Here in Iowa, the documentary Food, Inc. just aired on the local PBS station. I had heard great things about the film and it lived up to expectations for me. They made a very convincing case. I'm typically more of a defender of our ag policy than many around here, particularly in the context of the subsidies that I feel sustain a basic level of liveability in the rural heartland and on the heavy use of corn as a cheap baseline crop that holds down the cost of food. With that said, the movie convincingly connected the dots between existing mass production of corn, and the cheap food policy beast that it feeds, as a primary moving part responsible for rural America's decline. I was hard-pressed to challenge anything that was presented in the first 88 minutes of the film. But then the narrator said something in the last two minutes that almost blew apart the film's entire argument for me....
The narrator suggested that challenging the agriculture overlords and forcing transformation to a more traditional method of food production was in fact possible, evidenced by the recent transformation of the tobacco industry to be more consumer-friendly.
Come again?
Is he really suggesting that the gold standard for industrial transformation via public policy is government's unconscionably cynical tobacco policy? Seriously?
What has been the transformation with tobacco thus far? The only tangible change to occur in the industry since government has put its thumb on the scale has been the cultural demonization and financial pillaging of the product's consumers.
Beyond that, what has really changed? The same major players in the industry 20 years ago continue to run the show today. In fact, they have a higher market share...and that's by design. In 1998, states effectively legislated Big Tobacco monopoly protections in exchange for an annual ten-figure protection stipend. And subsequently, as part of last year's SCHIP legislation, government has been levying taxes to upstart competitors that are more than 1,000% higher than the tax increases levied against Philip Morris and RJR to effectively run the upstarts out of business and preserve revenue flow to state and federal coffers.
Bottom line: the "reform" against the tobacco companies that the Food, Inc. narrator celebrates has merely been government doubling-down on the egregious ethics of the tobacco industry's past practices and turning the industry into an ATM machine for both government coffers AND the same tobacco barons they claim to be "reforming".
So will this be the level of "reform" that all progressives find acceptable in transforming the food industry, as appears to be the case with the film's narrator based on his comments? Will we be perfectly fine if the current arrangement of crop subsidies, corporate consolidation, saturation of processed corn, and exploitation of impoverished illegal immigrant labor in food production continues so long as ever mounting "sin taxes" are levied against consumers of these products?
Any true progressive should demand that any food production reform be focused like a laser on changing the fundamentals of food production and delivery....and unilaterally reject any cynical attempt by government to define "reform" as taxing consumers for purchasing the very products peddled by the food industry in its current form.