Nat'l food, Venezuela policies to pay off for LA

You win some, you lose some. Louisiana had that reinforced with recent developments about its sugar and oil industries.

This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a new, and radical, change in its guidelines for nutrition. Principally, it pivots away from processed food and other suggestions that invoked sugar-composed consumption.

That’s not so good for Louisiana sugar production, which leads the country. And it could be significant because, although not a lot of consumers will base their shopping choices on the 2025-30 dietary guidelines, promised cooperation with the Department of Agriculture’s nutrition programs — which send $400 million a day out the door — will affect what foodstuffs can be purchased, which affects demand, which affects producers.

This will hit negatively sugar producers. But even as Louisiana will be affected adversely by this, the seismic changes occurring in Venezuela will give the state’s economy a boost.

After the snatching of suspected drug kingpin Nicolas Maduro, whose side job was dictator of the country, the successor government has pledged greater cooperation with the U.S. government. That means far greater access to oil extraction, which under the Maduro regime had dropped off substantially, and for the single U.S. company that could remain, microscopically.

This is significant as oil from Venezuela, which has the world’s largest reserves, is of the heavier variety that Louisiana refineries disproportionately are able to process. This sudden influx of crude will provide a significant boost to these producers.

In all, it probably ends up a net benefit for Louisiana. Sugar is heavily subsidized by the federal government, while the private sector benefits from an influx of crude into Louisiana processing. That means any ripple effect from each will reverberate more strongly from the expanding oil sector than from the retrenching sugar sector.

Yet in another way, Louisiana may prosper from the food pyramid change. It almost certainly will prompt several state agencies to alter what they do, such as the Department of Health and Department of Education changing requirements (building upon previous state-level directives) concerning food provided in schools, child care centers, and nursing homes to what should evolve into healthier diets. Better health will make fewer demands on taxpayers, and that should have an outsized impact in Louisiana where almost a third of the population is on Medicaid programs, trailing among the states only New Mexico, California, and Alaska. That means the net economic multiplier loss of reduced sugar production likely will be more than offset by reduced Medicaid spending.

These acts, the doings of the Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration, continue to pay off for Louisianans.