Most important, if the government would stop subsidizing corn and soybeans and start subsidizing fruits and vegetables, we could begin to make real progress.
I'll probably get a tractorload of snow dumped at the end of my driveway for saying this, but Lupien makes sense. Our agricultural market has been knocked out of whack by government intervention to favor agriculture products that don't really feed people. For instance, 80% of the corn we grow goes to feed livestock (which, yes, we do eventually eat, but imagine how much better that meat would be if the livestock ate grass!). Far too little of the corn we directly consume is fresh corn on the cob. More than three times as much corn is used to make high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners than is used to produce cereal and other directly consumable corn products (see the chart on page 4 of "US Corn Growers: Producing Food AND Fuel" from the National Corn Growers Association).
Government subsidies of corn and beans drive producers away from healthier products. The result: the cheapest foods are indeed the least healthy. The seemingly paradoxical increase of obesity among the poor is a result of bad choices, not by the poor, who act quite rationally in choosing the cheapest foods, but by the government, which favors certain agricultural corporations who proceed to flood the market with cheap, fattening food.
Now I can't guarantee that the government could make everyone give up Cheetos in favor of celery sticks by an overhaul of its ag subsidies. But by shifting the market back toward fruits and vegetables, the government could drive some healthy changes, as the poor might find healthy food more affordable, and, as a not so peripheral benefit, many of my neighbors might find it more profitable to turn their cropland and their cattle back to pasture.
I also think there's something to be said about more closely connecting consumers to the farmers who produce their food.
ReplyDeleteIf you ask school kids in _insert big city name here_ where milk comes from, and they'll tell you the grocery store. I would hope South Dakota kids would say it comes from cows.
Adults wouldn't do much better. To consumers, Wheaties have more to do with Tiger Woods than wheat farmers.
The idea of producing directly consumable crops is an interesting one.
Think of my trip to the Super Wal-Mart down the road. I'll pick up a can of whole-kernel corn.
But that can was brought in from a distribution center in North Platte Nebraska. It got there from one of the myriad of trucks traveling Interstate 80. It was probably packaged in California, but grown in Illinois. Who knows.
At any rate, there's a corn field not a mile from my house. Why couldn't my corn have come from that field, fresh on the cob?
I think we're disengaged from the land we live on.
And I'm going to sound like I've totally burned my neocon membership card, but think of the environmental impact too. If our food isn't being shipped back and forth across the country three times before we eat it, think of the reduction in fuel use.
Hi, Steve!
ReplyDeleteBurn baby burn -- that neocon card, that is! Then again, it's quite possible to be a neocon and still give a dang about the environment. After all, conservatives should be all about conserving things, natural resources included. Even neocons have to recognize that we must keep our environment healthy so we can continue to produce the resources necessary to spread democracy and capitalism around the world.
Your comments about connection to the land and our overreliance on long-distance transportation align perfectly with Erin's favorite thinker, Wendell Berry. Also, if you'd like to read Erin's grad school paper on the theology of food, she'll be happy to forward you a copy.
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." -GK
ReplyDelete*admiring his shiny neocon card*
ReplyDelete"Wow do I ever hate corn on the cob"
The problem of Obesity is far more a motter of inactivity than it is diet. Exersize actually is something of an appetite suppressant, and the impact physical activity has on mental chemistry fights depression and the bad eating habits that come along with it. Instead of transferring the bad idea of farm subsidies from one crop to another (and do you really think fruit and vegatable crops wouldn't be rapidly turned into junkfood? it wouldn't impact peoples food choices significantly, it would just change the form of crap they bought) Subsidies should be eliminated entirely.
...which, Phaedrus, is why I said, "If You've Got to Subsidize...." I agree that the government should not pick winners in the free market. However, laissez-faire gives way to matters of the public interest.
ReplyDeleteI also agree exercise/activity is part of the obesity problem. (I defer to the researchers to quantify just ow much more or less a contributing factor it may be than changes in diet.) Maybe the government should thus tax bloggers, who sit around writing and checking their comments all day instead of getting out and jogging.