Note: Over the course of three weeks, as Congress begins discussion of the 2007 farm bill, Victual Reality will be devoted to analyzing the political economy of farming and teasing out an agenda for a socially and environmentally sustainable farm policy. It's more exciting than it sounds, we swear! [Read the first installment below, the second installment here, and the third here.]
Like a barnyard sow basking in attention at a county fair, the farm bill -- that monstrously complex five-year plan for federal agriculture policy -- has suddenly gained a high profile.
If it were only that simple.
Photo: iStockphoto
A classic example of omnibus legislation, the bill governs such disparate programs as food stamps and farm subsidies. The latter provision, with its byzantine formulas and mind-numbing jargon ("nonrecourse loan program," etc.), has been a particular source of public befuddlement. Until not so long ago, only agribusiness lobbyists and farm-interest groups paid it much mind.
That has changed. U.S. farm subsidies are now big news, and seemingly everyone's got an opinion about them. The Washington Post has devoted in-depth coverage to them. Groups ranging from the Environmental Working Group to the global anti-poverty organization Oxfam to the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute have cogently denounced them.
All of this is to the good. When a large swath of public policy becomes buried under the weight of impenetrable language, it's reasonable to suspect that the treasury is being pillaged for private gain and little public benefit. It's no doubt healthy that federal agriculture policy is finally getting a public airing.
Yet farm policy has operated under a veil of rhetorical obscurity for so long, and generations of U.S. citizens have gotten so far away from the land that sustains us -- less than 2 percent of the population now farms -- that it pays to take a fresh look at agricultural economics before demanding an abrupt end to public support for farms.
Farm Economics 101
Does farming deserve public support at all?
The question is worth asking. Other industries flourish with little or no government support. When the price of computer chips falls, for example, dominant chip-makers Intel and AMD have a simple remedy: they make fewer chips. With a dearth of chips on the market, computer makers begin to bid the price back up, and the chip makers are happy again.
Typically, of course, the newly high chip prices coax the chip makers into boosting production, and the whole cycle begins anew.
But computer chips and crops work differently. Say you're an Iowa corn farmer and the price of corn futures drops after you've planted the spring crop. Unlike Intel, you can't slash production any time soon; you have to wait until the next season's planting.
Worse still, when the time comes to put the next season's crops into the field, you're faced with a harsh fact. If you decide to plant less corn, there's no guarantee that the corn price will rise. Why? Because unlike Intel -- which essentially shares the chip market with AMD -- you have thousands of competitors. Unless you can figure a way to organize a significant portion of them to join you in cutting production, you're not going to succeed in pushing prices up.
Since no mechanism exists to coordinate farmers in their planting decisions, they tend to respond to price drops in a way that would be alien to an Intel exec: they plant more corn. The calculation: If they're going to hold their income steady while prices fall, they'll have to bring more product onto the market. But since thousands of other farmers are making the same decision, the market just gets flooded with corn and prices fall further.
But there's another, longer-term problem that haunts farming. To put it in economists' jargon, productivity outruns demand. What does this mean? Simply that farmers -- and the petrochemical, biotechnology, and heavy-machinery industries that cater to them -- keep figuring out new ways to squeeze more and more food out of less and less land, but the human body's caloric needs don't change much. Food demand, in economists' terms, is pretty inelastic.
Between 1948 and 2002, total U.S. agricultural output rose by a factor of 2.6, while population didn't quite double. Since the food supply grew faster than population, it's no wonder that the prices farmers fetch for their goods have steadily fallen.
Now, this steady downward pressure doesn't mean prices don't sometimes rise. Recently, for example, corn prices surged, bolstered by growing ethanol demand and Wall Street speculation. Again, though, external factors, and not farmers' own planting decisions, sparked the rally. Moreover, farmers will likely respond to the windfall by scrambling to plant more corn -- a factor expected to bring corn prices back down.
As University of Tennessee agricultural economist Daryl Ray put it in an influential 2002 paper [PDF], technologies that increase supplies and put downward pressure on prices are quickly adopted. The lower prices then encourage the adoption of more cost-reducing technologies, and prices continue their slide. In other words: you can't win.
Bread and Butter
Why should this matter to the broader society? Shouldn't a long-term trend of falling prices -- i.e., cheaper food -- be a good thing?
One problem is that food is such an important product, so critical to life, that it's in society's interest to promote a healthy, thriving farm sector. In fact, we want farmers to overproduce a little and maintain a surplus, because we never know when a drought, a flood, or some other disaster is going to wipe out an important harvest.
