U.S.
Agricultural Regions
The country we know today as the United States of America was created through various means, legal and illegal. Check out the map. Where does all the wonderful food come from that we eat everyday? An example of a food giant is Archer Daniels Midland. Agricultural regions reflect the diverse topographic, physical, political, economic, and dietary characteristics of the United States. The number of counties dependent on farm income has dropped sharply: look at a map.
Consult
your atlas for a copy the map.
The structure of US agriculture is very problematic. U.S. government farm policies and programs reward larger-scale farmers and harm smaller-scale farmers, yet all farmers vote disproportionally for Republicans -- see map. Look at the spatial consequences of the large-scale farm bias of U.S. agricultural subsidies. The markets in sugar, coffee, cotton, and other commodities that tropical farmers can grow cheaply can find no markets because of subsidies of $300 billion a year to rich-world growers. For sugar alone, the European Union puts 140% tariffs on many imports from Africa, such as cocoa, supports its own sugar-beet farmers by $1.6 billion a year, and dumps sugar surpluses in overseas markets.
The Fidelity Investment company keeps 25 cattle on its corporate campus near Fort Worth, TX, and thus saves $328,000 in taxes from Texas "agricultural" exemptions! This is called tax loss farming: produce little or nothing and get paid for it through reduced taxes.
1) Read about one fast food chain: McDonald's, and its critics -- take one of the guided tours [the commentary is on the left side; McDonald's pages, on the right side]! Consult a comparative chart of the absolute and relative cost of a BigMac around the world!
2) Read John Robbins (of ice cream fame), The Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and the world. Berkeley, CA: Conrai Press, 2001.
3) Read Ingolf Vogeler, Myth of the Family Farm: Agribusiness Dominance of US Agriculture. Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1981.
4) Read about the "lowly" potato.
5) Look at amazing ways food can be turned into art!
4) Genetically modified (GM) crops are very common for some crops in the
USA;
whereas in Western Europe GM crops and foods are banned.
Read about this important environmental
and health food issue.
What does
Ingolf Vogeler think about
genetically engineered food?
5) Examine the unique agriculture of the
Central Valley in California.
6) Read about the continuing
miserable life of agricultural migrant workers.
7)
Read about some very
interesting research findings on why people in the USA eat more than they
think and how this is affecting their health and pocketbook. Be sure
read all the pages about food illusions, shown at the bottom of each web
page.
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Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) calls itself
the "supermarket to the world."
But this company like other food corporations are highly subsidized by the
U.S. government. The sugar subsidy: the U.S. price for sugar is three times
that of the world price because of US tariffs. This allows ADM to use corn
sweeteners as a "sugar substitute" and make enormous profits: with the use
of corn as ethanol for cars, profits from the sale of corn accounted for
half of ADM's profits of over $700 million. Sugar welfare costs U.S. consumers
$3 billion a year more than they would pay without the sugar subsidies. [Source: Michael Moore, Downsize This!
p. 49] |
The sugar industry swears it is not subsidized; but it
rests on a system of daunting price supports and import restrictions.
Each year, the Department of Agriculture decides how much sugar
can be imported at low tariffs; anything above that level is charged prohibitive
rates of duty. U.S. producers account for about three-quarters
of domestic sugar consumption. Protecting sugar has three sour
results:
1) U.S. consumers pay more for sugar than they need to,
2) the environment is damaged more than it should be, and
3) Third World countries can not sell as much sugar as they want for
improving their standard of living.
In California, it takes 3,400
gallons of (heavily federally and state subsidized) water to grow a dollar's worth
of sugar beet. The more contentious area, however, is Florida,
which accounts for about a quarter of domestic sugar production.
Thanks
to the federal government, much of the Everglades were drained in the
name
of flood control from the 1920s to the 1970s. This was a colossal
mistake that destroyed a unique ecosystem. Planting sugar on
700,000 acres of it was the
next mistake. "Progress is not a pretty picture!"
Local versus national fruit distribution: what are
the geographical consequences? Answer.
One gallon of gas contains 31,000 calories.
