Why We're a Fat Nation

Bushels & Cents: Corn and the Farm Bill

You don't have to move to Iowa or grow an acre of corn to understand U.S. farm policy, or to see its powerful effect on the American food system. Just take a stroll through the supermarket or see what's cooking at the local fast-food restaurant, and you’ll notice a telling trend. Corn is everywhere, and most obviously, it’s in the corn-fed burgers and corn-sweetened sodas that are abundant in the American diet.

But this ubiquity of corn products is not entirely fueled by market demand. All-out production of corn (a record 300 million tons were harvested in 2007) and low corn prices (read: 99 cent hamburgers and free soda refills) are also driven by government policy. In particular, they’re powered by a complex piece of legislation dubbed the Farm Bill, which comes up for reauthorization in Congress every five to seven years.

Earl Butz

America has enacted farm relief legislation since the New Deal-era, when aid programs set in motion under the Roosevelt Administration obligated farmers to keep production low so that crop prices would remain high. But the modern Farm Bill bears little resemblance to its 1930s counterpart. Since President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz abolished production limits in the early 1970s, corn farmers have been guaranteed a livable income by a subsidy system that doles out cash even when the market is already flooded with corn.

These subsidies have become big business. While initially meant to protect farmers from the vagaries of weather and the fickleness of the free market system, the subsidy system now often rewards big growers over small- and mid-sized producers. Moreover, in recent decades it has tended to consolidate government payments in the hands of a few. Between 2003 and 2005, for example, American taxpayers paid $34.75 billion in crop subsidy benefits to farmers, but only the top one percent of farmers received nearly one-fifth of that amount. In Iowa, 70 percent of subsidy payments go to only 20 percent of the state’s commodity farmers.

This government support for big corn growers has meant that corn farmers have little incentive to curtail their production. Record-breaking harvests continue to overflow grain bins and elevators across the Midwest. In turn, corn-based feeds remain a relatively inexpensive and convenient option for livestock producers, and corn sweeteners and oils offer a cheap and ready ingredient for processed foods like sodas and french fries.

In contrast, the Farm Bill currently offers little reward to farmers who grow nutrient-rich with corn to land that produces watermelons or tomatoes. The result is an imbalance in the price of healthy foods versus unhealthy ones. Throughout the 1990s, the real price of fruits and vegetables rose 40 percent. And by 2000, the price of many sodas and other junk foods had dropped to 80 percent of their price in 1985.

Even as an increase in obesity prompts warnings from public health officials, American farm policy continues to set the stage for the mass production of high calorie and low nutrition corn products. In turn, these foods continue to dominate the American foodscape.

Updated 4/14/08

Sources

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/bushels.html

How NOT to be Happy

Tips for how NOT to be happy.

www.happiness-project.com 

One big revelation I've had about the nature of happiness is that some people simply don't want to be happy.
There are many reasons: you want to control other people, you want the satisfaction of being pitied or self-pity or both; you want special attention; you want to take the pressure off yourself, because you can't be expected to achieve much when you're so unhappy.
Oddly, too, you might associate unhappiness with depth of soul or intellect, and so pride yourself on unhappiness as a sign of inner worth.
Plus, for many people, it's less work to be unhappy than to be happy.
If you don't want to be happy, what qualities might you cultivate? Consider these:
-- Hone your powers of discernment so that practically nothing can meet your standards, and be sure to tell everyone else how the food, performance, or service fell short.
-- Stay alone as much as you can. Avoid seeing other people. Cancel plans frequently, don't answer your phone, tell people things like, "I hate parties," "I detest crowds," etc.
-- When someone bugs you -- whether it's a stranger talking loudly on a cell phone or a relative repeating the same maddeningly stupid jokes year after year -- tell as many people about it as possible. You may even need to see a therapist twice a week to talk about your grievances sufficiently.
-- Avoid any physical effort. Drive everywhere, and when at home, get off the sofa as little as possible.
-- Cultivate habits that keep you feeling stretched and overwhelmed. If you're short on cash, overcharge on your credit card. If you're busy at work, stay up late cruising the Internet or flipping among cable channels. If you don't have enough time to yourself, make complex plans that will take lots of time and errands to manage -- say, plan an elaborate birthday party for a two-year-old.