2012 Is Finally The Time to Prune Farm Subsidies

From the editorial "Pruning Farm Subsidies," by Victor Davis Hanson:

"We need a drastic reset of agricultural policy. The use of prime ag land to grow corn for ethanol biofuel makes no sense. Why divert farmland for fuels when the world’s poor are short of food, and there are millions of unfarmable areas in Alaska and the arid West, as well as off the American coast, that either are not being tapped for more efficient gas and oil or are only partially exploited?  

When North Americans do not fully utilize their own fossil-fuel resources, two very bad things usually follow: 

1. Someone in Africa, Asia, or Russia is far more likely to harm the environment in order to provide us with oil, and 

2. Precious farmland is diverted to growing less efficient biofuels instead of food — and billions worldwide pay the price.  

No supporter has ever been able to explain why the advent of massive subsidies over the last half-century coincided with the decline, not the renaissance, of “the family farm.” Nor has anyone offered reasons why cotton, wheat, soy, sugar, and corn are directly subsidized, but not, for example, nuts, peaches, or carrots.  

Finally, the United States is supposed to be the world’s premier free-market economy, based on the principles that competition is good and that entrepreneurs freely reacting to markets create more wealth when unfettered by government red tape. Why, then, would the conservative agribusiness community want government intrusion that warps world food markets, ends up hurting the global poor, and contributes to an unsustainable national debt?

2012 is finally the time to end the crop-subsidy business, with the annual budget deficit approaching $1.5 trillion in 2011, farmers receiving record prices on the open market, and the new conservative House of Representatives having been elected on the promise of fiscal responsibility."

MP: As the chart above shows (data from EWG), there is also massive "farm subsidy inequality" - the top 1% of farm subsidy recipients (13,186) got almost as much taxpayer-subsidized "pork" ($2.16 billion and 20% of the total payments) as the entire bottom 80% ($2.32 billion, and 21% of total payments).