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Intro
Michael Pollan changed the way people thought about the agricultural system in the United States when he published The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006. The book was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times and hasn't left the NYT bestseller list since it was released. Pollan used his skills as a professor of journalism to the fullest, bringing the reader on a very personal journey through family farms, big-business organic hatcheries, and the operation of Joel Salatin, who visited Wabash last semester to talk about locally grown food.
I initially researched the subject of agricultural subsidies because of Pollan's book, trying to determine whether his claim that government subsidies caused a chain of cause and effect: lower corn prices, lower high fructose corn syrup prices, lower prices for unhealthy foods, and higher obesity rates. I was astounded to discover that the first relevant peer-reviewed article I accessed actually named Pollan as an example of a “commentator” who took a strong position on the effect of government subsidies on obesity despite the lack of conclusive research on the matter. In effect, the authors were calling out Pollan, a college professor, for making a claim not backed up by research of any kind.
This paper attempts to accomplish two goals. The first goal is to determine whether other claims made in The Omnivore’s Dilemma about the government’s effect on American agriculture are as unfounded as the one made concerning the connection between federal corn subsidies and obesity. The second goal is to state a policy recommendation concerning a flaw in United States government policy if a description of any such flaw by Pollan has any merit. As it turns out, Pollan strikes gold when discussing the problem of nitrogen runoffs.
Literature Review
Farm subsidies and obesity in the United States: National evidence and international comparisons by Julian M. Alston, Daniel A. Sumner, and Stephen A. Vosti
This article seeks to address the “mainstream view presented in the media” of the effect of agricultural subsidies (“farm programs”) on “farm policy-induced commodity-price changes for food prices, food consumption, and obesity.” The paper, written by three professors at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California–Davis, concludes that U.S. farm programs have a “negligible” effect on the prices consumers pay for food and thus a negligible effect on American obesity.
The authors note that the federal government has stated that a policy goal is to reduce obesity, but “the appropriate policy is not clear.” A few possible policy changes are listed, such as subsidizing healthy foods like fresh fruit. They follow this list up with a quote which basically summarizes their methodology in this paper: “To make a socially beneficial choice among these instruments requires understanding the likely effects of each instrument on food consumption (and other) choices by different types of consumers, the implications of those choices for patterns of obesity, and the consequences for social and private costs.”
Methodically making their case, the authors show first that corn’s price would rise by very little (less than 1%) if all subsidies and protections were lifted, then, using international data, show that the price of agricultural commodities is in fact positively correlated with obesity, but probably not strongly enough that subsidies affect obesity very much at all. Instead, the authors say, "other policies that have (or have had) more significant effects on food commodity prices may well have (or have had) more important effects on obesity." An example given is agricultural R&D in the United States.
A Comparison of the Economic Well-Being of Farm and Nonfarm Households. by Katchova, Ani L.
This article deals with the well-being of households that farm, comparing non-farming and farming households using data from two different surveys. The author claims that the article is important because the main goals of farm policy since its inception have been to "provide financial support for agricultural production, increase farm income and well-being, and provide a safety net for farmers." Surely, comparing the well-being of farming and non-farming households will show, in part, whether farm policy is doing its job. The 2002 farm bill provides special assistance to young farmers, so the author made it a point of emphasis to compare those young farmers to their non-farming counterparts.
The metrics used in the paper to compare farming and non-farming households are income and net worth. The author also did tests to find the Gini coefficient among farming and non-farm households.
Because we are focusing on Pollan's argument, which, in part, is that smaller farms are hurting, we should only look at the farms which could be classified as "family farms." Also, we won't look at what the study calls "rural residence farm households" because those households gain their income from sources outside the farm. The group of farmers that we will be comparing to non-farming households will be "intermediate farms," farms with less than $250,000 in sales and which name farming as their primary business. Also, since Pollan claims that getting into debt is a big problem for farmers, we should look at net worth as opposed to income.
