Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Ch. 2

Comment on the role of government policies in shaping corn production in the United States today; who are the winners and losers? What could/should be done at a governmental level to improve our food system? What global ramifications might this have?

15 comments:

  1. The changed government policy has really hurt American farmers. Before, the government offered farmers a storage granary during bumper-crop years where they could store their corn to wait for higher prices. The government also bought some of the extra corn from the farmers. These policies helped both the farmers and the market by keeping the amount of corn in the market relatively stable and therefore keeping the price of the corn high enough for it to be worth it for the farmers to grow corn. Unfortunately, some time in the 1970’s, Nixon gave some dude named Earl Butz the job of dismantling all of these programs in order to make American farmers grow as much corn as possible and for the corn to have as cheap a market price as possible. This led to corn being sold for $1.45 to grain elevators after costing $2.50 to grow. The government no longer makes up the difference. The “winners” of this destructive system are the corn itself, the manufacturing companies (ex. Cargill), and the American consumers. The “losers” are the farmers.
    To fix this problem, the government should go back to the system it had in place before Earl Butz messed it up. Though it will lead to a decrease in corn production, it will give corn farmers a chance and make the industry sustainable. It will also give foreign corn farmers a chance in the world market.

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  2. I'm still a little confused with the whole government subsidy thing, and supply and demand. But from my understanding, the government has affected corn prices by controling its production. Starting with the New Deal, the government paid farmers to keep part of their agricultural land idle to control corn prices. Then the US sold millions of tons of grain to Russia, inflating the price of corn. This, combined with bad weather drove up internal food prices. To keep corn prices low, the government subsidized all corn sales. Farmers would sell their corn at any price, and the government would make up the difference. This deflated the price of corn, but hurt the farmers in the long run.
    In this situation, the average American consumer is the winner. Corn is cheap, making food cheap through association. The losers would be the farmers as profits are hard to come by even with the government subsidization. Perhaps, by decreasing government involvement and allowing the corn sales to fluctuate on a natural course, the sales could fix themselves. However, this could be disastrous as it could lead to incredibly inflated prices, affecting the US and World economy by affecting grain exports and leading to world-wide food shortages.

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  3. Both Danielle and Mason mention that the farmers are the losers in this new scheme. A more subtle set of losers are both farmers and consumers in the developing world. Policies that keep American produced grains cheap undercut local farmers in other parts of the world, so consumers there become dependent on American grain. When something happens to increase the price of that US grain, for example if more corn is used to produce ethanol in this country, reducing global supply, prices spike around the world. Our food is pretty cheap here, but in the developing world it is common for people to pay over 50% of their total income on food, so even what we think are slight increases in demand or reduction of supply have big consequences elsewhere. The World Trade Organization has been trying for years to stop the US government from subsidizing grains, and actually calls it illegal (according to global trade laws).

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  4. Governmental policies surrounding the corn industry are unjust to say the least, favoring food processors and other key players in the industrial food chain. Basically, everyone's pocket from the Coca-Cola rep to the dirty politician is lined with corn cash, except that is for the farmer who grows the crop. The US Government, after New Deal reforms were repealed due to the pressure of greedy industrialists and the government's need to fuel the war machine, began subsidizing farmers for their corn, encouraging gross overproduction that flooded the food market with a surplus of the relatively nutritionless crop, making its price worthless. As a result, corn was both cheap and abundant, and could be utilized in bulk for the concoction of harmful, yet sellable, products; the high fructose corn syrup found in most processed foods, contributing to America's obesity epidemic as well as the beef factories that pump out meat products saturated with growth hormones and antibiotics. The really disgusting part is, the antibiotics are needed to prevent diseases from sweeping through the warehouse-raised livestock, who are unable to digest the corn and soy they are fed. During the Great Depression, New Deal reforms paid farmers to idle their fields, both to stabilize the global food market and to allow farmers to better maintain the quality of their land. During this age of the endless urban sprawl of the "corn city," those reforms have been completely reversed, posing both economic and ecological threats that have placed our world in harm's way.

