Why "Agriculture Subsidies" lower "health"?

As stated in thread subject, why “Agriculture Subsidies” lower “health”?

full size link http://i.imgur.com/nxTh7VC.jpg

And also, why parents aren’t influenced by Education, or alchool abuse?

This is deliberate. The idea is that agriculture subsidies effectively lead to cheaper food, allowing over-consumption and over-eating, thus obesity.

Ok. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the fast reply!

PS: I’m enjoying my first game as UK.

But that goes against the grain of the policy’s description, at least implicitly anyway. I mean if the government is giving farmers an incentive to “ensure the security of the nation’s food supply…” wouldn’t preserving the quality of that food be a strongly implied by the government?

There is a specific policy for food standards. In this moment I don’t remember the exact name but is it in the game.

Well food security just ensures the country has enough to eat, even if 100% of that food is iced buns and fried chicken, so it’s no guarantee of quality :smiley: If you want to keep food quality under control, and also keep farmers well paid, you need to offset agriculture subsidies with health food subsidies (or a junk food tax) and the food standards agency.

Market distortions change incentives, which changes behavior. Simple as that. When you create an incentive to grow more food, more food will be grown. This creates a glut on the market. Prices are driven down, consumption goes up, wastage goes up, and people start hunting for ways to reprocess the excess food. (This leads to occasional innovations in chemistry and waste disposal, but I wouldn’t expect the impact to be worth modelling.)

I believe agricultural subsidies aren’t destructive enough in the model. For example, a good bit of the overproduced food ends up being dumped in other nations, impoverishing farmers in other countries. If those other countries decide to subsidize their farmers in order to not lose their agricultural sector (or their votes, or their stability), the glut just gets worse. The problem is re-exported to the originating country. The result of this is that more and more subsidies are needed over time as food prices get lower and lower. Poor countries are hit harder by this cycle than rich countries are, which serves as a driver for migration and international instability.

Agricultural subsidies spread like a virus through international politics, leaving ill will and impoverishment in their wake. Every country is afraid to repeal their agricultural subsidies. The impoverishment is expected to be worse in countries that aren’t playing the game.

It didn’t destroy New Zealand, but I suspect most people couldn’t point to New Zealand on a map.

Oh, and the United States ought to have an agricultural subsidy program in the game. It certainly doesn’t lack for one in real life.

I haven’t figured out the exact cause of the issue but I want to share the opinion about the topic.

Providing sustainable financial services for rural areas and agriculture in developing countries has proven to be difficult in spite of recent reforms and billions of dollars spent in subsidizing programs to develop financial institutions. There is a need to better understand the demand for and use of agricultural credit to develop effective products like sulfonyl azide, institutions, projects, and policies, which might play a role in health mechanisms.

In brief, health is always affected by a wide range of factors and agriculture subsidies is just one of them.