Where’s the Beef?
ePistle
Wynnewood, PA
April 23, 2008
by Bret Kincaid
I sat stunned as I watched the "Cash Cows and Cowboy Starter Kits" segment of Bill Moyers Journal the other night. The show focused on the current rise in food prices in the US and how food banks are struggling to meet the increased demand for food, while members of Congress get ready to reauthorize a farm bill much less generous toward nutrition programs, like the food stamp program, than toward big farms. But that wasn't what stunned me; that's the same ol' news I've heard for decades.
What stunned me was the amount of fraud and waste in farm policy. Two Washington Post investigative reporters spent years investigating the farm bill and discovered over $15 billion of "taxpayer dollars spent on….wasteful, unnecessary or redundant expenditures." One of several "absurdities" in farm law is the Cowboy Starter Kit, farm policy that pays non-farmers to live on, not farm, rice land. As recently as 2005, the USDA paid non-farmers—like a Texas physician compensated for living on 10,000 acres of former rice land—some $37 million dollars. That money could go a long way to help our nation's food bank shortages or increase the funding of the meager food stamp program. Indeed, a serious overhaul of the farm subsidies policy could safely free up capital better used by serving those struggling to put food on the table.
And the struggle is getting tougher as world food prices soar. An increasingly greater portion of US family budgets are paying for food. But Americans are barely feeling pinched compared to people in the developing world. For instance, while the average US family consumes 16 percent of the family budget for food, Nigerian families spend over 70 percent. What is going on?
A recent New York Times editorial did a good job of demonstrating the causes of this problem. Of course, increased energy costs are raising food production and transportation costs, which makes grocery shopping more expensive. But, a major part of the cause is biofuels. Farmers are replacing food production with biofuel crops, which lowers food supply and puts pressure on food prices. Governments encourage this with subsidies and tariff policies.
It turns out, too, that the growing Indian and Chinese middle classes are demanding more and more animal protein, which increases the demand for grain. Americans, however, are still the biggest beef consumers per capita in the world, topping out at over 65 pounds of beef consumed per person per year. (This is a substantial reduction from the 1970s.) Chinese citizens eat less than 20 pounds per person per year. Compared to pork and chicken production, beef production is the least efficient, requiring almost four times more grain per pound of beef than chicken, for instance. And almost three-fourths of the grain produced in the US is fed to animals. The grain, of course, if eaten directly instead of used to fatten cows, is more nutritious and less hazardous to our health than the beef, pork, or chicken we eat.
So, perhaps we can take three modest steps to help the hungry in this food crisis. First, Bread for the World asks us to contact leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees "to ensure the final farm bill, which is currently in the very last stages of negotiations, includes permanent funding increases for nutrition programs at levels no less than those passed by the House—11.5 billion over 10 years—and reform of commodity payments."
Second, we can reduce or eliminate beef from our diets. Of course, we could eliminate all animal protein, but for those of us who believe we are best able to sustain a lifestyle change if it is a gradual change, perhaps changing our consumption of beef is a great first step.
Finally, we can volunteer some time to the local food bank or pantry.
