Editor’s Choice Series on Agricultural Ethics
Internalizing the Societal Costs of Agricultural Production
Frederick H. Buttel*
Department of Rural Sociology, Institute for Environmental Studies, and Program on Agricultural
Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison 53706
Societies and social groups within them are becoming aware that food and fiber are not gifts of nature
that come to us cost-free from the natural world
because their production involves consumption of
renewable and nonrenewable resources as well as
expenses for capital and variable inputs in the production process, plus outlays for transportation, processing, marketing, and food preparation. The essence of food and fiber production is that on one
hand, the key production resources (seeds, tubers,
soil, manures, and rain water) are renewable resources, thus potentially enabling agriculture to be a
highly sustainable activity. On the other hand, agriculture has some actual or potential characteristics of
an extractive industry, similar to mining, and accordingly has the potential to be highly unsustainable. In
addition, food and fiber production may involve
long-term nonenvironmental costs (e.g. impacts on
workers, communities, regions, and consumers) to a
greater or lesser degree. In this paper, I use the
expression “societal costs” of agriculture to pertain to
adverse impacts of agrofood systems on human
health, environmental quality, and the welfare and
livelihoods of social groups. (A focus on the societal
costs of food and fiber production does not, of
course, involve a presumption that the benefits of
this production, both to humans and non-human
portions of the biosphere, are insignificant.)
HOW SHOULD FOOD AND FIBER PRODUCTION
BE REGULATED?
The notion that agriculture has societal costs is
related to the neoclassical economics concepts of
“market failure” and “externalities.” Market failure
exists when the self-interested behavior of economic
actors in a market leads to a suboptimal allocation of
resources. Externalities—reductions in the welfare of
others that are not accounted for in the price system
or through compensation—are one of the most common types of market failures. (Typically, the term
externality is employed in a manner that presumes
that the referent is to negative consequences for the
welfare of individuals or society as a result of the
production process. Note, however, that there logically exist “positive” externalities, which economists
often refer to as “external economies of production”
www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.103.030312.
*E-mail [email protected]; fax 608-262-6022.
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or a “spillover effect.” In this paper, the notion of
externality will be used to refer to negative outcomes
rather than external economies and spillovers.) Economists tend to hypothesize that, in principle (although not necessary in practice, given the vagaries
of the policy-making process), compensatory market
incentives can be introduced that will readily reduce
the societal costs of food and fiber production and do
so in an efficient manner. As I will stress below,
however, this is not always the case with some of the
most important and contested societal costs of food
and fiber production.
How should the human need for food and the
social benefits of the food and fiber production systems be assessed in relation to the societal costs of
production systems and practices? For most of the
history of western agriculture, there has been little
explicit awareness that agricultural production might
have significant societal costs, and there has been
even less impulse to influence the behavior of agriculturalists and performance of agriculture accordingly. This may be surprising because history teaches
us that early civilizations declined because they did
not pay attention to the environmental ravages of
their agricultural practices. Even so, there have been
a good many efforts, such as the promulgation of
land use regulations, the expansion of support for
public agricultural research, and the development of
food, chemical, and drug safety rules, that can be
thought of as institutional interventions to reduce the
societal costs of agriculture. In addition, measures to
curb the power of large landlords, industrial farm
operations, railroads, and agribusinesses were undertaken to ensure broader public benefit from the
food and fiber production system (Danbom, 1995).
These regulatory impulses, however, have tended to
be weaker in the United States than in most other
industrial countries. Our family farming heritage and
respect for the yeoman food producer have caused
policy-makers to be cautious about harming hardworking rural small businesspeople through mandatory regulation. Most agricultural pollutants are from
non-point rather than from point sources, which
makes measurement and regulation difficult. Finally,
the spaciousness of the United States and our extensive pattern of rural land use have historically made
dispersion of pollutants a socially—if not a technically—feasible alternative to regulating farms in the
same manner that metropolitan industry and municipalities have been regulated. My analysis of the
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Agricultural Ethics
issues surrounding how we could go about internalizing those societal costs is based on the U.S. experience, but the lessons that are learned are not limited
to the United States.
