Reports: Food

It is commonly argued that farm subsidies have led to the overproduction of commodity crops, such as corn, driving down the price of “junk food” made with commodity ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and partially hydrogenated soybean oil relative to healthier alternatives. This cycle, it is suggested, has led to increasing rates of obesity. Removing subsidies, the argument goes, would help combat obesity by discouraging overproduction of crops that are the base ingredients of unhealthy food. This seems like a logical argument, yet few if any of those making these arguments reference academic findings and economic analysis to support their claims.

This white paper examines the public health and agricultural economics literature as well as primary and secondary agriculture policy documents. Based on this analysis, there is no evidence of a relationship between subsidies and the overproduction of commodity crops, or between subsidies and obesity. Instead, this paper finds that the deregulation of commodity markets – not subsidies – has had a significant impact on the price of commodities. Deregulation also has provided benefits and incentives to the food industry, including processors, marketers and retailers, and is one of a number of contributing factors impacting the availability of high-calorie processed foods in the marketplace.

Since the 1996 introduction of genetically engineered crops — crops that are altered with inserted genetic material to exhibit a desired trait — U.S. agribusiness and policymakers have embraced biotechnology as a silver bullet for the food system. The industry promotes biotechnology as an environmentally responsible, profitable way for farmers to feed a growing global population. But despite all the hype, genetically engineered plants and animals do not perform better than their traditional counterparts, and they raise a slew of health, environmental and ethical concerns. The next wave of the “Green Revolution” promises increased technology to ensure food security and mitigate the effects of climate change, but it has not delivered. The only people who are experiencing security are the few, massive corporations that are controlling the food system at every step and seeing large profit margins.

From the moment she became New Mexico’s governor on January 1, 2011, Susana Martinez has worked overtime to dismantle key protections that the
state put in place for the benefit of New Mexicans and the air, water and land they cherish.

China has become an agricultural powerhouse and leading food exporter. Though supermarket labels may not always indicate it, a growing portion of the American diet is now made in China. In 2009, 70 percent of the apple juice, 43 percent of the processed mushrooms, 22 percent of the frozen spinach and 78 percent of the tilapia Americans ate came from China. Unfortunately, it’s not just China’s food that’s reaching American shores — it’s also China’s food safety problems

In 2011, rising oil prices and global unrest over escalating food prices highlighted the public policy questions surrounding government promotion of corn-based ethanol as a transportation fuel. Corn-based ethanol is unlikely to significantly reduce America’s dependence on imported oil, has a negligible ability to reduce green- house gas emissions and contributes to environmental degradation in coastal waters.The public policies that promote or encourage ethanol production have significant impacts on America’s future energy use, efforts to curb global warming and the global effort to reduce hunger. These transportation biofuel incentives will be tied to corn-based ethanol for the near future, as only corn-based ethanol is currently commercially viable in the United States.

Farm credit is the backbone of American agriculture. During the recent economic downturn, America’s family farmers faced significant barriers to accessing farm credit, which endangered their economic security and the stability of rural communities and food production in America. This national survey of farm credit counselors and farm advocacy organizations demonstrates the critical, growing and overlooked gaps in credit availability for our nation’s farmers at a time when
they need it most.

Globalization has fundamentally changed agriculture across Europe. The idyllic image of small farms with sustainable agri- culture has been replaced with agricultural cogs producing food-ingredient inputs for international industrial agribusinesses. The pork chops and chickens on European tables begin their lives far away on soybean plantations in Latin America, where the feed for European livestock is harvested.

Over the last two decades, small- and medium-scale livestock farms have given way to factory farms that confine thousands of cows, hogs and chickens in tightly packed facilities. Farmers have adopted factory-farming practices largely at the behest of the largest meatpackers, pork processors, poultry companies and dairy processors. The largest of these agribusinesses are practically monopolies, controlling what consumers get to eat, what they pay for groceries and what prices farmers receive for their livestock. This unchecked agribusiness power and misguided farm policies have pressed livestock producers to become significantly larger and adopt more intensive practices. Despite ballooning in size, many livestock producers are just squeezing by because the real price of beef cattle, hogs and milk has been falling for decades.

U.S. poultry farmers have used drugs containing arsenic, a known poison, to control the common disease coccidiosis for decades. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the arsenic-based drug roxarsone as a feed additive in 1944. The chicken industry discovered that roxarsone promoted growth, increased feed efficiency (pounds of chicken produced from each pound of feed), and improved flesh pigmentation as well. Between 1995 and 2000, 70 percent of broiler chicken producers used roxarsone feed additives.

During 2008, rising food prices, accelerated by an unprecedented run-up of prices on the commodities futures markets, created a food crisis that increased global hunger, sparked civil unrest and hurt farmers in America and worldwide. The global food crisis is an overlooked symptom of the broader global economic crisis. The food crisis shares many characteristics of the financial meltdown – it was exacerbated by the deregulation of the commodity markets (including agriculture) that encouraged a tidal wave of Wall Street speculation – leading to further increases in already rising food and energy prices.