Then make your case. WHY is it antiquated and stupid? The value of strategic reserves has been validated time and time again. Most of the crop subsides are baloney, I agree on this. But there are some bona fide reasons to insure that adequate strategic reserves are always available for a few key crops. If it can be done without subsides, so much the better, but it must be addressed. All your ideology aside, if the nation was dependent on foreign corn and a war disrupted the supply of corn, it would quickly collapse the beef and pork industries, too with a cascading series of problems resulting. No way should we subsidize all corn in a country this productive. But if enough crops are allowed to be imported as to endanger the country's strategic reserve, then enough domestic corn must be provided for to cover us in an emergency. We have a 30-day petroleum strategic reserve, but only a 5-day corn strategic reserve.
why would we be dependent on foreign corn? is your premise that without subsidy we would be a net importer of corn? that is ridiculous. we have whole states that are basically designed by god to perfectly produce corn.
Without subsidy would they not turn to higher financial yeild crops such as soy beans? Even if we became a net importer of corn I still think it would be worth it to dump subidies.
if they are growing soybeans, we are of course still just as safe from war-induced starvation. also i dont believe a country as rich and fertile as us could ever be a situation where we cant feed ourselves, even in war.
You aren't paying attention. Of course, we can feed ourselves given time. But what we can't do is suffer a war-related interruption of more than 5 days without seriously impacting us. Without a strategic reserve, we can be gotten to by our enemies. Most of our shipping is foreign owned, foreign crewed, and foreign flagged for tax purposes and can be redirected from us. We drew down to a 5-hour corn supply during the Gulf War just from our own redirection of international shipping.
5 hour corn supply? i dont understand what you mean. i can certainly understand that shipping issues might result in higher prices for various things, but there are other things that would fill in the gaps. without corn for corn sugar, perhaps we could send Louisiana cane farmers back to work, and in general we could encourage local (meaning fantastically healthy) food production. also as the worlds most powerful country, with a long list of incredibly powerful allies, i would like to see somebody try to stifle our shipping lanes. even our non-allied trading partners would be up in arms if global trade were interrupted. are these enemeies you speak of, have they controlled tha atlantic as well as the pacific? we cant even import any chinese rice and we are starving? we have a spectacularly fertile heartland, that is quite able to feed us and others. isnt the purpose of these corn/wheat reserves to control prices, to keep them stable, not so much to protect us in wartime?
I told you already that most of the subsides are unnecessary, but that there may be a few exceptions for strategic reserve reasons. Your black-or-white, one-or-the-other, all-or-nothing mindset blinds you to the possibility of exceptions and special cases.
these special cases are what i am discussing. i am so incredibly nuanced that i am willing to discuss the shades of grey. my question is this, what possible scenario could make us need reserves? and what do you mean we were down to a 6 hour corn supply? were the guys at the fritos plant preparing to shutdown the corn mush fryers? who cares? why exactly do we need reserves? are we worried that we will shut down all our farms and turn them into water parks and import all our corn and then go to war and then say "aww dadgum it we aint got no corn, we's gunna starve"?
unless the plan to convert the worlds 1000's of seed varieties into about 7 backfires. he didnt capitalize that's how long all the fatasses in our country can go without eating.
