Farmers and worker advocates argued over the details of a revised AgJOBS program that included earned legalization throughout 2000, with farmers wanting more days of farm work to qualify for eventual immigrant status, and worker advocates fewer days. After the November 2000 elections, some worker advocates, noting that both U.S. President Bush and Mexican President Fox favored a new guest worker program, agreed to a compromise that won the endorsement of the United Farm Workers and the National Council of Agricultural Employers. Under this December 2000 compromise, unauthorized workers who did at least 100 days of farm work in the preceding 18 months could qualify for temporary legal status, and they could convert this temporary legal status into an immigrant status if they did at least 360 days of farm work in the next six years. The compromise included freezing the minimum wage that had to be paid to foreign workers for several years and giving farmers the option of providing a housing allowance rather than housing to workers. The AgJOBS compromise came close to Congressional approval in December 2000, but was blocked by those opposed to any type of amnesty for unauthorized foreigners. The atmosphere changed in 2001, especially after U.S. President Bush and Mexican President Fox met in Mexico in February 2001 and agreed to establish a migration working group that was charged with creating “an orderly framework for [Mexico-U.S.] migration that ensures humane treatment [and] legal security, and dignifies labor conditions.” Senator Phil Gramm became the leading proponent of the guest worker-only approach, favoring a program that would permit unauthorized Mexicans already in the U.S. to obtain seasonal or year-round work permits: seasonal workers could return to the U.S. indefinitely,macetas de plástico and year-round workers could remain in the U.S. three years, and then they would have to stay in Mexico at least one year before returning legally. U.S. employers and guest workers would pay social security taxes to a trust fund that would reimburse U.S. hospitals that provided emergency medical care for injured guest workers; the balance of the social security taxes paid would be placed in individual IRA-type accounts that workers could receive when they surrendered their work permits to U.S. consulates in Mexico.
Gramm’s proposal covers Mexicans employed in all U.S. industries, but does not include a path to immigrant status. The other extreme is legalization. Under a plan embraced by the AFL-CIO and many church and ethnic groups, unauthorized foreigners in the U.S. from any country, and employed in any industry, could become immigrants, and then sponsor their families for admission. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez introduced a bill that would grant immigrant status to all persons who were in the U.S. at least five years, and temporary legal status to those in the U.S. less than five years. When unauthorized foreigners reach the five-year U.S. residence mark, they could apply to convert their temporary status to an immigrant status.Only unauthorized foreigners who have worked in the U.S. would be eligible, and they must continue working to maintain their temporary legal status and to eventually become immigrants. Earned legalization appeals to those who associate immigration with work in the U.S., and allows Mexican President Fox to keep his promise of improving conditions for the migrants he calls “heroes” for working in the U.S. and sending remittances to Mexico. A spokesperson said President Bush supports “a new temporary-worker program that would allow for some of the [unauthorized] workers to achieve permanent residency status over a period of time.” In 2003, it appears that Democrats, unions and immigrant rights groups will settle for earned legalization, but they oppose new temporary worker programs, while Republicans and most employers favor new temporary worker programs, but oppose an easy transition to legal immigrant status.Many human activities have had a significant effect on the environments in which they take place, and agriculture is no exception. California’s natural waterways have been greatly modified to enable conveyance of water to its farmlands as well as its cities, and to provide facilities for flood control, navigation, and hydroelectric power generation. Most of the natural wetlands in the state have been drained and transformed into fertile, highly productive agricultural land. Farmers have introduced many new species of plants and animals to California and in the process changed many of its ecosystems. While modifications of California’s environment have generated immense good, they have also increasingly become a cause of concern.
