According to the California League of Conservation Voters , “Because agriculture has gone unregulated for so long as a source of air pollution while other sectors have been subject to air quality rules, there exist many viable opportunities to reduce air pollution from agricultural sources.” Thus, ending the exemption not only helps avert national sanctions, but will help the state clean the air . This mirrors Florez’s stated intent in offering the bill in the first place. According to Pollard , “Florez said he introduced [SB 700] because agriculture is a major contributor to air pollution that is related to epidemic levels of asthma in children and other health problems in the Central Valley.” In an attempt to put a “face” on the victims, Florez had residents from across the valley testify on behalf of SB 700. As reported by Grossi in the Fresno Bee , “Caleb Schneider, 16, of Hanford, said he has asthma, and he wants to see every effort made to clean the air. ‘When you can’t breathe’, he said, ‘nothing else matters.’” This narrative depicts the agriculture industry as a villain deserving of public policy burdens. The numbers and comparisons define the level of the burden. Since the contribution of the agriculture industry is “significant,” their responsibility in the cleanup should be proportionate. The proposed solution will make agricultural sources a part of the regulatory process just like every other industry in the California. For supporters of SB 700, this creates a sense of equity in the treatment of all sources of pollution. While this harkens back to the complex cause narrative, there is no doubt that supporters have emphasized the role of agricultural sources in the air pollution, allowing others to fade into the background. There is a strategically constructed link between the agricultural sources and the exemption . This adds to the somewhat negative construction of the agriculture industry. There is also some concern about the arbitrary and capricious nature of the regulatory structure of SB 700.
Many in agriculture do not see themselves as being like other industries. According to Roger Isom,vertical hydroponic garden vice president of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association, “It’s not like ag is an industrial source that’s going day after day. It’s seasonal. The question is how can we do our share and not be put out of business” . An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle makes the case for differential treatment, “The farmers have a decent case for special consideration. A range of 200 crops call for different farming methods, making rule-making tricky. In a struggling economy, new costs should be minimized. As always, water, land prices and import figure, too” . The last component of this narrative is the potential consequences of imposing an unfair and overly broad regulatory approach on agriculture. Opponents of SB 700 argue the agricultural community will not be able to “absorb the additional operation costs resulting from new regulatory fees imposed by LADs, given the international competition in the marketplace for most agricultural operations” . While increased costs and decreasing competitive advantage will plague the industry, there will also be impacts felt at the level of individual small farms. According to state Senator Chuck Poochigian , “They are not corporate magnates. They are ordinary people trying to make a living. They are losing their farms. They are making no money at all in some cases. . . . [The bill] punishingly exceeds federal regulations” . This narrative uses very different language than the previous one . Here the agriculture industry is more often referred to as farmers, growers, ranchers, and dairymen. This “puts a face” on the seemingly faceless, corporate agriculture industry. It is these individuals that face the unfair and overreaching regulations of SB 700.
There is also a different interpretation of the multi-causal narrative. Instead of emphasizing the contributions of agriculture, all of the other sources are placed front and center. This is especially true of passenger vehicles and sprawling development. It is simply inequitable to single-out agriculture for regulation when this will result in increased costs with little or no improvement in air quality. It is only by using a modest approach to address California’s air exemption that this pain can be avoided. Hence, it is the regulatory approach of SB 700 that is the problem in this narrative, not air pollution in the valley. The narratives, as captured by the NPF, have a strong link to the theories of policy design discussed by Schneider and Ingram.Both the portrayal of characters and proposed policy solutions fit with the social construction of target populations and their hypothesized links to elements of policy design. This allows the use of these narratives to hypothesize about what kind of policy tools, agents, and implementation structures will be contained in SB 700. Both the “complex-cause” and “agriculture as significant contributor” provide a characterization or social construction of agriculture as villain in the narrative of causing pollution harmful to the health of citizens. While the “complex cause” narrative has many more villains, “agriculture as significant contributor” has only one and tells a damning tale of intentional causation. Thus, one should expect to see policy design elements used on negatively constructed target populations. The “agriculture as victim” narrative portrays agricultural interests in a much different light. This narrative shows agriculture as the victim of punitive and overly broad attempts to regulate their activities. It provides a more positive construction of this target population. So, given this portrayal, we should expect to see policy designs reflective of a positively constructed target population. All of these narratives coexist with one another in the larger debate surrounding air quality policy and SB 700. Agriculture and its interests are characterized as both villain and victim in the policy discourse.
