liberazing agriculture

As much as I support agricultural liberalization I just can't stand being in the same camp as some filthy Quebecois.

Choke on your beaver meat, frog.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Cal

If the UK wholesale situation's anywhere near as fuckfail as ours then they're entirely right to complain about the supermarkets, actually.

bloo bloo bloo my antiquated way of life is threatened by markets of scale and cheap food waaaah

As much as people like to see farmers as some salt of the earth Americana BS, they basically amount to a landed gentry with lobbying power way beyond what their voice should be in a pluralistic democracy. Even worse now that corporate farms are on the rise with their massive teams of lawyers and lobbyists. They also get farming subsidies.

Farming subsidies are bullshit, especially while using the World Bank and IMF to tell third world countries that they can't institute similar programs while we force them to buy our subsidized surplus.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Cal

That the rentseeking is invariably honoured comes as much from governmental pragmatism as industrial lobbying: no nation wants to export its foodbowl to a foreign jurisdiction and bottom line simply because either the foodbowl's buyers won't play fair, or because poultry's ten cents cheaper wholesale at the moment from fucking Chile or somewhere.

In the US, agricultural subsidies are paid directly to farmers and farm holders as a holdover from New Deal ideas of direct wealth distribution. It has little to do with the price of food, in fact it is put in place because food is so cheap, that farmers claim they can't live off of hundreds of acres of fields or ranch land. The US government has paid agricultural subsidies to dead men and stock holders. American agricultural markets are in the least danger of having food production being exported, regardless of how cheaply food can be produced in the third world, especially with fears of foreign contagion and all the other dey took er jerbs Lou Dobbs protect the Heartland propaganda.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Janus X

Bush has given 180G$

The Hell is a G? Grand? Gajillion?

As for your questions: no, and not really.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?