Fat and the Farm Bill

Here's a suggested post from a 202er. I would STRONGLY encourage you to familiarize yourselves with this issue. It's going to be getting a lot of media attention. Took a long time to start bubbling, but now it will boil.

Katy,
I'm not sure if anyone's still reading the blog now that the quizzes are over, but on the chance that they are, it might be good to mention the Farm Bill 2007 that's currently going through the senate. The legislation is extremely important, and, unfortunately, it hasn't gotten much attention (at least that I've seen) besides a few op-eds (and an upcoming documentary called King Corn). Ultimately, the Farm Bill is the reason corn syrup is in everything we eat, and part of the reason Africa loses two dollars to trade deficit for every dollar in aid it receives. Billions and billions of dollars of subsidies go to massive agri-business corporations (I think 75 percent of the subsidies go to 3 companies), and it affects everything: nutrition, local farming,
the environment (that shipping costs money) and global poverty. It doesn't seem like a very interesting topic, but it has a huge impact, and people should know about it (especially since this is a very agricultural state). Here are a couple of those op-eds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15kleckner.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/22/AR2007102201656.html

plus a NYT magazine feature a while back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html