Maureen Groppe, writing for Gannett News Service, has an article well worth reading entitled “Should Corn Remain King?” It focuses on a documentary by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis called “King Corn.”
Agriculture policy – guaranteed to make your eyes glaze over. But, wait. How about Money, Food, and Health? Suddenly the topic is a little more important to the average person. The film includes retired Purdue Dean of Agriculture and Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz. Butz was apparently instrumental in changing farm policy in the 70s in subsidizing corn production rather than paying farmers not to grow in order to keep prices up.
When the filmmakers visit the now 98-year-old former secretary and former Purdue University agriculture dean, Butz still thinks he was right to transform the old subsidy system.
“When I was a youngster on the farm,” he says, “we paid farmers not to produce, one of the stupidest things we ever did.”
Ellis said in an interview that he understood Butz’s mentality and was not trying to make him the villain of the film.
“He graduated from college in the thick of the Depression,” Ellis said. “We graduated from college in the thick of the obesity epidemic.”
It’s perhaps just been in recent years, Ellis said, that Americans can ask whether the costs associated with the nation’s most planted, processed and subsidized crop now outweigh the benefits.
The filmmakers believe those costs include:
# Small, family farmers taken over by large, commercialized operations.
# Pollution caused by the chemical fertilizers.
# Confined feeding operations where livestock, standing shoulder to shoulder, are quickly fattened on cheap corn instead of roaming on ranges, eating grass. Corn-feed beef contains more saturated fat than grass-fed. Also, the cattle are given antibiotics to avoid getting sick on the corn or from the confinement conditions.
# Subsidized unhealthy products like sodas and snack cakes instead of fruits and vegetables.
The Corn Refiners Association responded to the movie by arguing that no single food or ingredient is the sole cause of obesity, which should be blamed on too many calories and too little exercise. The association’s statement on the movie also says obesity and diabetes incidence continue to rise even though per capita consumption of high-fructose corn syrup is on the decline.
Maybe the Corn Refiners are correct, but their statements have the stink of prior statements by Big Tobacco and global warming deniers which basically boil down to “It’s all too complicated, who’s to say who is to blame? Let’s just keep doing things exactly the way we’ve been doing it — and maybe pass some immunity legislation.”
Ms. Groppe cites this documentary as being akin to Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Supersize Me. All of those, particularly Fast Food Nation, have caught my attention and are works that I would recommend.
I don’t think the basics of the problem are too tough to understand. As a nation we’re less healthy because technology has changed our labor needs so that people are mostly needed to process information and not as necessary for moving stuff around; technology has also changed our towns and cities so that walking makes less sense than riding. Consequently, we don’t use our bodies as much during the day — long way of saying we get less exercise. And, it’s not because we’re lazier than our predecessors. In the meantime, we’re eating food that’s higher in calories and other stuff we don’t need than ever before. Again, there are practical reasons for this that are morally neutral.
As Mr. Butz pointed out, we used to have so much farm land under production that prices for the commodities produced were so low that farmers couldn’t make a living doing it. Now, I suppose if we were really committed to the free market, we would’ve let the market force the farmers who couldn’t turn a profit out of the business. That probably would have been more painful in the short term and more efficient in the long term. But, instead, our lawmakers have chosen – and continue to choose – socialized farming through provision of subsidies in one form or another. Apparently under Mr. Butz’s leadership, we subsidized corn production and had to figure out stuff to do with it. One of the results was increased reliance on high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener which, as it turns out, isn’t especially good for us.
The initial price is cheap, but it doesn’t reflect the cost. We pay more in taxes to subsidize the farmers. We pay more in the form of health care to deal with the consequences of our diet. My Econ 101 (or more accurately – 9 weeks of high school economics) teaches me that the market is less efficient when prices do not reflect costs. When that is the case, buyers are making decisions with incomplete information and the market rewards inefficient behavior.
What do we do? I don’t know. Perhaps we shift subsidies from corn production over to exercise (community design and time and resources for individuals) and healthier foods (subsidies for green vegetables are pretty negligible, I believe).
Updated Ms. Groppe did not allude to the colorful history of Former Dean and Former Secretary of Agriculture Butz’s career.
- Public remark directed at the Pope on the subject of birth control, “He no playa the game, he no maka the rules.”
Racist comment on the subject of blacks, “Butz said that “the only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight p – – – – , loose shoes and a warm place to s – – -.”
Convicted on federal tax evasion charges for which he was sentenced to 5 years, fined $10,000, and ordered to pay $61,000 in penalties.
Perhaps not relevant to the discussion at hand, but as the saying goes, credibility is always relevant.
“High fructose corn syrup” is essentially sugar, the price of which is kept artificially high by import quotas on sugar from sugar cane producing countries (protecting Hawaii and Louisiana sugar cane production). On the world market sugar from sugar cane has historically been cheaper than high fructose corn syrup in the United States. Soft drinks and candy would be cheaper if we dumped the quota system, thus I doubt that our agricultural policies, taken as a whole, are making us fat by increasing our consumption of sugar. In any event our goofy energy policies are turning all of this upside down with the ADM’s and the agriculture lobbies pushing us down the ethanol from corn as a fuel route.
How about we just dump agricultural subsidies and tariffs?
My big question in this area is that if ethanol is so inherently and obviously wonderful, why do we both subsidize its domestic production and put big tariffs on its import?