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  5. The real winner in this system is the market for American crops. As the government enforces laws against over production and subsidizes much of the farming industry the economy only grows stronger because there is control and organization to the system. Because farmers are encouraged to grow fewer crops the price of corn increases, thus helping the economy (obviously). As some farmers find the urge to disobey these regulations growing stronger and stronger they will actually plant and harvest more crops then they are allows to provide sufficiently for the economy. This immediately boosts the economy even further as the price for corn is maintained, but the production is increasing.
    Conversely, the farmers are losers here because they are forced, under strict rules, to keep their production low. Should they deviate from these laws, they will only help decrease the price of their crop and eventually hurt themselves- making the farmers in something of the “lose, lose” situation.
    To minimize this struggle and control he production of corn, I think the government could reinforce their subsidies with monetary incentives. Perhaps the government could also allow all farmers who follow the code for X amount of years to be allowed to use more crop land…
    Should governments world wide be able to clearly completely control the production of crops I think the consumer of the world would benefit because everyone could purchase corn for an overall cheaper price due to the organization and global agreement on the price of corn. In this utopian system the farmers would also benefit by everyone being on board and not ruining the system due to motivation to personally get ahead by cheating.

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  6. To me it seems that the government’s goal is to appeal the group of people that will give the government the most support, and this seems to be the big industrial corporations, instead of the actual growers of the corn that so many citizens depend upon. The government’s involvement seems to indebt the hardworking farmers to the government, and also seems to lock most farmers into a vicious, positive feedback loop, referred to as the Naylor curve. If I understood it correctly, the curve describes how since the price of corn is on a low, exacerbates the overabundance of cheap corn. Although this would probably be a complicated solution, I think the government should promote farmers to return to growing a diversity of crops and minimize their use of the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Maybe the government could offer credits of some sort to the farmers who minimize the use of the fertilizer and who are more environmentally conscious in general. I’m sure this would cause multiple heated debates and controversies about fairness, since being environmentally friendly is usually more expensive. Nevertheless, if the government is going to continue to be so involved in agriculture and corn production in specific, they should be taking action to make it more environmentally friendly, instead of just profitable to the big, monopoly corporations.

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  7. The most prominent losers are farmers, whose livelihoods and lifestyles have been redefined, alongside corn production, by government policies. The shift away from the New Deal’s farm programs towards the Nixon administration-era policies was the main redefiner. Earl Butz’s new farming policies in the 1970s forced American farmers to change the way they grew their crops. Without the Ever-Normal Granary, which used to guarantee money for any virtually any successfully grown crop, farmers instead had to increase their yield to hold their places in the market. While the cost and energy-efficiency of growing the corn is low compared to the financial and caloric yield of crops, farmers, powerless compared to the political and economic forces at work, give in to the system that is driving them further and further into debt and impoverishment. I think there are two sets of winners in this scenario: the big companies who buy corn to process into both food and nonfood products, and the big companies that develop and sell nitrogen fertilizers. The former benefit because the expansion of the corn market means alarmingly low and continuously dropping prices, and the latter because desperate farmers need to always revitalize their land for the super-intensive corn crops they grow on bigger scale. Alongside this second group, I’m guessing, are other industries that develop technology to maximize crop yield. Considering how the whole corn industry reacted so sensitively and thoroughly to government policy, I’m not sure what potential government action could improve the current situation and our overall food system. Ideally, using the New Deal farm programs as a prototype for similar programs could revitalize the seemingly irrational role and efficiency of farmers, but still let other industries that have grown and changed maintain their importance in corn production and distribution. Additionally, taking a sustainable approach can provide stability to the system within the United States, and might inspire similar changes across the globe.

