This is a little off topic but the following comment got me to thinking:

"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."

In other words, we grow about 2.6 times more food calories now than we did fifty years ago and people can only eat so much. Biofuel demand however, has the potential to grow exponentially.

There are 300 million Americans using enough gasoline to fuel about the same number of cars. The average American eats about 1.2 million calories a year.

The average American driving a car would consume over 6,000 times more calories per year than they eat.

Our agricultural output increased 2.6 times over half a century but (if my calculations are correct) feeding plants to our cars would require an agricultural productivity increase (of some kind of monocrop) of about 6000 times (2.6 verses 6000).

If my numbers are even close then there is not enough room in this country for both agrofuels and food. Sorry, carry on.

84400 BTU/gallon of ethanol

0.00396566683 BTU/Calorie

3,200 Calories per person per day

12,000 miles driven per year

24 miles per gallon

141 billion gallons of gasoline used last year

70% of the food energy in a unit of corn is lost making ethanol

30% of the energy value in a car gas tank lost to ethanol

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Dear Ron,

I am referring to this report:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/business/worldbusiness/ ...

This is about the US position on agricultural subsidies.

Hope that clears things up.

Huh?
You write: "The errors are assuming that BushCo. and Big Ag care about 'ag policy as if people mattered', or that they tell the truth."

Where did I assume those things? Reread the post.  

Victual Reality

http://www.alternet.org/environment/54218/

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

It is a pity that Tom neglected to mention the work of progressive groups like the National Farmers Union, American Corn Growers Association and the National Family Farm Coalition who are truly working on a sustainable agriculture policy that helps our family farmers, the environment and reorienting our agriculture systems. Family farmers are caught in between big commodity ag/agribiz groups (which do NOT represent family farmers) and these so-called reform groups (Cato, Oxfam, EWG) with their misguided approach. meanwhile, the voices of family farmers are lost amid the hubbub and support for boneheaded proposals like Ron Kind's which are basically radical social security privatization for farmers w/o addressing corporate consolidation and concentration issues.

Supply management is the only solution that makes sense, but it will take time to change the "free trade globalization" mantra of the WTO.

Please check out the Food from Family Farms Act put forth by the National Family Farm Coalition to see a true progressive vision for our farm policy and what a supply management/price floor approach would look like.

http://www.nffc.net

"Thus there really isn't much distance between the Oxfam/Cato/EWG position and ADM's."

What got lost here is that Oxfam has advocated reducing subsidies to give Third World farmers a means of competing in agriculture. Subsidies depress prices and drive farmers who don't get them out of farming. So Oxfam views their elimination as a means of alleviating poverty. They don't advocate it in order to increase the ROI of ADM, though obviously, if trade increases, that may well be the effect.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

Sam,
I understand that about Oxfam. They've done great work analyzing, for example, the effect of cheap U.S. corn flooding Mexico. But I think they're being naive to assume that ending U.S. and European ag subsidies, and enshrining Doha, is going to automatically benefit farmers in the global south. Farmers, especially commodity farmers, don't respond to price signals like other economic actors. Take away subsidies,and farmers might well respond by planting more of the commodity crops, in an attempt to offset lost income.  

Anyone with an interest in ag policy should check out this 2002 paper by Daryll Ray that pretty much obliterates Oxfam's position. Ironically, Oxfam funded it.

Victual Reality

Agreed. i should be mentioning these groups when I write about the Farm Bill, etc. i will in the future.
TP

Victual Reality

"Also, Oxfam also buys into the dangerous myth that third world countries can "export" their way out of poverty. Exports geared toward the First World's tastes and consumption only devastates their own food security as well as destroying the environment (see Palm oil in SE Asia and soybeans in Brazil/rainforest)."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Victual Reality

While I completely agree with the goal of maintaining farmers, I have serious doubts that a supply management strategy is feasible.  And I agree that ADM and Cargill would prefer the most WTO friendly farm bill possible, but let's not forget the mass market livestock industry that loves the current setup, and the big commodity groups who somehow have gotten to the point where they advocate for plants rather than the farmers who grow them.

As you mention, supply management is not going to happen.  That argument was lost a couple of decades ago and we're not going back.  But there is a determined groups of advocates still pushing supply management, and the subject is worth taking a look at.  The most complete supply management policy today is being offered by the National Family Farm Coalition (http://www.nffc.net), George Naylor is a big gun with them.  I have one enormous issue with their plan, and the gist of it is captured in this quote from their position paper:

Prosperity for U.S. farmers must not come at the expense of farmers and peasants in other
nations. The United States must take the lead in promoting international commodity
agreements aimed at setting floor prices and equitable sharing of responsibility for
international reserves and supply management, thus eliminating the destructive practice
of dumping.

Not only do we have to reverse decades of US ag policy, we must convince the rest of the world to buy into supply management as well.  Because if you don't, eventually those giant multinationals will just be buying their grain from Brazil, Central Asia, etc.  But getting other countries to adopt supply management is NOT going to happen.  In fact, that is so much NOT going to happen that I question why people are still pushing for it.  The other large grain producers- primarily Brazil- already believe they can produce grain for cheaper than the US, and they can.  They would rather have more of a free market and let comparative advantage go to work.  They're not going to buy into a plan that reduces the amount they produce.  They're locking up 10 and 20 year contracts with China for soybeans already.

