Author: naturehydro

The Salinas River sampling site has been used as a least-impacted reference site in previous toxicity studies and is generally classified as non-toxic, based on acute exposure studies. This increase in potency after a rain event is consistent with an influx of pesticides, and the chemical analyses show higher levels of several pesticides of concern in November at all three sites . Climate change is altering rainfall patterns in many areas of the world and understanding how these changes may impact sensitive aquatic systems is crucial for monitoring water quality. Surface water exposure caused significant changes in D. magna swimming behavior both before and after a first flush event, even at low concentrations. In September, prior tofirst flush, we detected strong dose-response patterns in total distance moved and log-linear dose response in photomotor response. Daphnia magna exposed to all concentrations of surface water in September increased their movement in response to light stimulus, while control groups reduced their activity. This may have implications for survival in natural populations. Individuals who cannot respond to predator cues, or that show impaired and/or altered responses, may have an increased risk of predation. It is important to note that changes in swimming behavior in organisms exposed to water samples from Alisal Creek in September may have been partially capturing a lethal response. This treatment group had significant mortality in all exposure concentrations , so it is possible these individuals were exhibiting not only sublethal,planting blueberries in pots but also delayed lethal toxic responses. Future studies should consider including recovery periods in their experimental design and analyses to parse out whether behavioral impacts are reversable, indicative of long-term effects, or even subsequent mortality.

Due to the high mortality observed for Quail Creek in September, we were unable to make any behavioral comparisons. It is notable that the level of methomyl detected at this site was greater than three times the EPA chronic fish exposure level, and it is likely that methomyl represents a main driver of the toxicity for this site. It is possible that additional contaminants are present at this site, which were not included in our analysis. Many pharmaceuticals are known to cause hyperactivity and have been detected in wastewater at other sites in California. Taken together, these findings illustrate the importance of conducting sublethal assessments to link physiological responses to chemical monitoring data. After the first flush , we measured hypoactivity for all sites during at least one light condition, in at least one concentration. Many of the pesticides we detected in surface water samples are known to reduce the swimming speed and distance of D. magna at concentrations relevant to those detected in our samples. We detected changes to the photomotor responses of D. magna exposed to low concentrations of surface water from all three sites when compared with controls, demonstrating biologically relevant impacts. Despite low mortality observed in the Salinas River site during both testing dates, we detected altered behavior even at the highest dilution of 6% ambient water in November. Hypoactivity and altered photomotor responses may reduce the capacity of D. magna to follow normal behaviors, such as patterns of diel vertical migration and horizontal distribution, thus increasing predation risk and reducing overall fitness. We measured significant changes in the swimming behavior of D. magna after acute exposures to CHL and IMI in single and binary chemical exposures, and as components of agricultural surface waters both before and after a first flush event.

Surface waters contained complex mixtures including CHL and IMI, but also other pesticides of concern including neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, carbamates, and organophosphates. We determined that swimming behaviors of D. magna are sensitive endpoints for the sublethal assessments of the tested pesticides, and for surface water exposures. We detected chemical-specific changes in D. magna swimming behavior for both CHL and IMI exposures. Imidacloprid exposure at environmentally relevant concentrations caused hypoactivity for both concentrations tested, across both dark and light conditions, following a dose-response pattern. The increase in activity over the light period represents a return to baseline following a change in light conditions. Our results are consistent with previous findings: IMI negatively impacts nerve conduction and alters swimming behavior in D. magna and is known to inhibit acetylcholinesterase . Past research has shown AChE inhibition is linked to changes in swimming response, and that a 50% decrease in AChE activity can cause enough change in swimming behavior in D. magna to be described as toxic . In a recent study examining the effects of IMI on the amphipod Gammarus fossarum, IMI stimulated locomotor activity at low exposure concentrations and inhibited activity at higher concentrations . Daphnia magna are particularly tolerant to neonicotinoids, illustrating the potential for impacts in other more sensitive organisms known to inhabit IMI-polluted waterways. We detected significant hypoactivity in individuals exposed to CHL under dark conditions. This is consistent with previous studies on D. magna demonstrating that CHL is a known neurotoxicant for this species, causing changes in muscle contraction via interaction with the ryanodine receptor. Low levels of CHL exposure have been shown to produce dose-dependent inhibition of swimming, and decreased responses to light stimulation in a recent study. Another recent study examining effects of single chemical exposure to CHL and IMI, among other chemicals, at low concentrations had effects on total distance moved of D. magna.

We observed hypoactivity under dark conditions and hyperactivity under light conditions for D. magna after exposure to binary mixtures of CHL and IMI. Hyperactivity could suggest a possible disruption of signal transmission in the vision or nervous systems and has been observed for IMI exposures at low exposure levels in other studies. The hyperactivity observed in the low IMI exposure group was notable in that the response was inverse from both single chemical exposures performed at the same concentrations, potentially indicative of an antagonistic response. Our finding is partially consistent with Hussain et al.; however, where investigators also found hyperactivity under light conditions but no significance under dark conditions. It is relevant to note that our experimental design differed from that of Hussain et al. , who used one exposure vessel containing 50 Daphnids per treatment group, whereas we used fewer Daphnia per exposure vessel, with six exposure vessels per treatment. For future studies, increased replication could improve the ability to determine whether small changes in total distance moved could also be significant. Considering the significance of our other treatments and endpoints, and that our replication exceeded many previously published studies, we propose that our experimental design was sufficient to detect many sublethal effects . Sublethal impacts can result in ecologically relevant effects on individual fitness, populations, and communities. In pesticide-contaminated aquatic environments, overall invertebrate biomass and diversity are reduced as sensitive individuals and species decline . With the increasing number of pesticides being detected in waterways worldwide,blackberries in containers rapid and standardized testing approaches are urgently needed. For many species and chemicals of interest, biochemical reactions can visually manifest via behavioral changes, making behavior a highly integrative and informative endpoint for exposure. Meta-analysis of behavior in comparison to other toxicological endpoints such as development, lethality, and reproduction, showed that behavioral analyses are advantageous to assess the effects of environmental chemicals due to their relative speed and sensitivity. Behavioral assays possess great potential as rapid, high throughput monitoring tools. The world now seems prepared to seriously consider agricultural trade liberalization and domestic food and farm policy reform. The economic summits of the major western countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , the World Bank, the International MOnetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , and numerous other international agencies now recognize the necessity of multilateral and phased liberalization. In other words, a dramatic reduction in protection for agriculture throughout the world would appear to be the right answer. Simple economic analysis has demonstrated that, in a world in which pure competition maximizes net economic payoff, the deadweight losses resulting from current policy interventions in food and agriculture are enormous.

Unfortunately, we do not live in such a world: Only second-best outcomes are possible, governments do not maximize social welfare, pure non–distortionary–that is, decoupled– transfers do not exist, political and economic markets are not separable, and policies for other sectors–especially general macroeconomic policies–are not perfectly designed and implemented. Simply put, there are many complications in evaluating agricultural and food policy reform. This paper will examine one in particular–the macroeconomic risk nations face in the implementation of food and agricultural policy reform. In all of the recent studies of agricultural trade liberalization and agricultural policy reform, little if any attention has been paid to the macroeconomic environment that might exist during the implementation phase of various proposals. This is indeed surprising because the origins of many farm policies can be traced directly to the macroeconomic environment. Moreover~ the dynamic adjustment paths that would evolve following the implementation of particular reform proposals would be heavily dependent upon macroeconomic conditions~ such as the level of real interest rates and exchange rates~ the nature of monetary and fiscal policies–whether expansionary or deflationary– and so on. This paper focuses on four major themes. First~ macroeconomic and international linkages are significant and must be recognized in any framework for policy design and reform. Second~ the intercountry linkages of both agricultural and macroeconomic policies are especially important for less-developed countries . Third~ political economic markets for policy reform exist and governments throughout the world have an opportunity to supply reform through the reduction of transaction costs. Transaction costs can be reduced through alternative compensation schemes which are motivated by behavioral analysis of political economic markets. And fourth, macroeconomic and international linkages are a major component in the design of flexible agricultural policies that can respond to changing conditions. These themes·are used to examine agricultural policy reform and trade liberalization in the current environment.Throughout much of the developed world~ macro policies in the two decades following World War II afforded a unique period of macroeconomic stability. As a result~ concern regarding the macroeconomic linkages with food and agricultural systems largely disappeared. In the early 1970s with the major changes in monetary polices and central bank behavior, macroeconomic linkages were once again recognized as prime factors complicating agriculture and food policy. The roller coaster ride that agriculture has experienced over the last two decades has been significantly influenced by macro and international linkages . Recent history stands in sharp contrast to the basic stability of the 1950s and 1960s. This roller coaster is not unprecedented. For example, the period 1900 through 1915 is surprisingly similar to the 1970s, and the late 1920s through 1930s have some of the same characteristics of the 1980s. A longer historical perspective demonstrates that macroeconomic disturbances and their links to agricultural sectors throughout the world were central to the emergence of direct governmental intervention in food and agricultural systems. For example, in the case of OECO countries, there have been abrupt increases in governmental intervention during periods of macroeconomic contractions accompanying downward movements in agricultural prices. The first major wave of increasing intervention.in agriculture occurred during the last quarter of the 19th Century, following several decades of trade liberalization. Prior to this, agricultural trade had expanded dramatically due to the removal of tariffs and import quotas and to the increasing availability of low price grain from the United States and Europe. The protectionism following this trade expansionary period was motivated by what was then referred to as Europe’s great depression.Policy responses varied across countries. England alone maintained a staunch free trade position while Germany, France, and Italy restored agricultural tariffs from the mid-1880s onward. In Denmark and the Netherlands, falling grain prices encouraged the expansion of livestock activities. In the the United States, despite expanding grain exports, farmers did not ignore depressed prices. The period from 1873 to 1896 witnessed increasing levels of farmer mobilization through the Grange and populace movements. Farmer demands were wide ranging, but a major objective was a change in banking policy to promote inflationary expansion of money supplies. Lobbying efforts to this end continued into the Twentieth Century and were partially responsible for the institutional changes that created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the federal land banks in 1916. The U. S. government’s massive intervention in agriculture in the 1930s followed a farm crisis that had its origins in the macroeconomic adjustments after World War I.

