The Economic and Political Factors Affecting the U.S. Sugar Subsidy Program
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Sugar growers continue to benefit from favorable economic conditions provided by the U.S. government. Yet empirical data reveal a decrease in the aggregate support for sugar legislation in recent years. In 1978, there were 9,187 full or part owners of sugar cane and sugar beet farms, compared to 7,799 farms in 1987. The level of sugar subsidy allocated to the farmers, however, has increased and even favored certain sugar growers disproportionately over others. Such empirical findings suggests that politics, as much as economics, affect the level of sugar subsidy. This paper examines why an increasingly smaller number of sugar farmers receive a steadily larger government subsidy.
Mainstream economics cannot explain the unusual linkage between sugar producers and subsidy levels. While traditional, neoclassical economists cultivate elegant models that explain economic phenomena, they fail to characterize correctly the relationship between voters, their elected representatives, and the political institutions which shape the policies.
Consequently, an accurate model must combine what we know from mainstream economics and political economy. Before outlining the theoretical framework, however, the following section reviews the history of the sugar subsidy.
History of Sugar Subsidy
The Jones-Costigan Act, created the modern sugar program as part of the New Deal package of agricultural legislation in 1934. The program included domestic production controls and direct payments to farmers, as well as import restrictions that addressed the declining ratio of farm to non-farm incomes of the preceding decade (Harper, 1990). The first major transformation of the U.S. sugar program resulted from the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba's exports to the U.S. in 1963. Throughout the following years, the United States government imposed a series of price supports, import quotas, and loans to protect U.S. producers from lower-priced foreign grown sugar as well as to encourage domestic production of sugar (Rendelman, 1989). Many farmers in the U.S. began to supplement the dearth of sugar left by the embargo and exploit the "protected market" conditions provided by the U.S. government subsidy.
Despite the federal aid granted to sugar growers, not all sectors of agriculture devoted to growing sugar derivatives flourished. Domestic production of sugar cane increased steadily from 1982 onward, while sugar beet production stagnated (Knutson, 1985). Through time, the largest number of sugar beet farmers were concentrated in a specific West/Midwest region of the U.S. (Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho) while sugar cane farmers were found in the Southeast, specifically Louisiana and Florida.
Imagine this, it is the 1800’s and you’re shopping for sugar. You see the sweet, pure white sugar and look down. Wham! The price makes your stomach drop. You need a cup of sugar, and the price is five dollars per teaspoon. That’s two-hundred and forty dollars, and you only have two dollars with you! In the articles, How Candy Conquered America by Lauren Tarshis and This Cupcake is Trying to Hurt You by Kristin Lewis and Lauren Tarshis it talks about how the consumption of sugar changes over time from the 1800’s to today. Two ways sugar consumption in the United States differed in the 1800’s than today is how much sugar we eat and how it affects our bodies.
Sugar was first grown in New Guinea around 9000 years ago, which New guinea traders trade cane stalks to different parts of the world. In the New world christopher columbus introduced cane sugar to caribbean islands. At first sugar was unknown in Europe but was changed when sugar trade first began. Sugar trade was driven by the factors of production land which provided all natural resources labor what provided human resources for work and capital which includes all the factories and the money that’s used to buy land. Consumer demand was why sugar trade continued to increase.
The Bermuda Triangle is the home of approximately just under a thousand “unexplained” disappearances in the past five hundred years. This area has generated unproven tales that have served as “explanations” for these disappearances. The triangle is also known for its unique weather and other “unnatural” occurrences. However, each story or occurrence within the Bermuda Triangle can be explained.
...nergy from an acre of Iowa farmland. Unfortunately, for more than fifty years, farm policies is designed to encourage the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other. It simply because the government subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country. While the surgeon general is warning the epidemic of obesity, our government is still signing bills encouraging the river of cheap corn flowing. It is clearly shown that food production in America is partly a mixture of politic, economic and morality.
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
Liesel’s mom leaves her with foster parents because she wishes to protect her from the fate she is enduring. The words Paula, Liesel’s mom, uses go against Hitler because she is a communist which resulted in her being taken away and Liesel to lose her mother and experience the loss of her. This shows Liesel experiences unhappiness because of her mother’s disappearance which is caused by the words she openly uses that contradicts Hitler.
Miller, Connie Colwell. The Bermuda Triangle The Unsolved Mystery. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2009. Print.
revolts. The Sugar Act had placed tariffs on a varied assortment of goods, such as sugar,
In document 7a, it tells when sugar got attention worldwide rich people started moving to the West Indies to grow because everyone wanted sugar and sugar makes you a lot of money. The more you consume sugar, the more you will start to
“Art therapy is a form of therapy in making of visual images (paintings, drawings, models etc.) in the presences of a qualified art therapist contributes towards externalization of thoughts and feelings which may otherwise remain unexpressed”(Walter & Gilory, 1992).
New York Times, p. 1. Riedl, M. (2011, March 30). Farm subsidies ripe for reform?
The Bermuda Triangle is best known for its strange phenomenon and unexplained disappearances. It is located off the west coast of Florida. As stated in the article “Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear” written by Benjamin Radford, a deputy editor of the scientific magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the points of the triangle are located in Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda Island (qtd. in NOAA). The Bermuda Triangle covers roughly 500,000 square miles of the deep Atlantic Ocean (Radford “Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear”). This great span of ocean and its abnormal phenomenon is often credited for the disappearances of boats, planes, and their crewmembers.
To be able to understand this healing process better, it is important to comprehend what art therapy is. Although the title might be misconstrued and hard to define, art therapy is used in many practices to benefit mental and physical rehabilitation. Even though the professional view in art therapy is new, the thought of using art therapy as an alternative healing method is old (Malchiodi 978). Namburg defines art therapy by claiming how it “bases its methods on releasing the unconscious by means of spontaneous art expression…”(qtd. in Ulman 40.1). In other words, although we don’t have the means to communicate well when confronted with delicate discussions, our subconscious could use art as means to show hidden emotion that could not be expressed verbally. Bethli believes art therapy contrasts from any other form of creative therapy such as dance and music; art stays visible.(Carrigan 32). Which also allows one to refer back to their previous works as a therapeutic exercise.
7. Bhattacharya, Raj. (n.d.). Tudor Star Tiger. Disappearance In The Bermuda Triangle. Retrieved 29 March, 2014, from http://www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda2_00009e.htm
It is important that the individual does not have to be brilliant in art to benefit from art therapy. The main focal point of art therapy is not the final end product but the creative process and the thinking that goes into it. The individual feels less exposed when engaged in art and this enables the individual to express his feelings that may remain verbally unexpressed otherwise. And this helps in the process of healing since the problem can be addressed only once the problem is identified (1). Art also gives voice to those individuals with speech impairment for example stroke patients (3). Some individuals find it difficult to use a verbal form of communication to describe feelings and find it easier to make sense of their experience by the use of art.