What's that got to do with the price of free range beef in Philly?

[nancylebov]

So I go to the farmer who'd got really good beef at phenomenal prices ($7/pound for most roasts), and practically nothing is below $9/pound.

I ask politely, and he says that the subsidies for grain are what's doing it. Even though he doesn't feed grain to his animals, they've driven up the price of land so much that it's affecting him. I'm not sure how, maybe by way of what he has to pay for loans.

I want those subsidies gone. They might have felt reasonable after the depression, when the big deal was making sure people got enough calories. However, it's turned into a monster, and I expect the same thing would happen if there were subsidies for fruits and veggies, "organic" food, free range meat, and/or locally grown food.

Comments

Re: A Couple of Things

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I agree its not just a contrast. We have a beef shortage. Cattle are raised in a cycle, and it generally takes beef cattle several years to reach the point where they get slaughtered (aside from those marked for veal). To save money on feed and keep the cattle plump enough for sale, ranchers eliminated a significant portion of the supply that should be available now. It's not here to meet demand, so meat goes up -- in absolute terms not just relative to the lower price previously.

I want to see ag subsidies eliminated because they largely go to industrial farms, are not needs tested, and encourage bad policyn of farming where not needed. On top of that, our ag subsidies have been found on several occasions to violate our obligations under the WTO and are a source of friction between us and developing nations trying to compete in the global market. Our subsidies are a "non-tariff barrier to trade" because they allow our growers to dump agricultural goods in the world market. We get rather annoyed about this when China does it with steel. Brazil gets annoyed when we do it with cotton, and Ukraine gets pissed when we do it with wheat.