For those readers who have been following the news about eggs and salmonella, here is a very informative Op-Ed article written by Dr. Patterson that was published online in the New York Times on August 25.

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The American food system, and in particular egg producers in Pennsylvania and other states, have made great strides in reducing the risk posed by salmonella enteritidis, to the point where eggs have not been a significant food-safety risk in recent years.

That wasn’t always so. Following a rise in salmonella enteritidis in humans starting around 1970, egg safety became a major concern. In 1990, the U.S. Department of Agriculture traced salmonella enteritidis back to egg farms in the Northeast.

Hens most likely become infected from contaminated environments or from rodents bringing the organism to the birds. While salmonella enteritidis does not typically affect bird health, when a hen has a systemic infection of salmonella, the ovaries, and thus the egg yolks, become contaminated. Contaminated eggs can cause serious illness to people if eggs are not thoroughly cooked.

In response to the increased risk of salmonella, Pennsylvania egg producers, federal and state agriculture departments, Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 initiated research to find solutions for salmonella egg contamination. Findings resulted in the establishment of the Pennsylvania Egg Quality Assurance Program, which was the first pre-harvest program in the country based on “hazard analysis of critical control points” to reduce salmonella egg contamination.

In the 18 years since the program began, the percentage of contaminated poultry houses has dropped to 8 percent from 38 percent. In 1992, 26 percent of samples from Pennsylvania hen houses tested positive. Today, that’s down to 1 percent. The risk of exposure from a single egg always was statistically small — just 2.6 per 10,000 eggs from infected flocks tested positive for salmonella in 1992. Today, thanks to the assurance program, that incidence is down more than 50 percent, to 1.2 eggs per 10,000. When Salmonella is found in eggs or poultry houses, eggs are discarded or pasteurized.

The program has been so successful that the Food and Drug Administration in July initiated a national program modeled after it. Had the program been in place earlier, the current outbreak may never have occurred. Now that it is, we can expect to see fewer salmonella outbreaks in American eggs.

By Stephen Budiansky
Published: August 19, 2010

IT’S 42 steps from my back door to the garden that keeps my family supplied nine months of the year with a modest cornucopia of lettuce, beets, spinach, beans, tomatoes, basil, corn, squash, brussels sprouts, the occasional celeriac and, once when I was feeling particularly energetic, a couple of small but undeniable artichokes. You’ll get no argument from me about the pleasures and advantages to the palate and the spirit of eating what’s local, fresh and in season.

But the local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by “locavores,” celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations. Words like “sustainability” and “food-miles” are thrown around without any clear understanding of the larger picture of energy and land use.

The result has been all kinds of absurdities. For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.

The statistics brandished by local-food advocates to support such doctrinaire assertions are always selective, usually misleading and often bogus. This is particularly the case with respect to the energy costs of transporting food. One popular and oft-repeated statistic is that it takes 36 (sometimes it’s 97) calories of fossil fuel energy to bring one calorie of iceberg lettuce from California to the East Coast. That’s an apples and oranges (or maybe apples and rocks) comparison to begin with, because you can’t eat petroleum or burn iceberg lettuce.

It is also an almost complete misrepresentation of reality, as those numbers reflect the entire energy cost of producing lettuce from seed to dinner table, not just transportation. Studies have shown that whether it’s grown in California or Maine, or whether it’s organic or conventional, about 5,000 calories of energy go into one pound of lettuce. Given how efficient trains and tractor-trailers are, shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.

It takes about a tablespoon of diesel fuel to move one pound of freight 3,000 miles by rail; that works out to about 100 calories of energy. If it goes by truck, it’s about 300 calories, still a negligible amount in the overall picture. (For those checking the calculations at home, these are “large calories,” or kilocalories, the units used for food value.) Overall, transportation accounts for about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by the American food system.

Other favorite targets of sustainability advocates include the fertilizers and chemicals used in modern farming. But their share of the food system’s energy use is even lower, about 8 percent.

The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far.

