Farm Subsidies, the Excercise in Stupidty

As you read this, $171 billion is being spent on farm subsidies by the federal government. The logic behind farm subsidies goes like this "Agriculture is a vital part of America, it has been so since the founding of our nation, and must be protected." (This is a quote from Chuck Scheumer, a Democrat from New York.) Whenever farm subsidies are mentioned, politicians like Chuck Scheumer are quick to trot out the Americana image of the family farm, with its farmers at the mercy of unpredictable crop prices. However, most of the money from subsidies does not go to the family farm, instead it goes to gigantic agribusinesses and people who don't farm. That's right, farm subsidies are going to people who have never farmed a day in their life. People like Ken Lay, who has gotten $22,486 a year. The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company gets $134,318 a year, I may be wrong but life insurance has nothing to do with farming.

The top ten percent of farms get 73 percent of the $171 billion handed out each year by Uncle Sam. What do agribusinesses do with their "welfare" checks? They buy the family farm the Chuck Scheumer and Co. drool over, these acquisitions give the agribusiness more subsides which they use to buy more family farms. This consolidation isn't harmful on its own, and may even be helpful, since agribusinesses can produce crops at a lower rate then smaller farms, but it should not be funded by the American government.