The Surprising Popularity of Farm Subsidies
Well-known bigot Steven Walt offers up another one of his tawdry conspiracy theories in which U.S. policy is the result of special interest lobbying:
Like other industrial countries, the United States subsidizes a host of agricultural products and erects various trade barriers against foreign imports. This happens because the farm lobby is defending the narrow interests of the farm sector and many democratic systems give small groups (in this case farmers or agribusiness) disproportionate influence. (It’s the usual story: A small group reaps the benefits of this policy while the costs are dispersed across the whole population). This policy makes food more expensive, encourages farmers to grow the wrong crops, squanders energy, and hinders economic development in poorer countries, thereby contributing to political instability. These policies also make it much harder to negotiate multilateral trade deals that would raise prosperity world-wide. So although nearly every detached observer thinks the policy is wrong, they also know that the political power of farm interests (both here and abroad) makes it excruciatingly difficult to change course.
No, actually, this is just what everyone thinks and not a conspiracy theory at all. Indeed, “everyone” thinks it to such an overwhelming extent that we may be overlooking the extent to which lots of people think terrible agriculture policy is actually a good idea. Here’s a recent Pew poll on various aspects of Barack Obama’s budget, a document which, among other things, proposes slicing agricultural benefits:
On the issue of reducing agricultural subsidies, more Republicans say it is the wrong thing than the right thing (57% vs. 34%), while Democrats and independents are more evenly divided.
It would be interesting to know the exact wording of the question here, which unfortunately I can’t find. Still, it seems to indicate that this is a bit more than a question of a narrow group blocking change. What may be happening is that since farm subsidies have passionate defenders in both parties, a wide swathe of people are accustomed to seeing them endorsed by leaders they trust.
31 Responses to “The Surprising Popularity of Farm Subsidies”
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March 18th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
That’s funny…”Well known bigot.”
Yeah, if anyone should be thinking about giving back money to the American people (or going the Japanese route), it should be the farm lobby and Chuck Grassley.
165 million dollars is chump change compared to what these crooks take every year.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Unfortunately, when you talk about ‘farms,’ most folks think of family farms — diverse operations with number of produce/animal products.
The real world you describe is agribusiness.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’d guess we’d like agricultural programs less if we knew more about them. But how many of us actually know how these programs work? I’ve been amazed how rice farmers I talk to in Southeast Asia know more about our farm policies than I do. They can name exactly which provisions are screwing them. Obviously, they are affected by the policies much more than I am, but it’s still kind of weird. It’s also kind of scary that a billion farmers in the rest of the world are at the mercy of our desire to appease a few million farmers in the US.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Of course it isn’t just interest group politics. The US favors rural areas over cities in representation and so rural concerns have much more political representation as compared to their overall importance.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Walt anti-Farmer, but he does use a lot of anti-Farmer stereotypes.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
No, it’s not “rural concerns.” It is agribusiness. Agribusiness benefits from farms growing subsidized corn and soybean that they can then buy at ridiculously low prices. Which consumers then buy for cheap and then continue to eat a terrible diet which destroys our health. It’s too bad that though Obama and the Democrats recognize that the skyrocketing cost of healthcare is the main reason Medicare is in danger and our health insurance sucks in general, they don’t seem to recognize that one of the main drivers of skyrocketing health care costs is the cheap yet poisonous diet we live on.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Hey, help a guy out. I don’t know who Steve Walt is, so I don’t know whether the “well-known bigot” epithet is hilarious sarcasm (because he’s been unfairly tagged as a bigot by creeps) or a hilariously blunt put-down. And I’m too lazy to google for it! Halp!
March 18th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Dissing on Steven Walt?
Yglesias seems to be deteriorating since his blog moved to Think Progress.