The data shows clearly that the net worth (and, incidentally, income) of the median intermediate farmer is higher than the net worth of the median non-farmer who does not own a business. According to the author, the difference is statistically significant. This casts doubt on Pollan's claim that family farmers in America are struggling.
Article 3: Optimal Self-Protection From Nitrate-Contaminated Groundwater by Ready, Richard C. and Henken, Kimberly
This article discusses damage caused to people who get their drinking water from wells that are contaminated with nitrates in a concentration that is above the EPA standard of 10 ppm (parts per million). Pollan claims that fertilizer runoff is a large ecological problem, and a study that finds that large damages are caused by such runoff would be helpful to Pollan's argument.
The authors are actually essentially critiquing an earlier article claiming that damages caused by contaminated well water are about $900 million per year. The authors have two problems with this study: the first is that "a single test reading of nitrate levels below 10 ppm does not guarantee the well is safe," since nitrate levels vary over time. Thus, the damage estimate should be higher than it is. On the other hand, the study didn't take into account the possibility of well owners taking action to lower damages, which would obviously decrease the amount of damages caused by nitrates. The study does not actually give a new damage estimate, but instead claims that if well owners optimally protected themselves from contaminated water, the damage done by that water would be reduced by about 40%. If we assume that well owners do not protect themselves in an optimal fashion, the damage caused by nitrates is still large enough to help Pollan make a convincing argument for policy change regarding fertilizer runoff.
Efficient Waste? Why Farmers Over-Apply Nutrients and the Implications for Policy Design by Glenn Sheriff
The author asks a question in his opening paragraph that cuts to the heart of Pollan's beef with the agricultural system as it is now: "...why do farmers 'waste' money by applying more nutrients than crops can use?" Pollan feels that the answer is that farmers are worried about not having enough yield in their harvest; thus, they err on the side of over-application when it comes to fertilizer. Pollan posits that the philosophy that leads to over-application is "better safe than sorry."
In the paper, the author agrees with Pollan that fertilizer is, in fact, being over-applied, citing studies that show that the over-application is likely somewhere between 17%-32%. However, Sheriff lists many different reasons why farmers may over-apply, only one of which can be construed as "better safe than sorry."
The first section of the body of the paper is titled "Farmer Perception of Agronomic Advice" and theorizes that farmers may reject the model of optimal fertilization called "Linear response and plateau." Farmers may follow a polynomial model instead, which would mean in theory that more fertilizer would mean more yield. Following such a model would clearly lead to over-application, but there isn’t any evidence that farmers do, in fact, follow that model.
The author spends some time talking about the difference between manure and chemical fertilizer before discussing how uncertainty might play a role in over-application. Weather apparently plays a role; Babcock (1992) concluded that farmers in locations with volatile weather systems apply more fertilizer than farmers in systems with lower volatility. According to Sheriff, Babcock claims that 25% of over-application can be explained by varying weather “relative to constant mean weather conditions.” Another factor of uncertainty comes from nitrogen levels in the soil. Musser et al. found that tests reduced application of fertilizer by 43 lbs per acre (frustratingly, no figure for the percentage drop was provided) and that yields did not suffer as a result.
Sheriff explores the possibility that providing insurance to farmers who over-apply fertilizer to reduce uncertainty might be a solution to the over-application problem. He also posits that controlling fertilizer application directly would be the ideal solution. However, enforcement is clearly a difficult task in this situation, “due to the nonpoint source nature of nutrient contamination.”
He moves on, however, to what I believe is the best solution: a tax on nitrogen-base fertilizers. I’ll discuss that tax in the main portion of the paper.
Corn-based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River by Simon D. Donner and Christopher J. Kucharik
The only reason this article is included in my literature review is that it helps further the case that nitrogen runoffs are a very bad thing.
