Connection between Poverty and Obesity

English 135
DeVry University

Farm subsidy payments are over $10 billion and are authorized to make payments to people “who aren’t even farmers anymore” (Morgan, Gaul, Cohen, 2006, para. 3). This has been going on, in some cases, over 10 years (para. 6). As long as you owned the farmland, you don’t even have to be growing anything and you would continue to receive a subsidy check (para. 3). Bottom line is all these billions of dollars in government subsidies contribute to lowering the cost of processed foods; not a good occurrence if you have low-income and cannot afford the high cost of healthier foods. The processed foods are so cheap to buy and are the unhealthiest that can be consumed by any human being. They are high-density, high-calorie, high-fat junk food that the unfortunate and less-advantaged part of our society has no choice but to buy because it is all they can afford. Studies show a strong connection between poverty and obesity, the government should appoint a task force to regulate and limit or repeal farm subsidies and overproduction of certain agriculture commodities like corn that is used to create highly processed, cheaply priced, high-calorie, high-density “junk foods”, so that prices of natural whole foods can once again be competitive and give the low-income consumers healthier food choices, thus contributing to the reduction of obesity. The U.S. budget for government financial subsidies to U.S. farmers is too substantial and needs to be cut back so farmers can’t overproduce commodities like corn, wheat, soy beans to name a few, but especially corn. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) distributes anywhere from $10 billion to $30 billion in farm subsidies” (Edwards, 2009, para. 1). In addition to direct cash subsidies, “the USDA also subsidizes the following: crop insurance, marketing support and other commercial services to farm businesses” (para. 43). “This system of subsidies is part of the Farm Credit System, which is made up of 50 – state network of cooperatives that control assets of about $90 billion and started as far back as the year 1862” (para. 2). See the graph below showing subsidy payment amounts going back to 2002:
Table 1. Government payments, 2002-2012f

Note: Adapted from ERS/USDA Briefing Room - Farm Income and Costs: Farms Receiving Government Payments, 2012, Feb 13. Retrieved from http: www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FarmIncome/nationalestimates.htm

With money like that you can only imagine the their strength in the politics of it all, but at the same time, an organization this big can easily turn into a monster and can become difficult to manage in direction, cause, and purpose. According to Edwards (2009): The extensive federal welfare system of subsidies to farm and farm landowners is costly to taxpayers and it also creates distortions in the economy. Subsidies induce farmers to overproduce, which pushes down prices and creates political demands for further subsidies. …the flow of subsidies from Washington hinders farmers from innovating, cutting costs, diversifying their land use, and taking the actions needed to prosper in a competitive global economy (para. 9). The main theme that Edwards is getting at is the subsidy system is out of control and “it pushes down prices” (para. 9) of unhealthy foods and putting healthy food costs out of reach for the poor. He argues, “That seven decades later, the folly is the same, except that subsidies have increased from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars (para. 10)! Edwards actually calls for the “repeal of farmer subsidies” and claims “agriculture would thrive without subsidies” (para 40). He further claims that: It is normal for people to fear economic change, but many industries have been radically reformed in recent decades with positive results, including the airline, trucking, telecommunications and energy industries. If farm subsidies were ended, and agriculture markets deregulated and open to entrepreneurs, farming would change – different crops would be planted, land usage would change…. But a stronger and more innovative industry would likely emerge having greater resilience to shocks and downturns (para. 40). I agree with Edwards as he makes a good argument that if other companies can survive economic change without a bailout, why can’t the farm industry do the same? He also states the whole system is practically corrupt because of political involvement in the process as the “many legislators have an interest in increasing the USDA’s budget” (para. 6). The whole system needs reform and subsidies need to be reduced or repealed. Another reason to reduce the government subsidies is because another by-product of corn that is produced in overabundance is High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which has replaced pure cane sugar because it is cheaper to produce (Pollan, p. 104). What is HFCS? High-fructose corn syrup contains fructose and sucrose, the same compounds found in cane and beet-sugar, the latter two having a 50-50 ratio of both compounds. The difference, typically, is that HFCS is so highly processed that the ratio of the resulting product, HFCS, “is about 55 percent fructose and 42 percent sucrose” (Parker, 2010, para. 8), which on the surface doesn’t seem a whole lot of difference to cause one to be more fattening than the other, but consider this, “While this may not have reduced soda prices to an extent that would account for rising consumption, there is little doubt U.S. agricultural policies have indirectly subsidized a sector that my be contributing to health problems” (Harvie & Wise, 2009, para. 4). The second difference is, according to (Parker, 2010): …as a result of the manufacturing process of HFCS, the fructose molecules of the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized (para. 8).
In other words the fructose molecule is ready to attach to the cells in your body (that’s why you gain weight so fast when eating processed foods) and the glucose molecule takes longer to be used; it requires your body to do more processing. She goes on to explain that according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, that “since the introduction of HFCS, and since replacing simple sugars as a low-cost alternative, the rates of obesity have skyrocketed in the U.S.” (para. 10). Pollan informs us that, roughly, “530 million bushels of corn harvested annually is produced into 17.5 billions pounds of HFCS” and “in 1985, each person, on average consumed about 45 pounds of the sweetener” and, as of late, “that number has increased to 65 pounds” (p. 103). Below are charts showing sales of corn (Table 1.) and a map depicting amounts of subsidy payments by location and amounts of subsidies received as a percentage of income (Table 2.) (ERS/USDA Briefing Room - Farm Income and Costs: Farms Receiving Government Payments. (United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, Briefing Rooms, Farm Income and Costs, 2012).
Table 2. Corn sales by the bushel Note: Adapted from ERS/USDA Briefing Room - Farm Income and Costs: Farms Receiving Government Payments. Retrieved from http: www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FarmIncome/nationalestimates.htm

