How much of your food cost is political?

In a recent edition of the Modesto Bee, Victor Davis Hanson asks the question another way.

In times of massive deficits, why are we borrowing millions to subsidize profitable agri- business?

It really becomes very clear what is happening when you scrape away the political rhetoric and look at who is giving thanks for their bounty and who does not reap that harvest. Of all the commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat, sugar, cotton) corn most clearly illustrates exactly how we are all getting the shaft. According to Hanson:

Corn reserves are at their lowest point in 15 years, as prices skyrocketed nearly 70 percent in almost one year. Escalating world wheat prices have caused unrest in the Middle East. Soy, dairy and meat prices are likewise reaching record levels. In other words, a growing world population, increased affluence abroad and demands for higher- priced meats and vegetables, and diversion of prime cropland for biofuel from Europe to Brazil — in perfect-storm fashion — have made food a lucrative business.

Hanson does not even address the most distressing fact concerning corn.  As the US Government moves to increase the amount of ethanol in our transportation fuel, an increasing amount of our crop is being diverted to fuel rather than food. Climate blogger, Joseph Romm, never a fan of ethanol, was petty clear about this today, but with more moral indignation that Hanson managed to convey.

In a world of blatantly increasing food insecurity — driven by population, dietary trends, rising oil prices, and growing climate instability — America’s  policy of burning one third of our corn crop in our engines (soon to be 37% or more) is becoming increasingly untenable, if not unconscionable.

I have written about the problems with commodity subsidies before: here, here and here (with Wisconsin's Jill Bussierer).

Now we have a Republican controlled House of Representative, with a large number of Republican Senators from the very states that grow most of our corn. Kari Hamerschlag, Sr. Analyst at the Environmental Working Group sent out an email about the EWG's Farm Subsidy Database in which she makes the point that the benefits go to a very few. Then concludes her letter by pointing out that we need a new agricultural policy.

In a time of large federal deficits, the agricultural budget is a zero-sum game. Every dollar that goes into wasteful, inequitable programs cannot be committed to solving serious environmental problems, promoting local and sustainable organic food systems, increasing access to healthy foods, or building new opportunities for beginning and minority farmers. A better strategy is needed to help growers and ranchers of all sizes, sectors and regions cope with the myriad challenges facing agriculture.

That is pretty much what Hanson was saying in the Mod Bee OpEd linked above. It seems to me that there is a need for someone who can challenge the status quo of our gerrymandered Central Valley congressional districts, someone who can talk about getting the waste out of Federal Budget, who can talk about putting people to work on their own land; someone who can extol the advantages of decentralizing power back to the local government, someone who knows what farmers have known for millennia, that if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.

That sounds to me like a Green.

California Ag and Climate Change

I have just finished reading Kari Hamerschlag's report for the Environmental Working Group: California’s Climate Change Policy Leaves Agriculture in the Dust: I quote a bit from the executive summary: (full report also available from that link.)

Climate change presents California agriculture with two major challenges: how to reduce its contribution to climate change while arming itself against the threats a warming planet poses to agricultural production.

Fortunately, many of the measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in the soil will also make agriculture more resilient to extreme weather patterns, such as the current drought. Cover cropping, composting, conservation tillage, organic fertilization and other best management practices will increase the amount of soil organic matter, reduce erosion, conserve water and enhance fertility. This, in turn, will help increase crop productivity and drought and pest resistance in the face of an increasingly dry and hot climate. According to a January 2009, ground-breaking study by University of California at Davis researchers, these practices, when combined, will generate significant greenhouse gas reduction benefits, primarily through carbon sequestration.

This is just a reminder that there is a lot happening locally and that all to idiots are not in Washington. Some of them worked on California's strategy which might be summarized as "Build the Arnold Schwarzenegger Peripheral Canal".

Fortunately, Hamerschlag also provides a list of 10 things that need to be done and that had been inconveniently left out.

CA Dept. of Dept. of Natural Resoures Fails Again

Alex's post earlier today makes the distinction between Greens and the other parties quite clear. If you need more evidence of just how much our Government in Sacramento publishes propaganda, you need only read the latest blast from Kari Hamerschlag (Sr. Analyst with the Environmental Working Group). Kari refers to the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy document, a draft now in circulation.

Unfortunately, the action plan for agriculture leaves out one critical proven strategy for coping with extreme weather events: the promotion of organic agricultural practices that will make soils healthier and more productive, while also conserving water and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The draft adaptation strategy points out what most critics of federal and state climate change legislation constantly fail to acknowledge: That taking no action to address climate change now could cost key sectors in the state “tens of billions of dollars per year in direct costs.”

It is good that someone is thinking about the effects of climate change, since we are not doing much about avoiding it. Still, it sounds like the ag plan is in need of some good old manure. It is like almost everything else out of Sacramento. The words sound good, the thoughts are lofty, but the green is just astroturf.