A single 10-mile round trip by car to the grocery store or the farmers’ market will easily eat up about 14,000 calories of fossil fuel energy. Just running your refrigerator for a week consumes 9,000 calories of energy. That assumes it’s one of the latest high-efficiency models; otherwise, you can double that figure. Cooking and running dishwashers, freezers and second or third refrigerators (more than 25 percent of American households have more than one) all add major hits. Indeed, households make up for 22 percent of all the energy expenditures in the United States.

Agriculture, on the other hand, accounts for just 2 percent of our nation’s energy usage; that energy is mainly devoted to running farm machinery and manufacturing fertilizer. In return for that quite modest energy investment, we have fed hundreds of millions of people, liberated tens of millions from backbreaking manual labor and spared hundreds of millions of acres for nature preserves, forests and parks that otherwise would have come under the plow.

Don’t forget the astonishing fact that the total land area of American farms remains almost unchanged from a century ago, at a little under a billion acres, even though those farms now feed three times as many Americans and export more than 10 times as much as they did in 1910.

The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market, as we do with every other commodity in the economy. Sometimes that means growing vegetables in your backyard. Sometimes that means buying vegetables grown in California or Costa Rica.

Eating locally grown produce is a fine thing in many ways. But it is not an end in itself, nor is it a virtue in itself. The relative pittance of our energy budget that we spend on modern farming is one of the wisest energy investments we can make, when we honestly look at what it returns to our land, our economy, our environment and our well-being.

Giorgio Fidenato has made a habit of carrying a raw ear of yellow corn and taking a hearty bite whenever a camera is in sight.

It’s a provocation. The Italian farmer’s corn is genetically modified, grown surreptitiously in fields in the northeast not far from the Austrian and Slovene borders.

“Our biggest goal is to show consumers that it is safe to eat,” said the 49-year-old advocate of what’s known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

More activist than farmer, Fidenato’s cultivation of nearly 5 hectares, or 12 acres, of genetically modified corn is a rogue act aimed at forcing the legalization of genetically engineered crops in Italy. He waxes on about their benefits: They require fewer chemicals and produce higher yields and greater profits.

Fidenato faces formidable opposition in Italy. His opponents are angry, organized and, in some cases, equally prepared to take the law into their own hands. Unlike Americans, the vast majority of Europeans are staunchly against the marketing of genetically modified foods.

Arrayed against Fidenato are agriculture officials, who put a moratorium on genetically modified seeds in March, the country’s main farm lobby, consumer groups, environmentalists and anti-globalization protesters.

“Violating the law to get the debate going is a very dangerous precedent,” said Roberto Burdese, president of Slow Food Italy, one of 20 organizations that have banded together to keep genetically modified food out of the country.

The European Commission announced in July a proposal that would allow the 27 member states to have the final word on whether to allow cultivation of genetically altered food within their own borders. That would likely lead to more bans because countries would no longer be required to back up their rulings with new scientific data.

The announcement was bad news for Fidenato, though by then his corn was knee-high.

The genetically modified corn, produced by St. Louis-based Monsanto, was the only genetically modified seed authorized for commercial cultivation in Europe until March, when a potato seed sold by the German company BASF was approved. Besides the moratorium in Italy, the seed has been banned in at least six countries, including France, Germany and Austria.

Tired of legal battles, Fidenato planted the corn on April 25, Italy’s national Liberation day. He posted a video on YouTube showing him planting six seeds, but he didn’t disclose that he had in fact planted two fields. That only came out when anonymous letters containing pieces of the plants reached prosecutors in July, raising opponents’ suspicions that there could still be others. He won’t say where he got the seeds.

Word spread about the crop, and on Aug. 9 about 70 anti-GMO activists wearing chemical protection suits trampled nearly an acre of corn to the ground.

“The pity is they should have waited 10 days, and it would have been ready to make polenta,” Fidenato said, referring to the corn meal that is a dietary mainstay in northern Italy.

The leader of the corn bandits, astrophysicist Luca Tornatore, argued there is enough uncertainty surrounding the health and environmental risks posed by GMOs to make them undesirable.

Tornatore said his group grew frustrated that prosecutors, who have sequestered the fields, had not destroyed the crops despite a 2001 Italian law that forbids their cultivation.