Different policy solutions are linked to these different characterizations. These varying constructions as agriculture result in seemingly contradictory elements of policy design that both benefit and burden the agriculture industry. The choice of policy tools reflects the social constructions policymakers have used to construct target populations. These policy tools direct the treatment of both targets and agents . Schneider and Ingram argue that different types of policy tools contain different behavioral assumptions about the group being targeted by the policy. Thus, just as the narratives suggest, we should expect to see a mix of policy tools in SB 700 that seek to force the agriculture industry to comply; and those that seek to aid them in achieving compliance. The structure of the regulatory framework itself is based on the premise that the agricultural industry is a significant contributor and will not voluntarily comply. All agricultural sources are required to meet the most stringent technology standards , as well as the best available control measures for mitigation purposes. The required standards reflect what Schneider and Ingram term an authority tool. The expectation is that industry will obey the requirements. A locally administered permit system is another part of the regulatory structure. Agricultural sources emitting 50% or more of major source emission levels for PM-10 and ozone are required to pay a fee to operate or construct facilities. According to Schneider and Ingram , “User fees, rates, and charges also are used as incentives, but these do not carry as much positive valence as inducements.Charges can also be distinguished from sanctions in that they do not intend to convey social disapproval of an activity.” Thus, the regulatory structure itself reflects a somewhat negative to ambivalent tone concerning the agriculture industry. There are a host of other policy tools that will aid agricultural sources in their attempts to comply with the new regulatory framework. These tools echo themes from the agriculture as victim narrative. The first of these is the information clearinghouse on mitigation strategies. This fits the description of a capacity-building tool . These kinds of tools are supposed to “enlighten, remove impediments, and empower action by the target group or agency itself” . The agriculture industry is portrayed as a group that simply needs to learn about the best mitigation strategies available. This suggests a more positive social construction of the agriculture industry. It is not a question of willful neglect, but one of needed education.Specifically, financial institutions that provide service to agricultural interests will be granted access to additional monies in order to make it easier to provide loans to fund air pollution control measures. This inducement implies “respect for the target population and portray[s] a positive valence of the behavior that is desired” . Agriculture will receive financial resources to aid compliance with the new rules developed under SB 700’s regulatory framework. This suggests a positive tool for a positively constructed target group. The nature of the relationship between agent and target reflects themes of the agriculture as victim narrative. The clearest illustration of this relationship lies in the rule-making process for SB 700 . The policy tools utilized here are learning tools. This approach coincides with the “consensus-building” or “support-building” implementation structure . This design is “intended to provide a forum for participation and discussion that will enable lower-level agents or target populations to determine what should be done. Statutes usually allocate discretion to lower-level agents or even target populations” . This implementation structure sets the stage for the negotiation of both PM-10 and ozone rules developed by the SJVAPCD.
Although a large literature describes how recessions affect non-agricultural labor markets, few studies examine the effects of recessions in the seasonal agricultural labor market.1 We examine how the last three recessions affected hourly earnings, the probability of receiving a bonus,vertical home farming and weekly hours in agricultural labor market. We compare those results to those in three non-agricultural labor markets that rely on immigrants. We empirically test five hypotheses. First, we expect seasonal agricultural workers’ earnings to rise during major recessions. Because the income elasticities of demand for seasonal agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables are relatively inelastic, recessions cause a small, possibly negligible leftward shift of the labor demand curve in seasonal agriculture. In contrast, a recession’s may cause a significant leftward shift of the labor supply curve. Roughly half of hired, seasonal agricultural workers are undocumented.2 The Great Recession significantly reduced the number of new, undocumented immigrants entering the United States , causing a substantial leftward shift of the agricultural labor supply curve.3 Given a substantial leftward shift of the supply curve and only a minimal shift of the demand curve, agricultural workers’ earnings rise. Second, while we hypothesize that hourly earnings and the probability of receiving a bonus rose during the Great Recession, 2008–2009, we expect these earnings measures to rise by less or possibly fall in the earlier, relatively minor 1990–1991 and 2001 recessions. The Great Recession caused much larger decreases in new immigrant labor supply than in these earlier recessions . Third, we expect recessions to affect undocumented workers differently than documented workers because their labor markets are partially segmented. Evidence that these markets are partially segmented comes from earlier studies that show that, compared to documented workers, undocumented workers are more likely to be employed by farm labor contractors as opposed to farmers, and because their pay differs . Fourth, we expect weekly hours of employed agricultural workers to increase to compensate for the reduced flow of new immigrants during major recessions. Fifth, we expect recessions to have larger earnings effects in agricultural labor markets than in construction, hotel, and restaurant labor markets. These non-agricultural labor markets are more likely to have sticky wages due to union and other contracts and minimum wage laws. The first section discusses how recessions affect the supply curve of agricultural labor. The next section describes our two data sets. The third section presents our empirical results. The final section discusses our results and draws conclusions.In contrast, during a major recession, fewer undocumented immigrants enter the United States from Mexico and other countries. Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera reported a large drop in the number of undocumented immigrants during the Great Recession relative to the recovery years afterward and to preceding years, which include milder recessions. They estimated that the number of undocumented immigrants rose monotonically from only 3.5 million in 1990 until it peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. However, the number of immigrants fell to 11.3 million by 2009 during the Great Recession. In contrast, they found that the supply of immigrant labor rose during relatively mild 2001 recession.These results are consistent with U.S. border patrol reports from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics.