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When Some Farm Subsidies Go Away, Will Our Food System Be Healthy?
Every good foodie knows that farm subsidies are the root of all evil and a big reason why obesity rates continue to rise, right? This thinking has become so commonplace among the good food movement that we’ve stopped questioning this assumption and pretty much take it as gospel.
But now is a critical time to start asking questions about what the consequences would be – intended or otherwise – if subsidies go away. This week, Congressional agriculture committees proposed cutting $23 billion out of Farm Bill programs over the next 10 years, and by most reports, one type of farm subsidies called direct payments are the first thing on the chopping block. Even the corn and soybean lobbies seem resigned to the end of direct payments to growers of commodity crops. 
So if the most often-cited example of farm subsidies is about to end, does that mean we’re on our way to a food system that makes broccoli more affordable than fast food burgers? It’s not quite that simple. As we describe in a new report, released this week with the Public Health Institute, subsidies are not making junk food cheaper and more abundant than healthy food – the real culprit is the deregulation of agriculture markets, the failure to enforce anti-trust law and the millions spent on marketing junk food.
In a market controlled by just a few buyers of crops like corn, wheat and soybeans, and no mechanisms to manage overproduction that causes prices to collapse, subsidies have served as the bandage that partially stops the bleeding of farmers who often cannot stay in business any other way. Pulling the subsidy rug out from under the small and midsized farmers who depend on this support to keep farming in lean years could result in even fewer independent family farmers and even larger mono-cropping behemoths who buy up that land and keep using it to produce crops like corn and soybeans.
Commodity crop overproduction has been around long before the current subsidy program existed. During the New Deal, farm policies encouraged farmers to idle some of their land so they wouldn’t overproduce and established a national grain reserve, much like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve we have today. It prevented crop prices from skyrocketing during times of drought or falling too low during times of surplus. Overproduction was kept in check, and the stable commodity prices functioned like a minimum wage for farmers.
Beginning in 1985, food processors, grain traders, meat companies and marketers mounted a strong and successful lobbying effort against these policies. In 1996, crop prices were high and budgets were tight – much like they are today – and the agribusiness lobby called for policies that would, as they put it, give farmers “the freedom to farm.” That Farm Bill eliminated land-idling programs, letting farmers plant as much as they wanted, and production increased over the next few years. That, along with the elimination of grain reserves earlier, resulted in farmers overproducing themselves into bankruptcy, and the subsidy system we know today was born.
While simply doing away with payments to commodity farmers may help deficit hawks reduce the federal budget for the short term, the longer-term impacts may land us with a food system that’s even more consolidated and gives even more control to the cabal of agribusinesses we’re fighting to diffuse.
What, then, would effective food and farm policy reforms look like if we want to promote healthy foods and reduce obesity? Rather than just ending subsidy programs, we should develop responsible federal supply management programs that reduce overproduction and stabilize price and supply, undoing the damaging deregulation that took place in the 1980s and ‘90s.
While the idea of simply moving the dollars used to subsidize corn and soybeans over to apples and spinach is obviously appealing, it won’t solve the problem. A rural farmer with a few thousand acres of wheat can’t suddenly switch to growing tomatoes to sell directly to consumers at the farmers market. The demand and infrastructure needed to sustain this type of transition away from intensive commodity crop production no longer exist. Ending subsidies won’t change this. Doing the hard work of reforming the commodity policies in the Farm Bill could, along with enforcing anti-trust law and regulating the marketing to children of junk food.
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38 Comments so far
Show AllI always thought the old farm program that ended a couple decades ago was the best plan. The government paid storage on a "farmer-owned reserve" whenever prices were below a certain 'target price.' If the price rose above the target price then storage stopped which encouraged farmers to sell. There were few worries about running out of food. It is true, however, that modern seeds and farming methods produce larger, more stable yields than in the past. This means a lesser need for a government encouraged reserve. The last few years have seen massive profits for grain farmers. It does seem a little over the top to continue taxpayer funding to people like myself. If we are to continue any of this farmer welfare I believe it should be tied to conservation methods aimed at saving soil and improving water quality.
