USDA's subsidies ignore its own dietary advice

Graft knows no bounds. While the USDA is setting new dietary standards they subsidize old friends.

WASHINGTON -- The only reference to corn on the Department of Agriculture's new food pyramid is an image of a bright-yellow ear among a medley of other vegetables. Soybeans aren't mentioned at all. But corn and soybeans receive a good chunk of the $15 billion in subsidies to farmers that the Agriculture Department is doling out this year. And while that might seem logical because the food pyramid advocates a plant-based diet, most of the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. are used to fatten cows, pigs and chickens, while the pyramid recommends that consumers eat more fish and beans. Corn and soybeans also are used to make artificial sweeteners and partially hydrogenated oils that the food pyramid urges Americans to avoid. Such oils also are derived from cotton, another heavily subsidized crop. That disparity points out an awkward truth about the USDA: what it urges people to eat to remain healthy does not match what it pays farmers to grow. In fact, fruit and vegetable farmers receive no subsidies from the government, though fruits and vegetables should make up the largest share of Americans' diets, according to the new pyramid.

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