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90% of global farm subsidies damage people and planet, says UN:
[...] Almost 90% of the $540bn in global subsidies given to farmers every year are "harmful", a startling UN report has found.
This agricultural support damages people's health, fuels the climate crisis, destroys nature and drives inequality by excluding smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, according to the UN agencies.
The biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, such as beef and milk, received the biggest subsidies, the report said. These are often produced by large industrialised groups that are best placed to gain access to subsidies.
Without reform, the level of subsidies was on track to soar to $1.8tn (£1.3tn) a year by 2030, further harming human wellbeing and worsening the planetary crisis, the UN said.
Support for the "outsized" meat and dairy industry in rich countries must be reduced, while subsidies for polluting chemical fertilisers and pesticides must fall in lower-income countries, the analysis said.
The report, published before a UN food systems summit on 23 September, said repurposing the subsidies to beneficial activities could "be a game changer" and help to end poverty, eradicate hunger, improve nutrition, reduce global heating and restore nature. Good uses of public money could include supporting healthy food, such as vegetables and fruit, improving the environment and supporting small farmers.
[...] The EU is to pay €387bn (£330bn) in farm subsidies from 2021 to 2027, but last Thursday green MEPs in Brussels said a planned overhaul failed to align agriculture with EU climate change targets.
Journal Reference:
Document card | FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, (DOI: 10.4060/cb6562en)
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @08:21AM (13 children)
Nonsense. All we need is a nice pandemic, and a couple of wars. There's still time to find a couple Pol Pots, or a Stalin, or a Mao!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @08:35AM (3 children)
Plant more bacon!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:40AM (2 children)
Bacon ain't kosher. Ivanka2028.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 17 2021, @04:07PM
Plant more Twinkies!
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday September 18 2021, @06:19PM
Genetically modify pigs so they chew a cud!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @09:34AM
When you collect all three you get a Trump!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @09:46AM (2 children)
We're gonna need a bigger pandemic, and a more worldly war.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 17 2021, @10:11AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @01:22PM
Oh, cuss (spelled AUKUS), nuke subs! Who needs Fauci?
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Friday September 17 2021, @04:48PM (4 children)
Kurt Vonnegut's 2BR02B [mcgrewbooks.com] had the world starving two decades ago. As I wrote in the preface, few writers seemed, oddly, to have noticed advances in farm equipment, other farming technologies, or advances in chemistry, biology, agronomy, and other sciences needed to improve yields. That's not going to stop any time soon.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday September 17 2021, @10:09PM (3 children)
Are you sure about that? Even if work continues just how much can the yields be increased?
All the technologies that you mentioned come at a cost to the environment that is rapidly outstripping the gains.
You can't have infinite growth in a finite system.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday September 18 2021, @01:02AM
FYI, I've mentioned it a while ago [soylentnews.org] but Murphy's new up-to-date book is out: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions [escholarship.org] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m [escholarship.org]
compiling...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 18 2021, @03:06PM (1 child)
All the technologies that you mentioned come at a cost to the environment
They won't when everything is electric. Any combustion engine can be replaced with an electric motor, which can be powered by wind or sunshine. You're probably not old enough to remember real pollution, unless you're in China or somewhere. When I was a kid, pollution was so bad that driving past Monsanto in 100 degree heat you had to roll up the windows (there was no AC in most cars) because the air would burn your lungs. Rivers and streams caught fire and fishing was prohibited in most bodies of water.
Guess what got rid of the pollution? Laws and technology.
In the 1870s it was predicted that 1970 would have a horrible pollution problem: Horse shit would be up to everyone's knees.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:32AM
Well to be fair the prediction was fairly close. If they had predicted that bullshit would be up to everyone's neck then they would have been spot on!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 17 2021, @10:16AM (6 children)
How much of that is "Big Farmer in the USA"? The EU data looks like only 1/6th of the total, and between the EU and the USA, most of the traditional "rich countries" are accounted for. So it looks like they're just weasel-wording for "USA". (And yes, I did clicky-clicky - the "report" DOI link is a blank page, because on the modern internet 5.0G(tm) a link to a report is no longer a link to a report.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by HammeredGlass on Friday September 17 2021, @02:29PM (4 children)
EU may only make 1/6th of the total, but the EU imports gobs of beef from the U.S.A. as do so many other regions in the world.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday September 17 2021, @02:41PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 17 2021, @04:29PM
Somewhere between 6%-15% of EU beef is imported from the US according to this article (and yes, hormone infused beef is prohibited). [beefmagazine.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @03:10PM
The EU imports very small amounts of US beef, due to the unhygienic practices in US agriculture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday September 17 2021, @03:49PM
According to the EU report on beef trading [europa.eu], the bulk of beef coming into the EU, about 80%, is from South America: Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and more recently Paraguay. My impression is that that beef is cheaper, plus is more likely to meet the EU's standards.
