dissonancengine:

damonwells:

Just gonna leave this here.

this is a good point to make, but such a chart cannot even begin to help people to understand the rather ridiculous complexity of farm subsidies. in particular, dairy prices don’t function the same way that grain prices do, and are subject to much wider variance. for example, a few years ago, milk prices tanked, only to have prices double the next year. this forms part of the argument for why subsidies may not conform to our expectations based on diet. the farm bill, which appropriates the money for subsidies, is one of the largest bills passed by congress every year. it’s enormous and staggeringly complex and a simple, catchy graphic is not particularly helpful for understanding the reasons why money is appropriated the way it is, nor does it help us to reflect on the different needs and circumstances of the different parts of the farming industry. the first question i have is whether or not vegetable farming is particularly stable and doesn’t need subsidizing the way a more volatile product, such as dairy, might. all of this doesn’t even begin to address the larger question of the need in general for subsidies for farming, but that’s neither here nor there. i am not even going to address the chart, which looks questionable on the surface but i don’t have the info to discuss it.

The chart was made by opponents of the bill in the congress who wanted to make changes too it, even proposed those changes. You can find them on the internet somewhere. But yeah I agree, subsidies are a very complex issue that can’t very well be explained in a chart, but without simplifying them most people won’t take the time to read into and understand it.