GROWING ATTENTION TO THE SOCIETAL
COSTS OF FOOD AND FIBER PRODUCTION
In recent years, we have witnessed greater attention to the societal costs associated with agricultural
production systems and practices. This expanded attention has three major origins. First, there has been
growing attention by environmental groups and environmental regulatory agencies in the United States
to the impacts of agricultural practices on environment, human health, and animal welfare. In many
instances, these environmental problems have
crossed the line from non-point (cows in a pasture) to
point (cows in a large feedlot) sources of pollution
and have led to increasingly vehement calls by activist groups to regulate farm producers the same way
the government treats other point sources of pollution. Second, the rise of increasingly large-scale industrial
agriculture
enterprises—especially
“factory”-like concentrated animal feed operations
(CAFOs) and large-scale field crop monocultures—
has generated opposition in their own right; in many
instances, for example, activist groups contesting the
practices of CAFOs are as interested in eradicating
large-scale animal agriculture as they are in achieving rural environmental quality. Third, there are
growing concerns from public interest groups about
the social and environmental impacts of particular
new technologies such as precision farming, genetically modified crops, the use of recombinant bovine
somatotropin, or the use of antibiotics as feed additives in poultry farms (Fig. 1; Cranor, 2003). The
anti-genetically modified (GM) crop movement is a
particularly important instance of this third thrust
involved in the growing attention to the societal costs
of agriculture, in that the costs and risks of GM crops
and foods that generate concern are often not seen as
costs and risks by many scientists, farmers, and regulatory personnel.
Finally, recent changes in regulatory doctrine and
practices, such as the “precautionary principle” (PP)
and the “fourth hurdle,” which are the de facto regulatory doctrine in the European Union (EU), have
signaled a new receptivity to preventing, rather than
merely ameliorating, the societal costs of agricultural
production. Each of these relatively recent initiatives
is aimed at altering or influencing the behaviors of
agriculturalists to reduce the actual or perceived
costs of agrofood systems. The PP—sometimes referred to as the Precautionary Polluter Pays Principle
(or “4P”), in recognition of the fact that it is premised
on the notion that firms should be directly responsible (including the payment of fines to the government and compensating victims) if a technology or
production practice proves to be harmful—is a regulatory doctrine that involves several departures
from the U.S. approach. First, it involves a shift in the
burden of proof from government regulatory agencies to private firms; thus, under the PP, it is not the
obligation of government to prove that a new product or production practice is harmful, but rather an
obligation of private firms to prove that it is safe.
Second, the scientific standard for implementing the
PP in regulatory decision-making is a more encompassing one than in the U.S. system (which is generally referred to as a “substantial equivalence” system). (Substantial equivalence regulatory doctrine
essentially involves the principle that “if the new or
modified food or food component is determined to
be substantially equivalent to an existing food, then
further safety or nutritional concerns are not expected to be significant” [Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development, 1993]. There is now a
Figure 1. Societal costs of agricultural practices.
The sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in cattle,
swine, and poultry rations is most common on
farms with large-scale confinement facilities,
such as this poultry farm in Florida. Use of
antibiotics in animal feed that are employed to
treat humans tends to foster antibiotic resistance
in bacteria that can then be transmitted to bacteria that cause infectious diseases in humans.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) photo
by Larry Rana.
Plant Physiol. Vol. 133, 2003
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Agricultural Ethics
vigorous and growing debate as to whether the PP or
substantial equivalence is the most appropriate regulatory framework for assessing new technologies
that may have major implications for human and
animal health and ecosystem integrity [see Millstone
et al., 1999; Juma, 2000].) Products or practices could
be disapproved if there is evidence of any harm
and/or if there it is a plausible scientific rationale
that approval could lead to negative health or environmental effects (for a critique of the PP as applied
to new agricultural technologies, see van den Belt,
2003).
The fourth hurdle is not a formal regulatory policy
practice, but rather it is the term some observers use
to refer to the EU procedure that gives nationalgovernment ministers the final authority to approve
or disapprove a regulatory request (Lacy, 2002). The
fourth hurdle is an allusion to the fact that there is an
implicit “social impact” hurdle beyond the three regulatory criteria—product efficacy, safety with respect
to human health, and safety with respect to the environment and animals—that are widely accepted in
both the EU and the United States. In recent years,
the EU has apparently based some regulatory decisions, such as the moratoria on recombinant bovine
somatotropin (1993) and new genetically modified
crop varieties (1999), at least in part on “political”
criteria such as the likely social implications or impacts of a new technology. The U.S. government—
particularly the State Department and the U.S. Trade
Representative—has been highly critical of these decisions and about the EU practice of permitting politicians to have the final say on regulatory decisions.
In activist quarters, however, the PP of the EU and
the ability of the EU to pose a de facto fourth hurdle
are admired and seen as the direction in which public
policy-making in the United States ought to move.