The authors state that fertilizer “applied to corn” is a “primary source” of nitrogen exported to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River and that that nitrogen causes “extensive seasonal hypoxia” over an area of >20,000 square kilometers, which threatens the well-being of fisheries on the gulf coast.
The article discusses the impact that government policies concerning ethanol will have on this dead zone and concludes that said policies will make the “already challenging goal” of decreasing the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico” practically impossible.”
Empirical Analysis
After zeroing in on nitrogen runoff as a problem that could perhaps be solved through government intervention in fertilizer application levels, I attempted to find an article that contained research on the increase in nitrogen runoff from increased application of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Perhaps it is not surprising that I could not find such an article: measuring the quality of the runoff would be extremely difficult. Besides, common sense would dictate that an increase in fertilizer application by 50% would most likely increase runoff by roughly the same amount.
Assuming that a relationship between increased fertilizer application and increased nitrogen runoff does exist, the goal of the government should be very easy to see. Nitrogen causes nearly a billion dollars in damage every year to the water supply of individuals who get their drinking water from wells. Nitrogen draining into the Gulf of Mexico threatens the livelihood of fisheries on the gulf coast. Clearly, the situation would be bettered if farmers stopped over-applying fertilizer and applied at the recommended level.
Of course, there’s no point in arguing for a change in policy if farmers aren’t actually over-applying. In his article, Sheriff cites a study by Yadav, Peterson, and Easter which states that Minnesota corn farmers over-apply fertilizer by 17% above “agronomically recommended rates.” Sheriff cites another study, this one by Trachtenberg and Ogg, which came to a similar conclusion.
Sheriff claims that “agronomically optimal fertilizer application rates are not necessarily economically optimal.” In other words, farmers are making rational decisions about maximizing their crop yield. They are applying too much fertilizer in an economic sense because of uncertainties in the crop-growing process; weather and soil quality are two of those uncertainties. Ideally, every farmer would apply fertilizer at agronomically optimal levels, and the money saved could reimburse victims of crop shortages both caused by unfavorable weather and which could have been prevented by extra application of fertilizer.
The way to accomplish this goal which seems to best combine ease of implementation, effectiveness, and fairness, seems to be a tax on nitrogen fertilizers. In my proposed tax, the money accumulated by the government would become a part of the United States subsidy program. Redistribution would occur partly as part of normal subsidy checks to all farmers, and partly based on the failure of crops due to weather: if a swath of farms in southern Minnesota were to have below-average yields due to cold weather persisting late into the year, and the government determines that those farms could have had normal yields had they applied more fertilizer than agronomically recommended, then the affected farmers would receive money from the tax fund. Clearly, some research would have to be done in order to measure optimal growing conditions and how much of a deviation from those conditions merits a payment from the fund.
There are a few alternatives to this proposed tax, none of which are satisfactory. Simply regulating the amount of fertilizer used directly wouldn’t work simply because enforcement would be a nightmare. There exists no method for a governmental regulatory agency to efficiently measure the level of nitrogen application by farmers. Setting up a voluntary insurance program would be costly and would cause obvious moral hazard problems. According to Sheriff, alternative methods of farming designed to reduce nitrogen runoff are very expensive.
The main problem with the proposed policy is that the raw form of the tax does not discriminate between farmers of different areas. Nitrogen finds its way into the water supply at different rates in different regions of the country, so the optimal tax rate on nitrogen changes from place to place. There are certainly ways to remedy this, however; one solution might be to grant farmers in areas of the country which are not harmed as much by excess nitrogen as others a rebate on nitrogen purchases.
In order to augment the tax, or if the tax is not politically feasible, two additional policies should be implemented. Firstly, education programs for farmers would be helpful. SriRamaratnam et al. (1987) wrote an article analyzing the difference between the perception of farmers and reality of nitrogen-based fertilizer’s benefits. The following graph shows the gap between experienced farmers in the study and experimental plots of crops.
