Download OUTLINE: Food and soil

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OUTLINE: Food and soil
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Physical and social characteristics
Why government regulates food and soil
How government regulates food and soil
Key groups affecting food and soil
Controversies
Physical and social
characteristics
• Human survival depends on food
• Governments have always regulated
23% for a
agriculture
family of 3! Hi
Dominant in U.S.—Mono-cropped
Farms
Why government regulates food
and soil
• Need to ensure that (1) farmers will
produce food and (2) that we will have
food ALWAYS!
• Land grants, 19th century
The mission of these institutions as set forth in the Morrel Act of 1862 is
to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science and
engineering (though "without excluding ... classical studies"), as a
response to the industrial revolution and changing social class.[This
mission was in contrast to the historic practice of higher education to
focus on an abstract Liberal Arts curriculum.
(1) Great Depression
• Great Depression—agricultural depression
starts late 1920s when exports from
Europe stop after the end of WWI
(2) Dust Bowl
Observed rainfall map—1930s
Monocropping plus drought = severe ecological
disaster (which meant food shortages and increased
price)
Red represents driest areas
(NASA Earth Observatory)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYOm
jQO_UMw
June 4 1937, at Goodwell,
Oklahoma. (Mrs. Emma Love,
Goodwell, Oklahoma)
Black Sunday April 14, 1935,
Kansas
How government regulates—
federal government
• The Farm Bill (first in 1933)
• Soil conservation
• Farm animals
1. 2008-2012 Farm Bill-- $287
billion
• Passed every 5 years as an “omnibus bill”
And is the food and ag policy tool for the
federal government.
• 14%
commodity crops
• 65%
food stamps and commodity aid
• 8%
conservation
• 8%
crop insurance
• Added : $4 b. supplemental disaster aid
Farm Bill is a Priority
• $287,000,000,000 (Farm Bill)
• $37,000,000,000 (NSF)
• Is food and agriculture almost 8 times as
important as science?
“Farmers can’t farm without a farm bill. I think most farmers would
like to see a five year extension of the current farm bill,” Dodge
County Farm Bureau President Johnny Johnson said. “I’m
concerned about the overall picture. If we get dependent on foreign
countries for food the way we are dependent on them for oil, we can
hang it all up.” (Georgia Farm Bureau News, Oct. 2006)
Farm Bill subsidies
(commodity crops)
“Agricultural policy has...led to a
ritual of overproduction...”
“The government has provided
essentially a guaranteed
income to producers of these
crops.”
--Senator Richard Lugar (RIndiana)
Production subsidies:
• Corn
• Wheat
• Cotton
• Rice
• Soybeans
Import protections (tariffs):
• Milk
• Sugar
• Peanuts
1. Unintended consequences--U.S.
agricultural subsidies yield: Social Harms
• market distortions that result in...
• environmental and social harms:
– U.S. farms consolidated (as small farms fail)
– farmers in non-subsidy countries can't
compete (international dispute--WTO)
– land is degraded
2. Unintended consequences--U.S.
agricultural subsidies yield: Environmental
Harms
March 5, 2001: Mississippi River Delta's Dead Zone (sediment and agricultural
chemicals)
Photo: David Alles, Western Washington University
Environmental Working Group. 2006. "Farm Subsidy Reform Key to Restoring
Gulf of Mexico 'Dead Zone'" [NGO news release], 4/10/06, Ascribe Newswire.
Growth of GEC in US
3. Unintended consequences--U.S.
agricultural subsidies yield:
Economic Harms
U.S. ruled as anti-free trade
WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATION
WT/DS267/15
23 May 2003
(03-2739)
UNITED STATES - SUBSIDIES ON UPLAND COTTON
Constitution of the Panel Established at the Request of Brazil
Note by the Secretariat
Elizabeth Becker. “Global Trade Body Rules Against U.S. on
Cotton Subsidies.” New York Times, 4/27/04, pp. A1, C14.
Amadou Toumani Touré and Blaise Compaoré. “Your Farm
Subsidies Are Strangling Us.” [Op-editorial] New York Times,
7/11/03.
