The Fabric of Lubbock's Life

Editorial in the NY Times on cotton farming in Lubbock, Texas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/opinion/19SUN1.html

What do you want to bet that all these benefactors of government protectionism are Rethuglican?

Another instance of a red state depending on tax money from a blue state to subsidize uncompetitiveness.

:kick:

snip-

America's cotton farmers are currently at the center of an international outcry against the way rich countries rig the trade game with protective tariffs or agricultural subsidies. "Judging by what's written in some Eastern newspapers you'd think I murdered my parents or something," says Ronnie Hopper, a cotton grower in nearby Petersburg. Mr. Hopper, 57, grows some of the most coveted cotton in the world on a 2,500-acre high-tech farm. But most years his costs exceed the global price, which is why he has relied on nearly a half-million dollars of subsidies since 1995.

"Why do you want to get rid of me?" asked Mr. Hopper, who works hard and plays by the rules as the government sets them. Like many farmers who receive subsidies — a glaring exception to America's ostensible free-market values — he argues that the United States needs some agricultural self-sufficiency and that no cotton farmer could break even at market prices.