It really depends on your priorities . Do we want our vehicles to run on bio fuel ? Do we want high fructose corn sirup in almost everything we eat or drink ? Do we believe agricultural subsidies to be an effective way for the government to steer the agricultural sector ? My personal answer to all of that would be no . I primarily want the agricultural sector to supply our food . And I dislike high fructose corn sirup , and I almost never eat corn . My secondary priorities are conservationist in nature . Currently , many states are depleting their aquifers , to which the agricultural sector reacts by simply drilling deeper wells . Californians practice little gestures in their house holds to save a few gallons of water here and there while agricultural use of water is orders of magnitudes larger than household use . Reducing chemical fertilizer usage would probably also not harm the pH balance and algae growth in lakes . minimal fertilizer wash off is not currently optimized for in agricultural decision making . So the dirty hippie answer would be to stop subsidies for corn , and if you have to subsidy at all , promote conservationism . The experts can figure out what that means . Maybe crops like sugar beets for sweetener and crops like millet for cereals .