Farm Subsidy Outlook

An important issue on the plate of the incoming president will be the next farm bill. Current farm programs run through September 2018, and farm bill supporters are already making plans to extend and expand them.

I have posted a new essay on why farm subsidies should be repealed at DownsizingGovernment.org. I describe eight types of farm subsidies and six reasons to repeal them.

The durability of farm programs over the decades encapsulates just about everything that’s wrong with Washington. The programs make no economic or environmental sense. They subsidize higher-income households, including billionaires. They run directly counter to the American ethos of independence and rugged individualism. Farmers should be proud rural businesspeople, but some have become like cattle feeding at a subsidy trough.

Farm programs survive not because they make practical sense, but because Washington’s agenda is controlled by special-interest insiders exploiting a key flaw in our Madisonian system—logrolling. In a recent news story about the next farm bill, a top farm lobbyist basically admits that farm programs don’t have the votes to pass on the merits, so they are packaged in legislation with food subsidy programs to gain the support of urban legislators.

The current farm bill, passed in 2014, is costing more than originally promised, yet farm-state legislators will soon go on “listening tours” to ask farmers how to expand the subsidies even more. Meanwhile, neither of the two main presidential candidates seem interested in reforming the grotesque system.

Nonetheless, there was a lot of talk about Washington corruption and cronyism on the campaign trail over the past year, so maybe the public will get fired up to oppose welfare for the well-to-do in the upcoming farm bill.

See here for more on federal agriculture subsidies.