Something going on for 60 years doesn't mean it's a good thing...it could just mean that elected leaders tend to be terrible when it comes to inaction on things that could create meaningful change lol.
I listed out several reason for why corn subsidies are a bad idea, I went into much more detail in my post above, but there are some real problems with encouraging farmers to use a disproportionate amount of their available land for the over-production of a crop for which there's a lower direct-consumption demand that doesn't offer a whole lot in terms of nutrition.
This article makes a lot of those same points
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...642a3c-9434-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html
When there's less land to be used for other healthier vegetables that actually do have a larger public demand, it shrinks the supply of those vegetables thus raising their prices. Having Broccoli, Carrots, and Spinach being more expensive in order to make corn & soy artificially cheaper isn't doing any favors (outside of merely keeping soy & corn farmers employed)
Another major issue is what's done with the corn surplus in the forms of artificial sweeteners and forcefeeding it to livestock (who should be eating grass). They're dumping corn syrup in everything just because they need to find something do with it.
The original subsidy model introduced in the 30's (that was partially to help stave off the harsher effects of the tough economic environment of the time) was far different than the iteration that was introduced in the 1980's.
Basically, it took much of the risk out of farming corn & soy, but not out of the other, healthier, fruits & veggies.
Since other major corporations are guaranteed buyers of the product (companies that produce things that heavily rely on soy & corn syrup), the government is willing to pay a huge amount of the farmer's insurance premiums. So it became a form of risk management for farmers.
If you look at the article I linked, in terms of direct purchase price for the crop itself for direct consumers (IE: people who just want to buy some corn to eat as a side dish), the subsidies only drop the price by around 5% for us - so we pay 0.95 for corn instead of 1.00.
The major benefactors of that are the corporate purchasers of corn who want to use it for things like high fructose corn syrup.
So it's not a case where these subsidies are hugely benefiting American food consumers, it's benefiting companies like Nabisco when they want to get their raw materials cheaper when they're producing Teddy Grahams.
Or another way of looking at it, our farm subsidy model more closely resembles corporate welfare to companies like Nabisco and Kellogg than it does actually creating lower food prices for American consumers buying produce at the grocery store.