The PP and the fourth hurdle are embraced most
strongly by the EU, but there is support for these two
regulatory doctrines in much of East Asia and the
developing world. The more independent and
science-driven system in the United States for approving new agricultural technologies is often incompatible with the regulatory systems of other
countries, particularly those of the EU.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO INTERNALIZING
THE SOCIETAL COSTS OF FOOD AND
FIBER PRODUCTION
The sustainability imperative and the notion that
agricultural institutions should maximize the social
benefits and reduce the social costs of food and fiber
production do not lead to a straightforward public
policy formula or even to a straightforward analytical procedure for simultaneous optimization of sustainability and social benefits. In practice, the sustainability component of agrofood systems tends to
be dealt with within particular regulatory agencies
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(e.g. the Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental protection or natural resources departments, local planning and zoning boards), whereas
the main thrusts of U.S. agricultural policy—commodity programs, public research, and conservation
programs—are dealt with separately by other parties
such as the U.S. Congressional and Senate committees that shape the Farm Bill, national and state departments of agriculture, and state legislatures.
Within each of these, there are multiple conflicts
among multiple actors.
There are two basic strategies for internalizing the
costs of food and fiber production: regulation and
market incentives. Regulation refers mainly to state
(national or subnational government) practices
aimed at supervising and controlling private economic activities to accomplish more or more social
goals such as ensuring competition, reducing externalities, promoting fairness, and ensuring health and
welfare (although there are some instances in which
private regulation, such as third-party, organic
producer-organized standard-setting that predated
the new USDA National Organic Program, can occur). The two main types of regulatory approaches
are: (a) use of the legislative process to develop liability and torts law, which establishes civil penalties
for damages resulting from behavior that is harmful
to other individuals or groups, and (b) legislative or
administrative processes that result in government
regulatory controls (e.g. health regulations, environmental regulations, technology approval practices,
and GM product regulations) that directly prescribe
or proscribe producer behaviors and practices.
Market incentives approaches are also generally
based on government action, but instead of the state
directly prescribing or proscribing producer behavior, these approaches involve modifying the system
of price signals in some significant way to encourage
producers to engage in appropriate behavior (e.g. soil
conservation structures). Also, market incentives approaches may occur in tandem with a regulatory
approach. There are three main types of market incentives programs. The first is that of “conventional”
subsidy programs, which reduce the cost of a producer engaging in desirable behavior; the US Soil
Conservation Service and the National Resources
Conservation Service and state government costsharing of soil and water conservation investments
have been particularly important historical examples
of this approach. The second type of market incentives
approach is one that ties the receipt of production
subsidies or other benefits to agricultural producers to
environmental compliance (e.g. cross-compliance provisions of 1980s U.S. Farm Bills that required use of
reduced-tillage practices in exchange for benefits from
commodity programs; Fig. 2).
The third type of market incentive program is one
that aims to influence farmer or agribusiness behavior indirectly through, for example, “green taxes.”
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Agricultural Ethics
Figure 2. Mechanisms to mitigate societal costs
of agriculture. Tying production subsidies to
specific agricultural practices is one way that
governments can influence those practices.
Shown here is a large farm in Iowa that is practicing no-till farming. No-till practices reduce
soil erosion and air pollution (from dust) and
save water. USDA photo by Tim McCabe.
Note that although there are significant green taxes
in some European countries (e.g. 15% taxes on agricultural chemicals in Norway), no green taxes have
been implemented in the United States. In fact, there
are “negative green taxes” in many American states
because agricultural chemicals are often exempted
from state sales taxes; such “negative green taxes”
basically amount to a tax subsidy of their use. Many
U.S. advocates of the green taxation approach are
now pushing for “environmental tax shifting,” which
involves repealing tax exemptions on pesticides and
fertilizer that subsidize or encourage their use while
reducing other taxes (e.g. on net farm income) to
make the shift “revenue equal”—a crucial consideration in a the current political environment of obsession with “no new taxes” and preoccupation with the
efficiency of government programs.
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF AGRICULTURE
DO NOT ALWAYS LEND THEMSELVES TO BEING
MEASURED IN YEN, DOLLARS, OR EUROS
Thus far, the discussion has presumed that the
notion of “costs” (and “benefits”) is a straightforward one—that what is a cost or benefit is quite
tangible, is widely agreed upon, and can readily be
measured. But many costs are not highly tangible
because, for example, they cannot be directly observed. For example, much of the knowledge about
“ecosystem services” in agriculture has only been
developed over the past decade or so (for some of the
pioneering references, see Costanza et al., 1997; Dailey, 1997; Pearce, 1998). Many ecosystem services
(e.g. carbon sequestration) cannot be directly observed. Many of the positive and negative things that
agriculture does with respect to the environment (e.g.
water purification and nutrient run-off, respectively,
depending on the type of farming operation and
agro-ecosystem) are largely invisible. Others (proviPlant Physiol. Vol. 133, 2003
sion of wildlife habitat and creation of a scenic countryside) are very valuable to some and without value
to others. We now know much more about how
agriculture creates or maintains, as well as how it can
destroy, ecosystem services such as the quantity and
quality of water. There are frequent attempts to
quantify these less tangible benefits and costs of food
and fiber production. But doing so is difficult.