That's not to say South American beef isn't a problem: In Brazil in particular, that beef represents destroyed rainforest.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 17 2021, @04:11PM
I'm not finger pointing. Google tolled me that farm subsidies were passed along party lines and which party was in favor of this damage to people and to the planet. Good job!
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:46AM (4 children)
Look what happens if you actually listen to these NGO loons: Sri Lankan crop failure.
https://news.yahoo.com/sri-lanka-organic-revolution-threatens-030839694.html [yahoo.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @11:49AM
That's part of the plan. Crop failure means people starve, then they die, which reduces their carbon footprint. Eventually, you're left with just a global elite who can eat all the steak they want.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 17 2021, @01:55PM
The well-fed and comfortably air conditioned author of the report likely did not consider that impact.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 17 2021, @04:36PM (1 child)
Awful lot of "coulds" and "mights" in that article!
But what Non-Governmental-Organization are you referring to? This is Sri Lankan government policy so it may be flawed but it's the exact opposite of an NGO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @12:20PM
Hush now! We all know that the frozen windmills is why Texas had no power to thaw the gas plants, or something. It's all the fault of the evil Big Solar and AOC cabal, like that the the American Taliban told me to believe.
And oh wait, FT linked article, they talked about tea. And then they talk about fertilizer.
so, from promising to subsidize to outright banning it... I know, idiots and policies, but that's what you get. Same like knee-jerk reactions here too. In a sane world, you do things like control the amounts that can be dispersed. You mandate that runoff is managed. But in LALALA world, it's either ban or freedom orgies.
Sanity? Anyone?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:49AM (8 children)
Europeans like to make fun of fat Americans and oversized portions, but one thing America obviously has plenty of is food. I think America should completely ignore whatever advice these UN morons are putting out about how to "fix" agriculture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @01:27PM
For now. Add another year of La Nina.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 17 2021, @02:18PM (5 children)
The US restructured our agriculture subsidy programs in 2014 and now the vast majority of those dollars are for crop, disaster insurance, and conservation programs. We still have direct payments and price supports for peanuts and dairy, but they are the exception, not the rule.
(Ignoring the 2020/2021 coronavirus money fountain. I'm ignorant of what was in that can of bacon.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @02:36PM
It included loan forgiveness to farmers--but not to white farmers.
I love how the Biden administration is stamping out racism in America.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 17 2021, @03:19PM
It wasn't so much a can of bacon as a line of Cargo Container Ships delivering 80% of the pork to the 5% most wealthy, because that's how the normal US economy is balanced.
Other countries took other approaches to lockdown aid. Other countries also had different levels of success in containing the virus and preventing additional deaths / to infection related injuries.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Saturday September 18 2021, @02:04AM (2 children)
This is from 2010 showing how farm subsidies are completely inverted from a suggested healthy food pyramid: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/why-a-big-mac-costs-less-than-a-salad/ [nytimes.com]
"The chart was put together by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, but its figures still, alas, look quite relevant. Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of. ... Whatever the cause of the pricing change, there is little doubt that many healthful foods have gotten much more expensive relative to unhealthful ones. David Leonhardt showed this in another remarkable chart, published here last year, that displays how the prices of different food groups have changed relative to their pricing 30 years ago..."
Is it no longer true with the changes you mention?
Other informative links courtesy of "Rosco P. Coltrane" from July 28, 2021 on the bigger picture:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=44093&page=1&cid=1160554#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://modernhealthmonk.com/food-addiction/ [modernhealthmonk.com]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=44093&page=1&cid=1160555#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://www.institutefornaturalhealing.com/2011/04/the-economics-of-obesity-why-are-poor-people-fat/ [institutefornaturalhealing.com]
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 18 2021, @03:27AM
"Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine" is an animal rights group that wants to end ALL animal agriculture. I'm sure that makes them an entirely reliable source...