The more others cite Matt, the more Matt starts acting like some MSM beltway boy. Can’t say such a trend wasn’t expected.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
You need some sort of anchor to think about these things. Your assumption here would appear to be that because there is an even split in public opinion, therefore agricultural subsidies are not driven by interest groups, or put another way, to see decisive interest group influence, you need to find an interest group balance of power which is different from public opinion.
But this is the wrong way to thing about it. It is interest group power which is usually decisive, whether or not it matches public opinion outcomes, for all the resource and mobilisation reasons that Walt indicates. If public opinion is more or less similar, that should be viewed as coincidental. It’s only when you get a political outcome which is decisively driven by public opinion away from the expected interest group lobbying outcome that there is any reason to expect that public opinion is having any effect.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Never mind. I googled for it. Steven Walt is the “Israel Lobby” book author who was smeared as an anti-semite for daring to suggest support of Israel isn’t necessarily the same thing as unquestioning devotion to its foreign policy.
It appears Michael was taken in by the sarcasm, so it wasn’t just me…
March 18th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Rob Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Of course it isn’t just interest group politics. The US favors rural areas over cities in representation and so rural concerns have much more political representation as compared to their overall importance.
============================================================
Unless of course you don’t think eating is of “overall importance”
March 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
My guess is that Republicans mostly opposed reducing agricultural subsidies because it was presented as Obama’s plan. If it had been identified as part of a Republican plan they would have supported it.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I think the wording of the question is a pretty big issue:
“Reduce agricultural subsidies for many farms.”
If you replace the word “many” with “the largest” or “the wealthiest,” (which is the Administration proposal) I think you would get a very different result.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
“What may be happening is that since farm subsidies have passionate defenders in both parties, a wide swathe of people are accustomed to seeing them endorsed by leaders they trust.”
Maybe…. (But I don’t think the average Joe would say that he “trusts” any political leader). But for saving farm subsidies, I’d guess it’s more of a Willie/Melloncamp-save-family-farms-dynamic. (Would have to see the wording of the question too).
Republicans, and (fewer) Democrats have no problem spending Govt. money if it is for Real Americans. Farmers, firemen, police, military. (School teachers? – Dems and Repubs would split there, because women aren’t generally Real Americans).
Most people also feel no compulsion to hold consistent opinions about government spending. People who support bailing out families whose homes were lost in Mississippi River floods probably opposed giving Karina victims government money. (And maybe vice versa).
March 18th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
There’s no such thing as the farm lobby.
Just people who really, really care about China.
What are you lookin’ at?
March 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Ah, now that I see the wording of the question, I think “peep” is correct that Repubs oppose the initiative (to reduce subsidies) because it was an Obama plan.
But that still leaves the question of the Dem support.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I’m assuming Michael’s comment is also sarcastic building on the same sarcasm in Matt’s post.
Either that or he really needs to work on his reading comprehension.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
In a strange way it is a good thing that farm subsidies are popular. If they were unpopular that would have really bad implications for special interest power. But since in fact they are popular a concerted effort to change that could bear fruit.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Well, Walt is a well-known anti-Farmist. As a farmer, I can’t help but hear code words about people like me in his speech. Next thing you know he’ll be quoting from the infamous forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Ag” and telling you that some of his best friends are farmers.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Here we see the incorrigibly establishmentarian Professor Walt, who managed to write a long article about lobby influence on Middle East policy without ever mentioning the oil lobby. (Yes, he did discuss it in his book, but in his view the oil industry isn’t a narrow special interest lobby, it’s simply the voice of national security and the national economy.) Since the farm lobby is on the opposite side from the big free-trade corporations, it’s necessarily a small special interest. It doesn’t even occur to Prof. Walt to think about what actual people think about the issue, being against big corporations is enough to make you a narrow special interest.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
IIRC Walt shows examples where the oil lobby gets beaten by the Israel lobby in getting what they want, and also demonstrates that the anti-Saddam lobby was much more Israel-related than oil-related.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
@otto – Surely we can agree that the oil lobby doesn’t always get what it wants, and we can also agree that the oil lobby sometimes gets what it wants. But it’s there, and it’s significant to the making of Middle East policy.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Currently, our farms bear a superficial resemblance to the USSR’s: most farming occurs on agribusiness/state farms, while the most efficient producers are the smaller and less numerous family farms.
