- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
Prices for nearly every major U.S. crop are below what it costs to grow them. But a drop in rice prices means another blow to farmers in Mississippi’s agricultural belt.
Then it is a waste of money as well, no?
Part of the reason you subsidize is that overproduction most years is a feature. You dont want a “not enough food” situation in the lean years, and growing enough to make sure of that guarantees that the farmers go broke.
That said, the specifics of how and what the US subsidies go to are pretty bad: we mostly pay for the creation of cattle feed and motor vehicle fuel.
I get that. It’s a shame that food isn’t treated as a pubic good that simply needs to be provided for free at the point of consumption. I know some people would maybe overeat, but it’s not like making them pay has solved that problem.
We subsidize for corn syrup and sugar to a large degree too, products americans get way too much of, because they are artificially cheap, it’s a cheap filler in processed foods.