In the absence of organized government support, society would be asking farmers to bear the burden of carrying a surplus (in the form of steadily lowering prices) while counting on the benefits of food security when calamity strikes.
Moreover, society's stake in agriculture extends beyond the brute fact that everyone needs to eat. Farmers' decisions have huge impact not just on land, but also on water and even air quality.
In that context, it seems fair and even wise for society to accept a share of the farming burden -- that is, to support farming on some level. The questions then become: Does current farm policy, as embedded in the soon-to-expire 2002 farm bill, work to bolster farm health and enhance food security? If not, what would a farm policy that did so look like? I'll be addressing these questions over the next few weeks.
I'll be addressing these questions over the next few weeks. [Read the next installment here, and the following one here.]
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Comments
View as Flat
Pandu Posted 3:32 am
23 Jan 2007
I don't know how you wrote this article without touching my primary objection to agricultural subsidies, which is that they strongly favor animal slaughter and meat-eating. In addition to the harm done to animals, the subsidies add a competative disadvantage to farmers in developing countries.
Based on my understanding of ecology and on a few books on the subject, I know that the costs associated with meat production are much higher, perhaps one to two orders of magnitude, than vegetable or grain production. Yet one can buy a hamburger for less than a bell pepper. I understand that this is mainly due to agricultural subsidies.
To briefly quote a recent U.N. report, "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
From my perspective, it seems that the primary goal of agricultural subsidies in the USA is to provide cheap meat to Americans. Ending such subsidies is by far my most important political objective.
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Jocelyn Posted 4:03 am
23 Jan 2007
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caniscandida Posted 6:04 am
23 Jan 2007
It is curious how this civilization of ours, which pays honor to the Enlightenment, and generally admires the rule of reason, and the development of the intellect, nevertheless most anti-intellectually refuses to pay attention to where its food comes from.
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katesisco Posted 6:19 am
23 Jan 2007
These farm subsidies are not supporting family farmers but factory farms!!
Read "Raise more Hell and Less Corn!" by an insider who knows.
In this article, it talks about how farmers plant and don't know what price they will be selling for; that's the way it used to be but it isn't anymore. Nowdays, the farmer is forced to obligate his crop for a price set by the big corps (Centex, etc.) before he plants. He CONTRACTS his crop before it is even planted. The big corps have the American farmer between a rock and a hard place and they know it.
The subsidies?? They are going to the factory farms. They allow the big corps to collect government money (furnished by the tax payer) to grow (in the case of the corporate owned farmland) and to pay below-cost prices to the contracted farmers for crops (lets say corn) so they can sell this crop for which they have already been paid to members of the global trade agreement (lets say Mexico) for a price that undercuts the country's own home-grown corn and floods the market with its cheap product there by destroying the homegrown market and forcing the farmer out of business. Its called FAIR TRADE.
Guess how many companies collect this subsidy? Guess how few companies control the crop contract business?
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Tom Philpott Posted 8:14 am
23 Jan 2007
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bookerly Posted 11:21 am
23 Jan 2007
I agree that we need to preserve our farmland rather than turn it all into subdivisions and parking lots.
There are a number of problems. One is that much of our farmland (and the trend continues in that direction) is not part of family farms, but is rather large corporate farms.
We face a devil's dilemna. How can we support our true small family farms, without giving large sums of money to giant corporations? Or do we really want to? (After all, if they don't get the large sums of money, won't large corporations consider turning their land over to large developers as soon as it makes economic sense to do so?)
As long as land is a commodity, we face this danger. At the moment, there is no trend of thought in America that seeks other ideas than that of land as something with monetary value.
Another problem is our position in the global marketplace. While it is great to support local businesses (farms), we have promised other, poorer nations, that if they open up all of their markets to our industries, we will open up our agricultural industries to theirs.
People can like or dislike this, but the pressure on developed nations to allow food imports from poor nations on an equal level is not going to go away.
(And the pressure doesn't just come from the poorer nations, industries that want access to those nations (such as finance and insurance, even manufacturing) will also support this trend).
Ignoring it will not make it go away. Any plans for sustainable local agriculture in America must address this issue, and begin to search for solutions.
But it is a great topic for discussion, thanks Tom!
patrick
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Pandu Posted 11:34 pm
23 Jan 2007
No need to preserve a lot of farmland as such. Get rid of the subsidies so that the price of meat reflects its actual costs, and the subsequent dietary shift would make about 90% of the current farmland unnecessary. Preserve some and let the rest grow into a forest or whatever.
