Comment by alwa

It’s been a while since I brushed up on that question, thank you for the impetus!

The EWG attempts to enumerate the federal subsidies, which, by its count, total some $50bn directly to livestock producers since 1995, plus $160bn to farms that produce mainly feedstock for the meat. [0]

To be fair, EWG’s count includes disaster assistance, COVID subsidies, and direct compensation for losses related to Trump’s trade war-all of which is consistent with what the feds provide for any industry.

But in agriculture particularly, in the US as in most territories, the stated rationale is to protect farmers. The idea being they can’t control the weather, but one bad year can wipe them out through no fault of their own. And these types of failure, from the vicissitudes of nature and of market conditions they couldn’t have foreseen, can be coordinated across a region or market in a way that makes it hard for conventional insurance to handle.

But they also don’t look at subsidy programs beyond those direct payments to meat and dairy producers; skilled (though motivated) observers seem to estimate that larger number at close to $36bn/yr in 2013 terms. [1]

To get to that larger number you’d probably include consumption-side subsidies like school lunch programs, marketing support, and backstopping private crop insurance; and you’d include the major crops like corn and soy that, while not directly bound for the supermarket shelf, will end up feeding humans as well as livestock in some form. Or as ethanol shrug. The kinds of subsidies that the EWG counted toward the 160bn-since-1995 in [0].

Their broader point though was that the latter type of subsidies aren’t subsidizing things you or I would call a fruit or a vegetable and buy at the grocer and eat directly (those are <1% of federal subsidies); instead they’re subsidizing inputs to livestock and processed food producers.

[0] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/02/usda-livestoc...

[1] https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/news/removing-meat-subsidy-our...