Animal agriculture subsidies, explained.

“Okay vegans… You say that a vegan diet isn’t expensive but how come plant-based alternatives cost more than meat, dairy and eggs?”

The truth is that plant-based foods aren’t more expensive, but meat and other animal-based foods are cheaper than they really should be. And the reason they are able to be so cheap is because of agricultural subsidies.

Agricultural subsidies artificially drive down the cost for the consumer by cutting the costs for producers via government intervention. But at the moment, they fund the production and consumption of meat, dairy and animal feed far more than fruit and vegetables. 

Not only has our use of agricultural subsidies created a false economy around food, but it has incentivised the intensification of animal agriculture, leading to extreme suffering, poor population health, and the degradation of the environment. 

There’s a lot to unpack here. So in order to explain this, let’s go back to just after the second world war.

Desperate times, vested interests.

In the Agricultural Act of 1947, the British government announced a series of unprecedented agricultural subsidies aimed at stimulating production and making domestic agriculture more self-sufficient, as the war had revealed the vulnerability of a nation reliant on foreign imports for its food supply.

The subsidies were given to farmers producing meat, cow’s milk, eggs, feed grains, potatoes and sugar beet. Animal farmers were by far the largest recipients, in part because rising household incomes, mass marketing campaigns, and new technology to improve shelf life increased demand for these products, and in part because fruit and veg farmers were doing fine on their own. Moreover, animal products were erroneously believed to be a superior food source and viewed as a symbol of power.

In any case, the Act marked a historical increase in state involvement with the agricultural market, and without a doubt incentivised the intensification of animal farming and the explosion of cheap animal products onto shelves and into everyday diets. 

Here’s where things get a little darker.

The amount of taxpayer money which farmers would receive was determined following a yearly review, which consisted of government ministers consulting not with the agricultural workers themselves, but with the head of the farmer’s unions, who represented the interests of larger industry.

It was noted in a 1985 report on post-war agricultural policy that ‘The farmers' unions were in a unique position among British industries in having a statutory right to consultation over the prices they would receive for their produce.’

Every year, the farmer’s unions appear to strike better deals and receive more assurances, to the point that subsidies literally couldn’t be taken away. For example, for any product the guaranteed price the government would give could be reduced by no more than 4 per cent per year, and for animal products the reduction was to be no more than 9 per cent in any three-year period.

The wording of the policies was also adapted to be more sympathetic to farmers, such as changing the focus from ‘minimum prices’ to ‘remuneration and living standards.’ The farmers' unions even convinced the government to let them overproduce, claiming that surplus could be used as food aid for developing countries among other things. In reality, these policies helped the biggest, worst animal farmers to make increasingly larger profits to the devastation of animals, the environment, and people’s health.

So how on earth did this absurd use of public money fly under the radar? 

Well, the only people outside of government who would have had the stature to challenge these unprecedented government handouts would have been academics who were publishing papers and reports from universities. But it turns out, much of their research was being funded by the same department who were setting the subsidies...bit of a conflict of interest here.

The 1985 report concludes: ‘This unique example of co-operation between agricultural interests over the development of agriculture and the fixing of prices arguably served to reduce criticism of the system; everybody with the knowledge of the details was likely, one way or another, to be part of the system.’

If the objective of post-war British farming policy was to make agriculture self-sufficient and sustainable, it achieved the absolute opposite. But where it did succeed is in reconciling public opinion with the most damaging and unethical kind of farming there is. 

Got land?

Fast forward to today and well, not much has changed, except the physical land which has been depleted of most of its natural forests and shrubland to make way for pasture for farmed animals. 

For the last 50 years, the UK has been functioning under the EU’s common agricultural policy, or the CAP. The backbone of this is direct payments, where the government pay farmers per hectare of land they own, regardless of what they do with it. 

This policy has encouraged land to be hoarded by increasingly small numbers of increasingly rich and powerful people. Of the 59 billion euros given out every year, over 47 billion - or 80 per cent - goes to the largest 20 per cent of farms.

Research by Greenpeace suggests that one in five receiving EU farming subsidies is a millionaire or billionaire. Every year, some of the largest recipients in the UK include Sandringham farms, a predominantly meat-based business owned by the Royal family, Grosvener farms, a dairy, owned by the Duke of Westminster, and Juddmonte farms, a racehorse breeding enterprise owned by a Saudi prince.

Aside from being owned by the upper class, these farms have something else in common - they farm animals. 

Around 85 per cent of the UK’s agricultural land is used for grazing animals or growing their feed. So even though landowners can do pretty much anything they want with their land under the CAP, many choose to farm animals or produce animal feed, which coincidentally uses more land and therefore picks up more subsidies than crops intended for human consumption. 

But if the goal of the CAP is to improve agricultural productivity and increase food security like they say, then why are they incentivising the type of agriculture which uses more land yet produces less food than any other? After all, animals provide just 18% of the world’s calories while plants supply 83%. But then again, the CAP also claims to protect the environment, while giving millions to animal farmers despite the EU’s own governing body classifying meat and ‘livestock’ related subsidies as ‘environmentally harmful.’

Since Brexit, the UK has been working on implementing a new subsidy system, called the Environmental Land Management Scheme, or ELMS, which would pay farmers to make environmental improvements to their land. At first glance, this would appear to be a step in the right direction. But at second glance, it's greenwashing. 