California has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. As a sector, agriculture is responsible for 8% of state emissions. Approximately two-thirds of that is from livestock production ; 20% from fertilizer use and soil management associated with crop production; and 13% from fuel use associated with agricultural activities . California plays an essential role in the nutritional quality of our national food system, accounting for, by value, roughly two-thirds of U.S. fruit and nut production, half of U.S. vegetable production and 20% of U.S. dairy production. Assembly Bill 32, California’s primary climate policy law, adopted in 2006, has spurred research into practices and technologies that could assist in reducing emissions and sequestering carbon. Here we report on more than 50 California-based studies prompted by this landmark legislation. We note that the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission and California Department of Water Resources have been critical to funding much of the science reviewed here. This article grew out of conversations with state agencies concerning the need for a review of the current evidence base to inform emissions-reduction modeling and revisions to the state Climate Change Scoping Plan , which specifies net emissions reduction targets for each major sector of the California economy . It is important to note that the Scoping Plan states that work will continue through 2017 to estimate the range of potential sequestration benefits from natural and working lands . With over 76,000 farm and ranch operations in California, covering about 30 million acres , there are no one size fits all solutions. But as we outline below,raspberry container there are numerous opportunities to both reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon across diverse agricultural operations — small to large, organic and conventional, crop and livestock.

Perhaps most importantly, many of these practices have cobenefits for water conservation, restoration and conservation of natural lands, or farm economics. Since 1984, farming and grazing lands have been converted to urban development at an average rate of 40,000 acres per year . At this rate, and considering the higher rate of emissions from urban versus agricultural land, slowing agricultural land conversion represents one of the largest opportunities for agriculture to contribute to California’s climate plan. Research from one county estimates that GHG emissions associated with urban landscapes are up to 70 times greater per acre than those from irrigated farmland when human emissions related to transportation, electricity, natural gas, and water are accounted for . With continued population growth in the state, policies that promote more energy efficient patterns of urban development are critical to meeting climate targets and preserving irreplaceable farmland. Models show that coupling such urban development policies with farmland conservation could reduce transportation and building related emissions from new residential development by 50% by 2050 under a low-emissions scenario . With 80% of California’s most productive rangeland privately owned, losses are projected at 750,000 acres by 2040 . Conversion of rangeland to urban uses may increase GHG emissions up to 100-fold depending on how the rangeland is managed, and conversion to irrigated agriculture may lead to increases of up to 2.5-fold . Land-use-related policies to reduce GHG emissions in California are still at an early stage. Several new incentive programs warrant future research to optimize their impact. These include the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program , for purchase of conservation easements on farmland at risk of suburban sprawl development; the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program , supporting development of affordable housing within existing urban areas; and the Transformative Climate Communities Program , slated to provide GHG-reducing planning grants to disadvantaged communities beginning in 2017. Together with legislation requiring a regional Sustainable Community Strategy, these can create a land use planning framework in California to preserve farmland, reduce GHG emissions, and achieve other co-benefits such as improved quality of life, public health and social equity.

Soils are complex biological systems that provide ecosystem services and can be managed to store carbon, reduce emissions and provide environmental and economic co-benefits. The diversity of California agriculture requires different management strategies to mitigate GHG emissions or sequester carbon. Soil GHG emissions increase with soil moisture and nutrient availability. Significant reductions in GHG emissions can be achieved by shifting management practices to more efficient irrigation and fertigation systems such as micro-irrigation and subsurface drip. A comparison of subsurface drip versus furrow irrigation showed decreased GHG emissions in the former . While cover crops often increase GHG emissions, integrating more efficient irrigation with cover crop practices decreased nitrous oxide emissions two- to three-fold in California processing tomatoes . In semi-arid regions such as California, the long term implementation of no-till practices reduced emissions by 14% to 34%, but only after 10 years of continuous management. Under shorter time horizons, emissions increased by up to 38% . Socioeconomic and biophysical limitations unique to California have led to low no-till adoption rates in California of roughly 2% . Improved nitrogen management provides a high potential for reductions in emissions, including emissions associated with applied fertilizer as well as emissions related to the production and transport of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer . N2O emissions respond linearly to fertilizer application in lettuce, tomato, wine grape and wheat systems in California . However, once fertilizer rate exceeds crop demand, emissions increase at a logarithmic rate . Fertilizer source has been broadly shown to influence N2O emissions . Only a few California studies compare synthetic fertilizer sources. One shows that ammonium sulfate reduced N2O emissions approximately 0.24 to 2.2 kg N per acre compared to aqua ammonium . Another study of comparing fertilizer sources found emissions reductions of up to 34% ; however, the results were not statistically significant. Recently, California research has shown that the use of manure and green waste fertilizers can increase emissions when applied to the soil surface , particularly if their use is not timed to crop demand . Fertilizer source and timing, along with the use of nitrification inhibitors, are key areas for future research in the California context. Management practices have the potential to increase total soil carbon, but the magnitude and persistence of sequestration is dependent on inputs and time. In grasslands, pilot studies of carbon sequestration associated with compost application are being conducted to validate early findings throughout the state . For cultivated systems, in two long-term projects at UC Davis, soil carbon increased 1.4 and 2.3 tons per acre in the top 12 inches of soil over 10 years in cover cropped and organically managed soil, respectively . In an ongoing experiment at the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources West Side Research and Extension Center, no-till combined with cover cropping and standard agronomic practice in a tomato-cotton rotation system has increased soil carbon 5.3 tons per acre over 15 years compared to the standard tillage, no cover crop treatment .

