Global planting of biotech crops grew 8 percent last year, to a record high of 395 million total acres, according to the latest report from Clive James at the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). Despite the many regulatory hurdles that governments around the world have erected to the approval and adoption of biotech crop varieties, when farmers have the opportunity to plant them, they do. Last year, more than 16 and a half million farmers grew biotech crops in 29 different countries.

What’s particularly noteworthy is that, while activists try to portray biotechnology as a rich industrial world tool, the bulk of recent growth in biotech crop adoption has come among relatively resource-poor farmers in less developed and newly industrialized countries. The United States has, since the first biotech crop introductions back in the early 1990s, grown the largest number of acreage planted with biotech varieties. But, while annual acreage increases in countries like the U.S. and Canada is starting to flatten a bit, the most robust growth has come from Brazil, India, and China. LDCs and NICs now grow about half of the world’s total biotech crop acreage. In China alone, roughly 7 million poor farmers grow biotech crops on an average of just one and a quarter acres.

On a related note, in this short video, former Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter discusses the role that advanced technologies have played in making U.S. agriculture a vibrant and productive contributor to the global economy.

I didn’t have a chance to write about it then, but a few weeks back the Food and Drug Administration denied a citizen petition submitted by environmental activists asking the agency to forbid the “sub-therapeutic” use of certain antibiotics in food animals. The petition — initially filed in 2005, and fundamentally identical to one submitted in 1999 and rejected in 2001 — argued that using antibiotics for growth promotion, rather than to treat infected animals, contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

The issue is a complicated one, with serious implications for medical treatment and consumer well-being more broadly. We know that development by human pathogens of resistance to medically important antibiotics poses serious public health concerns. And, although a clear link between animal antibiotics use and human disease has not been proven, there are good theoretical reasons to believe, and some real world evidence suggesting, that it does — or at least could — occur.

Nevertheless, I would still argue that FDA made the right call, but for an incomplete reason. In response to both the 1999 and 2005 petitions, the agency essentially said that going through the formal legal process to revoke the approvals for a drug is intensive, time consuming, and a poor use of FDA resources. And because the agency already monitors the development of resistance and has both nominally voluntary and explicitly mandatory programs in place to restrict uses that may pose realistic threats to human health, FDA argued that beginning the revocation process isn’t worth it.

I would further argue, though, that the agency simply does not have sufficient information on which to base a decision to revoke the approvals in question, but that it should begin a less formal investigation to shed some light on the matter. The agency has never before compared the risks that arise from animal antibiotics uses to those that would arise from restricting them. But doing so should be mandatory before any bans or further restrictions are put in place.

The use of antibiotics in animals is only one factor (and a small one at that) in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and it contributes far less to the development of resistance than does misuse among human patients. More importantly, though, the use of antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals delivers substantial benefits for both animal and human health. Even the often criticized sub-therapeutic uses of these drugs contribute to reduced pathogen loads in animal-derived foods and have a positive impact on human safety. The question that few have even bothered to ask, and that the scientific community has not yet answered is whether, on balance, forbidding sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock would do more good than harm. There is good, though by no means conclusive, reason to believe the answer is no.

Generally, even when antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in livestock, the likelihood of human exposure is remote, in part because risk management strategies to minimize and contain resistant pathogens have been implemented throughout the food chain. But, even when human consumers are exposed to resistant bacteria, the effect of the drug-resistance is typically inconsequential. General intestinal enteritis caused by Salmonella, for example, is rarely treated with antibiotics, leaving little opportunity for a therapeutic failure. And, in other cases where antibiotic treatment is indicated, bacteria that are resistant to one or more antibiotics remain sensitive to others. While not zero, the risk of a treatment failure in human patients arising from the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in food animals is quite low (See here, here, here, and here).

But is it worth tolerating even a small risk merely for the benefit of cheaper food? Some would argue “no.” The New York Times, for example, editorialized that rejecting the petitions was “a bad decision that runs counter to the F.D.A.’s own research.” And “The drugs make the animals grow faster, but their overuse increases the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.” But posing the question that way ignores other important benefits.

