Des Moines Register
04-30-06
Brasher: Studies say crop subsidies make us obese
Theory states farm policy leads to cheap foods that add sugar and fat to
Americans' diets.
PHILIP BRASHER
WASHINGTON FARM REPORT
Washington, D.C. — Farm subsidies help keep food cheap. That's long been an
article of faith among farmers.
But are farm subsidies also making Americans fat? That's a line of attack against
federal farm policy that is cropping up in a number of places, including a recent
report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and a
new book by journalist Michael Pollan.
There are problems with the theory that subsidies and cheap food cause obesity:
Fresh fruit and vegetables are relatively cheap, too, and farmers who grow them
don't benefit from subsidies.
But farmers may well have to deal with the obesity issue when Congress writes
the next farm bill.
At the very least, the nation's swelling girth could make an argument for using the
farm bill to promote the consumption of healthful foods.
There are plenty of reasons for the obesity problem — overeating and lack of
exercise, to name a couple — according to the report by the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy.
But the report argues that federal farm policy shares in the blame because it has
encouraged the overproduction of corn and soybeans, crops that processors turn
into cheap food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and partially
hydrogenated soybean oil.
(It's no small bit of irony that the report was funded in part by the Wallace Genetic
Foundation, a legacy of Henry Wallace, the father of hybrid corn and founder of
Pioneer Hi-Bred International.)
"The problem with the extensive use of these cheap commodities in food
products is that they fall into the very dietary categories that have been linked to
obesity: added sugars and fats," the report argues.
Pollan, a longtime writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of the
best-seller "The Botany of Desire," makes a similar argument, though more
elegantly, in his new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
Pollan likens the country's obesity problem — he calls it the "Republic of Fat" —
with the national drinking binge that was blamed on a surplus of corn and cornmade booze in the early 1980s.
"When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat," he
says.
Pollan also faults subsidies for encouraging the use of corn as cattle feed.
Pollan would have us eat grass-finished beef, in part because farmers consume
less fossil fuels growing grass rather than corn.
But even if you accept his premise that cheap, subsidized food makes people fat,
it doesn't necessarily follow that getting rid of the subsidies will cause Americans
to slim down.
Economists at Iowa State University analyzed what would happen if corn and
soybean farmers stopped getting subsidies and found that prices would rise at
most by 5 to 7 percent.
An increase of that amount would have no impact on the price of corn syrup and
would boost the price of meat by no more than 1 percent, the economists said.
Even an ardent critic of U.S. farm policy like Ken Cook, president of the
Environmental Working Group, doubts the subsidies-obesity linkage will have
much traction in Washington.
"I have a hard time believing that if you cut farm subsidies people would lose
weight," Cook says.
What the obesity problem could do, however, is push Congress to put more
money into programs that promote the consumption of fruit and vegetables.
One of the ideas is to expand a program initiated by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., that
provides free veggies to school kids in selected school districts.
The question is where lawmakers will find the money for programs like that.
One place they could go: subsidies for crops like corn and soybeans.