Postive Yield and Production Impacts

By clicking on the title to this post, readers may go the the briefing note (17 April 2009) of PG Economics Limited about the Union of Concerned Scientists report titled "Failure to Yield." PG Economics writes that "the public, policy makers, stakeholders and media need to be aware of its [the UCS report] misleading nature through a combination of inappropriate use of data and omission of representative, relevant analysis."

Readers may also use the link at the end of this paragraph to read the PG Economics Limited "Focus on yield," a four page document about biotech crops directly addressing yield, socio-economic impacts, and environmental effects from 1996-2006. http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/pdf/GM_Crop_yield_summary.pdf This four page document refers to a still lengthier PG Economics report published in a peer-reviewed journal, AgBioForum, from the University of Missouri.

Farmers are quite capable and knowledgeable about what occurs in their fields. Farmers would not grow or adopt biotech crops unless those crops provided agronomic, economic, and environmental benefits for the farmers. Millions of farmers around the world have grown transgenic crops on a cumulative total of 2 billion plus acres since 1996. Farmers can count and they count accurately. As the PG Economics documents show, the UCS report fails to count accurately. More importantly, the PG Economics documents provide the evidence of the positive yield and production impacts of biotech crops that farmers have experienced and are experiencing in 25 countries of the world.

http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/pdf/GM_crop_yield_arial.pdf

A Tribute to Craft Beers

Here's to a great American agricultural product - craft beer.
Despite the recession, craft beer sales have grown in most markets, developing a loyal following . American Craft Beer Continues Global Expansion: U.S. Craft Beer Exports Increase 25% in 2008. See also, MN Craft Beer Sales Boom.


Celebrating this bit of positive economic news, posted below is a new video, I Am A Craft Brewer. It was created by Greg Koch, CEO of the Stone Brewing Co. along with more than 35 other U.S. craft brewers.

It is offered as "a collaborative video representing the camaraderie, character and integrity of the American Craft Brewing movement" at the 2009 Craft Brewers Conference as an introduction to Greg's Keynote Speech entitled "Be Remarkable: Collaboration Ethics Camaraderie Passion."

Who knew that brewing could be such a social inspiration?


I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Failure to Yield

While technology is often promoted as the key to increased production, a recent report highlights the risk in relying upon genetic modification as the technological enhancement that will solve global food needs.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently released a report, Failure to Yield on the use of genetically engineered crops as a means for achieving higher production yields. The report concludes that "[d]epsite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields." Instead, yield increases are largely due to traditional plant breeding and improvements in agricultural practices."

From the USC press release:

The UCS report comes at a time when food price spikes and localized shortages worldwide have prompted calls to boost agricultural productivity, or yield -- the amount of a crop produced per unit of land over a specified amount of time. Biotechnology companies maintain that genetic engineering is essential to meeting this goal. Monsanto, for example, is currently running an advertising campaign warning of an exploding world population and claiming that its “advanced seeds… significantly increase crop yields…” The UCS report debunks that claim, concluding that genetic engineering is unlikely to play a significant role in increasing food production in the foreseeable future.

The report recommends that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state agricultural agencies, and universities increase research and development for proven approaches to boost crop yields. Those approaches should include modern conventional plant breeding methods, sustainable and organic farming, and other sophisticated farming practices that do not require farmers to pay significant upfront costs. The report also recommends that U.S. food aid organizations make these more promising and affordable alternatives available to farmers in developing countries.

“If we are going to make headway in combating hunger due to overpopulation and climate change, we will need to increase crop yields,” said Gurian-Sherman. “Traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”

G8 Agricultural Ministerial

Secretary Vilsack and other government agricultural leaders can be commended for the recent Group of Eight (G8) Agricultural Ministers Meeting in Italy. Vilsack noted in his press release that "This meeting, the first of its kind in the G8's history, underscores the important role that agriculture will play in the coming months and years, as we look for ways to improve global food security."

The importance of sustainable development in food security appears throughout the final declaration achieved at the meeting.

Ensuring access to adequate food and water is essential for sustainable development and for our future. . . .

We underline the importance of increasing public and private investment in sustainable agriculture, rural development and environmental protection in cooperation with international organisations. It is essential to tackle climate change impacts and ensure sustainable management of water, forests and other natural resources, while considering demographic growth.

