Hello Readers,

Thank you for that introduction Emily.  I am excited about all the many adventures to come at DCF!  As Emily mentioned, I recently graduated from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, where I received my Master in Environmental Management.  I am a lover of living creatures of all sizes and vibrant habitats of all kinds.  I have been a lover of these things all my life, but in recent years my love and my life have been focused more specifically on sustainable farming and food systems.  I am excited to devote my career to making food systems more just and healthy for all, and I am thrilled to begin that career here at DCF.

The Research Gap

 I wanted to focus my blog post today on a particular phenomenon that is shaping college campuses across the country:  the campus farm.  Campus farms and gardens, such as the ones we have here at Duke, are popping up on college campuses across the nation everywhere.  After doing a brief Internet search, I found this resource, a website created by the Rodale Institute, which is a guide to colleges with campus farms[i].  From this guide I found that approximately 50 colleges have campus farms.  The number of campus farms to-date, however, is likely larger, seeing as that this guide excluded Duke University, among a few other campuses, which I know to have started farms in the past couple of years. So what does this mean?  Why are colleges getting so excited about growing their own food?  I suppose you would have to ask each individual college for the answer to this question.  If I were to infer, however, I would say that such a phenomenon signals the start of a movement.  College campuses have been the birthplaces and incubators of progressive movements throughout history.  Think civil rights and women’s rights for instance.  So when more and more college campuses across the nation start to grow their own food, it may be in one’s best interest to pay attention.  If you a businessman or woman, this phenomenon screams business opportunity!  Harness the energy of young people coming out of college and put them to work.  Start local food restaurants, start organic and local food distributors, start farmers’ markets, start organic and local grocery stores.  The list goes on and on.  If you are politician, this phenomenon screams policy change!  Get ahead of the curve and introduce bills that support local food systems that function via direct markets, i.e. farmers’ markets.  Reallocate subsidies that support crops that aren’t commodity crops.   But if you are the scholar, a man or woman of academia, what does this phenomenon scream to you?  I have my thoughts.

If you are a scholar or affiliated with academia in any way, I urge you to pay attention to this movement as well.   Thousands of students across the nation are eager to do research in non-conventional food systems.  For the purposes of this blog post, I am broadly defining non-conventional food systems as those systems, which do not function via the conventional model, e.g., community-based food systems, organic food systems, etc.  Currently, every state in the United States has at least one land-grant university, as set forth in the Morrill Acts of 1862.  As defined by the Morrill Acts, land-grant universities were started “to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts, so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education[ii].” Most land grant institutions today focus on the agricultural sciences, and a majority of the agricultural research coming from these universities is focused on improving conventional agricultural systems.  Currently, there is a lack of research being done in the area of non-conventional agricultural systems.  Based on information I gathered from this report published by the Organic Farming Research Foundation, of the 70 land grant institutions they surveyed only 6 of them were rated as having comprehensive organic agriculture programs, which demonstrated “an institutional commitment to conducting research meaningful to organic producers”[iii].  The Organic Farming Research Foundation used an 8 point scale to rate institutions and gauge institutional commitment to organic agriculture.  Points were given based on whether or not an institution had the following:  certified organic research acres, a student organic farm, organic academic programs, and organic Extension services.  Nine land grant institutions had 7 out 8 points, and 16 had 6 out of 8 points.  The remainder of the institutions had less than 6 points.  Although organic agriculture does not encompass all types of non-conventional agricultural systems, it is a good indicator of system-think change, particularly in the world of academia and land-grant institutions.  Conclusively, therefore, it seems as though the majority of land grant institutions have not demonstrated a substantial commitment to research in the non-conventional agricultural sector.  If I were a professor at a land grant institution, or any other college institution for that matter, and looking for ideas for the next publication, I would see this research gap as an opportunity.  Not only is this an opportunity, professors, but this is an opportunity fueled by the energy of a thousand burgeoning student researchers, interested in this very topic.

The research gap in the non-conventional agricultural sciences is an opportunity for both universities across the nation and the nation as a whole.  We keep asking ourselves how we can create more jobs in the United States…  Well this may be an answer to a piece of our puzzle:  grow and improve our non-conventional food systems. With corn prices going up (a direct result of a faulty conventional agricultural system), we have nothing to lose, right?  So students grab your professor, tell them you are interested in developing new methods, new technologies, new policies that improve non-conventional food systems, and professors listen.  There is a world of agricultural sciences and food system studies awaiting discovery.  And students, if your professor still doesn’t listen, just go start a campus farm.

