The Tragedy of the Commons, Flipped

Red Lobster is subsidizing international lobster fishing waters:

"Is there Red Lobster without lobster?" is not an existential question for this company. The North American lobster harvest fluctuates every year, but demand continues to grow. So two years ago, Darden began sponsoring an experiment to boost the population. Scientists working with the government of New Brunswick, in Canada, catch pregnant lobsters and care for their offspring until they're mature enough to burrow into the ocean's sandy bottom, then release the tiny animals into the wild. Then Darden waits and hopes -- for six years or more. So far, says Bill Herzig, Darden's senior vice president of supply-chain innovation, "it looks like good science." ...

But today, overfishing has made the seafood side of the business increasingly complicated -- not just for Red Lobster but for all the Darden brands. "It's a supply-and-demand issue," says Ian Olson, the company's director of sustainability, a newly created position. "There are 6 billion people on the planet today, and it'll be 9 billion by 2050. There's no better way to say it: There are only so many fish in the sea." Even before scientists predicted in 2006 that world fish stocks could collapse by 2048, Darden had begun removing endangered wild fish, such as Chilean sea bass and orange roughy, from its menus and using its clout as one of the world's largest buyers to push the industry toward sustainability. To promote fish farming and to set standards to minimize its environmental impact, Darden cofounded the Global Aquaculture Alliance, a nonprofit trade association that partners with governments and NGOs. Once GAA agreed on shrimp aquaculture rules, Darden required its suppliers to adopt them, much as Wal-Mart has successfully pushed its vendors to reduce packaging. "We recognize our responsibility," says Olson. "We want to make sure we preserve the ecosystem, but it's even better if we enhance it."

Somewhere Elinor Ostrom is smiling.

Against Industrial Farming (?)

A few weeks ago, I posted an article in defense of industrial farming and hoped that it would spark some discussion about agriculture policy. There wasn't much, but here's one article from an "agri-intellectual". He doesn't rebut much of the first piece, instead trying to reframe the discussion:

I’ve said for a while that I see three big challenges for the sustainable-food movement as it scales up: 1) soil fertility—in the absence of synthesized nitrogen and mined phosphorous and potassium, how are we to build soil fertility on a larger scale?; 2) labor—sustainable farming requires more hands on the ground; who’s going to work our farm fields, and at what wages?; and 3) access—in an economy built on long-term wage stagnation, how can we make sustainably grown food accessible to everyone?

Hurst’s essay begins to engage these questions—sort of. I don’t have the time or energy right now to take it on point by point. But I will say that the discussion would be much richer if he acknowledged a few serious questions about the industrial-farming model he champions.

The rest of the response is mostly about climate change, which is also a major concern for "scaling up" sustainable farming, and worries about "ecological blowback". As are yields, of course, and costs. In short, the response was disappointing. Some of the comments are better, tho.

"In Favor of Industrial Farming"

Or, "The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals". A Missouri farmer pushes back against the likes of Michael Pollan and Food, Inc., and argues that those criticizing industrial farming don't have a grip on the realities that farmers face, or the necessary trade-offs of moving to an all organic, more "natural" norm of farming. For starters, we'd have to cull the human population by several billion people, engage in more environmental degradation, and speed up climate change. There's another component, familiar to IPE students:

We are clearly in the process of deciding that we will not continue to raise animals the way we do now. Because other countries may not share our sensibilities, we'll have to withdraw or amend free trade agreements to keep any semblance of a livestock industry.

Agricultural policy has been one of the major sticking points in the Doha round of WTO talks, and there is reason to suspect that if the U.S. starts requiring organic or free-range certifications for food imports that developing countries will respond with retaliatory "process" tariffs of some kind, and having WTO backing to boot. Which might be worth it, but it does up the ante quite a bit.

Here's the concluding argument:

But farmers have reasons for their actions, and society should listen to them as we embark upon this reappraisal of our agricultural system. I use chemicals and diesel fuel to accomplish the tasks my grandfather used to do with sweat, and I use a computer instead of a lined notebook and a pencil, but I'm still farming the same land he did 80 years ago, and the fund of knowledge that our family has accumulated about our small part of Missouri is valuable. And everything I know and I have learned tells me this: we have to farm "industrially" to feed the world, and by using those "industrial" tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.

Unsurprisingly, the article was published by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank. There is hardly any discussion of the various ethical claims most often made about agriculture policy. The article instead focuses on the practical difficulties of moving in the direction that the Pollanistas prefer. The author does not claim that we shouldn't move in that direction, only that we should have a true appreciation for the full package of what we'd get.

I hope this article inspires some honest rebuttals. I don't know of anyone who is completely comfortable with the way food is manufactured in the U.S., but we rarely have open and informed discussion of agricultural policy in this country. Instead, public commentary often devolves into ill-informed, emotional moralizing. We can, and should, do better.

Abolish Agriculture (Committees)

Hit play first.



Ezra Klein wins today's Archimedean "I Wish I Were in Charge" Award (which I so want to shorten to the Archimedean Silver Star award). He asks "isn't it time to abolish congressional committees on agriculture?" He astutely notes that such committees currently are a playground for "special interests" (he seems to think these committees used to be okay). These damn farmers, apparently, are now using their special committees to mess with the ability of right-thinking people to create the world Klein prefers (no special interests involved in climate change legislation, I guess). He concludes that maybe it's time farmers don't have such committees. [Throw away point: Ezra seems to think that no other industries have their own committees. This is true except for all of the sectors that do have their own committees: such as transportation, energy, armed services (defense industry) financial services, education, small business, and I think there are committees for health care services. Maybe these industries aren't "special interests" though].

Klein wins today's award for failing to recognize that what he proposes--abolish agriculture committees--is indeed impossible if his characterization of the world is in fact accurate. After all, if farmers are sufficiently powerful to have their own committees that they use to extract stuff from the rest of us (which they are and do), then they are sufficiently powerful to prevent the abolition of said very useful committees. And even if you somehow could abolish the committees, powerful farmers will find other mechanisms through which to achieve their objectives. Finally, if we could in fact abolish ag committees, then we would not actually need to do it (because farmers would not be powerful enough to use these committees to their advantage). Because Klein recognizes none of this, he wins today's award for offering us an analysis that provides no insight into anything other than what the world would like if Ezra Klein were in charge.

As Ezra enjoys his new status, perhaps he will consider why those pesky farmers have so much influence to begin with. Undoubtedly, this will lead him to suggest that what we really need to do is abolish the Senate--or maybe he'll just go straight to the heart of the matter and propose that we just stop letting those damn farmers vote. They all live in flyover country anyway, right?