Corn farm subsidies are a relic of the Great Depression. They are an inefficient use of taxpayer money, giving the crop an unnatural advantage over other, more useful, food crops. But political pressure from farm states keep them alive.
I sympathize with all farmers. It's a tough way to make a living. But why should corn farmers feel they have a government-given right to continue their business? Why do they have more rights than auto workers -- or journalists -- who have seen their industries change and resort to massive layoffs? (As a journalist, I would make a biased but persuasive argument that maintaining a professional press force is more important to the country.)
Let's add another argument to the list of why corn subsidies are bad. Never mind all the high-fructose corn syrup that has invaded the country, corn's unnatural use in cattle farming is probably causing its own problems. Corn has become the staple diet of cattle used for food.
Remember all the e-coli outbreaks that occasionally crop up? Beef is by far the biggest source of these outbreaks.
In a recent Charlie Rose interview, Michael Pollan at UC Berkeley and author of books about our food supply, offers a possible explanation for this. Corn.
The other issue I think though that`s important to touch on is look at
the system. And there is -- you know, E. Coli 0157H7 is a relatively new
bug. It was first identified around 1980, `82.
And there`s research suggesting that it is one of these bugs that
evolved on a feed lot, and that it is connected to the way we raise cattle
at every stage, especially the way we feed them.
We give what is for them is a very unnatural diet of lots of corn.
They are evolved to eat grass. Grass-fed meat at least didn`t used to get
this kind of bug, and indeed there`s research suggesting that if you change
their diet to what they`re meant to eat, they shed a lot of this E. Coli
0157.
So it`s if whole system that creates a kind of Petri dish in which
these new microbes can evolve and then bring this risk into our lives. Industrialized farming and food production is not sustainable. We have to get back to more natural techniques. It will be tough to do without pesticides and other "efficiencies," and political pressure will be enormous.
But non-sustainable practices are just that -- unsustainable. They will by necessity end on their own as soil is depleted and land and water is polluted. We would be better off stopping before things get that bad. We should work on ways to make the transition now.