In these two long-term studies,growing raspberries in container the soil carbon increase occurred between 5 and 10 years. However, when cover cropping and compost inputs were ceased at the first site , it led to a rapid loss of soil carbon. This shows that soil carbon sequestration is highly dependent on annual carbon inputs and if management changes, soil carbon is prone to return to the atmosphere. Given the reality of inconsistent management, rates of soil carbon sequestration that can be expected in row crop systems practice are perhaps 10% of the values seen in these long-term research trials, namely in the range of 0.014 to 0.03 tons per acre per year . If soil carbon sequestration and storage are priorities, management plans and incentive structures should account for the wide variability of California soils and the need for consistent management over time. While any single soil and nutrient management practice may have limited impact on GHG emissions, many have well-documented co-benefits, including reductions in erosion, improved air quality , reduced farm machinery fossil fuel use , reduced nitrogen leaching , enhanced water infiltration and reduced soil water evaporation , and increased carbon stocks below the root zone to improve carbon sequestration .Integrated or diversified farming systems are multipurpose operations that may produce several commodities and utilize renewable resources. Examples include integrated crop and livestock systems; organic production; orchard and annual crop intercropping; use of perennial, salt-tolerant grasses irrigated with saline drainage water on otherwise marginal land; and pastures improved by seeding beneficial plants such as legumes. Through reliance on biological processes to build healthy soils and support above and below ground biodiversity, diversified systems offer potential GHG emission reductions . Also, resilience to climate perturbations can occur by spreading economic risks across multiple farm products and by relying on on-farm resources and biodiversity, with less dependence on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides to improve soil and crop health . Other environmental co-benefits can include more efficient use of water, improved water and soil quality, pest reduction or suppression, or enhancement of wildlife habitat and biodiversity. These systems have been shown to reduce soil nitrate and nitrous oxide emissions, and increase carbon sequestration both in soils and above ground biomass . For example, frequent addition of various types of organic inputs increases labile and resistant soil carbon over a period of several years, so that soils exhibit more tightly coupled plant soil nitrogen cycling. In turn, plant nitrogen demand is adequately met, but losses of nitrate are minimized . In another case, an organic vegetable production system, the annual use of cover crops over 6 years led to greater increases in microbial biomass carbon pools, and compost additions increased measured soil organic carbon pool and microbial diversity in comparison to a cover crop grown every fourth year . Many of these studies examined California organic farms where multiple practices are often stacked, such as combining organic soil amendments, integrating cover crops into crop rotation for year-round plant cover and reducing tillage. In addition, farm scaping with perennials on field margins and maintenance of vegetated riparian corridors sequester carbon in the soil and woody biomass of trees and shrubs . Planting native woody species tolerant of drought for hedgerows, or resistant to water flux in riparian corridors, is a way to ensure adaptation and growth over many decades. Diversified, multipurpose systems provide other co-benefits depending on the set of practices involved. Practices that increase soil carbon also improve soil structure, nitrogen-supplying power and water-holding capacity . For example, a practice like cover cropping also can suppress weeds, influence crop nutrition and quality, especially in perennial systems like wine grapes, and provide habitat for beneficial predators . Filter strips and riparian corridors can reduce soil erosion and thereby diminish contamination of surface water with valuable soil and nutrient resources, and pathogenic microbes . Hedgerows have been shown to increase pollinators and other beneficial insects in California . Given the promise for multiple co-benefits, more types of California diversified systems deserve study, which would provide a better basis for metrics to evaluate their long-term contributions to climate and other goals. Intensive livestock operations, particularly the state’s large dairy sector, produce two-thirds of California’s agricultural GHG emissions, and thus are a primary target for state climate regulations as well as incentives for emission reduction. At the same time, policies should account for the already high levels of resource efficiency in the California dairy sector. A key climate policy concept is to avoid “leakage,” whereby strict climate policy to reduce emissions in one region causes increases in another. A recent comparison of the dairy sectors of the Netherlands, California and New Zealand documents that California dairies on average produce more milk per cow than dairies in the Netherlands, and more than 2.6 times as much as dairies in New Zealand, while operating under stricter environmental regulations . Currently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends using a fixed emission factor for dairy operations that is based on gross energy intake, which does not take diet composition into consideration . Calibration of GHG models for California using dietary information will provide a more accurate basis for measuring progress than current IPCC values, and for assessing the potential benefits of different forage and feed practices on emissions.

Additionally, bio-markers of proliferation and cell health such as Pax7, MyoD, and Myogenin may be measured to improve the robustness of predictions and correlations across assays. None of these metrics will aid in optimization if a sufficient model of the relationship between cell growth, media cost, and overall process cost is not considered. Therefore, a techno-economic model of the process is needed to tie together the large-scale production process to bench-top measurements. Secondly, further “white-box” studies that focus on the meta bolomics of the cell lines would be very useful in defining the upper / lower bounds and important factors of these DOE studies. Developing robust cell lines adapted to serum-free conditions would open up the design space for use in DOE studies because very poorly growing cells are difficult to optimize in DOE studies. In general, white-box or traditional studies act to constrain the complexity of future DOE studies, so must be conducted in collaboration with DOE. Experimental optimization of physical and biological processes is a difficult task. To address this, sequential surrogate models combined with search algorithms have been employed to solve nonlinear high-dimensional design problems with expensive objective function evaluations. In this article , a hybrid surrogate framework was built to learn the optimal parameters of a diverse set of simulated design problems meant to represent real-world physical and biological processes in both dimensionality and nonlinearity. The framework uses a hybrid radial basis function/genetic algorithm with dynamic coordinate search response, utilizing the strengths of both algorithms. The new hybrid method performs at least as well as its constituent algorithms in 19 of 20 high-dimensional test functions,plastic pots for planting making it a very practical surrogate framework for a wide variety of optimization design problems.

Experiments also show that the hybrid framework can be improved even more when optimizing processes with simulated noise.The design and optimization of modern engineering systems often requires the use of high-fidelity simulations and/or field experiments. These black box systems often have nonlinear responses, high dimensionality, and have many local optima. This makes these systems costly and time consuming to model, understand, and optimize when simulations take hours or experiments performed in the lab require extensive time and resources. The first attempt to improve over experimental optimization methods, such as ‘one-factor-at-atime’ and random experiments was through the field of Design of Experiments . Techniques in DOE have been adapted to many computational and experimental fields in order to reduce the number of samples needed for optimization. These methods often involve performing experiments or simulations at the vertices of the design space hypercube. Full-Factorial Designs are arguably the simplest to implement, where data is collected at all potential combinations of parameters p for all levels l requiring l p samples in total. Even when l = 2 the number of experiments or simulations quickly becomes infeasible so Fractional-Factorial Designs using l p−k experiments for k ‘generators’ are often used to reduce the burden. While such designs are more efficient, they have lower resolution than full designs and confound potentially important interaction effects. Therefore, DOE techniques are often combined with Response Surface Methodology to iteratively move the sampling location, improve model fidelity as more data is collected, and focus experiments in regions of interest. Stochastic optimization methods such as Genetic Algorithms , Particle Swarm Optimization, and Differential Evolution have also been used to explore design spaces and perform optimization on both simulated and experimental data, often requiring fewer experiments than traditional DOE-RSM techniques. The quickly developing field of surrogate optimization attempts to leverage more robust modeling techniques or Kriging / Gaussian Process models to optimize nonlinear systems.

They often employ a stochastic, uncertainty-based, or Bayesian search algorithm to intelligently select new sample points to query for experimentation or simulation. Due to the variety of modeling techniques and search algorithms available, hybrid algorithms, which attempt to leverage each methods strengths, have proliferated. These hybrid approaches usually involve taking ensembles of surrogate models and asking each surrogate for its best set of predicted query points. New queries are then conducted at these points, often weighted in favor of regions/surrogates with low sample variance or optimal response values. The drawback of many of these algorithms is that they are not always generalizable to design problems of diverse dimensionality and nonlinearity. A surrogate optimization algorithm is presented here, which uses an evolving RBF model and hybrid search algorithm. This search algorithm selects half of its query points using a Euclidean distance metric truncated to provide diversity in suggested query points. This is based on a neural network genetic algorithm developed for bio-process optimization, which has been shown to be more efficient than traditional DOE-RSM methods . The other half of the query points are selected using a dynamic coordinate search for response surface methods algorithm based on work developed for computationally expensive simulation.The performance of the NNGADYCORS hybrid algorithm is tested against NNGA and DYCORS separately. Further evaluation is performed to probe potentially useful extensions of the hybrid algorithm to address simulated experimental noise, to improve algorithm convergence over time, and to address cases in which certain groups of parameters have a greater influence on the response values than others. The NNGA algorithm is based on a RBF-assisted GA. The NNGA uses an RBF model to suggest points that are close to but not directly on top of optima, using a truncated genetic algorithm .

One advantage that GAs have over gradient-based methods is that their randomness allows them to efficiently explore both global and local regions of optimality. This makes them very attractive for an optimization framework attempting to look for global optima while facing uncertainty associated with a sparsely explored parameter space, and thus untrustworthy RBF models. This framework is shown in Figure 2.1 and the TGA is illustrated in Figure 2.2. First, a database of inputs X and outputs Y of No total queries is collected . An RBF model is constructed using the training regime discussed in Section 2.2.1. Next, a TGA is run using a randomly initiated population of potential query points with the goal of minimizing the RBF predicted output. In each iteration of the TGA, queries expected to perform the best survive a culling process and have their information propagated into the next iteration by a pairing, crossover and random mutation step. After each iteration, the best predicted query is recorded. When the average normalized Euclidean distance between the TGA’s current predicted best query and its next N −1 predicted best queries, dav,norm, is less than or equal to the critical distance parameter CD = 0.2,drainage for plants in pots the TGA is considered to be converged and submits this list of N best points for potential querying . This TGA is run a total of kmax = 4 times, and its query selections from all rounds of TGA queried to give the next set of data for simulation or experiments.The NNGA-DYCORS algorithm was tested against its constituent algorithms, NNGA, and DYCORS individually. Examining the performance of the constituent algorithms , the NNGA algorithm consistently works well in high dimensions , while the DYCORS algorithm performs better in low dimensions . This was the case both over time and at the final optimal query points . Given these differences in performance, it stands to reason that a hybrid approach would provide a sensible route to a more robust algorithm that could be used on a wider variety of dimensions. As seen in Figure 2.3, the hybrid NNGA-DYCORS often outperforms or performs similarly to the next best constituent algorithm in each experiment. This is reinforced by the data in Tables A.1 and A.2, where the final optimum of the hybrid NNGA-DYCORS is lessthan or equal to the final optimum of the next best constituent algorithm in 19 of 20 experiments . An optimum may be considered better if its upper bound is less than the mean of another algorithm’s optimum.