"Big Macs cost less than a salad" (at least on a per-calorie basis) because of relative perishability of the majority ingredients. You can freeze a hamburger and bun indefinitely; salad fixings last a few days in the fridge. That affects your supply chain costs.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday September 18 2021, @04:40AM
From what I can see outside the paywall that graph wasn't true when it was printed, much less now. Take a look at the 2005 data
2005
https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2005 [ewg.org]
Ignoring the dubious claims there you can see a significant difference if you compare that to 2019.
https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2019 [ewg.org]
We still have a long way to go to wean dairy off of the tax-dollar teat, but we've made fantastic progress.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:31AM
Elsewhere on Soylent News... [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:52AM
...sure we will see this implemented.
[tongue in cheek]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @11:46AM (1 child)
Cow credits. If you like to eat meat, you have to buy cow credits to offset their impact on the environment. If you're a vegetarian, you can buy cow credits for virtue signalling purposes. Win-win.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 17 2021, @04:15PM
Proposed truce: if carnivores who have teeth for eating meat will pay for cow credits, will vegans shut up about it?
And I mean that in a nice way.
Like:
Windows is shutting down . . .
or:
Windows is shutting up . . .
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday September 17 2021, @12:01PM (26 children)
Whatever TFA says is just more fuel for the fire. Farm subsidies are fundamentally evil. I have a number of farmers in my family. The *good* ones don't need subsidies. The bad ones live from them. I have one uncle (now deceased) who made more money being paid *not* to plant than he ever did actually farming.
Then you get stupidies like the whole ethanol adventure: farmers being paid to plant corn that is turned into ethanal to be added to gasoline. The whole process of farming and conversion uses far more energy than you want to know about, but it's a good racket because of the subsidies. Or farmers getting subsidized to plant tobacco, when we've been trying to eliminate smoking. Or rice farmers in California collecting subsidies to plant rice in the desert. The list goes on...
New Zealand eliminated all subsidies a while back. After the screaming from the farm lobby ended, the result was: no problem. New Zealand could pull that off in isolation, because it is an island. For the rest of us: we need a global agreement to eliminate agricultural subsidies entirely. Everywhere. Food prices may rise, but not by much (because that's not where the subsidies really go). What this *will* do is (a) save government lots of money, and (b) remove the insane market distortions that these subsidies cause. Oh, and (c) take money out of a lot of porky pockets.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @01:01PM
Lazy Farmers BAD!
Productive Corps GOOD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @01:24PM (4 children)
Nobody depends on New Zealand agriculture.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday September 17 2021, @01:44PM
Um, well, New Zealanders tend to eat a lot of it...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 17 2021, @02:03PM (2 children)
Surprisingly New Zealand is a net agricultural exporter. This is uncommon for an Island nation.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 17 2021, @06:03PM
Calling New Zealand an island is technically correct, but they are considerably above the average in size, and they aren't a tropical jungle, so there aren't very many similar islands to compare them against.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:35PM
Pretty sure Australia is also a net exporter and also qualifies as an island nation.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 17 2021, @01:58PM (13 children)
Perhaps, but we've got generations of farm subsidies. During which most of what I've heard is that it's needed, so the farmers don't go bankrupt. Then again, so many family farms have been sold. Who's to say the subsidies aren't to blame?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 17 2021, @03:22PM (8 children)
My impression is that family farms are indeed going under to a very large degree. But that's not really what the agriculture subsidies are about: What they do is create surpluses of particular products, which means that distributors and processors have to pay less for those products, which means they can make more money.