Sidenote:  Please approach us here at Duke Campus Farm should you have any research ideas.  We would be happy to be a resource for you.

2012 Iowa Yellow #2 corn, from Emily and my trip to Iowa earlier this month

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on Ag Policy here, but Tuesday night’s Colbert Report offered a golden opportunity to discuss a few of the key features of our industrial ag system. Unlike some past posts, I’ll try to stick to the (self-explanatory) facts rather than rail against the system itself. You can judge for yourself whether the system we’ve got is the one we want.

In the clip, Colbert plays a funnier Michael Pollan (no disrespect, Michael) while speaking to Bruce Babcock, professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State University. Watch the clip first, then read on!

Watch the video here (sorry, WordPress doesn’t let you embed flash into their blogs)

The interview begins with issues of scale. As Mr. Babcock states, “Iowa is corn country.” Here are the facts: this year, the blanket of corn covers 41% of Iowa’s exquisitely fertile land. Iowa planted almost 15 million acres of corn this year, or 15.5% of the 96 million acres of corn in the U.S. As a reference, America produces about 40% of the total corn harvest for the globe.

The interview continues to the issue of rainfall. Perhaps surprisingly, corn remains almost entirely un-irrigated in the U.S. Farmers depend on seasonal rains to produce a solid yield. This means that irrigation infrastructure doesn’t exist across most of the Midwest. (Personally, I think we should be grateful for this. The Oglala aquifer that underlies most of the land is expected to dry up in the next decade or so, even without irrigation of the nation’s most prevalent crop). When it doesn’t rain, there is little that can be done. And it’s not raining in Iowa, or in most of the Corn Belt.

Next, Colbert turns to the corn crop’s effect on food prices. According to Babcock, “You don’t need to worry about [the price of] soda pop or corn chips or corn on the cob.”

Why?

Well, the short answer is that soda pop and corn chips have a much smaller percentage of the corn price embedded in their sales price. This is a difficult point to make sense of. A useful analogy may be to compound interest. Products that use corn directly, such as soda pop and corn chips, use corn directly to produce the (diabetes-causing, heart-disease ensuing) goods. The cost of rising corn prices effects these good directly, but tend to get swamped by the cost of energy embedded in their production and shipping, and the cost of selling them embedded in marketing and labor.

And corn on the cob?  Corn on the cob is “sweet corn,” e..g. the corn you can eat directly without processing. It’s a very different incarnation of zea mays that makes up less than .3% of the America’s corn production.

The corn Professor Babcock was talking about? Fieldcorn, or Yellow #2 as it’s known on the street, a commodity defined only by its “0.2% or less heat damaged kernels, up to 5.0% damaged kernels and up to 3.0% corn or foreign materials.” If you walk into a field of Yellow #2, peel back the husk and dive right in, you’ll repeat the same earth-shattering experience I did as a child. The stuff is inedible, at least before it’s processed or fed to livestock.

In any case, as Prof. Babcock points out, “What you need to worry about is the eggs and chickens and dairy products…your beef and your pork.” Eggs? About 70% corn. Beef? 93% corn, according to Scientific American. That’s about half the corn, give or take.

Most of the other half, “About 35-40%,” goes to ethanol production. With a LOT less corn to go around for the next year or so, the feedyard operators and ethanol producers are in a bidding war over Yellow #2. In any normal market, the ethanol people would have packed up and gone home months ago, resigned to not make ethanol this year. It’s a highly inefficient process, after all, and people won’t pay $10/gallon for it.

Instead, more corn is going to ethanol this year than in any year in history thanks to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard. The RFS mandates that gasoline makers blend some 15 billion gallons of ethanol into their gas this year. Since the requirement isn’t based on price, ethanol producers can charge whatever they need to break even, which means they can pay whatever they need to buy the corn “feedstock.”

Farmers who can’t afford to feed their cattle will dump them on the market. If you have a deep freezer, this would be a really good time to buy two years’ worth of beef. Better yet, corner the market. The point is that prices will rise steeply once the glut is off the market.

Finally, lest you lose too much sleep fretting for our brethren in the Midwest, the interview turns to crop insurance.

