US Farm Subsidies Put the Junk in Junk Food

In You Are What You Grow, published last Sunday in the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan tells us:

• Junk food is the cheapest food in the grocery store, calorie for calorie.
• Junk food is cheap because its raw materials are cheap.
• The farm bill, renewed every five years, provides massive subsidies to growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice -- and non-foodstuff cotton.
• US farms overproduce these five crops, particularly corn and soybeans.
• The farm bill does little to support growers of fresh produce.
• The price of fresh produce increased by 40% in constant dollars between 1985 and 2000.
• The price of soft drinks (water, corn syrup, and flavoring) declined 23% in constant dollars in the same time frame.
• The school lunch program buys agricultural surplus to feed to students "chicken nuggets and "Tater-Tots."
• The farm bill is coming up for renewal.

Historically the farm bill has been left to midwestern legislators to craft to the desires of their farming constituencies. But Pollan describes combination of interests coming together to change the way things are done. The public health community is concerned about the farm bill's impact on the obesity and diabetes epidemics. Environmentalists worry that chemical and feedlot agriculture jeopardize clean water. The international development community is speaking up on the impact of massive US food exports on developing nations' agriculture and trade. People who are concerned about the food they eat want to do something about the torrent of high-fructose corn syrup.

Pollan says that it isn't a "farm bill," in reality it is a food bill, key legislation that determines what we, as a nation, are going to eat. One of these years, he writes, the eaters of America are going to demand a place at the table, and we will have the political debate over food policy we need and deserve. This could prove to be that year: the year when the farm bill became a food bill, and the eaters at last had their say.