>
> The Cancun negotiations seem to offer a pretty stark refutation of the
> idea of the productivity of high-tech agriculture. If it's so productive,
> why do American cotton farmers -- the most highly technologized in the
> world -- need massive subsidies to keep dirt poor Malian peasants on small
> plots from eating their lunch?
>
> Michael
>
Maybe this was your point, and I'll be embarrased if it was, but I always thought that the reason for subsidies was to keep farm production low enough so that it would be still profitable to sell food. I've brought this up before, but I remember the CBC reporting a while back that a lot of Canadian farmers had to destroy their livestock because the price of pork became too low.