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crfs1976 Posted 1:11 pm
25 Jan 2007
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Tom Philpott Posted 1:25 pm
25 Jan 2007
You're right about direct subsidies, but remember, most of that subsidized, artificially cheap corn and soy goes into feeding livestock, representing an enormous indirect subsidy.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 3:23 pm
25 Jan 2007
I think that it is helpful to divide the question of pressure on farmland between the heartland and elsewhere (particularly around the coastal megalopolises).
Farm policy in the United States is driven largely by the concerns of the states in the Mississippi River basin (and eastern Texas), where most of the corn, soybeans, cotton and rice are grown, and much of the livestock, are raised. While the peri-urban edges of this vast area are being eroded by development for housing and commercial establishments (and now by the development of biofuel plants, which also require paved land), most of the remaining land is not under strong pressure for non-agricultural uses that would destroy the land's agricultural potential. (I chose that wording carefully, since we know that some agricultural uses, on the other hand, do destroy the land's long-run agricultural potential.)
Indeed, in the Great Plains (i.e., the western third of the Mississippi River Basin), the concern has long been depopulation rather than development. Until the great white-lightning hope of ethanol came along, the most hotly debated proposal concerning that area was the one set out by two (eastern) University Professors, Frank and Deborah Popper, in their notion of a Buffalo Commons.
A key element of the Buffalo Commons idea was to "deprivatize" a significant portion of the region through voluntary contracts between the Forest Service and Plains farmers and ranchers. The Poppers' proposal was to pay participating farmers and ranchers the value of what they would have cultivated over the next 15 years, but for planting and re-establishing native shortgrasses, according to a Forest Service-approved program. At the end of the period, the Forest Service would purchase their holdings except for a 40-acre homestead. The Poppers envisioned such a policy ultimately establishing native grasslands over an area of perhaps 10 or 20 million acres (40,000 or 80,000 km²).
As suggested by its name, part of the Buffalo Commons idea involved knocking down fences and encouraging buffalo to graze the grasslands once again. Nowadays, that vision has been supplanted by proponents of lignocellulosic ethanol, who would have the grasslands grazed by machines.
In short, in the Great Plains region, current farm policies have little effect on competition between agricultural uses and "development", except in the broadest sense of the terms.
Neither do they, on balance, do much to protect farms at the opposite end of the spectrum: in the peri-urban areas of the east, west and Great Lakes region. Pressure on farmland near cities, which is often devoted to crops that do not benefit hugely from Federal farm programmes, is tremendous. That is why organizations like the American Farmland Trust and the Nature Conservancy have pressed (with some success) for more targetted, federal and state-level farmland-protection programs, as well as local ordinances and programs that give landowners the tools they need to keep their land in farming.
Among the types of policies that can help preserve farmland are conservation easements. As defined by the
A conservation easement is a voluntary, legally binding agreement that limits certain types of uses or prevents development from taking place on a piece of property now and in the future, while protecting the property's ecological or open-space values.
I am sure that Tom is much more familiar with those programs and organizations than I am, so I'll leave any further elaboration of this topic to him.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:33 pm
25 Jan 2007
You make a very unpersuasive case that farmers need welfare (that's what it is) more than other sectors of the economy. The private insurance market is sufficient for farmers to hedge their risks just like any other business- the fact that farmers don't know how much it's going to rain is no different than chip makers not knowing how much technology is going to change or what demand will be for chips
Even if we were to concede that farmers are "special" and deserve welfare payments the simplest and most equitable way to do it would be a lump-sum- you want to farm, ok, you get 25K, end of story. Produce whatever you want. It would be a lot cheaper and good for the environment. There is simply no case for production subsidies that makes any sense.
The amount of money for conservation is a pittance- a couple percentage points. Also, why should we pay people not to trash the environment? That's the opposite of the polluter pays principle.
Unfortunately, because of electoral politics farm states will continue to get a disproportionate share of revenue and agribusiness will continue to swindle us for the foreseeable futture, but environmentalists should keep making the case that IT IS WRONG, so that eventually reason and sanity will prevail.
J.S.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:53 pm
25 Jan 2007
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bookerly Posted 4:31 pm
25 Jan 2007
Ron, thanks for your comments.
You are corect in that my view point was near urban area centric. Clearly a mistake!
This adds to the issue of what a farm bill should be more food for thought (grin).
We need to ask ourselves what we are trying to accomplish, and what are the possible means of accomplishing it.
Right now, we need regional land use policies, which can then be rolled up into national policies (together in one "bill", but not one size fits all).
Most of the traditional agricultural community (smaller farmers) is trying to keep things the way they have always been, without recognizing that this is not really possible.
Unfortunately, our adherence to the ideas of a "free market" and "private property" keep us from planning and managing our land usage in any way what so ever.
We are prisoners of this false ideology.
Dear Jason,
Land is not consumable. It is a finite resource the use of which is affected by things like weather which are independent of market forces.
How would a free market lacking subsidies deal with a drought? Or the freeze in crops in California? Mostly it would not.
If we want to have farms, we need to understand more about the real forces involved, of which the market is only one.
The danger of a free market is that we try to apply a dollar value based on current demand to our resources. There is no quicker way to destroy biodiversity than this!
Your arguments are out of touch with the real world facing farmers.
We do however, need to take a hard look at agriculture and where it is going, then combine this with land use and planning to manage our national lands better.
And we should not forget the people who work in the fields, canneries and slaughter houses either. They are as much part of agriculture as are the owners of farms and factories.
patrick
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:56 pm
25 Jan 2007
How would a free market lacking subsidies deal with a drought? Or the freeze in crops in California?
And then add:
Mostly it would not.
We've come so accustomed to looking to government to minimizing the risks of farming, that it is sometimes easy to forget that, prior to the 20th century, farmers planned for drought and frost -- in particular, by diversifying what they produced, and not planting crops that were vulnerable to normal weather variations in the first place.
Of course, it is pretty hard to prepare for truly extreme weather or climatic events, such as the year without a summer", which followed the 1816 erruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. And farmers are human, which means that some will invariably look to the recent past and assume conditions will remain the same in the future. That is, essentially, what happened in the lead up to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when hundreds of thousands of people started plowing up the fertile -- but fragile -- soil of the Great Plains.
The initial motivation of the farm programs that emerged out of the Dust Bowl era was largely humanitarian: to help families whose lives had been devastated by the drought. Parallel programs were set up to teach better soil and water conservation, and to improve long-range weather monitoring. All good stuff.
Unfortunately, like a variation of Gresham's law, in which bad subsidies tend to drive out subsidies that are not so bad, farm policy eventually morphed into the massive transfer program we see today.
Modern technologies, such as remote sensing and soil-moisture monitoring, better weather prediction, and new institutions for organizing collective insurance, have reduced the need for governments to take the lead in managing many farming risks. There may be a role for government, but it is likely to be limited and targeted.
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:50 am
26 Jan 2007
The great thing about Global Heating is that there will be more and more arable land. The exclusive US breadbasket will start to extend way into Canada.
Also increased moisture will start to make even the Sahara become the farm it once was. There will be more crops around the Earth by the middle of the 21st Century than when that guy in "Idiocracy" told them to stop pouring Gatorade on the soil.
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awol Posted 3:55 am
26 Jan 2007
But with all due respect, the Farm Econ 101 lesson needs a bit of work:
Author says that farmers "tend to respond to price drops ... by planting more corn"
And three paragraphs later, that farmers respond to price rises by "scrambling to plant more corn"
This is silly! Obviously corn price drops lead to the conversion of corn growing land to more profitable uses (soybeans, McMansions, whatever...) Price rises lead to more corn.
And Intel/AMD is a terrible example of a functioning market - in fact, antitrust regulators have been all over the chip industry for years and (implications of illegal price-fixing aside) nobody would argue that two competitors can lead to a well-functioning marketplace.
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awol Posted 3:59 am
26 Jan 2007
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:08 am
26 Jan 2007
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Tom Philpott Posted 4:39 am
26 Jan 2007
Computer chips may be a bad example. but the industry well illustrates your point: that in classical economics, producers respond to price drops by cutting production. But classical economics doesn't do a very good job of describing agriculture.
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Tom Philpott Posted 4:54 am
26 Jan 2007
Cheers,
TP
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willa Posted 7:02 am
26 Jan 2007
Of course, even if some of the other issues were the same, I'd probably still think buying more local produce is a good thing, and corn is one of the few locally-grown things that is really filling (I hate when I end up buying basically all of the substance of the meal from the regular grocery store and trying to feel like I'm "eating locally" just because the salad and the herbs are local).
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Tom Philpott Posted 8:12 am
26 Jan 2007
One of the world's great civilizations, Mexico, is built on corn. There's nothing wrong with it; it's a powerful concentration of nutrients and carbohydrates. But, when its grown in vast monocrops, on land riddled with chemicals, from genetically modified seeds designed to maximize yield and repel insects, I think it's pretty nutritionally suspect.
