As so simply stated by the lunatic farmer, Joel Salatin, the food we eat determines the quality of our health as it “becomes the flesh of our flesh, bone of our bones, and mitochrondia of our cells.” For that very reason, we are taught to eat a diet consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables complemented by whole grains and limited portions of meats, fats, and sugars. However, walk into any grocery store, and compare the price of any variety of fresh produce to a highly processed, heavily packaged food-like substance, and one starts to wonder how it is possible to afford to eat that healthy diet espoused by dietitians, governmental agencies, and late-night infomercials alike. Those meager fruits and vegetables command some of the highest prices on your shopping list, while that ready-made, extra large, stomach-filling chicken pot pie in the freezer aisle slides in gracefully under a dollar with your shopper’s discount. A rational person might wonder how this is possible.
Part of the answer lies in the fact that produce innately spoils quickly and is therefore more difficult and costly to transport and maintain than that vacuum packed, irradiated, embalmed piece of sustenance on aisle 14. However, like so many other issues with seemingly elusive and indecipherably complex answers, the more concrete reasons lie within an often overlooked and frequently misunderstood piece of national legislation called the Farm Bill. Specifically, we must look to certain provisions of the Farm Bill known as agricultural subsidies, a term undoubtedly known to many Americans but clearly not understood, as they have been steadily rising over the years, simultaneously decimating family farmers and costing consumers more money in grocery bills and tax dollars.
To understand these subsidies completely, we must look back to the dusty, sepia-colored days of depression era America, when FDR’s secretary of agriculture, Henry Wallace enacted the first subsidies as “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency,” that being the collapsing incomes of 25 percent of those living in farming communities. At that time, farmers comprised 21 percent of the labor force. Today’s farmers, by contrast, comprise only 1 percent of the population and garner incomes well above the national average. So why then, one may ask, are they being given subsidies?
Most simply, they are not. In fact, 71 percent of all subsidies are given to only the top 10 percent of beneficiaries. The largest producers are rewarded for greater crop production and therefore greater revenues with commensurately greater subsidies. It also turns out that most of these farmers are not farmers at all. Rather, a large number of them are land-owning corporations like Chevron ($446,914 in subsidies), John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance ($2,894,799), and International Paper ($1,183,893) as well as celebrity “farmers” like David Rockefeller ($553,782) and Scottie Pippen ($210,520) and members of Congress who happen to vote on these issues like Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA, $225,041) and Representative John Salazar (D-CO, $161,084).
The majority of farms, that is smaller family operations, receive little to no money at all. While these subsidies are sold to voters as being necessary to protect family famers, they in fact do precisely the opposite as more than 60 percent of small farmers are not even eligible for this money from the start. Subsidies are only applicable to certain commodity crops, and 90 percent off all subsidies go to just five of these: wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans, and rice. Of these five, less than 20% of the material produced ends up in the U.S. food supply, much of which is heavily processed byproducts such as soybean and cottonseed oil, high fructose corn syrup, and beer made from rice. These and other commodity crops such as hay account for over 80% of total planted cropland in the United States. That leaves very little for actual food production, with less than 3 percent of our 350 million acres of cropland cultivated for fruits and vegetables.
Because our legislature chooses not to support the production of real food such as fruits and vegetables, American farmers are unable to sufficiently produce, and consumers cannot afford to buy, healthy, edible plants. Additionally, as large agribusinesses use subsidy money to grow their farms and push out smaller, family operations, jobs are lost and rural communities suffer. It is estimated that these subsidies actually cost Americans $12 billion in higher food prices as well as $25 billion in tax money needed to finance these handouts. For just $4 billion a year, we could give every American farmer a $40,000 annual salary, 185% of the poverty level for a family of four.
The Farm Bill must be renewed by Congress every four years. The last time was in 2008 and saw one of the biggest subsidy increases in history. Next year, in 2012, it will once again come before our legislature, and it will be up to us, the American people, to make sure that we do not allow ourselves and our farmers to keep paying the enormous costs of what is marketed to us as “cheap food.” For the health of ourselves, our communities, our farms, and our environment, we must help our famers to grow real food. The rest will follow.
