Poverty & Nutrition

Agricultural subsidies are a major factor in determining what people eat.  What does this mean and how does it affect you?

Agricultural subsidies are what the government pays farmers -sometimes to grow crops and sometimes not to grow crops- in order to manage food supply and control prices. The US government has used agricultural subsidies for about 80 years and since 1995 has paid out $194 billion in crop subsidies to farmers (farm.ewg.org).

NUTRITION

As an example, corn is America’s largest crop and the crop receiving the highest subsidies. Corn is animal feed and it’s turned into ethanol. It’s breakfast cereal, vegetable oil, high-fructose corn syrup (which, let’s face it, is in everything from soup to juice to ketchup to bread). Generally the reason we buy food that’s unhealthy is because it’s cheap and abundant. A really accessible and surprising read on this issue is U.S.PIRG’s Apples-to-Twinkies report.  There are interesting statistics in the Key Findings. My favorite is:

“If subsidies for junk food ingredients went directly to taxpayers to allow them to purchase food, each of America’s 141 million taxpayers would receive $7.58 to spend on junk food and 27 cents to spend on apples each year – enough to buy 21 Twinkies but just half of one Red Delicious apple.”