Food Policy
Michael Pollan has a great long piece in The New York Times Magazine making the case for farm policy reform a vital component of any serious agenda about the environment and public health. A glance at the problem:
Right now, the government actively discourages the farmers it subsidizes from growing healthful, fresh food: farmers receiving crop subsidies are prohibited from growing “specialty crops” — farm-bill speak for fruits and vegetables. (This rule was the price exacted by California and Florida produce growers in exchange for going along with subsidies for commodity crops.)
This is clearly insane. One can debate whether it ever made sense to subsidize agricultural products and whether it really makes sense to subsidize any of them today. But clearly if we are going to subsidize agricultural production, we ought to be subsidizing the production of healthy food. If the money currently spent on making sure that cheap corn and soy are as plentiful as possible were instead redirected to subsidize the production and sale of fresh vegetables, the United States of America could be a much healthier country.
47 Responses to “Food Policy”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 12th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
If the money currently spent on making sure that cheap corn and soy are as plentiful as possible were instead redirected to subsidize the production and sale of fresh vegetables, the United States of America could be a much healthier country.
Well and good, but which congressman is going to be the one to volunteer to face the daily barrage of “Congressman X voted to subsidize arugula!” ads when he’s up for re-election?
October 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
OTOH, growing fruits and vegetables are labor intensive which in practice attract non-skilled labor from 3rd world countries. I don’t think you want to subsidize that.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Danny – The way things are going economically Americans may very well want those jobs now taken by the Jamaicans and Mexicans, etc. We are going to lose a bit of our standard of living in the next few years.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
And I would argue it is time to eliminate all crop subsidies.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Farm policy does tend to based on corporate farming–that results in land degradation, dead zones in the Gulf every summer (and now showing up off the coast or Oregon), contamination of ground water, inferior produce, and bad working conditions.
I’d surely like to see more investment in small organic farms and urban agriculture. City planning and even neighborhood associations is also an impediment to smart land use.
Most Americans could grow all the fresh vegetables and herbs they need for a healthy diet on their lawns. Most lawns are environmentally hazardous, and worthless wastes of space and effort.
We could have strawberries hanging from the rafters.
Whoever labors on organic farms, they and their children will not be exposed to nerve agents, and other toxins.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I don’t think we’re not eating our veggies because of price.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I’m all for agricultural policy reform (CAP has made good progress in recent years), but you will always need to subsidize someone – whether they grow crops, organic vegetables or do large-scale landscape gardening – simply because the land needs to be taken care of. Also, if you want to “buy local”, instead of having your breakfast shipped around the world every day, you have to create economic conditions making that possible.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
It’s really true. Good produce is a food luxury in the U.S. If you’re short on money Ore-Ida crinkle cut fries are going to have to do–you don’t have the cash for the acorn squash.
Of course there’s a pretty awesome alternative if you have it–farmer’s markets, which have usually have inexpensive, very fresh, local produce. Oddly enough farmers’ markets are a lot more common in college towns (elitist arugula eaters) than they are in your average non-college rural town.
“Most Americans could grow all the fresh vegetables and herbs they need for a healthy diet on their lawns.”
This is all true, and I encourage people to try it, but it’s kind of impractical. The time of most middle class people is worth more,and is more scarce, than the time and effort it takes to grow your own potatoes. For people who have developed a taste for vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh herbs, it may be worth it. But your two-income working class family with three kids will find that a poor use of time. David Brooks probably has a book in the works that makes fun of yuppie home gardening.
The better solution would be to have more local farmers who make their living on 5-20 acres of intensive, high-margin produce. High quality, mostly organic produce that doesn’t have to be shipped long distances, grown by people who know what they’re doing.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Most Americans could grow all the fresh vegetables and herbs they need for a healthy diet on their lawns. Most lawns are environmentally hazardous, and worthless wastes of space and effort.
Zoning and community rules against kitchen gardens are faux-aesthetic nonsense.
But there are really important cultural aspects here. KFC has a current TV ad saying ’spend $10 with us because you can’t spend that money at the grocery store to give your kids KFC-style food’. That’s fucking insidious, because it’s basically saying that home cooking should be an attempt to recreate fast food.
