An Urban's Rural View

I think I must have been nice this year. Santa apparently intervened and arranged for me to finally figure out a minor bit of technology I'm sure others needed no Clausian intervention to master: the "reading list" on the Safari browser that stores web pages for another look. Here are five I saved recently, with brief comments on them:

-- "The Minimum Wage and McDonald's Welfare" (http://tiny.cc/…), a Bloomberg column deriding fast-food companies as "welfare queens" because they pay so little that 52% of their employees get Medicaid, food stamps or other public benefits. Alas, the column ducks the issue economists debate: If Mickey D's raises wages and charges a buck more for a Big Mac, as the column suggests, how many of those low-paid employees will end up getting the sack and receiving even more in public benefits?

-- "Why do We Even Need a Farm Bill?" (http://tiny.cc/…). Unlike many opponents of farm subsidies, this Washington Post columnist aims his heavy artillery squarely at the "food security" justification for them. "Perhaps government intervention was necessary to achieve this during the Great Depression, when the New Deal first federalized farm policy," he writes. "But that's preposterous now. This obesity-plagued nation is ankle-deep in cheap food." He doesn't go the next step and argue that over the last several decades fewer and fewer farmers have produced more and more food, so it's unlikely consumers will suffer if ending subsidies forced some additional farmers out of business. But someone will soon.

-- "What an 'Organic' Food Label Should Mean" (http://tiny.cc/…). In this Los Angeles Times piece former ag secretary Dan Glickman and former deputy secretary Kathleen Merrigan offer a solution to the debate over labeling of foods containing transgenic ingredients. "We believe that much of the energy around GMO food labeling would dissipate if the federal government honored the original deal we struck on organic food and allowed producers to label their products as GMO-free." I'm not sure they're right in thinking the campaigns for state labeling laws would end, but what they're suggesting is a good idea in any event.

-- Letter to the U.S. Trade Representative (http://tiny.cc/…). With the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks coming down to the wire, fear is growing in U.S. ag circles that our trade negotiators will cave and allow Japan to protect some of its sensitive ag products. In this letter, 17 ag groups warn that "It will ultimately be difficult for our organizations to support a TPP agreement with Japan that does not include comprehensive trade liberalization for all agricultural sectors." It's worth noting that some American manufacturers are unhappy with Japan as well. Tough choices ahead, for our negotiators and Japan's.

-- "This Is Your Brain on Gluten" (http://tiny.cc/…), an article in The Atlantic that rips apart a best-selling book blaming carbohydrates for "almost every modern neurologic malady." The best line in this lengthy but fascinating piece gets at the broader problem of the type of books that get published on food. "I hope people don't give up on nutrition science, because there is a sense that no one agrees on anything. An outlier comes shouting along every year with a new diet bent on changing our entire perspective, and it's all the talk. That can leave us with a sense that no one is to be believed. The scientific community on the whole is not as capricious as the bestseller list might make it seem."

Happy reading, and Merry Christmas.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

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