Subsidies

The Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Database documents that from 1995 to 2023, US corn producers received $136.6 billion in federal subsidies and soy producers received $50.4 billion. Over the same period, all fruit and vegetable production combined received $1.7 billion. Corn and soy together account for over 50 per cent of total commodity subsidies, despite being grown primarily for animal feed, ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil extraction.

This is because the 1973 Farm Bill, written by Earl Butz under Nixon, replaced the New Deal supply management system with direct payments that incentivised maximum production. The bill was explicitly designed to produce cheap calories for industrial food manufacturing. Butz told farmers to plant "fencerow to fencerow." The surplus was absorbed by the nascent processed food industry, which converted cheap corn into high-fructose corn syrup and cheap soy into hydrogenated soybean oil.

The subsidy structure ensures that a calorie of soybean oil costs one tenth of a calorie of grass-fed beef. Food manufacturers rationally use the cheapest available inputs, meaning that seed oils, corn-derived sweeteners and soy protein isolate appear in over 60 per cent of supermarket products. The obesity epidemic is downstream of an agricultural policy that makes disease-promoting ingredients artificially cheap and nutrient-dense whole foods comparatively expensive.

The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee report published in October 2024 declared the UK food system broken and diet-related diseases a public health emergency.

The committee found that 22.1% of Year 6 children are living with obesity.

The annual societal cost of obesity is at least 1 to 2% of GDP.

Over 30 years, nearly 700 obesity policies were proposed by successive governments.

Rates continued rising throughout.

The Independent Review of NHS Hospital Food found the NHS spent £634 million on hospital food in 2018/19, much of it unappetising, reheated from frozen and highly processed.

The EFRA Select Committee criticised the government's leisurely approach to food security.

DEFRA analysis indicates that approximately forty per cent of the food items in a typical UK household shopping basket correspond to commodity categories receiving substantial direct production support, primarily cereals, dairy and processed ingredients.

Subsidies lower the shelf price of subsidised commodities below their true cost of production, making them artificially competitive against unsubsidised nutrient-dense whole foods. The market price signal that would otherwise direct purchasing is systematically distorted.

The outcome is a food system in which industrial commodity crops receive public financial support while the most nutritionally complex foods receive none, embedding the chronic disease epidemic into the economics of everyday food shopping.

The Trussell Trust distributed 2.99 million emergency food parcels in 2023-24, compared to 26,000 in 2008-09, a 115-fold increase. An additional estimated 1.5 million parcels were distributed by independent food banks outside the Trussell Trust network. The Food Foundation (2023) found that 18% of UK households experienced food insecurity in the preceding month, rising to 27% for households with children.

This is because food bank donations overwhelmingly consist of shelf-stable ultra-processed products: tinned beans, instant noodles, white pasta, biscuits, UHT milk and processed sauces. Fresh meat, organs, raw dairy, eggs and fresh vegetables are rarely donated due to storage limitations. The most nutritionally vulnerable people in the UK are systematically channelled toward the least nutritious food categories.

The paradox is instructive: the UK simultaneously spends £2.4 billion annually in agricultural subsidies (predominantly supporting grain and livestock feed production) while millions cannot afford to eat properly. The subsidy structure makes processed food cheap and nutrient-dense food expensive, creating the conditions that food banks then attempt to mitigate with the very same processed products.

The UK's post-Brexit Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) allocates approximately £3.3 billion annually to agricultural support (Defra, 2023). The scheme pays farmers for "public goods" including biodiversity, water quality and carbon sequestration. There is no allocation for nutrient density, diet-related health outcomes or national food security. Horticultural production (fruit and vegetables) receives less than 3 per cent of total support, despite Eat Well Guide recommendations that half of dietary intake should come from these foods.

This is because agricultural policy has been designed by agricultural ministries with no health mandate, while health policy has been designed by health ministries with no food production mandate. The result is structural incoherence: Defra subsidises cereal and oilseed production that feeds the ultra-processed food supply chain, while DHSC spends £6.5 billion annually treating diet-related disease. The Treasury funds both, never connecting the expenditure.

A 2021 National Food Strategy report by Henry Dimbleby recommended a "Health and Climate" levy on salt, sugar and UPF wholesaling to fund fresh fruit and vegetable provision for low-income families. The government rejected it. The subsidy system continues to incentivise the cheapest possible calorie production regardless of nutritional quality, while the NHS absorbs the health consequences at approximately double the agricultural budget.

The farming and countryside programme budget was cut by £100 million from the 2025 spending review. SFI closed for applications. Delinked payments for farms receiving up to £30,000 face a 76% reduction.

DEFRA described this as accelerating the end of payouts to large landowners. The NFU stated farmers cannot deliver more with less.

Compass Group, through its subsidiary Chartwells, is the largest school meals provider in the United Kingdom, operating in over 2,000 schools.

Public procurement data shows Chartwells winning contracts worth £350 million since 2016.

Sodexo operates through Alliance in Partnership and holds a £100 million Crown Commercial Service framework contract.

