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This Is Why Carrots Cost More Than Twinkies

Ikerd, John
http://inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/20835/food-prices-industrial-agriculture-farm-bill-food-scarcity-sustainability

Publisher:  In These Times
Date Written:  12/01/2018
Year Published:  2018  
Resource Type:  Article

An examination of the role of Government-subsidized crop insurance, farm loans, tax credits, agricultural research and education, as well as environmental and public-health exemptions for farming, on the cost of food production and how that transfers to the consumer.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In a recent article, Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel took author and journalist Michael Pollan to task for blaming the farm bill for the sizable price difference between junk food and fresh vegetables. She wrote:

"…Pollan, whose work I'm a fan of, held up a package of Twinkies (which cost 99 cents) and a bunch of carrots ($2.99). The Twinkies are a complex food with 39 ingredients, and the carrots are 'a very simple bunch of roots,' he said. So why do the carrots cost so much more?"

Haspel added: "The idea that wholesome foods are expensive and junk foods are cheap because of the system of subsidies in the farm bill pervades the conversation about food policy. But that idea has one very big problem. It’s false."

She points out that vegetables would cost more to produce than the corn and soy in junk foods, regardless of the federal subsidies determined by the farm bill. According to one of the economists with whom Haspel spoke, those subsidies account for only "a penny and a half" of the cost of the Twinkies and three cents worth of the cost of the carrots.

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