{"id":9291,"date":"2013-07-15T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=9291"},"modified":"2013-07-14T11:03:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T15:03:38","slug":"on-farm-subsidies-and-quinoa-yours-truly-in-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/9291","title":{"rendered":"On Farm Subsidies and Quinoa: Yours Truly in the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

This raises a question: Why are lawmakers\u00a0so willing to vote for farm subsidies \u2014 even lawmakers who usually oppose government spending? …<\/p>\n

One theory is that money explains it all. Wealthy agribusinesses are somehow paying off Republicans to vote their way. …<\/p>\n

Not everyone\u2019s convinced by this, though. In a recent\u00a0working paper<\/a>\u00a0(pdf),\u00a0Duke University economist Marc Bellemare and political scientist Nicholas Carnes came up with a better reason for Congress\u2019s ag-subsidy love. Farmers and farm owners have disproportionate political sway in key districts. …<\/p>\n

Bellemare tells me that he expected agribusiness lobbying to have the biggest impact on various farm votes before they did the study. But that wasn\u2019t the case. Pressure at the polls turned out to be the key factor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s Brad Plumer on the Washington Post<\/em>‘s WonkBlog in a post<\/a> about why Congress supports agriculture.<\/p>\n

The day before, Lydia DePillis quoted me in a Washington Post<\/em> WonkBlog post<\/a> of her own, about why the US does not have much of a quinoa industry:<\/p>\n

[Corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar, and other staples] have their own corporate lobbying associations, government subsidy programs, and academic departments devoted to maintaining production and consumption. Against that, a few researchers and independent farmers trying to increase quinoa supply don\u2019t have much of a chance.<\/p>\n

“This is something where it would truly have to come from the demand side\u2013no one wants to get into this and get stuck with all this excess inventory,” says\u00a0Marc Bellemare, an agricultural economist at Duke University. And how do you determine how much demand is enough, or whether a fad has staying power? “We still haven\u2019t fully unbundled what the decision bundle is. It\u2019s like shining a flashlight in a big dark room.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s hard for\u00a0any<\/i>\u00a0new crop to make the transition from niche to mainstream.\u00a0Products, maybe: Soy milk is ubiquitous now, after years as a marginal hippie thing, but it comes from a plant that U.S. farmers have grown for decades. An entirely new species is something else altogether. “I wouldn\u2019t even go so far as to say that\u2019s a non-staple that went big-time,” Bellemare says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This raises a question: Why are lawmakers\u00a0so willing to vote for farm subsidies \u2014 even lawmakers who usually oppose government spending? … One theory is<\/p>\n

Continue readingOn Farm Subsidies and Quinoa: Yours Truly in the Washington Post<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,55,26,12,44,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-economics","category-food","category-policy","category-politics","category-self-promotion","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2pR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9291"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9296,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions\/9296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}