Via the Missouri Department of Agriculture, I see that the USDA is making grants available for growth and development of specialty crops. What, you ask, are specialty crops? When I hear that, I think obscure, difficult items in niche markets. Not the USDA. According to their definition (PDF), specialty crops include such oddities as “commonly recognized fruits, vegetables, tree nuts…” About the only things NOT considered specialty crops are basic grains and cotton. In other words, anything not already heavily subsidized by the Federal Government is a niche market in need of special support, not real agricultural activity.

Now let’s look at the USDA’s Food Pyramid, and compare the agency’s suggestions for healthy eating to the agency’s own actions. At the base, we find the grains. Plenty of subsidies there to make sure these items are cheap and plentiful. At the top we find fats, sweets, and oils, of which we are to partake very lightly. Except that these are just as heavily subsidized for some reason (sugar and corn (syrup) are particularly heavily supported by taxpayer money). All of these items are considered non-specialty (i.e. “normal”) agricultural crops. Now let’s look at the middle, where the bulk of a healthy diet is supposed to life. Dairy, meat and eggs are already indirectly subsidized through Federal support for the massive corn harvests needed to sustain industrial dairy, meat, and egg production, so we’re all set there. About the only food products not yet subsidized by the Feds are, you guessed it, those oddball niche products like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. But we’re going to fix that by throwing token subsidies and grants that way too, just to cover all our bases.

And anyone wonders why health and food safety in this country is such a problem? Not only are we heavily subsidizing fundamentally unhealthy products like sugars and fats, not only are we decreasing the nutritional value of the moderately healthy products like dairy and meat by shovelling cheap corn into the market rather than encouraging pasture-based management, but now we need to throw away even more taxpayer money to prop up the fundamentally healthy vegetables and fruits which have been forced into their “niche” status by all the above-mentioned subsidies undercutting their market value?

It was not that long ago that virtually every state had a healthy population of diversified farms growing and selling produce locally and regionally without the benign hand of the USDA guiding their every move. So now that our heavy-handed subsidy regime has shovelled billions of our dollars into thoroughly destroying a diverse food system, the same regime now wants to use even more money to offset the effects of the previous and ongoing money?

We’re worried that Americans aren’t eating healthily and are driving up our health care costs, so what does the USDA do? Rather than stop artificially propping up everything BUT healthy foods, which are currently disproportionally expensive because of the competing subsidies, they’re going to throw token money toward artificially propping up the last free-market, unsubsidized part of the food system.

Enough already. Enough subsidies, enough meddling, enough wasting billions of OUR money on this crap. Get rid of all subsidies, replace them with a basic system of crop insurance for ALL types of agricultural products regardless of “niche” (to provide basic security for farmers), and let consumers choose their food based on a fairer market in which price is based on labor, inputs, and costs, not government whims and lobbying power.

Funny, that’s already what we have in the small, direct-market farm world. I recieve no subsidies. I recieve no support from the government. I sell my products on a (literally) open market, directly competing with many other growers for consumers with many options. Whether I succeed depends almost completely on whether my products are good and reliable, and consumers can easily go elsewhere if I fail in that. Except that I’m not just competing against my peers, I’m competing against the entire inertia of the Federal government that views fruits and vegetables as speciality products, not real farm products. I don’t want support. I want freedom. And neither party seems to grasp that possibility.

I don’t read the NY Times regularly, but happened to browse through the site this morning, where this excellent op-ed caught my eye. The author looks at Thanksgiving, and its status as an icon of American cuisine, through the eyes (and pen) of Mark Twain. The result is a valuable commentary on the homogenization of American food, in particular the loss of wild foods in our diets, and all that we’ve lost as regional specialties and cuisines vanish into the cheap ‘n easy mist.

Writing in 1879 from Europe, Twain laid out a lengthy catalogue of American foods he missed while travelling:

Twain listed cranberry sauce, “Thanksgiving style” roast turkey and the celery essential to poultry stuffing. But he surrounded these traditional holiday dishes with roast wild turkey, frogs and woodcock…Along with hot biscuits, broiled chicken and stewed tomatoes, Twain wanted turtle soup, possum and canvasback ducks fattened by Chesapeake Bay wild celery. In Twain’s day, New York City markets still sold raccoon, a profusion of wild ducks and bear…His menu celebrated the amazingly varied landscapes of an entire nation. Shad from Connecticut, mussels from San Francisco, brook trout from the Sierras and partridges from Missouri all found their place alongside apple dumplings, Southern-style egg bread, “American toast,” and strawberries, which were “not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way.”

Reading this piece, I felt even better about our on-farm, Missouri Thanksgiving menu. Although we’re focusing locally, deliberately not using nationally available ingredients, I think the underlying concept is the same. It’s a celebration of real, regional food that preserves a sense of place. What we eat tomorrow will be unique to our state and our farm; I suspect that Mark Twain, that most excellent Missourian, would likely approve.