Our Corn Future
I’m back on the topic of food and Michael Pollan is once again to blame. Pollan wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine last Sunday calling attention to the perverse effects of the host of farm subsidies set to be renewed by Congress later this year. The federal government, through the once every five years ritual known as the farm bill, provides financial support for growers of five key crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton, with corn and soybeans receiving the most support. Pollan asserts that the farm bill has historically been the province of a small cabal of Midwestern congressmen, whose sole motivation is to improve the economic fortunes of a shrinking but still powerful constituency of farmers. By leaving the details of this important but intentionally mystery-shrouded legislation to a few self-interested politicians, Congress has unwittingly sanctioned agricultural policy that is diametrically opposed to improving the health of our nation at large. Pollan writes:
A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called “an epidemic” of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation’s agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives.
Pollan believes that the first step in the process of recognizing the larger significance of the farm bill is to rename it the food bill. Unfortunately, the stakes are even higher for the upcoming farm bill because of the surge in demand for corn-based ethanol. U.S. subsidies for corn, combined with tax breaks for the use of ethanol, have allowed ethanol to hurdle past more scientifically-defensible options to become the alternative fuel of choice for government policymakers. The generous subsidies and now rising prices for corn are fueling a gold rush to corn for American farmers and ethanol production for investors. The result is an agricultural landscape increasingly devoted to growing corn at the expense of the environment, crop diversity and national health, and an auto industry with a convenient excuse for business as usual, despite ethanol’s dubious credentials as a renewable fuel. So while the case to end corn subsidies may be air tight, the line of special interests working to maintain support for corn just got a lot longer.
The federal government’s obliviousness to ties between farm policy and declining public health comes at a time when state and local governments have awakened to the irresponsible collection of foods served to our kids at school, including hot lunches devoid of fruits and vegetables and vending machines stocked with junk food and soda. Many school districts have succeeded at kicking out the vending machines and overhauling school lunches. Yet, as the research highlighted in Pollan’s article indicates, working and middle class families continue to stock up on cheap corn- and soy-based manufactured foods at home, at the expense of unsubsidized, and consequently more expensive, fruits and vegetables. Pollan writes:
Researcher Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice… [The] result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.
As a country, we should be embarrassed at the conscious sacrifice of our national health for the ongoing, politically-motivated support for a small segment of the U.S. economy. And now we should be downright scared that the same misguided policy is leading us away from energy independence and innovation, at a time when the stars are aligned for a clean break from the stale thinking of the past. We can only hope that Pollan’s pleas are not falling on deaf ears in Washington, or worse, drowned out by the fast talking of Big Corn.