(An interesting point of comparison here is Jamie Oliver’s current British series, where he goes up to an industrial city and tries to get people on low incomes who live on takeaways to cook for themselves.)
On the macro side, Pollan has discussed how the corn monoculture in places like Iowa creates a vicious circle, in which it becomes impossible for farmers to diversify because the entire trade infrastructure is arranged around corn, and the only way to stay afloat is to grow more of the stuff.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Take a step back. What you are saying, Matt, is that government agencies have been corrupted by special interests, who seek to use the power of government to transfer your tax money into their high-fructose corn syrup ‘crop’.
How about, instead of talking about how we just need to change what gets subsidized, we just stop subsidizing all of it. Let the price settle out based on the actual costs and the willing buyers – if cost of corn goes up relative to the cost of brussel sprouts, we’ll certainly see more brussel sprouts on America’s tables.
I know, I know. I’m talking crazy. The government’s already so corrupted by special interests that at this point, we’re down to putting band-aids on different bits of the system, and the only choice we get is whether the band-aid has an ‘R’ on it or a ‘D’.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
The key to Fallon’s article for me was the picture he painted of just how dependent our whole food production is on fossil fuels – petroleum. It is totally dependent on cheap fuel and subsidies. The whole of our food system will topple without cheap fuel. That’s the sort of thing that should scare us into drastic rearrangement of how we produce food.
Like the suburbs and exurbs have spawned and need to be rethought with the end of cheap oil (or any oil, for that matter), farming needs the same kind of a new system design. We have years of work to recreate a green system design. It isn’t just replacing the fuel used by our cars and trucks with renewable fuels.
The legacy we are leaving to our planet is scary.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Oops! Pollan not Fallon.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
So say the rich kids who want organic produce. The counterargument to just about every commenter in the thread is that Americans benefit, from the bottom up, from paying the least share of their income for food in the history of the world. Subsidies are a big part of that.
Obviously that’s a generalities that leaves out perversions like the sugar tarriff and excessive subsidies for companies that don’t need it. But the basic aim of the farm program is to 1) insulate farmers from risk, 2) make the US a net exporter, 3) reduce the price of ffood.
If you want better produce, pay for it. Let the market move in your direction. There are certainly some problems with the subsidy system, but at the basic level it helps make food cheaper, it helps make the US food independent, and I don’t think either of those things should be taken lightly. The “end all subsidies” mantra is the stupidest thing that urban pointy heads say. Sure — end all subsidies…. when the Europeans do and when the Japanese do and when countries end their export restrictions and when the playing field is level. Until then, forget it.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
The better solution would be to have more local farmers who make their living on 5-20 acres of intensive, high-margin produce. High quality, mostly organic produce that doesn’t have to be shipped long distances, grown by people who know what they’re doing.
Recent studies have actually posited this is worse for the environment than large scale industrial farming. Industrial farming benefits from the economy of scale — think one big train full of corn or 10 huge trucks vs. 100 pickup trucks driving to farmer’s markets. Wish I could find the study, I’ll post if I can find it.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
But the basic aim of the farm program is to 1) insulate farmers from risk, 2) make the US a net exporter, 3) reduce the price of ffood. If you want better produce, pay for it.
Wait? Why does “if you want better produce, pay for it” apply only to produce? If we’re going to subsidize food via the farm program (and I think it’s a good thing, for food security purposes), there’s no reason we shouldn’t also be subsidizing produce as well as grains and soy. If the government’s going to make food cheap, why should it make only grains cheap? Why not make the sort of food that would be healthy to eat cheap, as well?
In short, why are we taking money out of the pocket of the American taxpayer and then demanding that they pay even more out of their pocket to get a balanced diet? Why not use those tax subsidies to, you know, subsidize the food that people buy?
October 12th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Tyler-
What I’m saying is that you want food that costs more to produce (i.e. organic, locally grown, etc.), then pay for it. It’s really not realistic to transform American agriculture to that model — there will be a great deal less output because of smaller yields, and inevitably costs will go up. Yeah — urban people will be happy that they can get their organic heirloom tomatoes, but what about poor people having to pay a far greater proportion of their income for food?
