Author: ecogrow

The finding also holds true for spending reduction, even under conditions of budgetary crisis. Third, this case highlights two tactics commonly employed by reformers seeking to retrench the welfare state: 1) introducing reforms that correct programs functioning inefficiently or unfairly and 2) corralling support for the reforms by simply buying off member states or by offering special policy exemptions and alternatives to those who are opposed to particular aspects of the reform package. The biggest achievement of the MTR, the introduction of an income support system that was not based on production, was achieved by constructing the reform around correcting an existing program that was inefficient and unfair rather than trying to get member states to agree to completely abandon the old system and support an entirely new policy. The old direct payment program was inefficient, environmentally destructive, and expensive. It incentivized farmers to produce as much as they possibly could no matter the cost to the environment and then stuck the EU with the bill for storage and dumping of surplus product. The old program was also unequal. Because payment was based on output, a small percentage of farmers received the majority of CAP payments. Moreover, those farmers who received the most payments were also those who were already internationally competitive and did not need CAP support. By ceasing to pay farmers based on how much they produced, the new income support system corrected the inefficiencies of the old program, eliminating incentives that encouraged environmentally damaging and wasteful over production,growing strawberries vertically and made progress toward a more egalitarian system of support payments.

The MTR saved the CAP budget and strengthened the position of the EU in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. Full decoupling and a transition to area-based payments prevented the CAP budget from ballooning out of control once the ten new member states from Central and Eastern Europe joined the EU. The reform of the income support system also put the EU in compliance with WTO subsidy rules. By completing these reforms in advance of the Doha Round, the EU avoided a repeat of the GATT Uruguay Round when EU officials had to negotiate a trade deal under the burden of an agricultural support system that violated existing rules. Even with the extraordinary circumstances that opened the political ground for more reform, the costs of marshaling the support necessary to enact change were high. While the SFP was a dramatic change in how farmers were paid and marked a stronger commitment to the greening components of the CAP, this reform had little effect on the total amount of support received by farmers. For example, the proposal to cap the total amount of annual support any individual farmer could receive at €300,000 was defeated. Some version of this initiative has been put forward by agricultural commissioners since at least the 1980s and has been defeated in every round of reform. Even when conditions were ripe for major change, a pet policy of agricultural commissioners failed. Even in the best conditions, it is difficult if not impossible to retrench farmer support. These reforms to the payment system neither significantly affected the total level of support received by farmers nor resulted in much change in allocation of support between countries and across farmers . Under the Fischler reforms, inefficient farmers benefited from the decoupling of support from production; they would now be paid no matter how much they produced. While large and highly efficient farmers would no longer be able to drive up their support payments through efforts to produce as much as possible, they successfully avoided a limit being placed on their overall annual income payments. This victory was especially important for those farmers with the largest holdings.

Historic yield based payments meant that these farmers still stood to earn a hefty payment, and with the proposal to limit total CAP support defeated, those payments would not be garnished. Finally, while all farmers earning above the €5,000 threshold lost some money directly though modulation, these funds stayed almost entirely in their own member state’s rural development program, and could be channeled back to the farmers though other programs and initiatives. Ultimately, offering exemptions, exceptions, and monetary incentives was a crucial component in successfully concluding the reform negotiations. In order to wrangle the cooperation of farmers who were leery of the effects of new programs, including the costs and burdens imposed by newly adopted environmental standards, reformers repeatedly relented, offering them monetary compensation for compliance and lowering expectations for meeting environmental standards. The next chapter of my dissertation examines the most recent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, agreed to in 2013. This reform, which established the framework of the CAP until 2020, is more similar to that of Agenda 2000 than the Fischler or MacSharry reforms. With no major outside pressures or crises, CAP reform reverted to politics as usual, and little change was made.As part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the 2013 CAP reform sought to make big changes to the CAP, bringing it in line with the modern, dynamic, and innovative European Union that the Commission envisioned. These reforms endeavored to address long-standing complaints that the CAP was too complex, unfair, and environmentally destructive. To that end, the oft-repeated mantra by CAP reformers was that they desired a CAP that was fairer, simpler, and greener. In reality, the 2013 CAP reform fell well short of these objectives. It made some progress on improving fairness, but also made the CAP far more complex and did little to improve environmental standards.

A major factor in explaining the limited changes that resulted from this CAP reform is that, other than the need to continue adjusting the CAP to operate in the enlarged European Union, there were no exogenous forces pushing for reform. Both MacSharry in 1992 and Fischler in 2003 used pressing concurrent challenges, such as stalled trade negotiations, to achieve major change. The same option to tie CAP reform to crises and/or concurrent problems was largely unavailable to Agricultural Commissioner Daclan Cioloș in 2013. The budget was not in crisis and the EU was not involved in any WTO negotiations. Enlargement was the one geo-political pressure that affected the 2013 reform. While enlargement to Eastern Europe had been concluded, the consequences for the CAP still required some management. The main issue lingering from the most recent enlargement was the imbalance of payments across countries. This issue proved to be the only source of disruptive politics,drainage planter pot providing Cioloș an opportunity to call for changes to the direct payment system. Indeed, the only major component of the final reform would be the provision that addressed the fallout from enlargement. The purpose of this chapter is to account for the content of the 2013 CAP reform and to explain why the reform was so underwhelming. Cioloș had a very limited mandate for reform, given that he was operating largely under politics as usual. In addition, the new CAP reform was being sorted out at the same time as the 2014-2020 Multi-annual Financial Framework . In addition, it undercut the ability of reformers to call for spending cuts or to use the threat of them to leverage reform because once the budget had been set, spending cuts were off the table. The result was a watered down reform, with changes much more circumscribed than initially proposed or abandoned entirely. The final agreement contained two main components. The first and most significant change involved the direct payment system. In order to address vast inequality in the payments received by Western and Eastern farmers, all member states would transition, over a 7-year period, to using the same system for calculating the amount of direct payments owed to their farmers. The program for this transition was ultimately made much more gradual and included far less redistribution than initially proposed. In addition, a proposal to cap income payments was rejected. Greening was the second component of the agreement. While new rules for permanent pasture, mandatory crop rotation, and other measures intended to protect and improve the environment were adopted, they ultimately had very little applicability, with nearly of 88% of farmers exempted. Smaller components of the agreement allowed member states to have more flexibility in directing money towards rural development and modified rules on who counted as a farmer, though the definition remained quite permissive. Once again CAP reform mirrored the process of welfare state retrenchment, with reformers employing a variety of tactics to slip through any reform and hopefully position themselves to achieve more substantial retrenchment in the future.

