Let's see, one of the benefits is probably that we're not all starving to death right now. Not sure if there are others.
I guess you could get rid of it to save every American 5¢ annually and trade that for a chance of a future rice disease wiping out our crops. That might make sense, in the same way that the Texas electric grid is very efficient.
Just wait until the populace at large finds out what is happening to their bananas. People will be screaming about why there was no American Banana Bureau Association
Where is the evidence it prevents starvation? Most of the crops in the US are wheat, soybeans, and corn. The rice crop is negligible. They could use that in other crops.
There is no proof of that, the fact that most crops are destroyed to prevent food prices from crashing and how milk farmers are pouring their milk down the drain is proof to the contrary.
Dairy producers in wisconsin dump milk and put artificially short ‘sell by’ dates on their packages because they need to maintain a regular flow of product out the doors (and cash flow in) to maintain their operation. Milkers don’t keep producing milk if they aren’t milked regularly.
Whether or not the US funds rice research because poor allies can’t seems completely disconnected.
That is an example of waste, the US has so much wasted crops they make HFCS from corn and biodiesel from it, there is no shortage of the big 3 crops, nor is there evidence these institutions do any worthwhile work. They gave Japanese wheat during WW2 and the Japanese invented instant noodles. There is no evidence of any benefit of this rice research, and nobody has proven otherwise.
You’re absolutely right that milk dumping, corn syrup, biodiesel are examples of waste, but they are market choices. Overproduction assures supply and keeps food prices low. It’s terrible for all sorts of other reasons; I just find it curious that you are lumping all these issues in with your objection about agricultural research. Ag is a huge field and industry. They’re not all the same problem.
You might be right that I’m lumping it incorrectly. The subsidies are the biggest problem, and I am suspecting that the subsidies fund this research, the Harber-Bosch process is the biggest driver for high crop yield as far as I know. Even without any of these institutions the US had never had a famine, so I don’t see their benefits
I am saddened that they oppress native crops and also prioritize yield over long term farming such as wasteful crop rotation, and I haven’t seen signs of their benefits.
I’m not against government intervention or “public good” but when I don’t see any signs of it, I’m suspicious of it as not only wasteful but harmful.
Fresh milk is wasteful, we could move to powdered milk, ultra pastuized, or the Canadian model but as long as subsidies exist they will continue this non green and wasteful spending. My point is the market choices are only existing as subsidies exist.
I don’t disagree with your
general concerns around subsidies; however, I am from, and reside, within an agricultural region - and count among my family and friends conventional, urban, and permaculture farmers - and I do believe you are taking an incomplete and too narrow a view here.
Do you care to explain or show me a resource I can get a better understanding of? I know friends of friends who are farmers and the only thing I know are that farmers are pretty high tech and educated, they grow according to subsides, and a lot of their friends growing up died in random accidents around the farm.
Well, no, we've already got rice. Maybe these people are making it better, but just the fact that rice is valuable doesn't justify anything on its own.