Yes, the "old farm program," when adequately implemented, needed no subsidies to compensate farmers for losses, as agribusiness paid fair trade prices for grain, cotton, soybeans. Daryll E. Ray has a new study on a weak version of that, a sort of big compromise, but one that very creatively shows how stupid the new programs have been. ("A Study of the Impact of a Reserve Program Had One Been in Effect in the Period, 1998 to 2010"). It's misleading to suggest massive profits for grain farmers. Through 2009, 2008 was the only year above zero for wheat (going back to 1976). A sum of 8 crops was below zero every year 1981-2006, except 1996, so a few years above zero isn't a scandal. On getting rid of subsidies: have you been listening to Earl Butz? He said in the 70s we didn't need price floors and supply reductions any more, as prices would always be high, and in fact they were reduced and ended, leading to the decades of losses, driving most farmers out of business. If we see market conditions like we had after the 70s, and no return to adequately implemented non subsidy price floors and ceilings and supply management, you'll need more than those subsidies to survive. And the political problem is that almost no one in the progressive community and food movement knows about these "old farm programs" that address the underlying economic realities (the lack of price responsiveness on both supply and demand sides).
Keep giving cash payments to Farmers? And lets not get a picture of the hard working farmer getting off his Ford tractor to have the lunch his hard working wife just brought him.
These are by and large Corporate subsidies. The same type that gave us corn based fuel more expensive than any other and just as dirty as most. We need subsidy for peanuts? Sugar?
This is the most convoluted argument I've seen. It emulates the argument to continue military spending no matter if it gives us defense or just profitable corporations.
You could make an argument for a water and soil conservation subsidy, thats true, but it would have to be tightly controlled and have no tax incentive built in for the "Gentleman Farmer or Rancher"
Great comments. I wanted to roll up my trouser cuffs as I waded thru her cow pies.... "O God, don't end government subsidies" she cries. End them all, except perhaps the kind you mention.
You misunderstand the article and the issue, and what you've been told previously is false. 1. Most farmers are family farmers, it's just that prices have usually been so low (since the 1970s) that it takes a lot of subsidies to get up close to breaking even. USDA-ERS had 6 sample studies showing the net returns for 6 crops, plus subsidies, and all 6 were below zero overall vs full costs, so farmers had to dip into their pay to pay for the losses on investment. A 150 acre corn/soybean farm is way too small to make a (half, for a family of 4) living (as farmers have lost livestock value added to CAFOs who got below cost feed grains). At 150 acres, the subsidies over 16 years are typically about $112,000, almost in the top 10% (11.4%).
alugilac apparently doesn't know about the real Corporate subsidies, the below cost grains, oilseeds and cotton, that implicitly subsidize the buyers. Ending compensations to farmers doesn't make them pay fair trade prices, it only hurts farmers. so alugilac's argument is the one like military spending. Wenonah is arguing for alternatives to subsidies, alternatives that make the corporations (multinational, foreign, domestic) pay.
The big tax problem is tax loss farming, where real farmers must compete against outside investors looking for a place to write off profits. So no, it's not about "the 'Gengleman Farmer or Rancher,'" it's about giant corporations. The biggest 2, probably Cargill and ADM, likely get more benefits below fair trade price levels than ALL farmers, of all sizes in the Farm Subsidy Database, more than $10 billion per year (globally, all products, as the US farm bill sets global market prices for major commodities).
I wasn't aware the subsidies were responsible for anyone's obesity except that of wealthy farm interests who received them.
Damn, that was good!
Another one of the endless takes on the libertarian argument that it's all about the individual and choice, as if no other detail or forced parameter need enter the discussion.
So far, only the forum's apologists for the status quo have commented here. And one can count on Greg R to repeat endlessly the lie that Monsanto's products afford greater yields, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary. Truth hardly matters to those willing to endlessly parrot a paid agenda. It's disgusting.
The issue is that below cost farm prices provide raw materials for junk food (ie. from corn, soybeans, wheat,) that save these corporations hundreds of millions of dollars. The beneficiaries are the corporate buyers of these farm crops. Farmers have been compensated by about 1/7 (for corn, wheat, soybeans) of the reductions in their farm prices below the fair trade price levels of the past (before the reductions began in 1953). So farmers get 6/7 less and are blamed for subsidies (1/7). You are not blaming the corporations that got the full 7/7 benefits, but rather are blaming the farmers who got the 6/7 reductions. So you're against justice.
