I read this article on urban farming this weekend, and thought "heartwarming, but uselss." So far it's required subsidies of $1 million to produce a small amount of food--the Times glowingly says that it "provide(s) healthful food to 10,000 urbanites", but of course, all that means is that 10,000 people, give or take, have received at least one vegetable apiece. It's not providing anything like the majority of their food intake. And that's in a rust-belt city with a lot of spare land and spare labor.
Ezra argues that industrial agriculture gets subsidies too, and this is true--but not the things these people eat. More to the point, the subsidies are not why American agriculture has so many vile practices. What enthusiasm for these sorts of projects fail to deal with is scale.
Scale matters in two ways. First of all, scale is why so many promising pilot projects fail to yield results when they're implemented broadly--think how many terrific new education and medical programs you've read about over the years, which delivered mediocre results when they became more popular. Pilot projects have a deep pool of enthusiastic and skilled labor. There is the excitement of the new, of possible discovery, driving everything forward. Broad programs are applied by ordinary busy people with no stake in revolution. Over time, the enthusiasm wanes. Urban gardening is not new, after all--it was in vogue during the Settlement House movment, the 1940s, and again in the hippie sunset of my childhood, when I, along with the other children of PS 166, dutifully weeded little herb patches on 89th and Amsterdam. By the early 1990s, many of those lots had been abandoned or turned into condos.
Milwaukee, unlike many cities, probably has a lot of abandoned property. But it probably doesn't have an unlimited supply of urban farming volunteers, or people interested in buying organic local watercresss at $16 a pound. And if Milwaukee did try to grow most of its own food, it would have the problems that areas with lots of farms experience, like massive pest infestations. (Agriculture has terrific network effects--for bugs and mold spores). And, um, smells, which are the first thing that urban transplants to farm country tend to complain about, particularly if animals are involved. Don't grow animals, you'll say; they're bad for the planet anyway. But animals are key suppliers of key organic inputs like bone meal and manure.
Then there's the reason industrial agriculture is like it is: economies of scale. Agriculture has extremely high capital requirements, and thank God, because all that capital is the reason that you and I (aka Shiva, Destroyer of Houseplants) are spending our days on the internets rather than poking at weeds or staring at the back end of a mule. But capital means high fixed costs for land and equipment. Industries with high fixed costs naturally gravitate towards large producers who do a lot of volume. America has a lot of cheap land far from its cities, which is where that scale can be most easily achieved. The subsidies are pernicious, but they are a sideshow. Remove them, and it's quite possible that we'd see a more concentrated, more socially irresponsible industry forcing even more negative externalities onto the rest of us.
That scale has, up until now, been least achievable with produce. Produce is also the area of farming which recieves the fewest subsidies, probably because when our farming policy was framed, produce was a perishable sideline for most cash croppers. But as picking becomes more mechanised, and various technologies enhance the returns for those with capital to invest, that is changing. I don't see how urban or suburban farming becomes anything but a sideshow for a few committed souls. The returns to scale are simply too great.
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Good point regarding economies of scale. Regarding agricultural subsidies, I’m all for eliminating them. I just think that if (or hopefully when) we do so, it would probably mean that the market would set a more realistic price level for agricultural commodities, some of which might actually be cheaper (e.g. you eliminate ethanol subsidies and the price of corn drops which makes it cheaper for animal feed) and a lot of the less efficient operations (e.g. many smaller farms) would go out of business and we might see even larger size operations than we do today.
I think urban and suburban gardening (NOT farming) is great for certain items that cost a lot already. Fresh herbs, for example. And having a few tomato plants around is a great thing. Individual gardeners all have their own favorite items.
But if you want to farm a significant percentage of your calories, you need to look at more than just getting the plants to sprout. Will everyone have to buy an extra freezer to keep all the stuff they grow? Will they can it at home? People who live in apartments don't have root cellars.
I actually like having someone else attend to all that stuff. There was a reason it was considered progress when it first came about.
Also, when the farm subsidy supporters needed support from representatives from states (like California) that produce mostly produce and less of the big subsidized crops in order to override GWB's veto of the last farm bill, they threw in some crumbs for produce and organics to buy some extra votes.
"The subsidies are pernicious, but they are a sideshow. Remove them, and it's quite possible that we'd see a more concentrated, more socially irresponsible industry forcing even more negative externalities onto the rest of us."
How so, Megan? You have piqued my interest.
I'm guessing she's worried that farm state senators may have to receive their campaign contributions from different, potentially more harmful, corporate welfare recipients.
I surmise that the industry would look for other, more unscrupulous ways to save a buck and make up for the subsidy shortfall. Ways that would be more harmful to the environment and conusmers alike. I bet Megan has a few in mind, just not sure what they are.
"We can't stop giving them money because they might do bad things" is a lame justification for a forcible wealth transfer from taxpayers to campaign contributers.
Farm subsidies, while they mostly go to large producers, also help marginal small producers to hang on. Without them, the industry might be even more dominated by big industrial farms.
But this is not a defense of farm subsidies, to which I am foursquare opposed.