Costs and benefits are partly an objective matter,
which lend themselves to “cost-benefit” analysis and,
if things go well, to public policies that use these data
to maximize benefits and minimize costs. The growing demand for accountability in government makes
it increasingly imperative that new regulations, new
taxes, repeals of tax subsidies and exemptions, and
new expenditures on incentives be justified in costbenefit terms. Many costs and benefits, however, do
not readily lend themselves to measurement in monetary terms; many of the costs and benefits of food
and fiber production, in fact, are “incommensurable”
in that they do not lend themselves to measurement
with a common metric, such as yen, dollars, or euros.
This is partly because costs and benefits have a subjective dimension. The fact that costs and benefits are
partly subjective makes it particularly likely that various groups in society will disagree about the particulars. The fact that costs and benefits may be incommensurable makes it even more likely that various
groups in the agrofood production system will make
radically different judgments on these matters.
THREE ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN INTERNALIZING
SOCIETAL COSTS
There are three particularly vexing ethical dilemmas about whether and how to internalize the costs
of agricultural production. The first dilemma is
rooted in the fact that farmers and the rest of society
may have quite different views about the benefits
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Agricultural Ethics
and costs of food and fiber production. Farmers, of
course, tend to select enterprises and practices to
maximize private benefits, whereas the bulk of the
costs of agricultural production are externalized onto
non-farmers. (These processes are clearly not specific
to agriculture. A major theory in environmental policy, that of the “distancing and the quest for frontiers” [Princen, 2002] is based on the notion that
rational producers and resource decision-making entities can be expected to strive to externalize costs of
production and that “business strategy and state policy creates a never ending search for frontiers, defined in political, economic, and ecological terms.”
The two main processes of creating a “frontier economy”—one that lacks jurisdictional authority over
externalized costs, little social resistance to externalization of costs, and free or inexpensive waste
sinks—are shading [the obscuring of costs] and distancing [the spatial separation of production and
consumption]. For Princen, agriculture is one of the
prototypical instances of a modern frontier economy.) Further, farmers may be quite divided about
whether and how measures should be taken to reduce the societal costs of food and fiber production.
Should policy-makers pay greatest heed to the views
and interests of farmers when designing policies? If
farmer stakeholders’ views are judged most important, should decision-makers pay most attention to
the small handful of farmers that produce the bulk of
the nation’s food and fiber? Or should they give
equal or greater attention to the views and interests
of small- and medium-sized traditional family farmers, who are numerically the most predominant but
who tend not to comprise the dominant component
of the overall production system? Should policymakers pay most attention to the views and interests
of the mass of citizens and consumers, who are far
more numerous than farmers as a whole and who
pay the lion’s share of the tax revenues that go to
farmers as subsidies? Should policy-makers rely
mainly on scientists’ recommendations based on established “sound science”? Or should policy-makers
consider more preliminary results from scientific
work and strive to regulate in a manner that is precautionary and is able to prevent—rather than just
ameliorate—pollution, other forms of environmental
degradation, and other types of societal costs of
agriculture?
A second ethical dilemma related to the first concerns the matter of who should decide about whether
the societal costs of food and fiber production should
be internalized. One way to approach this dilemma is
to think about what are the central or “hot-button”
issues in the area of societal costs of food and fiber
production. Most observers would likely agree that
regulation, registration, and re-registration of pesticides; regulation of GM crops; regulation of air and
water pollution by CAFOs; the hypoxia zone, point,
and non-point pollution by farm operations; the in1660
dustrialization of agriculture; multifunctionality;
agri-environmental payments, land use, and urban
sprawl; antibiotic resistance from subtherapeutic use
of human antibiotics in animal feeds; and enhancement of ecosystem services are eight of the most
important issues. Most of these issues are, at least
indirectly, environmental issues. One seemingly obvious conclusion is that environmental agencies, such
as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
state departments of environmental protection or
natural resources, should be the lead agencies in
assessment of societal costs and development of policies to address these costs. But there is clearly no
national consensus on this point. It is clearly the case
that over the past 20 years, and especially during the
Bush Administration years, the authority of the U.S.
EPA and of state departments of environmental protection has been decisively reduced. The EPA and
other environmental regulatory agencies enjoyed
substantially more authority in the 1970s when there
was not a strong counterweight to the environmental
movement. But since that time, there has arisen an
influential anti-environmental movement that is now
at its political apogee.