A glaring example of this: Corn is a great plant, very tasty, and a staple of North American diets for about a millennium for good reason, but it's actually less calories per acre and less healthy as a staple of a human diet than potatoes. So why is there so much more corn than potatoes in the agricultural areas of the US? Because corn is more heavily subsidized than potatoes. Why is that? Because corn syrup producers, the beef industry, snack makers, and pretty much everyone else who sells things outside of the produce section of the grocery store benefit from cheap corn, and bribe Congress accordingly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 18 2021, @03:50AM (7 children)
Potatoes might be theoretically a better staple crop, but you can't just swap out corn for potatoes. Corn is more tolerant of conditions that are too wet or too dry, corn tolerates heat and drought better, and potatoes need more crop rotation. Corn surpluses are easier to store than potato surpluses; you can harvest corn in its naturally dried-out state and it's good for years. Potatoes last a few months, and then you've got to process them into frozen or dried form, or they rot. I'd hazard that corn has more secondary uses as well (industrial processes, livestock feed, and other non-food uses), plus the stalks and cobs make good livestock feed. Potato harvest is more labor-intensive and less mechanized/automated, and rather more of the crop gets left in the field by the harvesting equipment, just because of random tuber growth. Dunno about field corn, but there are sweet corn varieties that can produce a crop (from planting to dried cob harvest) in as little as 75 days. Potatoes can't do two crops even in a long summer.
Potatoes can also be processed for fuel, but don't know how that compares to corn alcohol, which is already a net energy loss.
Potatoes must be more profitable, because I've noticed that they're the crop of choice wherever they'll produce a good harvest. So might be we're already pretty close to maxed out.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday September 18 2021, @04:50AM (6 children)
It's notable that you can't no-till potatoes. Digging them up is a form of tillage that burns a lot of carbon out of the soil. It's very hard on marginal lands compared to a no-till corn/soy rotation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @04:59AM (2 children)
You can, same way as onions, plant on top of the soil in deep mulch. Many are already done like this to prevent damage and dirt that reduces salability to the people that get disgusted by the smallest blemish.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:13AM (1 child)
They're planted in raised rows not for that reason, but because it's a lot easier to scoop up and process a pile of dirt than it is to dig down into the dirt. Also because both potatoes and onions tend to rot if they don't have good drainage. Bruising (ie. blemishes) damage their ability to keep in storage. Further, potato tubers grow on the stem, not on the root. They need re-burying about halfway through the growing season.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @03:46PM
All this is absolutely true. In fact, (as I'm sure the parent knows) you can get specialty tools on your tractor for precisely this kind of job.
The one point where I think that people are at cross purposes is that heavy tillage (including things like rotary ploughs for setting up your typical potato mounds/rows) is bad news for soil biota, which is not good in the long run for soil health and productivity. Potato can be a solid crop, but keeping your soil healthy definitely begs for either intercropping or extended fallow periods.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:26AM (2 children)
Potatoes are usually grown in raised rows but still need to be seriously dug up to retrieve the crop -- even with the rows above "surface level" there's no tidy way to do that since the crop is IN the dirt. And you can only grow potatoes for about three years before you need to rotate in something less nutrient-hungry (here it's usually wheat, then alfalfa, and when the latter has done its work, you need to plow up the roots before you can plant potatoes again).
And on marginal lands, you don't get much of a potato crop anyway, tho you may get a decent wheat crop (well, with enough fertilizer), but would be better to let it be pasture grass and grow meat on it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday September 18 2021, @07:50PM (1 child)
I feel like this is the biggest thing missing from modern crop rotations. I don't know how you could do regenerative grazing in a scalable way in the many square miles that are modern grain farms, but we need that.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 18 2021, @09:18PM
Out here in the Western Wastes most grain fields are grazed after harvest. Recycles the stubble better than plowing it under, and gets a dose of manure and hooves to break up any crusting. Cattle and wheat generally go together on the same ranch, cuz a lot of the ground isn't arable but wheat makes for more reliable income.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @04:43PM
There's a lot to this, but it's not well understood outside certain circles.
Basically, back in the second half of the last century they figured out the Big is Good, and Bigger is Better. Two reasons: first is that bigger things are more amenable to large-scale mechanisation and consequent efficiencies of scale (we'll ignore here long term inefficiencies related to monoculture practices, soil biota destruction and so on because the USDA did at the time, too). The second reason is that bureaucrats prefer to have a small number of large players to regulate, because they tend to be better about paperwork and easier to track.
They then enacted a series of policies intended to drive consolidation in the industry, and they worked. Small players sold out to other small players, who sold out to bigger players, until a few real gargantuan players dominated the landscape. It's only in the last couple of decades that things started to turn the corner on that logic, and even so it's going in fits and starts.
