Ag subsidies -- I am ashamed of my country

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Colon
Just give the money back to the taxpayers. Let the farmers themselves deal with advertising.

Pah... you sound like DanS..
How do you think farmers that, until now dependent on subsidies, can increase their expenses and lower their subsidies, eh?
But, of course, you don't care...

Unfortunately a change to quality food requires a lot of knowledge, because biological food is not so easy to plant and it also requires way more maintenance. Knowledge needs time and money to propagate. Still it's a good thing to start with that now... we have great food surpluses, we should change cheap massproduction to higher quality and then cut the market to the outside... I really see no point in importing food we can produce for ourselves.
Imagine how much food we will produce once the EU-15 has modernized their agricultural sector.

And when we don't buy the cheap food from 3rd world countries anymore they will have to sell among themselves and reduce the starvation

[JohnT]

I'm not too sure why we need to cut farming subsidies for the purpose of subsidizing Ata's pet little "natural foods" bugaboo.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Atahualpa

Unfortunately a change to quality food requires a lot of knowledge, because biological food is not so easy to plant and it also requires way more maintenance. Knowledge needs time and money to propagate. Still it's a good thing to start with that now... we have great food surpluses, we should change cheap massproduction to higher quality and then cut the market to the outside... I really see no point in importing food we can produce for ourselves.
Imagine how much food we will produce once the EU-15 has modernized their agricultural sector.

And when we don't buy the cheap food from 3rd world countries anymore they will have to sell among themselves and reduce the starvation

As far as I know all farmers on this planet are farming biological food. I guess that you mean ecological farming.

Third world countries doesn't starve because they export food, they do when they go to war or natural disasters happens.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Atahualpa


Pah... you sound like DanS..
How do you think farmers that, until now dependent on subsidies, can increase their expenses and lower their subsidies, eh?
But, of course, you don't care...

Unfortunately a change to quality food requires a lot of knowledge, because biological food is not so easy to plant and it also requires way more maintenance. Knowledge needs time and money to propagate. Still it's a good thing to start with that now... we have great food surpluses, we should change cheap massproduction to higher quality and then cut the market to the outside... I really see no point in importing food we can produce for ourselves.
Imagine how much food we will produce once the EU-15 has modernized their agricultural sector.

And when we don't buy the cheap food from 3rd world countries anymore they will have to sell among themselves and reduce the starvation

I'm not starting from the assumption farmers are toddlers who can't make up their own mind whether to engage in ecological farming or not.

And I don't see what's the point in producing a given amount of food by ourselves, if we can instead produce higher-added-value goods, export those goods in exchange for food from abroad whilst saving a buck, to be spend on other means. Check North-Korea if you'd like an example of what kind of folly striving after self-sufficiency can result in.

[MrFun]

Re: Ag subsidies -- I am ashamed of my country

Originally posted by DanS
The congress should be ashamed of themselves for promoting this theft from the honest taxpayers.

So why do you lack such sense of outrage when it comes to corporate welfare?

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by JohnT
I'm not too sure why we need to cut farming subsidies for the purpose of subsidizing Ata's pet little "natural foods" bugaboo.

Capitalists don't understand that....
What you should understand though is that every 3rd world country can produce cheaper food as we and naturally undercut our farmers earnings as they have to compete with them.. therefor we raise customer awareness to a new health trend and let our farmers produce quality food. This requires knowledge that other countries don't have and thus we don't need to compete directly with them on a price-only level.
This is kind of the technological advance in agriculture.. our soils can produce so much that competing by producing more is not going to work out in the long run.

Originally posted by BlackCat
As far as I know all farmers on this planet are farming biological food. I guess that you mean ecological farming.

Third world countries doesn't starve because they export food, they do when they go to war or natural disasters happens.

They starve ofc because we buy all the stuff for cheap and they grow food that we feed our animals with...

Originally posted by Colon
And I don't see what's the point in producing a given amount of food by ourselves, if we can instead produce higher-added-value goods, export those goods in exchange for food from abroad whilst saving a buck, to be spend on other means. Check North-Korea if you'd like an example of what kind of folly striving after self-sufficiency can result in.

NK is not in the slightest comparable to the EU

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Re: Re: Ag subsidies -- I am ashamed of my country

Originally posted by MrFun



So why do you lack such sense of outrage when it comes to corporate welfare?

You mean "other kinds of corporate welfare."

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
NK is not in the slightest comparable to the EU

It's the same basic principle. They reason producing by yourself automatically is preferable to trade, ignoring whatever loss of welfare. They just apply it at a wider scale.

[DanS]

You know my dad is competing in this business

Ag subsidies end up in my pocket, because I'm in the industry. It's still wrong.

What you should understand though is that every 3rd world country can produce cheaper food as we and naturally undercut our farmers earnings as they have to compete with them..

Just fine by me. What exempts them from the necessity of competing?

But realize that (1) there are ag niches other than organic farming; and (2) modern farming practices are very effective and efficient. Post World War II, in the US, corn (maize) yields per acre have increased by 800%. In the last 3 years alone, yields per acre have increased by about 25%. I'm not so sure these 3rd world countries would come out better in this competition for most crops.

[JohnT]

Capitalists don't understand that....

What you should understand though is that every 3rd world country can produce cheaper food as we and naturally undercut our farmers earnings as they have to compete with them(1).. therefor we raise customer awareness to a new health trend(2) and let our farmers produce quality food.(3)

1. So? Why force people to buy overpriced food just to deny some third-world country the money it needs to raise itself out of third-worldom?

2. So? Why should we subsidize "raising awareness" just so your family can profit from it? Could the answer be as banal as "so my family can profit from it"?

3. But our farmers already do produce quality food. Why pay higher prices to achieve the same quality, or, granting your assumptions, to achieve marginal and unnoticable differences in quality?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Atahualpa

Unfortunately a change to quality food requires a lot of knowledge, because biological food is not so easy to plant and it also requires way more maintenance. Knowledge needs time and money to propagate. Still it's a good thing to start with that now... we have great food surpluses, we should change cheap massproduction to higher quality and then cut the market to the outside... I really see no point in importing food we can produce for ourselves.
Imagine how much food we will produce once the EU-15 has modernized their agricultural sector.

And when we don't buy the cheap food from 3rd world countries anymore they will have to sell among themselves and reduce the starvation

Could you define what you mean by "biological food"? YOu are apparently misunderstanding the meaning of 'biological' given that you have implied that genetically modified crops aren't "biological food" even though anything genetically modifed would be intrinsically biological.

[DanS]

He's talking about organic food.

[Kuciwalker]

As opposed to the inorganic food.

[Colonâ„¢]

I think he means organic food: food that's produced without chemical or GM along the chain.

[edit]Dan ought to erase his post because mine's more informative.

[Berzerker]

So why do you lack such sense of outrage when it comes to corporate welfare?

ADM is a corporation and one of the biggest recipients of these subsidies.