I’m honestly suprised the us doesn’t just have a 25%+ import tariff. Would quickly cause more domestic manufacturing.
Like why do we even import garlic from China. We have plenty of domestic ability to produce.
Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo.
However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems without stopping to consider what impact it will have on that part of society is an incredibly rose tinted view of the world.
So there's a lot of avenues that we could take, and yeah, eliminating food subsidies entirely and not giving any other kinds of aid would probably be a mistake. I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just... there's a lot of things we could change or try that wouldn't leave people to starve. Recognizing that meat is subsidized opens up doors for us to talk about whether our current system is efficient, about what behaviors our current system incentivizes. If nothing else it at least acknowledges that we are currently messing with the market, that meat prices aren't naturally low, and that we if we're comfortable with that kind of intervention, then we could at least mess with the market in different ways to promote more diverse foods.
Right now, we are artificially boosting a few segments of the food industry to frankly unhealthy levels of consumption (at least in most of the US) in order to help people afford food. It is worth considering if it is possible to help those people without propping up industries that are at least indirectly responsible for a nontrivial number of health risks and environmental challenges in the US. I don't think most people here are saying we should leave income-strapped Americans to starve (or at least I'm not), but like you said, the current status quo isn't really working, and it has some some pretty big downsides.
Even if you don't want to touch subsidies at all, at the least we could talk about stuff like checkoff programs. I find it much harder to argue that government intervention into how food is advertised is for the benefit of low-income Americans, and I think the advertising that comes from that forced tax on food is responsible for some increase in consumption.
So the consequences would be poorer people would eat less meat, while the rich continue to eat unchanged.
That is the case with anything you want more expensive. The poor people would be the ones having less of it.
The moment I see any mention of price increase to curb spending is probably as naive as it is dangerous.
You always make a proper analysis and do multiple changes money earned on price increases on one category of foods could be spent to reduce another category of food.
You could e.g. tax sugar and junk food and use those earning to subsidize healthier foods , making healthier food more accessible to poor people.
Money saved one place can be spent other places. Instead of spending it on more tax breaks for the rich it could be spent on the poor providing a net gain for them.
So let's funnel that 25% import tarif or money we save from not subsidizing the meat industry into the federal food stamps program.
A lot of the low food prices in the US also contribute to this poverty. The low prices come at the back of people in the food industry doing long days for shitty pay. If the “solution” to people not getting food on the table was to keep pushing food prices down then one easily end up in a situation arguing against minimum wage and workers rights.
One has to look at the whole system and not just a tiny sliver of it.
Take the logic of "grow all your food at home" too seriously and you end up like this guy:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-sc...
America and/or North America is big enough of a domestic market to not need to export food.
Europe already has import tariffs on many American goods. Any broad import tariff actually benefits Americans more than it harms.
Money has to come from taxes or cuts somewhere else. Likewise a tariff gives money which could be spent elsewhere.
Hence a tariff one place could be used to create tax cuts or provide other benefits in another area.
In this case what matters is if you actually have a government which is trying to look out for the poor.
People import and export the weirdest shit with China. Even a small adjustment on tariffs might cause unseen ripple effect on businesses.