Nearly every proposal was significantly watered down, and some, like placing limits on the amount of money individual farmers received, were defeated outright. The core reforms, most notably changes to the direct payment system, followed a “vice into virtue logic”. The existing payment system was operating unequally. To address this problem, rather than creating a new program from scratch, reformers worked within the system, amending the method of calculating payments to decrease the gap between new and old member states. Finally, as is typical, the final package included a number of side-payments, concessions, and exemptions in order to facilitate the agreement. For example, greening measures designed to impose stricter environmental standards on a portion of a farmer’s land ended up including so many exemptions that only 12% of European farmers were ultimately subjected to the rules. In the end, this round of CAP reform amount to little more than tinkering around the edges. The 2013 CAP Reform illustrates the importance of disruptive politics for achieving meaningful CAP policy change. The only significant alteration to CAP policy in the 2013 reform was directly linked to the sole source of disruptive politics: enlargement. While no new rounds of accession were looming, the CAP confronted lingering problems from expansion to Eastern and Central Europe. Owing to different available methods for calculation and the rules governing the new member states’ accession to the CAP, the average payment per hectare in the old, Western member states was much higher than in the newer member states in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2013, the average payment per hectare across the EU was €269 . Farmers in Latvia, however, received on average €95 per hectare compared to €458 in the Netherlands . This inequality was politically unsustainable, with Central and Eastern European member states complaining about their second-class status. EU officials, specifically those outside of DGVI , had also taken notice and were increasingly critical of a policy that was badly out of step with the core EU value of equality among members. The other issues that had generated the disruptive politics in 1992 and 2003, economic crisis and stalled trade negotiations, did not drive reform in 2013. Europe did experience an economic crisis, but the crisis actually weakened the hand of reformers and budget cutters. The period immediately before and during CAP negotiations was marked by significant economic volatility. In 2008, agricultural prices peaked, then suddenly dropped as a consequence of the global economic crisis, which caused upheaval and uncertainty in government budgets and commodities markets. Concerns about falling prices increased the pressure on CAP policymakers to return to market intervention and regulation to help hard-hit farmers. In addition, the volatility in the markets induced calls to lessen or eliminate greening requirements so as to not overburden farmers and also to increase support for emergency relief. These proposals would require an increase in spending. Thus, instead of disrupting politics and providing Cioloș with an opening to call for change, the crisis buttressed politics as usual. Stalled trade talks, which were a key pressure for the MacSharry Reform, were not entirely absent from the 2013 CAP Reform. The difference between these two circumstances, however, was vast. At the time of the MacSharry Reforms, the GATT Uruguay Round was struggling to reach a conclusion. The problem was in the agricultural portion of the negotiations, with the design and operation of CAP programs preventing Europe and the United States from reaching an agreement. At the time of the 2013 CAP negotiations, the Doha Round was stalled. This time, however, the negotiations were failing in multiple sectors and agriculture, though one of the points of trouble, was not to blame for delaying the successful conclusion of the entire round.

Ultimately, Chirac was able to combine his agricultural expertise with a situation ripe for revision: a CAP agreement that was over budget, with no country willing to increase their contribution to the EU in order to close the gap. Chirac’s personal rewrite of the CAP agreement faced little resistance as he stood firm and the other major member states relented due to other considerations which France in turn did not oppose. The main changes imposed by Chirac included a smaller cut for grain prices, increased compensation for beef, and the extension of the milk quota regime by a further two years including an additional delay in price cuts. The UK was concerned with both protecting its rebate and, like Spain and the Southern countries, ensuring access to and increasing their share of cohesion funds. Chirac left Italy’s milk quota increase in the package, thereby ensuring their continued support for CAP reform. The biggest source of opposition should have come from Germany, but it was facing political crises domestically and also in its role in the rotating EU presidency. Schröder’s government was in disarray after finance minister Oskar Lafontaine’s abrupt resignation. At the EU-level, in its role in the rotating presidency, Germany was dealing with the crises in the Balkans, which had now escalated to a NATO bombing campaign and also with the stunning resignation of the entire European Commission, under pressure from the European Parliament . An independent investigation revealed widespread fraud, misconduct,vertical hydroponic farming mismanagement of financial systems, and suggested that “[the Commission] had lost control of the administration” of the EU 25.

A failure of the European Council to act decisively and to successfully conclude Agenda 2000 would be a major embarrassment for Germany and the entire European Union, which it was struggling to lead. With Germany politically weakened, the other major member states distracted by other priorities, and the EU struggling to appear decisive under the shadow of both an international and an institutional crisis, Chirac was able to amend Agenda 2000 to be more in line with his personal preferences after threatening to leave Berlin without concluding the negotiations. In the end, the overall reform was diluted even further largely by reducing the size of price cuts and delaying the timing of reform. This point is essential: the CAP budget was brought under control not by slashing farmer compensation, but by delaying cuts and reforms that would result in further market liberalization. Savings were generated not by reducing compensation packages but by delaying and/or reducing market reform. Price cuts were lowered from 20% to 15% for cereals and the delay of dairy reform was extended a further two years, until 2008. By making cereals cuts smaller than initially proposed and maintaining the dairy quota system the EU reduced and/or delayed the amount of money it would have to pay out as compensation in the form of direct payments. Instead, consumers would continue bear the cost of the price supports. Alternative solutions that would work within the budget, such as reducing the level of compensation or imposing payment ceilings, were rejected . The final agreement formally rejected both alternatives for budget stabilization though it did permit member states to apply modulation, if they so desired . In the end, all the key players left Agenda 2000 with their key interests protected: France avoided co-financing and protected the high levels of transfers it received from the CAP; Germany avoided further increasing its contribution to the CAP budget; the Southern countries protected their current level of structural funds ; and the UK protected the Thatcher rebate.

