By Samantha Demanbey
- MASSPIRG IS HERE TO HELP!
Let’s stop wasteful subsidies to big agribusinesses. It is bad for small businesses and detrimental to the health of Americans. It makes no sense to pay huge corporations that manufacture unhealthy products that contribute to the country’s obesity and soaring healthcare costs. This is not a matter of business, but national health and small business security. Corporate needs should be put second to the needs of the American public. In studies it is proven that the people buying these junk foods are the lower classes
and they are choosing the unhealthy options over the more expensive, but better choice, because that is all that they can afford. This has happened many times in my own home and healthier products need to be made more affordable. This can only happen if we speak up, by supporting businesses that don’t produce unhealthy products the government doesn’t seem to find an issue. They probably get the notion of a consumer is a consumer and whatever they like they are going to buy, but sadly sometimes that isn’t the underlying factor.
Small farmers producing natural products like fruit and vegetables are the ones that should be given breaks and support from the government. But instead they are not given the benefits that bigger corporations that are known for making quick and unhealthy foods, “junk foods” are getting. This needs to stop.
I know the matter is not so simple as favoring big business over small independent businesses, but with recent economic struggles, from the standpoint of the average citizen – it definitely appears that way. Jefferson did not envision America as the land of the corporate giants, but rather a place where the average person could make something of themselves by positively contributing to society. Small farmers represent ordinary Americans trying to produce something good for their country. Their products are not masses of hazardous chemicals and synthetic materials just to get money fast, they are truly trying to make a living, by giving a way of living back to their community. Please do not support the agribusinesses that are producing items bad for the country. Think before you choose who is right and who is wrong.
For more information about this cause please go to: http://www.masspirgstudents.org/