Supporting domestic producers makes sense, to a degree. While the macro econ 101 ideal would be for free trade across borders, the ideal suffers from a “rational producer/consumer” fallacy. Everything runs just peachy until someone gets a non-rational bug up their okole, at which point food prices go screwy, and people potentially go hungry. At that point, it’s nice to have a domestic supply.
I think that backup position is best handled by supporting family farms. ADM doesn’t need the help.
March 18th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Currently, our farms bear a superficial resemblance to the USSR’s: most farming occurs on agribusiness/state farms, while the most efficient producers are the smaller and less numerous family farms.
Really? Based on what? That’s not what I would have thought.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Y’know what would be awesome? It would be awesome if there were labels at the top of the columns on that table, so that one could distinguish between what the various columns referred to.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
That would be a really tricky question about the efficiency of factory farming. It’s not so much a question of methods as incentives.
What factory farming produces is a metric shitton of low grade, inedible corn that is processed into high fructose corn syrup and replaces sugar in processed foods. It’s not really cheaper but we subsidise the shit out of the corn and tariff sugar importation. It also may be very bad for you.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Food supply is the most vital of national security issues. I would think that someone who a) lives in a large urban area and b)believes global warming will have catastrophic consequences in the near future would support agriculture policies which encourage local food production. The closer the better.
Take for example aquaculture. Something like 70% of the seafood we eat is imported and 40% of that is commercially farmed seafood. The vast majority of commercial production occurs in Asian countries like China and Vietnam where there are virtually no environmental regulations. The levels of PCBs and other toxins found in shrimp and other imported species have been shown to be much much higher than US standards allow, yet it’s sold everywhere because we have no way of certifying it safe for human health. When in doubt, dish it out, I guess. Can you imagine the consequences of something like a shrimp borne mad cow type disease? Just about every disease known to man can be traced back to the domestication of some animal species. There are plenty of reasons to support strict control of agricultural imports.
Of course everyone can get behind curbing support for corporate agribusiness but the left should almost always strive to be pro-farmer. It keeps the price of things like milk, eggs, cheese, and bacon (mmmmm, bacon) stable and artificially low which, in turn, helps millions of Americans put food on the table. It also allows serves as a mechanism of enforcement for sustainable environmental policies. If ADM gets no money from the Feds, how do we ensure they rotate their crops? What would happen if they then chose not to diversify their production and instead chose to only grow corn for ethanol? What then?
March 19th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Actually, the poll would be quite different if it framed the question as proposed by the President. Even farmers and ranchers are supportive of reasonable restrictions to high income farmers or crop insurance reforms…..
March 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
It is ironic that farmers are one of the most reliable parts of the Republican base, favoring the GOP over Democrats during elections by wide margins (even exceptions like Marilyn Mugrave’s loss of CO-4 prove the rule on closer exception — the district has become much more urban than it used to be due to demographic shifts from farm counties to the urban I-25 corridor). Yet, rank and file Republicans are far less prone to favor farm subsidies than Democrats.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Then again the polling may have a huge amount to do with the question phrasing that starts with: “Q.46 As you may know, Barack Obama recently put forward his federal budget plan. I’d like to ask you about a few of the proposals he has made. First, do you think it is the right thing or the wrong thing for the government to”
I suspect that many Republicans instinctively oppose anything that Obama proposes, while many otherwise skeptical Democrats and independents may be willing to give a proposal from Obama the benefit of the doubt when they would question it in the abstract as a matter of policy.
In other words, the messenger may be swamping the message.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Sorry. It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.
I am from Kenya and also now am reading in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “We personally review every search engine to make sure it.”
Regards
Amana.