Overall, the cuts in the final agreement were smaller and took effect at a later date than in the initial proposal. Reducing the size of a proposed cut and/or delaying the time at which it will come into effect are strategies used by welfare state reforms. Reducing the size of a proposed cut is one way to buy off support for a reform while delaying the date of implementation allows the current policymakers to distance themselves from the negative consequences of the reforms they have adopted. The risk, of course, is that these reforms may never actually take place, as the delay affords future actors the opportunity to amend or entirely eliminate the reform before it takes place. Also similar to the process of welfare state retrenchment was the Commission’s use of targeted concessions, like increased milk quotas for some member states. Reform is achieved after support is bought from a key actor, in this case Italy, whose support was crucial to breaking the blocking minority on dairy reform. The Commission’s initial proposal was effectively watered down twice, once in order to reach a compromise in the Agricultural Council and a second time by French president Jacques Chirac at the Berlin Summit several weeks later. Chirac’s watering down of the proposal included reducing the price cut for grain from 20% to 15% and increasing the compensation paid to the beef sector. In addition, dairy reform, by way of finally removing the quotas, was delayed even further. The round of price cuts and compensation continued in the vein of the MacSharry Reform. Yet despite the cuts, EU prices for goods, particularly cereals, still remained well above world prices. As a result, the EU had to continue using export subsidies . The compensation specified in this reform was to be added on top of the compensatory payments already received under the MacSharry Reform.

While these cuts would allegedly help reduce the problem of surplus production by lowering price guarantees, the CAP still had yet to achieve the full decoupling of payments from production. Modulation was ultimately left up to the member states. If they desired,vertical gardening systems they could modulate payments to farmers for specific reasons such as, “below-average employment density, above-average profit level” or the total level of payments to the farm . The agreement required that any savings collected by the member states through this optional modulation had to be spent on rural development or environmental programs. Cross-compliance was adopted, but only as an optional measure. Member states that choose to impose cross-compliance on their farmers were also allowed to set their own environmental standards so long as they did not distort competition between the member states . While implementing cross-compliance in an optional, non-binding form with no universal environmental standards was a weak outcome, it did position the Commission well for future reform along the same lines. Moreover, it mirrored patterns observed in welfare state retrenchment, where seemingly small changes implemented early can smooth the way for more fundamental change, or systemic reform in the future. Indeed, in the 2003 Mid-Term Review of the CAP, Fischler was able to use the inclusion of cross-compliance in Agenda 2000 as a sign of tacit approval of the program and to successfully push for its adoption as a mandatory CAP program.The process of the Agenda 2000 CAP negotiations, particularly in contrast to the MacSharry and Fischler Reforms which bookended it, illustrates how CAP reform is more limited without the presence of disruptive politics to open space for broader reform. While trade was a driving factor for the MacSharry Reform, it exerted little pressure on shape or content of the Agenda 2000 CAP agreement. The MacSharry Reform negotiations took place not only while the GATT Uruguay Round was underway, but after agriculture had been identified as a major stumbling block in reaching an agreement. For Agenda 2000, there were no concurrent GATT/WTO talks , and the threat of a new round potentially beginning in the near future was not enough to push the CAP towards further liberalization and away from existing trade-distorting programs. Similarly, enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe was far enough in the future that it had yet to become a critical issue for the CAP. Moreover, the Commission and the member states were operating under the belief that the new member states would simply be excluded from the direct payments system, meaning that it was not necessary to reform the CAP in preparation for enlargement.

The Agenda 2000 agreement serves as a clear example of what happens when negotiations occur during politics as usual. In such cases, reform outcomes are mostly narrow, limited, and/or non-binding. Emboldened by the sense of urgency lent to the CAP reforms by trade negotiations, impending enlargement, and/or other crises, both MacSharry and Fischler were able to make, and more importantly, deliver on bold proposals, resulting in a major reworking of the core operations of the CAP. Without these disruptive politics during the Agenda 2000 negotiations, the Commission was unable achieve the such systemic reforms. The process of reaching an agreement on Agenda 2000 CAP highlights three tactics commonly employed by reformers seeking to retrench the welfare state: 1) implementing small changes, including even non-binding agreements that allow for deeper structural change in the future; 2) using delayed implementation for cuts as a way to reach an agreement; and 3) marshalling support for the reform package via a number of tactics, including offering compensation in exchange for cuts or changes to programs, buying off member states , and offering special policy exemptions and alternatives to those who are opposed to particular aspects of the reform package. The first tactic is best illustrated by the greening policies, which were adopted but left to the member states to decide how they would implement them. In his 2003 reform, Fischler would use the fact that member states had previously agreed to greening standards as grounds for making these standards mandatory. The second tactic, delaying the initiation of cuts and reforms, was seen in the reforms for all three major sectors: cereals, beef, and dairy. While delays were ostensibly undertaken for the purpose of budgetary feasibility, they also helped politicians avoid blame, as they may no longer be in office when the cuts arrive. Finally, the third tactic, attempting to buy countries’ support with side payments is illustrated most clearly in the dairy sector, with the Commission offering Italy an increase in its milk quota in exchange for supporting the reform and thus eliminating the blocking minority that was preventing an agreement. While Agenda 2000 did not have a landmark initiative like MacSharry’s partial decoupling of payments from production and introduction of direct income payments, Agenda 2000 at least protected MacSharry’s legacy by continuing to cut existing intervention price supports. The compensation for price cuts was added to the existing direct payment scheme, as reformers continued to slowly push the CAP away from system based on market intervention to one that was constructed around income supports. Agenda 2000, also continued to develop the CAP’s second pillar which concerns rural development and greening. Overall, and particularly in comparison to the subsequent Fischler reforms of 2003, Agenda 2000 was unremarkable. It lacked any landmark initiative. Environmental measures, while included, were non-binding and left to member state discretion for the standards. Both options to fundamentally reshape how the CAP is funded, degressivity and co-financing, were abandoned. So too were a number of proposed reforms and cuts in the effort to bring the CAP package in line with the new budget. Many of these reforms were eliminated by Jacques Chirac when he re-opened the already watered down reform agreed to within the Agricultural Council at the Berlin Summit. With Agenda 2000 being not just a CAP reform, but a broad package of reforms designed to orient the EU towards, and prepare it for, the challenges of the new millennium, most proximately enlargement, the member states had to pick where to place their influence. While France used its political capital to go all in on reshaping the CAP to align with French preferences as much as possible, other countries defended different interests: Germany sought to prevent an increase in its budgetary contributions, Spain and the southern countries fought to protect cohesion funds, and the UK defended its rebate.The next chapter examines the third major effort to reform the CAP, the 2003 Mid-Term Review also known as the Fischler Reform. Fischler intended to use this reform to push forward and extend the decoupling of the CAP, first begun by MacSharry in 1992.

