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commodities 
Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 16:36:16 PM PDT
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Robert "I Heart Monsanto" Paarlberg is at it again, with a new column called "The Inconvenient Truth About Cheap Food and Obesity: It's Not Farm Subsidies. First off, what's inconvenient about that? It'd be downright GREAT if the subsidies weren't our problem, given how dang hard it is to convince Congress to change them. Paarlberg says:
Any complaint that food prices are too low might seem bizarre today, since world grain prices hit their highest levels in 30 years in 2008 and are now back up again. Yet this did not stop columnist Mark Bittman from reminding his New York Times readers that the price we pay for corn, soy, chicken, pork, beef, and high-fructose corn syrup is "unjustifiably low" because of farm subsidies.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our federal farm programs are designed to supplement the income of farmers, not subsidize the production of food. Most federal farm support programs either give cash to farmers whether they grow more crops or not, or boost farm income by raising crop prices through import restrictions, market controls, or temporary land set-asides, all of which make food artificially expensive, not artificially cheap.
Much of what he says is true. This is typical of Paarlberg, to blend truth and BS seamlessly. Yes, commodity prices are at record highs, and they were in 2008 too. Prior to that, however, they were often quite low (years back, corn got down around $2/bushel... now it's up around $7/bushel). If Paarlberg had consulted researcher Timothy Wise of Tufts University, he would have received data proving that our subsidy system more or less provided savings of billions of dollars to the factory farm industry in the form of underpriced commodities over a recent period.
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Sat Feb 05, 2011 at 08:05:01 AM PST
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The international events of this past few days have distracted from financial news on the destructive nature of our current capitalistic religion: now that most finance companies and international speculators have ruined the property market and can no longer leverage their profits from the burst bubble, they are turning to food commodities.
All it takes is a quick reading of the latest UN reports in the past few days which indicate that up to 70% of business on commodity markets is speculative rather than trade. Furthermore the FAO indicates that food prices could rise as high as 40% over the next few years as a result.
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Thu Feb 25, 2010 at 21:33:15 PM PST
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Today I had a piece on school lunch posted on Alternet ("Are School Lunches Setting Kids Up for Obesity and Poor Nutrition?") If you find the subject interesting, I urge you to check out the report "Impact of Federal Commodity Programs on School Meal Nutrition" by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here's what I said in my article, based on the info in the report:
The commodities the USDA provides to schools make up about 20 percent of food served in lunches. A review of commodities provided to California schools found that a few items comprise the majority of commodities provided: coarse and fine ground raw beef (26 percent), low moisture part skim & light mozzarella (13 percent), small and large chilled chickens (11 percent), and barrels, blocks and slices of yellow or white cheddar cheese (10 percent). In fact, USDA commodities provided for school lunches turn the USDA's own food pyramid on its head. Whereas the food pyramid recommends a diet rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, the USDA usually provides schools with meat and dairy products often high in saturated fat. Only 13 percent of commodities provided are fruits and vegetables (including fruit juice and legumes) -- and about half of the vegetables provided are potatoes.
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Tue Jan 05, 2010 at 14:40:50 PM PST
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In the fall of 2008, the GAO found that the USDA had screwed up. While the very wealthy were ineligible for commodity subsides, the USDA wasn't talking to the IRS to make sure that those who were ineligible were actually excluded. It was a $49 million "oops" that sent free cash to 2500 people who shouldn't have gotten it. The Obama administration has been working to fix this. In March they said that farmers would have to sign a form allowing the IRS to send income information to the USDA for verification, and now there is more news.
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Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 20:37:37 PM PST
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With my boyfriend at work all night, I figured I'd get a headstart on my 2010 resolutions by reading everything by Daryll Ray that I could get my hands on. He's an absolutely amazing expert on agricultural policy and I don't read his stuff often for two reasons: First, because you have to think and pay attention while you read it, and second, because Google Reader gives it to me in PDF form. But now I'm supposed to be writing a series in ag subsidies and there is absolutely NO getting around reading Daryll Ray. If there's something intelligent to say about ag subsidies, he's the one who would have said it and I should definitely read it. Care to join me?
Below I've posted links to the Daryll Ray columns I found most interesting, and I promise they aren't PDFs.
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Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 00:36:53 AM PST
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About 50% of the acres harvested in the U.S. in 2007 were planted in corn and soy. Another 36% of the acres harvested were planted in wheat and hay. Veggies made up only 1.5% of the harvested acres in the U.S.; orchard crops (fruit and tree nuts) made up 1.6%. So who's growing all this fucking corn? Are small farmers equally as guilty as the biggest farms out there? Take a look:
| Farm Size | % of Sales($) From Corn | % of Sales($) from Wheat | % of Sales($) from Soy |
| 1-9 acres | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| 10-49 acres | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.5% |
| 50-69 acres | 1.5% | 0.2% | 0.9% |
| 70-99 acres | 3.0% | 0.3% | 1.7% |
| 100-139 acres | 3.9% | 0.4% | 2.3% |
| 140-179 acres | 5.2% | 0.8% | 3.5% |
| 180-219 acres | 6.2% | 0.7% | 3.7% |
| 220-259 acres | 7.4% | 0.8% | 4.4% |
| 260-499 acres | 10.9% | 1.3% | 6.1% |
| 500-999 acres | 16.2% | 2.0% | 8.8% |
| 1000-1999 acres | 21.1% | 4.0% | 11.2% |
| 2000+ acres | 18.2% | 8.6% | 8.0% |
| All Farms | 13.4% | 3.6 | 6.8% |
Because this table is measured in sales dollars as a percent of all sales dollars, you can't tell how many acres were planted of each crop. You CAN tell whose business is more reliant on corn, wheat, and soy though. And that's obvious: the bigger you are, the more likely you are to grow corn, wheat, and soy.
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Tue Sep 09, 2008 at 11:17:37 AM PDT
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While Larry Kudlow and the rest of the neo-con Kudlowites are telling you the economy is Goldilocks, reality is trying to remind us that things aren't so golden.
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Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 21:54:39 PM PDT
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(Excellent diary - promoted by Jill Richardson)
The contrarian in me is screaming that Reuters' recent piece on food prices is the food inflation equivalent to Businessweek's famous "Stocks are dead" headline from a 1982 issue. Yet another piece is whispering in my hear "baby, it ain't over yet!"
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