Babcock: “90% of Iowa farmers have crop insurance. It’s a federal program…”

Stephen: “A federal insurance program? That’s just Obamacare for our corn.”

Babcock: “Well, in essence, you are right.”

He is right, in the sense that the vast majority of commodity crop farmers carry insurance, covering up to 85% of lost revenues, heavily subsidized by the government, and with none of the most basic environmental protections required by other farm subsidies. Ironically, heavily subsidized federal crop insurance is part of the reason we have 95 million acres of corn. Federal crop insurance has systematically taken the (private financial) risk out of industrial monocultures, removing any incentive to diversify what is grown in the field (the best form of “natural” insurance). Taxpayers are paying farmers to make riskier bets, and we pay again when those bets bust in the form of emergency aid packages.

Now is the time to bring a little sanity back into the picture. For one, the five-year federal farm bill is up for renewal; it’s our best chance to trim the subsidies and pseudo-subsidies (i.e. RPS standards) that have exacerbated this “disaster.” On the other hand, bad farm policy didn’t make the weather. Consider this closing exchange from the interview:

Colbert: “Is this the worst drought of our lifetime?”

Babcock: “Well, it depends on how old you are…”

Mr. Babcock’s answer gives a nod to the severe drought of the 1930’s that led to the Dust Bowl. Yet the obvious answer, for anyone who has been paying attention, is “This may be the worst drought you’ve ever seen, but it won’t be.” The right answer is that it depends on how young you are. If you are not super-old or terribly infirm or particularly danger-prone—if you’re planning to stick around for a few more years—you’ll see a worse drought than this in your lifetime. More likely, you’ll see a dozen.

I recently ran across this policy briefing,  “Still Waiting for the Farm Boon,” by Timothy Wise at the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute. In a tidy and digestible five or six pages, Dr. Wise debunks the common narrative that historically high crop prices have improved the economic situation for most American farmers.

First, you have to understand that crop prices are high—in some cases (such as corn), really high. A recent check shows corn is trading somewhere around $6.20/bushel, down from recent highs but several times the price guaranteed by the government. As a result, farm revenues are up—farmers are taking in more money for the crops they sell.

The USDA, among others, has trumpeted the “highest net farm income since the nineteen seventies.” Unfortunately, things aren’t so good for Farmer Joe. As Wise asserts, most of the reports making such claims suffer from a critical flaw: they include information on all individuals whose property is classified as farmland by the government. In fact, most (about 2/3) of these “farms” do not produce much of anything at all; they are used as tax shelters (usually to reduce the property tax burden).

This distinction is fundamental if we are to understand the socioeconomic plight of the farmers that produce the bulk of our food. I cannot tell you how many reports I have read that fail to make this distinction, including (as Wise points out) most of information coming out of USDA through ERS and ARS.

Suffice it to say that real, net income for most farmers has dropped over the past decade even as prices have soared, although the same cannot be said for huge farms selling $500k or millions of dollars in product each year. The reason for falling incomes? Input prices have soared even higher: fertilizer, pesticides and, of course, the price of oil.

Misleading statistics are used for all kinds of political objectives. In the case of agriculture, they are often used to paint a nicer picture of the average US Farmer’s economic situation. But anyone who has ever looked at a chart of income distributions in farming knows that the mean (income, farm size, etc) is a horrible statistic to use to describe a distribution that is nothing near normal. A much better statistic, if you had to choose only ONE, would be the median. You can have the craziest distribution in the world, but if you know the median, you at least know that the number describes the point at which half the population is doing better and half worse.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from Wise’s piece is that farms are getting bigger in response to market pressures. Bigger, and increasingly dependent on the industrial inputs that sound the death knell for long-term ecological health. Large farms succeed [sic] because they do not pay the full price of their inputs; they do not pay the external costs of pesticide exposure, nutrient runoff, soil loss or even the full price of oil, subsidized as it is by American military force, a lack of climate change legislation, and greedy autocratic regimes with short shadows of the future.

Dr. Wise’s prescription is to continue direct subsidy payments for commodity producers, a prescription that Congress is not likely to fill when they re-write the Farm Bill this year or next. And it’s a good thing. Continuing direct subsidies is the worst kind of Band-Aid for a systemic infection that can only be solved with systemic reform. Rather than asking How can we keep mid-sized farmers afloat with government handouts? we should be asking how policy can level the playing field by making producers pay the full cost of their production.