What we have is a system where food is (relatively) cheap for poor people, and rich people can pay more for specialty items. Urban people are shouting, “Let them eat organic arugula!” Not very realistic.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
“Industrial farming benefits from the economy of scale — think one big train full of corn or 10 huge trucks vs. 100 pickup trucks driving to farmer’s markets. Wish I could find the study, I’ll post if I can find it.”
That sounds plausible. But I wasn’t mainly talking about the environment. I was talking about healthy food. I’m grateful my Wal-Mart stocks good quality, inexpensive bananas, seedless grapes, potatoes and iceberg lettuce. But their string beans, tomatoes, squash, and leafy green vegetables (not gourmet, boutique foods, by any means) are either very expensive or halfway spoiled. The long-distance economy of scale works for some foods but not those that have to be picked when they’re ripe.
I don’t think this is an elitist argument. In the U.S. we’re blessed with low food prices. But when you go into an Amerian grocery store, the cheapest foods are often junk. The vegetable staples of the low-income person’s grocery basket are typically confined to canned corn and canned green beans. Urban farmers’ markets in places like Dupont Circle in DC are indeed geared toward the well-off. But there are at least as many in smaller towns that deliver a better, often cheaper, more healthy product than Wal-Mart’s produce section.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Nathan,
What you’re missing in your “cheap food=good” equation are the negative externalities associated with our insane farm subsidies that are exacted on the American consumer
Of course, I’m talking about the effect this policy has on our health. Cheap corn and soy make cheap soda, cheap meals at KFC (chicken is fed on both), and cheap junk food.
Yes, soda can deliver very inexpensive calories, but would you argue that’s a good thing?
The empty calories lead to a litany of health problems; diabetes, heart disease, and obesity top the list.
We are essentially paying our taxes so health insurance companies can make us pay again when we get too unhealthy from the terrible food we eat.
And why do we buy it? Because it is available, and we’ve been conditioned to enjoy it. And because it is cheap. We remove food subsidies and prices will adjust rationally. That’s capitalism, this is not.
As other commentators have noted, the subsidized corn pushes foods with a higher nutritional load off the land. Thus pushing up the price for broccoli or spinach.
Nutritionally beneficial food is higher priced and more scarce than the poison we subsidize. People eat the poison and get sick.
So, tell me, how does this benefit the poor? How does this benefit any of us?
If we want to make it so the poorest of Americans have enough food every night, we increase food stamps and other poverty programs, we don’t make it easier for them to buy a few more bags of cheetos and a few more cans of coke.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:58 am
We don’t need to subsidize healthy foods.
Never mind the direct price support subsidies. Eliminate the subsidized irrigation water to plantation farms in rain-poor areas out west, and eliminate the highway subsidies that make it artificially cheap to truck their produce across the country, and you’ll see an exponential increase in community-supported agriculture.
In fact, the subsidies won’t work much longer even if they’re left in place. The price of asphalt for highway work goes up with the price of oil. And wait till fuel reaches $5 or $6 a gallon through spring and summer next year; the drivers will park their rigs on the shoulder and abandon them.
Corporate agribusiness and factory farming simply couldn’t survive in a free market. They can only survive by sucking at the taxpayer tit.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:15 am
Sure — end all subsidies…. when the Europeans do and when the Japanese do and when countries end their export restrictions and when the playing field is level.
Shorter Nathan: Taking the lead in anything is for suckers. Being last, all the time, in everything, is what made America great!
October 13th, 2008 at 6:50 am
What I’m saying is that you want food that costs more to produce (i.e. organic, locally grown, etc.), then pay for it. It’s really not realistic to transform American agriculture to that model
Wrong. It’s perfectly possible to provide every citizen in every country with decent, non-processed, additive-free food. And we should, unless we want our children to grow up eating junk, not knowing how to cook a meal and encountering related health problems in later life.
This will, however, require massive government intervention, since generally the food giants could care less about what people eat. And it’s not sufficient to simply subsidize select foods, you have to educate people on a large scale about food and cooking. This will not be easy since there are large parts of the population who have grown up eating junk, not knowing anything about cooking or nutrition and who have passed on such bad habits over generations. Jamie Oliver has tried it with some success, but also encountering massive resistance, in UK schools.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
What we have is a system where processed and unhealthy food is (relatively) cheaper for poor people. A bag of potato chips is cheaper than a bag of lettuce. Why is lettuce a ’specialty item’?
