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Article: Agriculture Subsidies
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
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AGRICULTURE SUBSIDIES
Payments by the federal government to producers of agricultural products for the purpose of stabilizing food prices, ensuring plentiful food production, guaranteeing farmers' basic incomes, and generally strengthening the agricultural segment of the national economy.
Proponents of agriculture subsidies point to several reasons why they are necessary. They claim that the country's food supply is too critical to the nation's well-being to be governed by uncontrolled market forces. They also contend that in order to keep a steady food supply, farmers' incomes must be somewhat stable, or many farms would go out of business during difficult economic times. These ...