Missouri’s Department of Health and Human Services  has estimated that more than one in five Missourians is obese, and that the more than $1.6 billion is spent in Missouri annually on obesity-related expenditures. According to the department, “Obesity is one of the most serious health issues facing society today.”

For people, I guess. For cows, Missouri’s policy is to encourage the bigger-is-better mentality.

The state has a tax credit for Missouri beef producers who raise Missouri-born cows that weigh at least 200 pounds more than the average weight of cows sold during the past three years. Beef producers are awarded $0.10 per pound of the extra weight, up to $3,000.

Regardless of the reason that the Missouri legislature created this tax credit, it is encouraging larger and larger cows by design. If growing larger cows were a more efficient means of beef production, then no tax credit would be needed. But if it’s more difficult to grow cows that weigh at least 200 pounds more than average, why on earth are are we subsidizing this wasteful activity?

I’m sure the cows would appreciate losing the extra baggage.

SEDALIA — I am writing this from the Show-Me Institute booth at the Missouri State Fair! We are talking about individual liberty and limited government with all of the fairgoers.

If you are in Sedalia, stop by the exhibition hall between corn dogs to talk to us about free markets. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to stop by, here is a picture of our booth!

* Title quote: Lenny at the State Fair, from That Thing You Do.

According to a study cited in an article in the Wichita Eagle, obesity rates are increasing in Missouri, and faster than the national average.

The author of the study says that the rising rate is largely attributable to the fact that snack foods and soda are priced lower than healthier foods. He proposes that:

[...] there is more that federal, state and local governments can do to reduce obesity, including taxing sugary drinks, providing incentives to grocery stores that locate in underserved areas and requiring restaurants to clearly label nutritional information on their menus.

Neither the article nor the author of the study discusses the fact that the federal government heavily subsidizes the production of corn, which significantly reduces the market price of starchy and sugary foods to consumers.

Instead of subsidizing the production of a good, and then taxing the consumption of the ensuing unhealthy products, it would be more efficient for the federal government to remove the subsidies entirely. This would cause the price of sugary and starchy foods to increase relative to other foods. Consumers would face a greater natural incentive to eat healthier substitutes like fruits and vegetables because they would be relatively less expensive. This would benefit low-income people in particular, because they pay a greater percentage of their income for food, so eliminating corn subsidies could help to reduce the difference in the rates of obesity across income levels.

As contributors to this blog have argued previously, an individual’s waistline is the responsibility of the individual, not of the government.

I guess the news has finally reached Washington. In a recent post on the Political Fix blog, Bill Lambrecht pointed out that the political heat around subsidies is increasing, and this time it is fueled by ethanol. Almost two years to the date after the Show-Me Institute’s release of its case study of the E-10 ethanol mandate in Missouri, another nonprofit research organization has published a study about the inefficiencies of federal ethanol subsidies. The Environmental Working Group’s analysis of the ethanol subsidies concluded:

Americans have spent $17 billion since 2005 to achieve reductions in gasoline consumption that could have been achieved for free.

Today, proponents of ethanol are attempting to piggyback on the recent oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico in order to gain support for their most recent push to increase the amount of ethanol in the U.S. gasoline supply and keep their subsidies. In a Post-Dispatch article yesterday, Jeffrey Tomich pointed out:

The ethanol industry is also lobbying Congress to extend a tax credit for blending ethanol with gasoline and maintain a tariff on imported ethanol — measures implemented years ago to help a fledgling industry grow. Both the tax credit and tariff are set to expire at the end of the year.

Letting the tax credits and tariffs expire wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Who knows, besides saving the American taxpayers $17 billion dollars, we might actually come up with an alternative energy idea that works.

A recent article in the Columbia Missourian highlights some of the steps being taken in Missouri to combat childhood obesity. Among the initiatives mentioned are the Walking School Bus and Farm to School programs:

More than 400 students from 10 Columbia public elementary schools participate in this Walking School Bus program, sponsored by the PedNet Coalition. A trained adult walks a set route each morning, picking up kids along the way and guiding them to school.

In addition to cutting costs for buses facing rising fuel expenses, the Walking School Bus is designed to increase physical activity for children in order to combat the country’s growing childhood obesity epidemic.

The difference between the two programs is that the Walking School Bus is grounded in the volunteerism of adults willing to walk with children to school, with the end of incentivizing good habit formation, whereas Farm to School is a government program that encourages the use of local food in school lunches. There are a couple of problems with the latter. As Sarah Brodsky and Caitlin Hartsell have pointed out, it’s incorrect to conflate “local food” with “healthy food”; food produced locally may not always be healthy, and food that is healthy may be imported from outside a given region. Mandating that school food be locally procured is also costly, because price-based competition from a large portion of the potential market for food is left unconsidered, and the increased demand for local food contributes to a rise in its prices.

It can also be a costly mandate for local farmers, who must cope with changes in the types of crops that they grow. A Columbia school district official admitted:

“We’re essentially asking farmers to start to grow what we want them to grow. And that’s a big risk for them.”

It is indeed a risk for Missouri farmers, who must diversify their crops to meet a new form of demand. Modern farmers maintain a delicate balancing act of running up huge debts in acquiring machinery that is geared specifically for the crops they have elected to raise. Mandating that schools provide local food presents an opportunity for local farmers, but also places a burden on them to raise a diversity of crops year-round — for many, a costly and impractical endeavor. Missouri farmers will be taking more than a “big risk” here and now; this involves their whole financial life plans.