Consumers benefit from lower prices, to be sure. But humans also derive health benefits from the presence of safer and healthier livestock animals. Sub-therapeutic antibiotics use helps to control and reduce the spread of a number of zoonotic diseases, and it is associated with a generalized reduction in health problems in the animals in which they are used. Carcasses from slaughtered animals not treated with antibiotics are more likely to be contaminated with human pathogenic microorganisms than those from treated animals (See here and here). And, because sub-therapeutic antibiotics use increases feed conversion efficiency, it lets farmers produce more food with fewer animals and less feed, which has significant environmental benefits — including, but not limited to, a need for less land in raising livestock and animal feed crops, and less waste from the animals.

Furthermore, experience in foreign countries that have banned or heavily restricted sub-therapeutic use is decidedly mixed. So, it is not clear whether a ban in the U.S. would result in less resistant bacteria or improved human health outcomes. Denmark, for example, began restricting sub-therapeutic uses in 1995. But over the following decade, while resistance to some antibiotics decreased among some pathogens in some livestock animal species, resistance among other pathogens to other antibiotics in other animals rose (See here and here). And there is little evidence that the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in humans was affected at all.

Similar results were seen following the European Union-wide restriction on sub-therapeutic uses. “The expected decrease in the incidence of resistant human pathogens did not occur. Instead, prevalence of many resistant human pathogens increased, in some cases up to 49 percent of the pre-ban incidence.”

There is no doubt that the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem. And it may even be wise to ban the use of new antibiotic classes — or existing classes that are considered antibiotics of last resort — in livestock, or at least to postpone their use for a period of years following their introduction. But it’s not remotely clear that consumers would experience net positive benefits from a ban on essentially all sub-therapeutic uses.

Regulatory war has been waged against another job-creating sector of the American economy. The U.S. Department of Labor has set forth new proposals restricting children under the age of 16 that are not children of the farmers from working in the agriculture industry. Should the DOL really be confident enough with the reduced unemployment rate from 9 percent to 8.6 percent to comfortably cut job opportunities for the prospective future farmers of America?

Current labor laws allow children under 16 to work when they aren’t in school.  Children of farmers may be employed by their parents at any age at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by their parents. But many children work on farms that are either owned by a grandparent, uncle or aunt. Also, if parents do not have full ownership of the property on which they farm, the exemption would not apply. Many agricultural producers also lease land to graze cattle or to harvest more acres. This being a common practice for family farms, it would be unreasonable and inefficient for children to be able to work on certain acres that are owned by the family and not be able to work on others that are leased by the family.

Jobs are being yanked out of young Americans’ hands that are ready and willing to work. These new proposals hinder a child under the age of 16 from participating in most agricultural activities that are essential in modern agriculture. They are restricted from working in pesticide handling, timber operations, manure pits, and storage bins, or working on ladders that are over six feet high. They are prohibited from handling “power-driven equipment” and operating tractors. Youths would be banned from being hired to brand, vaccinate, castrate, or treat animals, as well as herd animals on horseback. Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg, Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, states:

Hiring a neighbor, nephew, or niece to help with branding is a common practice on ranches and provides valuable experience to learn animal behavior and understand at a young age how to safely deal with livestock.  Additionally, any youth wanting to see veterinary medicine in practice would be prevented from doing so under this proposal, including a veterinarian’s own children accompanying him or her to a farm or ranch.  As with other sections in this proposal, this would discourage young people from taking an interest in ranching and veterinary medicine, and would be detrimental to the future to those industries.

Rehberg, an outspoken opponent to these new rules, alleges that the rules are too open to wide interpretations. For example children under 16 would not be allowed to assist in any task that involves inflicting pain, like branding or vaccinating. Rehberg points out, “If you were too take your baby to have its vaccinations, you’re going to have to take it to get shots in the arm or in the butt and I’s going to hurt. How do you say a vaccination is inflicting pain even if it’s keeping the animal healthy? That’s not very bright.”

These extra regulations are said to be safeguarding youths who work in the hazardous environment of agriculture. Rehberg’s letter to the DOL notes the National Farm Medicine Center’s finding that childhood injury rates on farms fell 59 percent from 1998-2009, stating “it does not make sense to crack down on an industry that is improving its safety record without government involvement.  In our current economic climate, we need to do everything we can to encourage economic growth. These new regulations are a detriment to that growth, and are pushing an industry that that is moving in the right direction on its own.”

These federal restrictions on the imperative hands-on experience in learning to manage and operate agricultural production deter the preservation of family farms in America. Of the two million U.S. farms, 98 percent of them are family-owned.

