Agricultural subsidies: are they a contributing factor to the American obesity epidemic?

I N THE PAST 3 DECADES, THE prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in the United States. 1 This increase has been largely attributed to shifting trends in the American diet, including the increased consumption of added fats and sugars and decreases in physical activity. 2 Previous public health interventions targeting individual-level factors have had marginal, if not negligible, effects on the rising prevalence of obesity. 3 In the past decade , attention has been brought to the role of US agricultural policies in the obesity epidemic. In particular , it has been suggested that the US Farm Bill (primarily the farm subsidies program) may have directly contributed to the increasing prevalence of obesity by increasing availability of energy-dense foods at relatively low cost. However, the extent to which the US Farm Bill has had an impact on the obesity epidemic is unclear. The US Farm Bill was initially created to subsidize farmers' income, provide a secure food supply for Americans, and ensure the economic viability of the American farming industry. 3 Since its inception in the early 1930s, policy reforms to the subsidy program and export policies have resulted in the mass production of commodity crops. The current subsidies program favors the production of the 8 major commodity crops, including barley, corn, cotton, oats, rice, sor-ghum, soybeans, and wheat. The subsidization program was established in 1996 with the Freedom to Farm Act and dispenses fixed subsidy amounts to farmers based on previous crop yields. 2 Although the intention of the act was to eliminate crop subsidies, it resulted in the imbalanced allocation of government subsidies. 2 For example, in 2001, large agribusinesses represented 7% of US cropland, yet they received over 45% of the government subsidies. 4 In contrast, small specialty farms represented 76% of the cropland, yet they received only 14% of government subsidies during this time. 4 As a result of this imbalance , the cost of fruits and vegetables has risen disproportionately compared with that of fats and oils. For example, the cost of fruits and vegetables increased by 118% from 1985 to 2000, whereas the cost of fats and oils increased by only 35% during this period. 3 Economists have argued that increased subsidization of commodity crops has resulted in relatively small fluctuations in consumer prices owing to the small percentage of food costs found in the foods Americans consume. 5-7 Moreover, economic simulations …