And when that suspect corn is then processed in a way that strips away everything besides sugar, as happens with high-fructose corn syrup, then it's actively damaging. As it is when it's fed in great heaps to animals that evolved to eat grass.
But there's no reason to deny yourself the pleasure of sweet corn in season, or tortillas made from whole corn freshly ground into masa.
As with so many things, the US food system has taken a perfectly good food, mass-produced it, stripped it of any nutritional value, caused a healthcare crisis, and then created that myth the that food itself, and not the system that trashed, is the problem.
Makes me nuts, but gives me plenty to write about.
Cheers,
TP
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Jason D Scorse Posted 8:41 am
26 Jan 2007
J.S.
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bookerly Posted 7:54 pm
26 Jan 2007
Ron,
Prior to the 20th century, many farmers lived in poverty, barely making a living. And those were often the people who owned the land!! Those who merely worked the land as tenants or paid labor lived lives that were not pleasant at all.
During the Dust Bowl years, migrating workers were sometimes murdered at the border with California, or driven back into the desert to die.
I see little evidence that anything called a "free market" is suited to the nature of agriculture. (I agree with Tom on this point).
Jason, if our agriculture system is so advanced, why do so many farm workers fare so poorly?
patrick
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Ron Steenblik Posted 10:33 pm
26 Jan 2007
I'm sure we could debate for days the relative roles played by "market forces" and government encouragement and intervention in precipitating the Dust Bowl. High prices for wheat certainly played a part, but so did misleading information, bad advice and active encouragement by the government:
In 1924 there was a prolonged drought. World War I had just ended a few years before and had disrupted agricultural production in Europe. To make up for food shortages caused by the war, the US government encouraged farmers all over the United States to plant crops "from fence to fence."
We agree that a lot of people suffered. But the conditions then and now are very different. Then, farming was the occupation of a large percentage of the population. Many people tried their hand at it because they had few other options. Today, few people in the United States become full-time farmers without lots of training, technical knowledge, and capital.
Market forces assert themselves no matter what. The issue is whether government policies distort them in an unproductive and environmentally damaging way, or smooth the rough edges and steer them towards socially desirable outcomes.
My point, simply, was that policy makers need to think carefully about what risks they want the government to try to mitigate, and what could be handled more effectively by individual farmers, or farmers acting collectively (e.g., through co-operatives or community-based "Landcare" groups). Look to New Zealand for an alternative model.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:06 am
27 Jan 2007
J.S.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:21 am
27 Jan 2007
J.S.
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bookerly Posted 5:51 am
27 Jan 2007
Hi Jason,
My question for you related not to farmers, but to farm workers. The people who pick the crops, who work by the hour or by the bushel in the fields.
Why do they fare so poorly if the free market is such a great idea?
As to crop insurance, as global warming continues, it may either disappear or become unaffordable.
If the free market is so great, why are people in Mexico starting to go hungry as the price of corn rises?
patrick
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bookerly Posted 5:57 am
27 Jan 2007
Hi Ron,
You've got me. I know nothing about New Zealand. Can you please elaborate?
It's great to suggest that farmers go out and form cooperatives, but sometimes life isn't that simple, there are other forces at work. Inertia, lack of knowledge being two (grin).
Market forces assert themselves? Well, it depends on what you mean by market forces. Do you mean the monopolistic practices of agri-giants like Cargill and ADM?
I do agree that we should discuss how and where government should get involved!
BTW, I should state that I do not believe there is any such thing as a "free market", I prefer the term "manipulated market", since they are almost always manipulated, the manipulator varying.
patrick
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Tom Philpott Posted 6:09 am
27 Jan 2007
I'm not sure if US fruit and veg farmers serve your ideological purposes as much as you'd like. They're squeezed between rising labor costs, low prices from big buyers like Wal-Mart, and cheap imports. As you yourself recently pointed out, California garlic farmers recently made a plea for subsidies -- expect to see much more of that as the Farm Bill debate heats up.
Moreover, your agricultural patriotism is bracing, but the US stands in the midst of a crisis in diet-related maladies. It's hard to see whom our food-production system actually works for, apart from sharegolders in transnational food processors and retailers, or consumers affluent enough to shop at farmers markets where local, organic food is available.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:15 am
27 Jan 2007
And Patrick- can you tell me any point in history when farm laborers have faired well? And by the way, they are doing a hell of lot better than they were in Mexico- that's why they risk so much to come here.
