JACOB T. LEVY WRITES IN THE NEW REPUBLIC:

Agricultural protectionism–the combination of quotas, tariffs, and subsidies for farm products–may be the purest example of destructive special-interest politics ever created. . . .

Still, the costs agricultural policies impose on their own societies are manageable in the huge economies of the developed world. The costs they impose on the rest of the world are often devastating.

Yes. This is why they should be abolished. As the Nebraska Guitar Militia sing:

They’re just payin’ us to live here
Payin us not to go
Bribin’ us to take the place of
Sioux and Buffalo

Or, as elsewhere in the song, “Other folks get welfare, but we get ‘aid’ — don’t care what you call it man, long as I get paid.”