Talk:Agricultural subsidy

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 August 2018 and 11 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Magneto9x. Peer reviewers: Magneto9x.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Deeyanong.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Are European and US subsidies rising or falling?

I have a theory that the rising food prices are due to a decline in food subsidies.

-G

do you have a source? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:37, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Historical Data

Is there a chart somewhere of subsidies in the US and europe and how they are growing/diminishing? It wqould be enlightening to find two areas with oposing policy which could be contrasted and have few other signifigant factors. (Unsigned - October 23, 2006)

Do subsidies really increase prices?

The article contained the following statements:

Others argue that a world market with farm subsidies and other market distortions (as happens today) results in higher food prices, rather than lower food prices, as compared to a free market. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, has argued that farm subsidies have a long term effect of raising global food prices, which in fact harms the poor and increases malnutrition. Countries such as India, Brazil or Argentina have comparative advantage in producing agricultural commodities due to their favorable weather conditions. Shifting production to inefficient countries through subsidies could be one mechanism which raises prices.

Now it really isn't clear to me how farm subsidies could possibly result in higher food prices. While they may be more expensive to produce, their prices still should not be higher than "free market prices", because of the subsidies; the prices are determined by the market (free, or not quite so). Furthermore, I searched a little for those Joseph Eugene Stiglitz arguments, but I could find none. Not surprisingly, as I had read a lot of his arguments, some quite obvious, but nothing to the quoted effect, and I strongly doubt that he has ever uttered such egregious nonsense. (Other than that the hidden clenched iron fist of capitalism may destroy those farmers, perhaps.) How on earth may shifting production to inefficient (less efficient?) countries through subsidies increase prices? --84.47.0.88 (talk) 15:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Somebody added a source for that: "Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, has argued that farm subsidies have a long term effect of raising global food prices, which in fact harms the poor, increases malnutrition, etc.[25]"

Source [25]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/oct/24/stig

However, I've read that article over, and do not see at all how it endorses that claim. In fact, Stiglitz argues the opposite, that subsidies lower prices. A quote: "Subsidies hurt developing country farmers because they lead to higher output - and lower global prices."

Perhaps he, or others, have said that subsidies will increase prices, but you need to find another source for it. And people shouldn't be adding sources for "citation needed"s that refute the claim in question. Since it's been two years w/out an accurate source, I've deleted that sentence and re-added a citation needed tag. --Cwhalvor (talk) 03:12, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Updated Data Needed

Figures for US are from 2004, or 8 years out of date.--Bill Harshaw (talk) 17:51, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Con artists

Appearantly, there are a huge amount of con artists in Poland that collect the agricultural subsidies without actually growing any food with it. These con artists are mostly law firms. See http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/844261-making-killing-organic-food

Mention in article. 109.130.163.110 (talk) 08:19, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

We can hardly blame people for claiming subsidies if the subsidy scheme splashes money around like water. bobrayner (talk) 15:41, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Food Stamps

In the USA food stamps are a surreptitious form of subsidy for farmers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:63:C2A2:AF00:A072:4B94:5D54:B770 (talk) 16:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

United States 2014 Farm Act

Several sources note that the 2014 Farm Act ended the Direct Payments program (at least for corn), and established income caps on farm subsidies. This information seems relevant since decade-old statistics might not paint an accurate snapshot of current US agricultural subsidies (provided that these sources are accurate).

References

As the US section is already rather long and there are more specific articles perhaps you could both update and condense it? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:50, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Neutrality of the artice

In February @Casualdejekyll tagged the article as not neutral with the comment "Since creation, article has been overwhelmingly negative. Whole thing reads like an argumentative essay". Since then the article has been somewhat modified and they have retired from Wikipedia.

I am removing the tag for now but if anyone is having trouble making the article neutral feel free to put the tag back and explain in detail here. Chidgk1 (talk) 08:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)