the darkness has not overcome it

I read this great book for grad school a few years ago, "Cadillac Desert," about our policy on water in the west. It really brought home the utter ridiculousness of our agriculture policy in the country - although there have been some good unforeseen side effects of the policy too (like the influx of power right when we needed it during WWII). To quickly summarize the book's argument, the government built for gigantic dams the create reservoirs. Then farmers receive subsidized prices for water from those reservoirs. Because water has become so artificially inexpensive, farmers began grow water-dependent crops in arid areas where those crops should never be grown - even as farmers in other areas back East are paid to destroy those same crops. The real cost of a loaf of bread (after the subsidies for all the water, the charges for the taxpayer-funded dam construction, and the subsidies to destroy unneeded crops are added back in) is bizarrely high. Not even to mention the environmental damage of all of those dams - or the realities of pork-barrel politics - or the explosion of population in areas that can't naturally sustain it because of government-subsidized water. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, believe it or not, and he makes a compelling argument. If you read it you will never be able to look at food or water in the same way. :)