After a speech Tuesday, during which President Obama offered up an American future of heavy investment in renewable energy, health care and education to an all-around applause and smiles, he presented the realism behind his optimism in the form of his 2010 federal budget proposal.

In tackling the economic crisis, Obama’s budget asks Congress to shift America’s gears on several contentious issues. He’s asking representatives to push forward a pollution tax on industries to combat global warming, raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, lower reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid treatments and prescription drugs and substantially cut subsidies paid to big farms.

“We’re struck with how bold and courageous a budget it is,” said the spokesperson for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “There are a whole lot of things that are going to be extremely difficult because there are very powerful vested interests out there that will fight them.”

Obama did not ignore the challenges ahead. “I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy,” he said. “It represents a threat to the status quo in Washington.”

One of the longest-standing traditions it threatens is one quite familiar to Iowans: farm subsidies — a practice that began in the Great Depression with J. Edgar Hoover’s Farm Board, which fixed price floors for wheat and cotton and continued with Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which combated oversupply by paying farmers not to produce.

Though lobbied for as temporary measures, once introduced, agricultural subsidies were viewed as entitlements and were hard to take away. Maintaining subsidies has only resulted in expanding their breadth to an increasing amount of crops, from corn to honey.

Obama has indicated he wants to take baby steps toward shrinking the agricultural subsidy system, which, according to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, paid out over $177 billion from 1994 to 2006. Of this total, half was collected by just nine states — with Iowa coming in behind only Texas, collecting $15.9 billion. Roughly a third, $56 billion, was paid to producers of the most subsidized crop — corn — and 75 percent was collected by a mere 10 percent of beneficiaries.

Obama’s intention is to cut direct payments to farmers, regardless of crop prices or how much they grow, to farms with sales exceeding $500,000 in annual sales revenues in order to cap the amount of money an individual farmer can receive — a measure President Bush attempted in his veto of the 2008 Farm Bill but Congress overrode — and to direct an additional $1 billion to improve nutrition programs and school meals for children. All three measures would represent a sharp break from the much-debated five-year farm bill Congress enacted last year.

And they should be enacted.

Yes, an estimated 81,000 farmers nationwide — over 9,000 of them Iowans — would lose payments, but, as Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack asked, “If you had a dollar, where would you put it? Would you give it to a child for more nutritious eating? [Or] would you give it in a direct payment to a high-income [farm] operation?”

Although many farmers out there might choose themselves, the kids, as the cliche goes, are our future. The socialization of eating healthy or eating unhealthily starts at a young age, and shifting monies to child nutrition programs and healthier school meals that would otherwise go to large agribusinesses is a no-brainer. If children learn to eat healthier and grow up to do so, the extension of this spending shift could reduce future health care costs immensely through its impact on obesity.

Maintaining payments to the biggest farms might do just the opposite in at least one way, as many such farms produce corn that is eventually processed to produce high-fructose corn syrup. Regardless of all of the recent commercials on the equivalent calories contained in HFCS as compared to regular sugar, products with HFCS are very cheap — which invites consumers to purchase high-HFCS, high-calorie foods and refreshments.

For example, when you go to Hy-Vee with a few dollars in your pocket and a stomach yearning for a snack, will you buy an apple and a bottle of orange juice for somewhere around $3.50? Maybe, but you are more likely to buy a 67-cent packet of apple cinnamon Pop-Tarts and a 99-cent two liter of orange soda. You get much more bang for your buck — the only catch is, after making such a choice for the first half of your life, you are much more likely to become obese, incurring the many associated risks and costs.

So although Obama might open a much-needed debate on the nature of farm subsidy, including their constitutionality — as the power to tax was never vested in our government for the purpose of supporting one class at the expense of other classes — the Obamameter gives him a thumbs up for at least seeking this specific shift in the USDA’s budget.

As Vilsack stated, “You will see USDA make an effort to encourage Americans, and particularly America’s children, to consume more fruits, vegetables and specialty crops.” Given that agricultural subsidies will never go away, one can hope for a future when the subsidization of these types of crops is increased — perhaps making that apple and OJ the cheaper choice — but until then, this budget shift is at least a good start to accomplishing this goal.

 — Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.