J.S.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 9:14 am
27 Jan 2007
Oscar Wilde once quipped, "There is this world and the next, and then there is New Zealand." As explained on the excellent web site, "Farming Without Subsidies?",
Governmental policy at this time [in the late 1970s, following the UK's entry to the EU, the oil price rises, and several other events] exacerbated the situation by seeking to boost agricultural production based on the hope of greater returns -- farmers were offered subsidies to purchase more fertilizers, and tax breaks for increasing herd sizes -- further depressing commodity prices through oversupply. In part because of the recognized importance of agriculture within the national economy, farmers were also offered price supports, low-interest loans, disaster relief, weed-eradication subsidies and special training programs to get them through the hard times. As the laundry list of farm support programs grew, it became an increasingly impossible burden for this small national economy to bear, threatening to further undermine the stability of the whole system.
By 1984, New Zealand's farm-subsidy system was clearly broke. A number of radical changes were instituted, backed by the majority of farmers. The principles followed since then can be summed up as follows:
Keep a basic social security framework for farmers as for urban residents, keep funding for agricultural research, ... keep environmental barriers like measures to keep agricultural pests from leaping around the world, and do away with the rest.
There has been no serious movement in NZ to go back to the old system.
While NZ is perhaps unique, it is not alone in opting out of production- and input-related subsidies. Australian farmers, with the exception (in the past) of producers of sugar, tobacco and wool, have generally operated under much more market-oriented governments than their U.S. counterparts. That does not mean that government has been absent. Besides helping to fund some top-notch agricultural research institutions, the Federal government also supports and encourages community-based collective action to address common, local problems, like exotic pests, soil erosion and salinization.
Looking towards the north, there are also useful lessons to learn from Canada's agricultural policies. Although it still maintains an expensive and inefficient supply management system for milk, eggs and poultrymeat, it successfully made the transition a few years ago from supporting crops to supporting farm incomes, mainly through income insurance and stabilization programs.
"Market forces" is a neutral term, and is shorthand for the forces of supply and demand. Even centrally planned economies cannot escape the consequences of ignoring them for long.
What I don't understand is why you keep referring to some Hobbesian view of the "free market". This discussion, I thought, was about the distortions and inefficiencies created by some of the current agricultural support policies (and, many would argue, the rather laissez faire attitude taken towards private, oligopsonistic agri-food giants.)
So, if you feel strongly that markets are invariably manipulated by somebody, are you suggesting current government policies are already ideal? You express concern for migrant farm laborers. What are they getting out of current farm programs?
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willa Posted 9:41 am
27 Jan 2007
Okay, I feel better now. :) I will go right ahead and buy lots of fresh corn from the local farms, where they have two dozen rows of corn or so, with various other things on either side.
Man, now I want fresh corn, and it's still so many months away...maybe I'll make some vegetable soup with frozen corn (not local, b/c I wasn't efficient enough last summer), canned tomatoes (local, canned in a pot on my stove) and some reasonably-local onions and potatoes. Oh, and green chile imported all the way from New Mexico Not local, but damn it's good!
Fundamentally, my instinct is to support farmers, because the economics stuff makes my eyes glaze over, but the food itself, as you see, makes me want to go make a big pot of soup. :)
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Jason D Scorse Posted 10:06 am
27 Jan 2007
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bookerly Posted 11:45 am
27 Jan 2007
Ron,
Thanks for your thoughtful postings. I do want to agree that the current system in many ways makes no sense (in fact I have said so earlier in this thread). I want to separate out the labor and other issues, because they are not the same (smile). I am not completely clear what your position is regarding the current system, do you favor eliminating it, or changing it to what?
I am always suspicious of wholesale changes in government policies because there are often hidden agendas that show up later (smile). For instance, the sugar industry in the US spends a lot of money supporting the Cuban Economic Blockade not because they hate communism, but because they don't want the competition.
The point of this is not that I automatically think the government should throw money at large agricultural corporations (I have said that as well), but that before we make massive changes, we should look at what our goals are, and what the reality is.
The laws of supply and demand? I am not sure exactly what you mean. Or how you expect to subject land policy to them.
When we talk about farm policy, we are not only talking about agriculture, we are talking about land policy. We need to be clear about this.
If the laws of supply and demand suggest that suburban sprawl is more economically beneficial, should we then stop trying to protect the relatively open land we call "farmland"?
There are no un-manipulated forces of supply and demand, which is why I continually criticize the usage of the term. Governments manipulate them, as do large corporations.
My goal here has been to try to suggest that if we want to eliminate the present system, we need to look beyond the merely agricultural implications of doing so, and understand the impact of said elimination on land usage and policies.
The reason they paved paradise and put up a parking lot was because they could make money doing so. This does not mean that society benefited, but merely those who did the paving and putting up.