Any such action would certainly raise the price of food. But remember, Americans spend a tiny percentage of income on food compared with other developed countries (and especially compared with developing ones). If we are concerned (and we should be) about the effects of food prices on poor people, we should strengthen the safety net of WIC and EBT. Depending on ever-larger corporations to grow cheap food using subsidized inputs points us in the wrong direction.

As children growing up in rural Chatham County, my sister and I competed to spot deer while our car sped along the ribbon of back-country roads. Most nights we pulled into our driveway disappointed. But occasionally the headlights would illuminate a bright pair of white eyes lingering on the forest edge and our mom would slow down so we might admire the sight, like tourists on African safari.

Driving along those same roads out to the Duke Campus Farm, it is nearly unthinkable to make it without seeing at least one herd of deer. Recent studies have shown that this change is not merely anecdotal. White-tail deer populations are ballooning and their numbers pose an environmental, moral and human health crisis.

Unfortunately, there are no silver bullets that will solve overpopulation. But there are bullets. It is time to reconsider our regional approach to the management of deer populations, including loosening restrictions on hunting and legalizing the sale of wild venison.

Calls for more hunting inevitably evoke the rancor of those who wish Bambi’s mom had returned home safely.  Yet opponents of deer hunting would do well to remember that hunting associations saved the white-tail deer after farmers had driven them to the brink of eradication.

In 1930 there were fewer than 300,000 deer east of the Mississippi River. Today, there are about two million in North Carolina alone, and as many as 80 deer per square mile in parts of the Triangle, about five times the sustainable number.

Deer overpopulations wreak havoc on forest ecosystems, especially the young pine forests so common in these parts. They eat shrubs, small plants and tree seedlings so voraciously that the Duke Forest has labeled them a major threat to local biodiversity.

In the absence of population control, deer will eat themselves into starvation. On a recent visit to the Duke Campus Farm, on the edge of the Duke Forest, I stumbled on a herd of seventeen deer.  They were not the full-bellied, vigorous deer of my childhood memories.  Having picked clean the forest floor, the emaciated deer had ventured onto the farm in search of food (explaining the 7.5 foot deer fence that protects our fragile acre).

Animal rights advocates are not doing the deer any favors in their blind opposition to hunting. Hunting restrictions have exacerbated the boom and bust cycles that lead to mass starvations. Meanwhile, population pressures have driven more deer out of the forest and into the crosshairs of unwary drivers.

A 2009 study out of UNC Chapel Hill estimates that deer are involved in over 17,000 automobile accidents each year in our state, or about 10% of all accidents. This represents a 25% increase since 2004.

Deer-vehicle collisions impose significant economic costs estimated at $127 million annually in NC. Worse still, no good comes of deer carcasses rotting in the grass or littering the shoulder of the highway. Moral outrage should not demand that deer are never killed. We should demand that deer are killed humanely and not wasted.

Several local programs are working to bring sensibility back to deer population management. In a highly controversial program, The Duke Forest has allowed bow hunters to take as many as 200 deer a year since 2006.

In years past hunters shared half of this venison with local food shelters. Last year, in another ominous sign that populations are wildly out of control, many deer taken during the annual hunt in the Duke Forest were too sickly to be eaten.

That’s why we need an enlightened public policy that allows enough hunting to create a perennial equilibrium where deer can thrive without exploding in sheer number. Smaller populations will be healthier, happier and less destructive to habitat and automobiles.

Legalizing the sale of wild venison is an important first step. Venison is a tasty, sustainable and local source of meat. We served both venison stew and venison tacos at our Fall Farm Festival last October (to mostly rave reviews). Creating a market for local venison would promote a less wasteful approach to hunting and would allow officials to regulate safety and quality standards.

As a community, we need to summon the courage to embrace hunting as a responsible and necessary approach to deer control. It is time to swallow our medicine and allow hunters to bring deer populations back into a healthy equilibrium. If we’re lucky, we might get to swallow some fresh venison, too.

Of all the trends in American agriculture, I want you to consider two for a minute.

First, the American farmer is aging: the average farmer was just over 50 in 1978, 54 in 1997, and is about to turn 58. New farmers are not replacing their aging predecessors nearly fast enough to keep up. The U.S. needs a new generation of farmers to pick up the plow as half of all American farmers retire in the next decade.

