The US government has been doing this forever. For example, meat and dairy farmers are heavily subsidized. They couldn’t survive if they weren’t subsidized.
For example, meat and dairy farmers are heavily subsidized.
They’re subsidized to regulate productivity. You don’t want large fluctuations in the supply of staple goods, so you offer a price floor that’s cost of production + vig to guarantee a certain volume of retail surplus.
If you want to get extra fancy, you turn the excess into a good that you can preserve for long periods (excess milk turned into Government Cheese) that you can then store in the event of a supply contraction or dole out abroad for goodwill as material aid.
The only real caveat is that you need the agricultural property owned by actual working people, rather than some enormous private conglomerate or trust. The goal is to guarantee a steady supply of his that still offers gainful employment, not to create a massive shareholder give away for folks who will still fuck with the supply chain
The US government has been doing this forever. For example, meat and dairy farmers are heavily subsidized. They couldn’t survive if they weren’t subsidized.
They’re subsidized to regulate productivity. You don’t want large fluctuations in the supply of staple goods, so you offer a price floor that’s cost of production + vig to guarantee a certain volume of retail surplus.
If you want to get extra fancy, you turn the excess into a good that you can preserve for long periods (excess milk turned into Government Cheese) that you can then store in the event of a supply contraction or dole out abroad for goodwill as material aid.
The only real caveat is that you need the agricultural property owned by actual working people, rather than some enormous private conglomerate or trust. The goal is to guarantee a steady supply of his that still offers gainful employment, not to create a massive shareholder give away for folks who will still fuck with the supply chain