Tackling the difficult issue of childhood obesity requires daily diligence in habit formation, because parents ultimately control the health of their children. One or more healthy meals served at school every day can be negated by a pantry full of junk food at home. This is not to say that schools shouldn’t care about serving healthy food — indeed, school lunch programs that focused on meeting nutritional guidelines, whether or not the food is locally procured, would better balance costs with student health.

Similarly, a mandated exercise class during the school day doesn’t affect the inactivity of kids who stay indoors and play video games all day on the weekends and during the summer. Yet initiatives like the Walking School Bus program directly incentivize the most important players on this issue — the parents and children themselves. Children are habituated toward associating activity with involvement with their peers, and parents are given an easy, safe, and inexpensive way of getting their kids to school that may benefit the community (e.g., through reduced traffic congestion near schools) at the same time. Yet again, volunteerism creates a win-win for everyone.

A piece from the Kansas City Star this weekend highlighted current political disagreement over “Know Your Farmer,” a $65 million program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture designed to educate people about the sources of their food, and something I’ve written about on the blog before. According to the Star, some politicians have taken issue with the program’s slant toward organic farmers over conventional farmers.

When the government promotes one business over another, it chooses economic winners and losers — something that government officials have no special skill for doing well. Some argue, though, that this governmental expenditure hardly rivals the ones for conventional farming:

Bruce Babcock, an economist and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University, said it was “ironic” that [Sen. Pat] Roberts and others objected to the USDA spending $65 million on Know Your Farmer.

Babcock pointed out that commodity producers received $5 billion over the last two years, and the crop insurance industry received $7 billion.

Just because one group gets a subsidy does not mean that another group should get a subsidy as well. In fact, I would argue, consumers and taxpayers are better off if neither get subsidies.

Agriculture, like all businesses, is best left to the marketplace. Subsidies lower the cost of producing politically favored products; this distorts the market by shifting the supply curve. In the case of agriculture, subsidies have led to an overabundance in the production of certain commodities, like corn and soy, which drives down their prices relative to other products, making them less expensive to purchase and use as ingredients in other foods.

Agricultural subsidies have decreased the price of — and, thus, increased the demand for — products like high fructose corn syrup and corn feed for livestock. Some researchers have suggested that such subsidies have led to poor health outcomes and higher rates of obesity. Some disagree with this claim, although still and other researchers, including the American Medical Association, maintain that the subsidies have led to an increase in unhealthy foods in the United States. At any rate, more corn is being grown and subsequently incorporated into people’s diets than would otherwise happen. The subsidies have also lead to an increase in corn-based ethanol production, which costs taxpayers and may well result in marginal increases in environmental harm.

In real terms, subsidies don’t make food less expensive. Rather, they divert taxpayer funds from the market price of food to the production stages of farming. This influences farmers to grow more of the subsidized crops than people would otherwise demand, and so taxpayers end up paying more for their food than they would in an otherwise free market.

Some may argue that the promotional program discussed by the Star helps organic farmers to gain an advantage similar to that of conventional farmers. If people are interested in organic foods, though, they will purchase organic foods. Indeed, films like Food, Inc. and books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma have convinced many that they should vote with their wallets for organic foods. It’s unnecessary for the government to create an educational program to support organic farming.

Although $65 million is a small expenditure in comparison to the overall budget for agriculture, it still represents a substantial amount of taxpayer funds. Whether it be subsidies or educational programs, the government oversteps its role when it encourages one business over another, or one form of agriculture over another. If government officials truly want people to consume healthier food, the best strategy would be to level the playing field by eliminating subsidies and promotional programs, instead letting market forces work.

The big news in Missouri today is President Barack Obama’s visit to an ethanol plant in Macon, so I thought it would be worth briefly rehashing the airtight case against ethanol subsidies, as we have done here so many times in the past.

Most obviously, ethanol costs more than gasoline, so consumers have to pay more for energy to run their vehicles. However, because ethanol diverts foods like corn from their more traditional use as energy for humans and farm animals, food prices are driven up by greater ethanol use. Ethanol backers like to claim that such costs are justified by the environmental benefits of ethanol, but those benefits appear to be completely illusory. From the abstract of a 2008 study on biofuels:

Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years.

Research has repeatedly confirmed that ethanol subsidies only drive price inflation for both energy and food without cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and it is long past time for politicians to admit that such programs are nothing more than a means for buying favor with voters in agricultural states.

I’ll be appearing on the Mike Ferguson Show on The Eagle, 93.9 FM in Columbia, this afternoon to discuss ethanol. Everyone can listen live online, and I hope you will tune in.

The Columbia Daily Tribune asks school board candidates which improvements they would like to see in school lunches. One candidate mentions local food in his response:

Nutritional Services is working with vendors to provide food and educational opportunities from local food producers and farmers to reduce the impact CPS has on the environment and to educate students about where their food comes from.

The assertion that local food is superior for environmental reasons comes up often in local food debates. To understand why districts should not conflate local food with environmentally friendly food, I recommend reading Caitlin Hartsell’s excellent post about why growing food closer to consumers is not always better.

In addition to in his claim that local food is better for the environment, the candidate says that purchasing food locally will teach students where their food comes from. I don’t know how he expects the food to do that. From the students’ point of view, food from Missouri looks the same as food from Illinois or food from Indiana. Of course, teachers could point out to students where the food originated from, and they could conduct lessons on where the food was cultivated and harvested — but they could do that just as well if the food came from a different state. In fact, if the place where cafeteria food is grown is to become a subject of study, it might be better to buy food from a distance. That way, students can learn about a place with which they wouldn’t otherwise become familiar, instead of focusing their local area, which they already know something about from experience.