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.

To evaluate the extent to which this assumption affects my results, I build 30 individual, small-scale, tractable models of grain storage and trade with full rational expectations in which harvests and world prices are stochastic. For the purposes of these models, I collapse all months, all grains, and all markets in each country into a single annual national harvest for which I calculate a sample mean and variance over my 10 year period of interest. For 20 countries with ports or direct access to Johannesburg, South Africa, I build a model for each country with just that country and the world market. For the remaining 21 countries, I build 10 models each consisting of a landlocked country, a coastal country, and the world market39. I choose a centrally-located major city in each country and use my trade cost estimates to compute a single representative trade cost between each landlocked and coastal country and between each coastal country and the world market. I use my estimated demand parameters for each country as well as my estimated monthly storage cost parameters aggregated up to the annual level. For world prices, I compute a single annual world price index for each coastal country based on its harvest year and demand share parameters and calculate the sample variance of the month to-month change in price of these indices over my 10 year period of interest. Putting all of this information together, I use the RECS solver in MATLAB to solve each of the 30 models and run simulations using actual observed harvest and world price shocks to solve for equilibrium storage, trade, price,hydroponic bucket and consumption in every country in every year under full rational expectations.

I then re-solve each model under counterfactual low trade costs. Despite volatile local harvests and high baseline trade costs, my results from this exercise indicate that inter-annual storage in Africa is limited even under full rational expectations, likely due to high storage costs and the position of most countries as net grain importers. Under existing high trade costs, an average of 2.0% of the grain harvest is stored inter annually, and there is positive inter-annual storage in only 50 of the 400 total country-years in my 30 models. Under counterfactual low trade costs, an average of 0.3% of the grain harvest is stored inter-annually, and there is positive inter-annual storage in only 7 of the 400 total country-years in my 30 models, as cheaper trade serves as a partial substitute for storage. The use of my assumption about trader expectations does appear to lead to underestimates of annual storage, but adjusting for these underestimates does not affect my main results. In my main model, under existing high trade costs, an average of 0.3% of the grain harvest is stored inter-annually, and there is positive inter-annual storage in just 1.5% of total market-crop-years, while under counterfactual low trade costs there is no inter-annual storage in any market-crop-year. To determine how allowing for full rational expectations affects my results, I re-solve my main model under both existing and counterfactual trade costs while restricting traders’ choice of inter-annual storage of each grain in each market to equal the percentage of grain stored inter-annually in equilibrium for that country for that year in the results from my individual full rational expectations models. The percentage changes in net agricultural revenues, the average grain price index, expenditure on grains, and welfare are all within two tenths of a percentage point of my baseline results, and the results for all indicators in table 1.12 are well within 95% confidence intervals constructed using the standard errors reported there.

Thus I conclude that my assumption about trader expectations does not have a statistically significant effect on my results. Given the fact that inter-annual storage is limited, it is reasonable to ask to what extent my results would change if I used a more parsimonious model with no storage at all. In recent trade papers dealing with the agricultural sector , it is common to use annual data on production and farm-gate prices, the prices farmers receive when they sell their produce immediately after harvest. Using annual data, one can avoid having to deal with harvest cycles and intra-annual storage, which is necessary for there to be positive consumption in non-harvest months. To better understand the differences between this approach and the one I have used in this chapter, I use the harvest month price for each crop in each market from my baseline estimated model as the annual farm-gate price and build a new static model with all variables aggregated up to the annual level and no storage. I re-estimate trade costs for this new static annual model using the same approach as for my dynamic monthly model and then solve for equilibrium with both my new trade cost estimates and counterfactual low trade costs. Trade cost estimates converge in 6 iterations for the static annual model, and each iteration takes only 2 minutes . However, my trade cost estimates are 23.4% lower on average using the static annual model, and the overall welfare gain from lowering trade costs is 32.9% smaller than under the dynamic monthly model with storage. These differences can be explained by the pattern of equilibrium storage and trade described in Proposition 1. When production is widespread, trade between markets almost never occurs at the beginning of the harvest cycle when farm-gate prices are measured. During this period, local production and storage is used for consumption, spatial arbitrage conditions do not bind, and equilibrium price gaps are narrower.