I'd think that subsidies actual harm the environment. Since subsidies raise crop prices, it's often profitable to farm on marginal land that would not normally be worth the effort. A lot of that land would still be good wildlife habitat. I suppose its possible that I'm wrong and all the marginal land would turn into industrial parks and toxic waste dumps, but I think that would only happen to land in the vicinity of major cities.
Subsidies benefit existing producers and permit inefficiency, which I'm defining to mean fewer crops per dollar. It may be the case that there are cheaper (to the producer) crop production methods with worse negative externalities. If so, then subsidies allow the clean methods to coexist with the dirty ones.
An illustrative (and made up numbers): pollutingly producing corn costs $1/bushel, cleanly producing corn costs $1.15/bushel, and subsidies stabilize the price at $2. This means that both clean and polluting corn producers can exist in the market (since each one makes a profit). In a competitive market, the cost of corn might stabilize below $1.15, driving clean producers out of the market.
Of course, we need to know what the actual numbers are to determine if this is the case.
True. I was pretty much throwing out an example about what could happen. I do know of a few cases like my example, but their kinda anecdotal. Still, trying price the external on the dirty method would be a cheaper more efficient solution than subsidizing them all with higher prices. Then you would reduce the chance of either one happening and the government out of the farm business.
Last part of the last sentence: Get the government out of the farm business. Never post without previewing.
But in your example, profits are higher for the dirty method. So why would anyone choose the cleaner method? I'm not saying it's impossible that a few might choose it, but it's certainly not inevitable that blanket subsidies would lead to cleaner methods at least coexisting with the cheaper dirty ones. As bombloader says, a better approach is to price the externalities to the dirty method (if feasible, which is always a big if).
You're right about economies of scale. But not about subsidies in relation to this operation. As I read the article the subsidies come from private foundations. I think that's great! Isn't that what we all should endorse - voluntary private decisions as opposed to coerced public subsidies? And I think Ezra is not saying the US should publicly subsidize urban farming but that we should cut back on subsidizing industrial farming. Don't we all agree with him on that?
Megan has a few things wrong about economies of scale. Basically, the space needs of plants mean that economies of scale only work up until a point. Throw in the time constraints of growing - where you are basically just waiting around for months for your inputs to turn into something you can sell - and large scale agriculture becomes less attractive for capital, which is why you see the prevalence of contract farming and the persistence of family farms as opposed to wholly owned corporate agribusiness operations. This is a loose summary of a long tradition of research into this question that goes back as far as the 19th century, but hey, why take the time to look into an issue when you've got your blog to update!
Aren't most farm subsidies aimed at 5 main crops: cotton, corn, wheat, rice, soybeans. Most other vegetables are unsubsidized. Sugar and diary are in there too, as a subsidized agricultural products, but they're less than the big 6.
A European was talking about US farms and economies of scale. Crops are much easier when you only have to turn the tractor once every mile.
Ooooh! What if we made the new stimulus just a bunch of massive payments for people to raise organic produce in city centers??
Fix the economy and our diets at the same time!
Man, I should have switched to being a crazy leftist years ago, the policy prescriptions write themselves...
I love gardening.
I think this sort of thing is a normal ebb and flow of fashion and fads.
It would be a disaster as a model for growing food. It might be okay as a substitute for midnight basketball courts. It is good for the soul, and the work ethic.
I consider gardening space a public good, at least as much so as you would consider a public park. I have mixed feelings about all if either is really a public good. But if we are going to have parks, why not gardens?
I hate subsidies for their own reasons.
I did that too! Interesting looking back that having 25 fourth-graders doing stoop labor was considered educationally progressive.
I agree that growing the things you like is good all-around (I'd never eat a tomato otherwise), but I wouldn't want to give up the produce section.
I'm not sure I want to consistently eat urban produce any more than I consistently eat fish from urban rivers. A hundred years of emissions and toxins doesn't make for a prime location.
I'm sure some plots are fine, but statistically there can't be much truly clean land in the rust belt.
I think you've got a what came first, the chicken or the egg issue.
Do you think that Mr Allen got a million dollars in foundation funding, and then used it to create an urban farm in Milwaukee, or did Mr Allen create an urban farm in Milwaukee, and then private foundations gave him grants to expand the operation into other areas?
And your arguments of scale are irrelevant. It is an argument of quantity. We don't need Mr Allen to scale up his operation to feed a million people. We need 1000 Mr Allens to feed a million people. You know, the way farming used to be done.
So you want more people to be poor? Small farmers can't compete when food prices are so low.
Yes, the way farming used to be done when north of 90% of humanity farmed. Come on, what was really so bad about the Middle Ages anyways?
Allen complains about fast-food places and wants everyone to have access to good, healthy food. But it is possible to get a salad at most fast-food places these days.
You forget the level of superstition in the modern treatment of food. Food isn't healthy because it's low in calories, or high in nutrients, or whatever. Food is healthy because it's organic, free range, vegan, fair trade, 100-mile, ethically aware, and a hundred other buzzwords. I don't know enough about this fellow to know if he's into that kind of nonsense, but I suspect the sort of person who starts an urban farming project is the sort of person who would rather eat his own Birkenstocks than a McDonald's salad.
