Month: February 2024

Reformers were concerned with not just the CAP in isolation, but also how CAP spending would affect progress toward the goals of the SEA. In addition, reformers needed to contend with the CAP’s impact on trade negotiations in the ongoing GATT Uruguay Round. These events and concerns opened the door for MacSharry to propose and advocate for deeper reforms to the CAP than would be possible when reformers were at work during a period of “politics as usual”.First, MacSharry and his team drafted a full version of their vision for reform. This plan included specific numbers for cuts and compensation levels and was intended to be confidential until the Commission’s formal articulation of the proposal. The second step was the publication of a “Reflections Paper”. This paper explained the proposed reforms in broad terms and identified the main issues the Commission sought to address with this reform. The Reflections Paper was intended to push forward and focus the debate on these matters. The third and final step was the formal presentation of MacSharry’s initial plan, this time including the numbers that were omitted from the Reflections Paper. Preparations for reform began in the spring of 1989 with MacSharry’s creation of an informal working group. The team developing the reforms included the Chef de Cabinet, Paddy Hennessy, Jacques Demarty, who was Jacques Delors’ personal agricultural expert, and DGVI Director General, Guy Legras. The group started their discussions by exploring whether the CAP’s existing price support mechanism could be maintained . At the same time as he was preparing the reform,vertical growing systems MacSharry was also quietly meeting with the Americans about the GATT UR as a means to ensure that the changes being made to the CAP would comply with GATT rules and facilitate an agreement.

MacSharry’s EU team quickly concluded that prices would have to be cut and moved ahead on constructing a reform to do so. Reformers intent on retrenching the welfare state are also known to work in secret. Keeping potential reform proposals out of the public debate, particularly those which include cuts or that involve an overhaul of the manner in which benefits are distributed, is an important way for reformers to manage dissent and opposition. While opposition will certainly spring up, developing the reform out of the public eye allows the reformers to present a full package, including information on the effects of the changes, as opposed to having to constantly defend a policy in development. MacSharry had three goals in his vision of reform, which shaped the content of his working group’s discussions. First, he sought to reduce existing production quotas. Second, MacSharry wanted to impose price cuts, with compensation targeted at small farmers. To MacSharry, attempting to channel aid to small farmers via price supports was costly and inefficient. Given that 6% of cereals producers were responsible for 2/3 of Europe’s output, and 50% of beef came from only 10% of producers, MacSharry saw price supports as a poor instrument for supporting smaller farmers. His third overarching goal was to improve the rural environment, which he sought to do via the promotion of less invasive but more efficient production, the extension of technology, and the redirection of aid . By December of 1990, at the same time that the GATT negotiations had collapsed at the Heysel Conference, the working group had completed a paper outlining initial ideas for reform. The document was leaked to Agra Europe, a major news source on agricultural policy, which promptly published it in January of 1991. The document contained four main elements: price cuts, a system of income compensation, mandatory land set-asides, and some recommendations for measures related to the environment and early retirement. The bulk of the discussion within the leaked plan focused on the price cuts and compensation, which were targeted at cereals, beef, and milk.

These three sectors represented the vast majority of surplus production. By reducing the prices for these goods, farmers would have less incentive to produce them. In addition to production concerns, price cuts in the cereals sector were necessary to protect the competitiveness and market share of those producers who grew grain for animal consumption. Because of the high prices of cereals, livestock farmers were increasingly turning to cheaper animal feed substitutes, imported from the United States and other non-EU countries. These animal feed substitutes had become price competitive with European grain, even though they were slapped with import levies. The new GATT deal included a provision that would force the EU to drop levies on the animal feed substitutes, meaning that unless grain prices were lowered to a reasonable level, animal feed substitutes would be far cheaper than cereals produced for non-human consumption in the EU. In order to keep these products competitive as a feed source for livestock farmers in Europe and abroad, cereal prices had to be lowered. The economic threat posed by animal feed substitutes actually gave MacSharry an opening to propose cuts beyond cereals. Price cuts for cereals meant that livestock farmers would see their input costs lowered. These lower input costs then allowed MacSharry to propose cuts to the beef and dairy sector that would not have been feasible absent lower prices for feed. A system of compensation was designed to accompany the price cuts. Until this point, European farmers were paid primarily through a system of fixed prices and guaranteed purchase agreements. The more farmers grew, the more money they could make, with the EU on the hook for buying, storing, and dumping the excess production. Under the new system of compensation, farmers would be given a “direct payment” which was calculated based on the historic yield of a farmer’s eligible land. Rather than attempting to overhaul the entire payment system in one fell swoop, MacSharry sought to decouple payment from production over time, starting with the most critical sectors. As such, only a portion of the farmers’ land would be supported by direct payments.

The rest of their land would could continue to operate under the traditional system whereby farmers were compensated via a system of inflated purchasing prices for their products. For this reason, the reform is referred to as “partial decoupling”. For the cereal sector, MacSharry and his team proposed a price cut of 35%. Cereals producers would be offered full compensation for their first 30 hectares of land in the form of a direct income payment based on the historic yield of the crop in that region. Compensation for their next 50 hectares of land would be reduced by 25%. A 35% reduction in compensation would be applied to any land beyond that. For dairy producers, the document outlined a 10% cut in the intervention price and an average reduction of 4.5% in quotas. Farmers producing under 200,000kg would be exempted from the quota cut, while those producing over 200,000kg would be subjected to a 10% cut in their quota. Finally, the team proposed a 15% cut in beef intervention prices. Beef sector farmers would be compensated for these cuts via an increase to the premiums they were paid per head of cattle. Beef and dairy farmers would also benefit from the proposed reductions in grain prices, which would translate to lower animal feed costs, reducing input expenditures. The pairing of cuts with compensation is a tactic also seen in welfare state retrenchment. Direct confrontation,outdoor vertical plant stands through the slashing of benefits, often provokes mass protest, leading to the withdrawal of the proposals. For this reason, welfare state reformers will often pair cuts with a form of compensation to buy off resistance. While the reform tactic of pairing cuts with compensation may seem weak or ineffectual, it can and often does have broader implications. These changes to how farmers are supported are changes to the system of support. Once a small change is made to the operation of the program, it opens the door to broader and more systemic reform or retrenchment in the future. Indeed, future CAP reforms would build on and extend MacSharry’s partial decoupling. In a further effort to reduce production, cereals farmers would be required to remove some of their land from production, a practice called “set-asides”. This proposal was the most direct way to curb production, as swaths of land that had previously grown crops would now be required to lay fallow. The amount of land withdrawn from production was to vary based on the size of the holding, with the largest farms, those over 80 hectares, required to set aside 35% of their land. Farmers between 31 and 79 hectares would be required to remove 25% of their land from production while holdings 30 hectares and smaller would be exempted from set-asides altogether. The proposal included the stipulation that land set aside would not be eligible for compensatory payments . This stipulation was one of the methods through which MacSharry aimed to rebalance the disparity in support between large and small farmers.

