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Comment by voldacar | Hacker News Reader

The whole point of the US ethanol industry and farm subsidies in general is, like any form of government welfare, to give money to a special interest group (farmers) in exchange for their political support. It's not some kind of benevolent 4-dimensional chess to make the food supply more reliable. The type of corn grown for ethanol is not suitable for human consumption.

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It's not 4-dimensional chess, it is simple strategy and two things can be true at the same time. The same applies to the defense industry's bloat -- keeping defense contractors capable to meet war time demand and eating up that cost now so it won't take 10 years to rebuild later on. At the same time, politicians make job programs out of these things to get reelected but these are "swing vote" politicians, every other politician would have to vote based on policy so that a nyc congressperson doesn't have to answer to voting for farm subsidies and military waste without some justification (even if his vote is in exchange for support for somee other vote).

the sub 1% of the population that are farmers in states that aren't battle ground states during election so they effectively don't matter? Not subsidizing farming is how you end up not being able to get critical goods during emergencies like Covid, you'll notice while there were toilet paper shortages, there wasn't a food shortage in the US.

the type of corn grown can be converted into other forms of calories like corn syrup that get used everywhere and are also used to feed livestock. Farm subsidies came about after the Dust Bowl so a single bad harvest doesn't ruin an otherwise capable farming operation

What changes would you recommend making so that the food supply could be secured without subsidies?

Is it still farmers? seems like more and more farmland is being bought up by corporations that manage many farms, at least in NZ.

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