Introduction
Back in 2011, Mark Bittman, writing in the New York Times, noted that the farm subsidy system was a joke: “Wealthy growers are paid even in good years, and may receive drought aid when there’s no drought. It’s become so bizarre that some homeowners lucky enough to have bought land that once grew rice now have subsidized lawns. Fortunes have been paid to Fortune 500 companies …” 1
A year after Bittman’s article appeared, Representative Stephen Fincher (R-TN) agitated, during a House Agricultural Committee debate, against food stamp assistance for the poor, although, in both the House and Senate version of the Farm Bill, nearly two million working families, children, and seniors had been denied food stamps. Fincher argued that this was proper: food stamps, he said, was an example of the government stealing “other people’s money,” or some people getting something for nothing. He cited the Bible to make his case: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” 2 Despite Fincher’s miserly stance toward the poor and the needy, he remained committed to subsidies for the rich. When it came to government handouts, he didn’t object to something for nothing. Between 1999 and 2012, he was the second most subsidized farmer in Congress, collecting $3.48 million of other people’s money. 3
Subsidizing Big Agribusiness: Monopoly on the Farm
Farm subsidies have been around for a while. They were originally intended as price supports for farmers during the Great Depression to help them avoid bankruptcy because of circumstances—such as the weather—beyond their control. The purpose, also, was to increase food supplies to help people avoid starvation. But long past the New Deal Era, farm subsidies and taxpayer support for agriculture continued, even when it had no ostensible purpose any more and was in fact helping to prop up windfall profits for corporate farms. The situation was mirrored and mimicked in a comic novel by Joseph Heller , Catch 22. In the novel, the father of Major made a good living not growing alfalfa: “The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. [Each day, Mr. Major] sprang out of bed at the crack of noon … just to make certain that the chores would not be done.” 4
For years, one did not have to grow any crops to be treated as a farmer in the USA. In a short period of four years, between 2007 and 2011, according to figures released by the General Accountability Office (GAO ), the US government paid about $3 million in subsidies to 2300 farms where no crops of any sort had been grown. Between 2008 and 2012, some $10.6 million was paid to farmers who had been dead for more than a year. 5
Such aberrations were an anomaly of course, but subsidies for large corporations have been anything but anomalous. For years, US farm subsidies have been egregious and expensive, harvesting about $20 billion per year from taxpayers. Much of this money has gone to big farmers or corporate farms, which produce staple commodities such as corn and soybeans, concentrated in big agricultural states like Iowa.
Between 1995 and 2012, the US government spent over $277 billion of taxpayers’ money on agricultural subsidies. The largest share of these subsidies by far, reflecting their political clout, went to a small number of large—corporate—operations: 75% of subsidies went to only 3.8% of US “farmers.” 6 In an ironic note, the large producers who took a disproportionate share of subsidies, as Laura Etherton and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have documented, used the federal dollars they received to buy out smaller farms around them, meaning that subsidies actually worked to displace small farmers to make large—often corporate farms—eligible for further subsidies, yet another example of how large corporate producers can minimize or eliminate competition and absorb more taxpayer dollars for themselves. 7
Of the $277 billion plus farm subsidies gifted between 1995 and 2011, at least $81.7 billion went to subsidize corn; wheat and cotton growers received more than $32 billion each; and soybean growers received subsidies of more than $26 billion. Other subsidies went to rice, sorghum—grass used to feed livestock—peanuts, barley, tobacco, livestock, and dairy production. 8 In 2009, taxpayer costs for crop insurance programs alone rose substantially to $5.7 billion because higher premiums resulting from rising crop prices drove up premium subsidies to farmers, but this cost was driven even higher in 2011, almost doubling to $11 billion. 9 Moreover, unlike other agricultural subsidy programs, the federal crop insurance subsidy did not require caps, or payment limitations, which back in 2011 meant a boon for Big Agriculture. The GAO was able to show that just 4% of the most profitable farm operations accounted for 33% of all premium support provided by the federal government. For the same year, 2011, as noted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) , “farmers” made more than $98 billion in profit, a figure large enough to beg the question of why taxpayers should be subsidizing rich corporations. 10
The EWG Farm Subsidy Database shows that farm subsidies for the period 1995–2014 were more than $322 billion, not counting the cost of research and statistical data provided by the government. 11 That is an average of more than $16 billion per annum, plus the annual $5 billion—minimally—in research support, plus the incalculable assistance helping seed companies like Monsanto , which have been able to get into Mexican markets and beyond thanks to the financial and commercial diplomacy of the USA.
But high as the costs of subsidizing Big Agriculture have been, the CATO Institute —a conservative think tank whose politics and instincts are more libertarian than Republican, and therefore even more anti-Big Government—has suggested they will be much higher than what we have already seen. This is despite the fact that the 2014 Farm Agricultural Act repealed direct payments—a substantial number of which had gone to farmers who did not suffer crop damage or even actively farm—and countercyclical payments, which were too easy for farmers to game and which over-compensated them regardless of whether prices rose or fell. But the new farm bill also created two new programs, Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC), that seemed to extend welfare for the rich, not reduce it. Producers of covered commodities—including corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats—could choose either program and be covered for either low prices, or low yields. 12
The 2014 Farm Agriculture Act was largely friendly to Big Agriculture because it had many friends in Washington, among them Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack , the former governor of the State of Iowa. The farm bill passed easily in the Senate, with sixty-eight votes, and comfortably in the House. Intended as a kind of reform bill, it did little to reform or reduce the big subsidies that propped up the outsized profits of Big Agriculture. It did abolish direct payments based on land ownership, banning subsidies to those “farmers” not actively engaged in farming or food production. But farmers were given more subsidized insurance, linking new subsidies to previous crop prices and productivity. Theoretically, the new farm legislation would save $23 billion over a decade, but since payments were linked to crop prices, and farm incomes were predicted to decline by 32% for the year following the passage of the new farm legislation, subsidies were almost a certainty to rise to replace falling incomes. In other words, rich corporate farms could look forward to (substantial) profits built into the system by guaranteed subsidies. 13
If anything, the Farm Agriculture Act of 2014 granted more welfare to corporate farms, as well as to the insurance companies underwriting the agriculture sector. The government picked up 62% of a policy’s premium on average; farmers paid 38%. Corporate farms benefited the most because premiums guaranteed up to 85% of benchmark revenues: even a bountiful harvest could bring handsome insurance redemptions—because a larger harvest would likely lead to lower prices that would kick in increased subsidies. 14
This was precisely the point of the PLC program, a fundamental piece of the new legislation. Under PLC, farms would receive subsidies when corn, soybeans, and twelve other crops dropped below a target price. This all but guaranteed that farms would collect payouts, especially for corn and cotton, which previously were the same crops most often earning direct payments. The PLC program was especially advantageous to corporate farms, which now had the incentive to plant additional acreage—which presumed a lower yield—knowing the price support system would kick in additional subsidies to meet price benchmarks. 15
The new law also included a program called ARC, which was added for “shallow losses” not covered by crop insurance deductibles, virtually removing any and all liability regardless of price or yield. If a farmer experienced a 15% “loss,” i.e., missed an artificially high target price, and his crop insurance carried a 25% deductible, ARC would cover the difference or “loss”. Farmers could not lose: whether choosing PLC or ARC, a farm had no liability. Farms did not pay for the cost of insurance, nor for the deductible, while target prices were virtually guaranteed at favorable rates. 16
The new legislation was also a cash cow for the private insurance companies administering the crop insurance program, anything but a reform of previous practice. The crop insurance industry received $1.3 billion for administrative expenses—mostly paid by the government—just for 2011. In fact, this was its historical average, about a billion dollars annually for the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a 30% average return. 17
The Farm Agricultural Act of 2014 was the reform act that wasn’t. Taxpayers were liable for a significant share of payments that went to producers if they should suffer a “loss” of either income or yield. Under the new law, farmers could actually do better if there was widespread crop failure, or a loss of revenue from price decline (or collapse), since they were fully insured by government subsidy programs. The more that farmers “lost” from drops in yield or price, the greater the cost to the taxpayer. But the taxpayer also was liable when crop prices rose. That is because land values rise with the price of farm commodities, and that means that insurance premiums, largely paid by the federal government, go up. 18 It was Catch-22 again.
Called a reform bill by Republicans, the farm bill of 2014 was denounced by many Democrats as bountiful for the rich—subsidies were simply reallocated—but punitive for the poor. This was because the farm bill stripped out food stamp spending altogether—putting this into a separate bill—despite the fact that wages for the middle class and working class had stagnated for decades, while prices for subsidized foods—and virtually all food commodities—had not. Realizing how much “fat” the rich retained even post-reform, Democrats were prompted to remark that Republicans were not so much against welfare as they were against the poor. 19
Thinking back to FDR’s four freedoms, especially the freedom from want, Paul Krugman put it even more starkly. For the Grand Old Party, “freedom’s just another word for not enough to eat,” or the freedom to be hungry. 20 As Krugman angrily put it, the Republicans were waging war against food stamps when House Republicans voted to slash them sharply back in 2013, while pushing to increase farm subsidies dominated by the corporate rich. 21 One might ask what Republicans could gain by depriving those already destitute enough to actually need food stamp assistance? Or why anybody could conclude that hungry people are hungry by choice, as the Republicans seemed to imply: after all, why would people not take a job if they were hungry?
