I’ve been thinking about food and nutrition more than I ever have before. This is partly because I’m in the “Hungry Hungry Hippo” stage of the third trimester, where my baby is gaining half a pound a week and my appetite has revved up to match.

My eating habits don’t just affect me anymore, but also my son, so of course I want to do everything I can (within my ability to control … rule number one of parenthood: that ability is small) to give him the best chance of being strong, healthy and nourished. According to my biweekly measurements and the frequency of his karate chops straight into my pancreas, he’s doing well on that front.

And, of course, this summer’s weekly farmers market trips have become a highlight of my week. It’s a place full of delicious foods and there are dogs there.

Then I read an article in the paper about a student food pantry opening up at Portland High School, in which the executive director of the Locker Project, which brings hundreds of pounds of fresh food to distribution events at the high school every other week, and otherwise assists with food insecurity, said: “We hear from parents a lot that this is how they got through the weekend. And with fresh produce being so expensive, they say this is their only opportunity to get fruits and vegetables,” she said. 

The anger exploded in my chest. We live in the greatest, richest country in the world and you’re telling me that a school food pantry is some families’ only chance to get fresh fruits and vegetables? Are you kidding me?

One in five children in Maine are food insecure and face hunger, the highest rate in New England. Longtime readers know this is a topic I care about and have brought up before — you may recall “Operation Buns for Buns,” my sale of thousands of dollars worth of donated Playboy magazines to donate the money to the Good Shepherd Food Bank and the St. Elizabeth Essentials Pantry — but those facts and numbers fill me with more rage now.

The maternal hormones must be kicking in, because I just keep thinking these are babies, these are somebody’s babies, they need good, nourishing food to grow up strong and smart. 

On the same day, I also read an article about how China has stopped buying American soybeans due to the trade war, and how this is a looming disaster for Midwestern farmers. When most people think of “farms,” they think of the guy with a straw hat growing vegetables and maybe having some cows or a chicken coop. I’ve been seeing these depictions frequently since a lot of baby and toddler toys/books/clothes are old fashioned farm-themed (I have no idea why.) But that doesn’t reflect the reality of American agriculture. 

Since farm subsidies began in 1933, they’ve contributed an average of 13.5% of net farm income nationwide. The exact amounts vary every year, due to the inherently unpredictable nature of farming. But still, 13.5% doesn’t sound very free market to me.

The knee-jerk response to that is, of course, we should be subsidizing the people who grow our food. But the thing is, most of those farms aren’t growing food. The top three most subsidized crops in 2024 were corn, soybeans and cotton. The corn and soybeans are produced for animal feed; corn is also used to make ethanol fuel additive and, of course, high-fructose corn syrup, which we all know is bad for us. (And cotton is cotton. You can’t eat it.)

According to data researched and crunched by the Cato Institute — a libertarian think tank co-founded by the Koch brothers, so not exactly a bunch of softhearted liberals — the USDA found that in 2015, half of crop payments, crop insurance subsidies and working-lands conservation subsidies went to households with incomes of more than $140,000.

USDA data show that 23% of farms with yearly revenues of less than $100,000 receive federal subsidies, but 69% of farms above that income threshold do. 

In the meantime, the USDA canceled two related programs called the Local Food for Schools program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, which provided around $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers.

Because I guess soybean millionaires need our money to raise hog feed, instead of making sure students have enough fruits and vegetables to hit their height/weight benchmarks. But, never fear. Produce may be prohibitively expensive but kids can buy lots of cheap snacks sweetened with subsidized high-fructose corn syrup. Is that healthy for them? No. Is it good for local economies? No. But will rich people get richer? Yes. Thank God. What would we do without that. 

Someday in the (probably distant) future, when we have a functional federal government, I hope they will tackle the issue of farm subsidies in our country, and start putting our taxpayer money where our mouths should be.