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Samuelsson on the Global Impacts of US Farm Policy

Earlier this week, Marcus Samuelsson, chef and author of New American Table, had a post on his HuffPo blog about the global impacts of US agricultural policy. Samuelsson begins by implying a dubious causal link from food prices to political unrest in Egypt, noting along the way how

“Egypt’s dependence on wheat is also partially because for decades it has been cheaper to import wheat, corn, soy and barley from the U.S. than to grow it locally. Farming subsidies in the U.S. have created a system which lessens the perceived value of food from a nutritional standpoint and heightens its value as a commodity. Decisions on food production and agriculture are made about what will make the largest profit.”

Profit maximization is not the result of farm subsidies. Decisions on food production and agriculture — decisions on any type of production — are almost always made in order to maximize profit, from the smallest family farm in sub-Saharan Africa to the largest industrial farm in the US. So invoking the profit motive to indict US farm policy really misses the mark.

When discussing American subsidies to corn production, Samuelsson notes how

“In America, the banner crop for big agriculture is corn. But the corn that is subsidized by the government, which gets turned into high-fructose corn syrup, processed foods and ethanol is the commodity that supplants any natural food supply. Because instead of a diverse variety of crops being grown in a region, and people being able to feed and sustain themselves locally off those crops, corn is grown because of the subsidies, and an unrealistic nutritional and financial structure is created.”

What, exactly, is an “unrealistic” nutritional and financial structure? If Samuelsson means that this distorts incentives, I agree, but is this what he meant by “unrealistic”? He then continues with

“Because of the US subsidy system, it is actually cheaper for many other countries to import these foods than it is to grow these crops locally. Local farmers who would be able to competitively price their wares in a market-based economy cannot compete against the artificially low prices of commodity crops. This unbalance erodes the local farming economies which further increases dependence on imports. When global food prices rise, there is often little recourse for local economies.”

This is a much better argument against US farm subsidies, which give American farmers an unfair advantage on global markets relative to farmers in developing countries. One can also make the case that these subsidies actually encourage farmers who would otherwise not be able to operate profitably to enter the market.

Unfortunately, it does not look as though the system of US farm subsidies is going anywhere anytime soon. Most American voters remain rationally ignorant about agricultural policy, which leaves agricultural policymaking wide open to lobbying by agricultural producers.

Combine that with the fact that rural constituencies have way more political clout than their population relative to urban constituencies, and you have a recipe for a mess of an agricultural policy that benefits the few producers relative to the many consumers. To remedy this situation, we will need to redesign the political economy of agricultural policy. To do so, however, I am afraid that a necessary condition will be to reform political institutions. If readers have any ideas as to how we can do that, I would be very interested in hearing about those ideas in the comments.

Samuelsson concludes his post with

“If you’re already spending a significant portion of your meager income on food and the cost doubles, where do you go from there?

As a UN Ambassador for the UNICEF TAP Project, it’s one of my priorities to get clean water to people throughout Africa. Whether it’s wheat in Egypt, corn in China, or water in Ethiopia, all these substances that sustain us are affected by politics. The political decisions of the US affect the entire world, we need to realize that we are a truly global community.”

From high budget shares of food in developing countries to UNICEF product placement to “we need to think globally when acting locally.” Wait, what?

A good case can be made against US farm subsidies. One just needs to be careful not to confuse a thousand different things and focuse on the crux of the issue. I understand that one can be passionate about the topic, but being passionate does not necessarily mean that one should make a weak case for or against something simply because one gets carried away.