Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fulafel 2962 days ago
Agriculture is already heavily regulated and inspected in terms of such things at least in the EU, owing to the fact that farmers get most of their income from subsidies and these are predicated on various terms.

Of course, it would be much simpler to just stop the nonsensical subsidies of environmentally and ethically disastrous ag products like beef...
1 comments
tengbretson 2962 days ago
> owing to the fact that farmers get most of their income from subsidies

Where on earth do people get these beliefs?

link
gowld 2961 days ago
Depends on how you count, and if "income" is "revenue" or "profit".

~$200B/yr in subsidies in USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_farm_bill

$990B/yr food GDP in USA: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

link
fulafel 2961 days ago
In my country it's 50+ %. While the EU paid direct cash subsidies are high, they only scrape the surface making up about 25% of the subsidies.

On top of the EU sibsidies there are direct national subsisidies and a wide spectrum of indirect national and EU level subsidies like export, pension, environmental, protectionist import duties, etc. And yes, beef production gets a similar share of subsidies as other types of farming.

I can't find good europe wide stats. I may have overgeneralized and the average may be under 50%. But the subsidies are still very high.

link