This essay on the Huffington Post sees calorie count mandates as the beginning of a “food revolution”:

[T]his could be seen as a historical turning point in the American consciousness about actually having awareness about where food comes from and what goes into how it gets made.

Most advocates for calorie count mandates emphasize the effect they could have on the population’s health. They say that if people read caloric data whenever they order food, they’ll make healthier choices and put less of a strain on the health care system.

The Huffington Post essay is unusual in that it connects calorie counts to the local food movement. At first glance, this seems puzzling, because a calorie count tells you nothing about where your food comes from. Furthermore, a dish that was served up from scratch in your home town might be high in calories, while produce flown in from hundreds of miles away could contain fewer calories. Supposing consumers pay attention to the calorie counts and consequently reduce the calories they consume — there’s evidence that they don’t, but supposing they do — the effect could be to discourage some people from eating local food. For example, think of people who live next to a cattle farm and have access to local hamburgers, but can’t buy vegetables unless they’re shipped in.

However, the Huffington Post writer may be on to something. Once people are comfortable with calorie counts on the menu board of every major chain restaurant, they’ll be less likely to object new national labeling mandates. They’ll take it for granted that the federal government tells restaurants what to write on menus. Proposals to label food as “local” or “organic” will then meet with less opposition.

The St. Joseph News-Press ran an article this past week about the biodiesel industry’s fight for a tax credit extension. Show-Me Institute research analyst Christine Harbin wrote about the negative consequences of corn ethanol subsidies on our blog recently, and provided good analysis about why such subsidies hurt taxpayers. The St. Joe’s article is filled with quotes from people within the industry that exemplify why the tax credits are counterproductive:

“Any further delays will cause additional harm to the industry,” said Michael Frohlich, director of communications for the National Biodiesel Board. “(The expiration has) really been devastating. What you’ve seen is a complete drop in demand.”

Frolich essentially concedes here that the subsidy drives demand, implying that ethanol cannot, on its own, be a profitable endeavor. But the industry leaders interviewed in the article go on to argue that these subsidies will make the industry competitive in the future:

“(The tax credit) is crucial in order for (the biodiesel industry) to keep running,” said Brooks Hurst, a state director for the Missouri Soybean Association. “As we’re starting out, it’s critical to make us cost competitive with petroleum diesel.”

Soybean oil is a feedstock for the production of biodiesel.

If the tax credit were eliminated altogether, the industry would likely “cease production,” Mr. Hurst added.

“The biodiesel industry is an infant industry,” he said. “We’re trying to build demand.”

The nascent or infant industry argument is one used throughout history to protect emerging industries. It suggests that new industries need to be protected temporarily in order to gain the economies of scale that their competitors already enjoy. This is later expanded by Frolich, however, who says:

“Obviously, the long-term goal is for a multi-year (tax credit) extension.”

Ethanol needs the subsidy in order to be profitable, but subsidy proponents argue for more than just economic viability. Some claim that ethanol is better for the environment than standard gasoline, and suggest that it should be subsidized for that reason alone; however, there is a substantial body of research showing that this is not the case. A 2005 study in BioScience debunked that notion by looking at the effects of ethanol use in both Brazil and the United States, concluding that it did not bring net environmental gains. From the study’s conclusion (emphasis added):

The use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither a sustainable nor an environmentally friendly option, considering ecological footprint values, and both net energy and CO₂ offset considerations seemed relatively unimportant compared to the ecological footprint. As revealed by the ecological footprint approach, the direct and indirect environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this alternative resource on a large scale.
[...]
In the US case, the use of ethanol would require enormous areas of corn agriculture, and the accompanying environmental impacts outweigh its benefits. Ethanol cannot alleviate the United States’ dependence on petroleum.

Other studies have replicated these results, such as another piece from 2005, printed in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. The authors reached a similar conclusion about E10, the ethanol mixture used for Missouri gasoline:

The study indicates that E10 is of debatable air pollution merit (and may in fact increase the production of photochemical smog); offers little advantage in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency or environmental sustainability; and will significantly increase both the risk and severity of soil and groundwater contamination.

A 2004 study published in Natural Resources Research concluded that ethanol creation uses more energy than the ethanol itself provides:

Specifically about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes. Increasing subsidized ethanol production will take more feed from livestock production, and is estimated to currently cost consumers an additional $1 billion per year. Ethanol production increases environmental degradation. Corn production causes more total soil erosion than any other crop. Also, corn production uses more insecticides, herbicides, and nitrogen fertilizers than any other crop. All these factors degrade the agricultural and natural environment and contribute to water pollution and air pollution.

Missouri is at a disadvantage because the state’s ethanol mandate requires at least 10 percent ethanol in the gasoline sold here. Show-Me Institute policy analysts David Stokes and Justin Hauke published a case study analyzing the effects of the mandate, concluding that it cost the taxpayers much more than it saved — the opposite of the cost-savings argument originally made in favor of the mandate. Requiring ethanol to be used in the state’s gasoline also discourages research toward better and more efficient forms of biofuel by propping up the corn ethanol industry.

The data shows that the ethanol mandate is expensive and does not help the environment. Ethanol may even harm the environment, by discouraging more efficient and environmentally solutions. That being the case, what justification is left to protect the ethanol industry with mandates and subsidies?

