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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

> The comments talking about farmers not being organized enough or powerful enough must be unaware of how powerful the farm lobby is and how much money they're able to secure from the government every year.

Most people don't realize how powerful farmers are in the US. We (rightly!) complain about Wall Street and bank bailouts when they happen, but I'd wager that we've given significantly more money to farmers over time, through bailouts (like this one) and regular subsidies.

Maybe that's a good use of tax dollars, maybe not. It feels bad, but I'm not an economist.

(And before anyone says that farmers are much more sympathetic characters than bankers, remember that "farmers" in the US overwhelmingly means gigantic corporate farming conglomerates; the individual family with a few hundreds or thousands of acres of land and hearts of gold is sadly increasingly uncommon.)

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I would much rather there be a surplus of food production (driven by subsidies or whatever) even if it causes inefficiencies given that the alternative is significantly worse.

Regular surpluses can cause famines. This is what happened in East Africa in the 1980s. Cheap grains from elsewhere (Europe, US) caused farming to become unprofitable. Domestic/regional traditional farming of grains largely ceased as farmers moved to the cities. This happened very quickly, so consolidation and mechanization of farming to become competitive never happened. When cheap imported grains became unavailable in the 80s, for various reasons, it was too late. (The war in Ethiopia is often cited as the immediate cause, but people have always managed to farm through wars, usually at least enough to avoid the Ethiopian situation.)

It's an extreme case, but that same sort of pattern has happened repeatedly throughout history. Keeping some amount of farming economically sustainable is important. You don't necessarily need direct public subsidies, but you definitely want to avoid long periods where prices are too cheap to make farming of important crops not economically viable.

> The war in Ethiopia is often cited as the immediate cause, but people have always managed to farm through wars, usually at least enough to avoid the Ethiopian situation.

This isn’t true. See the Thirty Years War. There have been many wars in the past that have led to mass starvation by making the work of agriculture impossible. See also the depopulation of Sichuan during the Ming- Qing transition.

Separately the Ethiopian war was subsidised by western food aid and other aid to the Dengists.

Farmers switching from peaches to elsewise due to a lack of buyers represents a bailout?

Paying farmers to make the transition from peaches is a bailout

Farmers provide food, banks scalp the interest between you and the government. They aren't the same at all. Farmers, even if they are megacorps are indispensable. Banks on the other hand serve basically no function in the modern era of financial activity.

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