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  8. The large amount of corn that is available is devaluing the price of corn, leading to cheap products like high fructose corn syrup becoming very prevalent at little cost to the American consumer. This is costing the nation's farmers a great deal, however. The corn that we have costs more to grow than it is sold for. Farmers are forced to produce more and more to stay afloat, aided by the welfare provided by the Federal Government. A return to self-sustaining family farms with diverse crops just isn't possible at this point, but any loss in productivity will be a loss to the international prices of food, which we as Americans would be cushioned from, but could lead to more hunger and unrest in poorer countries.

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  9. During the time of the New Deal, the government would pay farmers to not grow anything in order to both stabilize the quantity of food and to keep soil at a productive level. Today, however, farmers do not have the same policies. Nixon thought that it would be best if we produced as much as possible, as cheaply as possible. This new plan meant that the cost of corn to the consumer was less than it was actually costing famers to produce it. This meant that not only farmers in America, but also local famers and consumers were being hurt. Corn was so cheap that the local famers could not keep up with the prices and that made the consumers become very dependent on American grain. This means that if we were to go back to the old system, while Americans may be able to handle the minor price increase, consumers in poorer areas around the world wouldn’t. This is a huge problem, and it is not one with any type of clear or simple answer. No matter what we end up doing, there is going to have to be a group that is hurt. What we need to look at next is exactly how each group will be harmed, and what kinds of impacts the change will have in the future so that we don’t just run into an extremely similar problem in a few more years.

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  10. The corn industry is one unlike any other and could not function without intense government help. In order to keep corn prices down and keep farmers in business, the government pays money to the farmers, almost half of their salary (the government spends 5 billion dollars a year on this!). It seems like a strange twisted situation we have gotten ourselves in, using corn as the king crop because it has so many benefits and has been working for us thus far. So far it seems this system has benefited the people because corn prices have been kept low and corn is used (in some step of the process) to make most of the food we eat today. Now we are starting to see its negative effects in terms of nutrition and also in terms of what corn does to the land. Also, the farmers arent gaining any benefit from the current system. They are still making barely any money even though the government is paying them. The government money is simply keeping them from going bankrupt. If the government stops encouraging the production of corn then millions of people could go hungry seeing as corn is directly involved in the creation of so many food products right now. We have gotten ourselves into an incredibly sticky situation that seems impossible to get out of at this point at least in the near future unless we make some drastic changes.

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  11. The government has encouraged the growing of corn in the past decades by subsidizing farmers for their production. This led to a gross overproduction, meaning the prices of corn became very low and farmers were paid by the government to stop producing more. Sadly, since farmers are selling their corn for cheaper than it takes to grow, farmers increase their production to "stay even". We're really all the losers in this situation. Sure, the government and food process companies (like Frito Lay, Hostess etc) receive a lot of profit since the majority of their products' ingredients are made from the cheap corn. And consumers also feel like they win because they are able to purchase more groceries for less cash. However, the health of America has drastically declined to the point that many are undernourished, not receiving the essential nutrients to live healthily. The chickens, pigs, and cows we eat are fed this corn blended with antibiotics to prevent disease. We are dependent on the nature manipulating process of using synthetic fertilizers, which comes with its own problems such as the water run off from farms leading into bodies of water to cause eutrophication. Farmers, of course have been hit hard and cannot provide for their own families. They are paid substantially less for their crops than it takes to produce them. Also, farmers no longer tend to a diverse range of crops or animals; all they raise is unprocessed corn, which they cannot eat. As we have discussed in class, countries around the globe also suffer from America's cheap crops leading to more poverty and starvation.
    To improve our food system, perhaps the government or food process companies can simply pay the farmers the actual cost of the crop in order to stop overproduction (pretty hopeful i know). The government can also pay for organic fertilizers for every corn farm as the farmers cannot. Money of course is a dangerously sensitive issue.

