ADI 08SpringSubsidies good
Subsidies Good – Spring 4
Subsidies Good – Spring 4 .....................................................................................................................................1Sub elim
Farm Consolidation ..........................................................................................................................3Sub elim
farm consolidation ............................................................................................................................5Sub elim
Farm Consolidation..................................................................................................................................................................................6Sub elim
Farm consolidtion – developing world ............................................................................................7Sub elim
Farm consolidtion – developing world ............................................................................................8Sub elim
monocultures .....................................................................................................................................9Farm consolidation hurts developing world – mech ag ....................................................................................11Sub elim doesn’t solve commodity switch ..........................................................................................................12AT plan solves developing countries ...................................................................................................................13Subsidies good – Predictability ..........................................................................................................................14Subsidies key to farmer confidence ....................................................................................................................15Subsidies key to investment ................................................................................................................................16Subsidies key to heg .............................................................................................................................................17Subsidies Good – Empirics ................................................................................................................................18Subsidies key to Ag economy ..............................................................................................................................19Subsidies key to Ag economy ..............................................................................................................................20Subsidies key to small farms ...............................................................................................................................21Subsides Good - Cotton .......................................................................................................................................22Answer To: Subsidies help Corporate Farms ....................................................................................................23Deregulation Fails ................................................................................................................................................24SMALL FARMS GOOD – SUSTAINABILITY ...............................................................................................25Small farms good – Food security ......................................................................................................................26Small farms good – warming .............................................................................................................................27DISASTER SUBSIDIES GOOD ........................................................................................................................28DISASTER SUBSIDIES GOOD ........................................................................................................................29Subsidies Good – Disaster Relief ........................................................................................................................30DISASTER SUBSIDIES BAD ............................................................................................................................31AT Disaster Subsidies Good ................................................................................................................................32
1
ADI 08SpringSubsidies good
2
ADI 08SpringSubsidies good
Sub elim
Farm Consolidation
Ending subsidies only plays into corporate hands and assures nothing more than a death of alternativesto big, unhealthy agribusiness giants. Instead subsidies should be shifted to address smaller, localalternatives.Philpott 06
(Tom, Aug. 7
th
, “Reform ag subsidies, but don't plow them under: Why the late, lamented Doha round wasn't really theanswer for ag policy.” http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/8/7/124734/5937 Tom Philpott is Grist's food editor. Tom is a founder of Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture non-profit and small farm located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.He writes the biweekly Victual Reality column.)
Harvesting a bit of vintage Reagan-era rhetoric, L.A. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg recently denounced what he called "welfare queens on tractors." Theright-winger's target was clear: The U.S. farm subsidy program, which doles out around $14.5 billion per year (depending on market fluctuations), mainly tolarge producers of corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans, and rice. As Congress opens debate on the 2007 Farm Bill -- the omnibus five-year legislation that governsagricultural support -- the subsidy program has drawn a chorus of critics. Goldberg gets it about right when he lists the program's opponents: "Right-wingeconomists, left-wing environmentalists and almost anybody in-between who doesn't receive a check from the Department of Agriculture or depend on a political donation." To be sure,
the subsidy-haters have a point. A vast literature shows that the real beneficiaries of U.S. ag subsidies aren't farmers at all, but rather agribusiness giants. Direct government paymentsencourage farmers to produce as much as possible, which pushes down the prices of ag commodities. For years now, ag subsidies have helped enable Archer Daniels Midland to buy the corn it transforms intohigh-fructose corn syrup at well below corn's production costs. Meat producers like Smithfield Foods usecheap corn as fodder to run their profitable -- and socially and environmentally ruinous -- feedlotoperations. If the subsidy system bolsters the bottom lines of a few transnationals, it does little for mostfarmers. Overall, just 10 percent of U.S. farms grab 72 percent of subsidies. A large majority, includingfruit and vegetable grwoers, get none at all
.
Overseas, as the anti-hunger NGO Oxfam has shown over and over again, the situation iseven worse. Giant U.S. corn surpluses has spelled despair for Mexican farmers since Nafta dismantled domestic protection in 1994. In Africa, where farmershave been prodded for decades by the World Bank and other supranational institutions to produce cotton for the global market, cotton farmers must competewith U.S. producers who can sell for well below production cost. Predictably, the African farmers lose. Many observers had hoped for subsidy reform from the2007 Farm Bill. The WTO, in its Doha Round of trade talks, has aggressively prodded the U.S. and the European Union to slash ag subsidies. The carrotdangling in front of the two great horses of global ag was this: if you slash subsidies, we, the WTO, will force open developing-world markets to your farmgoods. The talks collapsed two weeks ago, though, and probably won't resume anytime soon. The mainstream U.S. farm lobby, a force in national politicsthrough the patronage of farm-state senators, had signaled a willingness to let go of subsidies. Essentially, the farm lobby's agenda for Doha was to ensure adollar in global trade for every dollar it surrendered in government support. If the WTO could use Doha to force open the markets of more "developingnations" to U.S. farm goods, then the farm lobby would go along with reduced subsidies. But when Doha failed, the lobby's willingness for reform tumbledlike corn prices after a bumper crop. "You have to look at the negotiating leverage that could be lost if we go ahead and write a farm bill that cuts back oncommodity supports," a lobbyist for American Farm Bureau Federation, the voice of U.S. industrial-scale farming, told Associated Press last week. The Bureauis now pushing for an extension of the generous 2002 Farm Bill. Despite the Bush Administration's desire for a less costly Farm Bill, the farm lobby is likelyto get its way. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the "
collapse of global free-trade talks is likely to kill any chanceof overhauling America's farm-subsidy program for years
," adding that, "With any Doha obligations now off the political radar,the congressional agriculture committees that will write the next farm bill, which could last five years, are doing business as normal." But Doha's failure isn'tquite as disastrous as Oxfam and other left-wing critics make it out to be. Indeed, Doha's whole thrust was to boost global trade, not boost local economies. Ithas always made an odd cause celebre for the likes of Oxfam. Granted, the U.S. subsidy program is egregious and in need of reform, but slashing it wouldn'tlikely do much for southern-hemisphere farmers looking to sell into the global commodity market. According to Daryll Ray, a University of Tennesseeagricultural economist,
if the subsidy cash cow dries up, U.S. commodity farmers will initially respond to thedrop in income by producing more -- thus putting more downward pressure on prices and farm incomes.Ray argues persuasively that for subsidy reform to boost farm incomes worldwide, it will have to beaccompanied by a system of price supports in the U.S.
-- a vintage New Deal program which was crushed by Reagan's free-marketzeal in 1987 and that has zero political traction. Thus, even if Doha had succeeded, it's unlikely that African cotton farmers or Mexican corn growers wouldhave gotten much relief anytime soon. Moreover,
it's a myth that ending a subsidy system that benefits multinationals atthe expense of small farmers everywhere will leave a "level playing field" in its place. A half-century of government support for large-scale farming has created a tremendous infrastructure for industrial food production and long-haul distribution. Food processing enterprises -- from meat-slaughtering to cooling todairy-bottling facilities -- have consolidated beyond imagination. Simply put, the infrastructure for producing food for nearby consumption has withered. Farmers markets and community-supportedagriculture (CSA) programs have spread dramatically over the past 15 years, but still supply a tiny
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