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Comment by projectorlochsa | Hacker News Reader

Too much subsidies in farming business. No true capitalism. When I see how much of EU money goes to farmers, it's ridiculous. It funds the destruction of rainforests all around the world, ecosystems, oceans etc.

Yes, the food wouldn't be as cheap, but at least there would be a huge incentive for people to find cheaper ways (maybe finally someone will make an effort to improve hydro/aeroponics).

Of course, capitalism is greedy, not globally optimal, so it is necessary that certain restrictions are made by law. Complex issue I guess, EU is on a good path IMO.

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On the other hand subsidies can be used to enforce ecologically sound practices. A completely free market just leads to the tragedy of the commons.

What's wrong with regulating farming practices and, if food prices rise, give the poorer consumers more money (as in negative income tax, basic income, whatever) so they can choose to spend on food or anything else? How does subsidizing producers help regulate their practices?

For a single 100 acre field there might be as many as 4 different areas that need a different regulation. You cannot bring that national scale, it requires humans on the ground running soil tests and looking at the results.

Yup.

Supply side policies have greatly distorted many of our markets. What is the true price of anything any more? How are we supposed to manage stuff if all the numbers are make believe?

I support price transparency, accountability, information symmetry.

The cost of food goes up, so we give say 40% of the population money to spend on food. This increases the demand so the cost of food goes up again, so we increase the benefit. This goes on forever, take a look at student loans in the US before federal intervention and now.

What if you tax it back?

You give the money, they spend it on the providers of their choice, and then you tax the money back out.

You say, why would the providers accept it? Because they have to. It would only get the minimum a person needs to survive.

Or a better way with less force on producers: a single payer system like SNAP program, that mandates producers sell basic food amount for a certain price if someone comes with food stamps. Because everyone needs food. Why would proucers accept this? Because they make up for it on volume of everyone who has the food stamps (in this scenario, everyone).

Same as why doctors currently accept Medicare even though it pays less on average.

> and then you tax the money back out.

What do you mean by that? Tax producers at a higher level to remove the subsidized profits from the system? That will have the same effect as before except higher taxes and decreased supply will be the cause of the price increase instead of simply decreased supply. As prices rise more people will need that assistance, thus causing prices to increase faster and faster.

Tuition went up because the feds and states stopped subsidizing tuition. Student loan burden skyrocketed because the feds privatized the game.

Tuition costs seem to follow the enrolment rates pretty closely. It seems the biggest factor is the fact that almost nobody attended postsecondary schools in the past, and now almost everyone does. Supply and demand.

Yes they can, and I benefit from that kind of subsidies (Integrated Farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_farming).

Also, a completely free market doesn't just lead to the tragedy of the commons, but to the rape of Nature.

There is no tragedy of the commons here. The person most incented to care for the soil is the farmer, because their future yields depend upon it.

The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

> The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

This can be true to some farmers, but it is not to the big ones. Sure you can apply fertilizer, but you pay for that. If you build your soil the first 7 years you will spend more money for less yields, but after 7 years your better soil will yield more than someone who tries to just apply fertilizer.

The other problem with the apply fertilizer theory is you can only apply so much. Corn needs nitrogen, but too much will kill (or stunt) the corn. Good soils will produce nitrogen every day in smaller amounts.

Of course with we are talking about potassium, that is a mineral and you need to replace what you take off the land either way. So soil health alone cannot be the answer, soil health with fertilizer is ultimately a much better answer.

>The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

Having lived around farming for a few years and known / worked with many farmers, this isn't true at all. Soil and soil health is incredibly important.

How do you figure that? Tragedy of the commons happens in the absence of ownership.

You are right, but that is just the case of rivers, phreatic water and the deep subsoil.

It must be the State reclaiming ownership of those commons, making people that benefit from them pay for their maintenance.

Why must the State own them in order for that to happen? History - especially that of the USSR in recent times - suggests that there are better alternatives.

The State owning them is a proxy for shared responsibility. Because in democracies, the people controls the State by means of parliaments/senates/etc.

Besides, the State doesn't have to own everything. There's a middle ground between the flexibility of private ownership and the rigorousness of public management.

In the USSR everything was controlled by the State, and the State wasn't accountable by means of democracy.

I must say that from were I come, I have some pretty good examples of good public management, like healthcare and water management.

Yea, totally, the commons existed for thousands of years because it isn't sustainable.

When the food runs out, it's three days until a revolution.

Over producing food isn't about capitalism. It's for national security.

When the food runs out, it is 3 days too late for the revolution.

But food running out isn't the problem you are talking about. You are talking about the failure of the logistics of the supply chain to grocery stores. Those stores carry a 3 day supply for their area, and most people are 100% reliant on them. And if they fail, the towns go hungry. Therein is the single point of failure.

Our mitigation for that is to split the food supply for our family in thirds... we still buy about a third from stores, like everyone else. We grow a third ourselves, and we get a third from other farms, some local, some remote from whom we ship things in monthly.