Nebraska Senators Mike Johanns and Ben Nelson were instrumental in getting the DOL to extend its comment period on this issue. Though Johanns acknowledges the necessity for workplace safety for all, he states, “This proposed rule raises serious questions about the administration’s understanding of the agricultural economy.” Nelson states, “One of every three jobs in Nebraska is tied to agriculture. We need to increase opportunities for our family farmers and ranchers to strengthen our rural economies, not threaten them with new, unneeded regulations from Washington.”

The infamous “secret farm bill,” negotiated by the leadership of the agriculture committees with little transparency and discussion, will not pass as part of the debt-reduction “supercommittee” recommendations, since discussions between Democrats and Republicans in the committee broke down. This means that the covert farm bill will not enjoy fast-track approval in Congress.

Now the new farm bill negotiations will be made public, and the new bill, expected to be based on the “secret” one, will probably face stiff opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. The contents of that farm bill, negotiated by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), are still a mystery. They did not release the full details of their negotiations, even to their own committee members.

The Hill reported that the secret bill eliminated lump sum direct payments to farmers (which in some cases meant that farmers who didn’t produce agricultural goods still received them) and replaced them with a “revenue based supplement to traditional crop insurance.” This type of insurance system would reduce the cost of farm bill programs when prices are sufficiently high. However, if prices fall below a certain threshold, taxpayers will pay for this insurance and costs can rise significantly. Ultimately, this program amounts to a privatization of gains (if prices are good, farmers keep all profits) and a socialization of losses (if crop prices are low, taxpayers are on the hook for federal insurance).

In a way, this program resembles the recent automaker and Wall Street bailouts. The so-called “toxic” assets maligned by commentators and politicians were actually bad investment decisions by banking executives. The bail-outs simply covered their losses. Had the investments panned out, Wall Street banks wouldn’t pay taxpayers back.

We should be thankful that the new farm bill will be closely scrutinized and openly discussed. The hidden negotiations of the bill probably included handouts to close associates and lobbyists of the agricultural committees’ leaderships. In fact, one of the details that leaked out was that pheasant hunters, represented by Pheasants Forever, had “successfully lobbied lawmakers for provisions that would have steered conservation funding to landowners who preserved grassy areas as habitat for the game bird.” If the “pheasant lobby” successfully lobbied to receive handouts, who knows what type of guarantees were made to more prominent and politically powerful groups, such as rice and peanut farmers (who supported the secret bill)?

We should expect a farm bill that will pit spending hawks, Corn Belt lawmakers, and welfare supporters against each other. The bill probably won’t change much from its past iterations (with the exception of direct lump payments and an expanded insurance program), but given the current economic climate and debt crisis in the United States, Congress should seriously consider eliminating costly and unnecessary provisions in the Farm Bill (starting with Title I commodity programs).

The Hill reports that a new “secret Farm Bill” will be included with the super committee’s debt deal. As The Hill points out, legislators are “using the super committee to avoid what would be a more public, election-year debate in 2012, when the current farm bill expires and new legislation would be scheduled for writing.”

As mentioned on OpenMarket before, this presents a big moral hazard problem. Legislators are using the secrecy and lack of accountability present in super committee deliberations and adding legislation beneficial only to narrow sectors of the economy. In the farm bill’s case, the super committee asked members of the Agriculture Committee to come up with $23 billion in cuts by November 1, and although the deadline has passed, the Agriculture Committee is still working on the proposal. Beyond these details, information is difficult to obtain.

Under “normal” farm bill negotiations, input from farmers, communities and advocacy groups would be accounted for, and negotiations would be made public. With the super committee, the bill is being negotiated behind closed doors, and would be passed as part of the debt reduction deal, not as a stand-alone bill.

Among possible bills, the American Farmland Trust has put together a review of 10 different proposals, and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Most proposals would eliminate direct payments, as well as other costly and inefficient programs like ACRE (Average Crop Revenue Election) but still give considerable aid to farmers. The American Farmland Trust published a report that summarizes 10 proposals and their components.

The small amount of information that is leaking about the farm bill negotiations seems to point toward a bill that would eliminate direct payments but would tie handouts to commodity prices. While this might eliminate costs when commodity prices are high, costs could balloon if prices fall. In a free market, lower prices might signal producers that they should close their operations or switch to more profitable products. In this system, it rewards bad investments and misuse of land. A new type of crop insurance program may also be included in the recommendations.