The authors considered the middle levels of nitrogen application to be the most important data, since farmers actually had direct experience with those levels. The fact that farmers with such experience could be so wrong about optimal nitrogen levels practically screams out for some sort of education program. The authors of the 1987 article also noted that contrary to farmers’ belief that additional nitrogen is risk-reducing, additional fertilizer actually increased the variance of the experimental yields.
Secondly, soil testing for nitrogen levels should be required by the United States government. Contrary to the direct regulation of nitrogen levels, requiring soil testing should be easy to enforce. Farmers can simply send the results of the testing to some central authority and be checked off a list. In a study performed by Musser et al. (1995), Pennsylvanian corn farmers decreased their nitrogen application by an average 43 lbs. per acre, about an 18% reduction, after having their nitrogen level recommendations changed by soil nitrogen tests. Yields, on the other hand, were unchanged. Given the large drop in fertilizer purchases that would result from this regulation, it seems unlikely that testing would be unprofitable for farmers.
Policy Recommendation
Pollan makes a few recommendations in his book that are clearly misguided. For example, it is almost certainly a bad idea for the government to consider obesity as a factor when deciding how much to subsidize corn farmers. Alston et al. do a good job of explaining that subsidies don’t affect corn prices much at all, and that even if they did, international comparisons show no clear correlation between corn prices and obesity. Also, there is evidence that Pollan’s claim that farmers are doing poorly in the U.S. agricultural system because agricultural subsidies help push them further and further into debt is also untrue. Katchova showed convincingly that farmers who sell less than $250,000 of crops per year (note that this is revenue, not profit) are doing better in terms of net worth than wage workers (people who do not own a business) in non-farm industries. The reason why I chose to look at the net worth statistic is because Pollan focused very much on the issue of debt.
However, it seems clear that a nitrogen tax would be a win-win scenario. Farmers would stop wasting money on unnecessary fertilizer, and less nitrogen would find its way into the United States water system. Testing soil nitrogen levels and developing education programs for farmers are potential alternative methods to get farmers to lower fertilizer application to agronomically recommended levels.
Conclusion
Michael Pollan wrote a book that changed many people’s view on the food system in this country, but cheated in order to do it. His overarching message was that a petroleum-based agricultural system simply won’t work in the long run and that radical changes in the way we grow food are needed. Such a message is difficult to swallow right away, so it seems that Pollan tried to convince the reader from the beginning that government policies are not optimal in ways which most people envision when thinking about the historical problems of the food system: the well being of farmers, the price of food at the cashier, etc. When Pollan tried to draw in the reader at the beginning of his book, he either made some careless errors or deliberately replaced easily obtainable figures like the well-being of farmers with interviews of a few individuals. It seems clear that at first, Pollan had his “journalist” hat firmly set upon his head.
I don’t think this is nitpicking. Pollan may have helped shift the narrative in the media about the food system, but the academic community isn’t taking him seriously. I do not have much evidence to support this; all I have is the fact that the only paper I could find that mentioned Pollan called him a “commentator” and dismissed what he had to say. Furthermore, there is no research that I can find that explores Pollan’s main question: what does the agricultural system do when oil runs out and chemical fertilizer becomes prohibitively expensive?
The fact is, there seems to be a clear solution to one of Pollan’s problems with the food system here in the U.S.: nitrogen runoff. The nitrogen tax, farmer education, and mandated soil testing are all real solutions to a real problem. However, who will attempt to fix the problem when the person most visibly sounding the alarm wrote a book which is clearly written by a man trying to convince his readers at any cost? Will members of the relevant Senate committee follow any advice from a man who seemingly sacrificed the respect of the academic community just to convince a few extra readers of his main thesis?
My final conclusion is this: Pollan brings up real problems that can easily be solved by government action… but it doesn’t matter. He should have made sure that his book both appealed to the average American and made its case without stretching the truth. With the inaccuracies found in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, it will be difficult for proponents of Pollan’s legitimate claims to get policy enacted to follow through on those claims.