So why did Conservatives target food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) , the food stamp program’s proper name? Although public spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) was falling, enrollment in SNAP grew from twenty-six million Americans in 2007 to forty-eight million in 2013—when Krugman was shaming House Republicans, falling off to about forty-five million in 2016. The cost of SNAP also rose from $17 billion in 2000 to $78 billion in 2012, declining to about $75 billion in 2015. 22
while the recession did indeed officially end in 2009, what we’ve had since then is a recovery of, by and for a small number of people at the top of the income distribution, with none of the gains trickling down to the less fortunate. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the top 1 percent rose 31 percent from 2009 to 2012, but the real income of the bottom 40 percent actually fell 6 percent. 23
Never mind that SNAP kept people out of poverty, or that many people eligible for food stamps were actually working. The rich still insisted that welfare was bloated because it encouraged idleness. How else to put it when Paul Ryan , who apparently never went hungry or worked for minimum wage (which he has helped to preserve as a “minimum” wage), the chairman of the House Budget Committee at the time that SNAP was being curtailed, characterized the food stamp program as an example of turning a safety net into “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” 24 Was it possible that Ryan did not know that the previous year, on average, food stamp benefits were $4.45 per day? Or that almost two-thirds of SNAP beneficiaries were children, the elderly, or the disabled? 25
The real welfare, as Paul Ryan knew, didn’t go to the poor. The 2014 farm reform bill, according to the USDA Risk Management Agency, did not change much. If anything, farm subsidies were increased. They were simply channeled through different programs. The crop insurance program, which disburses more subsidies than other programs, now accounts for outlays of about $8 billion per year. 26 Subsidized crop insurance protects against low production, low revenues, and adverse weather conditions, covering more than a hundred crops, although corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat are the most subsidized. Crop insurance also covers insurance premiums and the administrative costs of the nineteen private insurance companies offering policies to farmers. 27 Knowing that crop insurance is a welfare program for multi-millionaires, Congress has worked diligently to obscure the identities of the wealthy recipients, easily done by routing the largest portion of farm subsidies through the insurance program where the beneficiaries are not transparent. 28
Subsidy amounts fluctuate but, according to the USDA , the ARC subsidy payout was about $7 billion for 2016. 29 PLC subsidies for 2016 were about $2 billion. 30 The USDA also manages farm conservation programs, providing subsidies that cost some $5 billion per year to the taxpayer. While some of these may be good ecologically, the largest conservation program, the Conservation Reserve Program, pays farmers $1.7 billion per year to keep millions of acres out of production. 31
The total subsidies following the reform farm bill of 2014 add up to a minimum of $19 billion and as much as $25 billion annually, depending on price fluctuations, a sum that excludes about 67% of the cost of the conservation program. But if $19 billion seems like a relatively small amount of corporate-farm welfare, it should be remembered that crop insurance, price support, conservation subsidies, disaster relief, and commodity payments are only the beginning of welfare socialism for rich corporate farmers. Research and marketing support cost billions of dollars in addition. Note also that back in 2011 the farming sector netted $98 billion in profits, an indication that welfare, especially for the large corporate farms, was not needed. 32 Price support for corporate farms means keeping prices higher than they would be if government subsidies were not available to reassure agribusiness. And agribusiness has done well. Consider one of the largest corporations, Archer Daniels Midland, a recipient of government subsidy largesse. Its profit for 2015 was $1.8 billion, and this was a decline from 2014, when Archer Daniels reaped a hefty $$2.2 billion in profit. 33
Over the two decades prior to 2014, farm subsidies totaled more than $320 billion. That represents a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to wealthy farmers, especially the top 4% of farms scoring a third of the total subsidies. The reform farm bill of 2014 did replace “direct payments” if commodity prices were to fall, regardless of how much farmers planted or how much prices fell, but some experts were predicting that the real costs to the taxpayer over the next decade would still be in the neighborhood of $195 billion. That is because savings from direct payment cuts have been shifted to an increase in crop insurance programs. Since the US government subsidizes about 62% of the premium costs of farmers—who buy insurance to shield themselves against price fluctuations—farmers can lock in high prices regardless of crop size or market conditions. The farm bill also extends the number of beneficiaries beyond corn, wheat, soybean, rice, cotton, peanut, and dairy farmers. It includes the fishing industry, alfalfa growers, and producers of biomass and sweet sorghum. And beyond that there is special peanut revenue insurance and funds to study the extension of insurance to cover losses because of food recalls or health advisories related to contamination. There is even insurance against business interruption for poultry producers. The result is that farmers will have little if any liability in case there should be “losses”. 34
All of these additions represent—mostly—transfers of wealth to corporate farms and those who manage them. But there are yet other kinds of subsidies as well. Sugar growers enjoy protectionist tariffs that spike domestic sugar prices by keeping out less expensive foreign sugar. Sugar growers also benefit from an allotment scheme that limits domestic sugar protection, helping boost sugar prices closer to targets set by the US government. If market prices fall below targets, the government is committed to buy sugar at the higher price, a subsidy to sugar producers and a significant cost to consumers. These kinds of tariff measures only “tax” American consumers indirectly, but they are not unusual and they are costly. Between 1998 and 2004, US butter was protected against foreign competition, resulting in US prices that were double international prices, and likewise US cheese, which for the same years was 58% higher than international prices. 35
Subsidizing Sugar: How Sugar Went Sour
Sugar is the sweetest deal of all. Estimates are that protecting American sugar growers against foreign competition, plus the price support system mandated by government, has a cost to the consumer—who is also a taxpayer—of $3 billion per year, a significant amount of welfare and wealth transfer from consumers to the rich. There is also a collateral cost to consumers, their health. The high-fructose corn syrup industry did not exist before the early 1970s when the sugar price support regime was first implemented. The industry was born only because of the artificially high prices of sugar created by protectionism and sugar price support. Four decades later, high-fructose corn syrup, a cheap substitute for sugar, accounts for roughly half of all sugar consumed in the USA. Many clinicians and nutritionists believe it is no accident that the outsized consumption of high-fructose corn syrup has coincided with obesity , diabetes, and liver disease. 36 What is clear is that such pathologies as obesity and diabetes were not the health threats they have become since the widespread introduction of high-fructose corn syrup into soft drinks and foods typically called junk foods, many of which are in the American diet because they are cheap—and often addictive because of the sweetener.
Inflated sugar prices have cost American consumers up to $3 billion a year for well over three decades because of price support and tariffs, while the high-fructose substitute has cost many billions more because of health problems associated with its consumption. So how did the sugar industry, generally, whether cane sugar or corn growers, convince Americans that sugar was safe to consume and not a threat to their health? The strategy was simple: shift blame to fat.
The sugar industry paid scientists handsome sums in the 1960s to deemphasize links between sugar and heart disease, by promoting saturated fat as the chief cause of coronary heart disease. It was not until internal sugar industry documents were discovered by a researcher at the University of California in San Francisco, and published in September 2016 in JAMA Internal Medicine, that it was discovered that some five decades of research into the relationship between nutrition and heart disease were mostly shaped by the sugar industry. What the documents reveal is that the Sugar Research Foundation , also known as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard researchers to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat, and heart disease. Unsurprisingly, the articles that were given to the Harvard trio for review were handpicked by the Sugar Association. Right on cue, and with a fistful of dollars, the Harvard professors found minimal linkage between sugar and heart disease. The culprit according to them was saturated fats. 37
One of the scientists paid by the sugar industry was Mark Hegsted, later the head of nutrition at the USDA , where in 1977 he helped draft a forerunner of the dietary guidelines of the federal government. A second scientist was Frederick J. Stare, who was the chairman of Harvard’s nutrition department between 1942 and 1976. In 1964, John Hickson, a sugar industry executive, discussed a plan with other industry executives that would link high rates of heart disease with saturated fats and dietary cholesterol, while discrediting studies connecting high-sugar diets with coronary disease “through our research and information and legislative programs.” 38 In 1965, Hickson formally began his campaign to debunk studies linking sugar consumption and heart disease by enlisting the Harvard researchers to write a review critical of anti-sugar studies. Paying the professors-nutritionists $6500, the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars, Hickson made it clear he expected the results to be favorable to sugar interests. Sharing early drafts with the researchers, Hickson was satisfied that his investment was well placed. The professors were coming to the desired conclusion, and why not; it had been paid for. 39 In this way, sugar entered the American diet, blinding Americans to the health hazards caused by the naked pursuit of self-interest and by the likely rise in human morbidity.
Fifty years later, reports showed that the food industry continued to influence “nutrition science.” This time it was Coca-Cola’s turn to bend the “research.” Coke, the largest producer of sugary beverages, backed what it called a science-based solution to obesity , counseling more exercise and less concern with cutting calories. For those who remained unconvinced, Coca-Cola collaborated with scientists willing to promote its message in medical journals, academic conferences, and even social media like Twitter. To help its partner scientists, Coke provided considerable financial and logistical support to a nonprofit organization called Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), which defied most medical practitioners by proclaiming that weight-conscious Americans should be less fixated about how much they eat and drink and concentrate more on exercise. The nonprofit’s vice-president, Steven N. Blair, an exercise scientist, even stated that there was no compelling evidence that sugar-sweetened fast foods and sugary drinks led to obesity .
There was of course no compelling evidence that the consumption of sugar did not lead to obesity and type-2 diabetes. No doubt aware of this, Coke made a substantial investment in GEBN, though this was not readily disclosed by Coke. Not until requests based on state open-records laws that is: only then did two universities that employed leaders of Global Energy disclose that Coke had donated $1.5 million to start the organization. 40
That was only part of Coke’s campaign to support sugary beverages. From 2008, Coca-Cola provided about $4 million in funding for Dr. Steven Blair, a University of South Carolina professor, and Gregory Hand, dean of the West Virginia School of Public Health: both were founding members of GEBN. Its Web site, gebn.org, was also registered to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and Coke was listed as the site’s administrator. Asked whether this fact meant that Coke had editorial control over the content of the network’s site, the group’s president, James O. Hill, professor at the Colorado School of Medicine, issued a reassuring rejoinder that Coke had registered the site because the network’s members did not know how. This was a statement that might make most people wonder how GEBN’s scientists could figure out that sugar consumption was healthy and that there was no compelling evidence otherwise. In a bit of pique, Professor Hill noted that, “They’re (Coke) not running the show. We’re running the show.” 41 Dr. Blair added that Coke had no control over the work and the message of the network, and anyway he saw no problem with Coke’s support since he and the group had been transparent about their relationship with Coke.