While these subsidies are costly to taxpayers, some legislators are moving to eliminate some of the more costly and inefficient programs. The Free Market Sugar Act, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.), and Danny Davis (D-Ill.), would repeal the loan program to sugar producers and eliminate most sugar imports and production controls, resulting in cheaper sugar. These representatives have candy manufacturers in their districts, which have difficulty competing because of the high costs of domestic sugar. Their bill shows that alternatives exist, at no cost to taxpayers, which would give back some competitive advantage to the United States.

Twenty-nine years ago tomorrow, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Eli Lilly’s and Genentech’s Humulin, making it the first ever fully approved product of recombinant DNA, or what we now call modern molecular biotechnology. Humulin was the first biosynthetic human insulin, produced by splicing the human gene that codes for insulin production into a harmless microbe. Previously, diabetics who needed supplemental insulin used bovine or porcine insulin that was purified from the pancreases of cows and pigs. They worked reasonably well, but were not perfect analogues of human insulin. With the introduction of Humulin they could now take actual human insulin, which improved the treatment’s safety and efficacy.

According to The New York Times, my friend and colleague “Dr. Henry Miller, the medical officer in charge of Humulin at the F.D.A., said the development was a major step forward in the ”scientific and commercial viability of’” recombinant DNA techniques. ”We have now come of age,” Dr. Miller said.”

Since 1982, biotechnology has revolutionized the practice of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. Over the past 29 years, some 200 or so biotech medicines have been approved in the United States, with roughly 900 more now being developed to treat more than 100 diseases ranging from cancers and infectious diseases to autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular diseases.

Unfortunately, while food biotechnology has the same potential, it has not fared nearly as well. A broad scientific consensus has concluded that rDNA technology (known variously as gene splicing, genetic engineering, and genetic modification) is merely an extension, or refinement, of less-precise breeding techniques that scientists have long used for similar purposes, but it’s use has been hobbled by vast over-regulation in the U.S. and around the world — a phenomenon I have written about at length elsewhere. So, let’s celebrate the tremendous success of the medical biotechnology industry, but let us not forget how government has nearly strangled food biotechnology in its crib.

Recently, ActionAid USA and CEI filed a correction request under the Data Quality Act targeting misleading claims made by the EPA regarding the effects of ethanol mandates and subsidies, claims that have obscured how government policies have contributed to world hunger, malnutrition, disease, and death. This legal request, which was filed shortly before World Food Day, can be found here.

According to one recent study, ethanol diversion to fuel has caused nearly 200,000 excess deaths annually. Marie Brill, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid USA, stated: “High and volatile prices are already causing misery. The real price of a typical global food basket is up nearly 50% over the last year. With poor people in developing countries spending between 50-80% of their income on food, it is no surprise that 44 million people fell into extreme poverty from June 2010-February 2011 because of high food prices. The big surprise is that the EPA still fails to acknowledge the human impact of the Renewable Fuel Standard and still refuses to cite the plethora of reports that reveal the significant role of biofuels in global food price volatility.” According to Sam Kazman, CEI general counsel: “EPA’s refusal to address this issue has gone on long enough, and there isn’t a more appropriate time for the agency to change its approach than in the wake of World Food Day.”

A couple of days ago, Talking Points Memo’s Jim Kozubek reported that the Food and Drug Administration had finally decided to approve AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon for human consumption, and that the “evaluation is now under review at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.” I’d seen the TPM article, but didn’t write about it at the time because premature reports of FDA being on the brink of approval have been filtering out through the media for several years now. (I filmed a TV interview for Fox News’s “Your World With Neil Cavuto” way back in 2005, when it looked like an approval was right around the corner, for example. And I talked about it again on John Stossel’s show last year.) But a friend of mine asked today why an FDA approval decision would have to get a second look from the White House, so I thought that would be worth discussing.

As the TPM article mentions, the AquaBounty salmon has been hugely controversial. Wild Atlantic salmon grow to full adult size in about three years, in part because they only grow six or seven months per year. As water temperatures decline in the late autumn months, a genetic switch turns turns off the gene that produces growth hormone, so the salmon can conserve energy through the winter. Energy conservation isn’t as big a problem for farmed fish, though, because they have easy access to food all year and little exposure to predators. So, AquaBounty engineered Atlantic salmon with a promoter (the genetic switch) from an Arctic fish called the ocean pout, attached to the growth hormone gene from Pacific Chinook salmon. And, voila! The engineered salmon grows year round and reaches normal adult size in about 18 months, lowering the cost of raising them and lowering the price of fish in grocery stores. Here’s the packet of scientific information FDA prepared for its scientific advisory committee last year.