While this is a rough approximation of the comparative performance of the algorithm, it strongly indicates that the NNGA-DYCORS is robust on a wide variety of problem sets and dimensions. In intermediate cases , the NNGA-DYCORS continued to outperform or perform as well as its most competitive constituent algorithm, showing its usefulness in design optimization problems where it is not obvious a priori what dimensionality counts as ’high’ and ’low’. To test the effect of random noise on the ability of the surrogate optimization algorithms to find optimal parameters, a random noise ewas added to the output of the simulation. It is common practice, especially in noisy, low-data, and data-sparse models, to improve the out-of-sample generalizability by model selection procedures such as cross-validation to avoid overfitting. To address the issues with stochasticity in these experiments this, a hyperparameter optimization loop for the number of nodes nnodes in the RBF model was added to the NNGADYCORS algorithm, where cross-validation over the database was used to select the optimal nnodes. In this case we deliberately trade higher bias for lower variance to reduce overfitting. As can be seen in Figure 2.4, application of a node optimization scheme improved the learner’s performance over the regular scheme in nearly all cases. It should be noted that in these experiments, the linear tail of the RBF was excluded, so Equation 2.3 was modified to be Φλ = Y and was solved. There is a seemingly infinite number of modeling techniques, search optimization algorithms, and initialization/infill strategies in the literature to facilitate optimizing expensive objective functions. However, the characteristics of the experimental system and design space are never really known a priori, so having an algorithm that is more efficient than traditional methods and able to work with a wide variety of problems is advantageous. Therefore, the goal of this article was to develop a surrogate optimization framework that could be successfully applied to test problems with a wide range of dimensionality and degrees of nonlinearity. The NNGA-DYCORS algorithm runs two surrogate optimization algorithms in parallel. The NNGA uses a Euclidean distance-based metric to truncate a genetic algorithm, whose best members are k-means cluster distilled into a final query list. This acts as a global optimization process because the internal genetic algorithm searches over the entire design space. The DYCORS algorithm perturbs the best previous queries using a dynamic Gaussian distribution, where the perturbations are adjusted based on cumulative success and the total number of queries in the database. Thus, DYCORS acts as a local search method in the region defined by a Gaussian centred at its best queries. Both arms of the hybrid algorithm use an RBF for prediction.The result was that the NNGA-DYCORS hybrid algorithm was statistically equal to or outperformed its constituent algorithms in the 19 of 20 test problems. This demonstrates the robustness of the NNGA-DYCORS, as it performs as a best case scenario on a variety of test problem dimensions and shapes. This is important because, in real experimental problems, one does not know the shape of the surface a priori, highlighting the utility of a generalizable optimization framework such as the NNGA-DYCORS. In addition, it is never clear what constitutes a ‘high’ and ‘low’ – dimensionality design problem, so an algorithm that performs well in arbitrary dimensions should have large practical value. The DYCORS algorithm was already shown to be competitive compared to other heuristics, and the NNGA was demonstrated to be significantly more efficient than traditional experimental optimization methods. It stands to reason that this hybrid framework should extend the usefulness of both algorithms to test problems of arbitrary dimensionality and degree of nonlinearity. Using a node optimization scheme to reduce model variance during query selection improves hybrid algorithm performance, especially for noisy surfaces . Practitioners should therefore consider built-in regularization to avoid overfitting of the data when dealing with expensive, data-sparse and noisy systems. Optimizing the number of nodes was specific to this RBF variant, but the optimization loop in Section 3.2 could be applied to any model hyperparameter. In the next set of experiments, the method of making the NNGA-DYCORS convergence parameters dynamic during query selection did not improve performance. This indicates that it may not be fruitful to pursue extensive algorithm parameter adjustments/heuristics for this algorithm, and there is little sensitivity in the selection of algorithm convergence parameters on the outcome, unlike the results in previous articles on the subject. Finally, to mimic typical engineering scenarios where response sensitivity varies with the inputs, the test functions were scaled with a sensitivity vector.

Fertilizer use on the different crops across agro ecological zones is presented in Annex 2. Both adoption and application rates are higher in the zones with higher agro ecological potential than in lower agro ecologically potential zones. This may indicate that fertilizer use on the crops is more profitable and less risky in higher agro ecologically potential zones.The marginal effects of the Probit model show changes in the probability of adoption of fertilizer for additional unit increase in the independent variables. Farmers with no formal education had 7.6% less probability of adopting fertilizer compared to those with primary education, while farmers with secondary and post-secondary education respectively had 11.2% and 16.5% higher probability of adopting fertilizer than their counterparts with primary education. Educated farmers can better process information more rapidly than otherwise . It can also be presumed that educated farmers have a higher level of awareness of the benefits of fertilizer use in agricultural production.Having received credit increased probability of fertilizer adoption by 12.9%. This suggests that relaxing liquidity binding constraints among smallholder farmers through access to credit will significantly increase their probability of adopting fertilizer. Growing a cash crop is associated with 15.3% higher probability of fertilizer adoption. The major cash crops considered here have credit schemes that guarantee farmers’ input acquisition on credit,round pot which is repaid through deductions from the produce which farmers sell through the commodity cooperatives or factories. This indicates the important role of credit and guaranteed markets in promoting fertilizer adoption.

The probability of adopting fertilizer decreases by 0.7% for every kilometre increase in the distance to fertilizer seller. It is noteworthy that the distance to the nearest fertilizer seller declined from 8.1 km in 1997 to 3.4 km in 2007, which could be a result of improved input delivery systems after liberalization . Agro ecological potential significantly influences fertilizer adoption. Households in the drier and lower agro ecologically potential zones had between 50.8% and 77.2% lower probability of adopting fertilizer compared to those in the High potential maize zones, an indication that profitability of fertilizer use as dictated by ago ecological conditions has a significant impact on adoption. Compared to the Central highlands, an equally high potential region, probability of fertilizer adoption in the High potential maize zone was lower by 6.6%.Determinants of fertilizer use intensity conditional on adoption are presented in Table 6. Having no education at all or secondary education compared to having primary education no longer plays significant role in fertilizer use intensity. The significant determinants of fertilizer use intensity are gender, post-secondary education, household size, dependency ratio, credit, growing of cash crop, distance to fertilizer seller, distance to extension and agro ecological potential. The marginal effects show that for an additional year of age, fertilizer use intensity declines by 0.12kg/acre. A household being male-headed is associated with 6.6 kg of additional fertilizer per acre. Compared to primary education, post-secondary education increases fertilizer application rate by 4.5kg/acre. A unit increase in the household size increases fertilizer application rate by 0.49kg/acre. This is plausible as households will strive to enhance their food security status by trying to increase yield levels. At the means, a unit increase in dependency is associated with a reduction of fertilizer use intensity by 2.5kg/acre.Conditional on a household using fertilizer, receiving credit increases fertilizer application rate by 16.2kg/acre, while growing a cash crop increases fertilizer application rate by 19kg/acre.

A one kilometre increase in the distance to an extension service reduces fertilizer application rate by 0.8kg/acre. Paradoxically, unlike in the Probit model where distance to fertilizer seller negatively and significantly influenced fertilizer adoption, an increase in the distance to fertilizer seller positively and significantly influences fertilizer use intensity. This is a puzzling issue that may need further investigation.Fertilizer is considered one of the most important inputs for the achievement of increased agricultural productivity and food security in Kenya and, in deed, SSA. Although Kenya has registered high rates of fertilizer adoption, raising the intensity of use remains a key challenge. The patterns in households’ fertilizer use showed dramatic rise in adoption in the last decade. Fertilizer application rates, however, showed marginal increase over the period. Fertilizer use in the drier agro ecological zones is still way below that in the higher agro ecologically potential zones. This may be associated with higher risk involved in and lower profitability of using fertilizer in the drier areas. The relatively higher fertilizer use in higher agro ecologically potential zones may also be influenced by the presence of major cash crops such as tea, sugarcane and coffee, which have organized input credit schemes which allow farmers to acquire inputs on credit and repay through deductions made on deliveries of the produce. Econometric analysis has shown that age, education, credit, growing cash crop, distance to fertilizer market and agro ecological potential are statistically significant in influencing the probability of adopting fertilizer. On the other hand, the strongest determinants of fertilizer use intensity were gender, household size, dependency ratio, credit, growing cash crop, distance to extension services and agro ecological potential. Increasing fertilizer use intensity in general and promoting fertilizer adoption in drier areas of Kenya require several interventions. First, there is need for relaxation of credit constraint through improved access to agricultural credit for especially low income farmers who depend on food crops and do not have access to credit opportunities offered under cash crops’ input credit schemes. Another way of relaxing credit constraint would be to improve access to viable off-farm income generating activities.