The protesters also would like to destroy the 4 1/2 hectares Fidenato has planted in another town, but “we don’t know where it is,” Tornatore acknowledged.

Fidenato responded that genetically modified corn has been legal in Italy since it was added to the European Union’s catalog of authorized crops 12 years ago. And he pointed to a decision by an administrative court in Rome, which ruled that the agriculture ministry cannot decline to authorize the seeds out of caution.

The ruling resulted from a three-year court battle waged by Silvano Dalla Libera, a neighboring farmer in the northeastern region of Friuli, where Fidenato’s fields are located.

The former agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, along with the health and environment ministers, responded to the administrative decision by putting a moratorium on GMOs in March. There was a risk nearby fields could be contaminated, they said.

“To stop me, one poor farmer, three ministries mobilized,” Dalla Libera said with a hint of pride.

Fidenato began farming when he was 12 and now has about 70 acres. He became persuaded of the merits of genetically altered crops during a trip to the United States in the 1990s and helped found Futuragra, a group of farmers fighting for GMOs.

By planting the corn, he risks up to three years in jail and a fine of euro50,000.

Fidenato said he’s not bothered by the threat of prosecution. Futuragra has been in touch with farmers in Spain, which has the highest concentration of genetically modified corn in Europe, and France, where it has been banned, to press the battle.

“If they don’t understand it is an EU right, that we don’t need authorization, then I have farmers in the entire Po River valley, from Piedmont to Veneto, who will plant GMO corn,” Fidenato said.

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Original release can be found at:  http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9HLUEBO0.htm

News media has a tendency to portray certain aspects of agricultural production either positively or negatively. Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University co-authored a paper on “Coverage of organic agriculture in North American newspapers: Media – linking food safety, the environment, human health and organic agriculture,” just published in the British Food Journal.

Powell examined how organic food production is portrayed in the media. The paper is based on a study Powell conducted from 1999-2004 with two colleagues at the University of Guelph in Canada, Stacey Cahill and Katija Morley. Cahill was one of Powell’s students at the time. The team explored how topics of organic food and agriculture were discussed in five North American newspapers. Using the content analysis technique, the 618 articles collected were analyzed for topic, tone and theme regarding food safety, environmental concerns and human health.

The authors concluded that articles about organic production in the selected time period were seldom negative. Organic agriculture was often portrayed in the media as an alternative to allegedly unsafe and environmentally damaging modern agriculture practices. That means organic was being defined by what it isn’t, rather than what it is, noted the authors.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has repeatedly stated that the organic standard is a verification of production methods and not a food safety claim, says Powell. “Food safety was the least important in the media discussion of organic agriculture,” he says.”  The paper reported that 50% of food safety-themed statements in news articles were positive with respect to organic.

People have many choices on the type of foods they want to purchase based on many diverse production systems. USDA has measures in place to ensure that food produced from these various systems is safe to eat. There are challenges and benefits with any production system, and the media should be presenting a balanced view about this topic to readers.

An interesting news release from Europe came across my desk.  A group of farmers from Spain, Portugal and Romania traveled to Brussels, Belgium to convey to the European Commission that they are upset that they can not us genetically modified (GM) crops.  They urged that laws be passed to enable them to plant GM crops!

The press release follows with a link to the full report in Spanish.

Brussels, Belgium, July 13, 2010 — Farmers from Spain, Romania and Portugal presented to the members of the parliament (MPs) and representatives of the European Commission (EC) in Brussels a manifesto stating that “Biotechnology, a Tool for Agro-Food cannot be Ignored”. The manifesto points out that the rejection (by the EC) of positions and decisions about GM crops are not based in science. The report goes on to underscore that the safety of GM crops is guaranteed by the strictest and independent scientific assessment.

The  farmers pointed out that previous decisions made to not approve GM in Europe is unfair with respect to agricultural production.  The group called for scientifically-based decisions so as not to discriminate against farmers who want to grow GM crops. Spanish farmers also have attested their experiences in planting GM crops saying that the cultivation of transgenic corn yields more in a cost-effective way with higher quality and using less resource. These technologies which are available in other parts of the world should be enjoyed by other farmers in the European Union.

