American Agriculture Needs a Free-Market System Essay -- Argumentative

American Agriculture Needs a Free-Market System The words to the famous old children’s song â€Å"Old MacDonald Had a Farm† are due for a revision. The new lines should read â€Å"Old MacDonald had a farm . . . with a lawyer here, and an accountant there, and everywhere a new federal program and regulation.† Not quite as poetic, but definitely more appropriate. The current state of agribusiness consists of an incredibly complex mix of subsidies, price supports, and bureaucratic regulations that could confound the most knowledgeable business minds. Underlying this tangled web of rules and regulations are political battles that pit normally allied groups against each other, and bring normally adversarial groups into allegiance. One bizarre outcome of federal farm policy is that consumers and tax-payers (usually one and the same) are set at cross-purposes. In this paper, I will highlight some of the unusual policies that exist today and will try to present some rational alternatives to alleviate the nightmare tha t is U.S. agribusiness. E...I...E...I...Ohhhhhhh..... The United States Government and agriculture have had a working relationship for most of the twentieth century. In 1916, Congress established the Federal Land Bank to provide farmers with easier access to credit. Then, during the Great Depression, many New Deal programs came to the aid of the farmer (Rapp, 1988). A system of price supports and production quotas was established to ensure price stability. For the first time, farmers were being told not to grow as much as they could. After World War II, the government found that prices were a very difficult thing to stabilize, so it focused its attention on income supports. That is, it attempted to guarantee a farmer ... ... prosper, while those who are marginal will not continue to be a drain on the economy. We cannot continually advocate free trade around the world (the GATT talks) while protecting our farm industry at home. I believe that when the government gets out of the food-growing business, farming efficiency will increase, consumers will benefit, and the economy will be better for it. And after the shakeout, Old MacDonald’s son or daughter will have a chance for greater prosperity. References Rapp, David. How the U.S. Got Into Agriculture and Why it Can’t Get Out. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1988. Rawlins, N. Omri. Introduction to Agribusiness. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1980 Robbins, William. The American Food Scandal. New York: William Morrow, 1974. Tweeten, Luther. â€Å"The Economics of Small Farms,† Science 219 (4 March 1983): 1037-41.