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Originally Posted by Rekna
You are incorrect here. The US would gladly give away the grain but the other countries won't accept it. Accepting it would destroy their local economies. That is why we are waisting it. We over produce because we want to keep farmers making food so we never have food shortages. The last thing we want to do is become dependent on forgeign food.
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See the very large article farther up this thread. The gov't has had subsidies since the Depression, but in the '70s they changed the rules to give a subsidy for _every bag of corn you could produce._ Up until then, there had been limits on how much of your production the subsidy would cover. Like, you had 1000 acres and you were allowed to plant up to 500 in corn to get the subsidy. You could plant the other 500 as well in corn, but without the subsidy. Under the new rules, everybody could plant all their acreage in corn and still get the subsidy. So now we have 'way more corn than we need.
The old way -- limited subsidies -- worked fine. But there was a temporary grain shortage in the early '70s because of heavy exports to the Soviet Union which shot up food prices, and Nixon changed the system to maximize production, at the cost of billions in tax dollars per year. I wouldn't have minded if he changed the subsidies on a temporary basis, but he made it permanent.
Our current system is wasteful and produces 'way, 'way, more corn and other basic grains than we would ever need, even for emergencies.