Two books on agricultural policy controversies

In my in-box are two new books on agricultural policy controversies, both written by agricultural economists. Both books seek, with partial but not complete success, to move beyond a certain fear of criticism, openly engaging readers who may have diverse public interest concerns and motivations.

First is Depolarizing Food and Agriculture: An Economic Approach (Routledge/Earthscan, 2014), by Andrew Barkley and Paul W. Barkley. I offered a comment for the back cover:

When criticized on environmental or nutritional grounds, U.S. farm groups sometimes are tempted to adopt a thickly-armored defensive posture. In this daring book, respected agricultural economists Andrew Barkley and Paul Barkley offer a persuasive alternative. Echoing Schmpeter's vision of creative destruction (naturally), but also drawing on John Stuart Mill and Nelson Mandela (more surprisingly), the authors argue for an open and understanding approach to contemporary food and agriculture controversies, eventually offering hope -- as the title indicates -- for depolarizing food and agriculture.

Second is Agricultural & Food Controversies, part of the "What Everyone Needs to Know" series from Oxford University Press (2014), by F. Bailey Norwood, Pascal A. Oltenacu, Michelle S. Calvo-Lorenzo, and Sarah Lancaster. In a Huffington Post review, Jayson Lusk -- who was author of a more strident 2013 book called the Food Police -- notes the value of the new book's respectful discussion:

Rather than striking a defensive or muckraking tone, as so often is the case in this genre of writing, Norwood and colleagues embrace the controversies, interpreting them as a sign of a healthy democracy struggling to deal with pressing challenges. They reveal what the best science has to say on topics ranging from food pesticides and GMOs to the carbon footprint of beef production and the well-being of farm animals. They weigh in on synthetic fertilizers, local foods, and farm policy. Theirs is a respectful discussion of the positions taken up by different advocacy groups, but there is no hesitation in drawing conclusions where logic and science warrant.

Summarizing the Agricultural Act of 2014

Choices Magazine -- the outreach magazine of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) -- this spring and early summer published a special series summarizing the Agricultural Act of 2014 (also known as the Farm Bill).

Jody Campiche organized the series and presented the theme overview:

After more than three years of debate on the next farm bill, the Agricultural Act of 2014 was signed into law on February 7, 2014. Overall, total spending under the new bill will be reduced by $23 billion as compared to the baseline over the next 10 years. The Agricultural Act of 2014 reforms the dairy program, includes major changes to commodity programs, adds new supplemental crop insurance programs, consolidates conservation programs, expands programs for specialty crops, reauthorizes important livestock disaster assistance programs, and reduces spending under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). However, despite large cuts in total program spending, the Act continues to provide important programs to ensure a safe and adequate food supply and to protect our natural resources. The articles in this theme discuss new or revised provisions relating to commodities, crop insurance, dairy, conservation, nutrition, and specialty crops as included in the Agricultural Act of 2014.

The series includes articles on commodity payments, conservation programs, dairy programs, crop insurance, specialty crops, and my contribution on nutrition assistance programs.

AAEA recognizes Food Policy in the United States

In its 2014 awards program, the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) has given honorable mention to my book, Food Policy in the United States, in the category "Quality of Communication."

As publisher of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and other top-ranked periodicals, AAEA is the leading scholarly and professional association in U.S. agricultural and applied economics. Though my book is highly multi-disciplinary -- designed to engage non-traditional audiences interested in food policy debates -- AAEA's recognition shows that the book also meets the exacting standards of the mainstream of my home profession.

My department chair, Will Masters, wrote the nomination letter to AAEA:

Prof. Wilde’s book distills the instructional content of his 13-week graduate course on U.S. Food Policy into a very readable 200 pages, enlivened with anecdotes from 10 years of experience blogging on the topic at http://usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com. The quality of writing is extraordinary, making economic insights accessible by clear use of plain language, amply illustrated with well-designed charts and tables, plus sidebars with more academic material to add depth without interfering with the story line. The book is particularly innovative in its scope, spanning agricultural production and international trade, food manufacturing, grocery stores and restaurants, food safety and labeling, advertising and health claims, and nutrition assistance programs....

In summary, Prof. Parke Wilde’s Food Policy in the United States offers a big step forward in fulfillment of the AAEA’s vision and mission. This book exemplifies the highest standard of scientific communication needed by our profession, first to help students in classrooms all across the country, and then to help graduates improve food and agricultural policy in Washington and elsewhere.

