relationship with the developing world. Only a tiny fraction of our workforce is engaged in agriculture, as opposed to manufacturing and services. On the other hand, in most developing countries, agriculture by far is the main source of employment. But because our exports of grains such as corn and soybeans are artificially low, we out-compete countries that have much lower labor costs than the US. This leads to huge problems in other countries' still developing economies, and weakens their vitally important agricultural infrastructure. Furthermore, it degrades our ability to export our more important manufactured goods and services, since developing countries do not want to lower their goods and services tariffs and trade barriers as long as we continue to export artificially cheap agricultural goods. The farm subsidies were originally created to ensure our own food security. They were never intended to hurt countries' security.

To me, farm subsidy elimination seems like a non-partisan issue that would fit the ideology of both conservatives and progressives. It is a shame that there is so much bipartisan support for their continuation in the House and Senate Agricultural committees.