Food Bill

The article I suggested in an earlier post is actually a really nice summary, in case you haven't read it yet. It tells you all of this issues on the docket and gives you the skinny on each side's argument. There's also an interesting set of interviews linked from that page if you have half an hour to listen. These links below are to the same article with a mini-summary from me.

• Crop Subsidies
  
• Should we continue to use tax-payer money to subsidize commodity crops? If so, should we make some changes to the structure? What about tariffs?
  
• Qualifying for Payments
• Should big agri-business benefit from subsidies or should there be a cap that only supports smaller farmers. And if so, what should the cap be?
  
• Conservation Programs
• Paying farmers not to farm the land, paying them to clean up the land, paying them to use more environmentally beneficial practices
  
• Food Stamps
• Providing subsidies to food consumers (as opposed to food growers/producers)
  
• International Food Aid
• How should we structure giving food (or other goods/money) to foreign nations in need of aid? Is giving out food the right answer? Is our subsidy system shutting out third-world farmers?
  

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I have read a few books and articles and seen one very interesting documentary. However, as a consumer in this food system, I think it's my right to speak out about it. Feel free to comment and/or correct me where I'm wrong.

Basically, the problem as I see it, is that we subsidize based on the needs of a previous generation and because we have different problems than they do, the process needs to evolve if we want to ease the problems we're seeing today.

What are our problems?

• obesity
• diseases associated with obesity (heart disease and diabetes to name a couple),
• environmental degradation
  
• economic imbalance
  

Much of this has to do with the fact that we subsidize commodity crops which aren't actually food until processed (generally using chemicals). Because we subsidize these commodities, we're encouraged and therefore inclined toward eating and feeding our livestock things that we and they haven't evolved to eat. For us that means things like high fructose corn syrup and any number of preservatives, flavorings, dyes, and sweeteners. For cattle and other livestock that means eating corn (the commodity kind, not the sweet delicious goodness that you buy on the cob).

These manufactured food items for us mean that our diet is much less varied. Our bodies are designed, for better or for worse, to get a large array of nutrition which typically comes from many sources. When all of our food contains corn products or is unnaturally raised on corn, this diminishes the variety even when we think we are eating a variety. Plus it supports an economy based on only 5 main crops: corn, soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton. I also tend to think that our ready-made meals (which are largely corn- and soy-based) break down some of our community bonds that come with gathering, preparing and eating of food, but this article is long enough and I don't need to get into that here.

For livestock (keep in mind that I know most about cattle), this corn-based diet is destructive because their digestive systems are designed to process grass. Remember in 1st grade when you learned that cows have 5 stomachs and you thought that was amazing? Well it is pretty amazing. They are able to turn grass into protein in that system--no small feat! It is also beneficial for them to actually graze in a pasture and get some exercise and get some relief from their own waste. However, instead of letting cows do what cows would likely do on their own, we trap them in confined areas where they are encouraged to eat (literally) tons of food that they normally wouldn't touch--all while standing in a slurry of their own manure. This diet and the unsanitary living conditions combine for a negative effect on the health of the cattle. So, instead of having healthy, happy, grazing cattle, these factory farm systems choose to continue this practice and just feed the cattle antibiotics to treat infection. I think we all know where too much antibiotic leads us. Nowhere good.

It's also interesting to know that the government's meat quality ratings are at least somewhat based on having a good "marble" to the beef. Marbling means that there is visible fat in the meat. So our government is promoting fattier meat. It comes as no surprise to me that the same thing that is making our cattle sick and fat is the same thing that makes us sick and fat.

Another underlying issue to the whole debate is the notion of the small family farmer. At the beginning of the Depression, nearly 50% of people were involved in small-scale farming, now only 2% of our population is working on family farms. There's an argument that since we have had so many advances in technology and efficiency, why support the old system? The people who argue against family farms also call it a romantic notion.

Romantic doesn't have to mean wrong if you ask me. I think it would be pretty awesome if when I visit my uncle's farm in Iowa that I would be offered freshly picked food from the farm. However, aside from a small garden which you could have in a suburb, all there is is chemical-heavy #2 corn, which is not edible by humans. It's more complicated and complex to have a food system that is based on small family farms. We wouldn't have 5,000 identical ears of corn or apples or heads of lettuce in our grocery store, but we might actually be able to get all of our nutritional needs met through our food and not have to worry about supplements and pills and antibiotics etc. in order to be healthy.

What a world would that be?