Existing literature suggests positive spill over effects of off-farm income on agriculture by substituting for credit when credit markets fail . Secondly, concerted efforts to promote fertilizer use among farmers in the drier areas cannot be overemphasized. Extension efforts combined with fertilizer distribution innovations would ensure that farmers in these areas are sensitized on the benefits of using fertilizer for productivity growth. In addition, long term efforts are needed to establish and expand small-scale irrigation projects, which can help overcome the adverse effects of inadequate rainfall experienced in these areas. Finally,round plastic planter the liberalization of the fertilizer sub-sector has led to increased national consumption of fertilizer and Kenya has been a success case where the private sector has thrived relatively well. One of the current factors impeding fertilizer use is the high world fertilizer prices in relation to the output price for commodities . The world prices per ton of DAP increased from US$ 260 in 2007 to US$ 800 in 2008. If such trends continue, gains in fertilizer adoption and intensity of use over the last decade may erode. Efforts to reduce the costs of fertilizer delivery would help to offset the effects of rising world prices. Government can invest in rural infrastructure, efficient port facilities and standards of commerce to reduce the costs of distributing fertilizer.Twenty-five years after the publication of the first IPCC Assessment Report, it is instructive to step back and ask what we have learned about the economic impacts of climate change to the agricultural sector, not just from a technical standpoint, but from a conceptual one. California is an ideal focus for such an analysis both because of its strong agricultural sector and proactive climate policy. After passing the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, the state has sponsored research to complete three climate change assessments, with the fourth assessment report in progress at the time of submitting this paper. This effort to study adaptation appears to be relatively more prolific than in many other global sub-regions, particularly over the past decade . Assessing adaptation potential — the institutional, technological, and management instruments for adjusting to actual or expected climatic change and its effects — represents an important turning point in the climate impacts literature. The important role of responsive decision-making by farmers and institutions is recognized for the first time as the key ingredient to dampening the effects of climate change . Adaptation was simply mentioned as an optimistic afterthought in earlier studies, which suggested that agriculture would fully or mostly adjust in the long term — although there was sparse detail on how it would do so . When adaptation was directly included in the modeling framework, economists found that the estimated welfare damages from climate change documented in previous studies declined . In colloquial terms, this is a shift from modeling the “dumb” farmer to modeling one with reasonable economic agency. There are four key concepts linked to the idea of adaptation: vulnerability, adaptive capacity, economic welfare, and economic efficiency. In the IPCC literature, adaptation is connected to the foundational concept of vulnerability, defined as the propensity for agricultural systems to be affected by future climatic changes . Vulnerability can also be defined endogenously as the ability of farmers and institutions to respond and adapt to, and recover from such changes .

This latter definition is synonymous with the concept of adaptive capacity, or the ability of a system to moderate potential damages and take advantage of adaptation and mitigation opportunities to reduce vulnerability of the system to climatic changes . Economic welfare is the sum of producer and consumer surplus in the agricultural sector. Adaptation dampens welfare losses caused by climate change. The relationship of adaptation with vulnerability is more complex, and better represented as that of trade-offs. For example, changing the crop mix in favor of high value crops may reduce vulnerability to water scarcity, but it may increase vulnerability to heat tolerance. Finally, the concept of efficient adaptation has been defined as a situation where the costs of effort to reduce climate-induced damages is less than the resulting benefits from adapting . Given the central role of farmer and institutional responsiveness, how do recent agro-economic assessments suggest that specific adaptations may improve economic welfare and reduce vulnerability? What is economically efficient adaptation in the short and long-run? What are the limits to the agricultural sector’s adaptive capacity? This is certainly not the first review of climate impact assessments to California agriculture. Smith and Mendelsohn highlighted the importance of regional climatic impacts to several economic sectors in California , integrating across range of modeling approaches . The agricultural impacts are calculated by the Statewide Agricultural Production model under wet and dry scenarios. The results echo those of more recent SWAP studies, suggesting that field crop usage will decline by the end of the century under a dry scenario, though the decline in revenues will be partially offset by increased production of high-value crops. Prior to Smith and Mendelsohn , several notable studies examined the state of the knowledge of climate assessments at the US level . In particular, Lewandrowski and Schimmelpfennig integrate the knowledge from both programming and econometric studies of the agricultural sector. Other reviews have focused on the technical details of the different modeling approaches without discussing the results of the various studies . Following the pioneering work of Smith and Mendelsohn , this paper also focuses on California. The state is a leader in agricultural production, with $53.5 billion in sector cash receipts in 2014. California accounts for roughly 2/3 of US fruit/nut production, and 1/3 of US vegetable production . Roughly 1/3 of California cropland, or 9 million acres, is irrigated , making the state’s agricultural sector highly vulnerable to changes in groundwater and surface water supply . Several programming and econometric studies have been published after Smith and Mendelsohn , that operationalize the concept of adaptation . This paper begins with a review of regional impacts of climate change to California agriculture. It is followed by a review of the results from recent programming and econometric studies. The final section synthesizes the results from these studies, addressing lessons learned about vulnerability,adaptation, and adaptive capacity; and how these relate to economic welfare and efficiency.Observational studies indicate that average daily temperature and daily minimum temperatures, particularly during the winter season, have increased in California . Average daily temperature in the US Southwest for the previous decade has been higher than any decade observed in the previous century . Barnett et al. find that daily minimum temperatures in winter have increased between 0.28– 0.43 C per decade from 1950–1999. Not just magnitude, but an increased rate of warming has been observed. Karl et al. suggest that the US Southwest has experienced the most rapid rate of warming in the nation. Observed precipitation patterns are fundamentally more complex and variable than temperature, exhibiting a high degree of variability across space and time.

The OECD defines agricultural support as “the annual monetary value of gross transfers to agriculture from consumers and taxpayers, arising from governments’ policies that support agriculture, regardless of their objectives and their economic impacts.” The PSE, then, “represents policy transfers to agricultural producers…and is composed of market price support, budgetary payments and the cost of revenue foregone by the government and other economic agents” . As the data below reveal, the paradox of farmers continuing to receive robust economic aid despite limited employment and negligible contributions to the national economy holds true beyond Europe.Farmers in Japan have enjoyed great success in imposing their policy preferences due in part to their homogeneity and highly organized representative associations. Small farmers dominate the agricultural sector, which makes it easy for farmer associations to promulgate a single, coherent message. In addition, a strong union that is well organized nationally, regionally, and locally, represents Japanese farmers. Finally, unlike Europe and the United States, there is little if any pressure from sectoral organizations. The main farming organization in Japan is Japan Agriculture, referred to as JA or Nōkyō. The JA is a three-tiered organization, with national, prefectural, and local-level cooperative groups. The JA commands near universal membership of the Japanese farming community in large part due to the services and benefits it offers. It claims to have nearly 10 million members . Its main businesses are banking, insurance, agricultural retail and wholesaling, and supply of farming materials. In addition to these benefits and services, which are not uncommon among agricultural cooperatives,10 liter drainage pot the JA’s scope of business includes real estate, travel agencies, supermarkets, and even funeral homes .