Instead, trade occurs primarily at the end of the harvest cycle once local stocks have been depleted,stackable planters which is when equilibrium price gaps are wider and spatial arbitrage conditions bind. Using monthly data and a dynamic model with storage to identify more precisely when agricultural trade occurs thus seems important to avoid underestimating trade costs and their effects on welfare, particularly in developing country contexts with large seasonal price fluctuations. Further details on this exercise with graphical examples are contained in the appendix. Having confirmed the robustness of my main results to the relaxation of several of my key assumptions and explored alternate approaches, I next turn my attention to two extensions in which I run additional counter factuals to further explore the consequences of high trade costs in sub-Saharan Africa and the options for reducing them. Reducing trade costs everywhere in Africa to match transport costs elsewhere in the world is likely not feasible in the short run. However, it may be feasible to reduce trade costs along certain high-priority routes. This section considers the extent to which some routes matter more than others for achieving the welfare effects of the main counterfactual. Even if a long-term goal of reducing trade costs everywhere is maintained, trade cost reduction will not be simultaneous, so the results in this section also shed light on welfare effects during the potentially long transitional period from a high trade cost to a low trade cost regime. I start by looking at the effects of reducing trade costs along the 413 overland links within Africa while holding port-to-world-market sea trade costs constant and of reducing port-to-world-market sea trade costs while holding overland trade costs constant. Results in the second and third columns of table 1.16 indicate that while overland trade cost reduction accounts for over 70% of the overall welfare gain, nearly half of the overall welfare gain is achievable by just reducing sea trade costs between African ports and the world market.Overland trade and sea trade are partial substitutes as both can reduce prices in grain-deficit markets.Since reducing port-to-world-market sea trade costs is likely more feasible than reducing overland trade costs everywhere in Africa, I start with this scenario and then look at whether adding trade cost reductions on a few key overland routes can substantially narrow the gap with my main counterfactual. I select key routes by first identifying the markets with the biggest welfare gaps between the “just sea” scenario in column 3 and the main counterfactual in column 1 and then identifying the most important overland links connecting these markets to their trading partners. In columns 4 and 5 of table 1.16, I show that adding trade cost reductions on just 30 overland links to the “just sea” scenario allows for over 70% of welfare gains to be achieved, and adding trade cost reductions on 75 overland links allows for 86% of welfare gains to be achieved. These results are encouraging for policy-makers and multilateral donors who may have limited resources to invest in trade cost reduction. Generally speaking, the results suggest that investment in “trade corridors” of the type promoted by the African Development Bank and other institutional donors may be worthwhile.

Although it is likely that the specific corridors I identify might not be the most important ones when other goods besides grains are considered, my corridor selection exercise, which is detailed in the appendix, suggests that certain types of corridors may be particularly beneficial. First, reducing trade costs from the world market all the way to “dry ports” in densely-populated inland areas like Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kinshasa, D.R. Congo can achieve major welfare gains even if trade costs from the dry ports to further-inland areas remain high. Second, reducing trade costs along inland corridors with imbalances or fluctuations in production and consumption can lead to large gains without significant involvement of the world market. Third, targeting those inland areas isolated by extremely high trade costs can lead to very large welfare improvements for those areas. In 2013, African cereal grain yields averaged 1.4 tonnes per hectare, compared to 3.1 in South Asia, 4.2 in Latin America, and 7.3 in the US. Low productivity in African agriculture is primarily due to the low use of inputs like fertilizer, and institutional donors and organiza adoption to narrow this productivity gap. This section uses my estimated model to look at the effects that widespread technology adoption in Africa would have under existing high trade costs and counterfactual low trade costs. A complete model of technology adoption is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, I estimate what would happen if productivity everywhere in Africa doubled, i.e. if African cereal grain yields increased to 2.8 tonnes per hectare, which is much closer though still below levels elsewhere in the world. In the context of my model of production, this is equivalent to a doubling of all Bimt, which would double agricultural production in the short run . Practically speaking, I implement this counterfactual by doubling the harvest in all markets and all time periods while keeping all other exogenous variables and parameters the same40 . Table 1.17 compares results for key aggregate indicators from my main counterfactual , counter factuals with technology adoption under high trade costs and low trade costs , and a combined counterfactual in which trade costs are lowered and technology adoption occurs 41. Under high trade costs, technology adoption leads to a collapse of prices and agricultural revenues, as high trade costs confine much of the increased production to local markets with inelastic demand. Only 39 markets experience an increase in agricultural revenues, 37 of which are net importers for which increased production primarily serves to replace imports so that the price does not fall as much as in other markets42. In contrast, under low trade costs, agricultural revenues increase on aggregate and for 184 individual markets , as much more of the increased production can be exported to deficit areas and the world market. Low trade costs are thus a prerequisite for widespread technology adoption to increase the incomes of African farmers.The net welfare effect of doubling productivity through technology adoption is similar in magnitude to the net welfare effect of lowering trade costs43. Although lower trade costs and productivity improvements are partial substitutes as both lead to lower prices in most markets, the combined welfare effect of both represents 92% of the sum of the effects of each intervention on its own . These findings suggest that agricultural policy in Africa should give as much weight to trade cost reduction as to technology adoption and prioritize comprehensive approaches that include both.

These mapping efforts are constrained to variables that can be quantified at a large scale, and they typically define abandoned agricultural land as land that was previously used for agriculture but where intensive human management appears to have ceased . Some definitions specify a minimum of 2–5 years of observations of non-use, whereas others specify observations of successional processes resulting in the natural establishment of forests or other secondary vegetation. Certain agricultural uses, such as recent fallow or pasture lands, make these types of observations difficult to detect in large-scale land cover maps. Definitions of abandoned agricultural land based on remote observation of land cover changes over time often overlook the complexity of landholder decision-making and how landholder choices affect the cessation of agricultural use and potentially its later recurrence . These definitions result in overestimation of the available land area for reforestation for climate mitigation and other purposes, as well as of the permanence of newly established forest cover . We suspect that this is why Crawford et al. find such variation in abandoned land estimates. Moreover, these definitions and the semantics of the term “abandonment” imply a decline in land utility for agricultural livelihoods and a ceding of land rights to others. Using a definition that assumes away local residents’ landholding rights may inadvertently create social vulnerabilities in localities where there appear to be opportunities for reforestation. Without attention to landholding status and associated livelihoods,hydroponic nft system reforestation projects on abandoned agricultural land risk overstating their impact and sustainability. We propose a new conceptualization of abandoned agricultural land that incorporates changes in landholding status over time into determining whether land should be considered as abandoned.