If you believe in the value of local food, this is the way to go. An Affton couple turned their suburban property into a farm, complete with crops, rabbits, chickens, and beehives. They harvest their own vegetables and slaughter their own livestock.

They aren’t asking for subsidies for their enterprise, and they don’t insist on free public land. They aren’t lobbying the state to impose their preferences on anyone else, either. While they would like more people to agree with them, they go about convincing people without coercion. They show their neighbors the benefits of their lifestyle — no local food mandates or preferential policies are involved.

Anyone who lives in an area that allows chickens can try this approach.

This article about local food in San Francisco illustrates the problems with subsidizing food production on pricey urban real estate. When people could more profitably use land for other purposes than growing fruits and vegetables, it takes huge subsidies to keep it cultivated. It’s not enough for people to prefer local food — they have to be willing to pay so much for it that no other use of the land would be more profitable:

“It’s really a conundrum,” says Sibella Kraus, president of nonprofit Sustainable Agriculture Education, or SAGE, which encourages sustainable local farming. “There is this demand for local, but we’re not really investing in local.” Ms. Kraus, known for her work planning the San Francisco Ferry Building market, says that while development is at a lull now due to the real-estate downturn, government at the state and local level hasn’t created enough incentives to prevent farmland loss when economic activity rebounds.

It’s worth noting that the advocates quoted here are not fighting for environmentally sound agriculture, or for forging relationships with farmers, or for supporting small farms. All those things could be done at a distance. They want the farming to take place at close geographical proximity; they think minimizing the physical space between grower and consumer is what matters. If what they really cared about were the environment or small farms, they would drop their demands for farmland in San Francisco — where it makes no sense economically — and instead support those practices where farmland is affordable. Which is more sustainable: farming in a rural area where land values are stable and crops pay for themselves, or farming next to a big city where the high price of land means the enterprise would fail without subsidies?

So, advocates should abandon the idea that “local” is a code word for “sustainable” or “better.” It isn’t. It just means “close by.” If you look around and see that the farmers near you are environmentally responsible, you can’t conclude that farmers everywhere are equally responsible. And those other farmers are local from the point of view of their neighbors. Every destructive, unsound farming practice is local to the people who live near it.

When cities or state grant subsidies to local agriculture — and in every policy I’ve seen proposed, “local” is defined in terms of a geographical area — they can’t be sure that those subsidies will go to the good local farmers and not the bad local farmers. Even if all the farmers who currently work in that region are all virtuous, there’s no guarantee that an unscrupulous farmer from somewhere else won’t move in to become local and claim the subsidy.

To those who argue for such subsidies in Missouri, I say: Not in my backyard!

A judge refused to dismiss the state lawsuit against a family that was caught selling raw milk from its distribution stand in a parking lot. The state claims that it’s illegal for farmers to set up any raw milk pickup locations away from their farms.

In a Springfield News-Leader article, the assistant attorney general explains why selling milk “from a farm,” as state statute requires, should preclude off-site pickup spots:

“A farm is not anywhere defined in Missouri statutes as a vehicle in a parking lot away from the farm premises,” Blome argued.

Of course, no one would define a farm as a vehicle temporarily parked in a lot. But that isn’t a good definition of a food establishment, either — and the state, calling this family’s parked vehicle a food establishment, says it should be subject to the same regulations as a mini-mart or a grocery store.

If you can’t pick up raw milk from a farmer’s vehicle, what can you do with it? You can pick it up yourself at the farm. But suppose you drive your car to a parking lot, meet a friend there, and give him a gallon of the milk. Does your car now become a food establishment? Or maybe you bring your milk home, invite guests over, and serve them milk with dinner. Does your house turn into a restaurant?

Now that Columbia permits residents to own chickens, it’s a good time for the city to look into the next trend in urban agriculture — miniature goats:

The Carbondale, Ill., Planning Commission was debating this month whether to allow residents to keep chickens when Priscilla Pimentel, a member of the city’s Sustainability Commission, added goats to the mix.

“If you can have a 250-pound dog in town, why not a miniature goat that can produce milk?” she says. “It’s just common sense.”

Miniature goats are about as big as medium-sized dogs, and can be led around on leashes. Like chickens, they’re domesticated animals that don’t threaten anyone. People should be allowed to own them in cities.

Are farm-to-school initiatives a response to parents’ and students’ demand for local food? This program coordinator in the Oregon Department of Education doesn’t seem to think so. In her interview with the Oregonian, she talks about local food as if it were something constituents had to be cajoled into accepting. Regarding students, she said, “We’re going to [...] educate students to support those changes in the cafeteria,” implying that students don’t support the changes now and wouldn’t come to support them on their own, even once the new policies are established. This reminds me of the coaching some parents give little kids during holidays: “Tell Grandma how nice the toy is and that you like it soooo much!” If local food preferences bring superior fare to cafeterias, as advocates claim, students should welcome the tastier meals without explicit instructions.

Perhaps their parents are more enthusiastic? From the program coordinator’s description, I don’t think so. She suggests that parents, too, require a lot of education. When asked whether parents are learning about local food, she responds:

Not as much as they could be or should be. [...] They need to go to school lunch and share it with their kids [...] And then parents and caregivers, if they could purchase, serve and talk about Oregon foods with their family, phenomenal.