Michael Pollan changed the way people thought about the agricultural system in the United States when he published The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006. The book was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times and hasn't left the NYT bestseller list since it was released. Pollan used his skills as a professor of journalism to the fullest, bringing the reader on a very personal journey through family farms, big-business organic hatcheries, and the operation of Joel Salatin, who visited Wabash last semester to talk about locally grown food.
I initially researched the subject of agricultural subsidies because of Pollan's book, trying to determine whether his claim that government subsidies caused a chain of cause and effect: lower corn prices, lower high fructose corn syrup prices, lower prices for unhealthy foods, and higher obesity rates. I was astounded to discover that the first relevant peer-reviewed article I accessed actually named Pollan as an example of a “commentator” who took a strong position on the effect of government subsidies on obesity despite the lack of conclusive research on the matter. In effect, the authors were calling out Pollan, a college professor, for making a claim not backed up by research of any kind.
This paper attempts to accomplish two goals. The first goal is to determine whether other claims made in The Omnivore’s Dilemma about the government’s effect on American agriculture are as unfounded as the one made concerning the connection between federal corn subsidies and obesity. The second goal is to state a policy recommendation concerning a flaw in United States government policy if a description of any such flaw by Pollan has any merit. As it turns out, Pollan strikes gold when discussing the problem of nitrogen runoffs.
Literature Review
Farm subsidies and obesity in the United States: National evidence and international comparisons by Julian M. Alston, Daniel A. Sumner, and Stephen A. Vosti
This article seeks to address the “mainstream view presented in the media” of the effect of agricultural subsidies (“farm programs”) on “farm policy-induced commodity-price changes for food prices, food consumption, and obesity.” The paper, written by three professors at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California–Davis, concludes that U.S. farm programs have a “negligible” effect on the prices consumers pay for food and thus a negligible effect on American obesity.
The authors note that the federal government has stated that a policy goal is to reduce obesity, but “the appropriate policy is not clear.” A few possible policy changes are listed, such as subsidizing healthy foods like fresh fruit. They follow this list up with a quote which basically summarizes their methodology in this paper: “To make a socially beneficial choice among these instruments requires understanding the likely effects of each instrument on food consumption (and other) choices by different types of consumers, the implications of those choices for patterns of obesity, and the consequences for social and private costs.”
Methodically making their case, the authors show first that corn’s price would rise by very little (less than 1%) if all subsidies and protections were lifted, then, using international data, show that the price of agricultural commodities is in fact positively correlated with obesity, but probably not strongly enough that subsidies affect obesity very much at all. Instead, the authors say, "other policies that have (or have had) more significant effects on food commodity prices may well have (or have had) more important effects on obesity." An example given is agricultural R&D in the United States.
A Comparison of the Economic Well-Being of Farm and Nonfarm Households. by Katchova, Ani L.
This article deals with the well-being of households that farm, comparing non-farming and farming households using data from two different surveys. The author claims that the article is important because the main goals of farm policy since its inception have been to "provide financial support for agricultural production, increase farm income and well-being, and provide a safety net for farmers." Surely, comparing the well-being of farming and non-farming households will show, in part, whether farm policy is doing its job. The 2002 farm bill provides special assistance to young farmers, so the author made it a point of emphasis to compare those young farmers to their non-farming counterparts.
The metrics used in the paper to compare farming and non-farming households are income and net worth. The author also did tests to find the Gini coefficient among farming and non-farm households.
Because we are focusing on Pollan's argument, which, in part, is that smaller farms are hurting, we should only look at the farms which could be classified as "family farms." Also, we won't look at what the study calls "rural residence farm households" because those households gain their income from sources outside the farm. The group of farmers that we will be comparing to non-farming households will be "intermediate farms," farms with less than $250,000 in sales and which name farming as their primary business. Also, since Pollan claims that getting into debt is a big problem for farmers, we should look at net worth as opposed to income.
