What Kind of Agriculture Are We Subsidizing? By Curt Ellis
Hot Question: Is it unethical for developed nations such as the United States or those in the European Union to subsidize their agriculture? Do these subsidies affect the agricultural industries of undeveloped nations and should international bodies do anything about this?
Let’s be honest: agricultural subsidies aren’t anybody’s favorite topic.
Farmers don’t like to talk about them; what self-reliant yeoman wants to admit they’re on welfare? Urban people don’t take an interest in them either; a good reading of the Farm Bill will send even the most stubborn insomniac into a slumber. The right dismisses farm programs as government distortions of the free market, and the left sees them as handouts to agribusiness conglomerates. So why are farm subsidies still in full force? Probably because it’s difficult to have anyone engaged enough to reform them.
There are signs that change is on the horizon, though. In the last few years, farm programs have begun attracting attention from unlikely quarters.
Public health experts have drawn a convincing connection between the kind of farming we subsidize and the quality of food we eat. With CDC research predicting that one in three children born in the year 2000 will in time develop Type II diabetes, incentivizing all-out production of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and fast-food meat may only deepen our healthcare catastrophe.
Leaders in the climate change community have recently taken up the topic, too, pointing to soil as one of the only carbon sinks capable of storing a meaningful amount of atmospheric CO2. Under subsidized row-crop production (itself powered by fossil fuel fertilizer, petroleum-derived pesticides and diesel tractors), environmentalists warn that this climate-stabilizing potential is––quite literally––eroding.
It is the fallout from the 2008 Global Food Crisis, however, that has spurred much of the recent debate over farm subsidies. The riots that erupted in Senegal and Egypt and toppled the government in Haiti forced legislators in subsidy-driven Europe and the United States to acknowledge the international consequences of distorting agricultural markets at home.
So, with our global economy staring down a climate crisis and an obesity epidemic, we have to ask ourselves: what kind of agriculture are we subsidizing?
For much of the last 40 years, American farm subsidies have rewarded the all-out production of a handful of commodities. These policies delivered processors a ready supply of cheap raw materials for processing into snacks and feeding to confined livestock. What food companies couldn’t convince American consumers to eat (though judging from our waistlines, we did our part!) was exported. Often, barges of subsidized corn, soy and wheat reached foreign shores, where their contents could be sold at below the local cost of production.
The ripple effects of these policies have been dramatic, and are nowhere more apparent than in Mexico. There, corn farmers saw the price of corn plummet by half when NAFTA opened the door to subsidized imports. Unable to compete, millions of Mexican farmers left the land, pursuing economic promise in impoverished cities or across the US border. When the Food Crisis began, however, with a spike in imported corn prices related to ethanol, drought, and expensive oil, the price of a tortilla in Mexico shot up more than 400%. For many, the effects of skyrocketing staples were devastating.
This scenario of subsidy-induced dependence has repeated itself across the globe. American exports flood foreign markets with cheap grain; local farmers see their profit margins dwindle and leave the land; without the infrastructure for self-sufficiency in place, a shock felt in one part of the system––US grain production––suddenly leaves everyone vulnerable, and without a safety net in place.
America’s 20th century production-oriented agricultural policies have––under the banner of abundance and affordability––only made the world’s food systems more fragile. At home, subsidies have enabled an obesity epidemic and ecological degradation. Abroad, they have replaced local production and processing with a reliance on imports.
With any broken system, the tendency is to throw everything out and start from scratch. That’s rarely the best course, however. In the case of agricultural subsidies, there’s little logic to doing away with government incentives altogether. Some fundamentals––water, food, education––are important enough that the government should keep a hand on the tiller. Slashing farm programs tomorrow would leave farmers indebted and in the lurch, add another shock to fragile markets around the world, and likely lead to more corporate consolidation in a food processing industry already stifled by monopolies.
So, what kind of agriculture should we be subsidizing? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t tidy enough to be enacted all at once; nor is it the kind of policy that can be passed in a vacuum. It’s a policy that looks long-term, and across borders and disciplines.
First, 21st century farm policy will have to be––first and foremost––food policy. If we put good nutrition at the top of our priorities, we will begin promoting fruit and vegetable production at home, instead of fast food. Internationally, we will help developing nations grow their internal agricultural capacity (as the Obama administration has already pledged to do in Africa), and will cease to see foreign markets as a dumping ground for American surplus.
Second, next-generation farm policies will put long-term sustainability ahead of short-term, extraction-dependent yields. Green payments will compensate farmers for their contributions to climate stability, and those who work at the forefront of sustainable agriculture––testing perennial crops instead of soil-depleting annuals and pushing the limits of local and organic production––will be rewarded for their investments in a post-petroleum future.
Weaning ourselves off present agricultural subsidies won’t be an easy process, but it can be an incremental one.
Curt Ellis is a Food and Society Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the WK Kellogg Foundation. He co-created and starred in the Peabody-winning documentary King Corn, and produced and directed the sequel, Big River.
Related posts:
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Subscribe to the Calendar