Well, almost transparent. Coke, it seems, had forgotten to disclose that it was supporting the work—and the “science”—of GEBN, an oversight that was “corrected” following an inquiry about sponsorship of GEBN’s online site. The group’s Facebook and Twitter sites, which had actively championed physical activity as the solution to chronic disease and obesity , remained silent about food and nutrition—read sugary drinks and junk foods—as causes of heart-related disease and obesity . The network, coincidentally, failed to reveal a relationship with Coke, although Rhona Applebaum, chief scientific officer of Coca-Cola public relations, had lauded the work of the group. 42
Coke still did not retreat, relying on reputable scientists like Dr. Hill to make its case. After all, he seemed like a good investment. Dr. Hill was not only the GEBN’s president, he was also a co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry, a long-term study of people who had lost weight. He served on committees of the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health. And the American Society for Nutrition even called him a leader in the fight against the global obesity epidemic. 43
This was not necessarily reassuring for a number of other scientists. Barry Popkin, a professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explained that the tactics used by Coke were reminiscent of those once used by the tobacco industry, which also enlisted experts to become “merchants of doubt,” as attorney and author Larry White once put it, about the health hazards of smoking. 44 Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, was even more critical of Coke: “The Global Energy Balance Network is nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake.” 45
An analysis published in the journal PLOS Medicine found that studies funded by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, the American Beverage Association, and the sugar industry were five times more likely to find no link between sugared drinks and weight gain than studies whose authors had no reported financial links to the industry. 46 But GEBN continued to call itself the voice of science. It even provided links to two research papers providing strong evidence, it said, of the group’s contention: if you want to lose weight, the key is to exercise, not reduce food intake. Unfortunately, each paper contained a footnote that the publication of the article was supported by the Coca-Cola Company. 47
Coca-Cola, unashamed and undaunted, soldiered on. But then it encountered resistance it had not expected when voices were raised denying its claims to scientific legitimacy. In August 2015, the chairman of the nutrition department of Harvard’s School of Public Health wrote a scathing letter, signed by thirty-six other scientists, criticizing Coca-Cola and the GEBN for spreading “scientific nonsense,” a phrase that would seem to challenge the scientific credibility of Drs. Hill and Blair. Shortly thereafter, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which had accepted millions of dollars from Coca-Cola , announced they were severing all links with the beverage company, begging the question of why they had accepted money from Coke in the first place. When GEBN emails were scrutinized, it turned out that Coke had named its leaders, created its mission statement, and even designed its Web site, signs that its relationship with the network was incestuous. The University of Colorado School of Medicine then announced it was returning a million dollar grant to Coke, while the GEBN announced it was closing its website. 48
The vast majority of public health officials acknowledge that energy balance is an important concept: weight gain is about calories in versus calories out. But research by far concludes that the best way to maintain or lose weight is to consume fewer calories. Exercise increases appetite, making it likely that its advantages are linked to an increase in caloric increase. The best way to lose weight—and to maintain that loss—is to limit intake of high glycemic foods like sugary drinks—soda drinks especially—and other refined carbohydrates, which sharply raise blood sugar. Exercise is important, but it does not expend enough calories to maintain or reduce weight. A single can of Coke contains 140 calories, about ten teaspoons of sugar. To offset this, it takes three miles of walking. 49
One rigorous analysis of the impact of physical activity on weight loss, published in the journal Obesity , recruited 200 overweight, sedentary adults and put them on an aggressive exercise program. The adults were instructed not to change their diets, so they could more accurately isolate the effects of exercise. Participants in the study were instructed to exercise five to six hours per week, doubling federal guidelines. The results were conclusive: men lost an average of 3.5 pounds after a year, and women lost an average of 2.5 pounds for the same period. Virtually, all who participated in the study remained overweight. The authors of the study concluded that diet mattered much more than exercise for weight loss. 50
Corporations like Coca-Cola that sponsor “scientific” studies are not interested in science. They are interested in profit. They don’t get involved because they are concerned with health and they want to maintain consumer consumption of their products. Coke is hardly the only corporate sponsor promoting health strategies that are profit-friendly, but it has certainly been successful in shaping—and subverting—the conversation about sugar when it comes to its soda beverages. It donated money to build more than a hundred fitness centers in more than a hundred schools across the USA. When the City Council of Chicago proposed a soda tax in 2012, to address the obesity problem in Chicago, Coca-Cola donated $3 million to establish fitness programs in more than sixty of the city’s community centers. Coke was successful, the initiative to tax soda failed. Exercise, the company admonished, was the best antidote for obesity . Cheering on families in Chicago, Coke claimed the moral high ground. The battle against obesity and overweight begins, it said, “with the next push-up, a single situp or a jumping jack.” 51 These were hardly bad things in themselves, but they were diverting public education and conversation away from legitimate science, while suppressing the truth about sugar through corporate-funded science or by shifting the conversation toward exercise as the best way to combat obesity and excessive weight.
Sugar-sweetened beverages (soda sweetened with sugar, corn syrup, or other caloric sweeteners and other carbonated and uncarbonated drinks, such as sports and energy drinks) may be the single largest driver of the obesity epidemic. A recent meta-analysis found that the intake of sugared beverages is associated with increased body weight, poor nutrition, and displacement of more healthful beverages; increasing consumption increases risk for obesity and diabetes. 52
For a period of two decades, between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, the consumption of soda accounted for about half the total increase in calories in the USA. Consumption fell off after that, partially because of greater public awareness and rising costs, but a decade and a half later, in 2016, soda drinking had increased threefold for the typical American compared to the late 1970s. 53 That was because children and adolescents had been targeted extensively by soda industry advertising: so much so that in the mid-1990s children’s intake of sugared beverages surpassed their consumption of milk. More than fifteen years later soda beverages accounted for 10–15% of all calories consumed by children and adults. Moreover, for children who regularly consumed one can or glass of a soda beverage per day, the likelihood of obesity increased by 60%. 54 Yet despite the science, the major producers continued to identify lack of exercise and poor eating habits as the major contributors to obesity , heart disease, and diabetes, while promoting studies that confirmed their denial of the dangers of overconsumption of sugared beverages.
The High Cost of Cheap Junk Foods: How Poor Health Enriches the 1 Percent
At a time when food production is as efficient as ever, and when high-quality food can be produced abundantly and cheaply, almost three-quarters of Americans are either obese or overweight. The reason? The American diet consists of too many junk foods—foods short on nutrients but high in calories. According to the data of the federal government in a report published in 2010 by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, breads, sugary drinks, pizza, pasta dishes, and “dairy desserts” are included among the top ten sources of calories among all Americans. 55
Following the government report and a Harvard Health article publicizing it, the New York Times published an article in July 2016 by Anahad O’Connor, entitled “How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit,” in which the author asked which ingredients were typically found in junk foods? The answer was corn, soybeans, wheat, and dairy. In their natural states, these products are hardly junk foods. But a high percentage of these foods are never eaten in their natural states, and this has especially been true of corn sweeteners, especially high-fructose corn syrup, which is derived from heavily subsidized corn. High-fructose corn syrup is in everything from breads, crackers, and cereal, to mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard, to ice cream, jams, cookies, soft drinks, and even yogurts and nutrition bars. Nothing, it seems, is excluded. O’Connor’s conclusion? Government corn subsidies were helping to addict Americans to high-fructose corn syrup, and this was a significant contributing factor to obesity and diabetes, with predictable consequences for healthcare costs. 56
Largely because of junk foods, and the government subsidies that help to underwrite them, the USA is today in the midst of a public health crisis. Obesity has become a national problem affecting adults and especially children. The obesity rates of children have tripled in the last three decades. Nearly 20% of children aged between six and eleven are obese, and the percentage continues to rise. The consequences of childhood obesity are immense. Obese children, for example, have arteries so thick they resemble the arteries of forty-five-year-old adults, making them susceptible to heart disease. Some 70% of obese five- to seven-year-olds have at least one of the risk factors for heart disease. 57
The crisis cannot be fully measured in dollars, but Laura Etherton, Mike Russo, and Nasima Hossain published a report in 2012 on behalf of the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), “Apples to Twinkies 2012: Comparing Taxpayer Subsidies for Fresh Produce and Junk Food,” which found that $150 billion per year was spent on problems related to obesity and comorbidities—heart-related problems for example—a sum that had doubled in the decade between 2002 and 2012. 58
If predictions prove correct, and if there are no significant changes in policy, projections are that by 2030 half of all Americans will be obese and the USA will be spending an additional $66 billion a year on related medical costs. 59 There are a number of reasons for the production and consumption of junk food: consumer taste for one. But what the public clamors for can also be manipulated by industry, which spends millions promoting obesity -fueling empty calories—sugar coating for example—that are too often underwritten by federal subsidies. In 2011 alone, the US government spent more than $1.28 billion in subsidies that supported junk food ingredients, which brought the total spent subsidizing junk food between 1995 and 2011 to an outlandish $18.2 billion altogether. By contrast, between 1995 and 2011, the government spent only $637 million subsidizing apple production. 60
By subsidizing junk foods—with minimal if any nutritional value—government spending has inadvertently supported obesity . This is especially true of corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, and cornstarch, all derived mostly from corn. Since 1995, the federal government has spent about $8.7 billion subsidizing corn that was turned directly into corn-based sweeteners and cornstarch. 61 When we add up the subsidies for commodities turned into junk foods, $18.2 billion between 1995 and 2011, $3 billion per year protecting sugar, and the increased costs of healthcare that are the result of eating junk foods—up to another $150 billion per annum as cited above, and then add the direct and indirect subsidies to Big Agribusiness, $19 billion and beyond annually, we begin to understand just how much we are subsidizing the super-rich, and how unaffordable they have become for all of us.
Subsidizing the Gentry Farmers of Britain
In the UK, the British have coddled and subsidized their own “farmers” much like the USA, but there is a substantial difference. The so-called agriculturalists and agronomists of Britain have a much longer lineage, and as a group, they are not only a landed elite, they also control most of Britain just as they did in the feudal era. In Britain, not much has changed, including inherited inequality—made worse by the coalition government of the Tories which has been intent, since it came to power in 2010, on maintaining the comforts and ease of the native aristocracy and the country gentlemen of Britain. There has developed something of a consensus that there are too few houses and that planning laws are overly restrictive. But there is also a counterview that too much of Britain has been bulldozed and set into concrete, and that the lands are less green and more odious every passing year. Land is scarce and becoming scarcer, the argument goes, until Britain simply runs out of the stuff.
