Subsidies

Subsidies are payments made by governments to certain industries. Their goal is to support economic sectors, because they would not be profitable without them. Farm subsidies primarily aim at keeping the costs of living on a comparably low level. By financially supporting an agricultural sector, governments make sure that consumers only have to pay for a fraction of a product’s actual cost and thereby increase affordability. On the one hand, this ensures that more citizens have access to the most basic groceries. On the other hand, critics argue, subsidies contribute to environmental degradation and public health problems in developed countries and to poverty in developing countries. Apart from that, the question arises why some agricultural sectors are being subsidized while other sectors that also produce ...