
The Insanity of Our Food Policy - ttunguz
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/the-insanity-of-our-food-policy/
======
tghw
There's some truly nutty stuff going on with subsidies. One example is cotton
subsidies. Right now we're subsidizing cotton by direct payments and crop
insurance. In 2004, the WTO ruled these subsidies to be unfair in a dispute
brought by Brazil. To reconcile the dispute, the US started paying Brazil
about $150 million per year, instead of ending the subsidies. So now we're
paying twice for cotton subsidies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil%E2%80%93United_States_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil%E2%80%93United_States_cotton_dispute)

~~~
ddebernardy
It's hardly the most freaky, imho. The biggest one, to me, is how the enormous
subsidies that US farmers receive directly contribute to global obesity and
healthcare costs.

Here's a primer on what sugar (or more precisely, fructose) does by Dr Lustig
(of UCSF, if memory serves):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

I wouldn't be surprised if US agribusinesses ultimately end up on the
receiving end of lawsuits across the world -- much like tabacco companies did.

~~~
derleth
Does any other expert agree with Lustig, or is it just him and a bunch of
people who've watched videos by him?

~~~
coldtea
Can't you make up your mind on your own based on information, without the need
to appeal to expert consensus (which might as well be bogus and profit-
driven?)

~~~
hackula1
Not particularly reliably. Peer review by people who actually know what they
are doing is going to beat my puny brain 99% of the time.

~~~
coldtea
Wasn't that the exact same argument given to the expertise of priests and
medieval scholars?

In any case, I wouldn't count on that. Recent meta-studies (if we are to at
least believe those) show that a majority of scientific papers are non
verifiable and non reproducible BS, contain fabrications and alterations, etc
-- and that's talking about the "hard sciences". And having been involved with
researchers, I don't doubt that at all.

E.g:

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-
re...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-
changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong)

and:

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-
think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble)

~~~
derleth
> Wasn't that the exact same argument given to the expertise of priests and
> medieval scholars?

This is the "Experts were wrong before" dodge, which conveniently ignores how
often individuals are wrong.

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science_was_wrong_before](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science_was_wrong_before)

------
greglindahl
One of the amazing things about our food subsidies is that they skew towards
subsidizing things like row crops: wheat and corn, and indirectly subsidize
grain-fed meat.

And they don't subsidize things like vegetables.

Now, what do Americans not eat enough of? And it's partly because they're too
expensive compared to cheap grains and cheap grain-fed meat?

~~~
chad_oliver
To be fair, the subsidies exist (if only theoretically) to ensure that America
can feed itself in a large scale war. In WWII, the Allies had a lot of success
with cutting off Germany's external trade, which significantly reduces their
ability to make war. America wants to make sure that if that happens to them,
there won't be a famine.

Vegetables aren't a priority in that situation, because they can be easily
grown in backyard gardens. On the other hand, row crops tend to be
carbohydrate-heavy (perfect for a famine), cheap to produce, _and_ they
benefit significantly from economies of scale.

~~~
sliverstorm
Row crops also store & transport much better than most vegetables.

------
joelle
Look what happened with corn subsidies. Now corn is in EVERYTHING we eat.
Literally everything. The beef, chicken, and pork you eat has all been fed
corn. Every processed food has corn starch or corn syrup or some other product
of corn. Most of the words you can't pronounce in the ingredients list are
derivatives of corn. And it's all because of ridiculous bills and subsidies
and money getting thrown around in big agro. Recommended Read: Omnivores
Dilemma

------
bjt
Stiglitz makes a good point about how farm subsidies made sense in the '30s
when most farms were small and family owned. They were an antipoverty program
then, and only since then were their rules exploited by ever-larger farms.

This kind of rent seeking should not surprise anyone. The market moves a lot
more quickly than government. Today's reasonable policy is tomorrow's
corporate welfare.

