Perhaps one of the great proponents of contemporary industrialized
agriculture out there can explain for me why, if this system is SO
efficient, it gobbles of billions of dollars of subsidies every year. These
come in the form of subsidized water (especially California, whose farmers
pay pennies on the dollar for all the water they get from huge federal
projects), direct subsidies (corn, soybeans, and cotton, especially),
indirect subsidies (federal government mandating the use of
energy-inefficient corn-based ethanol, while at the same time taxing
imported but more-efficiently produced sugarcane ethanol), and import
tariffs (everything from avacadoes to sugar). All of these things take money
from the consumer/taxpayer and hand them directly to large corporations and
wealthy individuals (and on occasion, an actual farmer!) to support this
so-called "efficient" system. If all these government supports vanished,
whose food would be expensive? It's possible that industrially-grown food
would still be cheaper, but I think we would find the gap a great deal
smaller.

In my mind, there is no question that the free market is the most efficient
and effective means of allocating our resources and production. However, it
is important to remember that commodity agriculture is anything but a free
market. 

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