By not providing compensatory payments on set aside land, and by regulating the amount of set aside land based on the size of production, MacSharry could effectively garnish the earnings of the largest farmers while not affecting the payments to the smallest producers. In addition, the proposal could be presented as a means of curbing production and expenditures, while also helping to heal land that had been damaged by relentless production, with the redistributive effects a mere byproduct. These tactics of both disguising cuts and imposing cuts on some while channeling additional benefits to others again have parallels in the welfare state. When seeking to retrench social benefits, reformers might cut the replacement rate while raising, or at least maintaining, the minimum pension or unemployment benefit. Here, the protection of benefits for some limits opposition to a deeper longer term cut for others. This tactic helps to divide and demobilize resistance, because cuts are neither uniform nor fully visible. The entire package of reforms MacSharry constructed to address the surplus and budget problem mirrors a “vice into virtue” style strategy for designing welfare state reform. The existing system of farmer support was both unequal and dysfunctional. The system of high prices was already taxing for the EU coffers. The income support system linked to production compounded the effect of these high prices, raising expenditure even further by fostering excess production that the EU was responsible for storing and dumping. Instead of proposing to scrap and redesign the entire program, an initiative almost certain to fail, MacSharry sought to make fundamental alterations to the aspects of the program that were most problematic. Specifically, MacSharry proposed lowering prices and removing land from production in order to address problems related to over production, ballooning costs, and environmental damage. The contents and overall design of the reform as elucidated in the leaked report were a product of MacSharry’s fundamental belief that price cuts and quota reductions were unavoidable. From his experience working on budgets in Ireland , MacSharry knew that “the EU could not keep spending 75% of its budget on agriculture. With twenty other Commissioners, one could not control 75% of spending” . Indeed, in Agricultural Council meetings, MacSharry warned that without correction, the CAP budget would overrun the ceiling placed upon agricultural spending. At the same time, MacSharry wanted to keep European farmers on the land. He argued that, “desertification of the rural area would be a disaster, and very expensive [for national governments]. There were no jobs, so people would be on the dole. The infrastructure already existed in the countryside for them: houses, roads, schools, and so on. If there was a rural exodus, new housing, roads, schools, and so forth would have to be built to accommodate all of these people” . MacSharry’s plan for reform was first formally presented to the member states via a “Reflections Paper” published by the Commission in February of 1991. The paper was purely qualitative and provided no specific numbers on cuts, compensation amounts, or any other action, unlike what had been published in the leaked document. The purpose of the document was to explain the proposed reforms in broad terms and to push forward and focus the debate on these matters . The Reflections Paper began with a discussion of two major problems that needed to be addressed in the subsequent reform. The first problem was production.

In addition, reformers confront obstacles stemming from agricultural policies themselves. Here my argument builds on Pierson’s analysis of welfare state retrenchment. Retrenchment of the welfare state is a process whereby policymakers seek to cut spending on social benefits. Examples of retrenchment policies include reducing unemployment benefits, raising the retirement age, and increasing co-payments for health care. Pierson asserts that welfare state reform is a different process than welfare state expansion. Welfare expansion is an exercise in credit claiming while retrenchment is an act of blame avoidance. When expanding the welfare state, politicians are enacting “popular policies in a relatively undeveloped interest environment” whereas retrenching the welfare state “requires elected officials to pursue unpopular policies that must withstand the scrutiny of both voters and well-entrenched networks of interest groups” . In practice, cutting social benefits tends to be unpopular, politically delicate, and difficult to pursue . Pierson identifies several reasons why reasons why welfare state retrenchment is a different and more difficult process than expansion. The first reason is that there is an asymmetry in perception of gains and losses, with voters tending to remember losses more than gains . At election time, voters are more likely to sanction politicians for cuts to programs than they are to reward them for commensurate benefits. Second, when social programs are cut, the costs are highly concentrated, immediate, and sharply felt, while the benefits are typically uncertain, diffuse, long-term, and of low visibility. For beneficiaries of social programs,lettuce vertical farming retrenchment has a direct impact on their well-being. The pensions of senior citizens are smaller or those without jobs no longer qualify for unemployment benefits.

By contrast, the benefits of slightly lower public spending to the public at large are small and diffuse. This asymmetry of impact tends to produce an asymmetry of mobilization, with the groups threatened by retrenchment taking to the streets to defend their benefits, while the general population that might gain slightly says home. Third, the welfare state creates its own support bases or “policy communities”, in Pierson’s language. When social policies are threatened by retrenchment, policy communities are activated and mobilized to defend them. Proposed reductions or other negative changes to retirement benefits in the US, would, for example, mobilize the AARP . The challenge posed by imposing concentrated cuts on coordinated beneficiary groups is further compounded by the fact that many of these policies have strengthened the policy communities they serve over time and have more broadly increased opportunities for these groups to access politicians. As a result, policymakers must contend with an active and visible resistance that will mobilize to oppose their cuts. The fourth and final reason why welfare state retrenchment is different from expansion is the influence that past policy decisions exert on current options for reform. “Lock-in” refers to a situation whereby certain early policy decisions “greatly increase the cost of adopting once possible alternatives and inhibit exit from a current policy path” . A classic example is public pension systems. In the 1930s and 1940s, politicians were free to choose from a number of different models. Most countries chose so-called “pay as you go” systems under which current employees pay for the benefits of current retirees, rather than pre-funding their own pensions. By the 1980s, Pierson contends, reform options were narrowly constrained.

