rainfall percentages past 3 years, page-39

gcadenaz,

It feels like you've made an initial assertion but are moving the goalposts halfway through the argument to some other fancy. I don't think Israel's productivity was the intitial jist of your talk.

Even if the govt (taxpayers) were to subsidise payments for farmer training and technological improvement, that in no way would mitigate the need for existing subsidies (as per the figures you listed) to account for flat price risk, currency, emerging 3rd world competition, inputs costs etc. Even being able to bin a crop each year, eliminating natural disaster risk, increasing productivity etc is far from enough to make a farmer profitable on a consistent basis.