{"id":77938,"date":"2018-04-20T07:22:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T14:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/model-suggests-well-designed-subsidies-can-help-farmers-and-give-consumers-better-food-choices"},"modified":"2018-04-20T07:22:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T14:22:28","slug":"model-suggests-well-designed-subsidies-can-help-farmers-and-give-consumers-better-food-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/model-suggests-well-designed-subsidies-can-help-farmers-and-give-consumers-better-food-choices","title":{"rendered":"Model suggests well-designed subsidies can help farmers and give consumers better food choices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/model-suggests-well-designed-subsidies-can-help-farmers-and-give-consumers-better-food-choices2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When it comes to pegging the blame for the obesity crisis, farm subsidies are a popular target. Subsidies, the argument goes, encourage farmers to grow less-healthy foods\u2014corn, turned into corn syrup, is the common culprit here\u2014and fewer unsubsidized fruits and vegetables.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone agrees. Experts caution that cheap corn isn\u2019t the only cause of poor nutrition and that other factors, like technology, are responsible for the low cost of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/field+crops\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">field crops<\/a>. Still, it\u2019s reasonable to ask: How can subsidies be used to make healthier food options more available?<\/p>\n<p>One answer: by making sure that subsidies take into account consumer welfare as well as farmers\u2019 incomes, suggest UCLA Anderson\u2019s Prashant Chintapalli, a Ph.D student, and Christopher S. Tang. In a working paper examining a type of subsidy called \u201cminimum support <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/prices\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">prices<\/a>,\u201d or MSPs, the authors suggest that backing a diverse mix of crops\u2014including fruits and vegetables\u2014would give consumers a wider selection and be most effective at raising farmer profits at a lower cost to the government.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-04-well-designed-subsidies-farmers-consumers-food.html\">https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018&#45;04-well-designed-subsidies-fa...-food.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to pegging the blame for the obesity crisis, farm subsidies are a popular target. Subsidies, the argument goes, encourage farmers to grow less-healthy foods\u2014corn, turned into corn syrup, is the common culprit here\u2014and fewer unsubsidized fruits and vegetables. Not everyone agrees. Experts caution that cheap corn isn\u2019t the only cause of poor [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,1490,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-government","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}