Comparing MyPlate to farm subsidies
If the USDA says that vegetables and fruits should make up half of our diets, why does less than 1 percent of its food subsidies go to farmers who grow produce?
I don’t believe Americans are lacking knowledge or awareness that fruits and vegetables are healthy; the problem is that fruits and vegetables compete with artificially priced junk food in the marketplace. Lucky Charms and Trix are so cheap because they are made with crop subsidies; meat is cheap because cows are fed government-subsidized crops, and so on and so forth. Is My Plate suddenly going to make a pound of vegetables cost less, and a box of Lucky Charms cost more? Will My Plate turn food deserts into areas where residents can have access to healthy foods? No.
| Previous Post 10 tips for using Groupon | Next Post Does cicada ice cream put the loco in locavore? |
Comments
I would agree that perhaps having cheaper fruit would entice me to eat more fruits and veggies but at the end of the day we would go right back to our normal dietary habits. I saw the same named documentary from above of the woman raising a family on fast food. The thing that awestruck me about the film is that it didn't appear to me that they were eating necessarily the cheapest picks of the menu. It can still be cheaper, buying the right foods, to cook at home than go through a drivethru..... More
Also, I don't understand the perspective that meat is cheap. Maybe in a fast food context, yes, but if you go to a normal grocery store, only the very cheapest meat is under about $3/pound. The vast majority of vegetables and fruit are much less expensive than that. And since the new plate graphic recommends that we eat less meat anyway, where is the problem (if you're not eating fast food anyway)?
I think the biggest problem you mention is probably the "food desert" phenomenon. If people live in a city where they don't even have access to healthy food, then they are going to eat what is there. If that's not the case, though, I don't really think there is an excuse... my husband and I eat on about $150 per month per person, and we live in Washington, which is not the cheapest state cost-of-living-wise. There are plenty of apples, broccoli, and other good fruits and veggies that we can.... More
Check out Vilsackofshit's priorities as governor if you want to know where he's taking USDA. Screw food. We need more corn, i.e.ethanol. And then there's the ever popular question: if smoking is bad for you, why is our government supporting tobacco farmers with subsidies and crop insurance? Reason is the same as for the food subsidies....politics, money, and getting re-elected. They don't give a rat's *** about the people of this country.
"Maybe they’re hoping that people get vocal — very vocal — about this disparity. It might make fixing the subsidies problem a lot easier for them if this discussion went viral and didn’t end."
Most naive statement of the month.
What will actually happen, should discussion suddenly break out, is despressingly predictable: USDA will be lobbied hard to keep existing subsidies right where they are, or higher; the agency will then have to go begging to Congress to increase the.... More
I grow a wide variety of crops from year to year and I can tell you with almost absolute certainty that a subsidy to the farmer isn't going to help out at all because you simply cannot store fresh fruits and vegetable. Every year, I have at least one crop that matures during a market glut and the price received is below the cost of production. Demand for fruits and vegetables has to increase so that vendors can live with lower margins. You need people at grocery stores pushing fruits and.... More
As regrettable as the situation's consequences may be for public health and therefore the cost and quality of well-being, the subsidies structure is not nearly as irrational or hypocritical as this article makes it out to be.
The fact is that the root of subsidies is two-fold:
- Persuasive interest groups, and
- Governmental objectives.
It's the latter force I'd like to focus on, especially since in this case (agriculture) it is the more powerful of the two. Here is.... More
Meats are cheap "Because beef and grains are highly subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture." The USDA wants the people to eat more meat. The more meats we eat, the more obese we'll get. Meats contained high cholesterol levels, high protein levels, on top of that who knows what they've been feeding the animals. Illnesses developed from being obses caused by eating meats. The meats are not only contained high levels of cholesterol but a lot of toxics. These toxics chemials came from the.... More
If you think eating meat causes disease, why are vegetarian people of India dropping like flies from heart disease? They don't eat meat, so they must be healthy, right? It's because processed grain foods fried in rancid, polyunsaturated oils are still vegetarian. Any health benefits seen from eating a vegetarian diet have nothing to do with the exclusion of meat, and if you eat the wrong types of foods - even if they're vegetarian/vegan - you'll be less healthy, just like the vegetarians of.... More
if meat makes us obese, why were people able to lose so much weight on the atkins diet which cuts out carbs?
Agreed, produce is not subsidized as much as grain crops (high fructose corn syrup, I'm looking at YOU). Definitely agreed that healthy meals are more expensive; having children, I know what it takes to give them GOOD food.
But the only effective way to change the status quo is not to complain, not to write letters and not to polemicize. It is to purchase the good stuff you can afford and not buy the junk. If crap begins to spoil on store shelves, if mountains of unwanted and.... More
my family of 4 has had a lot of hardship lately and lives a cool few hundred a year above the poverty line. when my eyes were opened to all of the additives in food i was disgusted to find that i could not afford to feed my family quality stuff. in fact, it was too much for me to bear. so i learned to keep an organic garden and to can. i learned to keep chickens for eggs and i volunteered at a farm once a week in exchange for more veggies. now our diets are very healthy and it took very little.... More
.....Part of the problem is that the processed foods won't spoil on the shelf. They have an enormous shelf life thanks to chemicals additives. I attempt to buy as little junk as possible, but it's hard when you have to fix three meals a day for six people on a budget. I can't explain to my kids that "you have to eat less because mommy buys good food that costs more". I have had to grow my own veggies to help bridge the gap. It's really tough when things are getting more expensive and.... More
I would agree but I feel we need to have a balanced approach. Also, the fresh food spoils quicker than the packaged stuff anyway.