I hope the AAEA's honorable mention encourages faculty to consider using this book for courses that address -- in a lively but rigorous way -- the immense student interest in food movements and food policy. Faculty members who are considering adoption may acquire a copy from the publisher.

An introduction to Food Policy in the United States

A second excerpt from the first chapter of Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan), which was published in April.

This book offers an introduction to food policy in the United States. Food policy encompasses laws, regulations, decisions and actions by governments and other institutions that influence food production, distribution and consumption. While food policy is defined broadly, a food program is a more specific institution that provides or distributes food.

Food policy is intertwined with many of the fundamental economic and social decisions of the day. Will traditional farming in the United States disappear as an economically viable way of life? Can U.S. agriculture contribute to nourishing a growing world population without destroying the environment? What labor rights do farm workers have? Does globalization help or harm U.S. farmers and food consumers?  How can the safety of food be protected without imposing unnecessarily burdensome rules and regulations? What can be done about the epidemic of obesity and chronic disease? How can school lunches be improved? Why do some families go hungry in such a rich country?

U.S. food policy is an important topic for readers in the United States and also in other countries. The United States is the world’s largest exporter for some crops and a leading importer for others. The U.S. government position carries considerable weight in multinational policy decisions about globalization and international trade. Consumers around the world aspire to emulate some aspects of U.S. consumer culture, even as doubts arise about the nutritional merit and environmental sustainability of U.S. food consumption patterns. Some environmental constraints on U.S. agricultural production are local, but others are global. In these respects, the implications of U.S. food policy extend beyond national borders.

This book focuses on national-level food policy in the United States, but there are similarities with policy-making at other levels of government and in other institutions. Federalism refers to the division of authority between the national government and state and local governments. Policy innovations may be first attempted at the state and local level and later adopted at the federal level.

U.S. food policy is absorbing in part because it is dysfunctional. Just as other areas of politics in the United States suffer from partisanship and deep regional and cultural divisions, food policy can become mired down in bitter struggles across stagnant political lines in the sand. On topics ranging from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to advertising that targets children, it can seem as if no policy actors have either changed their mind or persuaded an opponent in the past generation.

Faced with such challenges, it may be worthwhile to climb down from the ramparts and devote some time to reflection and study. To some extent, this book is a descendant of hefty agricultural policy textbooks such as traditionally were used in departments of agricultural economics in U.S. land-grant universities, but there are important differences. This book tackles both normative questions (about how decisions should be made) and positive questions (about how decisions actually are made) in U.S. food policy. Throughout the book, real-world policy struggles provide the contemporary hook to motivate the reader’s attention to the more specialized details of economic principles, policy analysis, institutional structures and data sources. The study of these more academic topics may pay off even for readers whose primary interest is the policy arena. The hope for this book is that these principles and data sources hold some promise for knocking loose the logjam in policy-making.

House and Senate mark up farm bills

At long last, the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry both marked up farm bills this week.  But there are many miles to go before this legislation ever reaches home.

The Associated Press has a summary of several key differences in the main provisions (with dollar amounts stated on a per year basis).

In a partisan division that we saw already last year, when this legislation was still over-optimistically known as the "2012 Farm Bill," the House committee proposes deeper cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) than the Senate committee does.  The House committee proposes to cut $2 billion per year, while the Senate committee proposes to cut $0.4 billion per year.  The Republican committee leaders in the House sought the deeper SNAP cuts in part so they could move slower on budget cuts to direct payments for cotton farmers (largely in the South), and in part so they could accommodate the strong anti-food-stamp sentiment among some Republican legislators on the floor.  Yet, these deep SNAP cuts may make it difficult to reach eventual agreement with the Democratic-led Senate, leading to possible continuation of the years-long impasse over U.S. food and farm policy.

For the Senate committee bill, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition summarizes provisions of interest to producers interested in sustainable production practices, especially at the local and regional level.  For the House committee bill, Politico reports on the political angles.  The Hagstrom Report (gated, but valuable) is working overtime this week, and the FarmPolicy blog links to many national and regional media sources.

Upcoming Events: Michigan State University April 30

I look forward to giving a brown-bag talk about U.S. food policy at the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems, Michigan State University, this Tuesday, April 30, at noon.  Location: 338 Natural Resources Building.  Come visit and say hello.

