Saturday afternoon roundup

I'm sorry to be writing about yet another tragic accident. This one involves some seriously disgusting behavior on the part of the driver.

Someone has no sense of irony.

You know I'm not a fan of processed soy, but keep in mind that unless you're high risk, there are many other things to worry about first.

Tom Philpott on food reform:

Already, the Big Ag and Beltway media are buzzing with stories of how the new Congress, particularly the Republican House, will square deficit hysteria with farm subsidies. The general consensus: "No one knows yet."

But this recent Associated Press article provides some insight. Reporter Mary Claire Jalonick identifies several card-carrying Tea Partiers in the new House who both thunder against government spending and belong to families that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm payments over the years.

For some in the sustainable-food movement, this is a delicious contradiction with the potential to force real reform in the next Farm Bill. For these people, the key federal policy underpinning the industrial food system and all of its evils are federal farm subsidies. Take them away, and a good-food renaissance will bloom.

But as I argued so strenuously and so often during the last Farm Bill fight (see here, for example), subsidies are a symptom, and not the cause, of a food system geared toward the maximum production of corn and soy, and, by extension, industrial meat. Absent other reforms and measures, if you take them away, you'll cause plenty of hardship in the Farm Belt, stiff a few high-profile millionaires who receive subsidies, and leave the incentives for maximum corn and soy production largely in place.

Indeed, House deficit hawks are already taking aim at the few federal farm programs that act as checks against mindless overproduction. According to the above-linked AP story, incoming Rep. (and Tea Party favorite) Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) is calling for the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep ecologically fragile land idle.

Really taking on the corn-soy-meat colossus that's fouling our waterways and ruining our diets means creating new incentives in the Farm Belt. That means beefing up, not eliminating, conservation programs; and shifting payments -- not slashing them -- to reward farmers for things like crop diversity, cutting fertilizer use, and building up soil.