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By Mollie Engelhart
America loves to debate socialism. We argue about universal healthcare, guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness and government dependency. We pride ourselves on our rugged independence and belief in free markets.
We warn that socialism destroys innovation, freedom and personal responsibility. But here’s the uncomfortable truth most Americans never stop to consider: the most centrally planned, government-dependent, subsidy-driven system in the U.S. isn’t medicine, housing, or energy — it’s food.
Our food system is not a free market. It is not capitalism in any recognizable form. It is a government-engineered economy propped up by taxpayer dollars at every stage, directed by regulation, shaped by corporate interests and leaving both consumers and farmers dependent, unhealthy and without real alternatives.
Each year, more than $40 billion of taxpayer money is used to subsidize commodity crops like corn, soy, wheat and cotton.
Crop insurance — also paid for largely by the public — is essentially another subsidy, and without it, most large commodity farms wouldn’t survive. But the subsidies don’t stop at growing.
Once harvested, those subsidized crops become corn syrup, seed oils, stabilizers, livestock feed, artificial ingredients, ultraprocessed food additives, and ethanol — fuel grown on prime farmland and heavily subsidized again under the banner of environmental benefit.
Then the same Farm Bill that subsidizes growing and processing also subsidizes purchasing those foods through SNAP benefits.
And when the predictable metabolic outcomes emerge — obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, autoimmune disorders — the government subsidizes the healthcare required to manage the consequences.
So the loop looks like this: we subsidize growing the ingredients. We subsidize the industry, turning those ingredients into processed food.
We subsidize the public buying those products. And then we subsidize the medical care required to treat the disease that food causes. That isn’t a food economy. It is a taxpayer-funded dependency system.
People like to imagine that subsidies make farming cushy. Nothing could be further from reality. Even with subsidies, 85% of U.S. farmers work a second job just to stay on their land and feed their families.
They are subsidizing the food system with unpaid labor simply to keep feeding the country. I once watched a dairy farmer who had just won the lottery. When asked what he planned to do with the money, he shrugged and said, “I’ll keep farming until it runs out.”
He wasn’t joking — he was describing reality. Ask a farmer where they see themselves in five years and many go silent. Some get emotional. Some laugh because it’s safer than crying. I know that feeling: the pit in your stomach, the exhaustion, the prayer for a path forward.
What we have is not capitalism. It is a hybrid of state control and corporate power — uncomfortably close to agricultural indentured servitude for the very people who feed the country.
And the regulations farmers face are not about safety — they are about control. To legally sell raw milk in Texas, I need a raw milk permit, a government-approved facility, a mop sink, a floor sink, a dishwashing sink, a handwashing sink, an employee restroom, specific ceiling materials and multiple pages of compliance requirements.
In Idaho, to legally sell raw milk, you need a business license. Same country. Same product. Same cows. In California, raw milk regulations are so extreme that only one company in the entire state can meet them.
When I lived in Ventura County and asked about applying for a dairy permit — not even raw milk, just a legal dairy — the official told me, “There isn’t a single dairy left in this county. The regulations are too much. We don’t recommend you apply.”
The department responsible for food production was actively discouraging food production.
Some people say, “Regulations should protect health, not eliminate competition.” But the government’s job was never to protect our health, and it certainly isn’t protecting it now.
If health were the priority, soda wouldn’t be cheaper than water. Ingredients banned in other countries wouldn’t appear in U.S. baby food. Seed oils wouldn’t be unavoidable. And products engineered for addiction wouldn’t be placed directly into school cafeterias and federally funded food programs.
This has never been about safety — it has always been about protecting industrial systems and the corporate interests behind them.
Meanwhile, the public is not thriving. We are overfed and undernourished, surrounded by food yet biologically starving for nutrients. We solved hunger by creating a new kind of starvation — one hidden inside colorful packaging and subsidized pricing.
And while we celebrate cheap food as if it’s proof the system works, we’ve lost 170,000 farms in just eight years.
So what is the path forward? It’s not bigger government, not more regulation, and not another layer of bureaucracy.
The solution is choice, access and freedom. We need regional processing, on-farm legal processing, reduced permitting, consumer willingness to support real farms and knowledge passed from farmer to farmer — not mandated, standardized, or enforced from a federal desk.
Agriculture was never meant to be uniform. Different soils, climates, cultures and regions require different approaches. We need fewer barriers, not more. And we need systems built for resilience and nourishment, not efficiency and control.
We can call this system whatever we want — capitalism, socialism, or something in between — but if a nation cannot freely feed itself, it isn’t free.
Originally published by Brownstone Institute.
Mollie Engelhart is a farmer, rancher and restaurateur. She is the author of Debunked by Nature: How a Vegan-Chef-Turned-Regenerative-Farmer Discovered That Mother Nature is Conservative
