Pros And Cons Of Agricultural Subsidies

Agricultural subsidies are defined as “payments by the federal government to producers of agricultural products for the purpose of stabilizing food prices, ensuring plentiful food production, guaranteeing farmers' basic incomes, and generally strengthening the agricultural segment of the national economy” (Encyclopedia.com). By definition, farm subsidies sound important and necessary, but our research shows that most of the farmers that actually need subsidies, do not benefit from them. As reported by ABCNews.com, “subsidies make it harder for smaller farms to compete because farm subsidies rarely go to poorer farmers struggling to make ends meet. In fact, the average farmer makes twice what the average American earns. One farmer dubbed the “King of Farm Subsidies,” Maurice Wilder, is

The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was created as a solution for the economic depression that was occurring at the time. This economic crisis ended in 1939. There is no need for wealthy farmers and legislators to continue to be handed money at the taxpayers’ expense. Removing agricultural subsidies has been successful in other countries. For example, New Zealand revoked all agricultural subsidies in 1984 and it did not cause farmers to go bankrupt (Edwards). New Zealand farmers started to plant diverse crops and take up other ways of income. This is what farmers in the United States can do after the removal of agricultural subsidies. Therefore, we have concluded that agricultural subsidies must be discontinued in the United States due to the fact that it is an outdated government program, and farmers can still live off the growth of other crops or another means of