Read it.

Basically, the government subsidizes corn so much that it actually costs more to produce than to sell (new ethanol subsidies have upset this balance, but I'm not sure how significantly). Basically, farmers rely on government subsidies that only make sense financially if they plant/harvest more and more corn (and soybeans to a lesser extent).

Either way, the goal of the policy (established by Nixon) is to encourage farmers to overproduce and keep the price of food artificially low (there was a  politically damaging spike in food prices and Nixon decided that FDR's rational policies weren't worth the political risk).

What results is that we have corn going on the market at a cost that's far less than the actual cost of production.

Who benefits?
Big agribusiness. Cargill. Factory farms. Frito-lay...

Great! Coalition-building!

Orangeclouds115, who posts at DailyKos, is a good blogger on farm policy.  Also the folks who run Eating Liberally are oustanding.

Look at the rates of asthma, autism, diabetes, etc.  Then look at the usage of three things that have only in the last twenty-five years been prevelant in our food:  high fructose corn syrup, trans fat, growth hormones/antibiotics in meat.

Most people hone in on water and air pollution to explain a lot of the new health problems in society.  However, I think it's a twin problem of both environmental toxins coupled with food poisons that is causing the mysterious rise of human ailments.

As you may guess from my handle, I do have a dog in this fight. But honestly, after 25 years I'm tired of talking about it. I will point out that there are progressive, liberal farm organizations that you could have cited (just a couple to start, the National Farmers Union, the Western Organization of Resource Councils and the National Family Farm Coalition) instead of an environmental site. One of the great triumphs of Reaganism was peeling farmers off of the traditional New Deal coalition (although not entirely ... for the Mansfield, Mcgovern and Humphrey's in the 60s we have Tester, Dorgan and Harkin today. Lots of farmers loved Wellstone too.) by exacerbating conflicts between agriculture and the environmental community. I could see you going to poverty groups because 75-80% of farm bill funding goes to Food Stamps and WIC. But you wouldn't first go to the NAACP for info on say, handicapped access issues, would you? I'm not that involved with farm issues anymore, but I hope there are a few farmer types around here who will weigh in on the issue. But then, it is seeding time now so I'm not optimistic.

I completely agree with the Omnivore's Dilemma suggestion, it collect so much information from disparate sources and weaves them into a cohesive whole.  A must read.

To bring the information from the book into focus, I highly recommend visiting your local farmers market, and meet and chat with a few of the farmers there. Try buying carrots from safeway and from the farmers market, and see how a plant that seems so similar can be so different.

Also, if you can swing it, try to visit a farmer on an organic farm, as there's nothing quite like getting out to a farm and learn about how policy issues are affecting local farms.  All farmers are basically accountants these days, and can tell you exactly why things work the way they do, which ties back into farm policy.  Like activism, there's nothing quite like getting away from the keyboard for a day or two (and it's good for your wrists, too).

Eating liberally is great, but there are only a couple of posts a week and mostly by one person, not nearly enough for a huge topic like farm policy.

Wish I knew of a good blog that covered farm policy in detail.

One place to start would be the Community Food Security Coalition (http://www.foodsecurity.org/).  I attended their Cafeterias to Capitol Hill conference earlier this year in Baltimore (also help them set up a YouTube account mostly on the farm bill -- http://www.youtube.com/FoodSecurity).

I live in farm country. The biggest threat to the small farmer isn't huge corporate farms, but rather a mixture of urban sprall and the fact that since they can't compete they have to sell off large portions of their land to subdivision developers.  This breaks up the free range of open field and affects the quality of the crops. Which makes the small farm even harder to maintain. I think the federal government needs to encourage all food to be locally grown and sold at the stores.  There is no reason why my grocery store needs to order fruit over 2000 miles away when it grows perfectly fine right in my backyard.  That is a waste of energy and  causes the food to be handled dozens of times as opposed to it just being shipped directly from your neighbor to your grocery store. It is also a national security threat.  Who knows who could tamper with our food supply with it being handled so much by so many different people.

One thing that the small towns are doing around here is giving a sort of tax break for farmers who agree to include a promise on thier land that from then on no matter who owns it they can not develop it to a subdivision. Lots of downsides, but it does work really well.

