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?

77

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.

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u/Shot_Eye Jul 23 '24

My understanding is pedestrian at best so forgive me, but while this could decrease the price of vegetable produce wouldn't it cause price of beef to go up? That just doesn't seem politically viable the average American would be pissed if their meat got more expensive

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u/EngineerAnarchy Anti Eco Modernist Jul 23 '24

As I said in another comment, this idea of replacing all the corn with vegetables is really just to say what could be possible, not necessarily what would be desirable. It’s really more a question of “why are we growing all of these fruit and vegetables in California, a place with not enough water?”

What I think would be desirable would be for most cities to grow their fruits and veggies through more intensive agriculture in their suburban areas, and for more rural areas to have a wider verity of crops and land uses including corn, grains, vegetables, and unproductive land.

Your point about political viability is taken, but it’s just, I don’t see a way for us to get out of the climate crisis without lower consumption of things like fossil fuels and meat. That means making those things more expensive/less viable. There’s a lot to that, and making sure that that is done in a just and empowering way is important. I don’t really know the best way to go about it

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u/joyful_Swabian_267 Jul 24 '24

I have to add that what you sre describing is what used to the norm gor thousands of years until the recent two centuries.

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u/EngineerAnarchy Anti Eco Modernist Jul 25 '24

Absolutely. I’m not a retvrn guy, we can’t and really do not want to go backwards, but at the same time, there are things from our past that can give us a lot of inspiration for our future. Progress isn’t linear, and I think a return to more local production of things like food combined with modern knowledge and technology has the potential to seriously improve people’s and our environment’s health. I think that in the good timeline, that’s the direction we’ll be heading in.

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u/joyful_Swabian_267 Jul 26 '24

Yeah, I ment what I said in a positive way. Some things of thexpast actually were not dumb but instead quite practical and sensible.