Hugely in favor of their being no farm bill what so ever. To play devils advocate, would we have to have tariffs on imported food? Otherwise won't ag land be converted into other subsidized industries posthaste?
Discussion
This seems to be a consistent problem. The incremental creep of government policies or even our own personal choices and the incentives and environments they “nurture” (self effect). How do we find away out? Is it incremental or is drastic? And all the risks associated with both. I guess i just had a reactionary opinion without any true idea to a better solution. I’m just in such an antigovernment mood as of late! That sometimes makes me stupid.
I definitely think your perspective is correct. Possibly you could couple the end of subsidies with a timelock (10-30years) for zoning changes from ag to something else on ag zoned properties. That would have the simultaneous affect of dropping the cost of farm land, which we need currently cuz the young generations can't afford farm land these days.
That might further exacerbate the housing crisis, but if we actually closed the fucking border maybe not. Since ending oil subsidies at the same time would likely decrease suburban demand, maybe counties and municipalities would be willing to fool with their zoning in innovative ways to spur more village creation, but the boomers can't be trusted to do this bc they're the rent seeking generation.
Could also do something cool where the feds override local zoning codes for ag to make them temporarily less restrictive, for example permitting ag properties to build unlimited housing if it's inhabbitted by family and mobile tiny houses if not related. That'd get us back to multigenerational farms (incentivizing boomers to take lower profits on their homes and build a retirement home on their child's farm) and create the workforce needed for regenerative agriculture.
There is so much innovation that could be done if the ag subsidies ended that the right states and counties could definitely capitalize.