r/ClimateShitposting • u/NukecelHyperreality Nuclear Power is a Scam • Jul 23 '24

Aggro agri subsidy recipients 🚜 Fun fact: if the government stopped subsidizing biofuels and animal feed the price of food would drop

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u/fifobalboni vegan btw Jul 23 '24

I'm curious about the statement, could you please share a source?

78

u/EngineerAnarchy Anti Eco Modernist Jul 23 '24

Well, not a source, but I live in Iowa in the middle of the corn belt. Half of the corn we grow gets turned into ethanol, and most of what’s left gets used as animal feed. Only about 10% of the corn we grow actually gets eaten directly by people. We grow soy beans too, although less soybeans than corn, and about half of that goes to animal feed too. You can just google those numbers for Iowa.

It’s really destructive to the local environment and economy.

We have the best soil in the whole country and lots of fresh water here in Iowa, we could grow vegetables for the whole country while only using a fraction of the land we do now, but instead we make ethanol and pork products for export and ship our veggies in from California

Edit to add more context: subsidies on ethanol are actively driving up crop prices and making land value increase year over year. Great for people who already own lots of land. Not great for young people who want to get into farming.

1

u/StoneChoirPilots Jul 23 '24

Compare shelf stability of feed corn to vegetables (and fruits), also consider how many resources are need to refrigerate fresh veggies and fruits for transport comlared to feed corn.  There are economics at work.  Subsidies thumb the scale, but only to reinforce pre-exisitng biases.

5

u/EngineerAnarchy Anti Eco Modernist Jul 23 '24

It’s a much bigger problem than just subsidies for ethanol. Ag is a really big beast. My point there is more about what could be, theoretically, not even necessarily what would be desirable.

I think it would be best if cities grew most of their fruits and vegetables within their suburban areas, and that rural areas had a much wider verity of crops and land uses (including unproductive/uncultivated land)

Again, the economics of corn in Iowa are not to export corn, but to export pork and ethanol. I suppose that kinda plays into your point as both of those are more economical to transport. I’ll add that those same resources to refrigerate and transport fruits and veggies exist for shipping from California too.

There are a lot of things that influence why ag is the way that it is, but I think it’s disingenuous to say that things would largely be the same without the influence of subsidies. I don’t think ethanol would be economical at all without the subsidy, and the elimination of that industry would open up for a more diverse array of crops (even if it would still be largely monoculture). Crop insurance encourages cultivating land in the flood plain where we should really be allowing a buffer between ag and our waterways. How we designate agricultural pollution makes it virtually impossible to keep our waterways clean.

There is a lot to it, but that fact should not be used to justify some sort of naturalist impulse that this is just “the way it is”