Reformers could not easily shift to a private pension system since they would need to find a way to pay for the pensions of existing retirees along with future private pensions . Lock-in also impeded straight-forward benefit cuts, since retirees and those nearing retirement were counting on promised benefits and often lacked the time and opportunity to boost savings sufficiently to offset program cuts. Pierson finds that even those leaders most inclined to retrench the welfare state, Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, ultimately failed. In both cases, the reforms that were adopted fell far short of their proponents’ objectives, and social spending did not decline. In the end, policymakers in the US and UK simply could not overcome resistance from program beneficiaries or the challenges inherent in the existing policy structures. There are many similarities between the process of retrenching the welfare state and that of reforming agricultural policy. European agricultural policies are, essentially, welfare for farmers . As with the traditional welfare state, retrenchment of the agricultural welfare state is an entirely different process from the construction of the agricultural welfare state in the first place. As with the welfare state, cutting agricultural policy is unpopular and politically sensitive. CAP reform has, in the past, been delayed due to important elections in member state countries, and heads of government have publicly expressed a desire to weaken or delay reforms until they are out of office. In the same way that governments seeking to retrench welfare programs must contend with the preferences of the supporters or beneficiaries of those programs, agricultural policymakers must contend with the interests of farmers. Much like social policy retrenchment, attempts to impose cuts on agricultural policy mobilize a well organized and entrenched opposition.

Cuts, if they are imposed at all, are typically much narrower than originally proposed. While social and agricultural policy reformers face many of the same challenges, retrenching the agricultural welfare state may be even more difficult than retrenching the social policy welfare state. One reason is that the farmers themselves are key actors in policy implementation. Governments often rely on national farmer organizations to both explain and enact key agricultural policies. The very programs that assist farmers have preserved this group and its organizations. By contrast, groups that represent welfare claimants play no role in policy implementation. This dependence on farmers and their organizations makes it difficult for governments to enact retrenchment policies that would jeopardize cooperation. In addition,vertical grow shelf farmer organizations can potentially frustrate or check retrenchment initiatives at the implementation phase. A second feature that makes agricultural retrenchment especially difficult is that the general public is quite sympathetic to farmers and agricultural interests. As noted above, public support for the CAP is robust not just in France, but even in the Euro-skeptical UK. As Table 1.1 indicated a large majority of citizens believe that CAP spending is at the right level or too low and that the CAP benefits all citizens, not just farmers. Pierson notes that general support for welfare state retrenchment tends to dissipate when specific cuts are put on the table, but in the case of agriculture, there is no general consensus for retrenchment in the first place. Finally, there is the obvious political-institutional difference that countries set their own social policies, but Europe’s agricultural policy must be jointly agreed upon by multiple countries . The greatest hurdle is posed by the rules governing decision making that any reform must clear. For many years, EU agricultural reforms had to be agreed upon unanimously. The rules of Qualified Majority Voting, have been applied to CAP decision making since the adoption of the Single European Act in 1987. For a decision to pass, QMV requires assent from a group of countries that represent both a super-majority of countries and a super-majority of the entire Union’s population . This super majority voting system provides considerable opportunity for opposition and obstruction. Under the current rules of QMV, a blocking minority consisting of 4 countries that represent 35% of the population can prevent the passage of a proposal. The threshold for enacting cuts to the CAP is much higher than that for retrenching national welfare policies. While retrenching the social welfare state is generally considered to be difficult, a case can be made that retrenching the agricultural welfare state is even more challenging. Reformers must out manoeuver farmer organizations that are deeply embedded in the policy process. They must also navigate a public that is favorably disposed toward farmers. Finally, they must overcome the European Union’s complex decision making rules that provide a host of opportunities for thwarting change.The first part of my argument shows why CAP reform is so difficult.

Yet reform does happen at times. This section identifies the circumstances that make CAP reform possible. Moments of crisis may strengthen the hand of reformers. Pierson notes that welfare reformers often deploy or even manufacture crises and constraints to boost support for retrenchment. Globalization is claimed to force countries to cut social spending and taxes in order to remain competitive; deindustrialization and mass unemployment are said to necessitate reductions in labor costs and benefits in order to boost job creation in low-productivity services; European Monetary Union allegedly compels governments to slash spending in order to balance their budgets; and population aging is portrayed as mandating cuts in age-sensitive programs like pensions and health care. Crises and external pressures have also opened the door to agricultural retrenchment. International trade negotiations, enlargement, and environmental crises have all challenged the CAP. They have destabilized the status quo and created opportunities for proponents of far reaching change. These pressures are frequently cited in the literature about CAP reform. One group of scholars links the CAP reform process to GATT/WTO pressures . For these authors, episodes of CAP reform are presented as essentially driven by pressures related to a round of trade negotiations. In this school of thought, the time and content of CAP reform is shaped by the concurrent presence of trade negotiations. Other scholars cite budgetary concerns and the process of enlargement as driving CAP reform . As with the GATT/WTO line of argumentation, these authors evoke pressures related to budgetary restrictions and enlargement to both explain why CAP reform happens when it does and account for the contents of the final agreement. While the attention to these pressures is particularly helpful in identifying the factors that both precipitate reform and strengthen the position of the reformers, this literature is less compelling in explaining the ultimate content of the final CAP reform. More often than not, the final agreement differs greatly from the initial proposals, and the concerns related to external pressures are not always fully addressed. This approach, however, is quite useful for understanding when CAP reformers have the opportunity to press for broader, deeper reforms of the CAP. Building on this insight, I have developed a framework for determining the broader conditions under which CAP reform occurs and the implications of those conditions for reform. CAP reform and negotiations can be broadly categorized as falling under two sets of conditions. The first condition, which I refer to as “politics as usual”, characterizes those negotiations in which the primary pressures and concerns relate to day-to-day functioning and operation of the CAP in the EU under its present configuration. The main challenges and issues typically relate to spending and the budget, rural development, and the environment. Although bold and ambitious reform proposals are made, final agreements under politics as usual conditions tend to be underwhelming. Many of the proposals are defeated outright. Those that are not rejected are often made voluntary or watered down so significantly that the resulting policy has little impact on CAP operations. The second potential condition involves what I refer to as “disruptive politics”. Under this condition, reformers are not only concerned with the CAP itself , but must also consider the problems and consequences of the application of the CAP and its policies beyond the agricultural sector. Specifically, when negotiating the CAP in the context of disruptive politics, reforms are shaped by non-agricultural considerations, such as trade negotiations and enlargement. CAP reformers have considerably more success when they are able to expand the proposal’s scope, tying it to these broader issues. The reform success under “disruptive politics” tracks with what Baumgartner and Jones describe as “Schattschneiderian moments”. In Schattschneiderian moments, issues or policy proposals are reframed or repackaged so as to change the scope of conflict. Much like these moments, disruptive politics allows CAP reformers to reframe the policy under discussion by tying agricultural reform to a broader issue or challenge. By managing the scope of conflict and shifting the agenda CAP reformers have a greater chance of successfully pursuing far-reaching agricultural change.