She would love it if parents could do those things, meaning that they aren’t doing them already. The parents have to be won over. It’s a far cry from, “They are educating me with their phone calls and petitions begging for more local food” — the reply I would expect if local food preferences really were implemented at the behest of parents.

I don’t blame Oregonians for their indifference. After all, as the program coordinator correctly states, local foods are not necessarily healthier than foods from other places. Parents might be more supportive if schools focused on procuring nutritional meals, without regard to locality.

One policy I especially hope Oregon will abandon is the preference that the program coordinator affirms for canned and frozen foods from local sources. Local canned and frozen foods have no nutritional advantage over canned and frozen foods from far away; you can’t argue that one is fresher than the other.

Legislators in New Hampshire are debating whether to declare apple cider the official beverage of their state. As is often the case with proposed state symbols, the bill was submitted at the request of a group of elementary school students. Students at another school have lobbied for milk to receive the honor instead.

New Hampshire state representatives talk about the official beverage proposals as if naming these symbols actually accomplished something:

Rep. Leigh Webb of Franklin saw a problem with both drinks, saying, “Neither is unique to New Hampshire. [...] It will help agriculture, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it.”

This legislator implies that state symbols have the power to shape consumption patterns and improve health:

State Rep. Brian Poznanski, a Democrat from Nashua, reflected on his youth in supporting cider.

“In junior high and high school, I drank sugar and more sugar,” Poznanski said. “There’s a huge obesity problem in this country.”

The students’ teacher has a more realistic perspective on state symbols, and acknowledges that an official beverage probably won’t change people’s actions any more than the official recognition of state animals does:

“My students wanted cider to be a symbolic representation of New Hampshire because of autumn and farm stands,” Nichols said. [...]

“We have a white-tailed deer as our state animal, and I’m not sure what that does for the economy, but it’s symbolic because it’s here. That’s what the children were going for, not to exclude milk by any stretch of the imagination.”

It’s clear from her statement that some people already associate apple cider with the state of New Hampshire. Her students nominated it because they’ve seen apples growing and they’ve seen stands selling cider. Many other New Hampshire residents identify these familiar sights with their state.

People are justified in thinking of apple cider as symbolic of New Hampshire. But it’s a bad idea for New Hampshire to create a new state symbol recognizing it, for the same reasons I’ve opposed the proliferation of official symbols in Missouri. Long lists of state symbols encourage people to ask the government to sign off on their opinions and preferences. They give the impression that for a symbol to count, it needs a state imprimatur.

However, there is a positive aspect of state symbols that I’ve overlooked. When people watch their representatives argue about whether cider or milk should be the state beverage, they may conclude that legislators don’t share their priorities. This could prompt them to realize that if they want to get things done in their state, they’re better off finding solutions in the market. Elected representatives are often apt to shy away from making waves about the things that matter to their constituents and instead talk about less consequential things like official drinks. Maybe the official political fish should be the red herring!

The St. Louis Post Dispatch covers both sides of the urban chicken controversy in this article. In the paragraphs that deal with complaints about unwanted chickens, you could replace the word “chicken” with the name of any other pet. When you allow people to keep animals, some owners will be irresponsible and some will abandon their pets. This is no more reason to outlaw urban chickens than the glut of chihuahuas in California animal shelters is reason to forbid chihuahua ownership.

Unwanted chickens will be kept to a minimum if the birds go to people who seek them out of their own volition. Foisting chickens on reluctant citizens will result in abandoned animals. With that in mind, I’m not in favor of the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District’s plan to encourage chicken ownership. The district has a goal of convincing 50 families to keep chickens. I’m afraid that if it offers too much encouragement, people who aren’t so excited about chickens are going to give in and adopt them, only to abandon them later. A better goal would be to provide information about chickens to anyone who’s interested, without setting a lower bound for the number of chicken owners.

The district’s on-site chicken coop is a good idea; children can learn a lot about animal life cycles from watching chickens. When I was in elementary school, individual classrooms raised chicks. Building one coop for the whole school might allow for more efficient maintenance, and classes could come one at a time to observe the birds. It also could be more practical to keep chickens on a permanent basis than to order new chicks each year and give them away when school’s out.

A proposal in Wisconsin would allow dairy farmers to sell raw milk, with a few conditions:

Under the bill, farmers with a grade ‘A’ dairy farm permit would be allowed to buy a permit to sell raw milk.  They would have to meet certain sanitary conditions for bottling milk and have a sign to let consumers know raw milk doesn’t provide the same protection of pasteurized milk.

The proposed change in law would give farmers greater freedom to sell their milk. And consumers would be able to make their own decisions about whether to purchase unpasteurized dairy products. Everybody would win.

The bill’s restrictions should be enough to protect the public. We don’t station a policeman by every cow to prevent farmers from drinking raw milk, and we needn’t impose that level of surveillance on other people, either. Regulators ought to concentrate on stopping fraud and deceptive advertising, like if a farmer were to display a sign saying “Buy pasteurized milk here!” when he’s really selling raw milk.

If Missouri adopted a similarly free milk policy, it would be a welcome end to the bizarre law that says exchanging cash for milk in a barn is legal, but the same transaction in a parking lot is prohibited.

The Christian Science Monitor describes a Farm to School program in Vermont that encourages local meat consumption. This student has gotten the message (emphasis mine):

“I think it’s really good because we get healthier here than at my old school, and we get more fruits and vegetables and local meat,” says fourth grader Morgan Jones.

The district bought meat from a local farmer, spending an additional $1 per pound above the price it would normally pay.