Most people living in settler countries such as the USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia, etc., somehow imagine that someone owning a few hundred acres or even more is a "small farmer". This is a joke! Such large land holdings by "ordinary" farmers came about as a direct result of past conquests and colonization, including "homesteading", and do not exist in other parts of the world. Anyone holding a few hundred acres in any other part of the world would be considered super-rich. This will be difficult to imagine for those who have not seen small farms and rural communities in Asian countries.
All the problems associated with over-production arise from this one fact: that a lot of "farmers" simply hold far too much land than can be cultivated by using organic farming techniques and by using some amount of manual and animal power. This problem of over-production and the "solution" requiring payment to keep land idle is not going to go away anytime soon. The only long-term solution is for more people to take to farming, in somewhat smaller farm sizes, and to actually live nearby their farms to work the land. That is, to return to some kind of an agrarian economy, with other industries only playing a supporting role.
" The only long-term solution is for more people to take to farming, in somewhat smaller farm sizes, and to actually live nearby their farms to work the land. That is, to return to some kind of an agrarian economy, with other industries only playing a supporting role"
Wendell Berry has been advocating this for decades, but most of us are not interested in becoming small-scale farmers, using horses to plow the fields which feed our families and our animals. As the novelist once said: "You can't go back again."
What is your standard? 80% of the undernourished are rural. We have hundreds of millions of people with these very small farms living on $1/day or $2/day. That's not an adequate standard. US farmers represented an ideal in which farmers are not in poverty, but rather had "parity" with the rest of society, living wage farm prices, 1942-1952. That has been undercut, driving most US farmers out of business.
If you anticipate peak oil, with prices that skyrocket above the recent skyrocketing, then look at the Omish, and they're still not so small..
Of course, the need is for higher prices, for a decent living for all, worldwide. With parity prices, ongoing, it would greatly raise incomes in the poorest or Least Developed Countries, which are 70% rural. Instead the US chose to lose money on farm exports for a quarter century, in order to secretly subsidize the corporate buyers. This devastated LDCs (export dumping) and other farming countries, including the US, the dominant farm (commodity) exporter.
Whatever the industrial systems does, it won't be enough. Time for folks to learn to grow their own food without industrial inputs. Climate change, peak oil and the economic collapse they cause are bringing the system down. Find or start a Transition Town group and get connected now. for info go to www.transitionus.org
This article is really academic. It misses the obvious. What is needed is more people working smaller farms producing a wider range of foodstuffs to be distributed more locally.
alugilac is right in that much of this agri welfare goes to corporations. The money spent could have purchased the land and distributed it to those who will work it in a long term eco friendly manner.
People that sit on their butts driving machines through fields aren't farmers. They are equipment operators. It is worse when they use petro-chemicals that poison the land, water, and air, and we all know that they couldn't do it otherwise. The criminal capitalistic system is the culprit. The whole system is folly.
This year, I turned a 5 pound sack of seed potatoes into 150 pounds of spuds (one is 2.2 lbs) without any machinery, chemicals, or supplied water. Work and some ingenuity made it happen.
We need people to work the land, not drive around on it.
"We need people to work the land, not drive around on it"
That's a great expression. I don't believe for one minute we will be able to do away with corporate farming, but just think how much pressure could be removed, how much price's could be kept down if there were small farmers that had an outlet for their produce.
When things get big, they get dangerous. Just ask the corn farmers in Mexico how they like NAFTA. Oops', there aren't any small corn farmers left.
On our town square, every Saturday, small farmers are bring in their produce to sell, the only problem is there are people buying bulk and pretending to be farmers.
Congratulation's on your harvest. Spud donuts??????
Corporate farming is temporal, never last beyond oil.
The majority of acreage planted feeds livestock.
Produce takes way less space.
Trophic levels will dictate a retreat from meat.
Perma-culture is the best long term strategy.
I go to market twice a week now, it's winding down. Most markets around here won't allow the commodity exchangers. Sometimes it's tolerated with winks for old timers, sometimes for special items, like berries and fruit. I'd prefer it be all growers, but don't care enough to say anything. It's the kettle corners and nacho peddlers that really don't belong. They do good business, it's nuts, it's the market.
