Personally I want new or well maintained equipment for every farmer, barns in good shape with new roofs, crops rotating regularly, everything painted, lubricated, and running smoothly. The old saying "any civilization is only three meals from anarchy" is true. What would happen to us if there were no domestic food production, and we relied on import with the way things are now?

All good points, but current agricultural subsidy policies tend to reward pure size and overproduction rather than environmentally sustainable practices, particularly in the cotton and sugar industries. And there is no question in my mind that both EU and American intransigence on this issue chokes African and 3d world agrarian development by supersizing them out of the market

Yes, in that sense it is a cruel way to control developing countries who's only trade is in agriculture. I don't think that's the rationale though. I don't object based on the impact on my taxes, though. I reserve that ire for the military industrial complex. Edit: Thanks for a good post, BTW

I never ever try to imagine the actual allocation of my tax dollars to federal agencies or programs. I would have hung myself after Bush was re-elected if I maintained a strict Paulist (Dr.& Not Apostle) view of the world. Ag has become an industrial complex, sadly, and subsidies tend to feed the beast and pass over the small farmer. At the same time, it would be extremely irresponsible to pull all forms of government support from what is often a cruel and difficult way of life.

Discarding this video. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 4 days.

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The other side of the coin...

http://www.videosift.com/video/Eleni-Gabre-Madhin-Building-a-commodities-market-in-Ethiopia

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Promoting this video out of the discard pile and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 3:46pm PST - promote requested by Farhad2000.

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This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.