Agriculture isn't the best example. Agriculture provides for people's livehood. It's the actual industry that national security depends upon. Which is why so many countries subsidize agriculture, it's not a economical decision at all in any regard.
Technology isn't the best example. Technology provides for people's livelihood. It's the actual industry that national security depends upon. Which is why so many countries subsidize technology. It's not an economical decision at all in any regard.
You literally die without food in at max 21 days. Suppose food supply chain got cut because of war or pandemic, you have to be able to supply food locally.
This is not a pure economical issue because it's not about efficiency, it's about have some redundancy so when things get hard, one won't just be starved to death. Afterall, it takes time for the market to adjust itself and without food, there won't be time.
If we are talking about End of the World level conflict, then yeah no preparation would mean anything, but that's not the case for most of the conflicts, if any since WWII, aren't they?
And TBH, following that reasoning, that there is nuclear bomb, ground force should be cut to save cost and tax money too.
Yes, if you are a country that only wants to protect their homeland, cutting your ground forces as a result of nuclear bombs and ICBMs is perfectly rational.
Say that you are a citizen of a country endlessly threatened by invasion from a foreign power. Is it more important for you that your country has the nuclear bomb, which means your likelihood of being turned into glass falls from 50% to 0.1%, or that your country has greater control of agricultural production, meaning that in case of disaster you won't have to pay fortunes for imported food and cut your consumption? I'd say in this case the nuclear bomb is more important.
Also, we didn't see End of the World level nuclear destruction of any country because all the great world power developed the Nuke. The US Army very seriously considered using nukes in the Korean War as well as had plans for the invasion of the USSR (See : Operation Unthinkable and Operation Dropshot). The only reason these plans weren't carried out is because the USSR and China sacrificed very heavily in order to develop their technology and achieve technological parity with the West.
Tell that to the Lebanese. After the Beirut explosion took out the nation's largest grain depot (half of it got blasted to shreds by the explosion, the other half was contaminated) and the entire infrastructure of their dominant port, they're squarely fucked.
