ARTICLE: "Cultivating a Business: In New Zealand, Farmers Who Lost Subsidies Fine-Tune Their Trade," by Wayne Arnold, New York Times, 2 August 2007, p. C1.

In 1984 a free-market-focused administration comes to power and essentially ends farm handouts overnight, "something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible." Yes, the farming community was "devastated--but not for long." Ag remains the island's economic life blood, and most farms are "still owned by families." The difference? "Their incomes have recovered and output has soared." Simplest answer? Competition hardened ag in New Zealand, or turned into a "cold hard business" according to a local farm leader. The logic of going cold turkey?

"When you're not going to get paid for what the market doesn't want, you have to get off your backside and find out what they do want,"said Charlie Pedersen, who, when he is not raising sheep and beef cattle on his farm north of the capital, Wellington, is president of Federated Farmers of New Zealand.

But we are told by American experts that the lessons here are minor, since NZ grows primarily to export while America grows primarily for domestic consumption. Me personally, I don't see why that matters particularly. If your market is uncompetitive and you make it more competitive, then the unproductive will be culled--plain and simple. We can all cry about the loss of the archetypal small farmer in America, or we can cry harder for what our subsidies do to keep so many Africans in deadly poverty. Pretending both can be saved by handouts is too wrong-headed for words, so Bono, please meet Willie Nelson. This is not about choosing between "safe" and "unsafe" futures. We have to upgrade our food safety no matter what. The real question is, how much job dislocation is worth Africa's emergence from deadly poverty? Our treasure versus their blood. So yeah, New Zealand's experience is worth checking out.