Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!microsof!fluke!ssc-vax!uw-beaver!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbesvax.turner From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Govt and Agriculture - (nf) Message-ID: <187@ucbcad.UUCP> Date: Wed, 29-Jun-83 18:41:43 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbcad.187 Posted: Wed Jun 29 18:41:43 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Jul-83 13:49:40 EDT Lines: 63 #R:isrnix:-25300:ucbesvax:7500019:000:3283 ucbesvax!turner Jun 29 05:10:00 1983 Ah, but "Cui Bono" indeed! Over the decade that farm subsidies have been in place, we have seen an unparalleled concentration and industrialization of agriculture. Not that these things are so terrible in themselves, but just look at how it has been done. You are taking as your premise: "U.S. Ag is good, U.S. Ag is subsidized", therefore at least these subsidies have been good." I don't think U.S. Ag is so great. What do I think is wrong? Several things: 1) The germ plasm of the seed varieties for various staples are becoming the property of subsidy-fattened food conglomerates. They have, in fact, a vested interest in thinning out the genetic diversity of farmlands, since it is leading to a monopoly situation which would be very hard for competitors to break. 2) Farmers tie up huge amounts of capital in farm equipment inventory by letting land lie fallow. And write off the equipment depreciation on their taxes. Huge famines might be raking the Sahel, or Somalia--but we can't let world wheat prices be deflated by selling stockpiles of grain, no sirree. What about our nation's sturdy *farmers*? (Del Monte, General Foods, etc.) 3) Technology-intensive (really, energy-intensive) farming which is favored by the economies of scale that large, government-aided food companies can establish, is eating away our farmland by soil compaction and exhaustion, polluting rivers with nitrogen fertilizers, and poisoning the food chain with pesticides. Laissez Faire would probably be better than this. Collectivized farming (USSR and China, with Cambodia being a rather grisly example) is not in itself a solution. Voluntary cooperatives of farmers are, I think, intrinsically more humane, since they never approach the scale of large corporations, can coordinate their own marketing policies, and understand better the uses of charity, since they require it of each other in order to survive. The advantages of competition can be balanced with the advantages of cooperation. Radical cooperativism has spontaneously appeared during times of upheaval. The Makhnovists in the Ukraine fought for peasant self- determination, against both White and Red armies. The anarchist collectives in Spain were a response to centuries of landlord negligence--and were quite productive and profitable, even with a civil war raging around them. In Nicaragua, similar efforts were rather quickly blunted by the Sandinistas. Peasants who wished to undertake their own land reforms had to move quickly, or else put up with the government's slower version, a bureaucratic process mainly designed to give the appearance of not coming down too hard on some of the larger land-holders--while actually stabilizing a situation whereby the government could take a private, smoothly-run industrial operation into its own hands, without changing the working conditions significantly. This is a travesty of revolution. In the supposedly socialist countries, Big Brother says "I know best." In the supposedly capitalist countries, Big Brother collects money, and then hands it to big companies, saying, "You know best." In both places, small farmers look up, and say: "but we were here before you." Blam.