Policy: Agriculture

File version: $Id: agri.htm,v 1.5 2002/07/03 06:14:34 lars Exp $

Introduction

Most people believe that the goal of agricultural policy should be to produce food abundantly and inexpensively. Most people who were raised on farms believe that the farm lifestyle has intrinsic value to society and that keeping people connected to the land must also be a goal of policy.

Goals

Motivations

"Produce enough food to feed the nation"

The goal should be to allow the nation to be self-suficient, and to have a moderate amount of agricultural trade, with imports and exports roughly balanced by value. When the goal becomes to maximize production in order to promote maximal exports, quality tends to suffer, as does the environment.

"Produce food that is affordable, nutritious and safe"

These goals must be balanced. Food is a basic necessity of life, and every person and every family should have enough healthy food to maintain life in good health. We also want to provide choices to enhance life for those who can afford the best and consider a great variety of food to be important for their quality of life.
When economic conditions favor short term profit over long term relationships to the land, farmers tend to push their output by overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and to cultivate marginal lands. The long term result of these practices is depletion of the soil, less nutritious food, and land erosion.
Public health requires the abatement of bacterial contamination of food. An inspection and enforcement system is required to maintain quality.

"Maintain agricultural employment, and increase it if possible"

Agriculture is at the root of our culture, and even after our economy had shifted away from agriculture to manufacturing and trade, the rural agricultural base continued to function as a reserve pool of labor. Over the last several decades, rural areas have emptied out, and agriculture has become heavily mechanised.Today's labor reserve pool mostly consists of suburban housewives. But at the same time, we often have large contingents of unemployed and homeless people in the cities. The ubiquitous mechnisation of production has left us with precious few jobs for unskilled workers.
During the recession of the 1930s, it was a goal of public policy to develop new agricultural lands with Federal water projects, and encourage unemployed workers to move from the cities back to rural lands. It may be time to look at how we could do something similar today.

"Support the lifestyle of family farming"

Over the last 4 decades, land holdings have been consolidated. Family farms have been driven out of business by a variety of economic factors, and corporate entities of "agribusiness" now own large tracts of land, which is being managed according to "modern business principles" which often means that the goal is to maximize profits with a 1-year planning horizon at best.
In contrast, the traditional family farm enjoys a planning horizon of 2 generations, and families with a spiritual connection to the land (which they may not even be aware of) tend to look out for goals beyond monetary return.
The family farm life encourages raising children with responsibilities and social values that include the whole community. Such communities strengthen the nation as a whole and makes it more resilient during times of national crisis or economic downturns.
(Similar benefits to society inure from other family businesses, including independent fishermen and "mom-and-pop" retail stores.)

"Encourage long-term stewardship of the land, and protect the environment"

The long term health of agricultural soil is enhanced by crop rotation and by animal husbandry where animal waste fertilizes the croplands where feed crops are raised. In contrast, dairy farms, beef feedlots and "hog factories" with thousands of animals on a minimum area of land tend to be major sources of air pollution, and to require constant doses of antibiotics in the feed to keep infectious diseases under control, thus leading to the development of strains of infectious bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics.
These factors all support the claim that family farms are good for the environment and for public health.

Recommendations

Define a family farm (an agricultural operation held in personal ownership by a single person or a partnership of no more than 5 persons each of whom lives on the land and derives their main income from it), and do not allow any government preferences (such as irrigation water at subsidized prices) to any other kind of farm operation.

Implement new land use policies that prevent the owner of farmland from capitalizing on the conversion of farmland to residential or industrial use.

Contentious Issues

The cheapest food is not the goal

The city-dwelling population tends to want the lowest possible food prices, but this is misguided. Often, the lowest food prices come about by pushing some of the costs out of the accounting for the production and into other accounts, such as health care or welfare services. In particular, I believe that the following are worth paying for:

Allowing farmers to profit from land development is bad for the farmer

Ideally, all farmland should be locked up in agricultural preserve zoning, and rezoning of privately owned land should not be allowed: The procedure for urban development should be that the local government (through its planning department) determines the best location for the new development, then buys the land from the farmer at the going price for farmland, rezones it and sells it to developers at the going price for buildable land. Since the value is created by the government act of rezoning, the profit should fall to the public treasury to help pay for the public costs of development.

This suggestion tends to get a very poor reception from farmers, who may be operating their land at a loss, hoping to cash in on development profits and retire. But in the end, it is precisely this prospect of land speculation profit that makes their farm business unprofitable. The prospect of development makes the land more expensive, to the point where a young farmer who takes over the land is saddled with a debt that cannot be amortized out of operating profits. Similarly, the higher property value leads to higher property taxes, again siphoning off operating money and making the land unprofitable. It is unfortunate that such a change may hurt those whose land had already appreciated before the change, but I do not believe that there is any way to drive the land prices down that will not involve some bankruptcies before the land speculators leave the land to the farmers.

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