You're dead wrong about the article. It gets right at the reality, the underlying economic reality, that is by far the largest influence on the problems you emphasize. Farm prices don't self correct in free markets. Corporate BUYERS (not farmers, who are the victims,) took advantage of this, by lobbying for cheap farm prices (for reduction and elimination of policies to fix the economic problem). They won reduction and elimination of price floors and supply reductions (as needed to balance supply and demand) and we also lost price ceilings and reserve supplies to protect consumers.
Alugilac is wrong, as I show above.
You're missing the implications of this article, which is understandable, as little has been written about these matters in progressive circles. With a return to fair trade farm prices, no subsidies are needed to compensate farmers, as farmers are no longer the huge victims. The giant corporate buyers, (who individually may get bigger benefits than the ENTIRE farmer subsidy database,) then have to pay fair trade prices. This then stops the hidden subsidization of animal factories, with below cost feeds at farmers' expenses, so then farmers can put livestock into grassfed, foragefed systems and have a competitive advantage, as CAFOs must pay fair trade prices. This then reduces the size that farms must be to survive, so more labor returns to farms, (helping to raise wage rates in the cities,) as farmers get value added livestock back. To feed livestock, you then need hay and pastures, so land is permanently seeded down and/or put back into resource conserving crop rotations, so then there is less of that poison, and farmers do more diverse work, and less of that machinery work. They switch back from being agribusiness producers, to being agriculture farmers. This then preserves family farmers to achieve local food goals, and more families are trained in the diversity of farming.
If we assume a buck a pound at the supermarket, your 150 pounds of potatoes netted you $150.00 (assuming no cash expenses). How many hours of work did it take? If it took 20 hours, then you worked for $7.50 an hour - minimum wage (no taxes, tho, admittedly). If more, then less. Things will have to get a lot worse before most Americans are willing to go there (even assuming they could). Hard times or no, the average wage for those fortunate enough to be employed is still about $20.00 per hour (I know many people make a lot less, but on the other hand, many make much more). For myself, small farming - "working the land" sounds like the worst job I could imagine. I'd much, much rather be a janitor and scrub toilets. Absent a major, catastrophic collapse, people are not going "back to the land" in any significant numbers. Most everybody knows that it was a hard, grueling, boring, soul-destroying way of life - that's why so many of the farmers took "good factory jobs" when they could. Become Tom Joad? Not in this lifetime.
"How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" (WWI era song)
You are arguing in a very narrow context. Yes, farming is hard, but it is far from being a "soul-destroying way of life". What is soul-destroying is to be stuck in a "job" knowing that it forms part of a system or an empire that is destructive and exploitative, even if much of the destruction and exploitation is hidden from plain view. And that "major, catastrophic collapse" is NOT all that unlikely from happening (sorry about the double negative) if the current way of life continues.
I think you are missing the point. If you bought his spuds, he could afford to plant more and he enjoys it. He isn't talking about some "everyone back to the land" scheme.
Not everyone want's to work just for money. We all need it, but everyone has different needs to go along with the primary need.
Absolutely. At 63 years old I am lucky enough to feel moderately comfortable financially. However, even 20 years ago when far less comfortable I've always enjoyed growing things even if there is no financial reward. I've grown massive amounts of flowers for decades and never got a penny in returns. I simply enjoy it. As usual I had fine luck with my taters too. My roto-tiller quit working decades ago. I no-til my vegetables, flowers, and farm crops. I use a hand operated hula-hoe to weed my gardens.
And it's something money cannot buy.
But doing "everything" by hand....we are going to have to negotiate on that one! :)
I spend a half hour now and then with the hoe. It's good exercise. Some people pay money to work out on weird machines. If I'm in a bit of an angry mood I can pretend the weeds are republicans. It's all good.
Look out weed's!!!!!
He said, "What is needed is more people working smaller farms producing a wider range of foodstuffs to be distributed more locally." In order to feed everyone (or very many people) that way, as opposed to relying on the efficiencies of agribusiness, we would need *a lot* more small-time farmers. According to the 1900 census, the most common occupation in the country at that time was farming (# 2 was domestic service - perhaps a lesson there? - anyhow). Food was, in real terms, much more expensive and there was still some actual hunger (not "food insecurity," not obesity because of too much junk food- hunger). Some people worried about being too skinny. There was a reason why big farming caught on (and was supported by administrations from FDR on), and it was not just because of that old shibboleth, corporate greed.
