In general I am a fan of Jane Brody's health column. Today's has an inaccuracy about the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She writes:
Of course, in recent decades many of the policies of the department Mr. Vilsack now heads have contributed mightily to Americans' access to inexpensive foods that flesh out their bones with unwholesome calories and undermine their health. Two telling examples: The government subsidizes the production of both soybeans and corn, most of which is used to feed livestock.
Not only does livestock production make a major contribution to global warming, much of its output ends up as inexpensive, often highly processed fast foods that can prompt people to overeat and raise their risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease. But there are no subsidies for the kinds of fruits and vegetables that can counter the disorders that render people more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It's not accurate that there are "no subsidies" for fruits and vegetables. The federal government awarded $13,482,784 in grants in 2020 under the farmers market promotion program. The Department of Agriculture spent $231 million in 2020 buying fresh fruit—apples, grapes, oranges, pears, plums, grapefruit. In 2020 the USDA's $72 million Specialty Crop Block Grant program included federal funds to the Alabama Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association for an "education and promotion campaign," to the Alabama Department of Agriculture for research on disease-resistant peach rootstock, to a "marketing and promotion campaign for Alabama watermelons," and to Arizona to research "biological fungicides to manage late blight in celery." Those are just states beginning with the letter "A." The Environmental Working Group, which tracks farm subsidies, reports $159 million in total payments from 1995 to 2020 under the "tree assistance program," including $2,154,433 to cover citrus losses in California and smaller sums targeted to "NY fruit growers" and "fresh market peaches." And that doesn't even take into account state and local subsidies for farmers markets and orchard operators, which in many cases are considerable. Try, for example, typing the word "orchard" or "apple" into ProPublica's New York State Subsidy Tracker. One might also describe the lower property tax rate often applied to agricultural land (compared to residential, retail, or office property) as a subsidy.
It's certainly possible that federal fruit and vegetable subsidies are less generous or less lucrative for farmers than those for soybeans or corn. But to state that there are "no subsidies" for fruits and vegetables is just not accurate. How are legislators or voters supposed to rein in out-of-control government spending when the newspaper won't even provide an accurate account of the existing vast expenditures?