Agriculture

Trimming the Department of Agriculture

The Department of Agriculture provides an array of subsidies for farmers and imposes extensive regulations on agricultural markets. It operates the food stamp and school lunch programs, and it administers numerous subsidy programs for rural parts of the nation. The Forest Service is also within the Department of Agriculture.

The department will spend $148 billion in 2015, or $1,203 for every U.S. household. It operates about 266 subsidy programs and employs 91,000 workers in about 7,000 offices across the country.

Via Downsizing the Department of Agriculture @ Cato.

How Big Rigs the Game Against Small

….Joel Salatin’s Everything I Want to Do is Illegal is a good first stop to learn about how big government and big agribusiness have worked hand in glove to disadvantage innovative smaller farms. Salatin shows in painful detail the way well-meaning but often clueless government bureaucrats serve as the long arm of a rigged system,…

Speech Victories

Efforts to silence residents from speaking on agricultural policy are thankfully failing. Too bad these unconstitutional laws were enacted or proposed in the first place: Laws meant to crack down on farm whistleblowers, commonly referred to as “ag gag” laws, have been drawing fire around the country from various quarters—from animal rights activists to free…

How Ag Gag Laws Suppress Free Speech

Utah and Iowa, among other states, have passed ‘ag gag’ laws to prevent the recording of videos that reveal animal abuse at slaughterhouses.  These private recordings are a consequence of regulatory failure, just as laws to prevent them are proof of political hypocrisy.  If states regulated properly the videos wouldn’t be necessary; likewise, proper regulation…

The municipal war against…vegetable gardens

In America, and places beyond, homeowners’ vegetable gardens have become a target of municipal officials. They’re beautiful, offer fresh food, conserve water, and are peaceful uses of homeowners’ private property: yet for it all, vegetable gardens still offend officials’ laughable sense of what’s appropriate. That appropriateness in this case is little more than a dull…

Boosting Big Farms at the Expense of Small Ones

It’s about as hard as ever to be a small famer in America. Some difficulties are simply a consequence of competition, by which both farmers (compelled to be more innovative) and consumers (getting better goods at lower prices) benefit. Yet, when government, itself, becomes a burden and hardship for small famers, we have tolerated what…

Friday Poll: Raw (Organic) Milk

Wisconsin is prosecuting a dairy farmer, Vernon Hershberger, over his sale of raw milk. Hershberger is representing himself, and his effort to have the charges dismissed has been denied. Should organic milk sales be lawful in Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland? What do you think? Raw (Organic) Milk Poll

Supporting food freedom, and agriculture without government subsidies

Reason interviewed free-market farmer Joel Salatin in an article published on 5.5.12. Two of Salatin’s observations stand out. On deciding what to eat: I think the government should allow this debate to flourish in the marketplace of ideas. The government entered this debate in the early 1970s by publishing the first food pyramid, a guide…