Environmentalists don’t like it, of course. In part because ocean pen-raised farmed fish are known to occasionally escape into the wild, meaning the AquaBounty salmon could theoretically interbreed with wild salmon, with potential impacts on the wild gene pool. And in part because they just don’t like biotechnology. To address the arguably legitimate concerns, the AquaBounty salmon will only be raised in contained, inland pools, not open water pens, and they”ll be farmed only in Panama, where, if they do escape, the ambient water temperatures will be too high for them to survive. AquaBounty also uses two other breeding techniques that, with a 98 percent degree of certainty, produces only female fish that have been rendered infertile. So, even if they were to escape and survive, nearly all of them would be incapable of successfully mating with wild fish. Also, because the AquaBounty fish will be searching for food during the early spring months when wild Atlantic salmon are breeding, it turns out that the engineered fish have an extraordinarily low mating instinct. (Insert ribald, ex-wife joke here.)

Pacific salmon fishermen don’t like the AquaBounty fish because farmed salmon are the competition, and anything that makes the competition more efficient makes them less competitive. That’s why a group of Republican and Democratic congressmen are supporting a bill that would forbid the FDA to approve it.

Which brings us back to the OMB review. My friend asked, “What’s up with that? Does OMB usually get to sign off on FDA approval decisions? Or is this a special case, since the fish are genetically engineered?”

Ordinarily, OMB has authority to review proposed new regulations and guidance documents issued by executive branch agencies, not individual approval decisions — whether they’re biotech product approvals, drug approvals, pesticide approvals, broadcast spectrum license approvals, or any other individualized decisions. However, because the FDA Commissioner is appointed by the president, she technically works for the President of the United States. Commissioner Margaret Hamburg may well just be cooperating with the White House on the AquaBounty salmon approval, knowing that it will be controversial. So, one possibility is that FDA is just having the OMB staff (possibly, a division of OMB called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) have a look at the decision documents in order to ensure that all the political bases are covered.

Another possibility is that FDA may be issuing a new regulation or guidance document in conjunction with the approval, and that would need OIRA clearance. FDA decided during the George W. Bush Administration to regulate the novel trait in genetically engineered animals as New Veterinary Drugs (a stupid decision, but that’s a story for another day). In January 2009, FDA issued a guidance document explaining its legal authority to do that, and laying out the steps through which animal breeders would seek NVD approval. Ordinarily, I would have expected that to be done through a rulemaking procedure, rather than through guidance. So, it’s possible that the proposed rule has now been drafted and that OIRA review is necessary to clear that proposed rule for promulgation.

These possibilities are pure speculation on my part, and I haven’t ruled out the possibility that TPM just got the story wrong. After all, as I wrote above, we’ve been hearing stories for the past six years about FDA being on the brink of approval. It’s long past time that FDA approve it, though. The application has been at FDA for 16 years. The science is pretty clear that the product is safe for both consumers and the environment. And there’s good reason to believe that it would convey substantial health benefits for consumers by lowering the price of a food product that is highly nutritious, not to mention good for the environment by taking pressure off wild fish stocks that are often over-harvested. Why the White House might stand in the way of an approval decision is beyond me.

The Environmental Working Group seems to exist for no other reason than to scare consumers away from the products of modern technology — and to advertise on behalf of the organic food and natural products industries.  Since 1993, the group has been terrorizing America about everything from apples to the zinc-oxide used in some sunscreens, and practically everything in between.  And since 1995, it’s been publishing an annual “Dirty Dozen” list of fruits and vegetables the organization claims have dangerously high levels of pesticides.

When this year’s Dirty Dozen list was published in June, EWG president Ken Cook wrote that:

“Though buying organic is always the best choice, we know that sometimes people do not have access to that produce or cannot afford it.” … “Our guide helps consumers concerned about pesticides to make better choices among conventional produce, and lets them know which fruits and vegetables they may want to buy organic.”

And when last year’s study was published, an EWG press release claimed that “consumers can lower their pesticide consumption by nearly four-fifths by avoiding conventionally grown varieties of the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables.”

