4 ms·

Agro lobby is pretty powerful in the US. The people lobby - our dear senate, republican and democrat simply sells out.

serge2k 10y ago
Why does it seem like every damn thing we do for farmers is awful for others? I know it's not, we reap the benefits in lower food prices, but does beef really need to be cheap enough we can eat it 7 days a week?
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  >I know it's not, we reap the benefits in lower food prices, but does beef really need to be cheap enough we can eat it 7 days a week? No it is. The total cost to society has to include healthcare costs as well. Saying, 'This lowers our cost at the dinner table' is only looking at part of the equation. Never mind that people don't eat dinner together which is a by product of having super cheap convenient packaged calories available. Eating as a family increases child development significantly, it's like the cheapest thing you can do to give kids a good start. Never mind that we don't really need nearly as much corn as we produce. When the farm bill came out and started picking agricultural winners, we turned garbage farm land into prime producers of a crop that we don't need. Then we added tariffs to sugar imports, then we put corn into everything, providing a cheap source of calories and diabetes, heart disease, perhaps cancer (most of the links here are still from correlation and haven't been proven as causation). Corn moved from a side dish to being in everything you eat unless you are cooking all (most) of your own food. We have the (possible) super bug issue from our meat sources. It takes like 50 gallons of water to grow an avocado but we do that anyways because irrigation water is subsidized in many states even as we start to drain our reservoirs. It takes 2 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of food. We do this because it's still cost effective because of subsidies. The whole picture makes it look not quite as cheap, we've just pushed the cost into other categories to hide it.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > It takes 2 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of food. We do this because it's still cost effective because of subsidies. I think "we do this because we can't eat fossil fuels no matter how many calories they provide, so trading total energy content for ability to serve as food is valuable, independent of subsidy" would be more accurate.
    - jethro_tell 10y ago
      Partly, but we can grow food in a more efficient way. It's currently cost prohibitive because we use feed lots, and subsidies water and fuel for farming.
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      What about photosynthesis?

Why does it seem like every damn thing we do for farmers is awful for others? I know it's not, we reap the benefits in lower food prices, but does beef really need to be cheap enough we can eat it 7 days a week?

jethro_tell 10y ago
>I know it's not, we reap the benefits in lower food prices, but does beef really need to be cheap enough we can eat it 7 days a week? No it is. The total cost to society has to include healthcare costs as well. Saying, 'This lowers our cost at the dinner table' is only looking at part of the equation. Never mind that people don't eat dinner together which is a by product of having super cheap convenient packaged calories available. Eating as a family increases child development significantly, it's like the cheapest thing you can do to give kids a good start. Never mind that we don't really need nearly as much corn as we produce. When the farm bill came out and started picking agricultural winners, we turned garbage farm land into prime producers of a crop that we don't need. Then we added tariffs to sugar imports, then we put corn into everything, providing a cheap source of calories and diabetes, heart disease, perhaps cancer (most of the links here are still from correlation and haven't been proven as causation). Corn moved from a side dish to being in everything you eat unless you are cooking all (most) of your own food. We have the (possible) super bug issue from our meat sources. It takes like 50 gallons of water to grow an avocado but we do that anyways because irrigation water is subsidized in many states even as we start to drain our reservoirs. It takes 2 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of food. We do this because it's still cost effective because of subsidies. The whole picture makes it look not quite as cheap, we've just pushed the cost into other categories to hide it.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It takes 2 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of food. We do this because it's still cost effective because of subsidies. I think "we do this because we can't eat fossil fuels no matter how many calories they provide, so trading total energy content for ability to serve as food is valuable, independent of subsidy" would be more accurate.
  - jethro_tell 10y ago
    Partly, but we can grow food in a more efficient way. It's currently cost prohibitive because we use feed lots, and subsidies water and fuel for farming.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    What about photosynthesis?