The lesson I take from this: other things being equal, err on the side of
fewer programs and regulations instead of more. If you want to help the needy,
it's better to use broad-based direct assistance (like food stamps or the
EITC) than a more complicated program that singles out some sub-group like
farmers.

~~~
shadowOfShadow
Give poor people money to buy food, they will likely optimize in fat+ ways.
Pay people to be healthy. The needy can be healthy. Put a floor under everyone
and then progressively incentivize health.

~~~
pjc50
Health is its own reward; paying people for healthy _outcomes_ == worse
poverty for the chronically unhealthy, partially disabled, and (in the US)
victims of the non-healthcare system.

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camus2
It makes sense when you understand how DC works, and how corrupt the
government is .How many representatives have "farms" and get subsidies? There
is no insanity here, it's by design.

Saying that things are "illogic" is insulting.Things make perfect sense,
journalists just dont want to admit that US politicians are rotten to the
core.

~~~
maxerickson
A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more
interesting than an insinuation that many of them probably do.

The excessively subsidized farms discussed in the article were collecting an
average of $30,000 a year. That's nice money, but I can't see a significant
portion of the body wasting their influence chasing that around.

~~~
dangrossman
> A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more
> interesting

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-
pai...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-paid-
to-112-congress_b_842704.html)

[http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-
received-238k-fa...](http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-
received-238k-farm-subsidies)

Just some interesting links I found while attempting to sate my own curiosity
as to whether such a statistic has been compiled.

------
quadrangle
Honestly, I was expecting to read some sort of defense of this corruption here
in the comments.

There's a certain part of HN that is totally all about rent-seeking. It's what
startups do when they create platforms that are only a slight twist on things
in order to get everyone to use them, and then if they get enough market
share, they can take in rents disproportionate to any value they add.

Sure, there's a lot of productive and ethical startup stuff too. But there's
just the undercurrent that if someone is making good money in the marketplace,
it's because they are a success and should be emulated. Many people fail to
question whether the business is really founded in ethical practices.

I guess, so far anyway, when something is _that_ corrupt and unethical as the
U.S. food policy, then even those who knee-jerk to defend anyone rich are not
gonna be defending this nonsense. Everyone has a limit to their ability to be
in denial about the corruption in our economy…

~~~
coldtea
> _There 's a certain part of HN that is totally all about rent-seeking._

I find that modern day capitalism is ALL ABOUT rent-seeking.

That's what has halted major advances and innovations in favor of Tumblr's and
Instagrams and reduced the number of Promethean Elon Musk like figures to
people like Zuckengerg et al.

> _I guess, so far anyway, when something is that corrupt and unethical as the
> U.S. food policy, then even those who knee-jerk to defend anyone rich are
> not gonna be defending this nonsense. Everyone has a limit to their ability
> to be in denial about the corruption in our economy…_

Well, there's a counter explanation, that they don't think they are defending
rich people in this case (e.g they don't consider subsidised farmers that).

~~~
quadrangle
well, sure, I'm actually not going to disagree with you. Capitalism as we know
it in real-life (whatever about fantasy and theory) is all about rent-seeking.

------
wnevets
Get with the program, welfare is terrible. Unless of course its welfare for
the wealthy.

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dredmorbius
It's helpful to realize that questions of price supports (or import tariffs)
on agricultural products go pretty much to the very birth of modern economic
thought. Smith discusses them in his _Wealth of Nations_ , and one of David
Ricardo's first economic essays concerned the Corn Laws (restrictions on grain
imports to Great Britain).

[http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/p...](http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/profits.txt)

All that's old is new again.

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coldcode
Virtually no one in Congress has ever been hungry because they had little or
no money and couldn't buy any. But they have lots of experience having people
give them money to obtain more for the giver. So you wind up with feed the
rich and starve the poor as good politics.

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JoeAltmaier
Farmers are now 'the undeserving rich' -ha! Clearly they don't know any (I'm
from an Nth generation farm family).