We call for enhanced support including investments in agricultural science, research, technology, education, extension services, and innovation. We also commit ourselves to increasingly share technology, processes and ideas with other countries in the interest of increasing the capacity of national and regional institutions and governments, as well as promoting food security. These efforts are vital to increasing sustainable agricultural productivity and rural development in each country, in accordance with various agricultural conditions, respecting biodiversity and improving peoples’ access to food, social and economic development and prosperity.

Recognizing the importance of global food security, it is critical for world leaders to work together to promote the careful use of limited natural resources while also increasing food production.

Several issues come to mind -

• Secretary Vilsack recognizes global food security and battling world hunger as critical to our national security. How can this be reconciled with energy policy that relies on corn-based ethanol?
• Moreover, in a hungry world, why do we support an agricultural policy that promotes the production of corn for high fructose corn syrup, industrial uses, and cheap feed for livestock?
• Which technologies can aid world wide food production and which produce only illusory gains? This last issue will be the basis of future post. Stay tuned . . .

Arugula nation

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama seems more attuned to slow food than to fast food. Perhaps nothing symbolizes this subtle shift in the attitude of the White House toward food than arugula. Maureen Dowd explains in a column featuring the the legendary Alice Waters.

King Corn

I watched the film King Corn again yesterday, this time with our LL.M. Agricultural Perspectives class. I was once again struck by the odd and unsustainable path our food and agricultural systems have taken.

We often hear farmers proudly and very sincerely proclaiming that their job is “to feed the world.” And, the productivity of American agriculture has been touted as the model for the rest of the hungry world.

But, as King Corn illustrates in such an entertaining and yet serious fashion, American farmers and consumers are caught in a system that makes little or no sense; one that is disconnected from any constructive food, farm, or environmental policy.

According to the USDA ERS Corn Briefing Room, "corn is the most widely produced feed grain in the United States, accounting for more than 90 percent of total value and production of feed grains." The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that corn production rose markedly in 2007 to over 93 million acres and is estimated to total approximately 85 billion acres in 2009.

As King Corn accurately evidences, however, farmers grow corn even when it is not profitable to do so. This is because government farm programs subsidize its production. According to the farm subsidy database provided by the Environmental Working Group with numbers provided by the USDA, “over the past twelve years, taxpayers have spent $56 billion on corn subsidies paid to over 1.5 million recipients, making it the top crop for federal assistance.”

The environmental impact of corn production is surprisingly absent in King Corn, but it is well worth mentioning. Because of the nutrient requirements associated with our intensive cropping systems, nitrogen and phosphorus run off is an increasing problem. Adding additional corn acres generally means 1) less crop rotation or 2) taking land out out of conservation use, both of which exacerbate the environmental problems. See, e.g., U.S. Corn Production Feeds Expanding Gulf Dead Zone. U.S. corn production requires significant fertilization, significant pesticide application, and in many areas, irrigation. It is by all accounts a resource consumptive crop.

Okay, back to feeding the world - that is why we want farmers to grow it, right?

The huge corn crop that we produce is not a variety of corn that can be eaten “as is” by humans. In order to make it into food, it has to either be fed to animals or processed, most often through an energy-consumptive industrial process, in order to make it edible. And, even farther removed from a hungry world, we are growing increasing amounts of corn for ethanol fuel production.

What are we feeding to the world with our corn? Let's put aside corn based meat production for another post and focus on the primary industrialized food product that comes most directly from U.S. corn production - high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is hardly the product that is needed by a hungry world. According to the PBS website that accompanies King Corn, American consumption of sweeteners in food has risen by 19 percent since 1970. In 2003, the USDA estimated that Americans ate 79 pounds of corn sweetener per year—a four-fold increase from 1970.

Couldn't we develop a food and agricultural system that would encourage farmers to "feed the world" a crop that was good for them, a crop that could be produced and consumed without degrading the environment? Isn't that the kind of crop that the government should subsidize?

According to the USDA’s corn briefing room - "Research is continuing to expand the various industrial uses for corn and corn byproducts." The circular madness continues. We are developing more ways to use the crop that we are paying farmers to over produce at great harm to the environment. Let's shift the government research dollars that support this work over to developing a more sustainable food and agricultural system.

