[ExI] Grain subsidies and externalized costs (Paleo/Primal health)

[J. Stanton]

[Breaking this up into multiple messages due to length.]

Dave Sill wrote:

 >> >  (Grains, particularly corn and soybeans, are indeed cheap, mostly 
because
 >> >  they're heavily subsidized by our government...we are therefore 
deliberately
 >> >  creating the very health problems we wring our hands about.)

 > Bullshit. Grains are cheap mostly because they aren't that expensive
 > to produce.

I believe you've just disqualified yourself from further discussion on 
this topic by posting something blatantly counterfactual.  I'm going to 
join Max and say that this discussion is over unless you're going to 
bring something besides unsupported opinions to the table.

Here's just one example:

"At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily 
subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 
of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers 
$10."  [In other words, there is no free lunch: the cheaper price at the 
supermarket is paid for by our taxes.]
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

A direct quote from the then-CEO of ADM, Dwayne Andreas:

*** "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a 
free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the 
speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not 
understand that this is a socialist country." ***


And let's not forget the externalized costs of industrial grain 
production: depleted topsoil, poisoned water (I know someone who has 
personally been required to pay over $30,000 to have their well re-dug 
multiple times and elaborate filtering systems installed, because 
fertilizer and pesticide runoff from surrounding farms made their well 
water illegal to drink), and CAFOs.

"Every year, taxpayers shell out between $7.1 billion and $8.2 billion 
to subsidize or clean up after our nation's 9,900 confined animal 
feeding operations. ... Rural communities get an additional kick in the 
keyster since CAFOs, spewing odor and flies, have reduced rural property 
values by -- get this -- an estimated total of $26 billion."
http://www.ethicurean.com/2008/04/24/buck_the_cafo_tax/

Note that CAFOs are only economically efficient because of our massive 
subsidization (and consequent overproduction) of corn and soy, and 
because they externalize their costs onto taxpayers.  From the report 
itself:
"Low-cost grain was worth a total of almost $35 billion to CAFOs from 
1996 to 2005, or almost $4 billion per year."

In contrast, "Pastures themselves are not subsidized at all, so the 
sustenance that livestock derive from pastures receives no government 
support."  (Not to mention property taxes, which penalize pasturing and 
reward high-density CAFOs.)

JS
http://www.gnolls.org