agriculture

How the 2007 Farm Bill can help restore market competition

Are federal authorities finally taking the idea that a few companies shouldn't be allowed to dominate the food system seriously?

Well, the Federal Trade Commission recently blocked Whole Foods from gobbling up rival natural foods marketer Wild Oats. Congratulations to the FTC for busting up the natural-foods trust!

But even combined, Whole Foods and Wild Oats would account for only 15 percent of natural-foods sales. Meanwhile, Smithfield Foods alone now controls 30 percent of the pork market after acquiring Premium Standard Farms a month ago -- a deal that the Department of Justice waved on. In fact, our food production system is full of examples of market concentration that make the Whole Foods/Wild Oats tie-up look like small (organic, heirloom) potatoes.

Given such brazen inconsistencies, Congress needs to step in and give the executive branch some direction when applying antitrust theory to food companies. Adding a Competition Title to the Farm Bill would do just that.

Food? Farms? No connection at all!

From the BBC:

The Linking Environment And Farming organisation found that 22% of 1,073 adults questioned did not know bacon and sausages originate from farms ... The survey also found four in 10 people did not know yoghurt is made using farm produce, nearly half were unaware the raw ingredients for beer start off in farmers' fields and 23% did not know bread's main ingredients came from the farm.

(I'm not pinging on the Brits; I'm sure the U.S. is even worse.)

Dairy farmers’ organic practices called into question

Regulation might not be the best way to create greener markets, but the right sort of regulations enforced the right way can work.

That's a lesson in the organic market, which witnessed a first this week: a mega-organic dairy with 10,000 cows (3,500 "organic"), which was clearly skirting regulations, was suspended by a certifier and no longer allowed to sell "organic" milk.

Global warming, agriculture, and fossil fuels

In the article "A Perennial Search for Perfect Wheat" in yesterday's New York Times science section, writer Jim Robbins highlights one of the slow-moving global disasters of our age: the destruction of the world's soils. This in turn is part of a wider problem: global ecosystem destruction, including depleted oceans, cleared forests, and overgrazed grasslands.

As for erosion, Robbins writes:

Threatening local control in our food system

When the Democrats took control of Congress, a colleague of mine looked at me with a sigh of relief and said, "Isn't it great that we won't have to be playing defense against bad policy anymore?" If only that first impression were the case.

In a democracy, we shouldn't have to be constantly vigilant for bad legislative ideas that could hurt the public good. Our legislators are supposed to be the filter that guards against schemes that would strip rights and take choices away from people. Unfortunately, it seems to be the same politics, with the same money trails.

JMG's post yesterday touches on a topic I have been thinking a lot about, and I want to address it in more detail.

On the House Agriculture Committee website, summaries of all of the parts of the legislation being offered are posted. Under the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry there is a Title I Section-by-Section analysis. Section 123 is particularly problematic:

SEC. 123. EFFECT OF USDA INSPECTION AND DETERMINATION OF NON-REGULATED STATUS.
* Prevents a State or locality from prohibiting an article the Secretary of Agriculture has inspected and passed, or an article the Secretary has determined to be of nonregulated status.

What does this mean? Also known as "preemption language," this broad statement basically says that if the USDA says something is safe, a state or local government is not allowed to regulate it. For example, there have been a number of counties around the country that have banned genetically modified organisms from being produced within their borders. This preemption-style language, if it's passed in the Farm Bill, would void those local laws.

Whatever happened to local control is good?

From Organic Consumers:

Failing to suppress grassroots control over food safety laws and labels in the last session of Congress, industry has now called on their friends in the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry to slip a similar poison pill into an obscure section of the voluminous 2007-2012 Farm Bill. The provision would give the White House appointed Secretary of Agriculture the power to eliminate local or state food and farming laws, such as those in four California counties banning genetically engineered crops, and set an ominous precedent undermining states' rights.

Pesticide efficacy is decreasing

If you've ever colored Easter eggs -- I mean the old-fashioned way, with food-coloring, not with those plastic wraparounds -- then you know that when you mess up, you have two options: rinse them off with some white vinegar and start over, or forge ahead, layer even more color on top, and hope that something presentable emerges.

Okay, so that metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but that's what came to mind when I read, earlier this week, that scientists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, have engineered a new category of transgenic crops. The new plants -- which include broad-leafed greens such as soybeans, tomatoes, and tobacco -- harbor a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to an herbicide called dicamba.

"But we have Roundup!" you cry. "Why do we need anything else?" Well, because Roundup (active ingredient: a chemical called glyphosate) isn't working as flawlessly as it used to. According to the story in Science (sorry, subscription only), 24 percent of farmers in the northern Midwest and 29 percent in the South say they have glycophate-resistant (GR) weeds. Crop scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia report GR grasses popping up too.

World grain supplies tanking

Once again, a prediction is panning out(PDF):

The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses.

Every six years, we're adding to the world the equivalent of a North American population. We're trying to feed those extra people, feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production can't keep up.

The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer ...

(Another hat tip to KO.)

Interesting juxtaposition of stories

Interesting juxtaposition of stories:

First, an essay on what has become of organics, as it turns into what Fromartz calls "Organic, Inc."

Then, Energy Bulletin links to a story suggesting that some Brits might deny the organic label to food flown in from abroad.

And, of course, there's the post right here on Gristmill about labeling as an attempt to help consumers understand the effect of their purchases.

The issue boils down to the fact that our prices don't help consumers understand anything about food; in our perverse system, the food that has traveled the furthest at the greatest energy expense may often be the cheapest. As a smart man put it:

"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth."

-- Oystein Dahle, former vice president of Esso for Norway and the North Sea