As Farm to School expands to include products like meat or cheese, it gets harder for supporters to justify the program as anything but protectionism. The appeal of local fruits and vegetables is easier to relate to. Anyone’s who’s eaten delicious fruit right off the tree can sympathize with activists’ support for local produce. (At least, we can sympathize in the early fall and late spring. Activists still have to explain how local produce is superior during the rest of the school year, when very few fruits or vegetables are harvested. Many will say to preserve the local food in the fall — but is locally preserved food really better than food that was preserved somewhere else, or shipped in fresh?)

Meat, on the other hand, has no local advantage at any time of year. There’s no such thing as a hamburger picked fresh off the cow. Meat has to be preserved and prepared no matter where it comes from. Its quality depends on factors like the health of the animals and how safely the meat was handled.

It would be great if Missouri districts could resist this Farm to School trend and refrain from insisting on local meat. Districts should shop around for the safest meat at the best price — and not settle for whatever meat happens to be raised nearby.

The billions of dollars that the federal government doles out in agricultural subsidies each year — most of which go to a few large corporations, influential politicians, and wealthy landowners — do a lot of damage to the economy. The subsidies insulate businesses from the market forces that would, if left unfettered, force them to innovate and improve. They encourage overproduction and irresponsible farming practices: As farmers try to increase their yields in reaction to artificially high crop prices, they expand their farms into less-fertile land that must be blasted with chemicals if it’s to grow anything at all. And the subsidies make it harder for small farmers to enter the market and compete against the corporations that are propped up by price supports and shielded from risk.

Agricultural subsidies are harmful, no doubt about it. But is there a way to mitigate them? Activists say yes. They contend that new laws would counter the subsidies’ damage. To open the agricultural sector to competition, activists suggest — among other ideas — enacting preferential food policies that require school districts to purchase a set percentage of their cafeteria food from local sources. This, it is argued, would take power away from the corporations and undo some of the subsidies’ bad effects.

As much as I oppose subsidizing corporate agriculture, I can’t support the local food mandates. Ordering schools to buy local food is a poor antidote to corporate subsidies, for these reasons:

• There’s nothing to stop corporations from farming near school districts and touting their produce as “local.” Remember, a farm doesn’t have to be small or unsubsidized to count as local; it only has to be nearby. Just as agricultural corporations have stepped up to claim a large share of direct payments and other kinds of farm aid, they’ll also be eager to sell local food — at a premium, because districts won’t have the option to walk away from the sale and buy from businesses located farther away instead.
• Preferential treatment for local farmers could cause as much environmental damage as traditional subsidies. It would lure farmers to grow food near school districts, whether or not the land is suitable for crops. A district’s closest farmer might not always be the most responsible with pesticides and fertilizers. Even if you look around and see that your local farmers are environmentally conscious today, the situation might change when new businesses move in to be near a school district and have a guaranteed customer.
• Local food mandates place an unfair burden on school districts. District administrators didn’t engineer the mess in the agricultural sector, and fixing it shouldn’t be their job, either. They should be free to focus on their main goal — educating children. Let’s not take money that could go toward teachers’ salaries or building repairs and instead use it to pay a higher price for local food, when healthy food is available at a lesser expense from somewhere else.

Local food mandates, by guaranteeing customers for some farmers through public school policy, are themselves a form of subsidy. Neither the market nor the environment will be well served by adding yet another subsidy to the already over-subsidized farming sector. The real solution is to end government aid for agriculture. When farmers are free to compete on their own merits rather than on their political influence, we may see the market change in favor of farmers who were previously overlooked — including, possibly, farmers near your home or school.

An op-ed in the Daily Iowan refutes some arguments against urban chickens, including one I hadn’t heard before:

Bailey was quoted suggesting that urban chickens undermine local economies, saying, “We have a lot of small farmers around here making chickens and eggs available for sale. My fundamental question is: Why aren’t we supporting the regional economy?”

Here is the op-ed’s excellent response:

I would argue that urban chickens would in fact strengthen Iowa’s economy, especially when we consider unique and important businesses such as the McMurry Hatchery in Webster City, known nationally for its collection of rare chicken breeds. Likewise, I highly doubt Bailey would make such an argument when considering whether citizens ought to be allowed to have vegetable gardens.

City residents are also part of the economy, and they shouldn’t have to pass up opportunities to create value for themselves in order to protect people who are already farming. Transactions in which money changes hands aren’t the only economic activity that matters.

In fact, the freedom to raise your own chickens is an important check on the farmers’ power. When customers can build their own chicken coops, farmers aren’t able to overcharge them for eggs or sell lower-quality eggs than what the market demands. If farmers don’t offer acceptable price and quality, customers will walk away and raise chickens themselves.

As we saw in Columbia, Missouri school districts that search in vain for local food to serve are getting a lesson on “where their food comes from.” I’ll give you a hint: It’s not from the Midwest. Indiana is now running into the same problem:

Indiana school districts are lagging behind the rest of the country in procuring locally grown fruits and vegetables for students.

It turns out that buying local food just isn’t practical for Indiana districts:

“I don’t know what local farmers could grow that could last through a school year, but it would be nice if they could,” said Joanne Baierwalter, food service director for Muncie schools. “Potatoes, maybe, but where would you store them? Who would deliver them?”

Some local food advocates would respond that districts should buy up every local produce item when it’s harvested, then carefully preserve it to serve when school is in session. I’m left wondering: When did districts get out of the business of educating kids in order to become canneries?

