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President Trump has just announced a truce in our trade war with China.  We need one.

In August, the Trump Administration said it would provide $12 billion to farmers to make up for the losses in income caused by the dispute.

I’ve been collecting items about what’s actually happening with the bailout payments.

• Not much has been paid out: The New York Times reports that the USDA has paid out just $838 million of the $6 billion that became available in September. Another pool of up to $6 billion is expected to become available next month.
• They are not helping Wisconsin dairy farmers: According to the Milwaukee Sentinal Journal, about 4,800 dairy farms are collectively getting about 80 percent of the $10.4 million coming to the state, with an average payment of $2,390.  But the Wisconsin Farmers Union says a 55-cow dairy farm would receive a one-time payment of $725 from the Trump bailout program, but would lose between $36,000 and $48,000 this year due to low milk prices.
• They are not doing much for Iowa farmers either:  According to the Des Moines Register, the 4300 payments total nearly $31 million, with an average payment of $7,236.  But 100 payments are less than $25, 24 are less than $10, and 11 are $5 or less.
• Payments are going to 1,100 city residents; these average $881.  According to the Environmental Working Group, the recipients may or may not actually be involved in farming.  The EWG got the data from the USDA.
• The National Corn Growers Association wants more money for corn farmers.  Its letter to USDA says the agency does not understand the how badly the trade disruptions are affecting its members. Its own study estimates corn growers losses at $6.3 billion.
• North Dakota soybean growers have a storage problem, says the New York Times,  because they can’t sell the beans to China.
• Kansas soybean farmers are also in trouble, writes the New York Times.
• Overall farm income is declining, says USDA.

I think it’s fair to conclude at this point that current trade policies are tough on US agribusiness.

The US Global Change Research Program released its 4th report on climate change Wednesday night, coincidentally or deliberately during the slow news Thanksgiving holiday.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a Federal program mandated by Congress to coordinate Federal research and investments in understanding the forces shaping the global environment, both human and natural, and their impacts on society.

USGCRP comprises 13 Federal agencies that conduct or use research on global change and its impacts on society, in support of the Nation’s response to global change.

The report comes in two volumes, a technical report and an assessment report.

Don’t look for any good news here, especially for agriculture.

U.S. agriculture and the communities it supports are threatened by increases in temperatures, drought, heavy precipitation events, and wildfire on rangelands (Figure 1.10) (Ch. 10: Ag & Rural, KM 1 and 2, Case Study “Groundwater Depletion in the Ogallala Aquifer Region”; Ch. 23: S. Great Plains, KM 1, Case Study “The Edwards Aquifer”). Yields of major U.S. crops (such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, and cotton) are expected to decline over this century as a consequence of increases in temperatures and possibly changes in water availability and disease and pest outbreaks (Ch. 10: Ag & Rural, KM 1). Increases in growing season temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity (Ch. 21: Midwest, KM 1). Climate change is also expected to lead to large-scale shifts in the availability and prices of many agricultural products across the world, with corresponding impacts on U.S. agricultural producers and the U.S. economy (Ch. 16: International, KM 1).

Chapter 10 has four key messages, none of them cheerful:

1:  REDUCED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY: Food and forage production will decline in regions experiencing increased frequency and duration of drought. Shifting precipitation patterns, when associated with high temperatures, will intensify wildfires that reduce forage on rangelands, accelerate the depletion of water supplies for irrigation, and expand the distribution and incidence of pests and diseases for crops and livestock. Modern breeding approaches and the use of novel genes from crop wild relatives are being employed to develop higher-yielding, stress-tolerant crops.

2: DEGRADATION OF SOIL AND WATER RESOURCES: The degradation of critical soil and water resources will expand as extreme precipitation events increase across our agricultural landscape. Sustainable crop production is threatened by excessive runoff, leaching, and flooding, which results in soil erosion, degraded water quality in lakes and streams, and damage to rural community infrastructure. Management practices to restore soil structure and the hydrologic function of landscapes are essential for improving resilience to these challenges.

3.  HEALTH CHALLENGES TO RURAL POPULATIONS AND LIVESTOCK: Challenges to human and livestock health are growing due to the increased frequency and intensity of high temperature extremes. Extreme heat conditions contribute to heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and heart attacks in humans. Heat stress in livestock results in large economic losses for producers. Expanded health services in rural areas, heat-tolerant livestock, and improved design of confined animal housing are all important advances to minimize these challenges.

4: VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTIVE CAPACITY OF RURAL COMMUNITIES: Residents in rural communities often have limited capacity to respond to climate change impacts, due to poverty and limitations in community resources. Communication, transportation, water, and sanitary infrastructure are vulnerable to disruption from climate stressors. Achieving social resilience to these challenges would require increases in local capacity to make adaptive improvements in shared community resources.

The recommendations: reduce greenhouse gas emissions, now.

The Committee on World Food Security of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has a report out on this topic, well worth pondering.