Second, I'm not a huge fan of WTO by any means, but I think the logic of creating international supply management agreements to replace pro-trade international agreements is a least a little flawed.  How is this going to work?  Are we going to create an international supply management organization?  Wait a minute, doesn't that violate the food sovereignty we're trying to promote? And you know that each country involved will try to set the rules so it can make the most money, usually at some other country's expense.  The only way I see this working is if we have some sort of international supply management czar or council that decrees how much corn, etc. can be produced in each country each year.  Not likely to happen, and probably wouldn't be all that great anyway.

Last, I love Michael Pollan's book and the parts with George Naylor are the best parts of that book.  One of the devastating criticisms is that we are subsidizing a plant that makes us unhealthy- corn.  George Naylor's plan to solve the farm income problem- supply management- still subsidizes corn.  In fact, it subsidizes pretty much the exact same crops we're subsidizing today.  Sure, we might have a little less of them, but we're still going to be spending money to ensure that feedlots have enough corn to feed their cattle.  If we want to move to a new mode of food production, or back to the small, diversified family farms we have had in the past, we need to stop subsidizing the same old system.  And who, exactly, is going to determine what the cost of production plus a reasonable profit is?  Is that for organic farmers?  Industrial farmers who buy enormous amounts of input at a discount?  Smaller, nonorganic farmers who don't get those discounts? Conventional farmers with a certain amount of conservation practices?  Do you include the cost of tech fees on GM crops in the cost of production?

A friend of mine once said that George Naylor wants to grow 400 acres of corn and soybeans for the rest of his life and have the government guarantee him  enough of a profit to live on. No other sector of the economy gets that kind of guarantee, and it kills innovation. It also allows crappy farmers to stay in business while punishing farmers who are really talented.  Today, it doesn't take a whole lot of brains to grow 160 bushel an acre corn, that's for sure.  But there is an appropriate role of government in agriculture, and Philpott could not be more correct about the need for local processing facilities and a competition title in this farm bill.  We also need to figure out ways to stabilize the farm economy while simultaneously promoting innovation, crop diversity, and a type of farming that is protected from the harmful laws of ag economics while giving an advantage to the methods of production that are truly sustainable- and profitable.

It's true that the globalization of ag markets provides agribusiness a card that easily trumps any supply management scheme. There are still vast swaths of Brazil's savanna that can and will go under the plow for soy, and Argentina is churning out plenty of GM corn.

Plus, hell, subsidies for corn are going down, but we're probably going to see the biggest harvest in US history this year, because subsidy for corn has shifted from a direct payment to the tax credit and other goodies lavished on ethanol production. I didn't even get into the whole ethanol debacle in this post. Sigh.

With the ethanol program, we're getting more environmentally ruinous corn than ever, more expensive food for low-income folks, and no new investments in local-food infrastructure that would make local, organic food cheaper. It's a Gordian knot of regressive, pro-agrobiz policies.

Seen from that perspective, I'm reminded that small-scale projects and solutions are the way forward, and wonder if all the energy going into reforming/obsessing about the bloody farm bill might be misguided.

2002 Woodbury, Iowa, isn't waiting on the federal government to come up a food policy that makes sense; nor is Red Hook, Brooklyn. The rest of us should do the same.

Victual Reality

I just got off the phone with Oxfam and they emphatically made the point that they are not against taxpayer funded support for farmers in the US. What they are against is the current system of subsidies that encourages over-production and low prices - a point that has been made numerous times.

"Also, Oxfam also buys into the dangerous myth that third world countries can "export" their way out of poverty."

You'll always have dueling studies but see the most recent one on cotton farmers in West Africa, that was in the Times and Post. Exports do offer vital income, even for those at the bottom of the ladder, creating an income stream for subsistence farmers.

This isn't about the "free trade" agenda that the ADMs of the world seek but "fair trade" - and that is clearly better than no trade. Or at least, that's the way the developing world sees it.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

Fair point, Sam. My response is that Oxfam is naive if it thinks merely removing subsidies is going to boost commodity prices for farmers in the global south. By making that assumption, Oxfam is joining ranks in  policy terms with the agribiz right -- who no full well that removing subsidies will do no such thing.

Victual Reality

Calorie with a capital C is a thousand times different than calorie with a small c. So, ag production would have to increase about 6 times to feed our cars ethanol (instead of 6000 times). I new something was wrong.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

The House Agriculture Committee today passed a draft Farm Bill that, if properly funded, will make historic investments in the biofuels, wind and solar industries.

"The Agriculture Committee's Farm Bill Energy Title has the right programs in place, but it contains no mandatory energy investments..."

--John Moore, Senior Attorney, Environmental Law & Policy Center

Farm Bill clean energy supporters responded with cautious optimism to the passage of the House Agriculture Committee's draft Farm Bill. Although the draft legislation proposes new energy investments, virtually all of the funding is uncertain; it relies on finding offsets or other sources outside of the Farm Bill.

According to Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) Senior Attorney John Moore, "The Agriculture Committee's Farm Bill Energy Title has the right programs in place, but it contains no mandatory energy investments, and virtually all of the proposed funding in the en bloc amendment is contingent on as-yet-unidentified other funding sources."

A broad coalition of farm, energy and environmental groups recently sent a united request to Congressional leaders to boost federal Farm Bill funding for the Energy Title to at least $1 billion per year. The groups stressed the Energy Title's benefits for national security, rural economic development, and the environment, especially given that many renewable energy opportunities are in rural areas.

The successful energy programs in the 2002 Farm Bill already have generated substantial new investments in wind power, biofuels, solar power, energy efficiency and other energy resources.  

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Farm Bill before the end of July. http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=49 ...