Exactly this. Meat is drastically cheaper than it would be from natural market forces and actual healthy shit is expensive.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian by the way but this aggravates me to no end and contributes to a lot of our problems.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian by the way but this aggravates me to no end and contributes to a lot of our problems.
We know meat can be easily substituted with plant based diet, so no one will starve.
Meat processing is also resource intensive (for example, it needs large amount of water).
We need to price in externalities, even the methane gas released by cattles should be calculated and put on the prices of meat as a tax.
I've heard two reasons for subsidizing crops.
1. The government wants the country to be somewhat self-sufficient for food. If, let's say, there was another world war and imports were cut-off, they want to avoid mass starvation.
2. Crop output from a farm will vary from year to year due to weather and other factors. Without subsidies, during a streak of good crop years, production of that crop will exceed demand and the price will drop. This will cause some farms to go bankrupt (the number of farms will decrease until supply matches demand again). If a bad crop year then follows, you'll have shortages. Subsidies can smooth out these inefficiencies cause by weather by keeping farms alive during the good years so we have enough crops during the bad years.
But, the amount and type of subsidies in the US is way off the charts for just those purposes.