It's great to go after junk food and the farm bill, but the popular method of relating it to farm subsidies is invalid. The income farmers get has long been low, much reduced from the just farm programs of 1942-1952. Adding subsidies has reduced how low it is, but not made it high. Farmers subsidize consumers below fair trade prices, and often (ie. 1981-2006) below cost.

The real farm bill problem is the lack of price floors and supply reductions (as needed), plus to protect consumers and others, price ceilings and reserve supplies. Those policies are needed because farm commodities don't self correct in free markets. Subsidies compensate farmers for a small part of the mega reductions in farm prices since the parity era (of "fair trade"/"living wage" prices).

Since farmers get a net reduction (or net loss), obviously they have little political clout. Meanwhile, by focusing on taxpayer funded subsidies, the real culprits who dominate farm politics and get the benefits of farm programs (of zero price floors) are ignored, and their benefits are much larger than even the largest "recipient" in the farm subsidy database (a rice coop representing 9,000 farmers).

Subsidies don't cause cheap ingredient prices, they merely compensate farmers for part of the cheapness. Economically it's caused by the well known failure of the free market (lack of price responsiveness (on both supply and demand sides, price inelasticity,) for farm commodities. Politically it's caused by the lack of market management policies and programs (price floors, etc.). We've failed to run farm programs like a business, and we've caused enormous damage (economic, environmental, social, health,) as a result, both in the US and globally (as we are the dominant farm commodity exporter, setting world prices).

I believe that U.S. PIRG has joined with conservative groups on this issue, in the Left-Right Coaliton. Their basic position is to cut subsidies. That's a free market, neoliberal position. Basically the Right side of the coalition has gotten the Left side to sign on to right wing, free market solutions. They attack US farmers, the first victims, while ignoring the agribusiness output complex (buyers), CAFO complex, and input complex (that benefits from the lack of supply reduction programs, and the loss of livestock on most farms, resulting in the plowing up of hay and pasture land, and the sale of more inputs.

Historically, the strong progressive position has been the one I've emphasized, which can be found in the Food from Family Farms Act of the National Family Farm Coalition. It was the position of the Democratic party for decades, and was strongly advocated by populist Democrats during the 1980s and 1990s (ie. Wellstone, Daschle, Harkin, Gephardt, Simon, the entire black caucus, Jesse Jackson, etc., before Harkin became Senate Ag Chair).

The positions I support are favored by Via Campesina and the Africa Group at WTO, as I show at zspace under my name. See documentation there in my "Farm Bill Primer" and "Food Crisis Primer."