Europe also does some very heavy subsidies. Without subsidies, a lot of farming just goes away due to the uncompetitiveness in labor vs the southern hemisphere. The Amazon would be replaced completely with farms for rich countries. It's not surprising that countries just don't want so much of the country basically depopulating.

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Ericson2314 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Good points.

Need more legal immigration, and paying Brazil, etc. not to farm there. Better to do that than subsidize farmers.

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ahmeneeroe-v2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Why is that better?

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Ericson2314 4 days ago | parent [-]

What are we trying to accomplish? I think:

- Use arable land where it exists, not just where the cheapest labor is

- Don't do deforestation or other such things

I would like policies that directly address this:

- Legal immigration fairly moves the people the arible land, rather than moving the farming to the cheap people. The goal would be in 200 years there is enough economic development and immigration that there is no longer global scale labor arbitrage.

- Paying to protect the land we directly care about directly protects that land, and removes the incentive to farm there after all. (If you farm there, you loose the preservation rent.)

Farmers in brazil are notoriously far-right-wing, just like else where, and so paying the gov to not farm has other return-to-center-and-sanity benefits too.

	▲	ahmeneeroe-v2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't want to play your utopia-seeking/political games (punishing "far-right-wingers" in Brazil is a huge lol). Our current system produces a successful harvest (and surplus) for us every year, so I'm gonna stick with that.

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nsksl 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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