Then, I will be in Detroit from April 30 late afternoon to May 2 for a meeting of the AGree agricultural policy initiative.

Reason Magazine highlights food policy

Baylen Linnekin's new column at Reason Magazine this week highlights the nationwide interest in food policy in recent years.

Linnekin gives at least four main examples, with links for more detail.

1. Emily Broad Leib's Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (see our coverage earlier this year). 

For example, a recent Harvard Law School news article claims "there may be no hotter topic in law schools right now than food law and policy[.]" 

2. My new book Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan).

“As a pundit once said, ‘When we leave farm policy to the experts, we actually leave it to the lobbyists,’” says Wilde, himself the author of the new book Food Policy in the United States. “This book pulls open the curtains and lets any interested reader understand the fundamentals of U.S. food policy.”

The pundit, by the way, was Ezra Klein.  Umm, may I say "pundit" is not pejorative?

3.  Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Jayson Lusk.  I have long admired Jayson's work and enjoyed contributing a chapter on food security to the multi-author handbook on the economics of food consumption and policy that Jayson co-edited for Oxford University Press a couple years ago.  After reading Linnekin's column, I have just this very minute pre-ordered Jayson's new book The Food Police.  It seems possible that Jayson's book will agree with one key theme of this blog (that government regulation sometimes overreaches badly) and perhaps downplay another (that more vigorous public sector action commonly is needed to advance the public interest, so we should all work together to make government more effective rather than undermining it).

Lusk, too, has a new food policy book out. In The Food Police, Lusk pushes back against what he sees as a dominant, pro-regulatory bent among food writers, which he calls “condescending paternalism.”

4.  David Gumpert's forthcoming book, which I also have just pre-ordered.

Still another such book, David Gumpert’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights, is set for release this summer.

As a nice timely hook to close this post, the Consumer Federation of America's annual Food Policy Conference begins today (April 15) in Washington, DC. If you attend, say hello to the two Friedman School graduate students who have set up a table with flyers and copies of Food Policy in the United States.

Virginia Tech seminar, March 22

I will be giving a departmental seminar in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech, tomorrow, March 22, at 3 pm.

The title is: "Not just for farmers: Six ways that agriculture programs affect food, nutrition, and the environment."

Please come visit if you are in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The room is Fralin 102.

AGree position paper

The AGree agricultural policy initiative, which has been working for a couple years to bring together a diverse group of food policy stakeholders, recently began posting position papers to its website. 

For example, one position paper addresses policies to Increase Agricultural Productivity by Conserving and Enhancing Soil, Water, and Habitat.  In my view, the position paper reflects common-sense mainstream views about the need to protect the environment.  Yet, U.S. food policy has become sufficiently fractured, and some producer organizations are sufficiently concerned about regulatory overreach, that it requires some courage and compromise for AGree just to state these positions.

That productivity and conservation position paper includes several general principles plus a smaller number of policy planks for 2013:

AGree is deeply concerned about policy proposals actively being considered that would undermine rather than build on achievements to date. AGree supports the following currently threatened policies and programs, which are critical building blocks for long-term transformative change:

• Existing conservation requirements for farm program eligibility, which should be re-attached to federal subsidies for crop insurance premiums.* [Note from Parke: the footnote addresses special transitional issues for farmers who would be subject to these conservation requirements for the first time.]
• Investments in farm bill conservation programs; these programs should target durable environmental quality improvements across the landscape and leverage the investments of producers and other partners.
• Investments in the scientific, research, and extension infrastructure that support agriculture; indeed, strengthening this critical infrastructure will be necessary to successfully meet the challenges the U.S. faces over the long term.

I work on AGree's Research Committee, which provides research support services to the more important Advisory Committee.  The Advisory Committee oversees the policy positions.  AGree is funded by several major foundations.  Of course, AGree is not responsible for anything said on this blog, nor am I asked to endorse everything AGree does.  I will say that I think it is great to bring together such a group of stakeholders to talk and get to know each other, perhaps eventually overcoming some divisions and mistrust.  Such an effort could lead to policy recommendations worth listening to.

TuftsNow: Counsel for the second term

Timed to coincide with the inauguration, Tufts University's online news and features site TuftsNow this week invited six faculty members to offer comments in advance of the second Obama administration.

