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Bill: Agricultural Reform
Details
Submitted by[?]: Progressive Marxist Party
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: May 2091
Description[?]:
| This proposal is to help the modern farmer and increase our nation's agricultural output. The government will encourage small, inefficient or otherwise wasteful farms to merge or cooperate with other small farms or agribusiness complexes. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The government's policy concerning farm size.
Old value:: Farm size is not regulated.
Current: Farms that grow too large are broken up and the land redistributed.
Proposed: Small farms are encouraged to merge together into larger ones.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 17:42:39, August 01, 2005 CET | From | Conservative Party of Telamon | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | No subsidizing, it ruins the market. And leave the farm size unregulated....if it is too big or small don't worry. I'm sure they will know how to deal with it, if they let that happen in the first place. |
| Date | 02:37:39, August 02, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Subsidizing does not ruin the market. It can give the government much needed revenue while providing jobs to the normally unemployed. it helps us to sustain a degree of self-dependence and lowers our reliance on food products imported from other countries. Farms fail commercially all the time, government subsidization helps to keep OUR food on the market. As for farm size, I had expected your support for that one. It definitely supports the private sector. It is placed in there to eliminate the commercially unstable small farms and help pave the way for agribusiness and more efficient methods. This simply helps businesses along. |
| Date | 04:29:09, August 02, 2005 CET | From | Rationalist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Subsidizing agriculture is a huge drain on government coffers (see US) If farmers have a bad year (drought etc.), I see no problem provding emergency aid. Small farms have there place in agribusiness, they are better able to deal with niche marketing (Ontario Ice Wine industry at inception) and tend to be more fluid in their focus. We see no need to kill off those otherwise productive farms by handing their land to those who may be more successful. It is economic speculation on the part of the government, and no more. |
| Date | 08:40:06, August 02, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | The US is not the average. France has subsidized farms for their perfume industry and it has worked out well. Note that supply and demand does come into account, which means that a useless crop farm will still die if there is no demand. As for the niche market, look at the trends in current countries. The niche market is diversfying and expanding. Just because small farms are absorbed into larger farms does not mean that they are brewing a monoculture. Many farms devote themselves to a variety of crops. Absorbing these fgarms simply makes them more viable and helps agribusiness. If one crop's demand is falling slightly, production can still stay up from the other crop profits. Look at how supermarkets beat small businesses because they can keep prices lower on some commodities. |
| Date | 22:13:11, August 02, 2005 CET | From | Rationalist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Niche markets, by definition, do not diversify or expand, then they would be minor markets. And just because farms are smaller does not mean that they are less effiecient, we see no reason to remove small farmers from their land simply because they are small farmers. |
| Date | 03:46:56, August 03, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Niche market- a market devoted to a small group's interests or needs Yes when the aforementioned group expands the niche and its market expands along with it. And when i said they diversified, I meant the number of niche markets is expanding. An example would be a commercial application of Souk, a popular vegetable with immigrant Koreans. If more begin to like this dish or the Korean population growa, the niche market has expanded. And yes, smaller farms are less efficient. They can't afford better equiupment, fertilisers or pesticides. They aree often a monoculture beacuse they could not afford to care for more than one type of crop.. |
| Date | 19:36:53, August 03, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Also encuraging them would not be forcing them off of their land. They would simply be given incentive capital to sell their land and would be provided employment by the new owner of the farm. |
| Date | 00:07:28, August 04, 2005 CET | From | Conservative Party of Telamon | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | I'll agree to this...sure |
| Date | 01:00:32, August 04, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | I changed the description to allow for cooperative farming, where various farmers band together to buy equipment and help each other in times of need. The government will encourage cooperation or full mergers. |
| Date | 08:32:59, August 05, 2005 CET | From | Theological Technocratic Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | I have my doubts about the ecological effects of banding small farms together (increase in soil depletion, erosion, draining the water table, etc.), but if cooperative farming becomes an often-used option, I suppose that most of these problems wouldn't crop up. I'll go ahead and support it, at least for now. |
| Date | 13:36:48, August 05, 2005 CET | From | Progressive Marxist Party | To | Debating the Agricultural Reform |
| Message | Yes, but as said, these farms will have a greater amount of capital and can address any problems. Most intensive farms become artificial by extensive use of nitrates and fertilizers and are no longer a truly natural environment. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 190 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 0 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 65 |
| Random fact: Before choosing a nation, you may wish to research it first. For more information on the cultural backgrounds of the nations, please see the Cultural Protocols Index: http://forum.particracy.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6365 |
| Random quote: "A democracy that does not allow limits is not a democracy. Just as a limitless freedom is not freedom, but prevarication. Indeed, any theory of freedom worthy of this name is first of all a limit theory. If we extend the unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not willing to defend a tolerant society against the attacks of the intolerants, then the tolerants will be destroyed and the tolerance with them! Because, I ask to myself and ask you, given a certain system that we call democratic, which is today the best possible system to allow everyone to live freely and to be able to express their own thoughts, how can the same system admit attacks against its integrity? How can a system refuse the principle of the self-preservation? For this reason, to suppress the apologetics of thalerrism, it's for this reason that the exaltation of exegetes, principles, facts or methods of Thallerism and its anti-democratic aims does not constitute a violation of the freedom of manifestation of thought, but, on the contrary, the celebration of that freedom. The protection of the first premise on which a modern democratic system is based. And this premise must be safeguarded also and above all against itself and its abuses." ~ Malik Astori, Leadership of Liberty and Progress (Istalia) |