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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (267560)	1/8/2006 4:15:49 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 1574040

What do you see as the shape of "globalized agriculture" if we ended subsidies and tariffs and other countries ended theirs? Oh there would be change! For the USA, things like sugar and beef would see lots of competition. Europe is worse than the USA on ag tariffs. So the third world would benefit greatly, but largely because their GDP's are so small compared to ours. There would be a lot more pressure on processed foods (canned fruit, veggies, meat, etc), since they lack timing and transport constraints that fresh produce requires. In the USA there would be a long term reduction in commodities produced, to the point that the remaining acrage was profitable. Most of those squeezed out would be smaller operations, i.e. the sacred family farm. There would be political repercussions. On the plus side, I think that many small farms might turn to innovation and chase niche markets to survive. That would be good for the the industry in general. There might even be some progress on improving the fraction of retail food price that farmers receive vs. retailers, which is a very significant issue.