How do agricultural policies affect the local and global market?
Over the past 10 to 12 years, I’ve spent a majority of my time peripherally involved with the U.S. Farm Bill. And we at the IATP have been leaders in pointing out some of the dumping issues of U.S. farm prices. In the 1980s, both in the United States and elsewhere, farmers were suffering from low prices that were well below what the market should bear in terms of the cost of producing corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice — the basic commodities. U.S. agricultural policies have helped drive down the price of commodities so low that it has created a lot of problems for U.S. farmers, and the way we make up for that problem is with the government payment program. So it costs taxpayers quite a bit to support such low prices. And what has largely gone unforeseen is how the dumping — that is, selling agricultural commodities well below the cost of production — on international markets has had a tremendous impact on farmers around the world, because there is no way they can compete with these d