While challenging to implement empirically, this conceptualization offers an improved approach to understanding the significant heterogeneity in land use changes—not simply land cover changes. Whereas land cover changes can be observed directly through remotely sensed imagery, land use changes cannot always be inferred from changes in land cover. For example, land that exists under “forest” cover could be used for selective logging, shade grown agroforestry, or biodiversity conservation, each of which confers different environmental and socio-economic outcomes. These changes in land use ultimately derive from landholding status because landholding status affects landholders’ planning horizons. For example, medium- and long-term availability of abandoned land needed to sequester carbon and achieve other desired reforestation benefits depends on secure landholding that can only be known through incorporating information about landholding status. We focus on land that was originally forested but then converted to an agricultural use that has currently ceased . We identify the decision points that determine whether this abandoned agricultural land follows pathways that lead to a persistent transition to forest, either natural forest cover or woody tree plantations sensu FAO . After a period of deforestation driven by agricultural expansion, economic development creates sufficient off-farm employment that the agricultural labor force shrinks, agricultural labor costs rise and profits fall, and some land shifts from agriculture to uses that are less labor-intensive, including secondary forest or tree plantations ; often the land has low agricultural productivity. Forest transitions may also result from a rise in the price of wood rather than just a change in the relative return on labor .

This land is then commonly considered to be “abandoned” in terms of agricultural use, and it is assumed that forests will grow back on it through either natural regeneration or tree planting. This process has been documented in Europe, the eastern United States, Japan, Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and other regions worldwide . In fact, abandoned agricultural land results from a series of land-use decisions that are influenced by complex biophysical, demographic, and socioeconomic processes . This means that land that is currently “abandoned” from agricultural use will not necessarily result in a persistent, net increase in forest cover . To begin, the current landholder might have ceased agricultural use only temporarily, leaving the land fallow for multiple years to allow soil nutrients to accumulate, pathogens to subside, or market conditions to become more favorable . Even if the current landholder’s intention is a permanent cessation of agriculture, the land might not be biophysically suitable for reforestation, either because it is highly degraded or is in a biome where grassland or another low tree cover ecosystem is the naturally occurring vegetation . Considerations of land tenure, namely the landholder’s and potentially others’ formal or informal rights to own or use the land and how these rights are enforced, add complexity when the current landholder “abandons” agricultural use of land that is suitable for forest regeneration. By ceasing agricultural use, the current landholder may or may not abandon their rights to the land. In some locations, ending agricultural use necessitates relinquishing land rights because land that is not cultivated or grazed is considered “idle” or unassigned, but this linkage of use abandonment and rights abandonment is not universal . If no new landholder acquires rights to the land, then natural succession will likely result in forest regeneration .

However, if a new landholder acquires the rights to the land through voluntary sale or reassignment by a governmental or communal authority, then they, in turn, will decide whether to increase forest cover on it or revert to using it for agriculture or another non-forest purpose, such as urbanization . Forest regeneration is similarly not assured if the current landholder retains their rights to the land, as they too could decide to convert the land to a non-forest use . In cases where the original or new landholder decides to increase forest cover on the site, then they also must decide whether to regenerate the forest using natural or artificial means, which entails considering a mix of ecological, silvicultural, and socioeconomic factors . A fourth possibility is that the current landholder’s rights are not enforced, in which case an involuntary land transfer occurs against the current landholder’s wishes: a “land grab.” For example, Ugandan villagers report that Norwegian investments in forest carbon plantations caused “forced relocations of agriculture, grazing, and other livelihood activities” . A non-forest land use, typically some form of commercial agriculture, could also follow a land grab . Even if the landholder initially decides to establish forest cover on the land, the forest cover might not persist for a host of reasons. Changes in agricultural prices and technologies, off-farm employment opportunities, wood scarcity, political instability, and government policies and subsidies can prompt landholders to reverse a decision to retain forest cover . For example, some of the extensive area of agricultural land abandoned in eastern Europe following the fall of the Soviet Union has been re-cultivated in the past decade,nft channel mostly due to increases in agricultural subsidies and commodity prices . Whereas it is commonly assumed that forest cover will increase as opportunities for non-agricultural employment increase and people migrate to cities, there are examples of reverse migration to rural areas when economic opportunities or personal situations change . Climate change also decreases the likelihood of sustained forest cover increases in some locations due to changes in disturbance regimes and migration of both forest species and humans to more suitable climatic conditions. Finally, forest cover changes must be evaluated at sufficient scale to determine whether there is a net increase over a region or the globe, given documented cases in which ceasing agriculture in one location has led to displacement of agriculture to other locations , with any increase in forest cover in the first location being partially or completely offset by deforestation elsewhere . This displacement of deforestation can be challenging to quantify, as it may happen far from the study region given the ever-increasing globalization of the trade of forestry and agricultural products .

