Last updated on July 14, 2013
This raises a question: Why are lawmakers so willing to vote for farm subsidies — even lawmakers who usually oppose government spending? …
One theory is that money explains it all. Wealthy agribusinesses are somehow paying off Republicans to vote their way. …
Not everyone’s convinced by this, though. In a recent working paper (pdf), Duke University economist Marc Bellemare and political scientist Nicholas Carnes came up with a better reason for Congress’s ag-subsidy love. Farmers and farm owners have disproportionate political sway in key districts. …
Bellemare tells me that he expected agribusiness lobbying to have the biggest impact on various farm votes before they did the study. But that wasn’t the case. Pressure at the polls turned out to be the key factor.
That’s Brad Plumer on the Washington Post‘s WonkBlog in a post about why Congress supports agriculture.
The day before, Lydia DePillis quoted me in a Washington Post WonkBlog post of her own, about why the US does not have much of a quinoa industry:
[Corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar, and other staples] have their own corporate lobbying associations, government subsidy programs, and academic departments devoted to maintaining production and consumption. Against that, a few researchers and independent farmers trying to increase quinoa supply don’t have much of a chance.
“This is something where it would truly have to come from the demand side–no one wants to get into this and get stuck with all this excess inventory,” says Marc Bellemare, an agricultural economist at Duke University. And how do you determine how much demand is enough, or whether a fad has staying power? “We still haven’t fully unbundled what the decision bundle is. It’s like shining a flashlight in a big dark room.”
That’s why it’s hard for any new crop to make the transition from niche to mainstream. Products, maybe: Soy milk is ubiquitous now, after years as a marginal hippie thing, but it comes from a plant that U.S. farmers have grown for decades. An entirely new species is something else altogether. “I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that’s a non-staple that went big-time,” Bellemare says.