How government regulates—
federal soil conservation
(1) government regulates—federal
soil conservation programs
(2) How government regulates—federal
Concentrated animal feeding operations
largely exempt from environmental rules
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and
Eric Schaeffer, “An Ill
Wind from Factory
Farms.” [op-editorial] New
York Times, 9/20/03.
Actors outside government
• American Farm Bureau Federation
• Environmental Working Group
• Riverkeeper
• Center for Science in the Public Interest (food and health
NGO)
•
•
•
•
Animal rights groups
Farmers
Food processors (very powerful)
Consumers
Controversies
• U.S. subsidies
• Farms largely exempt from
– Labor and worker safety laws
– Environmental laws
• Agricultural biotechnology
• Animal rights movement
• Eat locally movement
Animals!
OUTLINE: Animals
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Physical characteristics and human use
Why government regulates animals
How government regulates
Key political actors
Controversies
Animals, characteristics and human
use
(1) Utility
(2) Emotional
attachment
Pets are a luxury good?
Why government regulates animals—
encouraged hunting, 19th century
Buffalo skulls, mid-1870s, waiting to be ground into
fertilizer.
(1) Regulated hunting, early 20th
century
Old magazine illustration
of hunters shooting
passenger pigeons. Note
the density of the flight.
(From copy in Schorger,
1955.)
Passenger pigeon net in Canada mid-1800s.
Experienced sharp declines due partially to
commercialization as a cheap food for slaves
(2) Shift to ecosystems, late 20th
century
Photographs of: stream by Kevin Schafer/WWF; freshwater mussel
courtesy the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
How government regulates
animals
•
•
•
•
Wildlife
Animals used for work or food
Pets
Lab animals
Wildlife: A misleading focus on
charismatic megafauna--cute
Photograph of panda cub by Li Wei Sc/Imagine China Photos.
Not as cute
Photograph of aye-aye from
AFP/Getty Images.
How federal government regulates:
wildlife
• Endangered and threatened species
• Ecosystem protections (by public lands
agencies)
Endangered Species Act, 1973
Signed into law by President Richard Nixon
on December 28, 1973, it was designed to
protect critically imperiled species from
extinction as a "consequence of economic
growth and development untempered by
adequate concern and conservation."
To petition to be on the ESL
• Petition and listing
To be considered for listing, the species must meet one of
five criteria (section 4(a)(1)):
• 1. There is the present or threatened destruction,
modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range.
2. An over utilization for commercial, recreational,
scientific, or educational purposes.
3. The species is declining due to disease or predation.
4. There is an inadequacy of existing regulatory
mechanisms.
5. There are other natural or manmade factors affecting
its continued existence.
• The annual rate of listing (i.e., classifying species as
"threatened" or “Endangered")
• Ford administration (47 listings, 15 per year)
• Carter (126 listings, 32 per year),
• Reagan (255 listings, 32 per year),
• George H. W. Bush (231 listings, 58 per year),
• Clinton (521 listings, 65 per year)
• decline to its lowest rate under George W. Bush (60
listings, 8 per year as of 5/24/08)
(a) Plants (b) birds (c) fish (d) mollusks
Recent battle over
implementation
A U.S. District judge has returned the gray wolf to the federal
endangered list. September 2008.
http://youtu.be/4F8GaxVsA8I
How federal government (USDA)
regulates other animals—humane
ideal
• Animals used for food
– USDA inspections, education
• Lab animals
– “minimize animal pain and
distress when it cannot be
eliminated”
– animal care review boards
in universities
How state governments
regulate
• regulate hunting and fishing (seasons,
take limits)
• implement Endangered Species Act
• animal cruelty laws (implemented locally)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/05/usglobal-exotics-fugitive.html
Controversies—animal rights vs. humane
treatment ideals
• Humane treatment: treat
animals with care and
respect; still can use animals
for food, products, and labor
•
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/21676
588/maui-mayor-wants-humane-society-tocombat-feral-chicken-problem
• Animal rights: Animals have
the same rights as humans.
Animal use is slavery and
immoral