Fruit & veg farmers only received .5% of all USDA subsidies

American dietary guidelines state that we should fill half our plates with fruits and vegetables. The other half should be occupied by protein and grains. Interestingly, however, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which created the dietary guidelines, does not reflect those priorities in the allocation of research grants.

A fascinating article for Politico, titled “The Vegetable Technology Gap” by Helena Bottemiller Evich, points out that, between 2008 and 2012, a mere 0.5 percent of USDA subsidies went toward vegetable, fruit, and nut growers. A whopping 80 percent, by contrast, went to corn, soy, grain, and other oil crops, and the rest to livestock, dairy, cotton, and tobacco. Clearly this does not align with what the USDA is telling us we should eat.

“The U.S. has simply gotten much better at growing corn than lettuce. Today, we get about six times as much corn out of one acre of land as we did in the 1920s. Iceberg lettuce yields, on the other hand, have only doubled in that time.”

source: treehugger.com

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