Vindicated agronomist....
April 27, 2008 | 03:21 PM

It's a relief to see bad agricultural policy actually getting talked about. Several decades too late, of course, but whatever.

Interesting to note are agricultural policy changes going on all over the developed world at the moment. New Zealand has recently dropped *all* agricultural subsidies... and they're still exporting food. Even the EU- who, all grand political talk aside, had a budget consisting mostly of money for farmers- has drastically reduced farm subsidies. Farm incomes actually went up- instead of selling subsidized cheapo milk to Parmalat to turn into powdered milk, farmers had to put together real business plans and found out they could have been making more money all along by making cheese. True story. And just last week, I was at a presentation by an Australian ag official talking about interesting experiences with small, close-to-the-city farmers. Their government ag system had regarded these small guys as nothing but trouble for the longest time- retiree yahoos who just kept cows as lawn ornaments. Then they got some census numbers realized that these yahoos were growing 25% of Australia's food. If they zoned out the farmers around Melbourne, 5 million people would stop eating vegetables. You can bet that changed their regulatory attitude real quick!

An unsung gift of smaller farms is that the farmer can manage their land *so* much more effectively. The saying about bigger farms being more efficient is true- in terms of *capital* and *labor.* It is absolutely untrue in terms of yield per acre.... which is what Australia just found out. That 25% of their food was coming off of far less than 25% of the land area. A small farmer can, say, plant clover between her corn rows, and once the corn's picked off let some cows in to graze off the clover and corn leftovers. That's a lot better productivity per acre than corn-only- plus they wouldn't have to buy as much Haber-Bosch nitrogen fertilizer. But a farmer capitalized to the nines does not have that flexibility- they've got to concentrate on one thing and one thing only if they're going to keep from going under.

Speaking of which, as a future farmer myself it's flattering to think that politicians want my vote. However it's important to realize exactly how tiny the farm population is. As farm sizes have exploded, the number of farmers had to go down. Idaho "The Potato State" has only got about 1,000 actual potato farmers in it, last I heard. 1,000 votes do not make policy happen. Not to mention, a lot of farmers have a pretty good grasp on what the country's agricultural policy really means- unlike most Americans they deal with it on a daily basis, and know that it's been a mess for decades. (A lot of them actually blame the subsidies for a farm economy that's been depressed ever since the Great Depression up until about now... and they'd be right, but that's a different story.) What does make policy happen is two things: Companies that sell specialized seed, fertilizer, and tractors, or benefit from cheap commodity foods, and have lots of money to spend in Washington- agribusiness and food processors. Check out Archer Daniels Midland or Tyson Foods sometime (or Monsanto, if you don't mind being unoriginal). The other is the rest of the Americans, who feel good inside when they make a vote that they've heard is going to help The Family Farmer... and didn't pay much attention in Econ 101.

Sarah Taber