Essentially, “within the villages, the JA is a one-stop service. Farmers and everyone else in the village use JA services” . An LDP politician explained that the JA has far-reaching influence and is a cornerstone of rural society, with even non-farmers depending on the JA for services, “No other organizations in Japan are like the JA with so much local organization and influence. The JA is crucial in local community because of the infrastructure it provides. As a result, even non-farmers in rural areas need and depend upon the JA” . Ultimately, this wide range of services means that the JA can forge a relationship with farmers and the broader rural community that extends beyond just agriculture. Indeed, the JA can assist rural communities in all their needs, even those that come after death. Along with high membership levels, much of the JA’s power derives from the fact that it has been in an official corporatist relationship with the state since it was formally created via legislation in 1947. This close relationship with the state has been quite beneficial for the JA, with the government at times heavily regulating and protecting the JA’s banking and insurance businesses, even going so far as to bail out JA banking multiple times, both after 1980s economic bubble burst and again in 2008. For example, Norin-Chukin a major agricultural cooperative bank had invested extensively in real estate during the 1980s boom. When the bubble burst and the real estate market collapsed, JA affiliated banks, Norin-Chukin chief among them, sustained heavy losses. As a result of political lobbying, the JA was able to reach an agreement where it was only responsible for ¥530 billion out of a total of ¥5.5 trillion in losses . The state has also granted the JA exceptional status in antitrust law, which has afforded the JA monopolies on the supply of agricultural inputs to farmers . Further exceptions are made for the insurance wing of the JA, “which is allowed to sell multiple kinds of insurance whereas other firms are traditionally limited to providing only one type of insurance” .

As these examples suggest, farmers and the JA have been quite successful in their efforts to influence agricultural policy making. An important area of success for Japanese farmers has been in shaping Japan’s trade negotiations, pressing for protectionism even when other groups seek greater trade liberalization. In these negotiations, Japanese agriculture is able to impose its preferences despite pressure from the Japanese business lobby, Keidanren, which stands to gain far more from liberalization than agriculture would ever lose. These victories for Japanese farmers have come at both the GATT/WTO and in Japan’s bilateral trade agreements. The GATT Uruguay Round sought to reduce if not eliminate agricultural subsidies and remove tariffs and trade barriers in an effort to liberalize agricultural trade. In these negotiations, Japan’s position was largely defensive and was grounded in a desire to make as few concessions as possible. Its objectives were shaped primarily by the special position of rice producers and also by the overall high level of protection of agriculture. The LDP, whose political position was vulnerable at the time, promised farmers that no amount of foreign rice would be allowed to enter the domestic market . Fundamental incompatibility between GATT objectives and the policy preferences of major negotiating parties, including Japan and the European Community, resulted in the round grinding to a halt. In the end, although reducing tariffs was a major goal of the negotiations, a modification was negotiated specifically for Japan to allow it to delay tariffication of rice in exchange for accepting more imports of agricultural products, but only in sectors that were unimportant to Japanese agriculture such as dairy production. In addition, farmer subsidies were protected, despite the GATT UR goals of eliminating them. By the end of the GATT UR negotiations, Japanese farmers walked away with an agreement that protected their core commodities and allowed them to largely avoid the removal of tariffs for key products, while also maintaining a system of income support for farmers. In September of 2003, Japan was in the final stages of a free trade agreement with Mexico, which had been delayed by agricultural opposition.

Frustrated with the delays, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ordered his trade negotiators to “get it done” . In the end, a tripartite coalition of agricultural representatives was able to extract considerable concessions for agriculture that finally allowed the agreement to move forward. The concessions included a reduction in the level of tariffs that had to be removed and special protection arrangements for “politically sensitive” commodities including pork, beef, chicken, oranges, and orange juice . Although this free trade agreement was concluded with Mexico, agriculture continued to block any progress on other free trade agreements Japanese officials desired at the time with the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea. One major reason Japanese farmers have been so successful in pushing their policy preferences and forestalling liberalizing trade agreements is that the main groups in other countries that traditionally challenge farmers by supporting liberalization,25 liter pot namely consumers, business, and the food industry, are either unwilling or unable to challenge the JA’s preference for protection . Moreover, while farmers are united in their opposition to agricultural liberalization their opponents, most notably consumers and the food industry, are internally divided. Consumer organizations, for example, are dominated by concerns over food quality and prefer to restrict access to the Japanese market to ensure that the preponderance of available products are those of Japanese origin, in which they have a high degree of trust. Because of this strong preference among consumers for food of Japanese origin, many in the food processing and distribution industry are reluctant to push for agricultural liberalization. Their fear is that demand for their products will decline if they are made with or include the imported agricultural goods. The result is that, despite their small share of the population, farmers are able to extract new policies, or preserve existing policies, that benefit a small share of the population and inconvenience a much greater share of the population. While these group preferences are indicative of the peculiarities of the Japanese case, the broader explanation of farmer influence and power tracks the European story. Japanese farmers, like those in Europe, have powerful and well-coordinated organizations. These organizations operate from the national level all the way down to the local level, giving farmers access to and influence over key actors at all levels of decision making. Tight control over members and impressive capacity for coordination allows Japanese farmer organizations to influence not only politicians concerned with re-election but also key actors, like business, that might challenge farmer preferences. Boycotts are one common strategy employed by farmer organizations in Japan to shape policy by punishing other interests that challenge agriculture. For example, in the mid-1980s, Nōkyō led a boycott against Mitsubishi Kōgyō Cement because a company executive belonged to a Nikkeiren committee that pushed for agricultural policy reform. Since that incident, Nikkeiren has struggled to find executives willing to sit on the committee . Farmers also executed a successful boycott of Sony, Daiei , and the food-maker Ajinomoto because their executives had pushed for agricultural policy reform as part of a Keidanren committee. In these cases, the boycotts were ended only after the executives from the offending companies apologized to farmers and quit the committee . So, farmer organizational power in Europe is often manifested through street protests, Japanese farmers often direct their organizational influence toward hurting the economic interests of their main policy opponents.

The JA’s organizational strength allows Japanese farmers to exert significant electoral influence, rewarding politicians who commit to protecting and advancing preferred farmer policies, and punishing those who do not. As a Japanese official explained, “If JA doesn’t like a candidate, they will do a smear campaign. Farmers are maybe not strong enough to make someone win, but they are strong enough to make sure someone loses” . The farmers have long been a staunch ally of the Liberal Democratic Party , which governed Japan, uninterrupted from 1955 to 1993. Since its formation in 1955, the LDP has only been out of power from 1993 to 1994 and 2009 to 2012. The JA’s ability to coordinate the voting of its membership played an important role of the LDP’s defeat in 2009 and its return to power in 2012. In the run up to the 2009 election, many farmers threw their support behind the Democratic Party of Japan as opposed to their traditional ally, the LDP. This shift appears to have been prompted more by the DPJ’s aggressive campaign to win the farmers over than farmer anger with a specific LDP policy. In an effort to win farmers away from the LDP, the DJP announced a plan to transition agricultural policy from price supports to a system of direct income compensation. The policy was an extension of one offered in the 2007 Upper House elections that proved to be very successful in winning rural votes away from the LDP. These policy promises in 2009 lured numerous JA prefectural offices into tempering their commitments to the LDP, saying that decisions on whom to support would be made on a district-by-district basis, or, in the most extreme cases, that this election would be a “free vote” and no official candidate would be endorsed. The DPJ, thanks to their plan for supporting farmer incomes, won the support of the agricultural community and thus the election. After taking power, the DPJ adopted their new farmer income scheme, which provided a direct income subsidy for all commercial farm households, regardless of size. The scheme was also designed to compensate farmers for times when production costs exceeded sale prices. Under the policy, farmer incomes increased for the first time since 2003. Despite these positive developments, the LDP took back farmer support and won the next elections in 2012. A central promise of the LDP was to increase public spending on the farm sector, which had been cut by the DPJ to pay for the new income support program. Under the DPJ, the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries had declined . In the run up to the 2012 elections, the LDP committed to reversing this decline. In addition, its agricultural policy platform promised to replace the “individual farm household income compensation scheme with enhanced direct payments to farmers for the multifaceted functions of agriculture” . The way the direct income payment was handled by the DPJ also came under criticism: some viewed it as a way to separate farmers from the powerful farmer organizations by weakening the dependent relationship between the two.

The second group was the anti-reform alliance consisting of France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. These countries took issue with nearly every aspect of the reform package, in particular decoupling and modulation. Germany, with large farms in the east and highly efficient farms in the west, opposed a limit being placed on total CAP payments. Both of these sets of farmers would be adversely affected by a limit on the total payment a farmer could receive. German farmers in both the east and west were already receiving more in direct payments than the proposed payment cap would allow. These member states also opposed the timing of the reforms, arguing that Agenda 2000 should be fully implemented before any further reforms were adopted . France’s position became even more staunchly anti-reform after a leftist cabinet was replaced by a center-right government in 2002, and Hervé Gaymard, a member of Chirac’s own party, was installed as minister of agriculture. Several agricultural lobbies posed three main reform critiques of their own. The lobbies argued that the new system of payments would not allow farmers “in the least-favoured regions, where low productivity and lower competitiveness” predominates to earn a livable income . The result, they argued, would be land abandonment and an increase in unemployment. Second, they voiced the concern that paying farmers regardless of production would negatively affect public opinion and could ultimately result in the complete termination of direct payments to farmers . Third,vertical farm tower the proposal to base the direct payment on historical yields would serve to perpetuate past discrimination in favor of certain products, producers, and regions .