In sum, landholding status and land rights are complicated core factors affecting the net increase in persistent forest cover that ultimately results from abandoned agricultural land . Although agricultural and forestry policies, also mediate the use of abandoned agricultural land, we argue that landholding status and land rights are fundamental factors that cannot be ignored when implementing reforestation programs. Despite the challenge of mapping complex land-use decisions, there are important policy reasons to estimate how much land is potentially available for reforestation in the future. To that end we suggest the following. First, those undertaking these efforts should clearly state how they are defining “abandoned” land and other related terms , including the temporal and spatial scale of those definitions. We recommend using more specific terms such as fallow , agroforestry or silvopastoral systems , timber plantation , or secondary forest. We also advocate evaluating the persistence of these different land uses. These definitions are best defined regionally, given differences in production systems by locality and ecosystem. Likewise, it is important to more transparently acknowledge the complex suite of factors that affect forest transitions and reversals that are likely to bias estimates of land available for reforestation . Second, more attention should be paid to who owns and has rights to use the land when mapping global land uses and looking for investment opportunities for carbon or land purchase. In some regions of the world, land ownership maps exist that could be included as part of mapping efforts. In other regions, this can be challenging given issues of unclear land tenure . In general, local stakeholders want tenure mapped and formally recognized, but tenure and land claims are often unclear or contested . Mapping tenure and resolving contested claims can hinder or complicate landbased projects and programs , but is critical to their success. Further, absence of legally recognized tenure due to incomplete or partial mapping processes may invite land grabbing and induce conflict, particularly in common property systems . Participatory mapping is a technique that can help illuminate and resolve potential conflicts but using this approach at broad geographic scales remains a challenge . Ultimately, it may not be possible to accurately map “abandoned” land in regions where land tenure is particularly contentious. Third, a promising approach to developing more realistic and inclusive maps of abandoned agricultural land and potential forest cover is to combine remotely sensed data with household/stakeholder surveys to understand landowner motivations for not cropping lands. For example, Zhang et al. combined remotely sensed data of forest cover change with household surveys and focus groups to elucidate factors affecting increases in forest cover in northwest Yunnan Province, China. They found that forest cover increases were not greater on lands receiving payments from the Grain-for Green program, in contrast to the reported net positive effect of the program on forest cover at the national level . Instead, the surveys and focus groups revealed that forest cover changes in the study area were influenced by a suite of factors that cannot be remotely sensed, including off- farm labor opportunities, changing energy sources, and tree crop planting for income . We realize this combined approach is time consuming and necessarily will need to be done at a regional or local scale, but this is the scale at which most policy decisions are made, and the estimates of land area available for reforestation will be more realistic. Furthermore, attention to these details prior to major investments in reforestation will reduce the likelihood of significantly diminished, net zero, or net negative returns. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, the governments of the central and eastern European Countries all aspire to join the European Union . These aspirations were given strong encouragement at the EU’s 1993 Copenhagen Summit, at which time associated CEECs were told they would eventually gain membership. Along the path to accession, however, lie difficult policy choices and delicate negotiations concerning the pace and terms of economic integration. Of these, among the most challenging are those affecting the fate of agriculture in the emerging market economies. Accession to the EU has historically implied the integration of the new member into the community’s Common Agricultural Policy , a complicated system of interventions whose most prominent and expensive features are designed to support prices of program commoditiesl through intervention purchases, and to shield markets from external competition through tariff barriers.

The experimental dispositif therefore commanded how actants were to be organized and made to relate to each other within well-defined limits of space and time. This was done so that vitalities within its scope were channeled according to a predetermined notion of what desirable elements were to be made to flourish, and what undesirable ones were to be allowed to wither away or be forcibly diverged to its exterior. Incidentally or not, dispositif is the same word Foucault chose to name the apparatus through which power flows in society. Like most of those that followed on his wake, in his oeuvre Foucault was concerned mostly with the government of human life. The experimental dispositif is also a manipulation of relations of forces, but of a non-human kind. Other than that, the similarities are remarkable. Like the Foucauldian dispositif, it is sustained by a particular kind of knowledge, manifested in the three expertises concerned here. This manipulation is also strategic, in the sense that it had a clear direction: what it did was to translate normative parameters that were external to the experimental domain into a technical, either quantifiable or discreet , form. These parameters came from the upper scales of context previously outlined: from global trade to the filière, to assumptions about the peasant environment, these were scaled down, at the micro level of the dispositif, into a central concern with yields as the core experimental parameter. Even conservation – as explained in Chapter 4,nft hydroponic the chief purpose of no-till – becomes important inasmuch as it helps sustain productivity in the long run, and does not significantly undermine it in the short run.

The experiments sought to strike a balance between short-term, economistic demands for high productivity, and long-term demands for soil conservation. In all three project components, brought together into the dispositif’s nested structure, experimental adaptation ultimately converged towards this end: increased yields became the ultimate sign that the system was working and thriving in its new environment. Thus, in their experiments, entomologists were chiefly concerned with mapping out and anticipating potentially significant pests – that is, insects that could cause sudden and sharp decrease in yields . In the project parcel, standing just above the layer of cotton at regular intervals there were white triangular boxes; these were insect traps, the only visible artifact of the pest control component in the parcel. The boxes, brought from Brazil, sheltered cards smeared with pheromone for attracting male insects, meant for a survey of insect populations in the area – a preliminary work to devising a biological pest control strategy appropriate to local conditions. During the first year, as the Malian entomologist explained, “there were observations, not results. For scientific results, it is necessary that a statistic dispositif be put in place”. The entomology dispositif proper was assembled in 2011 on the vitrine simultaneously with the varietal assay. In this trial, technicians observed and registered the magnitude and kind of damage inflicted to the different cotton varieties so that the behavior of the Brazilian ones would be compared to their control counterparts across two treatments: one consisting in zero chemical control, the other consisting in pesticide spraying according to recommendations for the milieu paysan. In the varietal test on the vitrine, yield, measured as a projected amount of kilograms per hectare, was the main parameter for comparing the ten cotton varieties introduced by Embrapa among themselves and to their local counterparts .

In the first season, productivity was also the main criterion according to which the head breeder from the Malian institute selected the two best performing Embrapa varieties to move further into the no-till fields the following year, where they would join the local varieties acting as controls. Performance of the different cotton varieties was also observed and compared according to other factors: level of damage by insects and disease, plant development , and the technological criteria listed above. In these evaluations as in genetic improvement research at large, breeders strived to strike a compromise between competing external demands on the cotton plant: farmers preferred bolls with heavier grain, as they got paid by kilogram of unprocessed cotton; ginners were concerned with the proportion of lint in seed cotton weight; the textile industry had its own standards of quality and color. Whiteness and brilliance of the fiber, for instance, were emerging from the trials as traits with the potential to improve local cotton varieties through cross-breeding with the Brazilian ones. But these and other parameters only became important provided that the concerned variety was also productive compared to the others. Similarly, in the no-till trial, most measurements were geared towards evaluating the impact of this new crop management system on the yields of different cotton varieties and the cereals grown in association or rotation with it, as compared to the control situation . Thus, the dispositif aimed at figuring out the best possible balance between biomass and yields: while cover crops intercalated with main crops were expected to produce as much biomass as possible in order to keep the soil covered during fallow, they also competed for nutrients, water and sunlight with the main crop, therefore potentially impacting its yields.