Given this new political environment, the third
ethical dilemma and the most fundamental one concerns how the disparate public policy criteria of efficiency, effectiveness, fairness, and social acceptability should be used to weigh the various policy
alternatives for internalizing the costs of food and
fiber production. Farmers tend to be resistant to initiatives to reduce the societal costs of agriculture if
these initiatives would be costly or would portend a
“slippery slope” of inviting more stringent regulation; these groups invariably have a preference for
incentives and voluntary programs over mandatory
regulation. But there is also usually considerable internal variation among farmers as to their views on
initiatives to reduce the societal costs of food and
fiber production. The most common tendency is that
the largest commercial producers are most resistant
to changes to the status quo, whereas some smaller or
medium-sized producers may welcome new regulations or market incentives if they feel they will enhance the competitive standing of smaller or “familytype” producers. Other farm producers will react to
such initiatives largely on ideological grounds—typically resisting regulation or being negative about
new taxes under almost all circumstances, being
against more government involvement in principle,
or believing that there is something special about
agriculture that ought to exempt it from citizen reviews and social regulation. Put somewhat differently, Thompson (1998) has noted that “Agricultural
producers and those who support them with technology may have been seduced into thinking that so
long as they increased food availability, they were
exempt from the constant process of politically nego-
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Plant Physiol. Vol. 133, 2003
Agricultural Ethics
tiating and renegotiating the moral bargain that is at
the foundations of modern democratic society.”
Equal or greater variability in the views of agricultural researchers and non-farm people on these issues exists as well. Lyson’s (1986) empirical research
on general public views about farmers and farming
has revealed that non-farm people now tend to have
little interest in agriculture and are increasingly apathetic about farmers’ problems. The rank-and-file of
the public at large tends not to have high awareness
of or knowledge on any of these “externality issues”
nor does it tend to have strongly held a priori
views—or at least this tends to be the case in the
United States, although there are clear differences
with respect to the GM crop issue (Gaskell et al.,
1999). Public apathy toward agriculture frequently
gives way to significant local resistance, however,
when attempts are made to site CAFOs in agricultural regions (Constance et al., 2003). And the nonfarming public also contains social movement organizations and other organizations and groups with
very strongly held, diametrically opposed views that
parallel (and that help to reinforce) the extreme partisanship in the U.S. political and policy-making system. Wells (2003) terms this juxtaposition of aggressive producer and trade group organizations with
equally aggressive social movements and a public
that is alternatively apathetic and mobilized the
“contingent creation of rural interest groups.” Policymaking that pertains to the externalities and costs of
agriculture has thus become more ideological, partisan, and contested, much like a good many other
issue areas in contemporary politics.
TWO EXAMPLES ILLUSTRATE THE DIFFICULTIES
IN RESOLVING THESE ETHICAL DILEMMAS
THROUGH LEGISLATION
The ethical dilemmas associated with addressing
the societal costs of food and fiber production can be
illustrated through very brief case studies of two
prominent problems of contemporary agriculture: (a)
the “excess” of fixed nitrogen that leads to the hypoxia (or the “dead zone”) in the Gulf of Mexico, other
coastal waters, and some lakes (Vitousek and
Howarth, 1991; Howarth et al., 1996; Vitousek et al.,
1997), and (b) the air and water pollution problems
(particularly hydrogen sulfide emissions that apparently can lead to severe neurological damage in humans) resulting from large-scale pork production facilities (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1996;
Fig. 3). (“Hypoxia” means “low oxygen,” and is generally used to refer to a concentration of ⬍3 mg L⫺1
water. The largest hypoxia zone is in the Gulf of
Mexico, but other coastal areas, particularly Long
Island Sound, have repeated hypoxic events. Hypoxia is caused by an overabundance of nutrients that
result in algal blooms. When the algae decay, they
deplete the water of oxygen. Hypoxia kills fish and is
believed to cause habitat destruction and long-term
changes in the ecology of coastal waters;
http://esa.sdsc.edu/hypox5.htm.)
Both issues have several critical characteristics in
common. First, both problems have their origins in
the structural changes of modern agriculture. Hypoxia problems, for example, are caused by algal
blooms that result from nutrient enrichment. In this
case, the use/overuse of nitrogen fertilizers made
possible by industrial nitrogen fixation has permitted
large-scale monocultures of field crops in the Midwest and the Mississippi River basin and has resulted
in large amounts of N entering the Gulf of Mexico
(Vitousek et al., 1997). Hydrogen sulfide air pollution
is caused by the industrialization and spatial concentration of swine production—namely, manure disposal in lagoons and through ground application or
aerial spraying of manure (Donham et al., 2002; Iowa
State University and the University of Iowa Study
Group, 2002). Both problems could in some sense be
Figure 3. Agricultural practices that cause air
pollution. Lagoons such as this one are commonly used to store and treat hog manure on
large CAFO hog farms. Lagoons emit hydrogen
sulfide, a toxic gas. As much as 65% to 75% of
the nitrogen content of manure is lost during
storage, treatment, and handling. Much of this
lost nitrogen contaminates the air and water
downstream and downwind from large hog
farms. USDA photo by Ken Hammond. Legend
for the hypoxia map. A U.S. Geological Survey
map shows the Mississippi River drainage basin
and the extent of the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of
Mexico in the late 1990s (http://webserver.cr.
usgs.gov/hypoxia/html/graphics.html; http://www.
meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/issues/agri/images/
paper1.gif; http://webserver.cr.usgs.gov/hypoxia/
html/graphics4.html).
