Ok, so stopping farm subsidies without price floors, etc., would devastate farmers (ie in the market conditions following the 70s price spike,) without helping stop CAFOs, but with the good NFFC policies, no subsidies would be needed. And there were none, under the good policies of the past (ie. 194201952).

Stop subsidizing oil which is prime subsidy of agriculture and a whole lot of sectors. Let the price of gasoline rise to its natural $10/gallon. When the price goes up people get serious about conservation. It has always worked and will work again.

Stop subsidizing grain which is a prime driver and subsidy for the confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs). If they had to pay full price for energy and grain they would have to charge more for their product and food should be more expensive – just look at the health problems we’re seeing.

Stop subsidizing urbanites with the mortgage deduction, real estate taxes on farm and forest land. Real estate taxes are quite simply a transfer of wealth from the land owners to the home owners – land makes no burden on the towns or schools).

Stop subsidizing the government with the inheritance tax on small businesses and farms. Because land gets over valued at “Best (developement) use” and it takes a lot of land to farm the farms get broken up when taxes are demanded at the death of the previous generation. We already paid our income taxes, sales taxes, land transfer taxes to buy this land. Every year we pay real estate taxes. The government shouldn’t be stealing what we’ve saved up in the value of our land.

If you’re going to tax land then start taxing 401K’s, IRAs and all other assets. Those are all ways that the urbanites hide their savings from taxation while the farmer and forester have to pay through the nose each year with taxes on the land, taxes not to pay for any services for the land but to pay for services for the urbanites, the home owners, their kids educational system, etc. If you’re going to tax land then tax all assets. Think how you would feel if your IRA and 401K had to pay a 3% tax every year on it’s gross worth?

There are a lot of subsidies that people don’t even see. I don’t get any agricultural subsidies yet Big Ag who I must compete with is subsidized up the wazoo. The result is they get to charge a lower price at the checkout counter. The reality is people pay for it in their taxes. Get rid of the subsidizes and let the food, energy and other prices rise to their natural levels and let us all have an even playing field in the market.

It really is a simple fix – stop the subsidies. Yes, it will hurt at first but then in time you’ll keep more money in your pocket book and be able to decide how YOU want to spend it rather than having Big Government, Big Corp, Big Energy, Big Ag making those choices for you.

Little things you can do now: spend wisely to support your beliefs.

Subsidies, on the other hand, inevitably lead to overproduction. Again I challenge you to find a single economist who would say otherwise.

I think I actually agree with you ultimate conclusions, which makes me sad to see absurd arguments being made in their favor. But you can’t go saying things like this if you want credibility.