This is, of course, a myth, easily dispelled by a look around. Many of the landowners of Britain are aristocrats who acquired their holdings through a quirk of ancestral good luck or who are at the long end of a succession that began with the Norman Conquest, or who benefited by the dissolution of the monasteries—a bit of good fortune during the sixteenth-century dispossession. There was also the wonderful benevolence of Parliament, which sanctioned the enclosures between 1688 and the Great Revolution and the final acts of the nineteenth century that removed much land from the commons through a centuries-long privatization . How the beneficiaries acquired their lands, whether by being well connected to Parliament, or by being on the right side of the religious struggles of the sixteenth century, or by the violence of the Norman Conquest, the result was the same: a landed elite that still controls much of the land of Britain.
All that was the bucolic past, but what about the bovine present? Like a number of American cousins, and through another quirk of good luck, and contemporary privilege, British aristocrats—be they major or minor gentry—are paid to keep their acreage off the market through a system of European Union (EU) agricultural subsidies. The result is a scarcity of land on which to build, and a consequence of that is not only a lack of decent housing, but a lack of plentiful food production. That is because in the EU—and that means in the UK pending departure from the EU—subsidies are given to landowners, to any who possess acreage, not necessarily to food growers. In Britain, it is a good thing to be a gentleman on the estates, one can command a handsome sum without having to bother about all those bad seeds, or problem fertilizers, or advocates of green farming and best ecological practices. At least one could do so until Brexit , after which farming—or not farming—might not be so lucrative.
The UK, it turns out, is not so developed after all. Only 10.6% of England and 6% of Britain are actually developed. Land is not so scarce, only permission to build is scarce. Which brings up a perplexing question for the British: why do so many people persist in believing that Britain is running out of land? And for that matter, who really owns Britain? How did its present owners come to control so much acreage, and what does that mean exactly for everybody else, especially for those who suffer from a housing shortage, or who lack even proper nutrition? The Labor Party —never mind the Tories , they are defenders of the status quo and the 1%—never speaks of the need for a land tax and never seriously mentions land reform. Jeremy Corbyn has hardly uttered a squeak about housing shortage, or even nutritional deprivation—through land reform, meaning redistribution, and land taxes—was once a great principle of the liberals. 62
In 2005, the average value of a hectare in mixed agricultural use in England was some £9,300. In residential use it was £2.46m. Such are the price distortions created by keeping the bulk of the population in urban reservations. Since society creates the increase in value, with the stroke of a pen, it should also obtain some portion of the benefits. 63
Giving permission to develop agricultural land as residential property, and then taxing these lands based on higher valuation, would create tax revenues to build infrastructure, such as schools and highways. Developers of properties so designated would have an incentive to develop the property since they would pay the same taxes either way, even if they did nothing.
In 1984, I bought my London house. I estimate that the land on which it sits was worth £100,000 in today’s prices. Today, the value is perhaps ten times as great. All of that vast increment is the fruit of no effort of mine. It is the reward of owning a location that the efforts of others made valuable, reinforced by a restrictive planning regime and generous tax treatment – property taxes are low and gains tax-free…. So I am a land speculator – a mini-aristocrat in a land where private appropriation of the fruits of others’ efforts has long been a prime route to wealth. This appropriation of the rise in the value of land is not just unfair: what have I done to deserve this increase in my wealth? 64
The emphasis here should be on low property taxes and no taxes at all on the added value of land, which rises despite no efforts to improve it by its owner. The emphasis also is on the fact that keeping rural land undeveloped, by squeezing the British people onto urban reservations, pumps up land values in populated areas, amounting to an artificially created scarcity of land (for development) and inflating land values in (rural) undeveloped areas—which are untaxed—as the inevitable result. Land speculation is inevitable. The less land that is developed, the more that developed land is worth. And what makes it even more valuable is that the added value is not taxed, which fuels speculation further: “This is the most important way in which wealth is transferred from the unpropertied young to the propertied old,” adds Martin Wolf . 65
Britain’s iniquitous system of land ownership is well known and it has been around for a while. In 1911, Herbert Asquith was moved to pass the Parliament Act, establishing the primacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords, which was one of the staunchest defenders of landed privilege in Britain. A century hence and not much has changed, despite Asquith’s noble attempt at reform. Of the sixty million acres in the UK, forty-two million acres are designated “agricultural” land and twelve million are called “natural wastage,” such as forests, rivers, and mountains, which are owned by institutions like the Forestry Commission, the Ministry of Defense, and the National Trust. The remaining six million acres are known as the “urban plot,” not a reference to a mystery novel but the densely congested lands on which the houses, factories, and offices of Britain are built. This “urban plot” represents some 10% of the landmass of Britain, compressed enough by any standards. But it is even worse than it sounds. Most of the sixty-two million people of the British Isles live on just three million acres. As Jason Cowley and George Eaton have been able to document, this means, in effect, that 69% of British acreage is owned by less than 1% of the population (0.28% to be exact), or some 158,000 families. Britain, in other words, belongs to the 1%; it is a virtual—as the authors put it—cousinhood, a concentration of ownership so extreme that it is unrivalled in Western Europe, with the possible exception of Spain. Never mind that the British lords of the cousinhood receive their own fair share of subsidies—something they fear they might lose because of Brexit —but their virtual monopoly of titles and land is also a primary cause of the housing shortage in Britain: which means high and ever escalating rents for those without the proper pedigree, while the lords serve tea on the manor. 66
Britain therefore has an unenviable paradox. It has no shortage of land, but little of the precious stuff is available for development—for housing for the non-privileged—because the landed elite still has its eternal grip on land. The lament that the pastures of England have been covered in concrete remains untrue. In 2011, the UK’s National Ecosystem Assessment conducted the most comprehensive survey of the country’s natural environment and resources ever undertaken, concluding that only 6.8% of the land area of the UK could be classified as urban. 67 Low as this figure was, it actually overstated the case for development. In England, as an illustration, 10.6% of the land was designated as urban, but 54% of that area was green space, consisting of parks, cemeteries, and sports pitches. Domestic gardens comprised yet another 18%, and water (rivers, ponds, and canals) consisted of another 6.6%. Altogether, when the accounting was done, 78.6% of English urban land was found to be “natural,” not “built.” 68
Overall, in the UK, “enclosed farmland” accounts for the largest share of land by far, some 40%, followed by mountains, moorlands and heath at 18%, and woodland at 12%, a percentage that has doubled since 1945. These figures explain why the UK has the smallest and yet the most expensive homes in Europe. Some 90% of the population lives on 5% of the land, a number that is bound to have a profound negative impact on the pocketbooks of home renters and is equally profitable for those renting them out. As authors Cowley and Eaton concluded, “it is unsurprising that so many believe this is an overcrowded country in which rapacious developers have monopolized what little space remains.” 69
What has emerged is a system that is not only contrary to reason, but reflects the power and influence of its beneficiaries. It is no surprise then that the largest landowner in all of Europe is British. He is none other than Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch and the 12th Duke of Queensberry. He is the senior patrilineal descendant of James, Duke of Monmouth (April 9, 1649–July 15, 1685), the eldest illegitimate son of King Charles II and his mistress, Lucy Walter, who inherited his titles and landed estates upon the death of his father in 2007. Scott is the reputed grandee and custodian of at least 240,000 acres—estimates are as high as 280,000 acres—including the Queensberry Estate, with headquarters in Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries, and the Langholm Estate on the Dumfriesshire–Cumbria border, worth an estimated £1 billion altogether. 70
This might be enough to impress most of us, but the Duke of Westminster, who only has 133,100 acres on which he must make do, can console himself that his landed worth is somewhere close to £6 billion, while his Grosvenor Estate includes the most valuable real estate in London, in posh Belgravia and Mayfair. Even Prince Charles, who as the Duke of Cornwall owns 133,602 acres, can only claim a worth somewhat north of £1 billion, a frustration he will have to live with whenever the Duke of Westminster appears in his sights. 71
Since these dukes and princes are at the summit of cousinhood and land ownership, we might conclude that these same individuals do not need nor would they accept subsidies from the taxpayer. Yet we would be mistaken. Under the auspices of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), such a program of subsidies—dubbed “aid to aristocrats” by those with sympathies for the ultra rich—does exist, and it is not going away anytime soon. Up until Brexit , at least, the average British household has been contributing somewhere around £250 a year to the CAP program, most of which was going to wealthy landowners, including the titled dukedom.
The original intention of CAP was to support small farmers and to reduce Europe’s reliance on food imports. To accomplish this, more than 40% (€55 billion) of the EU budget has gone to CAP. But what was a good intention has been transformed into a slush fund to maintain the lifestyle of assorted dukes, earls, and princes. That is because subsidy payments are based solely on acreage. There is no accounting of wealth, which makes the entire scheme the most regressive in all of Europe—the more acreage a lord owns, the greater the subsidy. Compounding this windfall, the EU’s definition of “farmer” does not require landowner-farmers to actually get their aristocratic hands dirty by growing something like crops or any agricultural products. 72 Whether wheat is grown or pitches are organized for polo games or lavish croquet tournaments, it is all the same. The aristocrats are essentially paid whether they farm or not.