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Agricultural Ethics
resolved if these agricultural-structural changes
could be reversed by returning to more diversified
farms, crop rotations, smaller animal production
units, and the closer integration of crop and livestock
enterprises. But doing so would be almost impossible
to accomplish because there are enormous investments and sunk capital costs involved in both types
of production systems; these investments and sunk
costs occur not only at the farm level but all across
the commodity chain from inputs through production, processing, and marketing.
Second, both problems are documented in the scientific literature at a level that could be characterized
as reasonably persuasive but not “open-and-shut.”
The connections of hypoxia and hydrogen sulfide
pollution to prevailing agricultural practices are documented in the scientific literature to a degree that
the typical scientist would accept that there is probable cause to believe that a bona fide problem exists
and that ameliorative action is warranted. (In the case
of the hypoxia, the chief uncertainty claim that is
made is that integrated assessments of the hypoxia
problem may exaggerate agricultural causes and underestimate the role of forests, municipalities, and
other sources of N entering the Gulf of Mexico [see
the “public comments” on the NOAH hypoxia assessment at http://www.nos.noaa.gov/products/
pubs_hypox.html]. In the case of hydrogen sulfide,
the principal uncertainty argument is that there is no
clear evidence that hog-farm-produced hydrogen
sulfide emissions are causally connected to the neurological and respiratory illnesses experienced by
neighbors.) In terms of the regulatory categories discussed earlier, the science behind these phenomena
would arguably justify “precautionary” action, but it
would likely not be sufficient to lead to major civil
penalties. Neither problem has served as the justification for a major new regulatory initiative or for a
costly incentive program capable of dealing with the
problem. The lack of “drop-dead” evidence that these
problems are causally related to prevailing practices
leaves room for persuasive “uncertainty arguments”—claims that because of the lack of firm scientific evidence, there is no clear basis for more regulation or for civil liability claims, and the societal
benefits of modern, intensive production could well
be as great or greater than any actual costs. Third,
given the remaining scientific uncertainties, there are
fierce differences of view about how serious these
problems are, the degree to which they are caused by
agricultural practices, and whether regulations of
production practices are warranted. The American
Farm Bureau Federation, the Fertilizer Institute, the
National Cattleman’s Association, the National Pork
Producers Council, and a good many other producer
groups fervently resist the notion that there are any
substantiated connections among large-monoculture,
large-scale animal confinement systems; the hypoxia
zone; hydrogen sulfide-caused human neurological
1662
disorders; and antiobiotic-resistant bacteria. By contrast, most environmental organizations, sustainable
agriculture organizations, and profamily farming
groups believe that the connections are “practically
undeniable,” to quote Dr. Kaye Kilburn, a University
of Southern California professor and one of the most
visible researchers working in the area of hog CAFOs
and hydrogen sulfide air pollution (http://www.
nytimes.com/2003/05/11/health/11HOGS.html).
Fourth, these pollution problems of modern agriculture involve bringing farm operations, especially
larger ones, increasingly within the scope of the
Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act—legislation that
had previously been applied mainly to industrial
corporations and municipalities. This shift of regulatory milieu raises the stakes involved in development
of policy responses. Fifth, there do not appear to be
any magic-bullet technologies that are compatible
with large-scale agricultural systems and that ameliorate either problem sufficiently to mollify activists.
Finally, there are no obvious incentives that would
address the problem and that would be acceptable to
producers and the public, or at least the activist
public. Large-scale farmers, for example, reject the
notion of making any major shifts in production technology, whereas activist groups’ goal typically is not
only to abate air and water pollution by ultimately to
decisively reverse the industrialization of American
agriculture.
ROLES FOR PUBLIC RESEARCH
Another dilemma common to problems such as
hypoxia, nitrogen sulfate emissions, and so on concerns the roles that publicly funded research should
play. Many societal costs of agriculture may be reduced through development of abatement or other
technologies, and in many instances, there are rationales for public research institutions to participate in
developing these technologies (e.g. Zahn et al., 2001).
Public research that ameliorates a significant societal
cost of modern large-scale agriculture has an obvious
efficiency rationale, as well as an obvious appeal to
large commercial farmers, agribusinesses, and leaders of other agricultural institutions. (This is not to
presume, of course, that all societal costs of modern
agriculture are accounted for by the largest farms.