October 13th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Eliminating all subsidies sounds wonderful, but unrealistic. How about this? Reduce all subsidies by 2% per year for 5 years, and no existing subsidy can be raised (ie, you can’t shift money around from unpopular subsidies to popular ones and raise those). Give the money back in a progressive tax cut (that is, decrease the lowest tax bracket by whatever percent).
Then, five years from now, with subsidies 10% lower than they are now, Nathan can show us how this has directly led to our cities burning, rioting in the streets, those damn Europeans controlling our food supply, etc. Or, if not that, then maybe we can actually survive without paying people to grow corn.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
We shouldn’t be subsidizing agriculture in the first place. There’s no point in being a net exporter of products that can be grown more efficiently elsewhere if those growing it had access to the global market.
As far as “taking care of the land,” what about letting it revert back to forest?
October 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Wow, love the disrespect everyone. Keep it classy.
I don’t really disagree with TMK that the farm subsidy program is skewed and results in distortions like high fructose corn syrup being cheaper than sugar. That’s pretty dumb, and things like that need to be reformed.
Michael-
That doesn’t sound like a bad plan, especially if it’s targeted in areas where things are particularly wrongheaded. I’m not opposed to a reduction of subsidies (especially if America’s trade negotiators push for market access and don’t throw agriculture under the bus like they usually do), but just calling for their elimination doesn’t make sense. Nearly every wealthy country protects its farmers, and just removing US protections without a global push to equalize the playing field would decimate huge swaths of the US farm industry.
Honestly, I agree with people, there are problems and distortions. But coming after the farm subsidies with a bunch of pitchforks and torches is really, really stupid. Maybe you like the idea of being a net food importer. Sure hasn’t worked well with oil.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
So, How many New York City residents get farm subsidies?
Its shocking. I thought farmers lived on farms. Guess the bankers own them also.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
By the way, before I get accused of being a Republican hick, go check out Obama’s farm policy. He believes in a farm safety net, reducing payments to agribusiness, pushing for market access, and ultimately believes in subsidies. I’m with Obama. McCain is the one who believes we should just eliminate subsidies (which, he idiotically claims make food more expensive).
October 13th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Finally a sane conversation about the food and thus health of Americans! Supporting local small organic farms is the logical answer to our food and energy issues. Support legislators who have the vision to see this need and support it.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Supporting local small organic farms is the logical answer to our food and energy issues.
How?
October 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I recently inherited a farm and have had to learn a great deal in a few months. And, before you ask, I will vote for Obama.
As Nathan has said, pretty much all “wealthy” countries subsidize their farmers, which is why food is relatively affordable in all developed nations. If everyone removed all the subsidies, and we found out what food actually costs, it would come as a shock. We had a small taste of this earlier in March when a shortage of wheat drove the price up to $13 a bushel–you saw the increase reflecte the cost of a loaf of bread in your local store, or even in your farmer’s markets. The price as since come down.
Some countries subsidize their farmers even more intensely than we do. Many of you will remember the “rice wars” with Japan in the 80s; they would not import their rice in order to protect their own farmers.
Someone must grow food, but it is actually not terribly profitable to do so. Having seen the balance sheets, I can tell you that most farms–family farms–operate on a very slim margin, and most farms have to find another source of income (custom harvesting, spraying) in order to survive. Even with subsidies, there are very few family farms left in America.
Recently, I was in western Nebraska and was curious to learn that the wealthy are buying up land there. These landowners (the farmers call them landlords) do not actually farm themselves, but hire others to do the farming for them. This might help explain why the subsidy map looks the way that it does.
I don’t deny that something in farming is broken–but it is also our job to understand our responsibility in this mess. My father–who was really and truly a farmer (and a lifelong Democrat) always said that people in America do not want expensive food. They will not pay for it. And it is true. Even fruit–which according to this article isn’t subsidized the way that other crops are–is very inexpensive in this country. Try going to Japan and buying an apple or even a melon. You will be amazed at what it will cost you.
The article also didn’t really address the issue of regionalism. Not all farmland was originally forest–as someone above quipped. Not all farmland is suitable for corn. It’s a very broad and general article which was interesting, and I was glad that it has raised some awareness and started the debate. But not all farms are equal.