See the full report in Spanish at:

http://fundacion-antama.org/consumidores-cientificos-agricultores-y-empresas-espanolas-piden-en-bruselas-un-acceso-mas-justo-a-los-cultivos-transgenicos-y-tecnologicos/.

Several high profile undercover videos of animal abuse on dairy farms have increased the pressure to implement welfare guidelines, much like the United Egg Producers’ certification program. We’re all appalled with what we have seen in some videos, and it makes it easy to assume that such a system is a terrific idea. Count me unconvinced for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that it will make dairy farms MORE likely to be targeted by animal rights groups. Let’s review how the United Egg Producer program worked for Quality Eggs of New England:

“During the time of the undercover investigation, QENE was certified by the United Egg Producers’ (UEP) voluntary animal care program. This factory farm’s admission to 10 counts of cruelty to animals is further evidence that the UEP program fails to prevent cruelty and abuse.”

Participating in such a certification program did not appease the animal rights groups, did not cause their employees to treat their chickens appropriately, and ultimately did nothing to instill consumer confidence. Very likely, QENE was targeted BECAUSE they were participants in the United Egg producers program, not in spite of it. HSUS has made it clear that the United Egg Producers’ program does not meet their standards. We cannot hope, in the long run, to appease those who believe animal products should be eliminated from our diets.

Trying such a program is fine even if success is not guaranteed, unless you’re proposing to implement such a program with other people’s money. That, of course, is precisely what is coming. It will not be the retailers or processors that pay for the FARM program even though they are at the heart of drive toward implementation. As if the prices they have been paid for the past 18 months haven’t put them in enough financial peril, it will be the dairy farmer that foots the bill.

The National Dairy Farm Program also is problematic from a rhetorical standpoint. One would not expect those trying to dispel “factory farm” perceptions to use industrial lingo, but “standard operating procedure” and SOP are incorporated throughout the National Dairy FARM Animal Care Manual. It’s not that SOPs can’t be helpful or improve cow welfare, but it’s unlikely to give consumers that “family farm feel”. It also would be more meaningful to focus on the outcomes of the SOP. For example, if your herd has a somatic cell count (SCC) of <100,000, who in the world cares if you’ve got a milking routine SOP? That would be a clear indication that udder welfare on your farm is exceptional.

Any one of these reasons is enough to question the value of a welfare certification program, but I’m most concerned about the potential of such a program to limit opportunities for some dairy farms. If a farm produces their milk in a manner that consumers associate with higher welfare, they should be encouraged to market their product by highlighting how they produce milk differently. The intent of this program is to do the opposite.

I understand the pressure many in the dairy industry feel to try and demonstrate that dairy farms have high animal welfare practices. However, this program is as likely to draw additional unwanted scrutiny from the animal rights movement as it is to allay consumer welfare concerns. In other words, it has a good chance of backfiring. We should be encouraging a diversified dairy industry that allows some to be the low cost producers and others to deliver products consumers feel great about purchasing. Pennsylvania, in particular, stands to gain from animal welfare awareness. We have a large proportion of cows on pasture, we have one of the lowest cow mortality rates in the country and, more than any other state, our farms are owned by a family that also does the majority of the farm labor. Why throw that competitive advantage away by just covering up our differences with some monolithic animal welfare document intended to convince consumers all farms are created equal?

Conventional wisdom maintains that large family farms are the future of the dairy industry. A 2003 Cornell University study used historical dairy industry data to project the future structure of the US dairy industry and concluded that the number of farms with fewer than 100 cows would decline by 92% from the year 2000 to the year 2020. The conclusion from many when they see such projections is that small farms are a thing of the past and that milk will be produced predominately on large family dairy farms in the future. I believe that is likely to prove incorrect and that we may witness the end of the large family dairy era.

Models attempting to describe the future of the dairy industry, like the previously mentioned study, have extrapolated past dairy trends into the future. We would be well served to also consider trends in more mature industries, like the hog industry. Figure 1 below shows the proportion of the nation’s hog farms by different size classes and the proportion of pork that those size classes produce.

FIGURE 1.

