Lose a Bit on Every Crop and Make It Up In Volume...

Subsidies have a way of disrupting markets.  In "The 9 Foods the U.S. Government Is Paying You to Eat",  you can see where government money is going to boost food production.  Corn is #1, of course, but very little money is ever directed toward producing healthful foods.

The distribution of food subsidies is even more obvious when you examine this pie chart (and pie, definitely, does not get subsidized).  Have a look where the money goes for food subsidies.

Norman Pagett says

We are faced with a barrage of bad news about the imminent, and inevitable rises in the cost of basic foodstuffs.Professor Tim Benton, head of Global Food Security working group has warned that ‘meat could become a luxury by 2040, because emerging middle classes in South Asia and going to affect food flows’.In everyday language, ‘food flow’ is the nice way of saying those who can afford meat and luxury foods will buy them, while those who can’t will go without.As Professor Benton makes brutally clear, ‘food is going to be competed for on a global scale there is going to be a doubling and trebling in price of everything we need to survive’.Tesco boss Philip Clarke backed up his statements: ‘The end of cheap food is over because of the surge in demand. Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food will be going up’.Remember that bit—the proportion of income. It’s going to be critical to your way of life.Two years ago Oxfam issued the same clear warning: Food prices are set to double by 2030 as the population grows from its current seven billion to eight then nine billion. There will be a perfect storm of ecological and sociological factors.Again, we need clarification of polite-speak: what that really means is that people will not starve to death quietly, they will fight to survive. And that is going to get nasty.

We are living in an artificial world market and it is about to end.  People who can raise and eat quality foods will be grateful for having learned the necessary skills.  This problem will be slow to arrive, but learning the skills and gaining the habits of healthy food take time too.  No time like the present.