I shall leave to others the task of exploiting the explosive inequities in
U.S. agricultural employment -- and, believe me, they will. All law is
ideological; it is even more so when it touches something as vital as
food production. (Aside to Farmer Meade: this is why I "gratuitously"
threw in a reference to fossil fuels. I am totally undisturbed by
fossil fuel use, provided that the fuel is priced at its marginal social
cost of production. But SANET's subscribers tend by and large to oppose
consumption of nonrenewable resources _per se_, and I am merely
exploiting the emotional attachments that I know my audience to have.)
What bothers me even more than the disparate labor impact is the economic
burden imposed on food consumers -- the broadest, most "populist" class of
them all.
U.S. farm policy consciously contemplates high food prices as a side effect
of price and income support for farmers. We need look no further for proof
than the traditional coupling of commodity programs with domestic food aid
and food stamp programs. Price-based strategies attempt to transfer wealth
to a producer class -- primarily at consumer expense, sometimes at taxpayer
expense. Actually, tax finance eventually translate into lost consumer
welfare (for reasons that I haven't time to develop -- even if that means I
leave the impression that my grasp of these issues is "sometimes
shallow"). All fanciness aside, one facet of food assistance tells
us volumes: food stamp eligibility kicks in only when even
"general assistance" and "public assistance" (that's lawyer talk for
"welfare") fall short of what the USDA sees fit to call subsistence.
The farmer's share of the "food dollar" is trivial, you say? Sure it is,
but only on the highly processed, convenient foods consumed by the richest
Americans. The poor spend far less on food away from home and food "taken
out to eat" (TOTE food, in the argot of household economists). Increased
food prices are among the cruelest, most regressive imaginable. Take the
example of milk. The income elasticity of fluid milk is 0.02. That means
that wealth has virtually no impact on individual levels of milk
consumption. It also means that high milk prices have the full economic
impact of a poll tax -- a flat, per-person tax. The price of milk seems
trivial to us who are fortunate enough to pray for our daily bread and then
to forget that God routinely answers the request. It is life or death for
those who pay up to 80% of their disposable income for food.
"Cheap food" is merely a side effect of overproduction stimulated by the
erection of "price umbrellas" throughout U.S. agriculture. It's a lesson
learned bitterly by the U.S. natural gas industry in the last 30 years --
and one yet to be absorbed by the U.S. farm sector. To the extent cheap
food is the product of massive water subsidies to parched farmers west of
the hundredth meridien, I agree with the apparent SANET consensus: just say
no. And the same applies to fuel: I would unflinchingly tax gasoline and
other fossil fuels so that their price reflects the full social cost of
production and consumption (including pollution and environmental
degradation incident to extraction).
What shocks me most of all, though, is the widespread belief that a market
consisting of numerous small farms is environmentally sound. Sometimes
yes, usually no. All too often we see so-called conservationists crafting
perverse, second-best deals with rich farmers that do the environment no
real good. On a small scale, we can see how bird-lovers -- excuse me, I
mean bird-*hunters* -- pushed to exempt California rice growers from the
anti-subsidization reform provisions of the Central Valley Project
Improvements Act of 1992. For the few ducks who visit California rice
paddies every winter, we must all countenance the continued delivery of
water to the desert for the production of a water-intensive crop that
symbolizes local subsistence farming in the rest of the world. (Hint: when
Thailand and Vietnam are one and four, respectively, in the world's export
rankings, you know that it's an unusual commodity.) On a larger scale, the
entire Conservation Reserve Program tends to follow the CVPIA duck paddies,
even if it does retire a few marginal acres at enormous taxpayer expense.
I could go on and on, but I challenge fellow SANET followers to tell me how
we are to ensure environmental integrity given the following cold truths:
* Clean Water Act jurisdiction over farm manure doesn't even kick in
until an animal farmer reaches a certain scale.
* If animal manure is so readily handled by small, integrated farms, then
why is the "freedom to farm" in all 50 states measured by agricultural
freedom from compliance with nuisance law, the common law's most
primitive tool for regulating groundwater and odor contamination?
* There is no Clean Air Act control on animal methane at all. For this
hurt, the only cure is absolute reductions in methane emission. Fewer
cows, less methane. Unfortunately for those of us who care about
greenhouse gas emissions, fewer cows also mean fewer dairy farmers. Why
else would there be so much putatively "environmentalist" opposition to
rbST, a drug that has the potential to dent U.S. dairy's contribution
to global warming, to reduce America's annual cow-sh*t level by 6 billion
kg, and to save America's waters 8 billion liters of cow p*ss?
Don't like the concentration of wastes in the manure pools built by Big Pig
and Dominant Dairy? Fair enough. The task is to address the risk as such,
free of any baggage regarding the feared loss of entrepreneurial jobs in
the farm sector. And by the way, friend Ann (Clark), enforcement costs *do*
matter -- a lot. Environmental protection agencies have limited budgets
and rely heavily on intangible public support. Big Pig and his ilk are
susceptible to one-stop, ham-fisted enforcement; the small pork peddler can
dodge detection (who has time to visit all those different operations) and
wrap himself in the cloak of agricultural romance if and when he's
actually caught. And by the way, when the environmental guard dogs slap
on the compliance orders, who do you think is going to have the cash on
hand to obey?
Time and again this newsgroup utters the mantra that farming means
rural culture, rural development. Even if this slogan ignores the
increasingly nonagricultural nature of America's rural economies, I am
prepared to concede some things. Human cultures and human values do
matter. But we can more readily retrain obsolete farmers than we can take
back an extra billion tons or so of bovine manure. And it's high time that
farm policy debates take full account of consumer welfare, the most
understated and underrated economic aspect of agricultural regulation. If
this task has to fall on a passionate observer whose sense of
intergenerational responsibility is that of an urban, immigrant child
weaned on subsidized school lunches, so be it. U.S. agricultural policy
will be that much more complete and more just when nonfarmers finally
participate in its formulation.
Cheers to all (and especially to those that we active participants have
come to know by the predictability -- and the enjoyability -- of their
contributions to the newsgroup),
Jim Chen
Associate Professor of Law
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
voice: (612) 625-4839
fax: (612) 625-2011