A large part of the push was just ratcheting up the complexity and intrusiveness of regulation - all in the name of food safety, or environmental protection, or some other feel-good stuff. But they also made it easy for big farmers to get the subsidies, to get the supports and so on. We are where we are by deliberate government choice and action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @05:21PM (1 child)
https://fee.org/articles/why-does-the-federal-government-have-14-billion-pounds-of-american-cheese-stockpiled/#:~:text=The%20United%20States'%20dairy%20surplus,1.4%20billion%20pounds%20of%20cheese.&text=According%20to%20U.S.%20Department%20of,of%2015%20per%20person%20annually. [fee.org]
Basically, we had Milk subsidies, but milk spoils, so we made cheese with the subsidized milk.
Now we have 14 billion pounds of cheese, for... reasons?
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday September 18 2021, @04:53AM
Not to nit pick, but it's 815 million pounds, about 3 months worth of cheese. You're off by orders of magnitude.
https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/70795767w?locale=en [cornell.edu]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday September 17 2021, @06:07PM
Well, my grandfather depended on subsidies to almost break even on his farm, but he made his living as an electrician. Every few years he'd go back to his farm and try to make it at least break even, then he'd go back to being an electrician to get enough of a bankroll to try again. (He didn't have much of a chance, IIRC he had only about 7 acres, perhaps less.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @02:41PM (2 children)
Subsidies might be bad, but there needs to be some way to ensure sufficient supply in a crisis. If allowed to optimize for supply and demand, a slight disruption can result in people starving. Not the end of the world when there's only a toilet paper shortage or a chip shortage, but a food shortage would result in bad times.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday September 17 2021, @03:38PM
The modern agricultural subsidy system in the US came out of a crop insurance program set up in the Great Depression in an attempt to do exactly that. That crop insurance got slowly but surely morphed into something that was paying out every year, rather than taking in money some years and paying out in other years.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:03AM
What do subsidies have to do with sufficient supply in a crisis? My take is that global agriculture is no more reliable or sufficient than it would be in the absence of subsidies. And in the meantime, we're paying more for food than we should.
Or rather that people would be eating food that isn't quite as cosmetically appealing. The enormous waste that naturally occurs in agriculture is hard to overstate.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 17 2021, @03:28PM (2 children)
I have a suspicion that the whole Ethanol for fuel thing is a "flex" on the geopolitical stage to prove that we don't "need" Arab oil, we could convert to Ethanol if we were threatened with a cutoff.
Also, the benefactors of ethanol subsidies don't stop with the farmers and their "inputs" suppliers. I was looking at land in Western Nebraska for potential wind farming. I concluded that competing with T. Boone Pickens was ill advised at the time, but I did notice that land I had been considering at $500 per acre jumped to $2500 per acre in less than a year after the Ethanol mandate for motor fuels passed. I bet there are plenty of friends of Congress who made a mint on that one.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday September 17 2021, @05:27PM (1 child)
Ethanol attracts water and the combination is corrosive. Attempting to quickly replace petroleum fuels with ethanol, even assuming it could be burned in all cases, would be disastrous. Think of failing cars and trucks, heating oil tanks in homes collapsing, etc..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 17 2021, @07:23PM
Oh, I have a 1999 car where the fuel inlet pipe is heavily rusted and I'm pretty sure it's due to the small percentage of ethanol in the fuel attracting water where it normally wouldn't have collected.
Still, there is a huge difference between retooling and retrofitting while we extract domestic petroleum sources as compared to a complete shift to electric or other power sources. Particularly for the military.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @02:09PM (9 children)
Why does the government need this public money for anything. I guess it gives politicians more back door dealing control. One video I found interesting.
Environmentalists Would Buy the Land They Want To Protect, if The Government Allowed It
ReasonTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKVC0ko8ZA [youtube.com]
https://reason.com/video/2021/08/26/environmentalists-would-buy-the-land-they-want-to-protect-if-the-government-allowed-it/ [reason.com]
Sometimes more government and more taxes are not the solution. The government is always complaining about alleged lost tax revenue as if the goal of government should be to maximize tax revenue. It should not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @02:14PM (1 child)
In response to
"repurposing the subsidies to beneficial activities could "be a game changer" and help to end poverty, eradicate hunger, improve nutrition, reduce global heating and restore nature. Good uses of public money could include supporting healthy food, such as vegetables and fruit, improving the environment and supporting small farmers."
from the OP.
