Poverty, hunger, and US agricultural policy: do farm programs affect the nutrition of poor Americans?

Poverty, hunger, and US agricultural policy: do farm programs affect the nutrition of poor Americans? [1]

The modern era of federal farm commodity subsidies began with the New Deal more than 80 years ago. At that time, a large fraction of American poverty was concentrated in rural and agricultural regions. Since then, subsidy programs, international trade measures, and commodity regulations have been repeatedly modified. The current version of these programs operates under the provisions of the Agriculture Act of 2014 (the 2014 farm bill). This study investigates whether US farm subsidy policies help the food consumption and nutritional well-being of low-income Americans. Focus on the poor, because they are especially vulnerable to changes in food prices. It conclude that farm programs do not affect food prices in a direction that protects the poor, and the people whose incomes are most improved by farm policies are not the same people who are at risk of poverty and hunger. In short, the time is long past—many decades past—for thinking of US farm policies as a good way of helping the poor.

Publication Date:

01/01/2017

Author(s): Glauber [2], Joseph W. Sumner [3], Daniel A. Wilde [4], Parke E. [5]

Source: American Enterprise Institute [6]

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