How should we help the extremely poor?

[Gangor]

By the standards of this country, farmers do more work than just about everyone and make less money as well. The co-ops in PA are not rich, though it is hard to be more poor than an African farmer. There is no standard for comparison there, so do not try that.

Isn't that a perfect reason not to have farmers in your country? Getting them doing something more productive would more than cover the cost of importing cheaper food.

 

[Mastreditr111]

how many farmers do you know who have job training for a truly well-paying job?

my grandfather now works as a truck driver as well, but that is one of very few jobs that require little or no educational training yet still pay well.

Frankly I wouldn't mind entirely, but do you really want to rely on a country that was in the midst of a civil war last year for our food supply this year? I think it leaves too many oppertunities for disaster.

 

[Gangor]

how many farmers do you know who have job training for a truly well-paying job?

Many farmers here hold degrees... I don't know many farmers personally, but I'd say the majority could turn their hand to something else pretty easily. Besides, I doubt farms would disappear - they'd just farm something more profitable to the country.

Frankly I wouldn't mind entirely, but do you really want to rely on a country that was in the midst of a civil war last year for our food supply this year? I think it leaves too many oppertunities for disaster.

But poverty is part of the reason for the wars...which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

 

[Mastreditr111]

First, a historical analogy: We are Great Britain, and the subsidies are the Corn Laws, forcing us to remain self-reliant in foor production.

Now I'm going to allow paranoia to start talking, just this once, and say this: What if, at some point, after abandoning the subsidies, we find ourselves in a war, and lose control of the sea lands linking us to Africa, and the land roots to South America. I will admit that the war would already be going badly if these two were to happen, but WWII went badly at first. Now there are 400 million people in America, all of whom will starve unless we break one of the blockades before our reserves run out. We could probably have won the war by bringing heavy industry into play to back our military, but now we don't have the time. We are faced with a choice: so we surrender, and face whatever terms are given to us, do we allow some of our population to die of starvation while we frantically try to plant crops and harvest them, or do we try to break the blockade with sheer manpower, killing millions of men to save the rest?

 

[Mastreditr111]

Britain got caught like that twice, and survived only through luck each time, luck and through the fact that we (Americans) came to their aid, and helped clear the German navy from the Atlantic. If the U.S. is involved in that decisive of a war, there will be no country large and powerful enough to rescue us, as we will probably be facing either China, India, or Russia, and already be working with our trading partners.

 

[amadeus]

Isn't that a perfect reason not to have farmers in your country? Getting them doing something more productive would more than cover the cost of importing cheaper food.

Farming is so efficient in this country that we're a net exporter of various foods. There's no reason to shut down the agribusinesses, they're just as productive as any other profession in this country.

 

[Perfection]

If it's so efficient then why does the government have to give farmers bajillions of dollars in subsidies?

 

[Gangor]

<snip>

Americans will starve without sugar? Well, I suppose that explains the obesity epidemic...

 

[Gangor]

Farming is so efficient in this country that we're a net exporter of various foods. There's no reason to shut down the agribusinesses, they're just as productive as any other profession in this country.

No, the reason you export foods is because they are subsidised to such an extent that it makes economic sense for farmers to use inefficent means to produce far more food than is needed for the local market, thus sabotaging the fragile agrarian economies of the third world.

 

[Mastreditr111]

You are saying that the subsidies are the only reason any farm is profitable here... no more farms means no more food means all imported means supply line can be cut. I used the Corn Law analogy for a reason, look it up on wikipedia if you don't already know what it is.

and i repeat again, GIVE ME A LINK WITH STATISTICS ON ALL THESE SUBSIDIES, would you? I want to see what their actual impact is.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

If it's so efficient then why does the government have to give farmers bajillions of dollars in subsidies?

so they wont grow too much and overflow the market. 'tis true.

 

[Mastreditr111]

because rmsharpe is right, we export vast amounts of food overseas, and there must be a reason why people continue to buy it over the produce of the 3rd world.

