Health Impact News: You the Taxpayer are Funding the Agri Business Takeover of our Food Supply

(From Health Impact News)

Here is a good summary of how we got into this mess:

A Depression-era program intended to save American farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch enabling affluent growers and financial institutions to thrive at taxpayer expense. Federal crop insurance encourages farmers to gamble on risky plantings in a program that has been marred by fraud and that illustrates why government spending is so difficult to control. The arrangement is a good deal for everyone but taxpayers. The government pays 18 approved insurance companies to run the program, pays farmers to buy coverage and pays the bills if losses exceed predetermined limits.

With a showdown over the nation’s finances — and a possible government shutdown — looming this fall, the growing insurance tab is a bipartisan target. Yet the president and the Republicans’ chief budget expert are no match for the farm and insurance lobbies, which spent at least $52 million influencing lawmakers in the 2012 election cycle. Rather than thin the most expensive strand in the nation’s farm safety net, Congress is poised to funnel billions of dollars more to individuals who already are more prosperous than the typical American. (Full article here.)

The main crops controlled by the handful of seed companies who are today racing to patent the seed supply via genetic engineering, exist primarily through government subsidies that YOU pay for. They are (2012 figures):

• Corn ($2.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies)

• Soybean ($1.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies)

• Wheat ($1.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies)

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/