As to New Zealand and Canada. New Zealand is an interesting case, but it and Canada both have something in common, relatively low population density, which means less pressure on the replacement of farmland by suburban housing. So, it is not clear that the same forces are at work in the United States. It is difficult to compare disimilar economies, and perhaps sometimes dangerous.
I am not automatically against going the New Zealand path (if it makes sense, and I wonder why it is not being copied in other countries?). But think that it needs more discussion.
Again, if we are going to change the current system, we need to consider the impact of the changes on not only agriculture but land usage.
patrick
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bookerly Posted 11:55 am
27 Jan 2007
Jason,
Your comment that farm workers have always done poorly is very interesting! Please apply that logic to animals (grin). You seem to be suggesting that since they always do poorly, we shouldn't object. Enjoy your whale steak!
Should environmentalists care about agricultural workers (not all of whom are migrants, and not all of whom come from other countries, though it is amazing how many countries import guest workers for temporary exploitation, er, help).
I think so. For me, how we treat the poor is akin to how we treat nature.
So, if we are going to change agriculture policy (or advocate it), should we consider the impacts on workers? Should we try to improve their lot as part of the process?
It's worth noting that the Republicans are trying to strip farm workers of minimum wage protection as we speak.
I don't think arguing that people do poorly under the current system is sufficient (it has a feel of an unstated "so what" that maybe should not be there?).
If we are about changing things, we should try to change them for the better, and for everyone, not just a few.
patrick
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:40 am
28 Jan 2007
PB: It is not completely clear what your position is regarding the current system, do you favor eliminating it, or changing it to what?
RS: I think there is definitely need for major reform. In my opinion, the New Zealand approach is as good as it gets, though there are also elements of other countries' policies (including some U.S. policies) that have merit. The challenge is to figure out, politically, how to make the transition to something a lot better. It was much easier for the Kiwis to undertake major reforms in the 1980s than it would be for the United States now. For one, the subsidies introduced in the 1970s were meant as transitional measures, and by the 1980s had not been around long enough to be considered by the rest of the population as entitlements.
PB: I am always suspicious of wholesale changes in government policies because there are often hidden agendas that show up later (smile). For instance, the sugar industry in the US spends a lot of money supporting the Cuban Economic Blockade not because they hate communism, but because they don't want the competition.
RS: Er, all the more reason to reform U.S. sugar policy?
PB: The point of this is not that I automatically think the government should throw money at large agricultural corporations (I have said that as well), but that before we make massive changes, we should look at what our goals are, and what the reality is.
RS: Hard to disagree with that. But the problem is not lack of analysis as to what the reality is (U.S. farm policy is something that is debated continuously, among thousands of people), or lack of clarity as to goals (which is different from disagreement over goals), but inertia, the size and power of the farm lobby, the disproportionate numbers and influence of farm-state senators in Congress, and the readiness of the public to buy into myths that reflect the stories of farming handed down to them from their grandparents, rather than hold those myths up to the light of the modern day. (The most classic is that farm policy is all about protecting the family farm.)
PB: When we talk about farm policy, we are not only talking about agriculture, we are talking about land policy. ... If the laws of supply and demand suggest that suburban sprawl is more economically beneficial, should we then stop trying to protect the relatively open land we call "farmland"?
My goal here has been to try to suggest that if we want to eliminate the present system, we need to look beyond the merely agricultural implications of doing so, and understand the impact of said elimination on land usage and policies.
RS: Federal farm programs, to the extent that some of them have as an objective protecting agricultural land, are concerned mainly with maintaining fertility and minimizing erosion on existing agricultural land. They do little to keep agricultural land from being paved over. That problem is left to state and local governments to deal with, through zoning decisions and land taxation policies.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 12:46 pm
28 Jan 2007
Quoting from two recent press releases:
First, from 17 January 2007:
Gold Collar: How State Job Subsidies in the Chicago Region Favor Affluent Suburbs
Job subsidies granted by several Illinois state agencies have severely shortchanged Chicago and many parts of Cook County. Instead of helping to revitalize areas in the region hardest-hit by plant closings and job flight, the state's development deals have favored affluent, outlying areas with low unemployment and the strongest tax base. The resulting spatial mismatch between new job creation at the fringe and economic need at the core means many transit-dependent workers cannot benefit from regional growth.
and, from 6 December 2006:
The Geography of Incentives: Economic Development and Land Use in Michigan
The unfair geographic distribution of economic development subsidies in Michigan favors well-off and thinly populated areas, delivering few benefits to the state as a whole and harming the state's economy. The state should get all the options on the table and begin coordinating its economic development programs with land use planning to make more efficient use of infrastructure, reduce tax base stress, and revitalize existing communities.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:17 pm
28 Jan 2007
And Patrick- please don't assume that because I don't dedicate pages of text to something doesn't mean I don't care about it. This is a blog after all and there are A LOT of problems in the world. If you really want to help farm workers then you want to promote economic development; it has the greatest track record for expanding opportunities and getting people out of back-breaking labor.
