[consensusform]

The second link here is a deeply biased political position advocacy opinion piece, so it's a little bit onerous to 'refute' because every section is sort of a misleading half-truth. (I'm not sure what the best example would be, but I'm sure you've read something before where an author was cherry-picking statistics or casting factual elements in dishonest light so that they could support their stance, whether that was about vaccines or immigration or encryption or guns or whatever).

One thing that it does get right, is the section "they induce overproduction, inflate land prices, and harm the environment" which is absolutely true. My point in my previous post was that this systemic overproduction is to the benefit of corn buyers (cattle production, food processors, etc) and the detriment of corn producers.

In essence, the aggregate result of the myriad laws and programs impacting agricultural production is that grain producing farmers are left sitting helpless on a knife's edge. The only way to avoid bankruptcy is to pump your land full of petrochemicals to maximize yield. ARC is based on revenue, not profitability- it's encouraging high-cost, high-yield farming practices to guarantee plentiful grain supply to buyers. PLC is even more brazen- after completely distorting the true market price for animal feed by forcing grain growers to overproduce, we let them buy corn for less than it costs to grow and then force the farmers to rely on an insurance payment that's just enough to cover their debt & tax payments.

Basically, the grain producers are pawns in the ag subsidy game and the grain buyers are the kings.