EDIT: Cheezy has a point. I'm not sure personally about America, but there are precidents in the EU. Actually, it was a major problem, because the EU as a whole voted to have subsidies to preserve the prices for French, Italian, Polish, and Spanish produce and the British and Germans, both of whom were massive importers of food, objected vehemently

 

[amadeus]

If it's so efficient then why does the government have to give farmers bajillions of dollars in subsidies?

Cheezy beat me to it. If all of the farmers in this country produced as much as they could, the prices of agricultural products would plummet.

It's a set of self-imposed restrictions designed to keep food prices artificially high as to "protect" the farm population. If we didn't, farms across the country would go out of business left and right.

I don't agree with farm subsidies, but it isn't the fault of inefficient agricultural practices.

 

[Mastreditr111]

I think that in this day and age the subsidies are as much a security measure as anything else. Without them, many farms would fail. There would still be enough left, obviously, under normal circumstances, but in the event of a major disaster, the US would be totally unable to muster surplus food supplies to aid other countries or its own citizens, as farmers never produced any extra food.

 

[Gangor]

GIVE ME A LINK

here you go

Box 1: Key Statistics
• The total amount of support to agriculture in developed countries now stands at over $300 billion
per year.
• $300 billion would pay for clean water for everyone in the world ($170 billion), education for all
($6 billion), basic health and nutrition for all ($13 billion) and pay off the public debt of the most
heavily indebted countries ($90 billion).
• Each tonne of wheat and sugar from the UK is sold on international markets at an average price of
40% and 60% below the cost of production respectively (ie, it is dumped)
• Every wheat farmer in the EU currently receives a subsidy of approximately £35 per tonne. As
ActionAid research reveals, in Pakistan subsidies to small-scale wheat producers have been
slashed under pressure from international institutions.
• In the UK, the richest 20% of farm holdings receive 80% of subsidies. The top 2,000 UK farmers
receive annual subsidy cheques of about £100,000. The majority of UK farmers (about 60%)
receive less than £5,000 a year.
• In the UK, farm subsidies cost every individual at least £50 a year. Agricultural support has also
inflated consumer prices, and the approximate cost to each UK citizen is an additional £50 each year.

 

[Gangor]

because rmsharpe is right, we export vast amounts of food overseas, and there must be a reason why people continue to buy it over the produce of the 3rd world.

Um, do I really have to point this out? Ok...

BECAUSE THE SUBSIDIES MAKE IT MORE COMPETITIVE

 

[Mastreditr111]

NO THEY DON'T. I believe we already established that they are in place to keep the agricultural market somewhat stable despite varying harvests every year. A normal graph of agricultural production over time will be wavy or bumpy, but the subsidies allow the government to take extra food (they destroy some, but not alot) and use it in years of low harvest, or to ensure disaster stockpiles are adequate. Thus, a flatline is what you get when you look at total sales or consumption. (well, a sloped line, but a stable increase matching the population and standard of living increases over that time)

 

[Mastreditr111]

and I still say the we shouldn't outsource food production, as it will bite us in the a**. What happens with my earlier scenario or if our suppliers get greedy/agressive?

 

[amadeus]

Um, do I really have to point this out? Ok...

BECAUSE THE SUBSIDIES MAKE IT MORE COMPETITIVE

The subsidies don't make U.S. agricultural business competitive, they make it less competitive. For some farmers, subsidies are a good reason to grow nothing at all, as opposed to working and bringing down the price of goods, for which they'd receive a smaller portion of those profits.

The point of those subsidies isn't to enhance our position, it's to hold us back from flooding the market and destroying the U.S. farm economy.

 

[Gangor]

NO THEY DON'T. I believe we already established that they are in place to keep the agricultural market somewhat stable despite varying harvests every year. A normal graph of agricultural production over time will be wavy or bumpy, but the subsidies allow the government to take extra food (they destroy some, but not alot) and use it in years of low harvest, or to ensure disaster stockpiles are adequate. Thus, a flatline is what you get when you look at total sales or consumption. (well, a sloped line, but a stable increase matching the population and standard of living increases over that time)

Here, I drew a graph to explain. Please excuse paintbrush...

Now that you've seen it, consider that subsidies pay farmers 3 times the market price. How does a poor third world farmer compete with that?

Edit: whoops...