Farm subsidies in the United States have some impact on exports, especially for cotton, but the quantitative impact overall is relatively small because more products have not benefited from significant farm subsidies and many of the subsidy programs have relatively little net effect on production. Korea exports few agricultural goods and the Korean agricultural trade incurs a large trade deficit— an amount almost equal to the country’s total trade surplus . U.S. agricultural exports to Korea exceeded $3 billion in the late 1990s, fell to $1.7 billion in 1998 during Korea’s financial crisis, and then began to recover slowly in subsequent years . U.S. agricultural exports to Korea began to decline again in 2004 after the discovery of a slaughter cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United States in December 2003. That event caused a collapse in beef exports to Korea and, as a result, agricultural exports fell in 2004 and 2005 . After 2005, which marked the lowest level of U.S. exports since the financial crisis in 1998, U.S. exports bounced back, reaching $3.5 billion in 2007. The United States remains the largest agricultural exporter to Korea and is the chief supplier of many agricultural commodities traded in Korea. Korea is the destination of 4–5% of U.S. agricultural exports but those products constitute a significant share of Korean agricultural imports—23–38% during 2000–2007 . The trend in the past few years, though, is a decline in the U.S. market share,vertical farm mainly due to the emergence of new competitors in the Korean market such as China, Australia, and Chile.

Table 1.e lists shares of total U.S. agricultural exports to Korea for 2003 and 2007 by commodity. Distinct changes in export share during that period are the drop in meat exports and rise in coarse grain exports. With the collapse of meat exports in December 2003, meats’ share of total U.S. exports to Korea plummeted from 33% to 11% in 2007 and the share of coarse grains rose from 1% to 24%. The category that includes fruits, nuts, and vegetables changed little, remaining at 11–12%.Table 2.a on the following page presents University of California Agricultural Issues Center estimates of recent California agricultural exports to Korea.4 After growing by more than $100 million or about 75% from 1999 to 2003, exports declined in 2004 and in 2005 rose only back to the level reached in 2001. In 2006, California agricultural exports to Korea rose back to the record of $312 million reached in 2003. Oranges continue to be the number one export product. In recent years, fresh oranges have replaced cotton and beef as the leading export from California to the Korean market. Beef exports collapsed in 2004 with the discovery of BSE in the United States. Along with declining cotton production in California, the Korean textile processing industry has been shrinking for several years as Korean wages have grown too high relative to those in China and other textile processing countries of Asia. Korean imports of cotton reached a high of about $100 million in 2001, fell to less than $40 million, and then collapsed to less than $10 million in 2006. Tree nuts, especially almonds and walnuts, are also major exports to Korea. Hay, hides and skins, processed tomato products, wine, grapefruit, and rice round out the top exports to Korea in value. Dairy products declined substantially starting in 2003 but remain a major export category.

California is a major provider of U.S. exports for many of the commodities listed in Table 2.a. Table 2.b arranges the California export data to indicate the importance of the Korean market to California agricultural export products. The ranks in Table 2.b are not evaluated by the magnitude of value but by the size of export share shipped to Korea within the given industry. In 2006, Korea was the top export market for California grapefruit with an export share of 14%. For some commodities, export markets are spread among many countries. With a 2–5% export share, Korea is the second most important market for California grape juice, hay, and hides and skins. For California walnuts, Korea ranked eighth in 2006 with a 10% export share. Korea slipped from the top export market for oranges in 2005 to number four in 2006. Before the collapse of exports in 2004, Korea was the number two export market for California beef, accounting for 34% of California beef exports in 2003. In the more recent years shown in Table 2.b, Korea holds double-digit shares of California exports of almonds, grapefruit, oranges, rice, and walnuts. For many of the export commodities listed in Table 2.b, Korea is a top-ten export market and accounts for a significant share of California’s exports.To evaluate California’s relative position and the export potential in the Korean market, we investigate the size and scope of Korean imports. Before we consider individual commodities, let us first review Korean imports of fruits, tree nuts, and vegetables at an aggregate level. There are many individual fruit and vegetable export products. Thus, aggregation of import items and the World Customs Organization’s harmonized sy.

