When a person thinks of farm subsidies, they think of a farmer sitting on his tractor with his hat in his hand, and a smile on his face as he wipes the sweat from his brow, knowing that whatever terrors Mother Nature might unleash that summer, he will at least be able to keep his head above water for another year... Well at least that was the warm and fuzzy, pink butterflies in the sky image I've always associated with farm subsidies, at least until I began to read up on the New Deal
that was. Now I know what a monster farm subsidies truly are. I have learned they are the very definition of the War on the Impoverished, and have helped destroy many lives since they first came into being.
On May 12, 1933 to combat low and negative agricultural prices, (a negative price meant a farmer had to actually pay to offload his food), and to help farms teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the Agricultural Adjustments Act was enacted. This vile piece of legislation raised agricultural commodity prices in three ways; 1) a tax was levied on the processors of the commodities, then the tax was used to pay back the farmer the difference in prices; 2) farmers were paid not to grow crops or raise livestock; and 3), by far my favorite, (sarcasm intended), farmers were paid to plow their crops under, and to destroy livestock. This was done at a point in history when many people in the US and around the world were going hungry, and dying of starvation.
This ludicrous, and evil law was found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the case United States vs. Butler, because the US could not tax one group of people to give the tax to another group, it violated the 10th amendment for the United States to take regulatory power from individual states concerning agriculture within its borders. In response to this decision the Agricultural Administration Act of 1938 was enacted, only this time without the regulatory tax, and became the law of the land.
The Agricultural Administration Acts could have been written in such a way that they would have only been temporary stop-gap measures, that actually subsidized farmers for losses incurred at market, so farmers would have sent their goods to market, and the needy and hungry would have had a better chance at survival during those desperate times. Instead crops were plowed under, livestock was destroyed and used as fertilizer rather than food, and bands of farmers gathered together and stopped trucks on their way to market, canisters of milk, bushels of grain, vegetables, whatever were thrown in ditches to rot, and livestock was destroyed and left beside the road, rather than let prices go down even the slightest bit at market. Here is a quote from Henry A. Wallace, the then Secretary of Agriculture, explaining why he believed agricultural commodities had to be destroyed.
These pigs of laws have been changed and renamed over the years, but the reality remains the same: farmers are paid to no to raise crops or livestock. Last year farmers, agribusiness, and ranchers drew down $20 billion in farm subsidies to to keep any number of agricultural items from ever making it to market, had the USDA not been tinkering with the free market, that $20 billion in foodstuffs would have lowered the cost of food in this nation, and in the nations we trade in agriculture with. Lower costs equate to helping the poor worldwide, while rising food prices only serve to make the poor that much poorer, as they try to get ahead and move forward with their lives. With 44 million people on food stamps in the United States the question of whether we can continue to pay for food that never makes it to market, begs to be asked. Farm subsidies, and their negative effect on the impoverished must be stopped.
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