Naturally, how much they are paid might be a delicate matter, possibly inciting fanatics who think the grandees should at least grow a few potatoes in between the croquet wickets. In fact, when the New Statesman made a freedom of information request to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) back in 2012, what they found out probably gave them a severe case of indigestion. The figures released by DEFRA for 2011 showed that the largest landowners received goodly amounts to purchase oats of the finest quality for their steeds. The Duke of Westminster, a multibillionaire, was paid £748,716 for his Grosvenor Farms, the Earl of Plymouth received £675,085, the Duke of Buccleuch some £260,273, the Duke of Devonshire £251,729, and the Duke of Atholl, who managed only an anemic £231,188 for his Blair Castle Estate. The Windsors also were in the queue. The Queen received a tidy sum of £415,817 for the Royal Farms and £314,811 for the Duchy of Lancaster, while Prince Charles reaped a harvest of £127,868 for the Duchy of Cornwall. Well compensated also was Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He received £273,905 for his 2000 acre Glympton Estate in Oxfordshire, allegedly purchased with profits from the 1985 al-Yamamah arms deal between Saudi Arabia and Britain. All of the above subsidies paled, however, when compared to the proceeds taken by Sir Richard Sutton , who was paid £1.1 million for his Settled Estates, a 6500 acre property near Newbury inherited along with his baronetcy in 1981, despite having net assets of some £136.5 million. 73
All these were predictable recipients, but there were strange outliers as well. One such benefactor of taxpayer largesse was an outsourcing company called Serco which had built a pipeline cashing in on the government’s privatization of National Health Service services, courtesy of the British taxpayer and CAP. It received a land subsidy worth £2.7 million although EU member states were simultaneously cutting jobs, wages, and services according to the austerity policies of Brussels. 74
But the EU and the British Tories are not oblivious to the concerns of the public waiting in the queue for housing assistance or job training. The EU had vowed to reform the program of “corporate” welfare by capping direct payments at €300,000 and also by ensuring that only “active” farmers would be eligible for subsidy. But even under these proposals, which went into effect in 2014, the EU continued to provide aid to landowners who derived only 5% of their annual revenue from agriculture. As for the CAP , the largest farms have been able to avoid it by simply restructuring, with barely a murmur from the Tories who derive much of their political sustenance from the gentry and baronet class. Life seemed to continue as it had for centuries, never mind the reforms. In 2014, the Queen still commanded £686,000 in subsidies from Brussels for Sandringham Farms on her Norfolk Estate. The Duke of Westminster, who died an untimely death a year later, and who had an estimated wealth of some £9 billion at the time, claimed £914,000 for his Grosvenor Farms, Tesco’s biggest milk supplier. And then there is Sir Richard Sutton , a large claimant under CAP previously, who suffered no noticeable imposition in 2014, when he claimed another £1.8 million for growing wheat, barley, peas, and beans on his family farm. This hefty subsidy arrived just in time to help Sir Richard avoid any diminution of the family worth of £160 million. The Tory coalition government looked askance at all of this for good reason, they were not about to challenge the scions and lords with whom they were connected. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith , who was simultaneously justifying and enforcing a £12 billion raid on welfare payments, managed, along with his family, to claim £159,000 for their Swanbourne Home Farms, a subsidy which he apparently felt entitled to, while denying meager sums of welfare to the genuinely needy. 75
If Secretary Smith was unaware of the needs people on public assistance have, he might have consulted his relatives. They were the recipients of EU largesse because they ran the family farm while the minister guarded the treasury against unwarranted welfare benefit intrusion. The farm business, which was run on the family estate, was partly owned by Duncan Smith’s son, with Duncan Smith’s wife as trustee. The family farm has received well over a million pounds sterling in taxpayer subsidies. To be precise, Swanbourne Home Farms, run as a partnership between the minister’s in-laws, Baron and Baroness Cottesloe, brother-in-law Thomas, and cousin Richard Brooks, received €1,517,535 over a 10-year period in funding from the EU. Beyond that it also received grants worth tens of thousands of pounds sterling from Natural England, presumably for contributing to the greening of England. 76
It could be that Brexit was supported because at least some British voters thought it mildly unfair to pay taxes to the coalition government, when Chancellor Osborne was proclaiming that nobody was going to get anything for nothing. In fact, the gentlemen farmers were getting quite a lot for nothing, sharing in the roughly €50 billion annually that the EU allocated to EU farmers. Considering that every British household was contributing some £250 per year to the EU, which then handed over subsidies to millionaires like the Duke of Westminster, the family of Minister Duncan Smith, and Sir Richard Hutton, Chancellor Osborne might have rephrased his views and asked why so many who had so little were subsidizing so few who had so much? The EU and its CAP , as Giles Fraser expressed it in the Guardian, was “socialism for the rich. It’s a mechanism to buttress the aristocracy – who own a third of the land in this country – from the chill winds of economic liberalism.” The European Union, said Fraser, “has become a huge and largely invisible way of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich, subsidizing lord so-and-so’s grouse moor, while redundancies are handed out to workers at Port Talbot (whose jobs the government can’t help subsidize because of EU rules).” 77 With about £3.6 billion in EU subsidies going to UK farmers in 2015, and with a third of all farmland belonging to the baronets, it is easy to understand the ire of Mr. Fraser: the CAP is socialism for the landed aristocracy living high on the hog. 78 It is in fact a mammoth subsidy program enabling the rich to extract wealth from everybody else.
Patenting Life: Monsanto and Bigger Agribusiness
Monsanto , possibly the largest biotech company in the world, has become an example of a new monopoly company. Monsanto owns the key genetic traits of more than 90% of soybeans and 80% of corn planted by farmers in the USA. Its near monopoly grew from a clever strategy. Robert Reich noted the ruse: “[Monsanto ] patented its own genetically modified seeds along with an herbicide that would kill weeds but not soy and corn grown from its seeds.” 79 Initially, this saved farmers much money and time. But the purchase turned out to be costly. The soy and corn grown from Monsanto seeds did not produce seeds of their own. Farmers therefore had to buy seeds every season. Even if farmers did reserve their own seeds, they could not by law use them or plant them. As a result of what was effectively a monopoly, given patent protection, seed prices rose much faster than the cost of living. Monsanto ’s price for corn and soy seeds more than doubled in the first decade of the twenty-first century. 80 The cost of planting one acre of soybeans between 1994 and 2011 increased on average by 325%, while the price of corn seed rose by 259%. 81
Monsanto ’s success inevitably helped lead to a decline in the genetic diversity of seeds. Yet another consequence was the rise of genetically modified traits in our food chain. 82 Further, as Monsanto acquired economic power, it also acquired political clout. It resisted a number of congressional attempts to require labeling of genetically engineered foods and to protect biodiversity as well. Instead, Monsanto globalized its reach, attempting to do in other countries what it had done in the USA, resisting moves to ban genetically engineered seeds. Monsanto sued other companies for patent infringement, and Monsanto lawyers sued farmers who theoretically saved seeds for planting or used them for replanting. To further establish and preserve its near monopoly, Monsanto successfully prevented independent scientists from studying their seeds, arguing that they would be infringing on Monsanto ’s proprietary rights. 83
Officially, Monsanto argued it wanted to solve food shortages, especially as the world’s population advanced ahead of its food supply, and the surest way to satisfy global food demands was through genetic manipulation to “improve” plant varieties. But Monsanto wanted to do much more than the genetic modification of plants. It wanted to own the results, or rather, it wanted the right to patent its genetically “improved” plants. There was a legal roadblock to doing this, however. Prior to a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 1980, crops that had been genetically modified—transgenic crops—were not patentable because, as the courts had put it, life could not be patented. But in 1980 the court changed its mind. General Electric had filed a patent application for a bacterium that had been altered to consume hydrocarbons. The US Patent and Trademark Office had rejected the application because of a 1951 law stating that microorganisms and plant life were not patentable. The Supreme Court decision of 1980, however, was explicit: “Anything under the sun that is made by man can be patented.” 84 This meant that life, microorganisms, plant life, and animal life, which naturally occurred in nature, could be patented, so long as Monsanto (or anybody) modified it in the laboratory.
To get a patent, it is no longer necessary to present a real invention; often all you need is a simple discovery. Someone discovers a therapeutic use for a plant, the Indian neem tree for instance, describes it, isolates it from its natural context, and files a patent application for it. The deciding factor is that the description be done in a laboratory, and no attention is paid to the fact that the plant and its virtues have been known by others for thousands of years. 85
Then’s illustration meant that Monsanto was not only genetically engineering something new, as was required by law, but that it was patenting something quite old, which had been part of the commons and was entirely organic. In other words, Monsanto had devised a plan and had purchased the political influence to patent life, which under US and European patent law had historically not been permissible or legal. As an illustration of how the perception of legal definitions had changed, the US Patent and Trademark Office has been granting more than seventy thousand patents per year, about 20% of which have been for living organisms. Moreover, between 1983 and 2005, Monsanto secured 647 patents involving plants. As John Doll of the Patent Office told Marie-Monique Robin in 2004: “We now grant patents on genes and transgenic plants and animals, any product of genetic engineering.” 86 When Robin responded that a gene is not a product, Doll replied that a company could patent anything, as long as it could isolate a gene in a laboratory: “once a company has been able to isolate the gene and describe its function, it can get a patent.” 87
That was only the beginning of Monsanto ’s campaign to restructure the agricultural national and global order—in its favor. In 1994, the company obtained a ten-year patent for its genetically modified (Roundup Ready) soybean seeds. The main benefit of these seeds was that they were resistant to Roundup Ready, a Monsanto pesticide: hence the name Roundup Ready soybeans. Two years later, in 1996, the European Patent Office followed the American precedent by granting a patent for Roundup Ready soybeans, ruling that the patent was applicable to a number of other crops including the following: maize, wheat, rice, soybean, cotton sugar beet rapeseed, canola, flax, sunflower, potato, tobacco, tomato, lucerne, poplar, pine, apple, and grape. 88
The rulings of the US and European patent offices, however, signified a revolution that went beyond patenting seeds. Beyond patenting “life,” they were also agreeing to patent Monsanto ’s intellectual property (IP) rights that the company had successfully argued were embedded in its seeds. The next step for Monsanto was to figure out how to enforce its IP rights. It first sold user licenses to seed dealers and then bought principal seed companies in order to secure its investment, and also to eliminate as much competition as possible. But Monsanto still had problems with farmers, who largely rejected the licensing agreements. Farmers were accustomed to reserving part of their crop to replant it the following year (except for hybrids), and this was often the prevailing practice in poor and developing countries. When the seed, however, contained a patented trait, such as Roundup Ready resistant seeds did, this created a dilemma for companies like Monsanto . In its own literature, the company complained that farmers who saved seed affected “competitive conditions.” Monsanto implied that farmers saved seeds only in backward countries. 89
But this was not true. In fact, it was so false that the head of Monsanto , Robert Shapiro, devised a “technology use agreement” that had to be signed by all farmers who bought Roundup Ready soybean seeds. The agreement, which dealers were compelled to present, provided for payment of a technology fee, set first at $5 and then at $6.50 per acre of soybeans. But there was another aspect of this agreement that farmers fiercely resisted. They had to agree not to replant any harvested seed the following year. Another clause required growers to use only Monsanto ’s Roundup Ready herbicide, not any of the many generics on the market, after the expiration of the patent on Roundup Ready in 2000. Farmers violating this agreement were subject to heavy fines, which were actively policed by Monsanto . The company reserved for itself the right to inspect and test all fields to be sure no farmer was in violation. 90 Monsanto imposed a heavy fine on violators or used litigation if there was resistance.