The Weekly Standard published an article this past week about the realities of buying “local,” written by a Missouri farmer. The farmer’s piece responds to the new $65 million USDA program “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” which states its program mission on its website:

It is also the start of a national conversation about the importance of understanding where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate. Today, there is too much distance between the average American and their farmer and we are marshalling resources from across USDA to help create the link between local production and local consumption.

The USDA’s program relies on the premise that local production is a social and environmental good that should be encouraged by the government. Blake Hurst, the author of the Weekly Standard article, debunks the idea that local is necessarily more “carbon neutral.” He cites a study by Hiroko Shimizu and Pierre Desrochers for the Property and Environment Research Center about “food miles.” The study’s abstract includes this conclusion (emphasis added):

The evidence presented suggests that food miles are, at best, a marketing fad that frequently and severely distorts the environmental impacts of agricultural production. At worst, food miles constitute a dangerous distraction from the very real and serious issues that affect energy consumption and the environmental impact of modern food production and the affordability of food.

Certain climates and types of land are better suited for particular agricultural purposes. The local-food movement trumpets locality and proximity above all else, though, ignoring the enormous energy inputs required to grow food on land that is not well-suited for that purpose. An assessment of the environmental impact of food growing needs to take into account all of the inputs — not just the distance traveled from the farm to the store.

The USDA has created its own matrix for evaluating the most important environmental factor for farms — proximity — without taking into account other criteria that could also have significant environmental impact. If an individual thinks it is important to buy locally, that is fine. But that decision should be made by the individual, without the help of a massive advertising campaign by a governmental agency that expends large sums of taxpayer dollars in order to promote their particular environmental model.

(This discussion is related to my recent post about farmers’ markets, and to Sarah Brodsky’s blog posts about local food.)

Another problem, in addition to USDA program’s misguided focus on buying local, are the implications that local food is somehow healthier. Fruit grown in Missouri is not any more nutritious than fruit grown in California or Florida, yet the USDA program seems to conflate the idea with statements like, “USDA wants to expand access to local, nutritious foods,” implying that proximity could contribute to nutritional value. Local food may not even be as fresh as food transported from other locales; in fact, the PERC study found that because larger farms ship much more frequently than small farms, their food is often more likely to be fresh when it reaches market. The USDA’s misleading claims about the purported environmental and health benefits of local food makes its program even more questionable, beyond the way in which it exerts influence on consumer choices.

Buying local food is not always the best way to be environmentally or health-conscious. At any rate, it is not the government’s job to influence consumer behavior, and the $65 million used by the USDA in its program to promote local food surely has a better use.

Today, first lady Michelle Obama launched her “Let’s Move” campaign, aimed at eradicating childhood obesity. Before the she made her announcement, attendees heard speeches from the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, an urban farmer, two mayors, and a student.

The urban farmer seemed out of place, because he made little effort to connect his locavore ideology to the problem of childhood weight gain. Of course, children will be healthier if they eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but there’s no reason those fruits and vegetables have to be grown in their cities instead of, say, shipped in from a field in California. The farmer railed against buying food from foreign countries — which, again, is no reason to avoid food from California, even if you accept his protectionist premise. Then he concluded with a few more off-topic pronouncements, including, “When farmers are in business, schools are out,” which sounds to me like an argument against relying on local food for children’s nutrition, and a recommendation that cities grow food in vacant buildings. (Not vacant lots, vacant buildings.)

The mayor of Hernando, Miss., offered more relevant comments, although he too gave the obligatory nods to farmers’ markets and urban gardens. He had a lot of ideas about things cities can do to invite physical activity, such as repairing sidewalks and building playgrounds. The mayor’s emphasis on local policies rather than federal mandates was refreshing. (You see, I have local biases of my own.) And I appreciated it when he said that government should not tell people to be healthy because “that’s a private decision.”

The mayor of Somerville, Mass., advocated a more invasive approach for government. His “Shape Up” campaign goes so far as to place a public stamp of approval on certain menu items at restaurants. Even more troubling is the mayor’s declaration, “The healthy choice must be the easy choice.” This recalls the attitude expressed by a student in Clayton when she spoke in support of the proposed smoking ban: If a choice is good, the city should ensure that it is also easy and fun. In other words, you shouldn’t have to make any sacrifices or be at all inconvenienced when you do the right thing — not if the government can help it. Take that way of thinking just a tiny step further, and the government will be making your choices for you.

While most of the speakers had creative plans for cities and schools, none of them explained why the federal government should play a role or why change couldn’t come from the ground up. The first lady emphasized that her campaign won’t try to impose Washington’s vision on everyone, but it’s hard to believe that when she says she’d like to turn convenience stores into produce markets.

Regarding David Stokes’ question of a couple weeks ago about which type of area (e.g., urban, suburban, or rural) is most heavily subsidized by the government, it appears that the USDA disbursed a record amount of money to rural Missouri last year — $1.126 billion. The bulk of the funds were used as a direct subsidy for rural residents:

The Rural Development Single Family Housing Program provided $578.2 million to individuals and families to buy homes or rehabilitate existing homes.

Let me just get this straight: They subsidized the purchase of homes where they are already cheapest, and at a time when there is already a glut in the nationwide housing market? What could go wrong?

The USDA announces that the secretary of agriculture has appointed new members to the National Mango Board. I didn’t know we had a National Mango Board, although until today, I didn’t know about the popcorn, avocado, or watermelon boards, either. (There’s no board for raspberries yet, but the USDA is working on it.)