There is a tendency, however, for increases in farm
scale to make certain externalities such as environmental degradation more likely. It is also the case
that the social costs created by very large, industrialtype farms are most likely to be of concern to the
public.) But doing so also raises troublesome ethical
questions of whether the public agricultural research
system should in effect subsidize the types of producers that are externalizing major costs onto society,
whereas the research system by and large eschews
research to benefit smaller or medium-sized producers whose practices are more environmentally benign
and less problematic socially.
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Plant Physiol. Vol. 133, 2003
Agricultural Ethics
Busch (1994) has written persuasively that public
agricultural research is at an impasse partly because
of the continued hegemony of the notion that its key
goal is to increase productivity (Chrispeels and Mandioli, 2003; see also the perceptive historical and
ethical reflection on the “productivist paradigm” by
Thompson, 1995). Busch’s objection to productivity
being the unstated but pervasive bottom line of public research is that the conditions are no longer propitious for widespread public acceptance of productivity increase as the understood goal for publicly
supported research. This is partly because postWorld War II productivity increases exacted unrecognized and uncompensated societal costs, as has
been noted in this paper, so that part of the productivity success story was somewhat illusory. But a
more important shortcoming of the productivity raison d’être of (domestic) agricultural research is that
the advanced industrial countries are mired in a persistent crisis of global overproduction, which can
only be exacerbated by output increase. (Productivity
and output increase are, of course, not coterminous,
although in practice, they bear a close biophysical
and ideological relationship.) The global impasse
over agricultural trade, export subsidies, and domestic agricultural support suggests that this overproduction situation will continue indefinitely. Productivity increase thus tends to marginalize the very
groups, mainly farmers, who are the ostensible beneficiaries of agricultural research. In addition, “true
productivity increase,” which would imply simultaneously increased input-output, allocative, and
“natural-capital” efficiency, is premised on the existence of input prices that provide realistic signals as
to the actual scarcity of inputs. For Busch, inexpensive publicly subsidized irrigation water, the fact that
prices for chemical inputs do not reflect the costs of
agricultural pollution, the unpaid costs of depletion
of natural resources, and loss of ecosystem services
involved in agricultural production are factors that
are currently not reflected in factor and product markets in agriculture. With such a distorted system of
price signals, agricultural technologies based on
these input prices will lead to distortions in resource
allocation—and to the illusion of productivity increase. He also stresses that the United States currently lacks a comprehensive national data system to
monitor the social and environmental costs and benefits—particularly the additions to and deletions
from the natural capital and ecosystem services
“stocks”—of agriculture. The lack of research on the
societal costs of agriculture and the corresponding
lack of an information system on these costs not only
makes it more likely that these costs will be ignored,
but it also makes it more likely that technical disagreements will make the regulatory and policymaking processes more politicized, arbitrary, and ineffective than they need to be (Busch, 1994).
Plant Physiol. Vol. 133, 2003
TOWARD SATISFICING,
PRECAUTIONARY SOLUTIONS
In this paper, I have argued that there are scientific,
ethical, political, and practical reasons why it is difficult to implement programs to internalize the societal costs of food and agricultural production. Which
way forward? I offer four modest proposals, with full
awareness of ethical complexities and uncertain political realties.
First, there is abundant evidence, albeit of a precautionary nature, that the relative inexpensiveness
of fertilizers and biocides contributes to heavy levels
of use and to a greater or lesser amount of off-site
movement of nutrients, toxins, and soil (Matson et
al., 1997). Thus, there is a sound precautionary rationale to discourage farming practices that tend to
increase the off-site movement of these materials.
One important place to start is to remove state tax
exemptions on agricultural chemicals. A modest federal tax on these chemicals would at least begin to
discourage profligate use of these inputs. Austria,
Finland, Norway, and Sweden already tax fertilizers
and/or pesticides, and similar programs have been
on the books in Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. The
current Norwegian policy, for example, involves a
15% tax on N, P, and K. These agri-environmental
taxes would be consistent with a market-oriented
policy and would be cost effective from a government fiscal point of view. A second precautionary
policy would be to move toward a consensus that
agricultural production units should be subject to the
same environmental and human safety standards
that other non-farm businesses must comply with.
Doing so is consistent with fairness and would ensure that farm enterprises are neither exempted from
accepted regulatory standards nor penalized for being unwanted rural land uses. Third, U.S. federal
investments in wetland restoration through the Farm
Bill should be expanded. Wetland restoration has
strong justification on biodiversity and ecosystem
services grounds, and wetland restoration almost
certainly would enhance water quality, flood prevention, and a range of other ecosystem services. Appropriately designed programs would be income-neutral
if not beneficial for producers.
