A great op ed in Saturday’s New York Times illustrates some of the dangers of government planning with a story about farming. The author of the article, a Minnesota farmer, made the naive mistake of responding to the market demand for local fruits and vegetables by converting 25 acres of corn fields into watermelons, tomatoes, and other vegetables.
Don’t try to grow watermelons here.
Flickr photo by Beggs.
It turns out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture forbids farmers from growing most fruits and vegetables on “corn base” lands. The farmer had to pay a stiff fine, equal to all his profits, for daring to grow watermelons instead.
The overreaction episode disrupts the balancing nature of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. pills viagra canada It takes a lot more tadalafil for sale cheap leadership courage to change me in order to change them. But purchase sildenafil online sometimes it is not so convenient for both partners. Today you can easily get nettle leaf extract from market in the form of capsules, extracts, powders and pills. viagra in india online U.S. farm policy grew out of the Great Depression, when farmers were suffering more than most. The New Dealers decided the solution was to restrict what farmers could grow so as to drive up food prices. The Depression has been over for more than 60 years, but the U.S.D.A. still has enormous control over what farmers can do.
The farmer who wrote the op ed for the Times blames California and Florida fruit and vegetable growers who don’t want competition from other parts of the country. Maybe so. Certain, when you give government power, you give special-interest groups incentives to use that power for their own gain.
But I suspect there could be some other factors involved, such as stubborn bureaucrats and pork-barreling members of Congress. After all, farm subsidies in 2005 were something like $25 billion, or $66 per acre of cropland. That’s a lot of money to give away.
One of the more repugnant aspects of U.S.D.A. farm policy is its mad-cow testing program. Or non-program, since it hardly tests any cattle for the disease. If a farmer, meat processor, or retailer wants to test to assure the public that the meat they produce is untainted, they cannot: the U.S.D.A. forbids private testing for mad-cow disease. Apparently, someone at the American Meat Institute thinks that testing will make the public fear untested meat. But why does the American Meat Institute control U.S.D.A. policy?
Central planning for farms is as inane as for urban areas. But once you start, you can’t stop because you create special interest groups who benefit from the rules you write. American consumers, taxpayers, and most of its farmers would be far better off if Congress shut down the U.S.D.A. and ended federal farm programs.
It is with pleasure that I can say tat you are wrong. “But once you start, you can’t stop because you create special interest groups who benefit from the rules you write.” Am surprised you are not aware of the free market revolution in New Zealand in the 1980s. New Zealand is a nation heavily dependent on it’s agricultural exports for it’s wealth. Up till the 80s this had been used as the excuse for extensive state involvement in farming and farm exports. An “economic crises” provided the excuse to strip away the various state sanctioned subsidies and monopolies. It took time to adjust but the result has been an explosion in high value niche crops which have significantly displaced the staid low value livestock farming perpetuated by the subsidies.
You’re right, AP. The Federal Government should not “plan” (and your use of the term “planning” for the USDA’s market controls is a stretch, at least when comparing it to urban planning – urban planning, when utilized correctly, does not control macroeconomic inputs) centrally. It should be left to local jurisdictions.
Central planning for farms is as inane as for urban areas. But once you start, you can’t stop because you create special interest groups who benefit from the rules you write.
Absolutely right. The same holds for special interest groups who benefit and still do from the zoning and land use regs of the past 60+ years.
This is the enevitable ‘unintended’ consequence of a mode of rules becoming a cult, as happened with post WWII zoning and land use planing.
We can change the model, and perhaps for the better, but the problem of rules becoming a hard-bitten cult will remain. Those who benefit ($$$) will hang onto the cultish ideals long past the time that they are useful, if they ever were.
Ironically one can draw a parallel between this sort of USDA over regulation and with zoning laws that prohibit new urbanist building projects and that promote sprawl.
The A.P. oddly got some thing correct for a change, but for the wrong reason and context. Much like as with the US government killing prairie dogs for ranchers.
…the free market revolution in New Zealand…
It is certainly refreshing to hear of instances where regulation is being revoked. But unfortunately there is an asymmetry. Apparently regulation is much more easily created than revoked. Case in point, the fact that, as you mention, it took an economic crisis to undo regulation in New Zealand. Public beware; once you enact regulation, you’re stuck with it.
By reading the comments and imagining what the public at large must think about this regulation it seems almost certain that it is rather unpopular. So why does it still exist? Who supports it?
The public itself once supported it, of course, and this is how regulation was enacted in the first place. At some point in the past, prevailing public opinion incorporated the unproductive credo that rationing the opportunity to wealth would lead to a more prosperous and equitable society. They saw the world as a finite pie and assumed that preventing any one person from having a large slice would leave some pie for everybody. The world is no longer a finite pie (if it ever was) and most of the public no longer believes in such nonsense, but by now the special interests are well entrenched, as these farm policies show.
While California Texas and Florida farmers would probably rather be shielded from competition than not, I will agree with A.P. that they are probably a minor reason why this regulation still exits. After all, their competition from cold climate states will most likely be limited.
Most likely, it is the bureaucrats at the USDA who derive the most vital benefit. For
them this regulation has become their livelihood (much like planning is the livelihood of city planners). It is the middle aged employee at the Farm Service Administration with 3 kids who has been with the USDA for 25years and retires in another 10 and who does not know how to do anything else but regulation. People in that situation will, of course, do anything to convince us that their work is needed. Again public beware; Don’t be so quick to create new bureaucracies in the first place. Once you create them you’re stuck with them.
Ettinger:
As my email .sig blurts out randomly:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
— Robert J. Hanlon
Central planning for farms is as inane as for urban areas.
I suspect Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto (along with the other six industrial ag corporations that run farming in US and CDN) will disagree.
See, they effectively are gaming the market. It doesn’t behoove them to stop supporting the Congresscritters who enable the Farm Bill. That would create competition, and they are doing all they can to quash competition.
Corporate command-and-control. Yay.
DS
A.P. Are you going to call every government policy that you don’t agree with planning? I hate (by which I mean love) to tell you that policy decisions made by the Dept of Agriculture under the authority of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, is not planning. I think you need another blog. I will be happy to comment on non-planning related posts, but it seems weird to do so on a blog called that is focused on planning issues.
Bennett, acting on your suggestion would take away an important rhetorical device: conflation. Ask him to take away ‘hasty generalization’ and how’s he gonna write?
DS
touché
AP wrote:
Central planning for farms is as inane as for urban areas. But once you start, you can’t stop because you create special interest groups who benefit from the rules you write.
Do you mean that the special interests that benefit from a regulatory scheme might use the regulators to protect their own market? I though the capture doctrine only applied to the evil railroads taking over the ICC.
Well, the USDA may not be able to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, but you don’t have to worry about the dangers of organic milk. Monsanto et als. will distort markets where there are hungry public officials to feed. However, I don’t expect the milk ban to extend deeply into TJs territory, lest a mob of angry yuppies burns down the statehouse.