It is completely feasible to diversify your own food supply. If everyone did it, we'd still have pains if the supply chains failed. But they would be survivable pains.

If the grocery store supply chain falls apart, it is unlikely you will be able to get any food from afar for the same reason (or, at very least, the people normally performing the deliveries will be too hungry to provide delivery service). Local farms are going to want to hang onto their production for themselves now that they have no other food source.

Realistically, that leaves the food you are growing yourself. 1/3 of your normal intake does sound like a struggle already, but to compound the difficulties, you have to ensure that you have the food available when you need it which is more complex than setting up a garden. Not impossible, but certainly a lost art. I'm not sure it really is feasible to expect many to follow through with this.

Yeah, but here it's not really about food, here it's about huge stockpiles of cheese, or about draining the water from the dry areas for cattle.

That's not food, that's luxury. Subsidies aren't necessary if you are seeking luxury, it's a waste.

> Yes, the food wouldn't be as cheap

If you removed the trade barriers that prevent the developing countries from competing in agriculture, that would change rather quickly. They'd have a better shot at actually becoming "developed," too.

If you removed all barriers on agricultural products being sold to developing countries, their local agriculture would be pancaked by cheap wheat, corn, and rice grown in more agriculturally productive regions.

That "cheap wheat, corn, and rice grown in more agriculturally productive regions" is cheap because its production is heavily subsidized. When economists talk about removing agricultural subsidies (pretty much the only thing almost all macroeconomists agree on, for what little that's worth), they're generally talking about removing trade barriers and removing agricultural subsidies in the form of payments to farmers. I suppose it's true that if you fixed tariffs without fixing the other side, you'd still have a problem.

There are lots of other reasons why farmers in developed countries can grow food cheaper than those in developing countries:

- access to capital. A modern family farm has several million dollars worth of land and several million dollars worth of machinery. Farmers don't buy $500,000 combine harvesters for no reason -- in the long run they're cheaper than the alternatives.

- security. A modern farmer just leaves millions of dollars worth of machinery in his yard, usually unlocked.

- information. In developed chemicals the government & universities put out lots of information about techniques, seed varieties, chemicals, machinery, timing, weather forecasting, et cetera

The interesting thing is, agribusiness can take its technology to the developing world and do the same work there that it does here (with less security but also with fewer environmental and labor related restrictions and costs). Right now there are just very strong disincentives to do so in many cases.

I can't speak to the state of information and knowledge of agriculture in the various countries we'd consider "developing," and how it compares to universities and government here, but I bet it varies quite widely. That's a good point, though - it matters a lot.

Iowa is number one in corn because it has the best soils in the world for corn. There is no third world country that can compete with the native soils of Iowa. You can solve all the other issues (many of which are real) and they still lost the location lottery and cannot compete. (some regions can grow two crops a year though which might make them better than iowa despite not as good of soils)

That would be the nice thing about an open market: different areas could stay focused on what they're particularly good at. Iowa would definitely stay involved in corn.

But as you sort of alluded to, in a free market some areas could put downward price pressure on corn even if they're not as efficient as Iowa. If they've got land that isn't very well suited for anything else, and it's a choice between making a little money on corn and little or no money at all with their arable land, they'll probably go for it...

> When I see how much of EU money goes to farmers, it's ridiculous.

True, but at the same time the EU piles on an endless stream of regulations on the farmers, forcing them to invest in heavy machinery, and undergo rigorous inspections to be able to sell their produce.

This company [1] claims to have aeroponics figured out. I'm not sure if it is economical outside of harsh growing environments like LV.

[1] https://urbanseedinc.com/

How are EU subsidies funding destruction of rainforests? And why in your, as you say, opinion the EU is on a good path? Does it have something to do with #Covfefe?

EU agriculture has extremely large dependence on soy from Argentina and Brazil. [1]

It's on a good path as in, it acknowledges the issue and is working through regulations to remove the dependence or drastically reduce the dependence.

[1]: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/so...

That doesn't have anything to do with subsidies, and at most indirectly depends on unrelated parts of protectionist agricultural policy i.e. tariffs. Then how the EU is anyhow responsible for predatory industries in Argentina? And how the global markets would fix any of that if only relieved from the cancer of EU subsidies?

Just because they don't bear the full responsibility doesn't mean they don't bear any responsibility. If the EU participates in a damaging market, it really doesn't matter if they are contributing to the supply-side or demand-side, since they have some ability to mitigate the damage regardless. In the end it doesn't even matter who's responsible, only what the outcome is.

This is pure rethoric on your side and not addressing actual stated question: how thigs would go better without subsidies. This is such a leaping sledge of hand at first, then a misleading argument (not that part of EU policy) and then difussing the argument into such generalities. You see a bad outcome and can't really tell if it would be better or worse without subsidies. You don't even bother arguing the point.

By the same token I could argue that all people die so medicines are suspicious or overusing vitamin C is the culprit. There is no concieveable argument except one demanding politicians be omniscient and rational policies blamed because every policy ultimately leads to death, as people die, thus markets should sort things out.

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