American farm policy has been described as “a bi-partisan pork-barrel boondoggle.” Critics claim that massive subsidies reward mainly corporate farms (through 1995 to 2010, the top 10 per cent of farmers collected 74 per cent of all subsidies) while undermining farmers in the Third World. For example, NAFTA allowed cheap,
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Drought, ethanol and the looming food crisis
That the drought in the U.S. will cause a rise in food prices is hardly news. However, scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute are warning that the potential for a price spike has already been created by “misguided food-to-ethanol conversion programs and rampant commodity speculation.” The drought will
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