So why are the people in power so reluctant to change, and deliver a truly sustainable plant-based food system? Perhaps because of the government’s own ties with animal agribusiness; you won’t have to look far into any legislature to find former and current animal farmers in positions of power. Take for example the UK government's minister of state for food, Mark Spencer, a former dairy farmer who campaigned against a bill to improve animal welfare and ban live exports. 

Or the fact that the House of Lords has historically been comprised of large land-owning aristocrats, with ventures in hunting, shooting, and farming animals. 

It’s a strikingly similar situation in the US, where Congress’s agricultural committees are dominated by lawmakers from farming states and districts, who may receive financial backing from farmers, or who are farmers themselves. Between 1995 and 2020, 33 members of Congress and their immediate family members collected a total of nearly $16 million in federal farm subsidies. 

Moreover, the United States Department for agriculture (USDA) - the government department that sets out nutritional guidelines - exists in part to promote the dairy industry, which it openly acknowledges.

So these are some reasons why we have ended up with a food system where an animal bred into existence for us, raised, and killed for us, can cost less than a punnet of blueberries or a few tins of beans, because it favours the interests of a small minority of landowners, businessmen and politicians.

Even those farming animals which do not directly benefit from large subsidies - like pigs and chickens who don't graze on pasture - pick up other subsidies from animal feed, which combined with tax relief and an intensive production system, leads to incredibly low prices at the checkout.

But it’s important to remember that this is a system based on a false economy. Experts calculate that the current food system has between £40 and £94 billion of hidden costs.

The evidence is clear - if the animal farming industry was forced to cover its costs on the environment and our healthcare system, it would not be financially viable - even if it received the current level of subsidisation. 

And what of the other hidden cost, the victims of our food system? 

Sure, subsidies might mean that you can buy chicken flesh or lambs livers or cow burgers for less than a bag of toilet paper, but does that reflect the true value of a life? Is this how cheap life has become to us?

Animal suffering is now so widespread and extreme that it seems impossible to find a way out of the mess we have created. But it really could be as simple as directing our subsidies elsewhere.

The Food Revolution

But there’s good news - subsidies don’t have to be bad. They can be used to ensure abundant, affordable, healthy, and ethical food for everyone in a way that works with nature, not against it. But we must urgently transition away from animal agriculture. Fortunately, scientists and academics have already analysed some alternative courses in detail, so let’s take a look at plausible options for reforming agricultural subsidies. 

A paper published in Nature, one of the most rigorous and respected scientific journals in the world, analysed various options for reforming global agricultural subsidies and calculated the outcomes on health, climate, and the economy. 

They found that restructuring subsidies and redirecting them to plant-based foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics, such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, would lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and diet-related mortality. With increased production and better calorie efficiency - meaning less nutrition wasted and recycled through animals - plus a larger, healthier workforce, there would be global increases in economic welfare of up to 5.5 billion dollars, which could be invested in more helpful initiatives like rewilding and alternative proteins. 

Now obviously, from a purely health perspective, plant-based wholefoods are optimal, and we will have an abundance of those if they are subsidised. But what of people’s appetite for meat, dairy, eggs, and processed foods? It’s hardly going to disappear overnight.

Well, this is where alternative protein comes in. This encompasses any plant-based and food-technology alternatives to animal protein, like soy and wheat protein, or cell-cultured meat.  

In 2018, the government commissioned an independent review of the British food system, which was published in two parts in 2020 and 2021 as The National Food Strategy. Along with urging the shift to a plant-based food system, the report also highlighted the potential of investing in alt proteins.

The report said: ‘The UK should be positioning itself at the forefront of this new industry…We estimate that developing and manufacturing alternative proteins in the UK, rather than importing them, would create an estimated 10,000 new factory jobs and secure 6,500 jobs in farming. So far, the Government has been slow to offer support and investment to companies developing novel proteins…We are in danger of missing a prime opportunity for green growth.’

One food technology mentioned in the report which looks particularly promising is precision fermentation. This is where yeast and bacteria are programmed in the same way as animal proteins, then brewed. It is essentially like making beer, but using protein and fat, and the end result is a product which is biologically identical to meat, dairy, and eggs, without involving a single animal. This process is already used to produce 99 per cent of the world’s insulin supply and 80 per cent of rennet, an enzyme used for producing cheese, so it’s an already tried and tested technology.

An environmental group called Replanet have produced a detailed report to transform the food system using precision fermentation. The Reboot food report, which was produced in collaboration with strategists, scientists, and politicians, calculated that if we scaled up precision fermentation, all of the world’s protein could be grown on an area of land the size of London. They call for the phasing out of subsidies for animal agriculture, and for taxpayer money to be invested in plant-based foods, precision fermentation, and rewilding all of the land spared from removing animal agriculture instead.

Of course, there’s the issue of animal farmers being out of a job, which would happen anyway if we stopped propping them up with unsustainable subsidies. It’s not a matter of if it happens, it’s a matter of when. That’s why the government needs to step up and support a just transition for farmers and fishing communities by providing new jobs in rewilding, plant-based farming and alternative protein, as well as providing retraining schemes, retirement payments for those wishing to exit the industry, state buyouts of farms and rural development funds for farmers seeking to start new businesses. 

Either way farmers will still have an income, but the planet won’t suffer for it.

At this pivotal moment, it is time for governments around the world to act, but also for ourselves. We can kick start the change today, by transitioning to a diet based on plants and alternative proteins, signalling to the world that it is time for a food revolution.

by Ed Winters