Seventy percent of hog operations are in the smallest size category reported by USDA, but they produce a small amount of our nation’s pork. The number of small hog operations is quite stable. The important trends for understanding the future of our larger size family farms are the middle categories. They have experienced a decline in both the proportion of operations and proportion of pork produced. Even the 2,000 to 4,999 hog class has peaked and begun to decline in both categories over the past three years. The hog model is one with many small farms raising a small amount of the nation’s hogs, and a few large production facilities producing the majority of hogs. Can we expect to see the same for the dairy industry? We can see the beginnings of such a move in the dairy industry version of our hog chart.

FIGURE 2.

Obviously, the dairy industry is not as far along the consolidation path as the hog industry, but the underlying structure is there and will accelerate given the terrible state of our dairy economy. As in the hog industry, the large majority of farms are in the smallest size class. This does not mean the number of small farms has remained stable. The total number of dairy farms has declined by nearly 40% this decade, with small farms numbers declining at more-or-less the average rate of the other size classes. The continued large proportion of small farms is where most prognosticators have been wrong in the past. In the Cornell study, they predicted the number of farms relatively accurately for size classes >100 cows, but underestimated by 55% the number of small farms we have at this point. There are many reasons the smaller farms will hang on far longer than some suppose. First, we underestimate the commitment of many to the small farm lifestyle. Young people that want to begin farming have little hope of procuring the finances needed to immediately establish a large farm, so they will start small. Small farms often produce milk more cheaply than their larger counterparts as well (at least when the “opportunity cost for unpaid family labor” fudge factor is not considered).

The second hog-industry-like trend we are beginning to see is the shift away from the middle categories, which is where our large family farms reside. A closer look inside the numbers reveal that farms with 500 to 999 cows have not increased for the past decade and the 1,000 to 1,999 class has plateaued. The percent of our nation’s milk produced by those size classes peaked in 2005 and 2007, respectively. And so, this is why I think the large family dairy farm model is in peril. It’s not that I think evidence suggests a revival of small family farms, but that the large family farm era was simply a step along the path toward real consolidation. The current low milk price cycle is accelerating this trend. Bankrupt 1,000 or more cow dairies are being bought at low cost. We will soon see management groups that control >100,000 cows – some are over halfway there now.

Where we will differ from the hog model is that there will be less concentration at single sites, and more spread across satellite operations. The question is whether consolidation for the northeast will come from northeast producers purchasing satellite dairies, or whether our western counterparts will push further east. I expect more of the first scenario, but there is some movement toward the second as well. Trends in the northeast will be slower than elsewhere, partly because we don’t have available land to facilitate a large number of such farms as readily as western states. I’m not sure whether Pennsylvania will arrive at the consolidated dairy farm model more slowly than other states, or simply slide down the list of top dairy producing states.

Many see this trend as not only a fact of life, but a very good development. It’s easy to become enamored with multi-million dollar businesses. These businesses are economically efficient and can compete in a global market. They employ brokers to contract their milk and feed prices, and have locked in a profit for the next 18 months. Many of these multi-site farms are managed by truly terrific families and upstanding citizens. For that reason, it is not easy to suggest that further dairy consolidation is something we do not want, but we must consider what happens when this type of agriculture takes hold. The effect of agricultural intensification on rural economies has been well documented, and it is not favorable. Consider for instance the nation’s largest county in terms of dairy sales. Tulare County in California is the capital of large dairy farms. The county’s dairy farms averaged over $6 million in sales in 2007.  It also had the highest poverty rate (23%) of all California counties in 2007, nearly double the state’s average. Moreover, a highly consolidated industry makes it very difficult for young people to enter production agriculture. It is impossible to have a discussion about the relationship between farm structure and the health of our rural communities without offending some of our friends and colleagues, but it is a discussion we should be willing to have.

Our 500 and 1,000 cow farms are not going to all disappear, just as many 50 cow dairy farms are still around. Such farms are not, however, a large part of the US dairy industry’s future if the current trend holds. It is disappointing to see a large family farm not make it because they were heavily invested in trying to position their family for a long term future in the dairy industry. Are we willing to take the steps necessary to save our family-farm model, or are we content with the direction we are now headed?