As for farm subsidies–fewer and fewer people actually farm and live on the farm. fewer peop
October 13th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Maybe you like the idea of being a net food importer. Sure hasn’t worked well with oil.
Yes, and it’s potentially dangerous. Countries that don’t produce their own food don’t historically do well if caught with their pants down. And, as long as Europe and Japan subsidize their farmers, it really doesn’t behoove us not to subsidize ours. We’d just be importing all our food–which would be more expensive than we are used to because we’d be paying to ship it here (add fuel costs).
I also think it’s disingenuous to blame the farms for our bad eating habits and our obesity. Do we blame the oil and car industries for the plethora of SUVs in the past decade? We, as consumers, have played a role in this disaster as well.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Nathan said:
If you want better produce, pay for it.
Look, I’ll definitely defer to the other readers’ views (including Nathan’s) on subsidies themselves, but this particular approach has been shown (so far as I can see) not to work… at least not to work on getting lower-cost healthy food available to lower-income families.
jimbonita said:
We have years of work to recreate a green system design. It isn’t just replacing the fuel used by our cars and trucks with renewable fuels.
Here’s some of the good news… Tractors (usually?) run on diesel! Not that it won’t be difficult, but there are some success stories with biofuel farmers in India no longer needing to import oil for their machinery:
http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/pdf/SeedsofHope.pdf
(if links are prohibited, put “biofuels energy farming south india roshini” into google, sans quotes…)
Road and building construction, on the other hand… My university is busily putting in CF lightbulbs and all, but the new buildings go up with the maximum use of fuel possible… Why make scaffolding, when the workers can just be lifted up and down each day with a motorized thing?
Anyway, all really good points for discussion here in the comment trail…
October 13th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
lyrebird-
That’s a good point about poor people having few options when it comes to produce. My own opinion on that though is that access is better handled on the local level. As farmer pointed out, relative to other countries we have relatively cheap produce. If neighborhoods zoned in supermarkets (which are disappearing in San francisco) it might help get poor people the options they deserve.
Now, organic small batch farming may remain a luxury, but I think it’s somewhat unreslistic to think that will or should change. Someone is going to have to pay for the higher costs if we switched over to that, whether it’s consumers or taxpayers, and legislating the change doesn’t make as much sense to me as keeping food costs low and letting consumers choose and pay for higher priced options.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Kucinich for Secretary of Agriculture!
October 14th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Thank God for Farmer and Nathan.
I was really concerned reading all the “get-rid-of-the-subsidies” posts.
One of the reasons for the eventual collapse of the Athenian empire was its inability to grow enough food to support its population, even with the Attic farmland outside the city walls.
This created a certain “grabbiness” with the neighbors’ food (as with the US and oil) and that led to quite a bit of bad blood. It wasn’t difficult, then, for Sparta to rally other city-states against Athens. Ironically, the Spartans themselves didn’t grow their own food – they made their slaves do it for them, and had the highest protein diet of anyone at the time.
At this time of economic uncertainty, the last thing I would want to see is farmer-bashing. Fruits and vegetables perish more quickly and do not have the storage qualities of less healthy grains. If the economic environment gets worse, then trust me, we will be missing all the extra “refined” carbs. We will need them.
So…let’s not do anything RIGHT AWAY. Who knows, we may be eating soylent green.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:29 am
For people who have developed a taste for vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh herbs, it may be worth it. But your two-income working class family with three kids will find that a poor use of time.
Poppycock. Here’s what you do: You tell your lazy kids three kids to get off the computer and tend to the garden. That will help them to lose weight, get exercise and some fresh air and sunshine. Since the growing months tend mostly to be in the summer when they are out of school, they should have no problem doing a few chores to provide the family with fresh veggies.
I have a garden, and yes it’s work. But not that much. A few hours a week is all you need to weed it, mulch a bit, and keep it going. squashes of all types just grow themselves. Any extra can be given away, or sold, which helps that poor two income family become a just-a-little-less-poor three income family. And they get free food which frees up funds for other things.
and good lord. If you really think that growing herbs is some sort of elitist BS, then you’ve got a problem with food in general. Even the poorest family in France or Italy grows their own herbs and veggies if they have a bit of land.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Furthermore, if you seriously think that growing a few apple and peach trees is ‘work’ then you haven’t ever grown them. Sure, you have to water them in dry times (oooo, how terrible, I might actually have to put the hose on them for half an hour a week. Can’t do that!)