Second, the American farm is growing. The acre-weighted median farm (feel free to email me if you want a complete description of how this statistic is calculated) has grown 35% since 1982, meaning most agricultural production occurs on farms bigger than 2,000 acres. Large farms overwhelmingly use capital and input-intensive processes focused on growing commodity crop monocultures with myriad environmental externalities.

To summarize, we have a lot of older folks growing crops in increasingly unsustainable ways. Why isn’t grandpa’s generation leaping into the sustainable food movement, even though organic demand continues to outstrip supply?

Well, older farmers tend to be set in their ways, even, dare I say, stubborn. They are less connected to digital social and knowledge networks where they could learn about new sustainable practices; as one farmer told me, “We older farmers are somewhat allergic to the internet.” And older farmers are less willing to make investments that would enhance their land over time (preferring instead to save for retirement, or take a vacation). And I won’t even get into Farm Bill policies, which have made land-pillaging practices nicely profitable.

Wait, wait, I know we’re off to a depressing start. American farmers are old, unsustainable and unwilling to change. Bummer. But they’re also old. Or as Thomas Kuhn put it: “Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after the last hold-outs have died, the whole…will again be practicing under a single, but now different, paradigm.” Not so subtle, Dr. Kuhn, but maybe pretty wise.

To rephrase, the dinosaurs of conventional agriculture won’t be around forever. If they eat the same food [sic] they’re supplying the rest of the country, they won’t be around long at all. Which means it’s up to my generation to restore sanity, care and justice in our food system. Returning to Kuhn, who was a rather brilliant man when it came to revolutions: “Almost always the men [sic] who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.” Pun intended, by the way. Go ahead and have a second look.

Anyway, the question becomes, what do we “very young” and “very new” busy ourselves with in the meantime? How can my generation prepare for a paradigm shift in agriculture when land is so expensive and we are so very poor?

It’s a question with a complex answer, but seeing as this is a “policy blog” I want to highlight one policy that will help. The “Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunities Act of 2011” is a bill that is currently sitting around on Capitol Hill doing whatever it is that bills do while they wait to get passed (or, more likely, as they wait to die).

There’s no need to get into the specifics on “BFROA” (as we in the know call it)—other much smarter people have carefully explained the bill’s particulars—but I will say that this bill takes one very small step toward overcoming the barriers that keep small, young, sustainable farmers out of farming. New farmers need land, they need loans, and they need a marketplace that pays a fair price for their food. At the very least, this bill would throw a handful of (organic) fertilizer onto the beginning farmer movement to help it grow a little stronger. If you think that’s a good idea, give a holler to your congressman.

Last month the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association hosted its annual Sustainable Agriculture conference in Durham, and a handful of Dukies donned our best plaid shirts and headed down to the Imperial Sheraton to see what was going on. The conference attracts goers from all over North and South Carolina who are interested in “sustainable” food and agriculture (more on that in a minute). Everyone from farmers young and old, food processors, catering companies, academics, equipment suppliers, policy wonks and activists huddle in small conference rooms to discuss a dizzying array of topics. Want to learn how to build a greenhouse? There’s a demonstration. Want to know how cover crops fix nitrogen? A lecture from an expert from NC State. Want to make meade? Butcher your pigs? Write a business plan? Plant your crops based on the phases of the moon? Check, check, check, and, well, check.

It is this diversity of topics, interests and individuals that makes the conference so enriching and why I will surely be back next year. But it is important to remember that this convivial, excited atmosphere comes at a price. The word “sustainable” has become a buzzword appropriated by anyone to mean anything, and CFSA applies it masterfully in this sense. To some, sustainable means locally produced; but 10 miles? 50 miles? Within NC? To others, it means organic growing practices; but certified organic? Free from any chemicals, even natural ones? To others, it means capable of continuing in the wake of Peak Oil; but, is biodiesel okay? Can I use my horse carriage to transport food if I didn’t build the carriage myself? To yet others it takes on financial meaning; but financially sustainable by whose metric?

Of the more than 1200 people who attended, I can guarantee that no two people would define sustainable agriculture—or its parent, “sustainable food system”–in precisely the same way. There are farmers who believe that they are sustainable simply because they make a profit. There are others who won’t be satisfied until we are all growing most of our own food in the backyard. And there is every shade in between.