Proponents of organic foods have touted many health, nutrition and safety benefits associated with the consumption of these foods.  However, credible science does not support the health, nutrition or safety claims made by the organic food industry (see Science Behind Reported Benefits of Organic Milk).  As might be expected, this has been vigorously disputed by advocates of organic food.  This is not a surprise given that deceptive use of marketing and health claims has been a core component of some campaigns to grow market share in the organic food sector.  Thus, some consumers are purchasing organic food on the belief that they are healthier than conventionally produced food.

An important reality is that the organic food system is one food production practice. If consumers elect to purchase this food, which is typically more expensive, so be it.  However, the marketing campaigns commonly used to market organic foods are to malign science and raise questions about nutrient content, health benefits and safety of conventionally produced food.  To date, these campaigns have not been based on sound science demonstrating that there are nutrition and health benefits associated with the consumption of organic foods that extend beyond those found in conventionally produced food.  In essence, there has been an element of “smoke and mirrors” used in these marketing efforts.

A recently published systematic review provides further evidence that there is no basis for the claims that consuming organic food is associated with any health benefits.  An extensive review of the scientific literature published in the July 2010 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concludes that “evidence is lacking for nutrition-related health effects that result from consumption of organically produced foodstuffs”; see: Nutrition-Related Health Effects of Organic Foods – A Systematic Review.

As some context, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) is viewed by many nutritional scientists as the foremost clinical nutrition journal in the World.  My point?  It is a highly reputable journal that publishes the very best science.

The authors of the AJCN paper reviewed a total of 98,727 papers that were published in the scientific literature, world-wide, to identify quality papers that were appropriate for analysis.  Only 12 papers met the “quality standards” for inclusion in the analysis.  Some could argue that this is a not a lot of data, however, rigorous standards were used to assess publication quality.  The paucity of data is surprising given the interest from the public about the question of whether there are health benefits associated with the consumption of organic food.  This also reaffirms the reality that the health claims made by some in the organic food sector are being made in a manner that is not based on sound science.

It is clear that deforestation of the tropical forests damages the environment and forest communities.  A recent report “Farms Here, Forests There:  Tropical Deforestation and U.S. Competitiveness in Agriculture and Timber” discusses the evidence that ending deforestation will increase income for U.S. farmers.  The Report is an interesting read–below is the Executive Summary.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Destruction of the world’s tropical forests by overseas timber, agriculture, and cattle operations has led to a dramatic expansion in production of commodities that compete directly with U.S. products. About 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forest are destroyed every year — mostly in the tropics. This deforestation has allowed large-scale low-cost expansion of timber, cattle and agricultural production, and has also caused damage to the environment and forest communities. Much of this timber and agricultural expansion has come through  practices that do not meet U.S. industry standards for sustainability, labor practices, and basic human rights, providing these overseas agricultural operations a competitive advantage over U.S. producers.

The U.S. agriculture and forest products industries stand to benefit financially from conservation of tropical forests through climate policy. Ending deforestation through incentives in United States and international climate action would boost U.S. agricultural revenue by an estimated $190 to $270 billion between 2012 and 2030. This increase includes $141 to $221 billion in direct benefits from increased production of soybeans, beef, timber, palm oil and palm oil substitutes, and an estimated $49 billion savings in the cost of complying with climate regulations due to lower energy and fertilizer costs resulting from the inclusion of relatively low-cost tropical forest offsets. Climate legislation currently under consideration in Congress includes provisions to unlock these benefits for U.S. agriculture through a combination of tropical rainforest offsets and by setting aside allowances for tropical rainforest conservation. Combined with anticipated comparable action by other developed countries, these policies aim to cut tropical deforestation in half by 2020 and eliminate it
entirely by 2030.

This report analyzes the impact of achieving these conservation goals on U.S. production of soybeans, palm oil substitutes, beef, and timber. Eliminating deforestation by 2030 will limit revenues for agricultural expansion and logging in tropical countries, providing a more level playing field for U.S. producers in global commodities markets. We examine potential annual effects of a reduction in deforestation as well as the cumulative effect between 2012 and 2030.