An item can be classified with an HS code of up to ten digits with longer codes representing more refined classifications of aggregation. For example, the first two digits of HS code 0706 represent vegetables while the last two digits narrow the category to root-type edible vegetables . HS codes 0703 through 0709 cover fresh/chilled vegetables and codes 0710 through 0712 cover vegetables in non-fresh form, which includes frozen, provisionally preserved , and dried products. Table 2.c presents Korean imports of selected fruits at the aggregation level expressed by four-digit HS codes. Fruits are first differentiated into fresh and non-fresh. In the table, processed items such as fruit juices are excluded because there are so many individual processed items and the HS codes cannot be conveniently aggregated. Table 2.c indicates that Korean imports of fruit products are mainly in fresh form with imports of non-fresh fruit accounting for, at most, 10% of import value. The value of fresh fruit imports was close to $500 million in 2007 with bananas and citrus being the top two fresh fruit import categories. California does not produce bananas but citrus is an important export item for the state. Korea also imports significant amounts of table grapes and cherries. Imports of these two items have grown rapidly and California has been an important supplier. Tree nut imports are presented in Table 2.d. The major items in tree nut imports are almonds and walnuts, which comprise almost 90% of Korea’s tree nut import value. Besides almonds and walnuts, other tree nuts imported include pistachios, pine nuts, and gingko nuts. Among these minor nuts, we report only pistachios, for which California is a major exporter. Table 2.d also reports U.S. tree nut exports to Korea for the last five years. Over this period, California has been supplying about 90% of Korean imports. For almonds, the United States was the only supplier in 2007. Tree nuts are a very important export category for the United States and California in terms of value and market share. Korea is not a major importer of vegetables. While it is a major importer of agricultural products, the country’s vegetable consumption is mostly supplied from domestic sources. Of the total imports of agricultural products worth more than $10 billion in 2007, nft vertical farming vegetables account for less than 5% . Table 2.e presents selected vegetable imports aggregated at the four-digit HS code level. The table omits vegetable categories that show few imports or little relevance to California. Unlike fruits, non-fresh items dominate Korean vegetable imports, accounting for about 60%. The table also shows China’s import share in the Korean market for the last three years. China dominates Korea’s vegetable import market with shares exceeding 90% for all categories except lettuce and other vegetables . Even in the lettuce market China’s share has been steadily growing, accounting for about half of the market in 2007.We now turn our attention to more disaggregated figures. Table 2.f presents the value of Korean imports for the three most recent years of individual commodities that are of potential importance to California. Among the products listed, the product with the highest value is beef with imports that exceed $1 billion. Product categories with more than $100 million in import value include fresh oranges, hides and skins, rice, wine, cotton, hay, cheese, and mixed milk powder. Categories that are greater than $10 million but less than $100 million include orange juice, lemons, table grapes, grape juice, cherries, processed tomatoes, olives, kiwis, garlic, almonds, walnuts, flowers, and many dairy products .

Imports of many of these products more than doubled during these years. Most notably, imports of table grapes, cherries, kiwis, walnuts, prunes, lettuce, butter, and mixed milk powder increased more than three times.Table 2.g lists the United State’s share of major Korean import products and the major competitors for each of these products. This table shows that the United States commands a major share of exports to Korea for a number of commodities, including oranges, lemons, grape juice, processed tomato products, raisins, grapefruit, lettuce, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, hides and skins, whey, cotton, hay, and flowers. The major competitors for orange juice include Brazil . Chile is the major competitor for table grapes and wine . China is the major competitor for many fresh products, including strawberries, lettuce, garlic, red peppers, rice, flowers, and processed tomato products. Spain is the main competitor for grape juice and olives. New Zealand is a major competitor for kiwis, beef, and dairy products and Australia is the major competitor for beef, dairy products, and cotton. Finally, Iran is the major competitor for pistachios and Vietnam for walnuts. An FTA would allow California suppliers either to have a price advantage relative to other suppliers or to keep up with suppliers that have or may soon have FTAs with Korea. Among the competitors we have listed, Chile is the first country with which Korea has established a bilateral trade agreement. The Korea-Chile FTA was signed in 2002 and came into force on April 1, 2004. Since the FTA was completed, Chile has had an advantage over other competitors and some exports from California compete with Chilean exports in Korean markets. Table 2.h uses Korean import data to examine the relative positions of the United States and Chile as import suppliers to Korea. Among the products of some importance to California, we consider only the markets in which Chile represents some positive market shares in Korea. The table includes data for 2003 as a representation of the pre-FTA period. This table shows that the United States commands a major share of exports to Korea for a number of commodities. Chile also is the main export supplier of table grapes to Korea and a significant supplier of kiwis and wine. Further, our data indicate that, after the FTA, Chilean imports grew substantially for kiwis, grape juice, lemons, processed tomatoes, wine, and whey. Imports also compete with domestic production. Table 2.i shows import quantities relative to Korean production for each commodity. The blank cells in the table indicate that either data are not available or production is almost zero. For many items, such as olives, pineapples, and bananas, there is no domestic production. Despite having no domestic industry to protect from directly competitive imports, Korea continues to maintain high tariffs, often more than 30%. These tariffs apply to lemons, grape juice, cherries, processed tomato products, raisins, pineapple, bananas, kiwis, grapefruit, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, and wine. Import tariffs for other products are also high, about 45% in most cases. Given the sizable domestic production, import quantities remain very small relative to domestic supplies. This is the case for table grapes, strawberries, apples, lettuce, and rice. Only a few products, such as oranges, beef, some dairy products, and hay, have significant imports when large quantities of domestic production are also available. In those cases, imports are able to compete with domestic supplies despite sizable tariffs because costs of production in the domestic industry are high. Finally, fresh peaches and pears deserve attention. Table 2.i indicates that Korea has a sizable fresh peach and pear market but almost no imports enter the country. Note that the Korea-Chile FTA excludes fresh pears from preferential tariffs.Korea maintains high tariffs on agricultural goods.

Further research is required to understand and minimize trade-offs between N fixation with NH3 loss and growth of diazotrophs, to optimize symbiotic interactions and nutrient exchanges between diazotrophs and plants, and to understand interactions between diazotrophs and the microbiome at large. For instance, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may facilitate NH3 transfer between diazotrophs and the plant . Parallels between N fixing symbioses in legumes and arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses that occur in most plant species, including common signaling components/genes involved in establishing these distinct beneficial symbioses, have spurred efforts to engineer nodulation and BNF in plant species that form AM symbioses, including the major cereals . In principle, current efforts are focused on engaging cereal AM signaling components to recognize rhizobial signals and transducing these signals into altered gene expression to promote plant cell division and nodule formation, while allowing bacterial entry into plant cells . These processes are complex, with over 200 genes known to be required to establish and maintain effective BNF in legumes . However, recent evidence suggests that evolution of one or a few genes was sufficient to put the ancestors of modern legumes on the pathway to effective BNF , so the hope is that the same key genes may set the stage for engineering of effective BNF in cereals . Further investments in this line of strategic and applied research will, at the very least, test our current understanding of the development and maintenance of BNF,plastic pots 30 liters while further basic research on the genetics, cell biology and biochemistry of legume BNF will advance knowledge and continue to inform efforts to engineer BNF in non-legumes.

