Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JoeAltmaier 2253 days ago
Maybe not "heavily". It was 2B out of a 50B corn crop. So, 4% classed as 'heavily subsidized'? And a large portion of this is in the form of insurance against bad weather/crop loss. Otherwise, we'd have no farmers left in a couple of year (everybody has a crop loss once in a while).

FWIW.
1 comments
wolco 2253 days ago
They invested to get the market to 50b at the expensive of other products that could have been grown. The 2b figure just helps keep the edges from fraying.
link
JoeAltmaier 2252 days ago
If something else had been supported to get that generous crop, we'd be dissing it now. Like VHS vs Betamax, Corn won early and it won big. Not surprising it went like that; so many things do.

Anyway it'd cost trillions to retool for some other staple crop now.

link