This is not a critique of CFSA—casting a huge umbrella enables the kind of discourse about food and agriculture that this country desperately needs. And to the extent that we can all say “This is what sustainable means to me, and this is what sustainable is not”, the better our society can hash out the tradeoffs we make with our policies and pocketbooks.

I encourage everyone who attented the conference, and anyone interested in food and agriculture, to spend some time defining “sustainable agriculture” and “sustainable food system” for themselves. Write down your definition, write down your reasons, and share it with a friend. Or if you’re feeling bold, post it here and let’s compare notes. Then we can go about the real work of changing the world.

Now that the specter of the Super Congress has passed, and with it the cloak room deals that would have comprised the next farm bill, we can all enjoy a winter respite and the chance to learn about farm policy before the process gets underway again early next year. A month ago I would have rung in the holiday season with a more tantalizing topic–conservation programs, crop insurance boondoggles, or the role of the carrot in 17th Century Dutch revolutions–but that will simply have to wait until December. Instead, it’s time to learn about so-called “shallow loss” revenue protection programs.

Why? Because that’s what Big Ag is shoving down Congress’ throat. It’s what the Ag Committees are hearing that farmers want. And it’s bad for sustainable farmers and the American people. To prove the point, we’re going to look at the 2008 Farm Bill’s version of shallow loss protection, the ACRE program (this horrible backronym stands for “Average Crop Revenue Election”…it’s intractable name is symbolic of the program I’m about to describe).

ACRE (Somewhat) Demystified
ACRE originated in the 2008 Farm Bill as both a compliment to and a substitute for pre-exiting subsidy programs. The mechanics of the program are complicated (and, as a result, many fewer farmers have signed up than originally anticipated). The implications of the program are complex and not yet well-understood (and, as a result, many of us sustainable farmers have not taken a strong position either way).

Program Mechanics
At first glance, ACRE appears to have been devised by a madman. There are something like 36 separate calculations necessary to determine if a farmer is entitled to a payment and, if so, how much. The first thing to know is that the program, like other federal subsidies, targets producers of commodity crops. In order to qualify a producer must have the same type of base acreage (historical production of commodity crops) that is used to calculate direct subsidy payments. A farmer may choose to keep his/her current suite of subsidy programs, or may opt into ACRE, thereby sacrificing 20% of direct payments, 30% of his/her marketing loan rate, and 100% of counter-cyclical payments (all major subsidies).

In exchange a farmer is eligible for a payment that depends on the magnitude of the discrepancy between the guaranteed and actual state revenue, and on the relative productiveness of the individual farmer compared to the state average.

Program Implication
According to the Farmland Trust of America, “The Average Crop Revenue Election program is a first step towards fundamentally reforming subsidy programs to be more market oriented with fewer incentives to overproduce.” This is probably true, with special emphasis on “first step”. Price-based subsidies distort the market in particularly insidious ways for conservation. By (artificially) raising prices, producers have the incentive to produce more and converting marginal or virgin land into intensively-cultivated commodity acres.

ACRE treats one a particular type of risk very well: the risk of falling commodity prices from very high levels. Agricultural economists suggest that high prices in the 1970s led to the farm crisis in the 1980s as prices fell. ACRE is designed to prevent such a recurrence. It goes like this: high crop prices increase demand for farm inputs as farmers scramble to get more acres under production. Input prices rise in response, and thus total costs of production rise. When market prices are very high, as they have been in the past several years, the risk is that prices may tumble well below current levels but still not trigger payments that are tied to a price floor. Even if lower prices only prevail for a year or two, the ratio of revenues to costs can be enough to put many farms out of business. ACRE provides a short-term bridge to help farmers maintain their income during these declines. However, unlike price floors, the moving average nature of the revenue guarantee ensures that ACRE doesn’t become a long-term price support. If market prices remain low, farmers retain the incentive to adjust their operations and produce what the market demands (as reflected by prices).

So, why is ACRE bad news for farmers whose farms look more like the Duke Campus Farm than like the square-mile commodity corn fields? Because farms aren’t eligible if they’re not growing commodity crops. Growing vegetables? You’re outta luck. There is nothing outwardly abhorrent about a system that protects farmers from catastrophic price changes for the crops they grow. What’s disgusting is a system that has so over-commoditized food that it is traded like iron ore or treasury notes on international futures markets. When farmers grow food that people want to eat–especially when those people are their neighbors–price collapses don’t happen.