But the real coup de grâce was what was behind Monsanto ’s strategy all along, and this is when the company established not only a temporary monopoly, but one that was eternal and irreversible. Monsanto Corporation said that no farmer actually bought its transgenic (patented) seeds, farmers were merely leasing them, and therefore, they had to be returned to its owner. This was the basis of the company’s insistence that it wasn’t selling seeds, it was simply renting out the IP that was embedded in the seeds. In law, Monsanto was arguing that it was the permanent owner of the genetic information—IP —in the seeds it sold. The seed was divested of its “status as a living organism” and was designated a commodity with commercial value. Farmers, according to the corporation, were not buying Monsanto ’s seeds, they were purchasing access to Monsanto ’s IP . In effect, though seeds are used to feed the world’s population, Monsanto was arguing that its clients were buying a license to use its patented genetic knowledge. 91 This required not only imagination and a redefinition of the meaning of deceit, but it provided a new definition for the properties of seeds. Seeds didn’t only yield food to feed the planet, they also were a storehouse of knowledge that Monsanto was renting out.
Monsanto now had a strategy for taking over much of the food supply. Even worse, once it could patent life, it could claim that whatever was on the planet could be patented by Monsanto or some other corporation. It was the pharmaceutical industry all over again. Take the genetic material of one plant or seed, inject it into the genetic material of another, and there it is, a patent on life—and a form of life created in a laboratory, which under the new regime was legal, legitimate, patentable, fully acknowledged in law by Congress, and IP that belonged to Monsanto in perpetuity.
For Monsanto , however, this was only the beginning of its transgenic journey around the globe. There was profit to be made everywhere. Monsanto smelled this, and the US government was close at hand to help the company achieve its goal. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , which was signed into law in December 1993 with the blessing of Bill Clinton , gave companies like Monsanto free access to the Mexican market. By itself, this was no more than a free trade agreement that should have helped Mexico and the USA, but companies like Monsanto were freely subsidized by the USA, giving US agriculture, and companies like Monsanto , a strategic advantage. It meant extending the monopolistic reach of Monsanto into Mexico by essentially making US patent law applicable there. This plus US subsidies to American companies meant that US agricultural commodities could undersell Mexican grown crops. Aided by the US government and supported by US law—and now international law—trade agreements like NAFTA trumped the sovereignty of all nations which were signatories.
In this case, it was Mexican farmers who were the victims of Monsanto ’s voracious appetite for market conquest. Biologists David Quist and Ignacio Chapela, in 2001, discovered that traditional Mexican corn, some 5000 years old, had been contaminated by Monsanto ’s Roundup Ready and Bt genes, genetically modified Monsanto seeds. The discovery was made in Oaxaca, where farmers adhered to traditional agriculture. Farmers had never bought seeds from outside Oaxaca, although they sometimes exchanged seeds among themselves. In Oaxaca, traditional corn was much healthier than the transgenic corn that had been planted in other parts of Mexico . Which was why in 1998 Mexico declared a moratorium on transgenic corn crops so the exceptional biodiversity of corn could be preserved. After all, the genetic cradle for corn was Mexico . 92
But the sovereign power of Mexico in this case was not enough to protect its corn biodiversity. Industrial corn coming into Mexico from the USA already amounted to six million tons per annum, 40% of which was transgenic. This massive importation of corn, because of NAFTA , could not be stopped. The reason was simple, and not just because of NAFTA . American corn was heavily subsidized by the USA, providing more than $94 billion in corn subsidies between 1995 and 2014. 93 Local corn was threatened because US corn was being sold at half the price. Between 1994 and 2002, the price of Mexican corn fell by 44%. As a result, many small farmers had to abandon their farms and ended up in city slums, landless and jobless. 94
There was a reason that the transgenic conquest was a danger for Mexico and its corn. If industrial corn, meaning an abundance of transgenic corn, became dominant, Mexicans would be forced to buy their fertilizers and insecticides from multinationals. Traditional Mexican corn would not grow otherwise, because it would not be resistant to imported insecticides. Mexican corn growers, in other words, would either have to buy corn seed patented by Monsanto , or they would have to abandon their farms because native corn seed and crops could not resist pests. 95 Mexican farmers had forfeited their freedom to farm using their own seeds, not by their own right to choose, but because of an agreement which they never signed—subjecting them to American subsidized corn—and Monsanto ’s practice of litigating against farmers accused of violating Monsanto ’s patented Roundup Ready products.
Green Revolution , Bad Seeds, and Patent Nonsense
Monsanto , like any producer of genetically engineered crops, has argued that the genetic modification of seeds has the potential to solve the world’s food problems, for example, to overcome food insecurity globally by increasing yield per acre, largely by reducing food loss due to pests and blights, and also by resistance to drought. In sum, Monsanto has claimed that its products have helped to create the second Green Revolution . 96
The initial Green Revolution was based on the work of Norman Borlaug . He was born on an Iowa farm and later hired by the Rockefeller Foundation as an agronomist. Borlaug had a single obsession: increase wheat production by creating varieties that could produce yields tenfold. He originally crossed Japanese dwarf variety Norin 10 with varieties grown in Mexico . This produced more kernels, but the weight of the more numerous kernels risked breaking the stems. The introduction of the dwarf variety reduced wheat stalks by three feet while—in 1910—wheat yields were increased from four hundredweight per acre to thirty-two hundredweight. But there were side effects because of the increased use of “phytosanitary products”—fungicides, pesticides, and insecticides—without which the miracle seeds were of little use. The problem was that to produce large amounts of kernels, the plant “had to be stuffed with fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium), which eventually brought about a decline in the natural fertility of the soil.” 97 There were other problems: the plants had to be watered copiously, which depleted aquifers; the density of the kernels was manna for insect pests and fungi; and that meant the massive use of fungicides and insecticides. The obsession with yields finally led to a decline in nutritional values of the kernels and a reduction in the biodiversity of the wheat, some varieties even disappearing altogether. 98
Despite this, the dwarf varieties that were produced spread around the world and India became the second largest wheat producer in the world, increasing production from twelve to twenty million tons between 1965 and 1970—and shortly after the turn of the century producing seventy-four million tons of wheat. According to Vandana Shiva, however, in Seeds of Suicide, this came at a great cost: exhausted soil, depleted water reserves, widespread pollution, and the spread of monocultures, all at the expense of food crops. The latter result meant the collapse of tens of thousands of small farmers, who ended up in slums because they could not afford the new model of farming. The first Green Revolution , whatever its merits, did not solve the world’s food problems, and it was an unmitigated disaster for farmers in undeveloped countries like India . 99
Patent law. The company has always said that genetic engineering was a way of getting patents, and that’s its real aim. … it is now pursuing in India . … it is testing twenty plants into which it has introduced Bt genes: mustard, okra, eggplant, rice, cauliflower … Once it has established ownership of genetically modified seeds as the norm, it will be able to collect royalties; we will depend on the company for every seed we plant and every field we cultivate. If it controls seeds, it controls food; it knows that, and that is its strategy. It’s more powerful than bombs or weapons; it is the best way to control the people of the world. 100
At the time of Shiva’s interview in 2006, it was illegal to patent seeds—and life—in India . Patents meant monopoly, and if Monsanto or any company could patent life, or plants that had been grown for centuries, it could effectively deprive farmers of direct access to living organisms that they had planted for as many generations as anybody could remember. Patents also meant exclusion and ultimately dependency. Yet Monsanto found a way around the Indian obstacle: genetic modification or invention in the laboratory. Or, as Monsanto argued, IP belonged to the inventor, so long as the product was not found in nature.