Why is the USDA involved in promoting individual fruits? Can’t the blueberry growers and the mushroom growers manage their own public relations?

These organizations belong in the private sector. The USDA should follow the precedent set by the state of Missouri and get rid of extraneous boards.

While we’re on the subject of produce, the National Watermelon Promotion Board links to this picture of a bus stop shaped like a watermelon. Check it out.

Diner’s Journal writes that the proposed increase in federal spending on school lunches disappointed many advocates, who had hoped for a steeper rise in funding. By itself, the increase won’t allow schools to change their menus drastically:

Quick calculations show that at best, the president’s plan might offer less than 20 cents more per school lunch.

Schools can still improve the meals they serve, but they’ll have to find other ways to pay for better food. Schools might raise money specifically for their cafeterias, or they could divert resources from things they’ve been paying for that are less important than lunch. Some schools have already succeeded; this charter school, for one, spends a few dollars more on each student’s lunch than the typical public school. The Maplewood–Richmond Heights School District is another example of a school that changed its lunch offerings without federal help. The district was able to add fresh produce to its meals using a grant from a nonprofit organization.

Not every district needs to transform its cafeteria food. In some districts, the lunches aren’t great, but students live in households that can afford to send bag lunches if they choose. Other districts may decide that something else is holding back student achievement and that all resources should be focused on solving that problem before any additional money is diverted to making lunches tastier.

Districts that do want to spend more on food should accept the fact that they won’t receive unlimited appropriations from the federal government. They need to be frugal, and to buy the food they want at the cheapest price. They need to look for foods that are both nutritious and inexpensive. They can’t afford to squander money on pricey fads like “local” or “sustainable” food.

I don’t have a precise answer to the Show-Me Institute Question of the Week, which asks which lifestyles are most heavily subsidized, but I agree with David Stokes that rural communities should be high on the list. The first rural subsidies that come to mind are agricultural ones, like the cotton subsidies that appear in this Southeast Missourian article. Here’s the rationale behind them:

Michael Milam, an agronomy specialist with the Missouri Extension in Kennett, Mo., said that underscores the important role subsidies play in the survival of farmers.

“The subsidies have kept farmers in business,” Milam said. “The help from the government allows the farmers to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world’s cotton producers. If the farmers that produced not only cotton but other crops dropped out because they didn’t receive the subsidies, I believe you’d see a domino effect of higher prices passed onto the consumer.”

The effect of ending the subsidies wouldn’t be as disastrous as this specialist imagines. Everyone could enjoy a lower tax burden if the government stopped paying Missouri farmers to grow crops that could be grown more cheaply someplace else. And there’s no reason to assume farmers who grow both cotton and more profitable crops would drop out of farming altogether. More likely, they would concentrate on raising crops that the market will pay for.

We shouldn’t try to level the playing field between Missouri and other places, because it’s a waste of money. We could pay farmers to grow oranges and level the playing field between us and Florida, but what would be the point? We can just ship in oranges with less trouble and expense. It’s the same for cotton and all the other crops that don’t bring in a profit when grown in Missouri.

Few policy issues are as as uncontroversial as the idea that the federal government should provide some kind of national defense. Realizing that funding the military is almost universally considered to be a federal obligation, advocates of other policies try to piggyback on that popular support by associating their programs with defense or comparing their concerns to a battlefield.

The latest example is this essay in the Huffington Post by Debra Eschmeyer, Media Director of the National Farm to School Network. Eschmeyer argues for a direct link between school lunches and national security:

Do tater tots, pizza, and soda rise to the level of calling in Janet Napolitano or David Petraeus? Oddly, yes, because the National School Lunch Program was originally created to promote “nutrition in the national defense,” as a solution to young men who were unfit for service in WWI and WWII. The lunch line was actually designed to prepare soldiers for the front lines. (And sadly, 27 percent of the population for military service today are too obese/overweight to serve).

Eschmeyer then turns her attention away from history and calls for a “fight” against poor nutrition.

Is Eschmeyer correct that we need better cafeteria food to keep out foreign invaders? I don’t think so. There are many other factors that prevent people from joining the military, such as criminal records, lack of education, and health problems that are not related to food (including poor eyesight, mental illness, and others). It’s worth noting that the report Eschmeyer cites about military service recommends expanding preschool education in an effort to improve graduation rates, but makes no mention of school lunches.

Fortunately, we don’t need a large percentage of the population to defend the country right now, so it doesn’t really matter that so many people can’t serve for one reason or another. Problems like obesity don’t determine whether we have a military, but which people are employed by it. As a country, we can still enjoy the benefits of national defense. The only people who lose out when the army excludes lots of overweight people are the overweight people who want to serve. And if someone wants to join the armed forces but is barred by weight, he can make nutritional or other lifestyle changes to improve his fitness. In this sense, overweight people are in a better position than others who are disqualified, because it’s possible for them to bring their weight down to military standards through their own initiative.

The fact that a small percentage of the population is eligible for military service can be a good thing, depending on how you look at it. It means that we are living in such a peaceful time in history that our military can afford to be selective, excluding people who don’t have quite enough education or whose weight is just a little higher than the ideal.

The defense argument for better school lunches doesn’t pass inspection. If states like Missouri think kindergartners don’t eat enough vegetables, they shouldn’t frame that as a national security crisis. There’s no need to call in the federal government — or to call forth the militia.