Hal Hamilton wrote:
>
> Dale and Bob,
>
> RE the thread on "subsidizing" farmers, etc.. First, I just have to take
> issue with the labeling of farm programs as "pork barrels," whether or not
> farmers ever receive a check from taxpayers. Legislating an "artificially"
> high price might entail something like a government granted frachise
> (certainly not a "monopoly"). And that is of course contrary to
> neo-classical economics. Economists argue that such a franchise system
> might require higher consumer prices and retard efficiency, but we should
> remember that such a system might nevertheless be good for people, community
> and the environment. My question is: do we grant economics the primary
> place in setting our society's goals?
>
> My main point is that agriculture produces not only food and fiber but also
> a variety of "public goods." Some European friends are calling this
> "multifunctional agriculture." This is in some respects a more robust
> concept than "sustainable agriculture," because we're not talking merely of
> avoiding negative externalities but also of positive services. The
> following few paragraphs are edited from a Dutch paper by T.J. Aldington
> called "Multifunctional Agriculture: A Brief Refiew from Developed and
> Developing Country Perspectives." If anyone wants the whole thing, let me
> know and I'll make it available when it's public.
>
> Until recently, it is agriculture's negative environmental externalities -
> pollution of water and air, loss of habitats and biodiversity and soil
> erosion etc - which have received most attention from policy makers
> (although some would argue that such attention is still insufficiently
> developed), involving taxes or regulations to correct for market failures.
> Yet, it is argued, agriculture also possesses positive externalities
> (multiple functions), the related market failures of which merit policy
> interventions such as subsidies or other means of agricultural support.
>
> Government intervention need not be justified on public goods grounds alone
> because there may be other valid reasons to justify intervention. For
> example, the public sector may be better placed to assess and to take
> countervailing action against risk than the private sector.
>
> The following frequently cited functions are listed:
>
> * Food security, including nutritional aspects, sometimes termed
> 'strategic.'
> * Economic - income, employment (implicitly in rural areas)
> * Ecologic - environmental protection, natural resource conservation,
> including biodiversity, disaster prevention (floods, landslides), protecting
> rural landscapes
> * Social - viability of rural communities and hence maintaining rural
> society.
>
> Some of these functions also are interrelated or could be placed under
> different categories. For example, protecting rural landscapes (an
> ecological function), may promote tourism and hence generate rural incomes
> and employment (an economic function), and so promote the viability of rural
> communities (a social function). This feature suggests that there may be
> synergy between the various functions but not necessarily so. For example,
> protecting a rural landscape may be worthwhile because it maintains a
> certain biological diversity even if it lacks the scenic value to promote
> tourism. Or again, agritourism may generate employment but insufficient to
> maintain the status of rural communities. It will depend on the situation in
> hand. In any case the economic function - income and employment - is derived
> directly from the primary production function and therefore is not an
> externality.
>
> Each of these functional categories is related to a range of policy
> instruments with which to meet society's needs. Please, let's get a little
> more sophisticated than the Republican objection to "subsidizing" farmers
> when we don't subsidize mom-and-pop stores.
>
> Hal
>
> __________________________________
> Hal Hamilton
> Center for Sustainable Systems
> 433 Chestnut St., Berea KY 40403 USA
> Phone: (606) 986-5336; Fax: (606) 986-1299
> hhamilton@centerss.org
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Name: winmail.dat
> Part 1.2 Type: application/ms-tnef
> Encoding: base64
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail