I actually disagree with the premise -- the subsidies themselves are not per se a symptom of the corruption etc., but the fact that so many people are dependent upon them is. Any country with poor people in it should take steps to ensure that those people have enough to eat. Ideally, yes, we'd like countries without poverty, but there aren't very many of those.
Hi, your writing is muscular, and incisive.
(sound of limp, vague, girly spluttering)
And if your local agricultural industry can't survive without subsidies, you should really be doing other things than farming. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Since most developed countries consider food independence as worthy to defend, they subsidize their own agriculture. The end result is that any local farming sector needs subsidies to survive, and even more to develop and become more productive.
Of course, thanks to the Washington consensus which followed more or less the principles you put forward, agricultural development was stuck, and even reversed, for much of the 80's and 90's. And, well, famines happened. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