Sustainability, respect, safety, health, transparency, accountability—all good ideas.  The trick is to put them into practice.

Mike Madison.  Fruitful Labor: The Ecology, Economy, and Practice of a Family Farm.  Chelsea Green 2018 (short at just 164 pages).

Every now and then, Chelsea Green sends me a book this publisher thinks might interest me.  And right they are.  This book is a perfect example of why I’m so impressed by what Chelsea Green chooses to publish.

Fruitful Labor is a conversational how-to manual for anyone thinking about doing small-scale, sustainable farming and wondering whether it could be fun and provide a decent living.  Madison’s optimistic yet realistic outlook makes it clear that both are possible.  He raises 200 or so vegetables and fruits on his own farm of 20 acres or so near Sacramento.

The book covers the specifics of what equipment and tools you need and what you need to do to raise animals, take care of the soil, and, yes, make a living.  Madison philosophizes about such matters as spacing of trees, what to do about wild animals, water quality, care of tools, the cost of electricity, and other such details.

He provides a copy of his IRS profit-and-loss statement and explains what it means to have enough income.

Dianne and I have never been motivated to be rich in terms of money.  We live in a beautiful place, we have many friends, we’re healthy, we have meaningful work, and we have wholesome food to eat and good local wine to drink–what would we want with more money?

Later, he explains the reality:

The increasing price of farmland in this area has far outstripped the rising prices of other assets, most notably labor, to the extent that a young couple starting out today has no possibility of replicating our experience….the price of farmland reflects not only its agricultural value, but also its value as an instrument of financial speculation and a place for a homesite; it is the latter two that primarily drive the price….In this context, our farming system is not sustainable.

This is a thoughtful, useful book, a pleasure to read and an inspiring plea for what used to be understood as agrarian values.

More than ever, we need such values.  Thank you Mike Madison, and thanks also to Chelsea Green.

Recall that to mitigate the damage to U.S. agriculture caused by our current tariff disputes, President Trump promised to give affected farmers $12 billion.

The USDA has now set up its Trade Mitigation Programs.  As seems invariably to be the case, these are not simple; they involve three separate programs:

• The Food Purchase and Distribution Program
• The Market Facilitation Program
• The Agricultural Trade Promotion Program

Food Purchase and Distribution Program

The government (taxpayers) will purchase up to $1.2 billion in commodities and then distribute them to food assistance programs.

USDA issued a list.  Here are some selected examples, to which you must add three zeros (amounts are in $1000s):

The big winner here is pork, hit badly by the trade disputes.

The Market Facilitation Program

This one gets a bigger slice—$4.7 billion.

Here, the big winner is soybeans — $3.6 of the $4.7 billion in payments.  Corn producers are lpretty much left out.  I can’t imagine tht they are pleased.

The Agricultural Trade Promotion Program

All I’ve seen about it is that USDA will spend $200 million on foreign market development.

What are we to make of this?

Whether trade groups are for or against this depends on how much of this pie they get.  Overall agricultural losses will be greater than $12 billion, so everyone loses, but some more than others.  The Environmental Working Group has filed a FOIA request for information about how USDA made these decisions.  Can’t wait to see what they get.

Only half of that has been distributed so far.

Let’s hope the lobbying is transparent so we can see who is doing what.

The Documents 

• USDA’s Announcement
• Market Facilitation Program: Final rule
• Market Facilitation Program Payments to Producers
• Agricultural Trade Promotion Program

The Environmental Working Group, ever on the job, has a new analysis of subsidy payments to farmers.

Nearly 28,000 farmers got USDA payments worth $19 billion since 1985.

EWG says:

Between 1985 and 2016, farm subsidy programs paid farmers when crop prices fell below price guarantees set in the federal farm bill or, more recently, when crop revenue fell below historic averages. In addition, “direct” subsidy payments linked to historic crop production were made between 1996 and 2014. Disaster payments have been paid through both annual spending bills and permanent disaster programs.

The USDA reports that investment in agricultural research is declining (since 2009) in high-income countries, particularly in the U.S.

The U.S. share of total agricultural investment in research was 35% in 1960; it fell to 25% in 2013.

What with global problems of hunger, chronic disease, and climate change, shouldn’t we be doing more agricultural research, not less?

The documents

• Agricultural Research Investment and Policy Reform in High-Income Countries
• Summary report
• Amber Waves article, Agricultural Research in High-Income Countries Faces New Challenges as Public Funding Stalls.
• Webinar, Tuesday, June 5, at 1 p.m. EDT.  Registration webinar page.

USDA’s Economic Research Service has a new report on China’s investment in agriculture and farmland.

China’s outward agricultural investments are growing rapidly.

The purchases are everywhere: Indonesia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Jamaica, etc., but some is in the United States.

China owns Smithfield, for example (see previous post).

The report is worth a serious read.  If you aren’t up to that, take a look at the tables and figures.  I wanted to reproduce a lot more of them.