Table 2. Map of Government payments as a percentage of income.

Note: Adapted from ERS/USDA Briefing Room - Farm Income and Costs: Farms Receiving Government Payments, 2012, Feb 13. Retrieved from http: www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FarmIncome/nationalestimates.htm

This overflowing of HFCS has to stop, as you can see it has a direct link to the epidemic of obesity that is becoming prevalent not just in the poor, but hitting across the whole spectrum of the socioeconomic class in the U.S. Investigating where the government subsidies go, or following the “money” in the corn industry is sometimes hard to follow. The U.S. Department of Agriculture does a good job of hiding this information, but deeper investigations discovers that only about ten percent of select farmers are receiving about seventy-two percent of all subsidies (Edwards, 2009, para. 27). Considering this statistic; could that be monopoly in disguise? The most interesting fact Edwards discusses is how “farm programs are prone to scandal” he says, “The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found as much as half a billion dollars in farm subsidies are paid improperly or fraudulently each year” (para. 31). He states that farmers find or “create complex legal structures” to get around paying back their farm loans and the GAO “found more than $2 billion” of farm loans that were seriously delinquent (para. 31). Edwards goes on to say “that the biggest scandal of all” is that some members of “congressional agriculture committee” are actually “farmers or farm landowners” (para. 33)! These are the people that lobby for farm subsidies, they obviously will have a strong interest to increase government funding to farmers. Unbelievable! Unfortunately, these “farm-state lawmakers in Congress” and the “strength of the farm lobby is unbelievable.” They are strong in numbers and any chances of overturning any farm bill that attempts to stop the money is always shot down. A rice farmer from Brazoria County in Texas makes a point, “So many wealthy people are getting so much money off this; it’s going to be hard to cut” (Morgan, et al., 2006, para. 25). According to Engber (2009, para. 2), HFCS is on its “downfall” due to the pressures from various health and medical groups, so that’s good news! The large bottling companies like “Pepsi and Snapple” are “rolling out” drinks that are of a “natural flavor” that contain (you guessed it) regular sugar. It’s actually a “blend of cane and beet sugar” (para. 1). With these new programs and changes occurring, sounds like that the manufacturers must be feeling the pressure from somewhere; that needs to continue because it seems to be working as they seem to be reverting back and slowing down on the use of HFCS. We need to further investigate the cause(s) that is/are making these big manufacturers to minimize their use HFCS. The reason I say this is because finding that source may be the key to bring down the manufacturing of HFCS. Engber says that there are “three cardinal claims of food politics” against uses of HFCS. They are: “unhealthy, unnatural, and unappetizing” (para. 2). His contention, though, is he feels that all the studies behind HFCS are mostly unfounded, that other sweeteners to include regular sugars from cane and beet are “equally as bad” (para. 6). Engber’s other contention is this: There may be other reasons to blame obesity in the U.S. on high-fructose corn syrup…he quotes Michael Pollan (author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma)…”the development of HFCS allowed cheap, subsidized corn to be converted into cheap, subsidized sugar…with empty calories, and America got fat” (para 6). He goes on say that even if we “wiped out all of our subsidies and trade restrictions” who’s to say that “we’d be consuming any less sweetener if corn weren’t so cheap and plentiful…subsidies save just a few pennies…in other words, if we wiped out all of our subsidies and trade restrictions, we’d still have plenty of cheap sugar around, and “processed foods would still be just as fattening” (para. 6). There may be some truth this statement of contention, but any reduction in the marketing and production of processed foods is still a change in the right direction no matter how you look at it. Look at the chart below showing numbers of affected children and adolescents that are affected by this epidemic of obesity (Ogden, Lamb, Carroll, Flegal, 2010).
Table 3. Prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents aged 2 -19 years, by poverty income ratio, sex, and race and ethnicity: United States 2005 -2008

