Virtually every country in the world subsidizes its farming sector for domestic and also geopolitical reasons. Domestic, because food shortages are the quickest way to political instability and revolution. And geostrategic, because a high dependence on food imports is a catastrophic and exploitable weakness for any nation.
It's often subsidized to help it be more robust to larger scale things like a famine, dust bowl, etc. Farmers increasingly asking for subsidies because the larger fiscal picture of our economy has squeezed the hell out of farmers, seems more a leading indicator that all industries are facing it. I think the problem is you have regular residential homeowners dipping into the farmer tax credits by doing little s*** like removing a little buckthorn or planting some native saplings that never grow.
It's actually quite absurd to think the US could have a food crisis given our territory. But our leaders have managed to make it happen before
This post was edited by RedFromWinter on Jun 7 2026 05:14am