Letters

From the January 1990 issue

 Sowing the Seeds of Truth

Carl Zinsmeister’s article, “Plowing Under Subsidies” (Oct.), is exactly what’s needed if our ridiculous farm programs to be corrected. The nonfarm populace must become educated through articles like his in journals like yours. The farm lobby will never discipline itself; the corrective needs to come from the outside.

Don Paarlberg

West Lafayette, IN

The writer is a former assistant secretary of agriculture.

 Carl Zinsmeister’s farm subsidy article in your October issue is the best one on the subject that I have read in a non-farm publication. The government got involved in farming in 1905 with the Agricultural Extension Act and things have been bad for farmers ever since.

It is not the purpose of the farm program to fatten farmer returns but to maintain a plentiful supply of cheap food. The scam is to subsidize a few large farmers by paying them not to produce as long as there are surpluses and to flood the market when supply and demand are in balance. Admittedly, this is oversimplified, but large farm operations benefit more from government programs than small ones do.

Furthermore, subsidized farmers see little or no additional benefit when the government decides to increase farm payments. Instead, equipment, seed, and feed suppliers simply jack up their prices to offset the difference. The unsubsidized guy really gets screwed.

That “the federal government paid for the slaughter of a million cows to support milk prices for the benefit of dairy farmers” is only partly true. A good chunk of that money came from dairy farmers who paid producer assessments. The assessments I had to pay really hurt when I was financially strapped.

The Leo Zilik-Loy Sneary comparison contradicts the article’s purpose. Mr. Sneary is subsidized, Mr. Zilik is not. I’m sure Zilik would dance his heart out if the government upped his gross income by 50 percent with subsidies. If subsidies were eliminated, Mr. Sneary would do very well in the paving business.

After reading Mr. Zinsmeister’s four articles, I hope readers will conclude that all government agencies and programs dealing with farming should be eliminated. 

Dan Burgner

Greeneville, TN

Black and White Comments 

Virginia Postrel’s editorial, “Black and White Issues” (Nov.), is one of the finest pieces of political analysis I have read since Ayn Rand was at her peak. Ms. Rand wrote masterful essays which were morally resolute and highly compelling in their tone of condemnation of those responsible for the general low state of