I tend to think of ag subsidies as primarily an economic and international issue. They push down the price for independent Third World farmers which, since the First World uses tariffs to discourage manufacturing, cuts off their major source of income (except in the case of those few nations which possess either diamonds or oil).

Obviously that's a simplistic formulation, there are other issues like the environmental costs of transport (although apparently much of that is due to agribusiness growing food with a short shelf-life such as salad crops a continent and a half away from their markets). One also has to consider the effect upon First World farmers of cuts in subsidies.

It's possible that they could diversify into other crops (in my part of Britain the staple crop is now oilseed rape, which I don't believe is grown much in the Third World) and it's possible that for certain crops subsidies could be maintained. But I tend to the view that subsidies must be cut, even though it harms farmers economically, because the state can deal with that, whereas Third World farmers need all the economic help they can get.

and currently raising apples, I have to say that your comment on the farm bill will undoubtably raise questions within this community about the need for a farm bill in this country at all.

The farm community and its way of life is not understood by almost all Americans and it is disheartening to see continued loss of support for farmers amongst liberal and progressive groups.

That being said, it is important to realize that the current farm bill, while better than no program at all and better than the "freedom to farm act" of the 1990's, does little to set a coherent farm policy for our nation.

It is in our own best interest to encourage agricultural production in our own country just as it is in our own best interest interest to encourage manufacturing or any other kind of production.

Whenever I hear people say that our agricultural policies are hurting the third world, I always wonder if people are really suggesting that our nation should represent the interests of third world farmers over the need of American farmers to earn a living right here in their own country?  Please don't read into my comment any notion that I think the current farm program should remain in its current form or that it promotes family-owned local farms.

and Matt- feel free to make as many unsubstantied and ill-informed comments as you like since most of the press does all the time- just like in the  article you quoted.

The Farm and Food Policy Project is the go-to group for informed advocacy on food issues, as it is supported by an impressive network of endorsers.  Their proposals for the new farm bill ("Seeking Balance") are posted on their website, and they link to a useful economic analysis of their proposals compared to the USDA's proposals (which are more reform-oriented than one might think, but primarily in an environmental direction). www.farmandfoodproject.org/news_and_anal ysis.asp (scroll down to "analysis," second entry there)

Slow Food has also done some excellent work on this issue: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/  Their discussion group is well-informed.  A third approach to researching the issue is to do a search in delicious or magnolia. Books other than Pollan's include Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy" and Dan Imhoff's "Food Fight," also, in a way, Timothy Egan's "The Last Hard Time."  Finally, watch for a good overview article in the upcoming issue of Edible Memphis.

Grist's Twinkies v. carrots anecdote is deeply flawed. For one thing, do Twinkies really sell for more than carrots? A one pound bag of carrots is, what, half a buck give or take? It's very hard to buy a pound of Twinkies for half a buck or even a buck. If you're talking ready-to-eat carrots out of the refrigerated case, the price comparison is more even but I still think the carrots would win at least as often as the Twinkies.

Though farm subsidies do have profound effects, the place to look for them isn't at the supermarket register. A box of relatively grain-intensive breakfast cereal has only a few pennies worth of grain, give or take one or two pennies of farm bill largess. As a sanity check, note that supermarkets sell vastly more grain-intensive hamburger for a lower price per pound than even relatively "cheap" shredded wheat.

No, it's marketing, distribution, and other non-ingredient costs that have far more to do with retail food prices. Not to mention the simple "willingness to pay" ingredient.

Hi - Maybe I can help a little bit. I've been following the issues here, even if I don't have 100% of the knowledge necessary or the solutions we want just yet. Several of us on dKos started a site at http://www.recipeforamerica.org where we plan to lay out our goals. There's a great site that I haven't been able to dig into yet at http://www.publichealthaction.org/ that addresses the farm bill and action needed for it, and there's also http://www.farmbillprimer.org which is a related site that kinda lays out what is going on.

I've also got a great PDF file that's basically ag policy for dummies (I'm a dummy, I needed it and still refer to it often!) so shoot me an email at OrangeClouds 115 at yahoo dot com (no spaces) if you want it.

I'd love to see MyDD participation on the RecipeforAmerica site so feel free to sign up and post comments or lemme know if you want to be more involved than that.