I can buy local eggs from a guy in my community for the same price as the supermarket, but have to drive (way) out in the country to get them - that's a problem.
Yes, it's hard work, and grain farmers got even less (market prices plus subsidies) than fruit and vegetable farmers, for decades (as measured by percent of parity, Agricultural Statistics, chapter 9).
Your comparison of farming during the Great Depression is true for times of low prices, like we also had, increasingly, 1981-2005. On the other hand, farming is a great job in many ways, when you get fair trade prices like we had 1942-1952. It's an "enriched job," (Frederick Herzberg, David Whitsett, etc.) while many other jobs aren't. It has great diversity, crops, livestock, finances, being in nature, machinery operation. Today, with the internet, it can make for Renaissance men and women (if we get farm justice, living wage farm prices.
Great article.
Many of the comments, unfortunately, come from la-la land. Let's face reality, remove some sort of system for stabilizing prices or one like the current subsidize system that keeps the non-corporate, non-deep pocket farmers in business during the lean years and we will further transform our commodity farm system into a corporate factory farm only system.
You think its bad now with a predominance of large corporate farms operated by employees punching hour clocks with the rural farm town further shrinking and blowing away while the profits that once kept rural America prospering continue to be shipped out of state and into the pockets of Wall Street bankers, just wait until you see a system where the family farmers, the ones that tend to not be heavily capitalized and who live on their farms and spend their profits locally are forced to sell out.
When this happens, and there was a reason why we had farm policy including commodity subsidizes, we will see a world where not only does Cargill control the market but it will own the land the commodity crops are grown on and operate it through massive factory type operations.
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water why don't we stop and think for a moment before we get rid of the last few small farmers growing commodity crops. The subsidy system for keeping family farmers on the land is obviously not the best system we've had but that's where our farm policy has evolved. Instead of turning over our commodity farms to Cargill and its ilk why don't we first stop and think how can our current system of subsidies be modified so we target and aid family farms?
Trying to target aid to small family farms is difficult. In the past we have had special government programs helping young farmers get started. From what I saw in my area this aid was often as not given to children of large farmers that merely allowed large operations to get bigger.
" just wait until you see a system where the family farmers, the ones that tend to not be heavily capitalized and who live on their farms and spend their profits locally are forced to sell out."
You are speaking of a class that no longer exists. Most of your "family farmers" drawing subsidy's are Corporate farms or the employed, usually urban workers that use it for tax write off's and extra income with the government benefits.
Our farm policy hasn't evolved, it's been dictated.
The hundreds of family farmers with one or both of the adults working full or part time off the farm to scrape a living out on the Delmarva peninsula would disagree with you as would all of the family farmers still growing wheat on the eastern plain of Colorado.
Family farmers are embattled but we're still here. Every year less and less of us as the market for those growing commodities gets more and more concentrated.
Yes there are farmers markets for those of us lucky enough to have farms near enough population centers. But a farmer in Iowa can't just pick up her farmland and move it to within driving distance of New York City and switch from growing commodity crops to vegetables that will sell in her new city market.
And often it does seem that our democracy is gone and we are being dictated to by some far away dictator but if that's true why are we wasting our time discussing a policy that we have no chance of influencing?
That is the point. "hundreds" As a group it is really disappearing. And the reason is the dictated "farm policy", the subsidies. The trade policies that favor the "Big's"
Nor can you afford to go organic if you are doing it for a living. Nor can you afford the energy policies dictated by the current administration or the last one for that matter.
Our Republic isn't gone, nor our democracy, it's simply been diverted again. And we can certainly do something about it. We cannot only influence it, we can change it.
As people learn the simple fact that it's cheaper to send a bale of hay to China from California than it is to drive it out to local dairy farms in California...that things are indeed interrelated and one policy no matter how well meaning has other effects then they will decide to stop buying the propaganda from all sides.
And I truly believe we are almost there.
post script... This could be taken a way I don't mean it, but I want to let it stand, so give it your best reading.
You had it right on, in your comment about "some sort of system for stabilizing prices." And yes, without that, the subsidies help preserve what we need, but not in a very good way. We need price floors and ceilings for that stability, plus supply management to balance suppy and demand (supply reductions as needed, plus reserve supplies).
With low prices and subsidies, we secretly subsidize CAFOs. And anyway, subsidies have only returned to farmers about 1/7 of what they lost in reductions below the fair trade prices of 1942-1952.