XMAS is correct. Most of the subsidies go to producers of the crops he/she mentioned. There is also another block of subsidies that go to landowners who use the funds to make environmental improvements to their acreage.
Megan is wrong about the subsidies helping small farmers "hang on". The subsidies are mostly based on the land itself--the more land you own, the more subsidies you get. Thus, the subsidies tied to the land raise the price of that land, preventing small farmers from expanding their operations and new farmers from starting up. Only big operators can afford to expand. The rich get richer.
Yes, industrial agriculture sucks. Yes, there are steps that can be taken to lessen its adverse practices and effects. But, from a basic food production standpoint, what's the alternative? Whenever I hear someone wax lyrical about urban farming and organic this and sustainable that, I ask them "Will any of this provide, at a minimum, three affordable square meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, to 320 million people?" They usually fall silent after that.
320 isn't the number you're looking for - I suspect it's a whole lot higher. The US is one of the world's major food exporters, after all.
Great post. People in cities forget why it is they're able to live in a city in the first place.
More to the point, the subsidies are not why American agriculture has so many vile practices.
You are very, very, very wrong about this. There is a direct connection between farm subsidies and factory farming. I wrote an article for Splice Today about this a couple of weeks ago. In the article I cite some research that proves this point for subsidies and hog farming, but others have done research on the connection between crop subsidies and other types of factory farmed livestock (.pdf).
In response to Ninja Zombie, production methods of any particular crop are pretty much standardized across the country. At least as to crops, there probably is no major distinction between polluting and non-polluting producers. Organic farming is so costly as to be off the chart. All big farm row crops are herbicide and fertilizer intensive. Perhaps a distinction could be drawn between conventional till and no-till farming which reduces environmental inputs somewhat along with reduction in fuel costs. Frankly, there is a reason why the world is not starving (or at least should not be) and that is the technological advances in farming wrought by the green revolution. Norman Borlaug anyone? Only in rich countries such as ours do we fret about the industrial nature of our agricultural system, especially since substantial improvements have been made. I will allow that our corn intensive method of raising beef cattle is insane and highly wasteful. But the row crops would simply be replaced by grazing cattle.
In response to Bombloader, probably the biggest subsidy currently is the Conservation Reserve Program and its offshoots, which pays farmers to take marginal land out of production. The last time I checked, I think 26 million acres were enrolled, probably more currently. The program has led to an explosion in wildlife populations where implemented. Drive through the midwest and count the number of grass fields and you would be amazed.
In the NYT one reads a lot about Ivy League English Majors who go off to Vermont to make cheese. Never mind all the farm kids from Iowa, Wisconsin, or Minnesota who go to Ag School and learn Dairy Science.
A lot of economic and other more general rules for success tend to violated by urban farming. Such as, lack of feedback loops (do people who achieve poor yields get kicked out?). Some force you to share work or work collectively on projects (ever write a team report in grade school? Same thing). A sort of reverse scale issue, if you’re really good / a natural you’re probably not given more land / don’t have enough land to really be productive (you’re hobbled by scarcity of land). Then yes, capital outlays (small organizations still require a lot of the same chemicals and tools as big ones, it adds up)… then last ideology, are you allowed to use the same things as real farmers (antibiotics to fight bacterial diseases on plants, insecticides, et cetera)? If not, you really can't grow much of certain things..
Dear Ms. McArdle,
Thank you so much for a truly wonderful post! How is it that a "city slicker" like yourself became so well informed about the truth behind all the mythology that taints discussions of today's farm issues? Really, I've not seen anyone in the press show so much common sense about the nature of food production, or admit to the fact that current practices are borne from necessity not evil intent.
It's obvious from the comments that very few share your good sense or ability to accept the fact that less than 2% of the population cannot feed the other 98+, in the romantically rustic ways they've deluded themselves into thinking are more healthy and wholesome.
The schizo-morons I'm constantly seeing quoted in the press wail about the evils of "factory farms", while using/buying "factory cars"... "factory clothes"... "factory medical care"... "factory education"... and never say a word about it. Why aren't they bemoaning the loss of the local car makers, seamstresses, town doctor, one-room school house? All the evil "factories" that ended those practices and small family businesses receive billions in subsidies as well. Why no outrage & revival movement for them?
On the environmental front, what the hell is wrong with "city slickers" brains? Your typical 100 acre housing development uses a 100 times more synthetic fertilizer and pesticides than 1,000 acres of crop land. And for what? To feed and cloth dozens of people? Well, no, not unless they're eating decorative grasses, shrubs, flowers or ornamental trees. The mind-numbing stupidity of those who squeal about crop treatments, while constantly treating their homes, offices and yards with some of the most deadly of chemical pesticides to kill icky bugs & plants, is truly awe inspiring.
Farming/Agri-business is simply an easy target and straw man for politicos, enviros and luddites to divert the unbelievably ignorant general populations ire towards. After all, they constitute less than 2% of voters and they and the real nature of their work are a total mystery to the slickers. So, who cares?
It's too bad, considering agriculture is vital to our economy and very survival, that we do not have more intelligent reporting and discussions going on.
Thank you again.
Mike Reed