The most audacious approach to solving the two-sided Nproblem is to engineer N fixation into plants directly by transferring genes responsible for BNF into plant genomes and expressing active nitrogenase enzymes in an appropriate plant compartment . There are many features of nitrogenase that make this venture a high barrier including coordinating the expression of the numerous genes involved in the assembly of the unique metal cofactors, and extreme oxygen sensitivity and high energy demand of the active enzyme complex . These features may explain why the process was never co-opted from microbes during plant evolution. Nonetheless, progress has been made toward this objective , and such work is testing and extending our understanding of BNF. Given the current state of knowledge and technology, the greatest impediment to solving the N problems of agriculture through N fixing plants may turn out to be public acceptance of such technology rather than our ability to develop it. At this stage, however, this approach, like the nodulating, N fixing cereals approach, remains in the high-risk, high-reward category . Breeding programs have traditionally focused on yield-based selection to achieve genetic gains, and comparisons among crop varieties representing historic and modern materials often show associated increases of mass yield but not of harvested N . This indicates that increasing NUE on a grain yield basis is not the same as increasing NUE on a N recovery basis. However, yield-based selection may have problems in efficiently overcoming possible barriers to improvement relative to trait-based breeding . Therefore, ideotype breeding centered on identifying and selecting traits affecting NUE may be an opportunity for breeding strategies that are based on understanding important processes rather than treating them as a black box, as done with yield based selection.

This opportunity is particularly attractive now because the rise of genomics and cheap DNA sequencing, functional phenomics, and high-throughput phenotyping allows the simultaneous identification of phenotypic variation, genetic mapping and marker identification, and understanding of underlying physiological processes . Natural variation for NUE has been observed among and within many crop species, including maize, rice, wheat, and soybeans. This variation implies that breeding programs may be able to select for high NUE, although many traits influence NUE and they are all under complex genetic control. For relevance to crop breeding, Moll et al. partitioned a NUE variant into N uptake efficiency , the fraction of N inputs found in the shoot of the plant at maturity, and NUtE, the weight of grain produced per unit of acquired N . Traits that contribute to plant NUE range from N uptake, assimilation, partitioning processes and transient storage, to N remobilization and utilization in source and sink organs . We propose synergistic breeding activities to improve underlying traits in the NUE functional hierarchy. NUpE can be partitioned into root and shoot processes, while NUtE centers around shoot processes related to grain production. While these efficiency measures are especially relevant for grain crops, others may be more relevant for forage crops where we expect high NUE due to greater synchrony of crop growth and N availability. Plant roots are responsible for acquiring N from soil. The acquisition efficiency of the root system has been defined in terms of the amount of N acquired per unit carbon investment to the root system . Root system architecture determines the spatial arrangement of roots, even at a given investment of carbon. Architectural features that increase topsoil foraging may be useful earlier in the season when N is applied, while deep rooting has been hypothesized to be beneficial for catching N before it leaches . Increasing acquisition efficiency may be possible by focusing on root traits that reduce the metabolic burden of individual root segments, or of the entire root system . For example, allocation among root classes may be optimized by increasing the number of lateral roots, which are thinner with less construction costs than axial roots.

Research in maize has shown that increased lateral relative to axial rooting can enhance N acquisition and shoot growth in soils with N limitation . Besides construction costs, maintenance costs such as respiration must also be considered . Anatomical traits including increased aerenchyma or reduced cortical cell area reduce respiration and have been shown to improve N acquisition, and in some cases to allow N remobilization from senescing root tissue . Recently, N-responsive differences in germination, respiration and crop maturity have been associated with NUE in rice . Specific uptake rate may be defined as the instantaneous potential rate of N uptake by a short root segment, but has rarely been considered as a root trait . However, variation among maize lines and maize root classes for nitrate uptake rates indicate that there may be a genetic basis that could be harnessed for plant breeding. Recent developments in high throughput phenotyping of multiple nutrient uptake by maize roots highlights this opportunity . Molecular biologists have identified many genes involved in root system architecture or transport of various types of N compounds and targeted some of these for genetic manipulation to improve NUpE, with varying success . Multiple approaches exist to increase uptake efficiency by the root system that could be included in pre-breeding programs screening for genetic variation. Once N is acquired by the plant, physiological processes in source organs that assimilate N and carbon, as well as in sinks that use or store the assimilates, will determine how well the plant can perform to increase growth and acquire more N. Photosynthesis is responsible for fixing carbon from the atmosphere and several strategies exist to decrease the N requirement of photosynthesis. Shoot architecture determines the overall arrangement of leaves,round plastic pots which has substantial impact of light interception efficiency . On a leaf area basis, photosynthetic N use efficiency may be related to chloroplast size and early seedling vigor . Recent work has demonstrated the importance of reducing photo respiration and accelerating photosynthetic induction after light changes for increasing overall photosynthetic efficiency. Steps involved in N assimilation, including NO− 3 reduction to nitrite then NH+ 4 , and assimilation of this into amino acids could be targeted to increase NUtE. Given the dependency of plant metabolism on enzymes composed of N-containing amino acids, substantial work could be done on the overall physiological efficiency of N anabolism and catabolism. However, it has been suggested that such strategies may only be successful if N metabolism and transport processes, including source-to-sink N partitioning, are coordinated or modified to avoid end-product inhibition or substrate limitation . For many years, breeders have focused on increasing the crop harvest index , which reflects the ratio of harvested grain to total shoot dry matter . However, increasing the HI on a mass basis may not necessarily increase NUtE , as indicated by the trade-off between grain mass and N concentration . HI may also be reaching a theoretical maximum because the remainder of the shoot including leaves is necessary to support grain production . However, altering remobilization and translocation of N from vegetative shoot organs to grains has been shown to affect NUtE .