Harris Berman (dean of the School of Medicine) addressed health care. James Glaser (dean of academic affairs in Arts and Sciences) focused broadly on legislative opportunities. Michael Klein (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) tackled economics. Sociologist Helen Marrow discussed immigration reform. Chris Swan (associate dean in the School of Engineering) emphasized infrastructure. And I commented on food policy. 

Parke Wilde, associate professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy; author of the forthcoming book  Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan).

As a nation, we face important challenges related to food and agriculture. We hope for environmentally sustainable farming and meat production, we wish for less hunger and poverty, and we want better protection from chronic diseases and unsafe food. I know that these things are beyond the president’s power to accomplish alone. For example, I know it was mainly our broken Congress, and not the administration, that dropped the ball and left the Farm Bill uncompleted in 2012. Looking ahead, here are some priorities:

Improve agricultural policy. Traditionally, U.S. policymakers have worried that food prices are too low, and farmers are less prosperous than non-farm households on average. Now environmental constraints and a growing world population have increased prices and raised concerns about food scarcity. This scarcity is mostly a challenge, but it does also present an opportunity to reform U.S. agricultural policy. Support reforms to traditional crop subsidies, limit payments to high-income farmers, and resist the temptation to use subsidized crop insurance and corn-based biofuels incentives as a back door to maintaining outdated subsidies.

Improve the healthfulness of food retail and marketing. Continue to support the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign, including promoting local retail access to healthy foods using moderate budgetary support, taking some care to avoid unnecessary supermarket subsidies. If some health-promotion measures are too bold for legislators to support today, such as soda taxes or marginal changes to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, then conduct pilot programs with strong evaluation designs to collect the information for sensible future policy decisions.

Protect food safety and the environment. Vigorously implement the new Food Safety Modernization Act. Raise awareness of the role of the food system in water scarcity, soil loss and climate change. Americans are a decent people. We might be willing to get along with less meat, less packaging, less energy intensity and less waste if we have the right price signals and a clear vision of how to do so.

Agricultural producer support declining over time

We hear all sorts of generalizations about U.S. farm policy.

Some say U.S. farm programs are too stingy and should provide more help to farmers, especially small farmers. Others say U.S. farm programs are a boondoggle that just makes rich farmers richer. Still others say farm programs make consumers fat by encouraging too much cheap food.

Instead of generalizing, it is important to think quantitatively.

One good data source is the Producer Support Estimates (PSE) from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (a club for the world's upper-income countries). I use this data source in several chapters of my forthcoming book from Routledge/Earthscan called Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction.

The PSE data measure diverse agricultural programs and policies in a consistent way across countries and over time.  One problem with the PSE is that it can seem a little complex.  To provide an orientation, Rebecca Nemec and I created the following data gadget.  Nemec is a graduate student at the Friedman School at Tufts and the teaching assistant for my class on U.S. Food Policy.  The top panel shows broad categories of support for agricultural producers.  The bottom panel shows more detail about each broad category in turn.   

Just click on each colored broad category in the top panel to see the corresponding detail in the bottom panel.

Working from top to bottom, we learn about trends in several major categories of producer support.

• Price supports and deficiency payments help farmers in years when prices are low.  OECD worries about these programs because they distort international trade and hurt farmers overseas.  Michael Pollan criticizes deficiency payments for making corn too cheap.  Notice that in recent years -- with greater scarcity and higher prices -- these distorting policies have fallen to almost nothing under current policy.
• Conservation programs have been growing in recent years, and also do not respond to price fluctuations as wildly as deficiency payments do.
• The other payments category includes direct payments, which pay farmers regardless of the current price.  These direct payments may end under some current farm bill proposals.  They do not distort agricultural markets very much, but it is unpopular to pay farmers when they are prospering during high-price years.
• Market Price Support represents the economic impact of the trade barriers that protect some producers, especially for milk and sugar, from imports.  Although they do not have a budget cost, these supports benefit farmers at the expense of consumers.  As with deficiency payments, the impact of these trade barriers has declined to almost nothing in recent high-price years.

An especially clever feature is that PSE data allow sensible comparisons across two seemingly different types of policies:

• payments to farmers at the taxpayers' expense (the first three broad categories), and
• trade policies that support farmers at the consumers' expense (the fourth broad category).

