Farm Income is Soaring – Maybe Its Time to End Farm Programs and Subsidies

But Where to Find the 'Free Market'  Politicians to Do So?

A combination of factors, world economic growth, freer markets, biofuels and the like have made working and owning a farm a very good business decision.

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Farm Income Is Projected to Be Highest in 40 Years

By MARK PETERS

CHICAGO—Federal forecasters expect U.S. farm income to climb this year to its highest level in 40 years as crop production rebounds from a deep drought and prices farmers fetch for livestock and poultry rise.

The Department of Agriculture projected in a report Monday that net farm income in the U.S. will reach $128.2 billion in 2013—the highest since 1973 when adjusted for inflation and the highest on record on a non-adjusted basis.

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So gosh, maybe the time has come to look at all those farm subsidies that were enacted in the 1930’s to help struggling individual farmers.  Maybe the time has come to return the agriculture sector to the forces of the free market, free of government intervention.

The question, though, is where would we find politicians or a political party whose philosophy supports free markets without government intervention?  Republicans?  No, they are two busy lobbying for support from the Federal government for their farm and agricultural states electorate.  The battle in the Republican Party over agriculture is not the battle to end the programs, it’s the battle of directing aid to the South, for rice and cotton vs. directing aid to the Midwest for grains.

So just like the people they decry, everyone can find the Republicans feeding at the trough of farm support from the Federal government.  And they wash it down with a nice full glass of hypocrisy.