The data shows clearly that the net worth (and, incidentally, income) of the median intermediate farmer is higher than the net worth of the median non-farmer who does not own a business. According to the author, the difference is statistically significant. This casts doubt on Pollan's claim that family farmers in America are struggling.
Article 3: Optimal Self-Protection From Nitrate-Contaminated Groundwater by Ready, Richard C. and Henken, Kimberly
This article discusses damage caused to people who get their drinking water from wells that are contaminated with nitrates in a concentration that is above the EPA standard of 10 ppm (parts per million). Pollan claims that fertilizer runoff is a large ecological problem, and a study that finds that large damages are caused by such runoff would be helpful to Pollan's argument.
The authors are actually essentially critiquing an earlier article claiming that damages caused by contaminated well water are about $900 million per year. The authors have two problems with this study: the first is that "a single test reading of nitrate levels below 10 ppm does not guarantee the well is safe," since nitrate levels vary over time. Thus, the damage estimate should be higher than it is. On the other hand, the study didn't take into account the possibility of well owners taking action to lower damages, which would obviously decrease the amount of damages caused by nitrates. The study does not actually give a new damage estimate, but instead claims that if well owners optimally protected themselves from contaminated water, the damage done by that water would be reduced by about 40%. If we assume that well owners do not protect themselves in an optimal fashion, the damage caused by nitrates is still large enough to help Pollan make a convincing argument for policy change regarding fertilizer runoff.
Efficient Waste? Why Farmers Over-Apply Nutrients and the Implications for Policy Design by Glenn Sheriff
The author asks a question in his opening paragraph that cuts to the heart of Pollan's beef with the agricultural system as it is now: "...why do farmers 'waste' money by applying more nutrients than crops can use?" Pollan feels that the answer is that farmers are worried about not having enough yield in their harvest; thus, they err on the side of over-application when it comes to fertilizer. Pollan posits that the philosophy that leads to over-application is "better safe than sorry."
In the paper, the author agrees with Pollan that fertilizer is, in fact, being over-applied, citing studies that show that the over-application is likely somewhere between 17%-32%. However, Sheriff lists many different reasons why farmers may over-apply, only one of which can be construed as "better safe than sorry."
The first section of the body of the paper is titled "Farmer Perception of Agronomic Advice" and theorizes that farmers may reject the model of optimal fertilization called "Linear response and plateau." Farmers may follow a polynomial model instead, which would mean in theory that more fertilizer would mean more yield. Following such a model would clearly lead to over-application, but there isn’t any evidence that farmers do, in fact, follow that model.
The author spends some time talking about the difference between manure and chemical fertilizer before discussing how uncertainty might play a role in over-application. Weather apparently plays a role; Babcock (1992) concluded that farmers in locations with volatile weather systems apply more fertilizer than farmers in systems with lower volatility. According to Sheriff, Babcock claims that 25% of over-application can be explained by varying weather “relative to constant mean weather conditions.” Another factor of uncertainty comes from nitrogen levels in the soil. Musser et al. found that tests reduced application of fertilizer by 43 lbs per acre (frustratingly, no figure for the percentage drop was provided) and that yields did not suffer as a result.
Sheriff explores the possibility that providing insurance to farmers who over-apply fertilizer to reduce uncertainty might be a solution to the over-application problem. He also posits that controlling fertilizer application directly would be the ideal solution. However, enforcement is clearly a difficult task in this situation, “due to the nonpoint source nature of nutrient contamination.”
He moves on, however, to what I believe is the best solution: a tax on nitrogen-base fertilizers. I’ll discuss that tax in the main portion of the paper.
Corn-based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River by Simon D. Donner and Christopher J. Kucharik
The only reason this article is included in my literature review is that it helps further the case that nitrogen runoffs are a very bad thing.
