How Can Twinkies Be Cheaper than Carrots?

Government Policy Consistently Favors Big Agribusiness

As I describe in my new book No Happy Cows, agri­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies, fac­tory farms and junk food man­u­fac­tur­ers are quite happy with things the way they are. Thanks to their lob­by­ing clout, gov­ern­ment poli­cies con­sis­tently favor the finan­cial inter­ests of these spe­cial inter­ests over pub­lic health, even though the result is tril­lions of dol­lars in addi­tional health care expenses.

Here’s an exam­ple: In just the last two years, 24 states have con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion that would place a tax on soft drinks. These “soda taxes” would dis­cour­age con­sump­tion of drinks high in sugar, thus reduc­ing obe­sity and health care costs. And they would also raise money that could be used to sub­si­dize health­ier foods. But in every sin­gle state, the leg­is­la­tion has been defeated. PepsiCo Inc., the Coca-Cola Company, and the American Beverage Association have spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to deter­mine the outcome.

“In the polit­i­cal arena, one side is win­ning the war on child obe­sity,” a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. “The side with the fat­test wallets.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, per­haps the best-financed lob­by­ing force for health­ier food, spent about $70,000 lob­by­ing last year—roughly what those oppos­ing stricter guide­lines on sug­ary sodas in the U.S. spent every 13 hours.

Spending $1 Trillion on the Wrong Things

Next week, the U.S. Senate will begin floor debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, which lays the ground­work for nearly $1 tril­lion in U.S. gov­ern­ment spend­ing over the next decade. Most of that spend­ing goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP—still some­times referred to as food stamps), and to sub­si­dies and incen­tives for farmers.

Efforts to restrict SNAP spend­ing to health­ier foods have been fought bit­terly, and suc­cess­fully, by the junk food lobbies.

Meanwhile, the cur­rent Senate pro­posal would give tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in sub­si­dies to Big Agribusiness, but would give next to noth­ing to pro­grams ben­e­fit­ing the envi­ron­ment, organic food, nutri­tion, or small farm­ers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the pro­posal an “all-you-can-eat-buffet for the sub­sidy lobby.”

In a national poll last year, 78 per­cent said mak­ing nutri­tious and healthy foods more afford­able and acces­si­ble should be a top pri­or­ity in the farm bill. But that’s not what’s on the table in this year’s “agri-business as usual” farm bill.

Kari Hamerschlag, Senior Food and Agriculture Analyst for the Environmental Working Group, explains that the cur­rent pro­posal would actu­ally “slash pro­grams for con­ser­va­tion, nutri­tion, rural devel­op­ment and begin­ning and socially dis­ad­van­taged farmers.”

For exam­ple, fund­ing for research in organic farm­ing would be cut to almost noth­ing, while corn grow­ers, who have received $73.8 bil­lion in sub­si­dies in the last 15 years, would get even more now. Subsidized GMO corn is used to pro­duce cheap high-fructose corn syrup, a sub­stance that even Vice President Joe Biden says is more likely to kill an American than terrorism.

This heav­ily sub­si­dized genet­i­cally mod­i­fied corn is also fed to live­stock in fac­tory farms and feedlots—at unfairly reduced prices.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at AlterNet.org.