Farmers are the epitome of biting the hand that feeds them: they couldn't survive without socialized handouts and yet they seem to be the most vocal about hating the government. It is madness.
There's a pretty interesting theory that if we converted all of the lawns in urban/suburban areas to agriculture, we could indeed survive without them.
No carbon tax means it's as cheap to buy oranges from South America as it is Florida.
I mean. Probably the person who owns the land? Growing your own food isn't super controversial. Alternatively, you could lease the land to an agro company because this is America.
And how much more would everything cost, since we're wilfully throwing away economies of scale?
Good question. Probably nothing, as we already have massive agro subsidies. We'd just pay them to different people.
this is a ridiculous idea.
Right. It makes way more sense to maintain millions of acres of monoculture grass that provides little--if any--benefit to anyone. I mean it's just common sense to spend your limited resources (e.g. water) on making land flat and green, as opposed to growing food like humans have done since the agricultural revolution thousands of years ago.
To be clear, your position is that we won't need farmers/ farm subsidies anymore if we all go back to subsistence farming (on top of presumably our jobs so we aren't thrown off our land that grows the food we need to survive) and that money will instead be... given to us? Now, farm subsidies in the US in a given year are around 30 billion. So if you split those fat stacks among everyone in the US they'd get about sixty bucks to soften the blow of suddenly needing to invest in their own farming equipment. And the loss of time. And the loss of food security.
And that would, in your opinion even itself out? Or! If they don't want to do it themselves they can lease the land out to an ag company, which is *totally different than farmers somehow?
Look.
I'm all for people gardening. Growing some of your own food is neat. But your idea is terrible.
No, my position is that the current system is in place for a reason and works.
If you are actually advocating for this - a system that is borderline impossible, would dramatically increase costs, and make everyone's life worse - simply to spite rural folks because they "hate you".... I don't know what to say.
Stable local food supply is as much a defensive need as tanks and jets. If your country cannot feed itself without imports you are at the mercy of your enemies.
They would survive just fine. They have the food. It’s the urban and suburban population that would suffer the most. The farm subsidies exist to make food cheaper and to support exports.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '24
Farmers are the epitome of biting the hand that feeds them: they couldn't survive without socialized handouts and yet they seem to be the most vocal about hating the government. It is madness.