The authors state that fertilizer “applied to corn” is a “primary source” of nitrogen exported to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River and that that nitrogen causes “extensive seasonal hypoxia” over an area of >20,000 square kilometers, which threatens the well-being of fisheries on the gulf coast.
The article discusses the impact that government policies concerning ethanol will have on this dead zone and concludes that said policies will make the “already challenging goal” of decreasing the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico” practically impossible.”
Empirical Analysis
After zeroing in on nitrogen runoff as a problem that could perhaps be solved through government intervention in fertilizer application levels, I attempted to find an article that contained research on the increase in nitrogen runoff from increased application of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Perhaps it is not surprising that I could not find such an article: measuring the quality of the runoff would be extremely difficult. Besides, common sense would dictate that an increase in fertilizer application by 50% would most likely increase runoff by roughly the same amount.
Assuming that a relationship between increased fertilizer application and increased nitrogen runoff does exist, the goal of the government should be very easy to see. Nitrogen causes nearly a billion dollars in damage every year to the water supply of individuals who get their drinking water from wells. Nitrogen draining into the Gulf of Mexico threatens the livelihood of fisheries on the gulf coast. Clearly, the situation would be bettered if farmers stopped over-applying fertilizer and applied at the recommended level.
Of course, there’s no point in arguing for a change in policy if farmers aren’t actually over-applying. In his article, Sheriff cites a study by Yadav, Peterson, and Easter which states that Minnesota corn farmers over-apply fertilizer by 17% above “agronomically recommended rates.” Sheriff cites another study, this one by Trachtenberg and Ogg, which came to a similar conclusion.
Sheriff claims that “agronomically optimal fertilizer application rates are not necessarily economically optimal.” In other words, farmers are making rational decisions about maximizing their crop yield. They are applying too much fertilizer in an economic sense because of uncertainties in the crop-growing process; weather and soil quality are two of those uncertainties. Ideally, every farmer would apply fertilizer at agronomically optimal levels, and the money saved could reimburse victims of crop shortages both caused by unfavorable weather and which could have been prevented by extra application of fertilizer.
The way to accomplish this goal which seems to best combine ease of implementation, effectiveness, and fairness, seems to be a tax on nitrogen fertilizers. In my proposed tax, the money accumulated by the government would become a part of the United States subsidy program. Redistribution would occur partly as part of normal subsidy checks to all farmers, and partly based on the failure of crops due to weather: if a swath of farms in southern Minnesota were to have below-average yields due to cold weather persisting late into the year, and the government determines that those farms could have had normal yields had they applied more fertilizer than agronomically recommended, then the affected farmers would receive money from the tax fund. Clearly, some research would have to be done in order to measure optimal growing conditions and how much of a deviation from those conditions merits a payment from the fund.
There are a few alternatives to this proposed tax, none of which are satisfactory. Simply regulating the amount of fertilizer used directly wouldn’t work simply because enforcement would be a nightmare. There exists no method for a governmental regulatory agency to efficiently measure the level of nitrogen application by farmers. Setting up a voluntary insurance program would be costly and would cause obvious moral hazard problems. According to Sheriff, alternative methods of farming designed to reduce nitrogen runoff are very expensive.
The main problem with the proposed policy is that the raw form of the tax does not discriminate between farmers of different areas. Nitrogen finds its way into the water supply at different rates in different regions of the country, so the optimal tax rate on nitrogen changes from place to place. There are certainly ways to remedy this, however; one solution might be to grant farmers in areas of the country which are not harmed as much by excess nitrogen as others a rebate on nitrogen purchases.
In order to augment the tax, or if the tax is not politically feasible, two additional policies should be implemented. Firstly, education programs for farmers would be helpful. SriRamaratnam et al. (1987) wrote an article analyzing the difference between the perception of farmers and reality of nitrogen-based fertilizer’s benefits. The following graph shows the gap between experienced farmers in the study and experimental plots of crops.