The third group represented those countries in the middle that, while not completely opposed to the reforms, had some specific objections. Countries in this group were Austria, Belgium, Greece, Finland, and Luxembourg . Finland and Austria were traditionally protectionist agricultural countries and thus supported subsidies as a means to help their farmers. However, because Austria and Finland each had an agricultural sector that was predominantly small-scale and high value added, they favored strategies for rural development, greening, and multi-functionality, as opposed to production-based subsidies that favored large scale cultivation of commodity crops . At a meeting of the Council of Ministers on 8 April 2003, decoupling was discussed for the first time. Only the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark expressed support for Fischler’s proposal to completely disconnect payment from production . Most of the other member states preferred partial decoupling, whereby a portion of a farmers’ income payment would continue to be linked to how much he or she produced, but no member state offered any concrete ideas or proposals for how partial decoupling could be carried out . While many countries were neither fully opposed nor fully in favor of the reform, no agreement could be reached without breaking the French-led blocking minority. Under the rules of QMV, a blocking minority consisting of a minimum of 4 countries that represented at least 35% of the population could prevent the passage of a proposal. Given the existence of this blocking minority, member states in the middle had no incentive to officially back reform, particularly since their formal support might provoke the ire of the farming community at home. There was no incentive to express support or even negotiate on the terms if the blocking minority could thwart the whole package. Though the Commission preferred to pass reforms with unanimous support, with the continued expansion of the EU, it was no longer feasible to pass reforms only with unanimous support.

The adoption of QMV facilitated a faster negotiation process than was possible under unanimity rules, and ensured that a single country could not use a veto to stymie reform. Ireland ended up abandoning the anti-reform group early. Irish farmers’ unions opposed the reforms, but their members did not. The farmers supported the reforms because they felt they would provide them with adequate income support while also giving them the freedom to farm a greater diversity of crops . Even without Ireland, however, the other four countries, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, could form a blocking minority on their own under the rules of QMV. In order to break this minority alliance of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, Fischler targeted the Spanish delegation, as it was believed that “Spain joined the French to gain some breathing space” rather than because of outright objection to the reforms . Fischler asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair to reach out to Spanish Prime Minister Aznar . Spain was a crucial country to flip, because it would break the blocking minority led by France. Blair agreed but asked Fischler to drop the capping of direct payments in exchange. These caps, which would be applied primarily to big farms, would hit the UK especially hard . Fischler agreed and Blair began working with Fischler to swing the other member states in support of reform. One of Spain’s central demands was to amend the decoupling proposal to allow for partial decoupling in certain sectors, at the member states’ discretion. Partial decoupling would allow the Spanish government to continue allocating a percentage of income payments based on production in sectors important to Spain, namely sheep and goat farming. Once that concession was made, Spain shifted in favor of the reform. With the blocking minority broken, France and Germany quickly followed suit, hoping to grab some concessions in exchange for their support of the reform Similar to Spain, Germany and France also received a concession that allowed them to keep a certain percentage of income payments coupled to production for sectors of importance.

The French switch was also motivated by pressure from the Association Générale des Producteurs de Blé , the cereals division within the FNSEA. Chirac’s opinion was strongly influenced by that of France’s national farming union, the Fédération nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles , with some Commission officials describing Chirac as “entirely beholden” to the FNSEA . Chirac completely opposed decoupling until he was approached by AGPB leaders, who told him that they supported the policy change . The cereals farmers reasoned that Fischler’s reform, with cuts to price supports being compensated for by direct income payments,vertical plant tower was far better than the uncertainty of an unreformed CAP. They feared that if left unreformed, the CAP would be subject to dramatic price cuts in the future to bring it into alignment with budgetary standards, and that no compensation would be offered for the price cuts. In addition, given that the French cereals sector was highly efficient and competitive independent of inflated prices, they believed that the new system would allow them to conquer additional market share. Farmers from other member states would be less competitive without inflated prices to support them. In exchange for its support for the reform, Germany was able to secure a concession that allowed for the SFP to be based on a regional calculation, as opposed to historic production receipts. The EU’s proposed historical method of calculation tended to perpetuate past inequalities across products, producers, and regions . Under Germany’s regional model by contrast, all farms in a region would be eligible to be paid the same amount, regardless of what they had produced in the past. This model was preferred by Germany in large part because of internal diversity in its farming community. Of course, there was a large gulf between the west and the east, but more importantly there was diversity within the same region depending on the type of farming undertaken and the location of a farm within a given region. The regional model, then, would eliminate the inequalities in payment perpetuated by the historical model and ensure that all farmers in a given region were paid the same. The calculation for payments under the regional model was based on all eligible hectares of agricultural land in the region. This method allowed both grassland and arable land to be included in the calculation, potentially increasing the amount of support included in the financial envelope for each region. After calculating the amount each region was entitled to, member states using this calculation method could, if they wanted, move money from one region’s financial envelope into the envelope of another region. For example, the government had the option of redirecting some of the money owed to farmers in the most fertile regions, such as Bavaria, to farmers in areas that would earn far less under the regional calculation, such as those farmers in the difficult to cultivate lands around the Alps and to the large but inefficient farms of the East. This modification of the regional calculation method was intended to help counties address disparities in farmer incomes within their country.

France, Italy, and Spain also extracted amendments to the decoupling proposal allowing member states to avoid full decoupling in certain sectors if the member state believed that “there may be disturbance to agricultural markets or abandonment of production as a result of the move to the single payment scheme” . In other words, if countries feared that the transition to full decoupling might result in many farmers abandoning their land or would “disturb agricultural markets”, a vague phrase, left open to interpretation, they could avoid the transition to full decoupling. This concession essentially allowed member states to protect nationally important or favored sectors. The sectors where partial decoupling was permitted included: cereals and arable crops, sheep, goats, suckler cows, and slaughtered cows. In the end, the reforms passed with the support of every country but Portugal, which still wanted a higher milk quota . The final agreement on the MTR achieved Fischler’s goal of implementing the reforms necessary to save the CAP. The Single Farm Payment changed the way farmers received income support, weakening the link between these payments and production. By implementing this reform, the CAP would be able to continue to function once the new member states were fully incorporated in the CAP income payment scheme. The level of production in the current EU was already financially unsustainable if support was coupled. Adding the new member states, with a larger percentage of the population employed in agriculture and higher levels of production, to the existing system would explode the CAP budget. The final agreement also included modulation and cross-compliance, two programs intended to strengthen the environmental objectives of the CAP, addressing public dissatisfaction over unsafe food, agricultural pollution, and inequalities in CAP spending. Modulation re-directed a percentage of a member state’s income support funds into programs that supported rural development and environmental objectives. Some of the funds collected through the modulation system could also be re-distributed amongst the member states in an effort to correct inequalities in allocation of CAP support across the member states. Cross-compliance conditioned the receipt of income payments on meeting environmental standards. Despite their importance for the long-term survival of the CAP, these policies were only agreed to after many concessions and revisions were made to Fischler’s initial proposals. Table 5.1 highlights these concessions by comparing Fischler’s initial proposal to the final outcome.A new system of income support payments was agreed to, but payments were only partially decoupled from production and member states were offered numerous opportunities for exemption and delays in implementation across multiple sectors. Modulation was adopted, but at a much lower rate than Fischler hoped. As a result, little money would be directed toward environmental initiatives. Member states would also be allowed to keep a higher percentage of modulated funds than initially proposed, meaning that little redistribution among the member states would result from the program. Finally, new environmental standards were imposed under cross-compliance, but only at a lower level than initially proposed and with financial incentives attached to induce farmer cooperation. The discussion of the Fischler Reform in this chapter demonstrates four major claims in this dissertation. First, the case of the Fischler Reform, particularly when considered in comparison to Agenda 2000, illustrates how important disruptive politics, such as trade negotiations or enlargement, may allow for further-reaching reform than would otherwise be possible. Second, this case illustrates that even when other factors and influences combine to create an opportunity for major policy change, CAP reform still resembles the logic and process of welfare state retrenchment. The changes that were adopted are limited, are less dramatic and far reaching than initially proposed, and were often slow to take full effect.

