Radley, either you misunderstood my comment or you just didn’t address the main point. I’m not suggesting a government controlled farming industry, we all know how poorly that works. However, gaurantees of a minimum price for a commodity which is above the market value will help create an oversupply. In a free market, when an oversupply occurs, the price of the commodity collapses and causes some suppliers to quit, which then usually leads to a period of scarcity. Are you ok with occasional periods of scarce food or do you not believe that would happen?

And even more:

This is it in a nutshell:

Assertion 1: A Free market, while the best economic system, are still imperfect(for a lot of reasons) and result in boom and bust cycles.

Assertion 2: Therefore, if you want to smooth out the busts, some perversion must be undertaken.

Assertion 3: This perversion will likely result in suboptimal allocation of resources(too much food, lower efficiency, higher cost). In certain cases, that might be preferable to enduring the bust cycle(too little food).

Yes, the boom–bust cycle is now a result of the free market system! I can see our libertarian blagging is doing no good with the dumb masses. And yet they still get to point their guns at us but we don’t at them…