Post Questions & Comments for Professor Lehner's Lecture

Seth,

Congress has always passed a farm bill .... sooner or later. it has frequently had to pass one-year extensions, and i think has even had to pass two one-year extensions in one cycle. Also, the farm bill has always been at least a bit bipartisan.  In 2018, the House, only after extreme arm-twisting, passed the first all-R farm bill, but it was largely ignored and the House later largely adopted the more bipartisan Senate bill.

What are the main issues? Work requirements for SNAP, and the amount of SNAP benefits have been big issues recently.  Since nutrition is 3/4 of the farm bill money, it's not a surprise that many of the controversies focus there. THis year, there is a big D-R debate about the payments to farmers. Generally speaking, the R's want less conservation money and more money for "reference price" increases -- countercyclical payments (meaning bigger payments when market price is lower) to farmers based just on past production, and the R's do not want the conservation money to be at all tied to climate change mitgiation as the D's want.

What will happen this year? Who knows? I talk with many insiders and they don't know. It's an unusual time.

Professor Lehner, 
Thank you for your time in responding to our questions and for your contributions. In listening to your talk I was struck by several things but primarily by the scale of CAFO's and their impact on our environment as well as what seems like the prevalence of problems with seemingly solvable problems. You addressed the current subsidized nature of our meat production and the need to switch to a largely plant based diet, but do you believe there is any way to continue to meet our market's desires for beef and pork, without continuing to harm the environment? Would a return to a less industrialized and concentrated form of agriculture solve the problems we face or is it impossible to consume at our current rate without harming the environment?
Do you belive the current resurgence of no till agriculture will be enough to reduce the over use of nitrogen in our current practices? Or have we crossed a point of no return regarding the over use of nitrogen based fertilizers? 
Again thank you for your time and I enjoyed listening to you speak. 

Professor Lehner,

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to our questions. I really enjoyed listening to your talk and learning more about the Farm Bill. You talked a little bit about the crop insurance included in the Farm Bill discussion and it was very intriguing. As you discussed, farmers are paid off with taxpayer money if their crops don’t work out, which encourages farmers to plant crops in more risky and ecologically sensitive areas. My question spurs from this dilemma in how we can continue to have crop insurance in order to have food security, but still control how the crop insurance is used. Is there a way to address the crop insurance issue where farmers cannot take advantage of it as much, in not using riskier areas? Or does this all lead back to the issue of the divide in support for different parts of the Farm Bill? Would attempting to make a change in the requirements for the application of the crop insurance cause a loss of support for the Farm Bill resulting in a revised version of the bill not being passed?

Thank you for your time, 

Clara Pence

Ben,

You ask about CAFOs and whether we can produce as much beef as we are eating now in a more sustainable way. Not really.  All beef start their life grazing, first with their mother and then to get mid-size.  then they can be either grass finished or grain finished in a CAFO. 98% or so are grain finished. Grass finishing may cause less water pollution, but for the same amount of beef would require a lot more land.  and since the animals would take longer to get to slaughter weight, would probably emit more lifetime methane. As I mentioned on the podcast, we can't get to clean energy by slightly cleaner coal plants and we can't get to clean food by slightly better ways of producing beef via slaughtered animals. That's why shifting diets and looking for alternative proteins, either plant-based burgers and the like or cultivated meats, is an important part of the solution. What's important to remember is that it's not all or nothing. Over decades, we'll be shifting our energy supply and every bit of clean energy and energy efficiency helps; in the same way we need to tink about shifting our food system to greater sustainability over time and every bit helps.

you also ask about no-till.  that is just one of several practices that seek to work WITH nature rather than fighting it all the time.  Leave the land less disturbed, have more variety through crop rotations and inter-cropping. Don't leave bare ground so use winter cover crops and more perennial crops.  All these must work together in a way that is right for the different geographies.  Using no-till alone, as is often the case, does not do that much; some studies suggest it does not really add much carbon to the soil but rather just moves it around. Cover crops and different crops can reduce need to added synthetic fertilizer but today would probably not eliminate the need. We can do a lot to use whatever fertilizer we do use more efficiently so less runs off into the water or the air.

In short, there is no silver bullet.  Agriculture is wonderfully complex and diverse; plants, soils, and animals are living systems that vary depending on conditions. it will take a lot of changes in how we produce food to get to real sustainability.

Clara,

You ask a good question about crop insurance.  Think of it like home insurance -- you get a discount if you have a fire alarm, and pay more if you are in a risky area or have risky habits.  (When you apply for life insurance, they will ask if you ride a motorcycle or climb mountains.) We can -- and should -- keep a robust crop insurance system, but it should act more like most other types of insurance.  The insurers work hard to identify practices that reduce risk and encourage policy holders to adopt those practices. In theory crop insurance does that a bit by requiring farmers to use "good farming practices" but these are often out of date and do not reflect climate change mitigation or resilience.  (AS the Environmental Working Group has shown, crop insurance is also wasteful because one in every three dollars goes to the companies and agent, not the farmers; normal private sector insurance is not as burdened by this administrative cost.) So the challenge is how to update the practices the system should encourage and discourage and influence producers that way.