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Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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We'll you're pointing out how ridiculous it is to believe in a free market. Because one has never existed. What ought we subsidize though? Obviously foods that are better for our environment, climate, health, economy and for animal welfare.
Dairy, meat and egg coalitions have known for years that subsidies and marketing are things they need to pursue for greater success, they've used tactics similar to tobacco companies with their marketing and they've used lobbying tactics similar to oil and gas giants as well. It's clear we need to stop subsidizing them.
Yep! That was my point.
Yeah, if we must subsidize something, then sure, those sound good.
Subsidies only benefit the big "farms" (industrial operations) and encourage producing the subsidized crop regardless of its value. The incentives are so perverse that farms end up dumping their milk because there is no market for the amount produced.
Personally am in favor of eliminating all food subsidies. Making food valuable could eliminate so many of our other societal problems - poor health, destruction of natural resources, overpopulation.
There are very obvious negative side effects to making food more expensive.
I can come up with my own, but what are some of the side effects you're thinking of? Right now food is so cheap that most people's only metric is price, with no consideration for quality, nutrition, environmental impact, etc. Most of what we are eating isn't really food, just an engineered combination of four or five heavily subsidized crops.
This makes no sense to me - people can choose healthy or unhealthy options because food is so cheap generally. Do you think that if food becomes expensive people will buy more healthy food for... reasons?
This is pure bullshit.
Maybe you don't live in the US. At least here, people spend a smaller portion of their income on food than any society at any time in history, but the most on health care. Not getting into the many reasons health care is so expensive, the fact that food is an afterthought has clearly led to major health issues. So what I am suggesting is that if we had to give more weight to decisions around food it could lead to better choices for our health. My bias is that I'm against the direction our society is heading tech-wise, so in my scenario people would be spending more time with their families and communities and less time and money rampantly consuming products.
Regarding your second comment, how would you describe the majority of products in grocery stores if not what I claimed they are?
You think making food more expensive is going to make people make better choices about what food they buy? I don't think you live in the US, I think you live in fantasy land.
🙄
"Food".
It's not exactly a mystery that when something costs more people do it less. If subsidies went away, the price of processed "foods" made up of highly subsidized ingredients would rise. Most fresh fruits and vegetables are not subsidized so they would not. Do you not think it's possible that if the price of poptarts, frozen waffles, and white bread surpassed fresh ingredients, some amount of people would choose to make their own breakfast? Similarly, big dairy and meat operations recieve the majority of subsidies in their industry. During COVID as prices rose, many people began buying meat and dairy locally.
If you consider boxed meals, canned goods with chemical additives, and shelf stable bread to be real food then I won't argue with you.
Then we're done.
you can just subsidize food generally if that's the worry
You can... But we've chosen to subsidize farming since that tends to be the raw ingredients. So in a way all food is kinda subsidized.