The fact of the matter is, the mere presence of a substance doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s present at a dangerous level.  Because farmers the world over use pesticides to increase their productivity, there’s going to be trace levels of pesticides in the food we eat. And, frankly, since we don’t live in a Lake Wobegon world, where everything is better than average, some product or another has to measure highest in pesticide residues. Cleverly, EWG rarely says directly that the levels of pesticides they measure are dangerous, but they know they can count on most consumers and the media to infer that conclusion.

Fortunately, a couple of scientists at the University of California, Davis, have conducted their own study that essentially debunks the Dirty Dozen argument.  Carl Winter, a food toxicologist who directs the university’s FoodSafe Program, and PhD student Josh Katz estimated consumers’ exposure to the pesticides “studied” in the EWG report and then compared them with the Environmental Protection Agency’s chronic reference dose (RfD), which estimates the amount of a chemical a person could be exposed to every day over an entire lifetime without an appreciable risk of harm.  What did they find?

All pesticide exposure estimates were well below established chronic reference doses (RfDs). Only one of the 120 exposure estimates exceeded 1% of the RfD (methamidophos on bell peppers at 2% of the RfD), and only seven exposure estimates (5.8 percent) exceeded 0.1% of the RfD. Three quarters of the pesticide/commodity combinations demonstrated exposure estimates below 0.01% of the RfD (corresponding to exposures one million times below chronic No Observable Adverse E?ect Levels from animal toxicology studies), and 40.8% had exposure estimates below 0.001% of the RfD.

Essentially, consumers could eat about 50 times their normal daily amount of the worst food on the EWG Dirty Dozen list, and do that every day for their entire lives, and still not expose themselves to much risk of harm. Winter and Katz concluded by noting that their:

“findings conclusively demonstrate that consumer exposures to the most frequently detected pesticides from commodities on the “Dirty Dozen” list are at negligible levels.” … And “the EWG methodology is not sufficient to allow meaningful ranking among commodities or that substituting organic forms of the commodities on the “Dirty Dozen” list will lead to measurable consumer health benefit.”

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalyan/2334853138/

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article highlights another reason why farm subsidies need to be put to rest.

Land prices are way up and so are bank deposits, as high corn and soybean prices mean local farmers are making the most money in their lives. At Sloan Implement, which sells John Deere tractors, “This could be our best year ever,” says chief executive Tom Sloan.

CEI has blogged about the archaic subsidy program before. With the budget crisis looming, Congress had a reason to cut the tax squandering program. It looks like the current economic outlook for the farming industry simply adds fuel to the fire.

What’s the reason for agriculture’s new found fortune?

The global grain markets shifted in 2006 when Washington began to require that the oil industry mix billions of gallons of corn-derived ethanol with gasoline annually. Around the same time, rising numbers of middle-class consumers in emerging economies such as China began seeking more grain-fed meat and milk, boosting demand for soybeans, pork and, most recently, corn from the U.S.

Ignoring the ethanol bit, this is another perfect reason support free trade. The United States may have a comparative advantage over many nations in producing certain farm goods. Expanding free trade allows poorer nations to receive these goods at a cheaper price, thus decreasing the likelihood of starvation, and our farmers, in certain sectors, benefit from the increase in demand. Both parties win. If we continue to open markets, this wonderful process could continue for quite some time.

Yes, the price of food will go down as profits incentivize farmers around the globe to produce more and discover more efficient farming technology. But, that doesn’t mean we should continue subsidizing our farmers. The subsidy program started 80 years ago. Its intent was to “tackle rural poverty during the Depression era, when a quarter of Americans lived on farms. Today, less than 1% of the population is in farming.” Given that less than 1 percent of the population farms, it’s difficult to understand why we give out billions in subsidies.

“But, if food prices fall and farm subsidies don’t exist, then many farmers will go out of business.” No one wants to see a family go out of business, but maybe the U.S. shouldn’t be subsidizing so many people in the first place. Maybe the U.S. only needs a few people to produce all the food that we need and want.

Efficiency, by definition, means that we produce more with less. We get more bang for our buck. That’s not a bad thing. It allows us to spend less time and energy producing one good and more time and energy on producing another good which wouldn’t exist without economic efficiency.

Let’s recap. Food prices are at an all time high. Many U.S. farmers will reap the benefits from high prices and will continue to do so in the near future as the United States expands free trade. Farm subsidy programs are immensely wasteful programs that benefit an extremely small portion of the U.S. population and are not needed. The U.S. is nearing a budget crisis and Congress needs to cut programs to reduce the deficit. Let’s hope these reasons are enough to convince Congress to end the charade.