METHODOLOGY

This report is a first step in understanding the potential impacts on U.S. agriculture of deforestation and global forest conservation efforts. We consider the impact of reduced production of these commodities on tropical forest lands and estimate how this reduction would affect the world market, taking into account resulting changes in commodity production on non-forest lands in tropical forest nations, the United States, and other parts of the world.

We begin by estimating the amount of each commodity that is produced on formerly forested land. We consider the impact of a reduction in the forested land available for agricultural and timber production in the tropics, without considering the underlying government policies and measures that would produce this result. This analysis has been structured around available data and therefore methods are specific to each commodity. Assumptions are outlined in the body of the paper.

We use a partial equilibrium model to estimate the impact of this reduction on the world market and the price effects and changes reduced commodity production from deforested land would have for revenue for the U.S. agriculture and timber markets. We use a range of supply and demand elasticities (estimates of the responsiveness of quantity demanded and supplied to changes in price) from existing literature to provide a scope of possible outcomes. In the low revenue scenario, the United States has a limited ability to adjust production in response to market price changes and the rest of the world has a greater ability. In the high revenue scenario, the United States has a greater ability to respond to market price changes and the rest of the world has a more limited ability.

We do not consider cross-elasticities or how the price increase of one commodity could affect the revenues of another. This could be a factor for beef revenues if soybean prices increase and vice versa. These factors (discussed more in Annex B) are important to drawing a fuller picture of what would occur under reduced deforestation scenarios. We aim to provide an initial concept of the scope of the issue as a basis to move forward with a fuller analysis. Given time constraints and the dearth of existing data and analysis on this topic, this report makes the best possible use of the resources available. A fuller analysis would incorporate dynamic economic modeling of price changes, estimates of technological improvements, changes in elasticities over time, more disaggregated and detailed country and regional supply reaction and impacts of supply changes in one commodity on production of other commodities. These are recommended areas for further research.

IMPACT OF OFFSETS

Allowing international forestry offsets in climate legislation also affects U.S. agriculture and forestry. Because these offsets are among the most affordable means of reducing climate  pollution, they would provide significant savings on electricity, fuel, fertilizer, and other input costs for the U.S. agriculture, ranching, and forest products industries. These input costs are major expenses for the industries analyzed in this report — the agriculture sector alone spends about $10 billion just on energy each year. Easing near-term costs of a climate policy allows the sectors to transition more smoothly to carbon-efficient technologies and reduce the overall cost.

Allowing capped entities, including energy producers, to “offset” their emissions by investing in affordable emissions reduction options such as tropical forest conservation will reduce permit prices, therefore keeping energy prices low for farmers, ranchers, and the forest products industry. Tropical forest conservation is among the lowest-cost emissions reduction options available, providing important savings for the agriculture and forest products industries. EPA has estimated that the cost of emissions permits in the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act would be 89% more expensive if international offsets (the bulk of which are expected to come from tropical forest conservation) were excluded. Estimates based on EPA’s analysis of the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act indicate that the inclusion of international offsets will save the agriculture, forestry, fishing and timber industries about $4.6 billion per year and $89 billion between 2012 and 2030. With tropical forest conservation likely to comprise an estimated 56% of offsets in the years immediately following implementation of climate legislation (though more afterwards), this translates into a cost savings for these industries of approximately $49 billion between 2012 and 2030 (see Section III).

Reader of my blog appreciate that I have been engaged in an effort to increase public understanding about science in society, and the need for biotechnology to be a key part of future solutions to feed the world.  An integral part of this communication effort has been to provide sound, science-based information to counter the misinformation that is on the web about the safety and efficacy of ag biotechnology.

One valuable source of unbiased information about consumer perceptions of ag (both plant and animal) biotechnology is the International Food Information Council.  The 2010 survey results have just been released.  When the last IFIC survey was released in 2008, I summarized the findings (see:  Survey Shows Continued Strong Support for Agricultural Biotechnology).  The 2010 IFIC Consumer Perceptions of Food Biotechnology survey presents interesting and postive evidence that consumer’s continue to support food biotechnology.