Ag Headlines from Nebraska

I seem to have let these pile up.

Swinging for the sweet spot

And now there are four. The FDA's approval of rebaudioside A, a derivative of Stevia rebaudiana bertoni, as a food additive brings the total number of low-calorie sugar substitutes to four: saccharin (Sweet ’N Low), aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda), and stevia (Truvia, Rebiana, and PureVia). What stevia holds over its rivals is this: because it is derived directly from the sweetleaf plant, it can be lawfully marketed as a "natural sweetener."

The New York Times' Kim Severson discusses the takeaway lessons  of the emergence of stevia.

Livestock Waste Management

Nebraska's Livestock Waste Management Act is currently the focus of a bill in our legislature. Read about it here. Personally, I question the wisdom of allowing livestock facilities to structure their businesses with multiple entities to avoid non-compliance. And when combined with a 5-strikes-and-you-are-out rule, it would appear Nebraska's law is fairly toothless. But further study may reveal something that I've missed.

In any event, I don't think it wise to base this decision on a need to aid the young farmer (as the post reports). Rules that seek to avoid environmental harms do impose costs on producers (while at the same time relieving the public of costs that it is bears in the form of environmental damage). If that, in itself, is a barrier to young farmers, then the argument is really an argument for non-regulation. I'd thought we had outgrown that. But perhaps I was wrong. The young farmer and the family farm live on in some settings as justifications for all types of policy. But why should it matter that a large livestock facility is owned by a family or a youngster? As Susan has suggested, it should be very difficult for industrialized agriculture (and, I think, all agriculture) to avoid industry-like regulation that responds to the dangers it poses.

Food Policy and Health Symposium at Stanford

I have recently had the opportunity to work with Stanford Law student Loren A. Crary, Articles Editor for the Stanford Law & Policy Review. Recognizing the significance of current issues of agricultural law and food policy, the Review is planning a Food Policy and Health Symposium. I am pleased to post the following call for submissions -

The Stanford Law & Policy Review seeks articles or short essays for publication in the Stanford Law & Policy Review’s upcoming symposium on “Food Policy and Health.”

The Stanford Law & Policy Review is an academic journal at Stanford Law School that explores current issues at the nexus of law and public policy. For each issue we solicit articles from prominent professors, judges, lawyers, political leaders, regulators, economists, and other experts (past contributors include then Governor Bill Clinton, Senator John McCain, and Governor Jeb Bush).

Through this symposium, we would like to explore the many ways United States policies directly and indirectly related to food have consequences for national health, broadly-defined. We hope to address all stages of the supply chain, including production, processing, transportation, sales and consumption. We would particularly like to highlight the ways agricultural production and the environment may be connected to health through food policy.

We welcome submissions on any subject relating to United States food policy and health including, but not limited to:

• Structure and health-related effects of US agricultural subsidies, and other provisions of the Farm Bill.
• Regulations of food production relating to the environment, including pesticides, agricultural water use, etc. and effects on health, and other agricultural laws related to health, for example regulation of antibiotic use.
• Food safety regulation at all stages of supply chain.
• Policy approaches towards nutrition, including school lunches and measures aimed at obesity.
• Marketing law, including marketing to children; labeling law, including Country of Origin Labeling; and private labeling standards.
• Regulation affecting food security and development of local and sustainable food systems including zoning law and other regulation related to urban agriculture.

Additionally, authors will be invited to present their articles at a live symposium at Stanford Law School during the 2009 – 2010 academic year. We will begin evaluating submissions for next year’s volume on June 15, 2009, so please submit your article by that date if you are interested in contributing. Articles should be between ten and forty double-spaced pages, not including notes and citations. Please contact us at your earliest convenience to discuss your submission. To submit an article, please e-mail it to slpr.foodpolicy@gmail.com.

Questions can be directed to Loren at lacrary@stanford.edu.

Reaction to NY Times Op Ed on Pork Production

My father used to tease me that I would sometimes get "worked up" if I thought something was not right. I guess this post would be a good example. This one's for you, Dad -

James E. McWilliams’ published an editorial, Free-Range Trichinosis in yesterday's New York Times. It provokes a response both because of its inaccuracies and its omissions. McWilliams cites a preliminary study of only 600 hogs as the sole basis for his assertion that “free range” production produces pork that is less safe than industrialized production, and he promotes concern about the dangers of infection found in the natural environment. He did not reveal that the National Pork Board funded the study.

