Somehow I had found myself explaining federal grain subsidies, federal crop insurance, and the demise of modern agriculture, to a concrete truck driver while standing in 5 foot tall grass in one of our pastures.
Yes, this actually happened last week. And here’s how I got there.
He had asked if he could buy some steaks, but when I told him the price, he responded, “Why is it so expensive?”
I’ll back up 14 years further to help explain.
When Rachael and I first moved to this farm, we watched a neighboring field in June turn mysteriously brown and everything died. Then a few days later some clean, straight rows of corn sprouted up through the carnage.
Mystery solved: the farmer had sprayed RoundUp to kill everything and planted GMO, RoundUp-resistant corn seeds at the same time.
The corn got to about knee high and then every single plant in the 5 acre field was eaten to the ground by deer within a matter of days.
I ran into this farmer’s nephew and said I was so sorry for his uncle’s lost corn crop.
The nephew said, “There’s nothing to be sorry about. That was his plan. He knew he could make more from the crop insurance than he could have from selling the corn.”
(14 years after the herbicide treatment, that field still barely grows grass.)
USDA’s taxpayer-funded crop insurance program is inherently a failing program. The pay outs to farmers are more than the premiums, which is why no for-profit insurance company could offer it, and why tax funding is needed to keep the program going.
The soil deteriorates further and further, so the farmer has to use more fertilizer, and the crop insurance becomes even more of a crutch.
If the crop survives, the farmer then gets paid a tax-payer funded grain subsidy to artificially keep the price of corn low, so that confinement animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) can produce meat for way less than the REAL cost.
A Costa Rican cattle rancher told me that 95% of Costa Rican beef is 100% grass-fed, because without government-subsidized grain, it’s just WAY too expensive to feed corn to cattle, compared to grass.
On top of that, it’s unnatural for cattle to eat concentrations of high carbohydrate grains, so these cattle often have health issues and require pharmaceutical intervention.
So the land gets degraded, the cattle suffer, our government goes further in debt, the end product is bland and nutritionally-deficient, but at least the beef is cheap…right?
Wait. Maybe regeneratively-raised, 100% grass-fed beef that is nutrient-dense, chemical-free, helps build soil, treats the animals humanely, and naturally sequesters carbon is actually the better deal?
The truck driver was perplexed…like I had just flipped his world view upside down.
The reality is that aspects of our culture ARE upside down from how they should be. But we can choose whether or not to take part in that.
Support what you believe in. Be the change you wish to see in the world.