The authors considered the middle levels of nitrogen application to be the most important data, since farmers actually had direct experience with those levels. The fact that farmers with such experience could be so wrong about optimal nitrogen levels practically screams out for some sort of education program. The authors of the 1987 article also noted that contrary to farmers’ belief that additional nitrogen is risk-reducing, additional fertilizer actually increased the variance of the experimental yields.
Secondly, soil testing for nitrogen levels should be required by the United States government. Contrary to the direct regulation of nitrogen levels, requiring soil testing should be easy to enforce. Farmers can simply send the results of the testing to some central authority and be checked off a list. In a study performed by Musser et al. (1995), Pennsylvanian corn farmers decreased their nitrogen application by an average 43 lbs. per acre, about an 18% reduction, after having their nitrogen level recommendations changed by soil nitrogen tests. Yields, on the other hand, were unchanged. Given the large drop in fertilizer purchases that would result from this regulation, it seems unlikely that testing would be unprofitable for farmers.
Policy Recommendation
Pollan makes a few recommendations in his book that are clearly misguided. For example, it is almost certainly a bad idea for the government to consider obesity as a factor when deciding how much to subsidize corn farmers. Alston et al. do a good job of explaining that subsidies don’t affect corn prices much at all, and that even if they did, international comparisons show no clear correlation between corn prices and obesity. Also, there is evidence that Pollan’s claim that farmers are doing poorly in the U.S. agricultural system because agricultural subsidies help push them further and further into debt is also untrue. Katchova showed convincingly that farmers who sell less than $250,000 of crops per year (note that this is revenue, not profit) are doing better in terms of net worth than wage workers (people who do not own a business) in non-farm industries. The reason why I chose to look at the net worth statistic is because Pollan focused very much on the issue of debt.
However, it seems clear that a nitrogen tax would be a win-win scenario. Farmers would stop wasting money on unnecessary fertilizer, and less nitrogen would find its way into the United States water system. Testing soil nitrogen levels and developing education programs for farmers are potential alternative methods to get farmers to lower fertilizer application to agronomically recommended levels.
Conclusion
Michael Pollan wrote a book that changed many people’s view on the food system in this country, but cheated in order to do it. His overarching message was that a petroleum-based agricultural system simply won’t work in the long run and that radical changes in the way we grow food are needed. Such a message is difficult to swallow right away, so it seems that Pollan tried to convince the reader from the beginning that government policies are not optimal in ways which most people envision when thinking about the historical problems of the food system: the well being of farmers, the price of food at the cashier, etc. When Pollan tried to draw in the reader at the beginning of his book, he either made some careless errors or deliberately replaced easily obtainable figures like the well-being of farmers with interviews of a few individuals. It seems clear that at first, Pollan had his “journalist” hat firmly set upon his head.
I don’t think this is nitpicking. Pollan may have helped shift the narrative in the media about the food system, but the academic community isn’t taking him seriously. I do not have much evidence to support this; all I have is the fact that the only paper I could find that mentioned Pollan called him a “commentator” and dismissed what he had to say. Furthermore, there is no research that I can find that explores Pollan’s main question: what does the agricultural system do when oil runs out and chemical fertilizer becomes prohibitively expensive?
The fact is, there seems to be a clear solution to one of Pollan’s problems with the food system here in the U.S.: nitrogen runoff. The nitrogen tax, farmer education, and mandated soil testing are all real solutions to a real problem. However, who will attempt to fix the problem when the person most visibly sounding the alarm wrote a book which is clearly written by a man trying to convince his readers at any cost? Will members of the relevant Senate committee follow any advice from a man who seemingly sacrificed the respect of the academic community just to convince a few extra readers of his main thesis?
My final conclusion is this: Pollan brings up real problems that can easily be solved by government action… but it doesn’t matter. He should have made sure that his book both appealed to the average American and made its case without stretching the truth. With the inaccuracies found in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, it will be difficult for proponents of Pollan’s legitimate claims to get policy enacted to follow through on those claims.