This trial was therefore principally concerned with estimating the best sowing date for each combination of plants: one treatment prescribed sowing the cover crop on the same day as the main crop, the other fourteen days afterwards. Other factors measured in this experiment addressed physic-chemical characteristics of the soil, and indexes of plant vitality such as leaf analysis, plant height and density, and germination. Yields and productivity, the focus of the economy of vitalities managed by the dispositif, depended most fundamentally on the right amount and quality of nutrients to feed the crop plants . In this respect, agronomists explicitly deployed in their experimental work a suggestive foreign trade-like idiom of nutrient export and import. Export is a normal part of agriculture, as much of the biomass that is nurtured inside the fields leaves them along with the harvested crop; the challenge is to make sure that these lost nutrients are replaced by equivalent import, in the form of mineral or organic fertilizers. Chronic soil degradation becomes a problem when more nutrients are being exported than imported over the long run. In West Africa, as we saw, not only was there excessive export of nutrients through leaching, runoff and the cattle that feeds on crop residues, but there was far from sufficient import of nutrients through fertilizers. As a result, peasant cotton farms developed, so to speak, a serious “trade deficit” in nutrients with their surrounding environment. The inevitable outcome is reduced productivity. As with the territory of nation-states, this idiom was predicated on the delimitation of a bounded space in-and-out of which elements travel: not just the nutrients,nft system but actants that carry them or dis/enable their action such as water, insects, weeds, and the crops themselves. Much like in customs and immigration, this movement had to be registered, quantified and controlled . As represented schematically in the picture below, this bounded space was geometrically delimited and internally organized according to the dispositif: size and form of the overall area , number and arrangement of internal sub-divisions , distance between blocks , number of lines in each sub-block , number of plants per line . Import of nutrients through inorganic fertilizers focused on primary minerals indispensible to plant development. In the entire parcel, these were typically brought in along the lines of the complexe coton distributed in the milieu paysan: the elementary tryad NPK plus sulphur and borum, followed by a second dose of nitrogen through urea. Part of these nutrients left the parcel in the form of harvest – along with cotton bolls, maize ears, or sorghum heads. The rest of the biomass was measured by cutting out from the soil and weighing a square meter sample; it was then left on the fields, to be reabsorbed and made available for the next season’s crops.

Measured and registered every day on a black board in a common area in the research institute, rainfall was an uncontrolled variable – in fact, the only significant one – that the project fields fully shared with peasant farms. Rains commanded the opening of the season in both sites, since only after a first significant stint of rain has fallen it is possible to sow. In the project parcels, however, sowing did not always occur simultaneously with peasant farms: at points, cotton and cover crop seeds did not arrive from Brazil in time due to the ever-present bureaucratic hurdles discussed in the previous chapter. This did not compromise the realization of the experiments, but recombined the dispositif in terms of a sowing date different from the one practiced in peasant land. Unplanned constraints could be turned into useful trials, since the sowing date to be recommended to farmers was itself one of the problems local researchers had been struggling with, given the growing unpredictability of rain patterns in the region. Towards the end of Phase I, this date was purposefully anticipated in order to demonstrate how no-till dispensed with waiting for a significant stint of rain in order to be able to till and then sow. In testing how the new technologies responded to local rainfall, researchers were gradually adjusting the tests so that an appropriate combination of variables – seed varieties, sowing date and depth, spacing, combinations of crops – would make up as best as possible for the irregular rain patterns found in the West Africa savannahs. Insects were another kind of external actant that would come and go freely. The entomologists’ protocol involved observing and comparing the damage inflicted on the different cotton varieties according to two treatments: spraying on the calendar, as recommended to the milieu paysan, and no spraying. Like their fellow agronomists, the work of entomologists was ultimately concerned with controlling the flow of nutrients. But more than the foreign trade idiom found in the soils component, or the kinship framing typical of breeding science, the entomologists’ task was most often conveyed according to a militaristic language of warfare: to “defend” crops from “natural enemies” through different “fight methods” . It basically involved protecting the crops from external threat: to make sure their vitalities were not significantly exported, or diverted away from the cotton plants, by insects and other undesirable actants such as viruses, bacteria, or fungi. Other such entities – the nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria, or insects that could act as natural enemies in biological control – were being recruited in the opposite direction: into the experimental effort. Therefore, whether these and other actants would be allies or enemies, depended on their relation with the target plants and on their effects in the economy of vitalities configured by the experiments. Plants other than the main crops such as weeds were discouraged or removed, while cooperative species such as cover crops were nurtured in a controlled manner. Even water and the mineral nutrients themselves could turn from friend to foe, if present in excess: they could cause, for instance, runoff or toxicity. In all cases, the ultimate parameter was their effects on crop productivity. Besides mediating transactions with the surrounding environment, internally to the parcel the dispositif organized a whole domestic economy of nutrients and vitalities. Spatialization prescriptions based on statistic models oriented how plants were supposed to be distributed in the area, linearly organized by forced settlement and displacement schemes of intercropping and alternate sowing. Spatialization was not just horizontal; researchers also looked at the plot according to a vertical axis where cotton and the other crops stood between two domains, one subterranean and one above the ground. The plants mediated much of the traffic between them, and were themselves regarded as segmented in terms of subterranean and aerial parts . For no-till, as remarked, what happened under the ground was as much or more important as what happened above it: soil was the ultimate repository of nutrients responsible for bringing about higher yields. A chief concern was to make sure that fertilizers were effectively captured by the roots and utilized by the rest of the plant so that they would not be “wasted” . Soil was itself regarded as a segmented domain: mineral elements accumulate and move differently across various its strata; while some tend to stay in place where it is applied, others are more mobile and tend to sink into greater depths.