Matt Yglesias

Exclusive

I like Michael Pollan’s books a lot. And it’s good that you’re hearing more discussion of agriculture and nutrition policy. But a lot of Pollan’s forays into this area seem to mostly reveal a lack of understanding of how the political process works. For example, this idea:

Make the House agriculture committee exclusive. The most important committees in the House — Energy, Finance, etc. — are “exclusive,” which means their membership has to be drawn from diverse geographical and ideological sources. Ag isn’t exclusive, which means it can be (and is) packed with representatives of Big Ag. It’s where decent ag legislation goes to die.

Ezra Klein observes that it would actually do the reverse. If House Ag were exclusive, then only members representing farm interests could ever possibly afford to give up the chance to sit on other committees for the sake of a seat on the Agriculture Committee.

The Food Committee

The United States could urgently use food policy reform. Right now, we have a lot of subsidies to food growers. That’s questionable economics. But what’s more, we subsidize people to grow food that’s bad for public healthy in ways that are environmentally unsound. That’s terrible. If we’re going to subsidize farming, we ought to be subsidizing people for growing healthy crops in a sustainable way. On the merits, this is a no-brainer — there’s obviously no public interest in taxpayer subsidies for high-fructose corn syrup — but the politics is another matter.

Nicholas Kristof did a column on this subject the other day that used as a framing device the idea that it should be called the Department of Food rather than the Department of Agriculture. The idea is that this reenforces the point that public policy should serve people who eat food (everyone!) rather than companies that grow and process food. As far as framing devices go, that’s a fine one. But the focus on the Department of Agriculture sort of obscures where the real action is: Congress. A president only gets to set a few priorities. In principle, agricultural policy could be a presidential priority. But it’s clear that it’s not on Barack Obama’s top five list and it hasn’t been on any president’s top priorities list for a very long time. That’s the way of the world. By contrast, ag policy is always the top priority of the House of Senate Agriculture committees. That’s what they’re there for. The route to improved policy runs through these committees so whatever clever ideas people have, that would be the place to look.

Meanwhile, Kristof writes:

But let’s be clear. The problem isn’t farmers. It’s the farm lobby — hijacked by industrial operators — and a bipartisan tradition of kowtowing to it.

I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where my family grew cherries and timber and raised sheep and, at times, small numbers of cattle, hogs and geese. One of my regrets is that my kids don’t have the chance to grow up on a farm as well.

Yet the Agriculture Department doesn’t support rural towns like Yamhill; it bolsters industrial operations that have lobbying clout. The result is that family farms have to sell out to larger operators, undermining small towns.

I’m not going to lie to you and say I’ve read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but I can say in good conscience that I read about half of it in Finland and Pollan makes a similar case. Kristof also quotes him in his column, so I think they’re on the same page about this.

But while there’s truth in what they’re saying, there are also some limits. It’s true that status quo farm policy is bad for many farmers. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves here. The Senate Agriculture Committee is chaired by Tom Harken. He’s a good guy and a good senator. But he’s also from Iowa. And though status quo ag policy may be bad for small towns in Oregon, trying to massively switch consumption in favor of fresh, seasonal, local produced food would be a disaster for farmers in Iowa. An Iowa farmer just isn’t “local” to very many people — the Iowa farm economy intrinsically relies on the existence of a big national and international market. California, by contrast, has both good farmland and metro areas full of people who could be buying locally produced food.