Rethinking Agricultural Subsidies

Late last year one of my students gave an outstanding presentation in defense of US agricultural subsidies, an accomplishment I had not thought possible. Daniel Davies makes the same argument here. Long story short, it’s difficult to convincingly argue that agricultural subsidies have a serious detrimental effect on Third World consumers, as opposed to producers. Given that most third world countries are net importers of food rather than exporters, reduced subsidies in the US and EU are likely to hurt more than help.

This doesn’t get ag subsidies completely out of the woods; they are still allocated unfairly, they still represent questionable subsidization of a narrow economic strata, and they still tend to have detrimental environmental effects. Still, something to think about.