Free school meals in England cost approximately £1.4 billion per year.

The government funds each meal at £2.61 for 2025/26.

The estimated actual cost of providing a meal is £3.16.

Five catering providers ceased operating in schools during the second half of 2025 because the funding did not cover their costs.

The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee found monitoring and enforcement of School Food Standards to be weak.

The USDA purchases approximately 4.5 billion pounds of commodity foods annually and distributes them to the National School Lunch Programme, which serves 29.6 million children daily. These commodity purchases are explicitly structured to support farm prices by removing surplus production from the market. The top commodities supplied are cheese (surplus dairy), chicken (surplus poultry), beef, corn-based products and processed potatoes.

This is because the National School Lunch Programme was established by the National School Lunch Act of 1946, which stated its dual purpose: to "safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children" and to "encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities." The second purpose dominates procurement. When dairy prices fall, more cheese enters schools. When poultry is overproduced, more chicken nuggets appear on menus. The nutritional content of school meals is downstream of what needs to be sold, not what children need to eat.

The result is that American children consume an average of 640 calories of processed commodity food per school day, including reconstituted chicken products, processed cheese and corn-based snacks. Schools receive 20 cents per meal in commodity food credits. The processed food industry donates heavily to the School Nutrition Association (the industry lobby, not a health organisation) to ensure that pizza remains classified as a vegetable (tomato paste provision, 2011).

The UK government allocates approximately £2.53 per pupil per meal for free school meals (2023-24 rate). The School Food Standards (2015) require certain food groups but do not prohibit ultra-processed ingredients. Dimbleby's National Food Strategy (2021) found that 64% of calories consumed by UK children aged 4-10 come from ultra-processed foods, and school meals frequently rely on UPF-heavy staples such as reformed meat products, processed cheese and industrially produced bread.

This is because the procurement system prioritises cost and logistics over nutritional quality. A budget of £2.53 per meal, including labour, kitchen costs and overheads, leaves approximately £0.80-1.00 for actual food ingredients. Local authorities outsource catering contracts to large-scale providers (Compass, Sodexo, ISS) whose supply chains are built around shelf-stable, centrally manufactured processed foods.

Henry Dimbleby resigned from his government advisory role in 2023, stating that the government had rejected virtually all of his National Food Strategy recommendations. Jamie Oliver's 2005 campaign briefly improved school food quality, but budget pressures and the removal of ring-fenced funding gradually reversed gains. The children consuming these meals are simultaneously the most nutritionally vulnerable and the least politically powerful constituency.

The Agriculture Act 2020 established a seven year transition from 2021 to 2028, phasing out the Basic Payment Scheme and introducing Environmental Land Management Schemes.

The government committed to averaging £2.4 billion per year for the Farming and Countryside Programme.

Actual spend fell short: £2.275 billion in 2021/22, £2.297 billion in 2022/23 and £2.136 billion in 2023/24.

That is a cumulative underspend exceeding £300 million across three years.

The SFI cap of £1.05 billion for 2024/25 to 2025/26 was reached by March 2025, after which new applications were halted.

37,000 live agreements were in place when the cap was hit.

Lowland livestock farms derived 67% of their income from direct payments, averaging just £23,500 per year. These are the farms hit hardest by the transition.

The Social Market Foundation (2018) identified approximately 1.2 million UK households living in "food deserts," defined as areas where no full-service supermarket exists within one mile and public transport options are limited. Residents of these areas rely disproportionately on convenience stores and takeaways, where fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and unprocessed meats are either unavailable or significantly more expensive per calorie than processed alternatives.

The Food Foundation (2022) reported that the poorest 20% of UK households would need to spend 47% of their disposable income to follow the Eatwell Guide, compared to 11% for the wealthiest 20%. The cost of healthier foods rose 7.5% year-on-year, outpacing both inflation and wage growth. A basket of nutritious whole foods costs three times more per calorie than a basket of ultra-processed foods. When budgets compress, nutritional quality is the first casualty.

The barrier is economic, not educational. A single mother in Burnley earning minimum wage does not need to be told that liver is better than chicken nuggets. She needs liver to be available within walking distance at a price she can afford. The relationship between income and diet quality is near-linear, and the foods that are most accessible in deprived areas are precisely those that drive the metabolic disease burden those areas disproportionately carry.

Under the EU Common Agricultural Policy, England received approximately £2.4 billion per year in direct payments, roughly 80% delivered as Basic Payment Scheme area based payments.

Analysis of DEFRA data by Greenpeace and Unearthed found that more than two thirds of this budget went to the top 20% of claimants.

At least 16 of the 100 largest payouts went to entities owned by individuals on the Sunday Times Rich List.

Lowland livestock farms derived 67% of their income from direct payments, averaging just £23,500 per year.

Arable businesses derived only 32% from subsidies but averaged £123,300 per year.

The system was designed to pay the largest landowners the most money, with population nutrition as an afterthought at best.