Fourth, given the likelihood that massive federal
farm program payments will continue for the indefinite future, serious attention should to be given to
implementing “multifunctionality policies” (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development,
2001). Multifunctionality (see also Dundon, 2003) is
the notion that, in addition to production of food and
fiber (and other marketable goods), agriculture has a
number of other, mostly non-commodity, outputs
(e.g. environmental protection, flood control, ecosystem services, maintenance of landscape or habitat,
rural development, maintenance of agricultural heritage or culture, and so on). Non-commodity outputs,
because they do not have a market price, tend to be
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Agricultural Ethics
underproduced. Multifunctionality policy would involve fundamentally changing the rationale and procedure behind subsidies of farmers. Instead of farmers receiving payments with no “strings attached” or
no performance requirement, a multifunctionality
payment system would compensate farmers for noncommodity outputs they already provide and for
additional services to society that they could and
should provide (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001). Thus, farmers would
cease being paid for overproducing farm commodities and instead would be paid for providing socially
valuable but non-marketable goods and services
(Dundon, 2003).
Each of these four suggestions involves satisfying
rather than optimizing, which is probably the best
that can be done given the low level of data and
information on the societal costs and benefits of food
and fiber production. Each has a moderate price tag,
and in aggregate, they would probably be revenue
neutral for governments. Each is low risk; it is almost
certain that each would do some good, and there is
almost no chance that the outcomes of any of the four
would entail higher societal costs of agriculture in the
future. Each would deal with multiple social costs of
agriculture.
A NEW DIRECTION FOR
AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
Looking to the future, we can observe two related
but contradictory trends. On one hand, the past 20 or
so years have led to justifiable scrutiny of the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. This
has led to healthy skepticism whenever new public
policies are being considered. On the other hand, the
“rationalization capacity” of the government is declining due to budget cuts, deregulatory zeal, and the
demonization of government—even by people who
work therein! The United States has also become a
global outlier among developed nations in its policies
toward trade, agriculture, foreign aid, the global environment, and many other policy areas. One of the
difficulties of U.S. government “going it alone” and
isolation is that we are invariably unwilling or unable
to take advantage of new public policy models being
developed elsewhere. It would appear that in most
respects, some European countries are far ahead of the
United States in developing policies to internalize
the societal costs of food and fiber production. In
1998, the EU, for example, banned antibiotics used
in human medicine from use as growth promoters
in livestock production, and several European countries have enacted levies on fertilizers and or pesticides, although these levies have arguably been too
modest to affect their use to a significant degree. (The
European Fertilizer Manufacturers Association is no
doubt correct that levies on fertilizer would benefit
livestock producers over arable farmers because of
1664
the access of the former to animal manures [http://
www.efma.org/Publications/EUBook/Section03.asp],
and thus on both environmental as well as equity
grounds, levies on chemicals should be accompanied
by incentives that discourage air and water pollution
from livestock confinement facilities.) In sum, there is
much going on across the Atlantic that would be of
great assistance to the United States in responding to
the dilemmas of organizing agriculture in an increasingly metropolitan and resource-scarce world.
But as much as there is to admire about some of the
approaches being implemented in parts of Europe,
neither side of the Atlantic is aggressively prioritizing research to decisively reverse the long-term
trends of declines in the efficiency of the use of
nitrogen, phosphorous, and water in western and
world agricultures. It is particularly difficult, but
particularly crucial, to control the fate of N in cropping systems. Tilman et al. (2002) has illustrated in
global aggregate terms the magnitude of the problem
by showing the adverse global trend in nitrogen use
efficiency (for nitrogen-use efficiency data for maize,
rice, and wheat in the developed and developing
countries, see Cassman et al., 2002; for data on nitrogen increasing strategies [in the conventional sense],
which have little relationship to the integrated research, regulatory, and incentive-based systems that
are so sorely needed, see Matson et al., 1998). There
needs to be research on closing nitrogen and phosphorous cycles rather than on patching up the problems caused by farmers and production systems that
do not, and cannot, do so. There also need to be more
integrative approaches such as the development of
biota and management systems for commercial-scale
agroforestry and development of the techniques,
tools, and policies for landscape-scale management
of multifunctional agriculture. Agro-ecology should
become a research priority comparable with biotechnology. Functional genomics (and related techniques
such as marker-assisted selection) should be harnessed for the development of locally adapted cultivars and other biota that increase the natural resource efficiency of production and close nitrogen
and phosphorus cycles rather than largely to the
pursuit of genetic traits aimed at further intensification. The answers to these problems do not lie solely
in the area of research, but research will clearly be
critical in developing innovative solutions.
Received July 18, 2003; returned for revision July 21, 2003; accepted July 21,
2003.
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