ABSTRACT
The Farm Bill is the cornerstone of U.S. agrifood policy and plays a significant role in organizing the industrial food system through the circulation of comestible capital. The agriculture and nutrition subsidies authorized by the Farm Bill enable certain forms of agrifood activity while foreclosing others. Critical attention to the functions of these subsidies sheds light on how the Farm Bill conditions food system participation among stakeholders in drastically uneven ways. This chapter applies Giddens’ structuration theory, analyzing how the recursive dynamics of these sets of subsidies (re)produce capitalist food politics. Farm Bill subsidy rules and resources function to concentrate comestible capital among white agrifood elites, marginalizing Black and Brown communities. I argue that agriculture subsidies bolster corporatized food production to the exclusion of Black and Brown producers and how nutrition subsidies constrain equitable food access and perpetuate food apartheid. Moreover, the Farm Bill organizes mutual dependence between these sets of subsidies, thereby maintaining the structure of the industrial food system.
