The Financial Times reports that “U.S. farmers are heading for their most profitable year on record despite the worst drought in half a century as high grain prices and payouts from a federal crop insurance program compensate for a smaller harvest.” Higher profits are great—when they come from real market …
This past year, the USDA produced a couple of lengthy research reports (here and here) concluding what others have also documented: The federal government’s drive to increase ethanol use has created an environmentally hazardous production cycle in the name of renewable energy that is neither affordable nor clean. The Renewable …
House leaders on Tuesday proposed a drought relief package for ranches, orchards, and nurseries as a substitute for the massive five-year farm bill that has been stalled for weeks in the deeply divided chamber. But the very same flaws that have sidelined the omnibus farm bill—lavish subsidies and perverse incentives …
Were we directed from Washingtonwhen to sow, when to reap, we should soon want bread. – Thomas Jefferson The federal government hasn’t stuck its nose into when to plant crops (yet, anyway), butJefferson’s warning is worth remembering as another farm bill chugs through Congress this year. Federal lawmakers are planning, yet again, to …
Last week, The Heritage Foundation reported on a 15-cent fee the Obama Administration’s Department of Agriculture planned to impose on certain sales of Christmas trees to support a new federal marketing program. Not 24 hours later, following an uproar of opposition, the White House announced it would delay its Christmas …
Paul Krugman recently lamented the fact that in recent years, “manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline.” His analysis, though, misses the mark. He reached this conclusion because “in the 1990s, U.S. manufacturing employment was more or less steady. After 2000, however, it entered a steep …