Why repurpose the money at all. Why not just return it to those that rightfully worked for it ... the taxpayers. Cut taxes.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 17 2021, @02:20PM
Your dossier has been tagged, subversive!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday September 17 2021, @04:56PM (6 children)
Why does the government need this public money for anything.
Congratulations on making the absolutely most moronic statement I've seen all week, and that includes Facebook. TAXES PAY FOR SOCIETY TO EXIST.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @05:15PM
Thanks for taking one sentence out of context. No one said to abolish taxes altogether. Just that taxes should be minimal, the default assumption shouldn't be that we need to maintain an unnecessary tax and find something to use it for. That's also how back door dealings and government corruption happens.
The default assumption should be that taxpayers should be entitled to the money they earned and taxes should only be levied to offer necessary functions. Taxes should be minimal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:17AM (4 children)
TAXES ALSO PAY FOR DESTRUCTION OF SOCIETY.
For some reason, people forget that corruption, tyranny, and some of the worst incompetence we've ever known are also enabled through taxes. I'd take arguments like yours more seriously, if you would occasionally exhibit awareness of why the anti-tax movement exists. There are a lot of government dumpster fires (say such as a few recent US wars) financed with your taxes that wouldn't be, if less taxes were collected!
Protest ideas like this would be vastly weaker, if the underlying problems were addressed even in a half-assed manner. But ignore it outright for many decades, and there you go - you have an anti-tax movement.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 18 2021, @02:58PM (3 children)
So your answer is to throw out the baby with the bathwater?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 18 2021, @03:33PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday September 20 2021, @04:05PM (1 child)
What's profoundly wrong is that the Electoral College chose George Bush for President (despite the popular vote). You expect fuckups like 911, Afghanistan, and Iraq when you put an incompetent in power. It has nothing whatever to do with taxes, it has to do with the man historians call the 12th worst US president.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 20 2021, @04:39PM
Not at all. Read the US Constitution some time. Look really hard for that section that talks about how the US President is selected by popular vote.
I'm sure it would have turned out much better if Dubya had a few trillion more dollars to play with. Think of all the society he would have created with that!
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Friday September 17 2021, @02:59PM
In this case, Sturgeon was an optimist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law [wikipedia.org]
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @04:04PM (2 children)
Please teach we the unwashed masses how to care for ourselves, oh great globalist overlords,
we await each of your dispensations of wisdom with baited breath. We know we are a horrible
blight upon the Great Goddess Maya. With you guidance, may she gently dispose of us through pestilence and
starvation (war is too scary)! Oh Great Ones in Brussels! Absolve us as we perish and allow
our passing to usher in a New World Order designed and overseen by your most wise council!
Let no more that 500 million of our blight ever trample the Earth again!
A-women!
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday September 17 2021, @05:35PM (1 child)
Properly, it's "bated breath". Bate is a shortened or alternate form of abate. It means withheld or diminished.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 17 2021, @06:11PM
No, in his case "baited" is probably the proper usage. It's likely not an intentional troll, but close enough.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @06:57PM
If there's one thing I've taken away from reading the history of agricultural policy it's this: Move slowly.
Some of the policy disasters seem like they could have been averted if they were tried as small pilot projects first, then phased in if they looked good after that. Don't try to revolutionize the entire system all at once [wikipedia.org], it tends to end badly.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday September 17 2021, @10:13PM
And here I always thought it was the corn/soy fed cattle that made all those green house gas emissions!
To think it was really the beef and milk all this time.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @12:41PM
There is some sort of an instant knee jerk reaction by the alt-right that is fed a steady diet of fake news or Fox News or whatever Freedums. ANY headline that ends with "UN report says" or "Bill Gates" or "Soros" is an instant reaction to attack it without even trying to understand the basic premises or reasons behind it. Maybe the next headline should be "BREAKING: If you live in a rich country, don't get the free COVID vaccine, says a UN report sponsored by Soros" and maybe that way we can easily solve the COVID crises as 10s of millions get vaccinated overnight.
Food for thought, no subsidies required.
It's probably true since the subsidies are quite anti-free market and mostly aimed at getting votes and rather than helping local populations. As for the US, the direct to farm subsidies are much more ad-hock and as a knee-jerk reaction to the China trade war which result in even more waste than the EU subsidies.
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2021-farm-subsidies-ballooned-under-trump/ [ewg.org]