The patent … encloses living things, such as plants that feed and heal people, and finally contributes to the exclusion of the poorest from the means of livelihood and even survival. As can be seen with food and medicine, as soon as a patent is filed, it means royalties and consequently an increase in price, which explains why food, crop maintenance products, and medicines were excluded from Indian patent law: this has enabled all to have access. The extension of the Western system of patents, advocated also by the World Trade Organization , directly undermines the economic rights of the poorest. 101
Seedy Politics: Monsanto , Monopoly and the Revolving Door Syndrome
Like many corporations, Monsanto has left little to chance. The corporation has used political leverage to engage in trade wars as part of its effort to establish near monopoly conditions for its products universally. In 2007, WikiLeaks, as part of Cablegate, released documents showing that the US embassy in Paris, France, advised Washington to promote a military-style trade war against any country in the EU that opposed producing genetically modified crops. The request came from Ambassador Craig Stapleton, who was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers with George Bush between 1989 and 1998. Stapleton’s wife, Dorothy Walker, was Bush’s cousin. Stapleton’s leaked cable came after France began moves to ban Monsanto ’s genetically modified corn. 102 Other leaked cables by WikiLeaks showed US diplomats working for genetically modified crops at the Vatican because of the resistance of US Catholic Bishops. 103
To keep as much control as possible over seeds and food supply, Monsanto made good use of the revolving door syndrome, assuring that it would maintain a commanding presence in the corridors of Congress, and beyond. One illustration was Michael R. Taylor , who was appointed by President Obama to the position of Deputy Commissioner of Foods at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), joining staff as attorney in 1980. Previously, he had been at the law firm of King and Spalding, which represented Monsanto . When he returned to the FDA in 1992 as Deputy Commissioner of Policy, he allegedly co-authored and signed a Federal Register notice that milk from cows treated with bovine growth hormone did not have to be labeled as such. He also ensured that the FDA would not interfere with the production of genetically modified foods. Jeremy Rifkin charged that this was a conflict of interest, but the FDA rejected the claim. Following his service at FDA, Taylor went to Monsanto as vice-president for public policy in 1998. Later, January 13, 2010, Obama appointed Taylor as Deputy Commissioner of Foods at the FDA. 104 Even the Supreme Court has felt the long hand of Monsanto . Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was employed by Monsanto in the 1970s, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan previously had supported Monsanto ’s genetically modified alfalfa, helping to reverse a lower court ban on its planting. 105
In 2011, Obama appointed Monsanto lobbyist Islam Siddiqui to the position of Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative. This was something of a shock because of the progressive image of the president. That is because in 1998, when Siddiqui was Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory programs at the USDA , he wrote the standards for organic food labeling that permitted genetically modified and irradiated food to be labeled organic. President Obama, however, had another surprise. He appointed Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture, although Vilsack was a major proponent of genetically modified crops and deeply linked to the biotech lobby. As Governor of the State of Iowa, Vilsack created a seed preemption bill in 2005 that blocked local communities from regulating genetically modified crops. 106
Although many if not most US farmers think Monsanto is already too big, Monsanto does not think it is big enough. Its former German rival, Bayer , agrees. In late 2016, Bayer purchased Monsanto and entered into a $66 billion corporate merger, pending approval by some thirty nations. If anti-trust obstacles are overcome, the resulting company would own about 29% of the global seed market and 25% of the global pesticide market. Bayer -Monsanto would also control about 60% of the US cottonseed market. Add to these figures that 40% of the world’s genetically modified crops are grown in the USA, where Monsanto already controls about 80% of the genetically engineered cornseed market and 93% of the genetically engineered soy market, and you have a recipe for control of the world’s food supply. 107
Should the merger be approved, it is hardly likely that the world’s food markets will become more competitive, more innovative, or provide greater biodiversity and consumer choice. This is made more certain because much of the world’s seed market not controlled by Bayer -Monsanto could soon be controlled by two other giant cartels: Dupont-Dow Chemical, which merged in 2015, and ChemChina, which acquired the Swiss company Syngenta in 2016. Although none of the mergers have received final approval, should they succeed these three agribusinesses alone will control about 60% of global seed sales and about 63% of global pesticide sales: hardly a recipe for so-called competitive capitalism. 108 Inevitably, seed and pesticide prices will rise, farmers will increasingly be squeezed into dependency and bankruptcy, and food baskets will inflate for typical families. Simultaneously, the new monopolies already present limitless opportunities for the extraction of wealth from global farmers and global consumers of food.
Yet, this is only part of the narrative. In 2015, the World Health Organization declared that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, Monsanto ’s herbicide, was probably carcinogenic in humans. 109 The state of California, where ten million pounds of glyphosate are applied annually, went much further. It decided to list glyphosate as a known carcinogen, a decision that Monsanto immediately appealed to the courts. 110
Conclusion
Putting government to work to protect and extend patents, and then to extend them around the world through trade agreements, has made billions in profit for Monsanto and other corporations benefiting from the revolving door between government and industry. Subsidizing American agricultural production also is a giant assist undercutting Mexican and Indian and other farmers. Protecting target prices for (corporate) farms, which the government insures, is also a form of welfare capitalism: if the price is met, that is good for the corporation. And if it is not met, the federal government simply buys back the crop, which it helped to insure. All of this is costly. Between 1995 and 2014, the federal government spent more than $94.3 billion on corn subsidies. For the same period, it spent almost $40 billion subsidizing wheat and $35.7 billion in cotton subsidies. From these figures alone, we begin to get some idea how the super-rich, at least in agribusiness, manage to extract wealth and treasure from the rest of us. 111
Subsidizing agribusiness, not applying anti-trust laws to deny monopolies to seed companies, allowing multinational companies like Monsanto to patent life—patents it then imposes universally through trade agreements—and manipulating the science of dietetics to conceal the health risks of sugar are forms of rent based on deceit. Permitting companies to label foods as organic when they are transgenic, not labeling transgenic crops as GMOs when they have been genetically modified, is deceitful and a betrayal of the public trust. Yet all these practices are widespread and becoming routinized, evolving into a rentier economy in which the privileged corporate super-rich, the new monopolists, have devised tools, from patents to IP , to impose rents on everybody else. Telling farmers that they are not purchasing seeds but renting the IP embedded in those seeds may be the world according to Monsanto , but it is not a world that we should embrace.
Notes
- 1.
Mark Bittman, “Don’t End Agricultural Subsidies, Fix Them,” New York Times, March 1, 2011.
- 2.
2 Thessalonians, 3:10.
- 3.
Aviva Shen, “Congressman Who Gets Millions in Farm Subsidies Denounces Food Stamps as Stealing ‘Other People’s Money’,” Think Progress, May 21, 2013, at https://thinkprogress.org/congressman-who-gets-millions-in-farm-subsidies-denounces-food-stamps-as-stealing-other-peoples-bb26216147/.
- 4.
Joseph Heller , Catch-22 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 86; Economist, “Milking Taxpayers,” February 14, 2015, at http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21643191-crop-prices-fall-farmers-grow-subsidies-instead-milking-taxpayers.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Environmental Working Group , “United States Summary Information,” Farm Subsidy Database 2012, online at http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000. Also Laura Etherton, Mike Russo, and Nasima Hossain, Apples to Twinkies 2012 (Washington DC: US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), 2012), 2. “Ten Percent of Subsidy Recipients Collected 75% of the Subsidies, But Because USDA Reports That 62% of American Farmers Don’t Pocket a Dollar in Federal Subsidies, Only 3.8% of Farmers [were] Being Paid Three Quarters of the Total Subsidies,” http://www.uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Apples%20to%20Twinkies%20vUS.pdf.
- 7.
Brian Riedl, How Farm Subsidies Harm Taxpayers, Consumers, and Farmers Too (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation , June 19, 2007), 6–7, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/06/how-farm-subsidies-harm-taxpayers-consumers-and-farmers-too; Gilbert M. Saul, Sarah Cohen, and Dan Morgan, “Federal Subsidies Turn Farms into Big Business,” Washington Post, December 21, 2006.
- 8.
EWG, Farm Subsidy Database.
- 9.
US Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency, “Crop Year Government Cost of Federal Crop Insurance, 2002–2011,” at http://www.rma.usda.gov/aboutrma/bud-get/cycost2002-11.pdf; Etherton, Apples to Twinkies, 5.
- 10.
USDA, “Federal Crop Insurance, 2002–2011.”
- 11.
EWG, Farm Subsidy Database.
- 12.
US Department of Agriculture, “Agricultural Act of 2014: Highlights and Implications, Crop Commodity Programs,” at https://www.ers.usda.gov/agricultural-act-of-2014-highlights-and-implications/.
- 13.
“Milking Taxpayers.”
- 14.
US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Renegotiation of the Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA) for Federal Crop Insurance (Washington, DC) June 10, 2010, at http://farmpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CRS_SRASummary_2011Aug12.pdf. See USDA, “Agricultural Act of 2014.”
- 15.
David Dayen, “The Farm Bill Still Gives Wads of Cash to Agribusiness: It’s Just Sneakier About It,” New Republic, February 4, 2014, online at https://newrepublic.com/article/116470/farm-bill-2014-its-even-worse-old-farm-bill.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid.; EWG, Farm Subsidy Database.
- 19.
Michael Tanner, “GOP Hypocrisy and the Farm Bill,” Huffington Post, July 12, 2013, online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-tanner/gop-hypocrisy-farm-bill_b_3586544.html.
- 20.
Paul Krugman, “Free to Be Hungry,” New York Times, September 22, 2013.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid.; Tanner, “GOP Hypocrisy and the Farm Bill.”
- 23.
Krugman, “Free to Be Hungry.” See Annie Lowrey for the Math, “The Rich Get Richer Through the Recovery,” New York Times, September 10, 2013.
- 24.
Cited in Krugman, “Free to Be Hungry.”
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2017, Analytical Perspectives: Budget of the US Government, Table 29-1, Federal Budget by Agency and Account, at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BUDGET-2017-PER/pdf/BUDGET-2017-PER.pdf.
- 27.
US Government Accountability Office, Crop Insurance: Reducing Subsidies for Highest Income Participants Could Save Federal Dollars with Minimal Effect on the Program, GAO-15-356 (Washington, DC: GAO, March 2015), online at http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-356. The full Report is available at http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669062.pdf.
- 28.
Bruce A. Babcock, “Crop Insurance: A Lottery That’s a Sure Bet” (San Francisco, CA: Environmental Working Group, February 2016), 3–7, http://static.ewg.org/reports/2016/federal_crop_insurance_lottery/EWG_CropInsuranceLottery.pdf?_ga=2.72475792.246157226.1500401467-1093488400.1469977703; Chris Edwards, “Agricultural Subsidies,” Downsizing the Federal Government Blog, October 2, 2016, online at https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies.
- 29.
US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “Data-Files: US and State-Level Farm Income and Wealth Statistics,” online at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-income-and-wealth-statistics/data-files-us-and-state-level-farm-income-and-wealth-statistics/.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “Historic Data on Mean and Median Farm Operator Household Income and Ratio of Farm Household to US Household Income, 1960–2014,” online at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-household-income-and-characteristics.aspx.
- 32.
