Why does America subsidise its primary producers, can't they support themselves like ours do?

Question

I'm speaking as an Australian where wages are similar. We have no subsidies here and can compete on the world market.

Answer 1

A while back in US history, people shifted from having smaller farms to larger ones, and companies started buying huge tracts of land and developing it. Because they had new mechanical equipment to help them farm, they grew more corn and more wheat than had been produced before on the same land. As the farmer/corporations started to sell the grains, they realized there was too much of it on the market. They could barely give it away. They were on the brink of bankruptcy, and that meant that NO one would be growing either of these important crops. So the government decided to bail them out by subsidizing the farms, just to ensure that someone was still growing food in the US. (interestingly, this is also why the government pays people who own certain plots of farmland NOT to grow anything on their land, which is an even worse waste of tax dollars) I'm not sure if this was meant as a temporary measure, but it has stuck around, probably because once the government starts giving away money, people start to think they have a right to it. I'm sure if anyone proposed to stop the subsidies now, farmers would be in an uproar, even though their businesses would survive. Maybe more small farms would fail without them, but the large corporations who produce most of our food would be fine. So the answer to your question is, large producers of crops can support themselves, they just don't think they should have to.

Answer 2

because the bulk of our subsidies go to Hugh conglomerates such as cargile etc oh yes they do help the small independent farmer a little but when the huge producers estimate they should make two million on their crops and only make one million the gov, subsidizer's them with money and tax refund support, it is called politics and when the farmers destroy a portion of their crop in order to keep prices higher as the potato farmers did this year and yet get subsidies it is or should be a crime,when is the American people going to wake up and say enough is enough
yet, when they have a crop failure or ?? who yells the loudest??,

Answer 3

actually it is to promote economic growth it is hard to compete with slave labor or massively cheap labor.

We should start selling our food like OPEC does oil and then we'd be the richest country in the world again.