To speak coherently about U.S. agricultural policy, one must make important distinctions across several types of programs and be aware of rapid changes in program impacts from one year to the next.

There are a couple limitations that I should mention.  First, the OECD data may have some limitations of their own.  Second, while I did the best I could to classify programs from the OECD data into sensible categories, I did make some judgement calls about these program classifications.

In general, U.S. support for farmers has been declining in recent years, mainly because of high food prices that result from greater scarcity on world markets.  Though some people are more optimistic, I think population and environmental constraints may generally keep prices fairly high in the future.

This means that governmental support for U.S. farmers can be smaller over time, unless legislators replace existing programs with new and poorly designed alternatives.  For example, I worry about new and potentially expensive crop insurance programs that have been proposed in draft farm bills.

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What happens if there is no Farm Bill?

Many farm programs and policies have never been permanently authorized, so, if there is no Farm Bill, policy reverts to a messy jumble of past authorities from more than 60 years ago.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has clear and detailed answers to 15 questions about Congress' failure this year to pass a Farm Bill.  Here is an example.

What happens if we ... revert to the 1949 Farm Bill?

If a new farm bill is not enacted or the current farm bill is not extended for a period of time, the farm bill commodity programs revert to permanent law contained in the 1938 and 1949 farm bills. Each successive farm bill since that time has suspended permanent law for the period of time provided for the newly enacted farm bill. But the permanent law provision is scheduled to pop back up and become the law of the land again if Congress does not enact a new bill or extend current law.

This peculiar feature normally induces Congress to get its work done on each new farm bill in a timely fashion. Without a 2008 Farm Bill extension or a new farm bill, dairy policy reverts to permanent law on January 1, and grain and other commodities do so once the new 2013 crop is ready for planting.

FERN asks: Whose Side is the American Farm Bureau On?

The Nation this week explores the American Farm Bureau, which, through affiliated organizations, is simultaneously one of the most important farm lobby groups and also a major insurance operation.  The story is by Pulitzer-winning writer Ian Shearn.  It was supported by the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN).

Interesting passages address influence over the upcoming Farm Bill ...

In Washington, the 2012 Farm Bill has predictably been a top priority for the Farm Bureau lobby team. They have surprised players from both sides of the debate by conceding cuts in traditional subsidies in exchange for a large expansion of subsidized crop insurance that protects against disasters and falling prices at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $9 billion a year. The tactical, philosophical shift garnered praise even from Farm Bureau adversaries. Nonetheless, it should be noted that crop insurance is a small, but significant piece of Farm Bureau insurance companies’ portfolio. In 2011, they collected over $300 million in crop insurance premiums. 

... and contribution to the tenor of U.S. agricultural policy debate:

American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman was succinct, almost militant in his opening address last year at the group’s annual meeting: “We will not stand idly by while opponents of today’s American agriculture…try to drag us down…try to bury us in bureaucratic red tape and costly regulation—and try to destroy the most productive and efficient agricultural system in the world,” he said.

Jim Moseley on AGree

The best moment in this video is former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Jim Moseley's personal story about his two sons, both young farmers, one traditional and one organic.  Currently, Moseley is one of four co-chairs of a foundation-funded agricultural policy initiative called AGree.  The other co-chairs -- also each with their own videos -- are former USAID executive Emmy Simmons, Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirschberg, and former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman.  I am serving on an affiliated Research Committee, which has been difficult and highly educational work.  AGree also has an excellent news feed.

The most distinctive feature about AGree is the Advisory Committee, with representatives from all walks of life in U.S. agriculture and the food system. The purpose of the initiative is to improve the tenor of U.S. farm and food policy debate.  That's a difficult task, and the initiative is by no means ensured of success.  If it does have any success, it will be largely attributable to the courage, tolerance, and hard work of this remarkable Advisory Committee.

Tyler Cowen on agriculture policy and corporate bailouts

Here is the latest NYT column from Tyler Cowen, who I generally think of as a market-oriented libertarian economist.  Cowen generally prefers to let the deserving rich be rich, and yet he can see why the demonstrators at Zuccotti Park have "so much resonance."

The first problem is that higher status for the wealthy can easily lead to crony capitalism. In public discourse social status judgments are often crude. Critical differences are lost, like the distinction between earning money through production for consumers, as Apple has done, and earning money through the manipulation of government, which heavily subsidized agribusinesses have done. The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.