More on Corn Farming

Sunni had some questions about my post on corn farming. I claimed that cheap corn contributed to obesity. This is my own opinion based on the assumption that the cheaper food is, the more folks can afford to eat. And corn based processed foods are high in calories. Also, less expensive chicken and beef means that more Americans can afford to eat meat every day, even at every meal. The corn I was discussing is commodity corn, not the stuff we eat qua corn. It’s the stuff that goes into animal feed and other products such as high fructose corn syrup. Of course, I can’t really prove that cheap food contributes to obesity, and I concede that the problem is overdetermined, but it stands to reason.

Until recently, when there has been a spike in prices fueled by demand for ethanol production, corn prices have been lower than the cost to produce corn with the result that farmers had to receive federal subsidies to make up the difference. In the case of smaller farms, these subsidies are inadequate to insure an income level sufficient to sustain farmers and their families. Smaller operators tend to support farm programs that guarantee income levels rather than price assurances. The recent price increases will doubtless be a short term boon to farmers, but the increased cost of oil will in short order add substantially to the costs of production.

Farmers in the corn belt are not readily able to retool and change crops, but are prone to sustain losses over a number of seasons in the hope that prices will increase. The only market is for corn and soybeans, so that is what they have to grow. If they switched to broccoli, they’d have no way to sell it.