Learn More About Our Agriculture Tax Dollars

A market with many different vegetables and fruits.

AGRICULTURE TAX DOLLARS

  • Without water subsidies to massive slaughterhouses and to gigantic feedlots for sewage lagoons bigger than many natural lakes, conventional raised beef, hogs, and chickens would cost $30 per pound. Organic pasture raised meat animals are already way less costly and way more cost efficient - not to mention healthier with no e coli risk.
  • If externalized negative costs are added in - such as human health, animal health (birds, etc), insect health like bees & butterflies, water -including ground water, air, & soil quality then our tax dollars appropriated annually as subsidy to toxic conventional agriculture are upwards of tens of billions or more.
  • 70% of the grain grown via toxic conventional agriculture in the U.S. is fed to animals - this same land should be used instead to pasture raise animals via organic sustainable native grasses, then slaughtered and packaged locally for healthier animals, people, and land. We must demand this change to our tax dollar subsidies for USA agriculture.
  • Tens of millions of dollars are spent researching, testing, and developing pesticides, BUT crop loss per acre has doubled since the inception of insecticides, AND the E.P.A. ranks pesticide residues in food as the number three cancer risk.
  • Pesticide production generates 350 million tons of toxic waste per year. Cancer is the second highest cause of death in the USA, just after heart disease.

THE FREE MARKET

  • Gallo Wines has implemented integrated pest management (ladybugs, bats, hedgerows for birds, etc.) and tractor weeding (vs. herbicides) on their 10,000-acre vineyards, i.e., ORGANIC FARMING, because it's cost-effective.
  • Organic food, completely UNSUBSIDIZED, is now a more-than-$50 billion-a-year industry (10% – 20% annual growth). 2017 current number.
  • Many small organic farms (less than 100 acres, largely UNSUBSIDIZED) report annual incomes of $50,000 – $75,000.
  • Vast majority of food grown on earth is 100% organic; most of the world's small farmers cannot afford pesticides—as in Africa, Asia, India, South America, etc. Russia has never subsidized toxic conventional agriculture, so it does not exist there.
    In the United States, middle-class farmers have decreased to just 6% of total farms. In 2014, 40% of all farmland is rented or leased; farmland continues to consolidate into larger and larger big corporate-owned enterprises.
  • Amazon owner Jeff Bezos bought Whole Foods Market (grocery stores) for $13.7 billion.
  • Whole Foods, an organic/natural food store, chain came to Chicago in 1992; local annual sales are currently more than $1 billion.

    • Agriculture Links:

    A person holding a box of vegetables in their hands.