While food safety should be the concern of all producers regardless of method of production, McWilliams' attempt to evoke public health fear as a reason for preferring industrialized animal production over "free range" production is profoundly misleading.

Contrary to the tone of McWilliam's analysis, today's free range production is not a new system that was invented by chefs who seek the taste of wild game. Rather, it is a system of production that has been used by farmers worldwide for generations. Getting back to my father, that is how he raised hogs on our farm. Free range is not “an arbitrary point between the wild and the domesticated.” It is system of production that acknowledges that animals are living creatures with natural tendencies and that recognizes that they do better when the most basic of these tendencies are respected. In the words of the designer of livestock handling facilities and Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, Dr. Temple Grandin in her article, Animals are not Things, "There is a fundamental difference between cows and screwdrivers." The same could be said for pigs.

In contrast, industrialized animal agriculture, i.e., raising very large numbers of animals in extremely close confinement, is an experiment that has been with us for about fifty years. It arose not because of safety concerns (as McWilliams implies) but because of the economic efficiencies it provided to meat processors. While for processors, it has been extremely efficient, the externalities associated with it are overwhelming. It is now recognized as contributing to serious public health problems never before associated with American agricultural production.

• Workers in confined hog operations have long been known to have serious health problems associated with their employment. Public health research over the last decade has now revealed similar health problems associated with living within a few miles of an industrialized swine facility. For example, an increase in diarrheal and respiratory illnesses including asthma is well documented in public health studies. See, e.g. on the CDC website, Neighbor Health and Large-scale Swine Production
  

• Contrary to the sterile image of industrialized agriculture that is portrayed in the article, animals raised in such close confinement are under constant stress and must be given an almost continuous stream of antibiotics in order to prevent disease. It is estimated that 70% of all antibiotics produced in the United States are fed to animals in industrialized production, causing many in the health community to blame industrialized animal production as one of the leading causes for the rise in antibiotic resistant infections. See, e.g., The Pew Commission on Industrialized Animal Agriculture.

• A recent University of Iowa pilot study found the deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in 49% of tested animals and 45% of tested workers.

• MRSA has been found in supermarket pork in a variety of U.S. and Canadian locations.

• Because of their intense generation of urine and feces, industrialized hog facilities have been associated with the contamination of groundwater with nitrate as well as the contamination of our streams and rivers.

Thus, McWilliams' efforts to scare consumers away from "free range" in favor of industrialized production is rather absurd. He fails to provide credible documentation for his concerns about free range pork, and he fails to acknowledge any of the well documented problems with industrialized production.

Public safety concerns demand alternatives to intense industrialized production as it is practiced today. Free range is one such alternative. Does free range mean safe? No, perhaps not. But, at the very least it provides a starting point in that it does not generate public health problems just through its production. We can work with the rest of it.

For some other thoughtful blogging on the op-ed, check out Paula Crossfield's post on the Huffington Post, April 11, 2009.

Food law academy in Puglia

Alberto Alemanno left an invitation by way of commentary on an Agricultual Law post. I'm happy to reprint that invitation here in the main body of this blog:

Dear food law colleagues,

I am pleased to invite you to the 1st EFFL Summer Academy in Food Law & Policy. The academy will be held on 20-24 July at the beautiful XVII century Masseria Chiancone, a farmhouse immersed in an oasis of natural beauty, archetypically Mediterranean, along the coast of Puglia, Italy.

The academy will offer scientific reflection and discourse on key legal and policy issues in European and World food law by following an innovative and interdisciplinary approach. This will be achieved through a dynamic, informal and highly interactive five-day program, which includes lectures, presentations, discussion groups and social activities. The faculty of the academy consists of food experts coming from relevant authorities, European and U.S. institutions and agencies, academia, industry and legal practice. Scholarships will be available.

To find out more, please visit the academy's home page. I look forward to seeing some of you in beautiful Puglia this summer!

Alberto Alemanno
Academic Director — 1st EFFL Summer Academy in Food Law & Policy
Associate Professor of Law
HEC Paris
1 rue de la Libération — Jouy en Josas Cédex
+ 33 1 39 67 75 20
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