the politics of food

Michael Pollen writes in yesterday’s NYT about the politics surrounding this year’s farm bill. Happily, he notes that consumers of America’s agricultural products (i.e. EATERS) are stepping up to play a role in the policy-making process. For years, American farm policy has screwed things up royally. The policies have the best of intentions: protecting America’s family farms from going under when a drought or wildfire strikes. But the opportunistic consequences of the bill has sent billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of megafarms and the businesses that thrive off taxpayer-subsidized crops. Businesses like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Archer Daniels Midland. Businesses that make money hand-over-fist selling products laden with high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils to increasingly obese Americans. Businesses whose products wouldn’t be so attractive to poor people (read: cheap) if our tax dollars weren’t subsidizing their corn and soy producers.

I have a personal relationship with this debate since my recently deceased grandfather, my great uncle, my grandmother and my uncle’s family make their living partially from farm subsidies. But they grow their crops the honest way (with sweat and toil rather than chemicals and genetic manipulations), and they grow their cattle the way cattle are meant to be grown (in fields eating grass).

Senators Lugar and Lautenberg have the right idea with their proposal that subsidies only apply to farmers when their revenues have fallen beneath a threshold because of circumstances beyond their control. This would end the per-bushel payments that farmers currently receive and make growing high-yield corn that is only suitable for high fructose corn syrup and soy that will go on to become partially hydrogenated oil so attractive.

Senators Dorgan and Grassley propose another sensible amendment that would cap the annual subsidy to a farmer at $250,000, thereby preventing huge corporate farms from making their profits sucking tax dollars through the farm subsidy system.

Here’s to a farm bill that truly protects our nation’s family farmers and supports locally grown, affordable, accessible food.

Contact your senators and representatives now to do what you can to put this bill on their radar screen as it goes into important markups in the coming weeks. Contact your federal senators and congresspeople to let them know that the US federal government should not be supporting industries that are leading millions into obesity, heart disease and diabetes and yielding billions of dollars in health care costs.

A popular stance these days is to blame the poor and obese for their condition when our public policies have created the conditions that have made processed, fat- and sodium-laden foods the most affordable for individuals and families on limited incomes. Let’s hold our legislators accountable for fixing it.