Many of us know about and love “community supported agriculture” (CSAs). In CSAs, consumers pay the farm up front and receive a share of the farm’s bounty for the season. In good seasons, the consumer gets an abundance of produce. In bad seasons, their weekly produce box looks pretty scant. This is nothing less than a local, sustainable form of shallow loss revenue insurance, one that doesn’t distort markets, incentivize unhealthy food, or bankrupt the government. This is the kind of insurance that we, and our government, should find ways to support.

Want a little more on the subject? Check out the following articles:

Dismukes, R., Arriola, C. & Coble, K.H., 2010. ACRE Program Payments and Risk Reduction An Analysis Based on Simulations of Crop Revenue Variability. USDA Economic Research Service.

Westhoff, P. & Gerlt, S., 2011. Potential Impacts of Eliminating Direct Payments. Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, University of Missouri.

Zulauf, C.R., Dicks, M.R. & Vitale, J.D., 2008. ACRE ( Average Crop Revenue Election ) Farm Program: Provisions, Policy Background, and Farm Decision Analysis. Choices, 23(3), pp.29-35. Available at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/94670/2/23-3 ACRE.pdf.

ATTN: Calling all foodies, policy wonks and friends of the earth.

I want to invite you to join me on a journey through the wild and whacky world of American agricultural policy.

If you’re reading this at all, you’ve probably already got some opinions on our country’s ag policies. A lot of us in the foodie and sustainability worlds walk around like zombies muttering well-worn mantras.

Crop subsidies…BAAAAD. Slow food…Goooood!

Corn ethanol, bad. Farmers markets, good!

CAFOs, baaaad. Michael Pollan, good (and delicious!)!

Sound familiar?

In this blog, we’re going to dig into the meat of these issues. I’m not going to try and disavow you of your opinion that subsidies are bad or that Michael Pollan is a foodie god. I quite agree. But what happens when you want to go beyond the mantras? When selling a skeptic on the rightness or righteousness of sustainable food production depends on a somewhat more nuanced understanding?

There is a great scene in Season 4 of the West Wing. President Bartlet is engaged in a fierce battle with the Republican nominee, a former governor from Florida. The nominee is full of the small government bluster and bravado that seems all too prescient at the moment. In their only debate, the moderator asks the Governor whether tax cuts are really the right solution to the country’s economic woes:

Governor Ritchie: You bet it is. We need to cut taxes for one reason – the American people know how to spend their money better than the federal government does. 

Moderator: Mr. President, your rebuttal.

President Bartlet: That’s the ten-word answer my staff’s been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They’re the tip of the sword. Here’s my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I’ll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while… every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren’t very many un-nuanced moments in leading a country that’s way too big for ten words.

This blog is for those who believe in the ideals of sustainable agriculture but whom also recognize that ten words are not enough. Transforming our agricultural system—or even nudging it in the right direction—will require more than ten words. This country badly needs a new paradigm of agriculture, what Wendell Berry might call a rediscovery of the “Agrarian Standard.” But before that’s a possibility, we need an army of people who are passionate, committed and informed about the complexities involved. We need evangelists wielding hard facts.

So, yes, we’re going to talk Title II of the Farm Bill (the Conservation Title). And we’re going to learn about the “disappearing agricultural middle.” And we’re going to talk crop subsidies—direct subsidies, counter-cyclical payments, crop loan guarantee programs, and the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program. And, yes, we’re even going to delve into crop insurance (perhaps the largest and most pernicious government subsidy of all, it turns out).

My goals are pretty simple. First, to provide a readable (and dare I say entertaining?) overview of the policies that are (in my opinion) doing the most harm or good for sustainable agriculture. But this is the Duke Farm blog, and I have a second goal: to ground these wonkish musing in the very real work we are doing at the Duke Farm.

Much of what is wrong with American Agriculture is its abject failure in supporting small, sustainable farms like the Duke Campus Farm. In fact, most sustainable farmers will tell you that if the government weren’t doing anything, that would be just fine. In fact, our national policies are hurting precisely the types of farmers that grow healthy foods in sustainable ways. The Duke Farm will provide our window of understanding into just why that is.

I hope you’ll read on as I get started on this project. Please don’t hesitate to join the discussion or to suggest topics that you would like to hear more about.