We pay a premium to buy food from the rural US in the form of common import tariffs that stifle or eliminate competition at the expense of the consumer and to the benefit of agricultural interests, and of course, taxes that subsidize agriculture. Large volumes of food need to come from some rural area, but if left to its own devices, the market would never demand that so much of it come from the rural US, or that the rural US make so much from the crops it produces. That's presumably some of what the OP was hinting at.
First, why? Second, from an ecological perspective this wouldn't change anything, just shift shit around.
Ridiculous, stop.
Is that how US agricultural interests would react if they had to compete on the free market? They would simply give up and let the land lie fallow?
This is pretty basic.
Why not? The US exports a lot a food and consumes a lot of food (per capita). If we were to cease exports and even some domestic production, then prices will rise. The worldwide demand isn't going anywhere but up, while arable land is the same or shrinking.
In a way I do think that many farm subsidies should be examined and maybe done away with, but in another way I realize that we can't compete globally (exports), and many likely can't afford to pay the the true cost of domestic production. Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.
To clarify, removing tariffs and agricultural subsidies might not affect our overall agricultural output much (I wouldn't want to make a prediction on that) but it would lower the cost of goods which were previously subsidized with taxes or tariffs.
> Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.
It's worth pointing out that almost all economists of all political leanings are opposed to agricultural subsidies (it's one of the rare political things economists agree on) and one of the commonly cited reasons is that buying food produced by third-world economies at a true market price would be a natural and valuable step in helping those countries develop and grow out of poverty. The number of powerful people (including people who would normally give lip service to free markets) who, when confronted by this consensus among economists, basically don't give a shit is... disheartening.
Domain experts reach consensus and their recommendations aren’t followed in a lot of disciplines. I agree in this case it makes economic sense to stop farm subsidies — which could result in lower domestic food production and greater imports from abroad. And when the world economy is humming along smoothly that’s great. But if there’s a hiccup in the world economy —- e.g., in the case of war in a place where it makes economic sense to grow a lot of wheat or a problem in the logistics network shuttling things from where they’re produced to where they’re consumed then it’s not as clear-cut.
My naive view of politics, when they’re running well, is to navigate conflicting priorities from groups, including domain experts, the populace, etc.
And I think the farm subsidies could be interpreted to involve national security concerns on top of then economic concerns. If a world war breaks out and we’re on the opposite side from places we normally source our food then they have leverage over us.
TL/DR I think there’s more at play than just the economic concern.
It's bizarre how often you see people arguing as if a lack of rural or farm subsidies would suddenly mean food disappearing.
1. The US drops all agricultural subsidies and tariffs.
2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere.
3. "Elsewhere" goes to war with a US ally and stops selling food to the US.
4. The US then wishes it hadn't given up its abilty to grow food.
Also I don’t know how “we will get food from even further away rural communities argues against food coming from rural communities”.
Gonna stop you there. This wouldn't happen, because the US has plenty of growing acreage and plenty of demand. The farming industry doesn't need subsidies, and removing them would affect total output only slightly on average.
Now, if we were more like Japan and had issues with enough space for farming, then yeah I'd agree with you.
I'd argue that the more plausible outcome is what economists predict: US agricultural interests would have to compete and domestic prices for food would go down, while the price that struggling economies which export food can charge for that food would go up. Competition... and the various parties involved focusing on what they're good at producing.
On the other hand, we in the US do tend to be pretty idiotic about largely abandoning business sectors when the going gets rough.