But yes, until progressives and foodies know about these needed policies (the Food from Family Farms Act of the National Family Farm Coalition,) farmers need subsidies so we don't "throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes! Unfortunately, progressives and the food movement unknowingly advocate for mere subsidy removal or reform (as do you in the end,) but that is a free market, free trade, neoliberal (conservative) approach, a pro-agribusiness approach.
The 99% have drafted a Declaration that ought to be published as its own item here at CD so I don't have to spam every article with the URL as I'm now going to do, https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
Our food system is healthy now???
There isn't too big a risk that farm subsidies will be significantly reduced. The farmers who receive the subsidies are among the most reliable supporters of das kapitalist thugocracy. Das kapitalist extremist thugs in Chicago dictate production parameters to such farmers. Such farmers merely take orders. Take away their subsidies and they will be less inclined to take orders. Das kapitalist thugs know how to rig markets and keep them rigged. There will be no significant subsidy cuts.
Cute! However, we need to realize how much a part we (in the aggregate) are of the food system. The food system we have is one we have, in our individually small way, has helped to create.
While concentration of farming has been going on since the early days of our nation it jumped in the early 60's with the supermarket. When individuals found it more 'convenient' to go to one location to buy their food they created a world where many small specialty outlets lost their markets and went bankrupt.
(I remember when our neighborhood produce store and butcher closed soon after a grand union opened up. People switched their buying allegiance to the, by today's standard small supermarket putting the even smaller stores into bankruptcy).
The larger food distributor found it more convenient to deal with larger growers denying the smaller farmers a market putting them out of business starting the concentration in the farming sector. And that has been going on ever since.
A Safeway or Wholefood (actually Walmart is the countries largest seller of groceries, and that includes so-called organic food) with its streamlined procurement system finds it convenient to deal with extremely large growers thereby denying the not as large farmers a market and putting them out of business.
As far as commodities go how many people out there make their own bread or buy their flour from a small distributor? I bet most people wouldn't even know where to look. Where does the sweetener you use come from? Are you buying sugar made from genetically modified sugar beets or have you found a local beekeeper to buy directly from?
And here we are, on the verge of demolishing the last vestiges or a farm program aimed (originally) to keep the individual grower of commodity crops in business and instead of attempting to turn the system so it can defend smaller family farms (and, yes, move the entire system in that direction) here we are throwing our hands up and saying 'the systems corrupt, there are bad people gaming it, lets just do away with the entire thing.'
Instead, why aren't we doing with farming what we should be doing with banking. moving it in the other direction. Letting the too big to fail fail, passing laws that make it illegal for large corporations to get subsidizes or to game the system.
In fact lets just use commodity subsidizes as a stop gap and move back to a system where we guarantee parity. Turn the playing field so the small farmer has the advantage and the large corporate farmer finds it harder to compete. Parity for those that do the work. No supports what-so-ever for farming operations that ship the profits out of state (how about out of county) to stockowners.
Yes, its easy to sit back and say the system is crap. We all know that. But instead of doing the easy thing why don't we do something a little bit harder but in the long run something that's going to move us closer to a world we want. Farm policy (and commodity farm subsidies) is just one little aspect of it. But why are we giving up and siding with the devil (and that's just what we're doing by calling for the removal of all subsidies. What we should be doing is demanding that farm policy, including farm commodity subsidies only go to small farmers to help them better compete with the corporate factory farms.
Yes, let's have reform, but lets have it in the right direction.
I agree with much of what you've said, but we need real reform, not just shifting subsidies. The mega beneficiaries are the buyers, not the big farms. The 2 biggest buyers, Cargill and ADM, probably get more benefits ($) below fair trade price levels, below parity, than the ENTIRE farm subsidy database. And anyway, a small 150 acre corn/soybean farm gets $112,000 in subsidies, almost into the top 10% (11.4%), and it's not even big enough to make a living most years going back decades. We need to return to the parity programs, which had no subsidies at all, BUT which had fair trade price floors and ceilings, plus top and bottom side supply management (supply reductions as needed to stop oversupply and reserve supplies to protect against shortages).
Once again, Food and Water Watch shows itself to be the best farm and food justice advocate among progressive food organizations. Everyone should read this over 3 times and follow their lead.