Delayed leaf senescence can be important for prolonging grain filling as well as N uptake from the soil, but it may also hinder partitioning of remobilized N from leaves to seeds . More research is needed on the timing and interrelationship of these various traits and how they may be co-optimized to increase NUtE. Plant-microbe interactions that influence biological N fixation, soil N mineralization, and nitrification could also be the targets of plant breeding. Most directly, legume crops form nodules with symbiotic rhizobia bacteria that fix N to share with the plant in exchange for C-compounds. Legumes have the capacity to “autoregulate” nodulation and BNF, reducing these when abundant soil N is available, which prevents “luxury” fixation. Selecting or producing legume varieties that continue N fixation despite the presence of soil N could potentially result in enhanced release of biologically-fixed N into agricultural soils, thereby increasing available soil N pools for subsequent crops . Promoting external root-microbiota that fix N, mobilize soil organic-N, or inhibit nitrification that drives N leaching from soil and gaseous N losses to the atmosphere, is another opportunity to make N gains for plant nutrition. Such knowledge of crop genotype-microbe interactions is increasingly important in plant breeding, for example where beneficial bacterial communities are associated with particular crop genotype and N processes . Therefore, it is plausible to select for plants that promote associative N fixation within the rhizosphere. Another attractive, if elusive, alternative is for crops to exude nitrification inhibitors directly from roots . Over the past 70 years, selection of crops has primarily been performed under high N fertilization, which may have limited gains in NUE. In some cases, NUE of modern genotypes is greater in both high and low N soils . However, multiple traits influence NUE, most probably leading to considerable variations in improvements of NUE between genotypes. We propose breeding programs that select genotypes under sub-optimal N as a way to increase NUE under these conditions and to substantially reduce N losses to the environment . Genetic gains could be accelerated with marker assisted selection, genomic selection, and gene editing technologies . New phenotyping technologies will need to be incorporated, also, to increase the number of lines evaluated and to improve precision of measurements to maximize selection pressure. A promising method in the context of N would be the use of unmanned aerial vehicles that can estimate biomass, height, chlorophyll content, and yield throughout the growth season. Using high-throughput phenotyping with UAVs to select for both N status and plant mass on greatly expanded breeding populations in low-input fields has substantial promise for quick gains. Frontiers of plant breeding for NUE will include perennialization of agriculture using crop rotations, mixed crops, and perennial species. The perennial grain crop intermediate wheat grass was shown to decrease N leaching substantially compared to maize, for example , because roots are already in place when soil N mineralization proceeds as soils warm in the spring. Introgression of wild perenniality traits may be possible through the creation of interspecies hybrids, such as in sorghum . Seeding summer annuals like maize into perennial covers can have similar effects, but the agronomic management is difficult. Synchronizing crop demand with soil N availability can be partially accomplished through plant phenology, like stay-green, and also increased early vigor even in hot or cold planting conditions. Therefore, advances in breeding for perennial crops or for poly cultures of annual crops within perennial systems could have substantial impact on the NUE of cropping systems.

Knowing how many wage and salary workers are employed sometime during the year gives a more accurate portrait of worker earnings and mobility. In 2014, agricultural employers hired over 829,000 unique workers, which suggests that two workers filled the average year-round equivalent job, meaning that the total farm workforce was twice average farm employment. Although the unemployment insurance data do not include the characteristics of farm workers, they do show that most farm workers have only one farm employer during the year, which indicates that California has a very stable agricultural workforce. An earlier study reported almost three workers for each year-round farm job in the 1990s, and a higher share of workers with more than one farm job . Analysis of data for 2007 and 2012 finds that the ratio had dropped to two unique workers for each average agricultural job . The 2014 analysis presented here shows that this two-to-one worker-to-job ratio has remained constant.Agricultural systems are ecosystems that are managed under economic and logistic constraints to meet social needs and interests related to food and fiber production. As such, they are critical to a broad range of issues and interests, from environmental concerns related to conservation and ecosystem services to social concerns related to poverty and justice. While the interested parties vary widely, they agree that agricultural systems throughout that world are under performing in important ways and need to be adapted to better meet a range of goals,square plastic pot such as increased yield and input efficiency, or decrease reliance on inputs and unwanted externalities.

Such a statement would be a suitable introduction for a dissertation that focused on anything from the use efficiency of nitrogenous inputs to the legal details of international trade policies. The implication with such transitions is that the specific focus would be particularly appropriate response to the more general problem, and this is often directly stated. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this approach and it is important to both focus on specific problems and contextualize them within larger issues. However, this habit of quickly jumping from a general concern to a specific response can distract from the fact that there are numerous equally valid but radically different specific responses, and a whole series of response at intermediate scales linking the research specifics with the general context. This dissertation takes a different approach, and the following chapters are not linked by a specific geographic focus or a single highly focused research question, but by a larger epistemological problem facing efforts to bring about change within agricultural systems. Agricultural systems are inherently complex, which means that that they behave in surprising or non-linear ways that are difficult or impossible to predict in the way that an engineered system might be predictable. This is a result of both inherent features, such as emergent processes and transient dynamics, as well as incomplete and uncertain knowledge of these systems. As such, they cannot be treated like engineered systems or reconstituted from reductionist or piecemeal analysis. This complexity in agricultural systems can be investigated as a purely theoretical problem, but—like it or not—the results are often applied to practical concerns, such as management strategies and alternative policies.

This problem then is how to balance complexity and pragmatism to drive adaptation in agricultural systems. This problem is not pursued directly—whatever that might look like—but through three more focused interdisciplinary studies that are practical and pertinent engagements with this philosophical issue. These studies address this epistemological problem within three different study systems and with three different target audiences in mind. The first looks at the interdisciplinary field of development studies and seeks to help academics better understand the semantics of these conversations so that they can better participate in them. The second summarizes the scientific literature on soil organic carbon storage within diverse Mediterranean landscapes to help land managers make carbon-informed decisions. The third investigates alternative management options within a complex and heterogeneous agricultural landscape in semi-arid West Africa to help farmers and rural organizations make more adaptive decisions. The first chapter, which will be published in the Sociology section of Cogent Social Sciences in June 2017, is a study of the semantics of the term “development” within the field of development studies. This emerging field has far-reaching interests related to international relations, social and institutional change, rural poverty, poverty alleviation efforts, and many other interrelated topics. Agricultural systems and adaptive change are dominant themes in this literature, which addresses many perspectives and issues not normally appreciated in the agricultural sciences. The field of development studies explicitly appreciates the complex nature of the relevant questions, and emerged as an academic subject through the recognition that no single discipline to properly tackle the necessary issues alone.

