American Agriculture Needs a Free-Market System Essay -- Argumentative

American gardening Needs a Free-Market SystemThe words to the celebrated old childrens song Old MacDonald Had a Farm are due for a revision. The new lines should read Old MacDonald had a work . . . with a lawyer here, and an accountant there, and everywhere a new national program and regulation. Not quite as poetic, but definitely more(prenominal) appropriate. The current state of agribusiness consists of an incredibly complex mix of subsidies, harm supports, and bureaucratic regulations that could confound the approximately knowledgeable business minds. Underlying this twisty web of rules and regulations are political battles that pit normally allied groups against individually other, and bring normally adversarial groups into allegiance. One bizarre outcome of federal farm policy is that consumers and tax-payers (usually one and the same) are set at cross-purposes. In this paper, I entrust highlight some of the unusual policies that exist today and forget try to presen t some rational alternatives to alleviate the nightmare that is U.S. agribusiness. E...I...E...I...Ohhhhhhh..... The fall in States Government and agriculture have had a working relationship for most of the twentieth century. In 1916, Congress established the Federal Land cashbox to provide farmers with easier access to credit. Then, during the Great Depression, many New Deal programs came to the attend to of the farmer (Rapp, 1988). A system of price supports and production quotas was established to check up on price stability. For the first time, farmers were being told not to grow as a good deal as they could. After World War II, the organisation found that prices were a very difficult thing to stabilize, so it focused its attention on income supports. That is, it attempted to guarantee a farmer ... ... prosper, age those who are marginal will not continue to be a drain on the economy. We cannot continually advocate free trade around the world (the GATT talks) wh ile protecting our farm industry at home. I believe that when the government gets out of the food-growing business, farming efficiency will increase, consumers will benefit, and the economy will be better for it. And after the shakeout, Old MacDonalds son or daughter will have a chance for greater prosperity. References Rapp, David. How the U.S. Got Into Agriculture and Why it Cant Get Out. Washington, D.C. Congressional Quarterly, 1988. Rawlins, N. Omri. Introduction to Agribusiness. Englewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall, 1980 Robbins, William. The American Food Scandal. New York William Morrow, 1974. Tweeten, Luther. The Economics of Small Farms, Science 219 (4 March 1983) 1037-41.