(WASHINGTON, DC) The International Food Information Council (IFIC) 2010 “Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology” survey found that consumers support the use of food biotechnology when they consider its potential benefits for reducing the impact of food and food production on the environment, and for improving sustainability.

The 14^th IFIC Food Technology Consumer Survey (formerly the IFIC Survey of Consumer Attitudinal Trends toward Food Biotechnology) explored U.S. consumers’ perceptions of various aspects of plant and animal biotechnology, as well as sustainability and new and emerging technologies such as nanotechnology. This year, consumers responded most positively to benefits of biotechnology for the environment and sustainability. For example, more than three-quarters (77%) of consumers would be likely to purchase foods produced through biotechnology for their ability to reduce pesticide use (consistent from 2008), and 80% of consumers said they would be likely to purchase bread, crackers, cookies, cereal, or pasta products containing wheat that was grown using plant biotechnology if they were produced using sustainable practices to feed more people using fewer resources such as land and pesticides (new question in 2010). While products containing wheat grown using biotechnology are still up to a decade away from being commercially available, these data indicate a receptive audience to such products if they are produced through sustainable practices.

“These results suggest that the importance of the impact of food production on the environment is here to stay for consumers,” said Marianne Smith Edge, MS, RD, LD, FADA, IFIC’s Interim Vice President, Nutrition and Food Safety.  “Over the last several years we’ve seen the overall awareness of sustainability and environmental issues continue to grow.”

Awareness & Perceptions of Sustainability in Food Production

Half of consumers (50%) have heard or read at least “a little” about the concept of sustainability in food production. This is a significant increase from 2008, when only four in ten (41%) had read or heard anything about sustainability in food production, and 2007, when only three in ten (30%) had heard or read anything about sustainability in food production.

With the increased focus by Americans on reducing environmental impact, we see that those aspects of sustainable crop production benefiting the environment resonate most with consumers.  When asked to rank aspects of sustainable crop production (from a list of options) in order of importance, consumers’ top three are:

• “Growing more food on less land so valuable land like rain forests is not destroyed/used as growing space for increased food production.” (69%)
• “Reducing the amount of pesticides needed to produce food.” (65 %)
• “Plants that use water more efficiently, thereby conserving fresh water to help cope with predicted droughts and water shortages.” (62%)

Other Survey Findings

Confidence in the Food Supply: Seven in ten consumers (69%) are somewhat or very confident in the safety of the U.S. food supply.

Labeling: The majority of consumers (82%) cannot think of additional information they would like to see on food labels. More than sixty percent of consumers (63%) agree with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) food labeling policy, which requires food products to be labeled when use of biotechnology substantially changes the food’s nutritional content (such as vitamins or fat) or its composition, or when a potential food safety issue is identified. Only 12 percent oppose, and 24% neither support nor oppose the policy.

Perceptions of Food Biotechnology: About seven in ten Americans (69%) say they have heard or read at least “a little” about biotechnology, steady from previous years. Significantly more consumers believe there are foods produced through biotechnology in the supermarket now (28%) compared with 2008 (23%), although these consumers are still the minority.

The majority of consumers are somewhat or very likely to purchase a variety of produce, such as tomatoes or potatoes, modified by biotechnology to provide more healthful fats like omega-3 fatty acids (76%); to avoid trans fat (74%); or to make them taste better/fresher (67%).

Impressions of Plant Biotechnology: About one-third (32%) are somewhat or very favorable toward plant biotechnology, with about two in ten (19%) somewhat or very unfavorable and about three in ten (29%) neither favorable nor unfavorable.

Impressions of Animal Biotechnology: About three in ten (29%) Americans are somewhat or very favorable toward animal biotechnology, while slightly more than one-quarter (27%) are somewhat or very unfavorable, and about one-quarter (24%) are neither favorable nor unfavorable.

Interestingly, the majority of consumers who are either unfavorable or neutral in their views toward animal biotechnology cited “I don’t have enough information” about animal biotechnology (55%) and/or “I don’t understand the benefits of using biotechnology with animals” (39%) as their reason(s) for being unfavorable or neutral.

To view previous Survey findings, visit the International Food Information Council Foundation Web site: http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Consumer_Insights_Regarding_Food_Biotechnology