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  12. The corn industry is one deeply dependent on government aid. Starting with the New Deal back in the day, the government has been paying farmers to keep land idle and control crops in order to sustain a healthy market (in order to control potential surpluses and keep demand up). But this system has a great number of problems - the government is spending an enormous amount of resources and money to keep this industry thriving. Corn. A funny little plant. This is a difficult problem to solve, as because of the surpluses encourage trying to put corn into every food product the American food industry can - making us more and more dependent on one crop for our livelihood. The farmers aren't benefiting from this system, the government certainly isn't benefiting from this system, and the consumers, forced to consumed much more corn than they really think they're consuming, aren't benefiting from the increased corn in their diet.

    The reason all these systems are in place is to benefit the economy, and at that, it has certainly succeeded. However, at this point in time, from what I read I see the negatives of the system outweigh the positives.

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  13. From rereading this book, it seems that Earl Butz's policies have a lot to blame for farmers' problems. Well I do not want to fall into a preachy, "evils of consumerism" tone, his policies, which basically paid farmers to overproduce, and to overproduce a single crop, encouraged excessive consumption at the expense of any profit for the farmers themselves. His ideas encouraged a deluge of cheap corn that is more like a sickening, inescapable stream than a plague, and overproducing it constantly, but unnoticeably has, dangerously, made the United States' food system "used" to overproduction and low corn prices. This should definitely be a question mark for people who claim that our agricultural system is one that helps the "working man", and which is beneficial to the welfare of the people inside of it.
    I am always deeply disturbed when I think about how much United States government policy serves to turn the country into a desert: an ecological desert and a place devoid of human activity. The farms are now stretches of "asphalt": poor in respect to soil and species diversity, ecologically dead for much of the year, and reliant on chemical fertilizer to produce any life at all. The migration of humans from these farms, and the towns they once supported, is also alarming, and drives home this point: that the current agricultural system is one of bodiless corporations, not human beings.

    As a final note, while the organic food movement can breed elitists, I think it was, at its heart, designed to counter the lack of care our country's "mechanical" agriculture has for its farmers, among other things.

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  14. The American corn based farming system is pretty messed up. The role of the government has changed over the years. Initially, at least starting during the 1930s, the government paid farmers to keep their product off of the market in order to control prices and allow them to sell their product when the market was in a better state. This practice continued until the Nixon Administration in the 1970s. Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, the “colorful” Earl Butz (who was later forced to resign for a racist joke…) decided to remove those government programs, and this resulted in “a plague of cheap corn” being released on the market. In effect, the main winners of the system, in a sense, are the companies that use the corn to turn into all food products we now eat. Consumers might also be considered beneficiaries because the price of corn and the products it created dropped significantly. The real losers of this situation are the farmers, who now are growing a product that is significantly cheaper, and the sustainability of their industry and ecosystem health. GM monoculture corn has a risk of going extinct because of a lack of genetic diversity, and it requires tons of ecologically damaging pesticides and fertilizer to grow. The basic solution is for the government to stop the plague of cheap corn, and promote localized non GM corn to ensure that the industry does not suffer a cataclysmic failure.

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  15. So first let me preempt this by apologizing for the "NYT Reporter business" and the photo. Apparently my "blogger" account is from a U.S. Government project in 2009. Cool.

    Reading this chapter, I was intrigued by the economic ramifications of a few people's actions that affected so many. What's more, the term "king corn" really struck a chord for me. Instead of glazing over it, as I was first tempted to do (A corn food system will lead to civil unrest: done), I wanted to flesh it out a little bit for myself. Much in the same way we do not pay the full price of corn, subsidies of corn, in lieu of paying whole price of all that goes into the production of corn like oil, labor, fertilizer etc, people who consumed cotton in the 1700-early 1800's in the U.S. were not paying the full price of cotton: slavery. Slavery, much like corn subsidies, was also government assisted (Plessy V Ferguson etc.) But one could argue that by the end of the Civil War, they had (complete meltdown of infrastructure, Confederate economy was deemed worthless, complete dependency on Federal Aid until arguably the Gilded age.) "King Corn" is not a cute alliteration that shares the economic size as cotton has: its a warning.

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