Editorial Board, “Senate Definition of Reform: Give Rich Farmers More Aid,” Bloomberg, May 2, 2012, online at https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-05-02/senate-definition-of-reform-give-rich-farmers-more-aid-view.
- 33.
Archer Daniels Midland Company, “Letter to Stockholders Proxy Statement, 2015: Form 10-K,” online at http://www.adm.com/en-US/investors/Documents/2015%20Annual%20Report.pdf.
- 34.
Tanner, “GOP Hypocrisy and the Farm Bill.”
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
Michael K. Wohlgenant, “Sugar Price Supports are Not So Sweet,” US News and World Report, September 5, 2014, online at http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/09/05/sugar-price-supports-have-hidden-costs-for-economy-consumers.
- 37.
Anahad O’Connor, “How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat,” New York Times, September 12, 2016; also Cristin E. Kearns, Laura A. Schmidt, and Stanton A. Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents,” JAMA Internal Medicine 176, no. 11 (September 12, 2016), at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308044447Sugar_Industry_and_Coronary_Heart_Disease_Research_A_Historical_Analysis_of_Internal_Industry_Documents; see also Robert McGandy, D. M Hegsted, and F. J. Stare, “Dietary Fats, Carbohydrates and Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease,” The New England Journal of Medicine 277, no. 5 (August 3, 1967): 242–47, at https://nature.berkeley.edu/garbelottoat/wp-content/uploads/Mcgandy-1967-part-1-1.pdf.
- 38.
Cited by Anahad O’Connor, “Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat,” New York Times, September 12, 2016.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Anahad O’Connor, “Coca Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away from Bad Diets,” New York Times, August 9, 2015.
- 41.
Cited by Anahad O’Connor, “Coca Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away from Bad Diets.”
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Ibid. Barry Popkin, The World is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race (New York: Avery and Penguin, 2009); Larry White, Merchants of Death (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988).
- 45.
Cited in O’Connor, “Coca Cola Funds Scientists.” For background, Marion Nestle and Mark Bittman, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
- 46.
Maira Bes-Rastrollo, Matthias B. Schulze, Miguel Ruiz-Canela, Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez, “Financial Conflicts of Interest and Reporting Bias Regarding the Association Between Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Weight Gain: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews,” PLOS Medicine 10, no. 12 (December 31, 2013), http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001578.
- 47.
O’Connor, “Coca-Cola Funds Scientists.”
- 48.
Anahad O’Connor, “Research Group Funded by Coca-Cola to Disband,” New York Times, December 1, 2015.
- 49.
O’Connor, “Coca Cola Funds Scientists.”
- 50.
Anne McTiernan and Bess Sorenson et al., “Exercise Effect on Weight and Body Fat in Men and Women,” Obesity : A Research Journal 15, no. 6 (June 2007), at http://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2007.178/full.
- 51.
Cited in O’Connor, “Coca Cola Funds Scientists.”
- 52.
Kelly D. Brownell and Thomas R. Frieden, “Ounces of Prevention: The Public Policy Case for Taxes on Sugared Beverages,” The New England Journal of Medicine 360, no. 18 (April 30, 2009), at http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0902392#t=article.
- 53.
David Leonhardt, “The Battle over Taxing Soda,” New York Times, May 18, 2010.
- 54.
Brownell, “Ounces of Prevention.”
- 55.
“Top 10 Sources of Calories in the US Diet,” Harvard Health Publications, November 2014, based on the government’s report of 2010, at http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/top-10-sources-of-calories-in-the-us-diet; see also the full report, Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, June 14, 2010, online at http://www.nutriwatch.org/05Guidelines/dga_advisory_2010.pdf.
- 56.
Anahad O’Connor, “How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit,” New York Times, July 19, 2016.
- 57.
See World Health Organization, Information Sheet, Obesity and Overweight (Geneva: WHO, 2003), at http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/media/en/gsfs_obesity.pdf ; Pam Belluck, “Child Obesity Seen as Warning of Heart Disease,” New York Times, November 11, 2008.
- 58.
Etherton, Apples to Twinkies, 1; see also Eric A. Finkelstein, Justin G. Trogdon, Joel W. Cohen, and William Dietz, “Annual Medical Spending Attributable to Obesity : Payer-And Service-Specific Estimates,” Health Affairs, July 27, 2009, online at http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/5/w822.
- 59.
“Series on Obesity ,” Lancet, August 26, 2011, at http://www.thelancet.com/series/obesity obesity ; “Obesity 2015,” Lancet, February 18, 2015, at http://www.thelancet.com/series/obesity-2015 .
- 60.
Etherton, “Apples to Twinkies 2012.”
- 61.
Ibid.
- 62.
Jason Cowley and George Eaton, “How We Pay for Our Richest Landowners,” New Statesman, September 19, 2012, online at http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/09/how-we-pay-our-richest-landowners.
- 63.
Martin Wolf , “A Strong Case for a Tax on Land Values,” Financial Times, January 5, 2006.
- 64.
Martin Wolf , “Why We Must Halt the Land Cycle,” Financial Times, July 8, 2010.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
Cowley, “How We Pay for Our Richest Landowners.”
- 67.
Linda Davies, “Urbanization,” UK National Ecosystem Assessment, 2011, Chapter 10, 362–63, at http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/Resources/tabid/82/Default.aspx.
- 68.
Ibid.
- 69.
Cowley, “How We Pay for Our Richest Landowners.”
- 70.
Ibid.
- 71.
Ibid.
- 72.
Ibid.
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
Brendan Montague, “The Landed Gentry ‘Jackals’ Claiming Billions in Farm Subsidies ,” DESMOGUKBLOG, July 27, 2015, https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/07/27/landed-gentry-jackals-claiming-billions-farm-subsidies; Hugh Muir, “Diary: Will IDS Speak Out Against ‘Income Support’ for Farmers?,” Guardian, May 30, 2013.
- 76.
Giles Fraser, “Why Our Landed Gentry Are so Eager to Stay in the EU,” Guardian, April 21, 2016.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Muir, “Diary.”
- 79.
Robert B. Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (New York: Vintage, 2015), 34.
- 80.
William Neuman, “Rapid Rise in Seed Prices Draws US Scrutiny,” New York Times, March 11, 2010.
- 81.
Debbie Barker, Bill Freese, and George Kimbrell, Seed Giants v US Farmers (Washington, DC: Center for Food Safety and Save Our Seeds, 2013), 16, online at http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/seed-giants_final_04424.pdf.
- 82.
Rachel Tepper, “Seed Giants Sue US Farmers over Genetically Modified Seed Patents in Shocking Numbers: Report,” Huffington Post, February 13, 2013; Reich, Saving Capitalism, 35.
- 83.
Ibid., 35–36.
- 84.
Cited in Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto : Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply, trans. from the French by George Holoch (New York: The Free Press, 2012), 203.
- 85.
Interview with Christophe Then, Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 203.
- 86.
Cited by Robin: The World According to Monsanto , 203.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Ibid., 203–204.
- 89.
Monsanto , Pledge Report, 2005, 42, online at http://www.monsanto.com/sitecollectiondocuments/csr_reports/monsantopledgereport-2005.pdf .
- 90.
Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 204–205.
- 91.
Daniel Charles, Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002), 185–87.
- 92.
Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 244.
- 93.
Environmental Working Group, Farm Subsidy Database.
- 94.
Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 245.
- 95.
Ibid.
- 96.
Monsanto , Pledge Report, 2006, online at http://www.monsanto.com/sitecollectiondocuments/csr_reports/monsantopledgereport-2006.pdf.
- 97.
Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 309.
- 98.
Ibid.
- 99.
Interview with Vandana Shiva (2006), in Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 310. See also Vandana Shiva, Seeds of Suicide, The Ecological and Human Costs of Seed Monopolies and Globalization of Agriculture (Navdanaya, 2006); Vandana Shiva, Biodiversity: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1997), 36–39 and 48–49, for an earlier iteration of similar themes. See also the most recent work of Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2016). This work challenges the customary arguments of Monsanto that genetically modified crops can solve global food shortages. On the contrary, they cause lethal damage to sustainable agriculture. See especially 33–37 and 85–110.
- 100.
Interview with Vandana Shiva (2006), in Robin, The World According to Monsanto , 310–11.
- 101.
Ibid., 312–13.
- 102.
Jason Louv, Monsanto vs. the World: Monsanto , GMOs and Our Genetically Modified Future (NP: Ultraculture Press, 2013), 19.
- 103.
John Vidal, “WikiLeaks: US Targets EU Over GM Crops,” Guardian, January 3, 2011.
- 104.
Louv, Monsanto , 22.
- 105.
Ibid., 23; Joshua Frank, “Elena Kagan and Monsanto ,” Counterpunch, May 19, 2010, online at http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/05/19/elena-kagan-and-monsanto/.
- 106.
Louv, Monsanto , 24.
- 107.
Carin Smaller, “Bayer Tightens Control Over the World’s Food Supply,” International Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Blog, September 23, 2016, at https://www.iisd.org/blog/bayer-tightens-control-over-world-s-food-supply; also Organic Consumers Association, “US and Monsanto Dominate Global Market for GM Seeds,” August 7, 2013, https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/us-and-monsanto -dominate-global-market-gm-seeds.
- 108.
ETC Group, Seedy Characters (Ottawa, ON: ETC Group, May 14, 2015), at http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/etc.-communique-seedycharacters-may2015.pdf; Tom Philpott, “Monsanto Now Belongs to Bayer ,” Mother Jones, September 13, 2016, online at http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/09/whoa-monsanto-about-get-swallowed-german-giant-bayer.
- 109.
“Roundup Weedkiller ‘Probably’ Causes Cancer, Says WHO Study,” Guardian, March 21, 2015.
- 110.
State of California, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), Glyphosate to Be Listed Under Proposition 65 as Known to the State to Cause Cancer, CAS No. 1071-83-6 (Sacramento, CA: OEHHA, March 28, 2017), online at https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/crnr/glyphosate-be-listed-under-proposition-65-known-state-cause-cancer.
- 111.
Environmental Working Group, Farm Subsidy Database.