Is it not wonderful enough to stand on its own in the marketplace, or are we just too stupid to see its wonderfullness?
(Actually, it can be pretty wonderful in the appropriate blend, over ice…)
Of course we should dump farm subsidies, but the farm lobby is so intense, and so present in so many states, that doing so would make any elected official that led the charge on the issue face imminent retirement.
Basic truism of economics: Anything you subsidize you get more of. So, if the problem is that there is too much corn, why on earth would you subsidize any part of it, for any reason? Well, we get sentimental about the farmer, and about keeping land as farmland. So we have bad policy.
Actually, subsidies for all food are high. Read “Cadillac Desert” sometime for a depressing look at water policy throughout the US. Here’s just one tidbit: We heavily irrigate desert areas in California, Colorado, Wyoming, so that we can grow green vegetables such as iceburg lettuce, which has virtually no nutritional value and can be grown in other areas that are not naturally desert. The diversion of the water causes the downstream areas to be robbed of the water, damaging the environment in addition to shortchanging the farmers in those areas.
Exercise does not make you thinner; lack of exercise does not make you obese. The human body is not a black box, with obesity being a question of calories in minus calories out.
It’s all about insulin. The more insuin in your blood, the more fat your body absorbs. Eat stuff that makes your body produce insulin, and you will gain weight whether you exercise or not. Eat stuff that does not make your body produce insulin, and you will be lean, whether you exercise or not.
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/
I’ll agree that it’s complicated, but calories ingested versus calories expended has to play a significant role. I doubt there were any fat people at the end of the Bataan Death March.
Cadillac Desert was a good one, but is a bit out of date in the sense that dams aren’t the aim of the western and southwest water lobby these days. Those folks are now interested in tapping into the Great Lakes. See:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/chi-water_bdoct28,0,3142729.story
Hmm. I thought they had their long term eyes on British Columbia.
I’ve heard the British Columbia (as well as parts of the US northwest) suggestion a few times. Obtaining water from BC is attractive in California, but less so in Arizona and New Mexico. (BC has far more control over its resources than do U.S. states, and it will likely prove difficult to persuade them to sell water. Arizona and New Mexico probably figure too that none of it would get past California agriculture interests, which are really big water users). With the threat of continuing draught in the U.S. South we could see thirsty folks coming from much closer to us.
Federal law gives control over diversions of water from the Great Lakes to the Great Lake States under such mechanism as those states work out with the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
Water Resources Development Act
1962d-20. Prohibition on Great Lakes Diversions
(a) The Congress finds and declares that –
The Great Lakes are the most important natural resource to the eight great Lakes States and two Canadian provinces, providing water supply for domestic and industrial use, clean energy through hydropower production, an efficient transportation mode for moving products into and out of the great Lakes region, and recreational uses for millions of United States and Canadian citizens;
the Great Lakes need to be carefully managed and protected to meet current and future needs within the Great Lakes basin and Canadian provinces;
any new diversions of Great lakes water for use outside of the Great Lakes basin will have significant economic and environmental impacts, adversely affecting the use of this resource by the Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces; and
four of the Great Lakes are international waters and are defined as boundary waters in the Boundary Water Treaty of 1909 between the United States and Canada, and as such any new diversion of Great Lakes water in the united States would affect the relations of the Government of the United States with the Government of Canada.
(b) It is therefore declared to be the purpose and policy of the Congress in this action –
to take immediate action to protect the limited quantity of water available from the Great Lakes system for use by the Great Lakes States and in accordance with the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909;
to encourage the Great Lakes States, in consultation with the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, to develop and implement a mechanism that provides a common conservation standard embodying the principles of water conservation and resource improvement for making decisions concerning the withdrawal and use of water from the Great Lakes Basin;
to prohibit any diversion of Great Lakes water by any State, Federal agency, or private entity for use outside the Great Lakes basin unless such diversion is approved by the Governor of each of the Great Lakes States; and
to prohibit any Federal agency from undertaking any studies that would involve the transfer of Great Lakes water for any purpose for use outside the Great Lakes basin.
( c) As used in this section, the term “Great Lakes State” means each of the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Wisconsin.
(d) No water shall be diverted or exported from any portion of the Great Lakes within the United States, from any tributary within the United States of any of the Great Lakes, for use outside the Great Lake basin unless such diversion or export is approved by the Governor of each of the Great Lakes States.
(e) No Federal agency may undertake an study, or expend any Federal funds to contract for any study, of the feasibility of diverting water from any portion of the Great Lakes within the United States, or from any tributary within the United States of any of the great Lakes, for use outside the Great Lakes basin, unless such study or expenditure is approved by the Governors of each of the Great Lakes States. The prohibition of the preceding sentence shall not apply to any study or data collection effort performed by the Corps of Engineers or other Federal agency under the direction of the International Joint Commission in accordance with the Boundary Waters treaty of 1909.
(f) This section shall not apply to any diversion of water from any of the Great Lakes which is authorized on the date of the enactment of this Act.
SENSE OF THE CONGRESS- It is the Sense of the Congress that the Secretary of State should work with the Canadian Government to encourage and support the Provinces in the development and implementation of a mechanism and standard concerning the withdrawal and use of water from the Great Lakes Basin consistent with those mechanisms and standards developed by the Great Lakes States.
(Nov. 17, 1986, Amended December 11, 2000, P.L. 99-662, Title XI, 1109, 100 Stat. 4230.)