Millions of local gardeners across America can fill in the gap in their own community by donating the excess garden produce to local pantries. You can easily find one at www.AmpleHarvest.org.
Visit www.AmpleHarvest.org/waystohelp to learn more.
I dunno, last time I went to the grocery store to buy meat, I looked at the price and found it to be so cost prohibitive that I stuck to veggies, rice, cereal, and beans.
What the author fails to mention is our exports of agricultural products is one of the few bright spots in our balance of trade. Y'all want your cheap goodies from sweatshops in the Third world but forget we need to have money coming back into this country to have any kind of economy. As for your food, quit whining, get off your couch and grow / raise whatever it is you want to have. You might find out this is a lot harder than you think and actually appreciate how good we have it in this country..... More
actually our artificially cheap food destroys local competition in 3rd world and developing countries, disallowing locals to produce for themselves which in turn forces people into foreign owned sweat shops. if there's anything we SHOULDN'T be exporting for profit, it's agricultural products. but all of the factors you mention are part of the same dysfunctional system.
This could be done. It would lower the total amount of food available on the global market, even though it would be supplied more locally as a whole. This might be a long term more sustainable option. Maybe. You need to factor in what the cost of lowering the total amount of food available on the global market would be. It is not that complicated. Widespread and pernicious starvation. That solution might be the greener way to go and overpopulation is an issue, but do you really want to solve it.... More
FOLLOW THE MONEY ! ! ! Food, Oil, War -- Makes no difference !
Follow the money !
This country is run by greed and neo-liberalism. Corporations dictate policy by manipulating the law and paying off politicians. The sad part is most americans are good people. Good people value family and community more. But these jerks at the top of corporations are borderline sociopaths (with few exceptions who actually help their fellow man) that only care where their next buck comes from. If they could sell you the rope that would hang themselves for a profit they would. I think they.... More
A good graphic for this story would be to show the MyPlate graphic accurately reflecting where the subsidies are going...
The article linked a graphic like that (not exactly that, but basically the same)
http://www.pcrm.org/news/usda_food_plate_federal_subsidies_meat_dairy_11...
Though the article has lies. Fruits and vegetables are cheaper than even fastfood hamburgers, as long as you don't buy the expensive vegetables/fruits. Bananas, apples, green beans etc. are all cheaper than
I'd like to see programs like WIC follow these guidelines, swap out more fresh fruits and veggies with half of the milk and cereal!
You might want to start with your congressman. Lobbyists play a big part in the scheme. So many of those poor farmers (especially grain and beef) have become millionaires from our need to eat.
People can grow their own fruit and veggies if they are motivated enough or educated and the gov't and big corporations can't make money from that. THAT may be a reason why fruit and veggies prices will never be addressed by gov't. I think all government subsidies should go away personally.
If you didn't have subsidies -some of which pay NOT to grow certain crops- you would have years when too many farmers grew the same stuff and not enough of other stuff. Many farmers would go bankrupt from low prices on the overproduced stuff and the next year there might not be enough food period. Subsidies are absolutely necessary to guarantee food supplies.
We don't all have the space to grow our own fruit and veggies. Many people live in apartments and there aren't community gardens for all.
Also, some people (like me) just happen to have brown thumbs instead of green. I tried growing tomatoes one summer in a pot. I managed to kill them. So, instead, I shop at farmer's markets and buy from people who actually have the skills to grow things.
in addition, organic farmers are required to PAY for government officials to come to their farms and give them the USDA Organic stamp of approval, as compared to the pesticide farmers for corn and dairy, who are as indicated here recieving the vast majority of government subsidies (no wonder prices are low!)
The food with the highest cost should go to those which are the worst for the environment and our heath (i.e. meat & dairy) yet they are often the cheapest. If people had to pay the true cost of meat and dairy, you'd also see a decline in environmental degradation and heart disease. Just sayin'
I try to find as much information and research as I can outside of the mainstream media, because that's where the truth lies... and so far as I have gathered, the issues of environmental degradation and diseases such as heart disease have everything to do with the agro-industrial industries and overpopulation. There are some evolutionary facts about human biology that cannot be altered, no matter how badly we want to believe that eating this way or that way is "healthier". A cow has two.... More
http://spirithappy.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/can-i-lose-weight-not-with-t...
Obesity is not the fault of the overweight person or animal In fact, it is almost impossible to lose weight in the USA due to Food Chemicals.
The
this is hilarious. I farm and eat the food--beef that we raise. I weigh 125 pounds. Have you ever heard of exercise? Quit spouting stuff that is ridiculous and quit blaming others. We all have control over our own lives. If you don't consume more calories than you work off-- you will not be overweight. That is just silly to say it is not the overweight person's fault.
I love when people think that your body is supposed to work like a machine(i.e A car engine). Fuel in and burn it off. Its much more complicated than that. So complicated in fact that science can't explain everything about the way our bodies work yet. Diabetes, Thyroid problems, hormone inbalances..all these things could easily caused by chemicals in the food we eat, and then effect the way our bodies process food and how much fat we store etc.
As soon as she heard about the recommendations, she asked about the money involved behind the scenes.
I think it's time we take a long hard look at both corn and oil company subsidies. Ridiculous.
You hit it right on the button! Hats off to this article