Sorry, but I’m a little sick of these excuses why Americans can’t do anything for themselves, and they just have to nuke some prepackaged junk out of the fridge. No time! No energy! Perhaps if they actually had some vitamin rich foods, they might get the energy, but of course, no one thinks about that.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:01 am
Randy, you make a good couple of points, I was thinking much the same thing when I read the comment about people with kids no having enough time.
On the other hand, the issue is killing subsidies to farmers for commodities that have been really volatile recently is entirely separate. Right now the prices have fallen only because many less developed countries can’t afford to buy them.
This is not a good thing…
So I think it’s worthwhile to separate the issues of lazy Americans who don’t want to grow even a little of their own food, and eliminating subsidies.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:14 am
If the money currently spent on making sure that cheap corn and soy are as plentiful as possible were instead redirected to subsidize the production and sale of fresh vegetables, the United States of America could be a much healthier country.
This assumes that the reason people don’t eat, say, Brussel Sprouts is cost, which is probably not a safe assumption.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:25 am
The grain subsidies make meat much more affordable than it would be in a free market. People would choose much more vegetarian fare if they had to really pay for the beef themselves. It takes (I’ve read) about 17 times as much land to produce meat (as opposed to grains)to feed a population. Don’t get me wrong, I like meat, but I like lots of other luxuries too. And I worry that we are exhausting our soil propping up an unhealthful level of meat consumption.
Republicans like to talk about the free market, but I’d be interested in to see them pitch an anti-subsidy platform in all those western ranching states!
October 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am
The grain subsidies make meat much more affordable than it would be in a free market.
This is exactly right. Where the “cheap food” argument goes off the tracks is the fact that everything in a McDonald’s $3.99 value meal is infected with cheap corn. The cows that go into the burger are fed on the unnatural, but quick-fattening diet of corn. This diet requires that they be also injected with hormones and antibiotics so that they can digest the grain. The wanton use of antibiotics especially can reduce the effectiveness of the ones humans take when we’re sick. Furthermore, this diet creates a much greater chance of cows developing hoof and mouth disease. The buns are sweetened with corn syrup and made with subsidized grain. The fries are fried in corn oil and the Coke is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.
In short, the McDonalds is a subsidized meal. Otherwise it makes no sense for prepared food to be cheaper than going out and buying all the raw ingredients yourself and making it at home. And this is not only true for McDonald’s of course, but most of the pre-fab products you find on store shelves. It makes no sense for a government to be subsidizing fast food that makes its citizens fat and unhealthy while healthy vegetables have to go it in a market that’s skewed against them.
Why does this happen? It goes all the way back to the post-war period when farmers learned how to inject oil and other chemicals into the growing system and to the Depression when farm subsidies began. Many of these corn subsidies have been in place since then and agribusiness has learned how to make money off them while denigrating the process with fossil fuels. It’s an unholy collusion of unhealthy industries.
Put things back on a fair market and vegetables would become cheaper, more available and more nutritious (because they would be grown in places where they perform best).
October 14th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
UJ,
what we currently have is a system that, at great cost, provides an excess of high-caloric-density, low-fiber grains.
There are problems with this.
At the same time, given the uncertainty surrounding fossil fuel availability (you know that stuff that lets the food reach you?) we may face a distribution problem.
Chances are that you drive a car? (I don’t, but my refusal to drive has little impact, given the minority position I’ve taken..)
That fossil fuel could have been used to cart food from small farms to your table.
It’s your decision, dear consumer, to drive, that affects this system much more radically than any subsidies.
Let’s face it, all people who are driving and who are against subsidies are kidding themselves…
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 am
cialis
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:45 am
tramadol
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
buy viagra online
Incredible site!
April 8th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Great site. Good info
viagra
April 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am
mz8tB1 lxjgvwairuui, [url=http://kcineieepzxl.com/]kcineieepzxl[/url], [link=http://wwietvtkjsst.com/]wwietvtkjsst[/link], http://wrgdaofgzfil.com/