re: Let's Talk About the Farm Bill

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I know a lot of farmers who don't care if subsidies all just go away. Market will correct itself.

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I agree that most of these subsidies could go away with the exception of the insurance subsidy. Not one single private farm could afford crop insurance if it was not subsidized. As high as input costs are now one crop failure would bankrupt the majority of big farms if they did not have crop insurance.
The drought 2 years ago would have bankrupted 80% of the large farms in the midwest. If you had 80% of the farms in a single county going out of business it is not like somebody can just jump right in and fill the gap.
Imagine having 4 million dollars invested in a crop and it being a total failure not because of something you did but something you had zero control over. Then the next year you have to come up with another 4 million dollars to put a crop in. That second crop is not going to cover the costs of 2 years.
Without government money there would not be a single crop insurance company.


Let me amend this. Farmers could pay the crop insurance if the price of every single commodity quadrupled overnight without the corresponding increase in production costs. The market could correct this but it would be at the expense of wildly fluctuating prices.