Subsidies? Nah, just taxes

I heard some stories long ago about why corn is so cheap: Michael Pollan and others talked about the giant system of subsidies.

Today Dr. Sarah Taber clarifies (in her usual, spicy way) that it's more about tax policy than about actual subsidies. She tweets, "You buy it, it appreciates with very little tax burden, you sell it later. Farmland is a piggy bank. That's why corporations are buying it now! Farmers legislated it into the best tax shelter in the world. But! You have to farm it for it to count as farmland & get the tax breaks! And that's why we grow so damn much corn, soy, beef, & other low-effort commodities. They're the shortest path to a tax break."

Update, Sunday August 29th: This morning's Washington Post includes this article about an outspoken British farmer responding to a new law there that will provide payments to farmers in a different way than it has been done before. It'll be interesting to see how this new law works out....

Food, Nutrition, & the Environment

In the US, we are really good at producing corn. What happens to the corn? Well, a lot of is used for animal feed, some of it is turned into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or ethanol (often added to gasoline), and basically none of it is an ear you see on the dinner table. As the price of corn drops, the price of meat drops, and our diets end up out of whack. The result, is that "Health impacts are the biggest hidden cost of the food system, with more than $1 trillion per year in health-related costs paid by Americans, with an estimated $604 billion of that attributable to diseases — such as hypertension, cancer and diabetes — linked to diet." (from the Washington Post quoting this original research.)

However, the deeper we dig, the more we see. Climate change is affecting crops from corn to vegetables and fruit, and food production is just the first step in our food system. How does food processing affect the choices we have available to us, much less the choices individuals make? What is the impact of plastics throughout the supply chain? This article is a great summary of the many questions we need to investigate.