Response to the Omnivore’s Delusion

Grist food editor Tom Philpott has posted a brief, but good response to the Omnivore’s Delusion (which I posted about a few days ago). Among other things, he points out that while Blake Hurst and other farmers in Missouri have received millions of dollars in government subsidies, they’re probably not the ones getting rich off of those subsidies:

More likely, it quickly passed into the coffers of Monsanto, John Deere, Mosaic (the fertilizer giant two-thirds owned by Cargill), and other input suppliers. [...] You see, while their friends at the American Enterprise Institute might mock them as such, it’s not the Hursts who are “welfare queens” here. It’s their agribusiness suppliers and buyers. And we can’t really debate the food system until we acknowledge their massive vested interest in it—and their vast political power, which they’re not shy about using to maintain their income streams.