The field also has high practical engagement with these issues, and the participants are often trying to inform policy decisions, influence non-government organizations, or find some other way to effect change. Unfortunately, these efforts to balance complexity and pragmatism are limited by some avoidable semantic confusion. The term “development” is central to this interdisciplinary conversation, but it is used in diverse and highly specific ways among the participating disciplines. Economists are likely to use it to refer to economic growth, politicians might assume it refers to specific policies and deliberate interventions, and anthropologists often relate it to externalities of colonization and globalization. These meanings are well understood within each discipline but there is little shared understanding between them. Careful semantic analysis is not necessary in the former, and perhaps as a result it is not common in the latter. Instead, influential authors in the field are willing to conclude that the term “development” cannot be defined, even though it is used to define the field itself. Most authors have been willing to leave this situation there, perhaps in their hurry to tackle the complexity of the issues and get on with more normative efforts. This chapter applies Confucius’ insight that the “rectification of names” is a necessary first step in an intellectual investigation,25 liter pot and directly investigates this semantic question directly. Using insights from Socrates and Wittgenstein, I survey the development studies literature to produce a descriptive typology of the variety of distinct but related ways the word is used in the field. I then demonstrate the benefit of this typology for interpreting complicated discussions of “development” by conducting a textual analysis of influential texts that propose provocative alternative understandings of “development.” I then do the same for articles from the prominent journal World Development to examine shifts in patterns of use over the last 40 years. In doing so, I am able to document evidence of the maturation of development studies from a conglomerate of multiple distinct disciplines to an increasingly unified field that in the future may be considered a coherent discipline in its own right. The second chapter, which was published in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems in 2015, is a literature review of how soil organic carbon levels are affected by changes in land use and land cover, and how these changes can be mitigated by alternative agricultural management practices. These related questions reflect a growing shift towards investigating and responding to climate change and other environmental issues at ecosystem or landscape scales, and to do so by balancing multiple interacting forces. Such systems approaches are in contrast to more reductionist investigations that target specific processes but do not attempt to bring them to bear on each other. For example, the possibility of carbon sequestration through alternative management practices has often been investigated at the field scale and without any historical context. Such analysis can be interesting, but it is not sufficient to understand overall landscape carbon storage patterns or opportunities, or to direct efficient management practices within diverse settings. Such interpretations requires additional analysis, such as comparing the potential effect of alternative practices against the amount of carbon that was originally lost through the conversion of the land into agriculture, or could be recovered through alternative land uses, rather than alternative agricultural management practices.

This particular study was conducted at the request of The Nature Conservancy of California to inform their activities within agricultural landscapes, so is a clear example of the need to balance the complexity of the relevant processes with the pragmatic need to inform management activities. Given the geographic context, The Nature Conservancy was particularly interested in questions of carbon management within Mediterranean landscapes and commercial vineyards. Their request was simply to summarize the relevant literature and develop carbon budget estimates to inform spatial models. Unfortunately, this was not simply a case of insufficient knowledge reaching management practitioners, but also of a research gap within the scientific literature. Despite the substantial interest in carbon storage within managed landscapes, I found a serious dearth in relevant studies on both change in land use/cover and the effects of alternative vineyard practices. There was also a tendency to rely on inappropriate methods, such as shallow sampling depths. This question was therefore not simply a case of the ecological processes being complicated and dynamic, but also dramatically incomplete knowledge of those processes. The initial hope was to perform a meta-analysis to draw quantitative conclusions, but due to the limited availability and often low-quality of relevant published research, I had to settle for a literature review. The general pattern that I found was of dramatic declines in soil carbon with conversion of native Mediterranean land cover types into agriculture, with vineyards often containing the least soil carbon of any land use. Alternative management practices with vineyards could increase the soil organic carbon levels, but it was clear that even the best practices could recover only a fraction of the lost carbon. I concluded this literature review with a critical analysis of certain methodological practices and assumptions, recommendations for research priorities and alternative strategies, and a discussion of the risk of making strong quantitative conclusions or predictions from insufficient and highly variable information. The third and final chapter focuses on the balancing of complexity and pragmatism to inform independent farmer management decisions within rainfed cropping systems in Senegal and The Gambia. These countries form the western edge of the African Sahel, which is the region south of the Sahara desert that gets just enough rainfall to support agriculture. “Sahel” is the Arabic word for “shore,” a reflection of the marginal nature of this region, and it is prone to periodic droughts and famines and often considered ground zero for how climate change is affecting agricultural livelihoods. Accordingly, the Sahel and adjacent semi-arid regions are a major target of international development efforts, which often focus on improving the rainfed cropping systems that are the primary source of food and income for the rural population. The pragmatic need for agricultural adaptation in this region is clear, but the complexity of the local agricultural systems is often overlooked, and as a result these efforts have been far less effective than expected. At first glance, Senegal and The Gambia appear to be relatively homogeneous countries. They are flat, consist largely of sandy and low organic matter soil, and contain a continuous rainfall gradient from around 200 mm/year in the north—just enough for pasture and marginal crop growth—to over 1000 mm/year in the south— enough for thick monsoonal forests. By global standards, the rainfed cropping systems are also fairly homogeneous, with little fertilization or mechanization and low productivity. They look nothing like the highly productive systems of more industrialized countries but, the thinking goes, they should. Most agricultural recommendations in the region, and even the way in which research is done and recommendations are made, are primarily derived not from the local systems but from some more industrial example. Agricultural adaptation is often assumed to be analogous to the adoption of practices from these more productive systems. On second glance, however, there is a high level of spatial and social heterogeneity that is relevant to rural livelihoods and greatly influence the ways in which these systems can change. A great adaptive opportunity for one farmer might be impossible or even maladaptive for their neighbor due to subtle differences that might easily go unnoticed by the most careful researcher. This heterogeneity is due to factors that are known but often overlooked, such as political insecurity, factors that are known but difficult to quantify, such as household purchasing power, and factors that may simply be unknown to researchers, such as farmer preferences.