Notes: Adapted from U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief, No. 51., Dec 2010. Retrieved from http://www.nccor.org/downloads/db51.pdf

I can see my call to stop or repeal government subsidies is going to be a hard battle, the opposition is strong in this business and when you have farmers and farm landowners in the lobbyist groups, it makes it that much harder. I am going to have to settle for an attempt just to reduce the government farm subsidies. Edwards (2009), states that supporting and buying from local farmers is way a way to keep them from closing shop and being bought out by the large rich farmers. By supporting the small local farmer; that’s our way to stop the rich farmer from buying out the small farmer just so the rich farmer can continue to grow their cheap corn! As responsible citizens, you can see the tens of billions of dollars being wasted in government farm subsidies, and the end result, that I feel the government sees, but doesn’t care to stop, that is, the manufacturing of highly processed foods containing HFCS and other unhealthy ingredients, that contribute to our poor in becoming obese in very high numbers; I call for you to stay aware of what you’re eating and where it comes from, eat natural whole foods instead?

References
Edwards, C. (2007, June 13). Agriculture Subsidies. Cato Institute, Retrieved from http://www.cato.org/research/downsizing/agriculture/agriculture_subsidies.html
Engber, D. (2009, April 28). Dark Sugar: The decline and fall of high-fructose corn syrup. Slate: State of the Universe, Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/04/dark_ sugar.html
ERS/USDA Briefing Room - Farm Income and Costs: Farms Receiving Government Payments. Retrieved from http: www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FarmIncome/nationalestimates.htm

Harvie, A., Wise, T.A. (2009, February 1). Sweetening the Pot: Implicit Subsidies to Corn Sweeteners and U.S. Obesity Epidemic, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/27044900/Sweetening- the-Pot-Implicit-Subsidies-to- Corn-Sweeteners-and-the-U-S-Obesity-Epidemic
Morgan D., Gaul, G.M., Cohen, S. (2006, July 2). Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm. Washington Post, Retrieved from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2 &ved=0CCkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp- dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2006%2F07%2F01%2FAR2006070100962.html Q&sig2=hC7-pkfeN6eb1dwucptpIg
Ogden, C., Lamb, M., Carroll, D., Flegal, K. (2010, December). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief No. 51. Retrieved from http://www.nccor.org/downloads/db51.pdf
Parker, H. (2010, March 22). A Sweet Problem: Princeton researchers find that high- fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain. News at Princeton, Princeton University, Retrieved from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
Pollan, M. (2007). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, New York, NY: Penguin Books