this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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But I do (sort of) blame farmers (agribusiness really) for a lot of obesity. Maybe everything doesn’t need corn syrup in it?
Fossil fuels are useful as hell for chemical feedstocks and we mostly just burn them. Stop trying to prevent solutions by spuriously individualizing the causes.
Part of the background is that the government wants to keep farmers "on hand" even when demand isn't there, for national security reasons.
Essentially they want to be able to get more crops out of all farmers in a bad year, rather than rely on only a fewer number of farmers in a good year.
There are many greed/corruption/waste issues with this system, but all nations have a strong interest in keeping their breadbasket staffed up for hypothetical bad times
I've heard the fuel and plastic thing is again a subsidized endpoint for corn to keep the conveyor belt flowing.
There's more than just corn like that
I grew up on a tobacco farm, when it's sells it sells like an auction. If no one buys your crop, the government bought it for a set price and threw it in a warehouse in case we "ran out" of tobacco between harvests and companies wanted to buy more or some shit
But that's not even really a subsidy, so I'm not sure why you're talking about it.
I would say that a government guaranteed price floor would count as a subsidy, especially on a luxury/vice product like tobacco.
Not sure what the mixup is but it's a subsidy.
Blaming farmers for obesity is like blaming oil field labourers for climate change.
Farmers aren't the ones putting corn syrup in things.
Farmers aren't putting corn syrup in things.