An Eater's Bill for the Future

You Are What You Grow
Will this year’s farm bill make us fatter and sicker?

Sunday’s piece by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine is a stark indictment of the state of US agribusiness farm policy and its literally widening effect on the human body. The less discretionary income Americans have to spend on food, the more likely they are to eat from the middle, from the center grocery aisles stacked to the rafters with sugar-laden, calorie-dense, processed foods.

Subsidized overproduction of corn — forget ethanol, the long money is in high-fructose corn syrup — soybeans, the staggeringly high percentage of which is processed into hooved animal feedlot and drylot rations, as well as wheat and, to a lesser extent, rice, provides US growers with a steady income from maximum bushels per acre rather than a fair market price, an artificially-introduced sweetness in every school lunch menu, and a dumping ground on the open market for the surplus.

Pollan’s prescription for the decades of debacle that cloak US food production is to bring this year’s bill into alignment with sound public health, environmental, fiscal, and international trade policies, not another bill that rides the backs of fruit and vegetable producers to the tune of a 40% increase in the real price you pay at checkout while the cost of Coke and Pepsi drop 23%.

Last year’s Washington Post series Harvesting Cash is an excellent read, too. Get through it all if you possibly can. It’s truly a follow-the-money-trail adventure. Best interactive graphic in the series: Raising Cash.