J.S.
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bookerly Posted 1:56 pm
29 Jan 2007
Ron,
I agree with most of what you have posted in regards to the problem, at least in terms of the current agricultural support system.
Let me restate my main concern around this issue (aside from impacts on farm labor).
Federal farm policy tends to end up being a mixture of various local concerns (micro) applied to a national level (macro). Which is one of the reasons we do as much harm as good.
Perhaps the New Zealand method would be the best, but we are really talking apples and oranges.
Farming in the US is not one thing, it varies considerably from region to region, and actually consists of a number of industries. Currently we lump everything together, which makes it easier for the oddities like tobacco and sugar supports to coast along.
I am very interested to see what Tom proposes.
You said "However, I suspect that minimizing farmland loss to urban sprawl does not, cannot depend on farm-oriented policies alone. "
And this is the crux of what I was aiming at, the desire to include land use as part of the discussion of national agricultural policies, not to merely leave it to the whims of state and local governments.
Exactly how to do this, or where it leads, to be honest, I am not sure. I do appreciate your posts. I am still not a big fan of supply and demand thinking in terms of agriculture, but the less pure the market is, the better (smile).
Your sprawl posts open a whole new area of discussion (smile).
We need more transparency in government, and tighter looks at where money goes and does not.
But this does not mean that money should go nowhere!
Both supply and demand are frequently manipulated (look at the diamond market for an example). Some manipulations are clear, some are hidden.
patrick
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bookerly Posted 2:39 pm
29 Jan 2007
Jason,
I was surprised at the tone of your remarks, since you usually express concern for people in poverty, so I was replying somewhat quizzically and somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Sorry if that seems harsh, but for the most part my experiences with animal rights supporters around issues related to poverty have not been positive (in the real world).
Which you do not deserve to be blamed for, but it does color my views.
That said (smile), given that we both care about farm workers, you said "If you really want to help farm workers then you want to promote economic development; it has the greatest track record for expanding opportunities and getting people out of back-breaking labor."
Yes and no. While this is somewhat true for certain professions, it has not been largely true for farm workers. Unless you mean getting them out of back breaking labor by eliminating their jobs!
Frankly, the lives of field workers in much of American agriculture are still pretty poor, economic development aside. The United States is the richest nation in the world and can do better by its farm workers if it chooses. Mostly it chooses to ignore them.
patrick
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BethKopitzke Posted 12:39 pm
17 Feb 2007
As I have perused the comments above, I found myself becoming increasingly irritated and disgusted. It's obvious none of you grew up on a farm nor own any farmland now. I spent my first 18 years on my parents farm, and now own that land I grew up on.
Farming is as much a business as my healing practice is. You gamble every day whether or not you will be in business the next day. Farming is worse than gambling in Vegas, because the odds are against you in all sense of the word.
I cash rent my land to a family friend. He, in turn, has no choice but rent and own over 5,000 acres of land in two states in order to pay the mortgage on the land, pay for the tractors and equipment it takes to run that much land, pay me my rent, pay the taxes (which are higher than you think - my 150 acres cost me $1800 in taxes last year and will be $2000 this year). His wife works full time to put their daughter through college and put food on the table.
His margins are as slim as most big retailers - 7-8% at best. There isn't room for crop or hail insurance.
As for the crack about the breadbasket expanding, think again. I look at the future, global warming threatens farming world wide. I'm looking at the shortage of snow on my farmland this winter, and I know it's going to be tough to get crops to sprout without some good rains in May and June. Just as the Dust Bowl of the 30's came about because the Great Plains came under cultivation, the same thing could happen again.
You have the right to complain that farm subsidies go mostly to the 'corporate farms'. There are a lot of them that don't deserve a cent because they have the backing of a corporation with deep pockets. Be careful of damning the family farm, where one man, with his family and maybe one or two hired hands, do the best they can.
They do deserve some subsidies in order to stay even with the soul sucking corporations like Cargils, Archer Daniels Midland, Con-agra and more.
I would also remind you that you might be wise to walk a mile or five in a farmer's workboots to really understand the issues. I have. I still do.
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