Over the last half-century many policies and regulations have been introduced to control some of the effects that California agriculture has had on its environment.Two main types of policy intervention have been made. First, numerous policies have sought to control agricultural externalities. These center on issues such as reducing groundwater contamination from animal waste; worker safety, environmental contamination, and food safety problems associated with pesticide use; water-logging problems associated with excessive irrigation and lack of drainage; air pollution from agricultural waste burning such as rice, and earth mining activities; and odor pollution associated with livestock. A second set of policies has specifically attempted to preserve ecosystems and species. These policies identify and protect the environmental amenities that may be threatened or damaged by agricultural activities. Environmental policies affecting California agriculture have continually evolved over the last fifty years. The evolution has been affected by changes in technology as well as by changes in the political environment and public beliefs and preferences. For example, new knowledge about the impact of agricultural chemicals on human health and the environment, the discovery of new methods of pest control, and the introduction of new monitoring or pollution-detecting strategies have led to changes in environmental laws and regulations affecting agriculture. Similarly, changes in the relative political power of environmental groups or various farm groups and/or changes in public perception and concern about certain environmental issues have led to changes in regulations. Farming in California is subject to policy-making and regulation by a wide variety of agencies. In addition to traditional agencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they include other federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; state agencies such as the California Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Department of Public Health, State Air Quality Control Board, and State Water Quality Control Board; and county and municipal agencies. These many agencies that control various aspects of California’s environment have operated under a complex set of policies that are not necessarily consistent and are subject to modification. The complexity and the changing nature of environmental policies in California have provided an ample background for research in agricultural and environmental economics. Agricultural economists have assessed the impacts of various policy proposals, attempted to provide an economic rationale for proposed policies, and introduced proposals for policy reform and modification. Some of this research may have affected the existing policies and regulations in California; some has provided general background knowledge for the body of literature in agricultural and environmental economics. A survey of the environmental policies affecting California agriculture identifies some of the difficulties that policy makers are faced with in their attempts to establish environmental regulations. Problems with detecting and monitoring agricultural pollutants have sometimes led to overly strict policing of agricultural activities that are likely to cause environmental side effects. For example,cultivo del frambueso a chemical may be banned or its use restricted even though policy makers may be concerned only with the environmental side effects of some of its residue. Similarly, animal production in a certain area may be restricted or limited even though the only local concern may be with the waste that the animals are producing. The evolution of new technologies will likely help to develop policy measures that will relate more to specific environmental side effects rather than to the general related activities . Establishment of straightforward and efficient policies is influenced by difficulties in measuring the impacts of externalities. The assessment of health risk effects and environmental side effects associated with pesticide use, for instance, is subject to much uncertainty. These uncertainties have contributed to the constant debates and controversies regarding environmental regulation affecting agriculture. One of the challenges facing the scientific community is to provide data to reduce such uncertainties. As Baumol and Oates have suggested, uncertainty regarding outcomes has led to policies that aim to reach a target level of environmental quality based mainly on biological or ecological criteria, even in instances where balancing marginal benefits with marginal costs might be more appropriate. Another practical difficulty in determining environmental quality is its multi-dimensionality. The same chemical can cause several types of environmental problems—worker safety, food safety, groundwater contamination, or damage to wildlife. The benefits of chemicals, as well as the magnitude of their environmental side effects, can vary significantly according to crop and location. The way a chemical is applied can alter its impact on the environment; a chemical sprayed from an airplane is likely to generate more environmental side effects than one applied by low-pressure, precise-application techniques. Thus the social costs associated with the use of certain chemicals may vary significantly across locations and applications, and policies such as uniform taxation or direct regulation of agricultural chemical use may be economically inefficient in many situations. Efficient regulation of the environmental side effects of agriculture may call for policies that vary by location and agricultural activity, and the need for flexibility may also provide a challenge in terms of design and implementation. Much of the economic research on the environmental regulation of agriculture has simply estimated the economic impacts of proposed regulation. However, some research has also suggested improvements in policy design and demonstrated how changes in policy instruments might result in attaining environmental objectives at much lower economic costs. This chapter discusses some of the major environmental issues arising from California agriculture, and describes the conclusions of recent economic research that has analyzed the efficacy of various approaches to handling these issues. The diversity of problems and policy issues is illustrated here through discussion of control of animal wastes, pest control and the regulation of pesticides, endangered species protection, climate change, and the growing role of agricultural land as a source of recreational amenities.California is the United States’ major dairy producer, and is home to approximately one-sixth of the nation’s dairy cow population. These 1.64 million cows account for over one-fifth of all milk produced in the United States . Although the United States milk cow inventory decreased by approximately 130,000 head between 1997 and 2001, the number of milk cows in California increased by 14 percent during this time. Milk production per cow has also increased by approximately five percent during the same period . In short, California dairy production has been increasing both in scale and efficiency in recent years. Until recently, the dairy industry in California had been closely concentrated near the larger population centers in Los Angeles and Northern California. The largest dairy-producing region in the state had been the Chino region near Riverside, not far from Los Angeles. These patterns were in accordance with the models of agricultural land use first developed by Johann von Thünen almost 200 years ago. Von Thünen modeled the allocation of land uses around a city as a function of the economic return, or “rent” to the land, which in turn is a function of transportation costs. In the city’s core, urban uses such as residences and industry will determine the highest value of the land. Von Thünen hypothesized that dairying and other intensive farming industries would be located immediately outside of the urban core, because they had the highest transportation costs, both in absolute terms and in terms of the losses that would be suffered by any delays in getting easily spoiled products to market. Less intensive industries such as forestry, extensive field crops, and ranching would be located further outside of the central city. The allocation of land predicted by von Thünen’s model does not take environmental externalities into account, however. Recent studies suggest that when the cost of environmental quality is taken into account, then the location of various activities have to balance transportation and pollution costs . Thus, pollution-intensive industries either have to reduce their pollution or relocate farther away from the city.