Essay On Agricultural Subsidies

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers food assistance programs that help provide food for low to no income families. It is their goal to increase food security and reduce hunger by increasing access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education for low-income Americans (Caswell, 2013, para. 1). Some of the current nutrition assistance programs include “the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)”(Caswell, 2013, para. 1). SNAP will be the primary nutrition assistance program of the paper at hand. No matter how morally good it is to try to help reduce hunger and increase food security within the United States, there are still many questions regarding issues with SNAP. This paper will be discussing why there is such a strong support for the program, how it helps the United States as a whole, problems with the program, and why some people are against SNAP.

Former president George Washington once said, “Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man,” (George Washington Quote). Since Washington’s presidency, countless advancements and developments within the agricultural industry have allowed the United States to grow, develop, and become one of the most prosperous countries in the entire world. Nevertheless, this prosperity is also marked by several key historical events, such as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, which have caused the core values and traditions that this great nation was built on to slowly disappear. Today, the majority of Americans have no knowledge, understanding, or appreciation for the agricultural industry, causing them to take for granted the basic necessities they rely on each day. This disconnection has created a gap between producers and consumers, which is known as

Agricultural subsidies is a very complex and controversial economic topic today. It will continue to be a hot topic as government continues it. It is largely debated in the United States as well as in other countries. The reason it is so largely debated is because it literally have an effect on the entire world market. Not to mention that the farm has been booming the last 5 to 10 years. This topic also tends to draw strong opinions in our area in particular due to the large agricultural community in our region. However, even within different states there are many supporters as well as opponents to these government subsidies.

Although a 2002 agriculture law superseded many parts of FAIRA, acreage was still increased because of the growing demand for corn in animal feed, the need for corn in ethanol manufacturing, and the increased possibility to make food with corn byproducts. These seem to be good and fair reasons to focus our efforts on increasing output, however, the same issue arises: the more corn that is made, the less stable a livelihood farming becomes, regardless of the subsidies that the federal government provides.

Income inequality can lead to an increase in the productive capacity of resources and so an increase in real GDP per capita. Economic benefits are mainly derived from the incentive effects of inequality. Firstly, inequality encourages the labour force to increase

These assumptions include: farmers had to compete with industries for workers; the emancipation of slaves left farmers with no workforce, forcing them into industry jobs; and income taxes drove farmers into debt. After our hypothesis was written, we consulted Mr. Nelson on advice in moving forward. With him, we created a list of variables to focus on: taxes, land, population, and crop production. We chose to focus on Al Valorem Taxes, as a farmer’s business depends on their land. We also chose to focus on cotton production because cotton farms were the most successful and thus biggest of farms. We filtered through data from the National Archives and U.S. Census Bureau to separate data related to these variables, and then created a separate graph for each topic. After analyzing the data trends, we researched the reasons behind these trends, and then looked for other problems related to our argument that we did not include in our assumptions.

This article written in the Texas Agriculture, a magazine published by the Texas Farm Bureau, is about all the factors impacting farmers that effect their income. Over the past couple years, a combination of things has caused the average Texas farmers income to drop. The primary audience for this article is the farmers in Texas as they are experiencing these issues first hand. The secondary audience would be consumers who have noticed price fluctuations in products at the store and are wondering the reason.

1. Railroads- Railroads in each area were often controlled by one company, enabling those railroads to charge what they wanted. Railroads were the only way for many western farmers to get their produce to market and high prices were always charged. Railroads controlled storage, elevators, and warehouses so the prices the farmers paid were very high.

In the late nineteenth century, many American farmers were experiencing economic insecurity. There were various factors that contributed to why farmers were facing financial hardships in this particular time frame. The fundamental factors were the commercialization, overproduction, and mechanization of agriculture. These factors are by no means all of the driving forces that lead to this time of financial insecurity, but they are large contributors to say the least. After the Civil War, subsistence farming was gradually morphing into commercialized farming. Instead of farming to support oneself or one's family at a minimum level, farmers began leaning towards making large profit off of their crops.

Like much of the midwest, Indiana is especially dependent on agricultural success to boost their economy. Farming is the backbone of the Hoosier state, with 57,500 farming operations functioning in 2016, per the United States Department of Agriculture. While Indiana relies heavily on the agricultural sector of their economy, the agricultural sector in turn often relies upon subsidization. According to “Food Policy: Looking Forward from the Past”, a book written by Arlene Spark and Janel Obenchain, “An agricultural subsidy is governmental assistance paid to farmers and agribusiness to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.” Now that we accurately

Income inequality has been a major concern around the world, and it mainly links to how economic metrics are distributed among individuals in a country. Economists generally categorise these metrics in wealth, income and consumption. Wilkinson and Picket (2009) showed in their studies that inequality has drawbacks that lead to social problems. This is because income inequality and wealth concentration can hinder or delay long term growth. In 2011, International Monetary Fund economists showed that less income inequality increased the duration of countries’ economic growth spells more than free trade, low government corruption, foreign investment or low foreign debt (Berg and Ostry, 2011).

Small family farmers were driven off of their property by large farm industries. Family farmers were pushed off of their land since they generally did not own enough property to qualify for financial aid. With a limited amount of land and money, family farms were taken over by large farm industries (“Farm Relief”, 2002; Green, 1946). More specifically, the “owners of giant commercial farms” were “heavily capitalized”, making competition with small farms easy (Green, 1946, p. 41). Similarly, Bean (1938) reported that the average income of farmers in 1929 were those on self-sufficing farms because they lost profit while the “general decline in farm prices” affected the economy and those directly involved (p. 27). **

Growing up on a small family wheat farm in southwestern Oklahoma, I have experienced the harsh conditions of farming firsthand. The job that used to employ the largest amount of people in the United States has lost the support and the respect of the American people. The Jeffersonian Ideal of a nation of farmers has been tossed aside to be replaced by a nation of white-collar workers. The family farm is under attack and it is not being protected. The family farm can help the United States economically by creating jobs in a time when many cannot afford the food in the stores. The family farm can help prevent the degradation of the environment by creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the people producing the food and nature. The family farm is the answer to many of the tough questions facing the United States today, but these small farms are going bankrupt all too often. The government’s policy on farming is the largest factor in what farms succeed, but simple economics, large corporations, and society as a whole influence the decline in family farms; small changes in these areas will help break up the huge corporate farms, keeping the small family farm afloat.

The agriculture field is one of the biggest employers, employing over 155 million people in the United States. What do you think about when you hear the word “agriculture?” Many people would say farming, but this is not the most common occupation in this field. Farmers make up a fraction of the agricultural jobs at 900,000, but over 2.1 million people own, rent, and claim farming as a primary source of income. The average farm size has dropped from 460 acres in 1990 to 418 acres in 2007, while the average age of this occupation rose to 57, making this one of the older workforces in the United States.

The Agriculture sector has changed monumentally over the past century in response to vast economic change and technological advancements. Farm subsidies are various forms of payments from the federal government put in place in an effort to stabilize prices, keep farmers in business, and ensure quality of crops. The federal government currently pays $20 billion in cash each year to US farmers and spent an estimated $250 billion between 1995-2005. Presently, a new farm bill is passed every five years