Stop the Corporate Welfare for Agribusiness
Farm subsidies were supposed to be a temporary relief for small farmers during the Depression, but today they go mostly to big agribusinesses that hardly need them.
Robert B. Reich | October 15, 2007
I’ve got a way to reduce global poverty, decrease the number of workers crossing our borders illegally, save American taxpayers money, and cut your supermarket bills all in one swoop.
How? Get rid of U.S. farm subsidies and tariffs.
They were supposed to be a temporary remedy for small farmers during the Depression. But renewed every five years regardless of which party controls Congress, farm subsidies keep going and going. The latest version is now before the Senate. If enacted and signed into law, these farm subsidies will cost American taxpayers some $11 billion a year over the next five years.
No…makes to much sense. Makes us a responsible global actor. Next you’ll tell me that we shouldn’t dump money into ethanol subsidies.
Reich continues:
Fewer than 2 percent of Americans even work on a farm. Yet about half the population of the developing world depends on farming for their livelihoods. But they can’t earn what the global market would otherwise pay them, because America’s subsidized farm exports keep prices artificially low.
American cotton growers, for example, export cotton for just over half what it costs them to produce it. Which means more than 10 million African cotton farmers are stymied.
If we stopped subsidizing our cotton businesses, world cotton prices would rise, increasing the incomes of African cotton farmers by some $300 million a year.
Meanwhile, the average American tariff on agricultural imports is 18 percent — much higher than the 5 percent average tariff on other imports. So not only do the world’s poor suffer, but Americans get hit with a double-whammy. We’re subsidizing U.S. agribusinesses with our tax dollars, while paying much more for our food than we’d pay if we didn’t also protect agribusinesses.
And, not surprisingly, many of the world’s poor who can’t earn enough by farming are desperate to immigrate — legally or illegally — to richer countries like America.
So let me get this straight, we could reduce illegal immigration, stave off radical Islam in Africa by improving conditions there, and more closely conform to the free market principals that Righty’s are always preaching about? Won’t happen with Iowa as a First in the Nation primary state.
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Reminds of something Bob Harris had up at his place, where the small guy got some help. Sure, it’s a little bit different in Malawi compared to the US, but every little deviation from the wingnuts’ warped version of the free market is a good idea.
While I don’t agree with all the premises in the article the reality is that the Farm Bill and the subsidies we provide agribusiness in this country coupled with our high tariffs on imported food severely distort the markets for food globally. The Farm Bill needs a major overhaul…it needs to be refocused to encourage sustainable agriculture and small local production. We need to let market forces operate on a more level field.
If farmers in Mexico got a reasonable price for their products there might be less incentive to pack up and move to the U.S.
The entire farm subsidy system is fubar and needs to be redone.
Found something closely related today, Fallenmonk:
# 13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants
Sources:
Truthout, January 27, 2007
Title: “Which Side Are You On?â€
Author: David Bacon
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012907L.shtml
The Nation, February 6, 2007
Title: “Workers, Not Guestsâ€
Author: David Bacon
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020607LB.shtml
Foreign Policy in Focus, February 26, 2007
Title: “Migrants: Globalization’s Junk Mail?â€
Author: Laura Carlsen
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4022
Student Researcher: Fernanda Borras
Faculty Evaluator: Diana Grant, Ph.D.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with cheap subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in deep unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers north in order to feed their families.
The National Campesino Front estimates that two million farmers have been displaced by NAFTA, in many cases related to the increase in US imports. In 1994, the first year of the agreement, the United States exported $4.59 billion of agricultural products to Mexico, according to the Department of Agriculture. By 2006 the figure had risen to $9.85 billion—an increase of 114 percent. US exports of corn, Mexico’s staple crop and largest source of rural employment, alone doubled to over $2.5 billion in 2006.
This combination of unemployment in Mexico, the huge gap between salaries in the United States and Mexico, and US demand for cheap labor to compete on global markets has created the current situation. The demand for undocumented labor in the US economy is structural. It is not just a few companies seeking to cut corners. These are not just jobs that “US workers won’t take.†Migrants work in nearly all low-paying occupations and have become essential to the US economy in the age of global competition.
Read the whole thing…
Thanks for the links Frederick. I will try and find some time today to read them but I can see from the excerpt that they recognize the distortion in the market we have caused by our policies.