Why is healthy food so expensive in America? Blame the Farm Bill that Congress always renews to make burgers cheaper than salad
BY Gene Baur July 21, 2023The 2023 Farm Bill is projected to spend $700 billion over the next five years, with powerful industry lobbyists directing funds to enrich themselves at the expense of agricultural communities, human health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. It’s far from its original intention: to help struggling farmers and hungry citizens during The Great Depression and Dustbowl. This year, with growing awareness about the myriad harms of our factory farm system, we have a critical opportunity to shift Farm Bill programs to serve our nation and our planet better.
Most Americans have never heard of this massive omnibus bill, which Congress reauthorizes every five or so years, yet it impacts us every day. It shapes our food system–from subsidizing factory farms to funding food and nutrition programs, and it is why burgers are artificially cheap and salads cost more than they should.
How did this happen? Farm Bill policies have been hijacked, resulting in the demise of family farms, the proliferation of food that makes us sick, and widespread ecological destruction.
After World War II, to meet the needs of a booming U.S. population and a growing export market, the Farm Bill invested heavily in monocrops, including millions of acres of corn and soy, used to feed animals on industrialized farms. We subsidize the overproduction of fat-laden animal products and highly processed foods, making unhealthy food cheap and accessible. This contributes to heart disease and other chronic diet-related illnesses that cost our nation billions of dollars annually in preventable health care costs.
Farm Bill programs should be revised to incentivize fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods and to make them more accessible and affordable. Nine out of 10 U.S. adults do not consume nutritionists’ recommended fruits and vegetables, and access to fresh produce is especially limited in lower-income communities. The Farm Bill can be crucial in supporting Americans’ nutritional needs by making healthy food accessible where it’s most needed.
Factory farming is capital and resource intensive, and it is inefficient. In the U.S., 10 times more farmland goes to feed farm animals than to feed people, destroying ecosystems and biodiversity, while wasting water and other increasingly scarce resources.
https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-...-renews-make-burgers-cheaper-salad-gene-baur/
Compared to life in 3rd millennium U.S. society, the hunter-gatherer existence is labor intensive. Without refrigeration and other modern food storage techniques acquiring food and maintaining shelter left little time to hunter-gatherers for other pursuits.
By hunter-gatherer standards today's U.S. food supply is $cheap, and well regulated and safe.
But these congressional farm subsidies are promoted in context of "constituent service", farm State congressmen seeking to benefit voters in their congressional district.
Does this tinkering with the economics of our food supply really benefit the U.S. population as a whole? And with global trade, and the U.S. being both food importer & exporter, doesn't it affect all humanity?
The following excerpted from U.S. Presidential candidate Libertarian Andre Marrou's 1992 stump speech, added for context.
It's a mistake to perceive it as gospel truth. But despite flaws, it calls attention to congress' institutional rejection of laissez-faire market dynamics.
The annual subsidy for each American dairy cow is between $600-$700 dollars a year.
This is greater than the per capita income of half of the worlds population. And what do
we get for that? We get a price for milk and other dairy products that's double the
world's level.
Who does this impinge on? Primarily poor people with children. Rich people could care
less what the price of milk is. Poor people without children, they don't use much milk.
It's the poor people with children who are primarily hurt by this.
