End subsidies on corn, soy and wheat. Instead use subsidies to encourage crop rotation, more variety and healthier fruits and vegetables.
The main reason for chronic illness in the US is poor diet, much of which comes from processed food. Our government subsidizes crops like corn to the point where it’s cheaper to buy it than it is to grow it. Which in turn leads to most food you find in grocery stores being made from the same ultra processed grains: corn, soy and wheat.
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This has to do with the processing and not the farmers. Farmers feed the world. You encourage crop rotation but every crop requires a different piece of field equipment that is very expensive to purchase and maintain. Most farmers can only rotate between 2 crops at most.
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The point is our govt is paying farmers to grow only a few crops that are unhealthy. Yes let’s help farmers, but don’t incentivize corn and soy. There are other ways to reduce ultra processed food consumption, this suggestion is just one way. If corn and soy weren’t so cheap and prevalent they wouldn’t be used as much as they are now.
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How about we really look into who the farmers are today. While I am willing to say Mom and Pop farms may need some tax breaks, I do not feel like companies like Vanguard, Black Rock, and Bill Gates who owns the most Farmland should be getting subsidies and not paying taxes. Not sure how many of the Chinese owned farms are getting same subsidies.
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Farm subsidies began like many ‘progressive’ policies under FDR. They have never been constitutional or in any way fair. If they had been temporary programs with clear and mandatory sunset provisions, they could have aided a post WW2 farming community and the nation in general- without becoming permanent tools for politicians to wield power. It is past time to end all subsidies over a reasonable period of time to allow everyone time to adjust. The timeline must be set in stone without possibility of change.
Crop rotation between corn, soybean and wheat uses the same equipment, albeit in different configurations.
The benefit of crop rotation is that each crop takes nutrients from the soil while leaving bi-products as waste in the soil - the bi-products happens to be nutrients for another crop, thus keeping the soil healthy and producing good crops.
As it stands, farmers that are growing nothing but corn are depleting the soil of those nutrients, and so they have to add chemicals back into the soil to make up for the nutrients that the other crops would leave naturally.
The late Senator Bob Dole of Kansas championed the Corn Ethanol subsidies, creating an incentive for farmers to exclusively grow corn, thus why many farmers stopped rotating their crops (they make much more growing corn with the subsidies, and even paying for the soil additives still turn a nice profit). The Corn Ethanol subsidies need to go away (note that every year they talk about the ethanol “blend wall” because vehicles are getting more efficient and they aren’t selling enough ethanol to meet the government mandated quotas unless they increase the ratio of ethanol to gasoline), and allow these farmers to manage their land their way instead of getting a government handout to do it the government’s way.
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