In the latest Newsweek, Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kansas, complains about a recent column outlining the folly of federal farm subsidies:
As a member of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, I found Robert Samuelson’s Sept. 17 column, “Our Giveaway Farm Programs,” on the 2007 farm bill, misleading. In the months I helped to author the House version of the farm bill, I witnessed the least political, most practical discussion I’ve seen so far during my first term in office. No one would claim that our legislation is perfect, but it takes steps in the right direction to combat consolidation, correct imbalances in commodity payments and provide a disaster safety net to farmers. It is so important because the farmer’s job is so risky. Just this April, a late freeze cost many Kansas farmers the majority of their wheat crop, which had looked very promising. Floods and tornadoes also ravaged the state during an unusually harsh spring. If you think that farmers don’t need federal support, try standing on a field that lost 90 percent of its crop in a single weekend due to a late frost. In light of the challenges that farmers face and in recognition of the critical importance of America’s food supply, our country should continue to support the farmers who sustain our way of life.
Imagine what would happen if a farmer’s job actually involved more risk. Thomas Sowell has some ideas about the outcome of increased risk for farmers. He shares those ideas in an essay called “Subsidies Are All Wet,” included in his book Ever Wonder Why? (Hoover Press, 2006):
We live in what is often called a profit system but, as Milton Friedman explained long ago, it is really a profit-and-loss system. The losses are just as important as the profits, though not nearly as popular.
Running up losses because you are using resources that are more valuable somewhere else is precisely what forces you to stop the waste. If you are too stubborn to stop, then you will get stopped by bankruptcy.
In other words, some enterprises should be forced out of existence, however much that might shock the delicate sensibilities of the Department of Interior during an election year.
As for agriculture, we have been running chronic agricultural surpluses for more than half a century and scrambling to find some way to store it, export it or just plain give it away. So many other countries have the same problem that we might be able to eat heartily ? and remain overweight ? even if we stopped farming entirely and bought up their agricultural surpluses instead.
Things are never going to get to that point. But it illiustrates how fraudulent it is for the government, the environmentalists or farm lobbies to try to scare us with the specter of losing agricultural land.