The former sought to slash the CAP in an effort to reduce Germany’s EU financial contributions while the latter opposed spending cuts in an effort to protect German farmer benefits. France’s position was strengthened because an overall bi-partisan unity emerged from the divided government on matters related to the CAP. Despite these divisions, there was some agreement among the member states. The ministers broadly concurred that a reform should happen before the next round of enlargement, that the 1992 reform should be continued and extended, and that the intermediate strategy was the most favorable . More specifically, the ministers agreed that reform of the beef and dairy sectors was inevitable as at the time there were surplus problems with both of these sectors. However, they disagreed over the size of the cuts and degree of compensation. Germany wanted small cuts, while Sweden and the UK wanted cuts to be large. In terms of compensation, the UK and Sweden preferred to phase out compensation, while Austria, Finland, Germany, and Spain insisted on full compensation, and Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain claimed that compensation was discriminatory . Similar technical squabbles also broke out over how to handle the dairy and cereals sectors. Four other issues divided the EU member states. The first was dairy. The quota regime was set to expire in 2000. In order for it to continue, an agreement to extend it would have to be voted on by a qualified majority within the agricultural council. A majority of the member states, led by France and Germany,hydroponic vertical farming systems favored the Commission proposal allowing for the continuation of current price and quota policy on the grounds that it ensured a stable market and kept production in check.

These member states also recognized that the compensation that would have to accompany reform would push CAP spending beyond its limits. They argued that delaying the removal of quotas even further than the Commission had proposed, until 2006, would save the EU €8 billion in compensatory payments that it would not have to distribute if the system was left in place . The UK, Sweden, Denmark and Italy, however, all supported an end to the quota regime. They favored a more market-oriented dairy sector. Together, these four countries formed a blocking minority meaning that, if they stayed united, they could prevent a vote from passing under qualified majority rules. Problematically for this blocking minority, however, Italy was also a member of a group of countries, including Greece, Ireland, and Spain, that were willing to support the Commission’s proposal in exchange for an increase in their quotas . The Commission ultimately gave into the demands of Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, offering them an increase in their dairy quota in exchange for their support, thus breaking the blocking minority. After Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Portugal argued that this quota increase was special treatment, the agreement was amended to increase the quotas for all member states, coupled with an additional specific increase for Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. The remaining members of the now defunct blocking minority were promised only that dairy policy would be analyzed and evaluated as part of a mid-term review of the CAP, with the goal of allowing the quota system to expire after 2006. Unlike with dairy, the member states were largely in agreement that reform was needed for cereals and beef.

Efficient cereals farmers in particular were confident in their ability to compete on the world market, and also knew that they would fare better within the EU because they would not be losing market share to smaller and less efficient cereals farmers surviving on inflated prices. Beef producers would benefit from the declining costs of inputs from the cereals sector, once those prices were brought closer to world-market levels. For that reason, discussions concerned the level of cuts and compensation as opposed to whether or not reforms should occur at all. Germany, for example challenged the Commission’s cereal price forecasts, arguing that world cereals prices would soon rise to EU levels, rendering significant price cuts unnecessary. In addition, Germany and France supported price cuts for beef, but only so long as framers were offered full compensation. France, however, was firmly in favor of cereals price cuts. Unlike in Germany, French cereal farmers do not need to rely on price supports for survival; indeed, the French view these supports as exposing French grain farmers to unfair competition by “encouraging production in other regions which could not produce without price support” . During Agenda 2000, the FNSEA, dominated by the large grain farmers, had a particularly powerful ally in French President Jacques Chirac, described by one high-level government official as “the spokesman for the FNSEA” . The UK position on both beef and cereals was in line with their desire for greater market liberalization. More broadly, the UK remained opposed to essentially subsidizing the agricultural sectors and paying compensation to the farmers of other countries. For beef in particular, they asked that price cuts be increased to 30% and any compensation payments made temporary as opposed to permanent increases to the direct payment scheme . Ultimately, for beef the price cut was reduced from 30% to 20%. For cereals, the Agricultural Council agreed to keep the cut at the same 20% level, but to delay the full implementation with the cut being imposed in two steps instead of all at once. A buyout, increasing the beef premium, was needed to secure France’s support for the reform as well .

A third area of significant debate was the set of horizontal measures: cross-compliance, modulation, and payment ceilings. The countries with the largest farms, the UK and Germany, continued their staunch rejection of modulation or any ceiling on payments imposed. Their objection rested on the grounds that these policies “discriminate against large, efficient farms, thus undermining the objective of making European agriculture more competitive” . There was also widespread resistance to cross-compliance. The member states argued that they should decide environmental aims at the national level rather than having the EU attempt to set common environmental objectives for 15 member states, each with their own particular agricultural situations. In the end,vertical planting tower the Commission gave in to every major demand on the horizontal regulations: payment ceilings were dropped, modulation was made optional at the member state level, as was cross-compliance, and member states were allowed to determine their own environmental standards under the program. While these concessions may seem like a major loss for reformers, by including these policies in the reform, even if only optionally, Agenda 2000 reformers positioned their future counterparts to build on and extend the program, setting themselves up for systemic retrenchment in the future. These policies, while at this point not mandatory, had at least become part of the CAP system. The addition of these small, and seemingly unimportant optional new policies opened the door to deeper, structural changes in the future. A final area of debate concerned rural development and the drive toward further establishing the CAP’s second pillar. Austria, Finland, France, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK were all in favor of significantly strengthening the CAP’s second pillar. Despite a common preference for a stronger second pillar, these member states did not agree on what that should entail. Sweden, the UK, and to a lesser extent, Finland, advocated for a radical reform under which the second pillar would constitute the bulk of the CAP, with market measures and direct payments phased out over time. The others favored a more even distribution of spending between the two pillars while also working towards making the two pillars and their policies more complementary.

One notable way the Commission sought to more tightly join the two pillars was through cross-compliance whereby environmental standards, traditionally the domain of the second pillar, would be tied to direct payments, the purview of pillar one. France’s support for the second pillar marked a shift away from its staunch defense of the traditional CAP programs and was crucial in helping to secure increased financial commitments for rural development. The French government had recently adopted a new Loi d’Orientation Agricole and a major part of it, the Contrats Territoriaux d’Exploitation, was essentially targeting the same objectives as many of the rural development programs supported under the second pillar . Specifically, the new Loi d’Orientation Agricole was designed to preserve the smaller-scale family farms while also promoting high food quality standards and the preservation of the environment in rural and agricultural areas . An increase in funding for the second pillar would essentially allow France to cofinance its new domestic policy. In order to push forward progress toward reaching a final agreement and to illustrate the difference between reality and what the member states wanted the Commission distributed a table, within the Agricultural Council, that reported that if all of the outstanding demands of the member states were included in the final CAP agreement, the annual budget would be exceeded by €25 billion, or roughly 8% over the course of the six-year budgetary period . A compromise was reached and shortly thereafter, and the agreement was officially approved by the Agricultural Council. Importantly, this agreement was still subject to final approval by the European heads of state and government when the European Council met in Berlin a few weeks later to approve the entire Agenda 2000 package. The agreement reached by the Agricultural Council contained changes to the Commission’s proposal for all three of major sectors under discussion: beef, dairy, and cereals. For the beef sector, as a concession to Italy and France, a higher slaughter premium was approved. In addition, the price cuts were reduced from 30% to 20% and would take place in three stages, not one. Reforms for both dairy and cereals were delayed. Dairy reform would not begin until 2003 and would occur in three stages while the cuts to cereals prices would take place in two steps . Both of these changes were necessary in order to finance the increased expenditure in the beef sector. The financial question, however, remained unresolved; no agreement on a method for budget stabilization was reached. More problematic was that the compromise reached and approved by the Agricultural Council exceeded the spending limits the Economic and Financial Affairs Council proposed for the CAP by €7 billion. In the final agreement on this compromise within the Agricultural Council, Portugal was outvoted and France issued a reserve d’attente on the grounds that the financial problems had yet to be resolved . The lingering financial issue and France’s reserve d’attente facilitated the re-opening and further amending of this agreement by the European Council at the Berlin Summit. The Agricultural Council knew that although their agreement concluded negotiations for the CAP amongst the ministers of agriculture, further revision was still possible by their heads of state or government. They acknowledged as much in their formal press release to outline their compromise stating “the reform of the CAP is part of the Agenda 2000 package and that no part of this [agreement] can be considered definitively agreed until final agreement is reached on Agenda 2000 as a whole” . The European Council, which is comprised of the heads of state or government for all the member states, met at the Berlin Summit March 1999 to reach a final agreement on Agenda 2000. As part of these negotiations, the CAP deal reached by the agricultural ministers was re-opened by Jacques Chirac. As a former minister of agriculture who maintained close ties with the farming community, Chirac was considered an expert on the subject, and was arguably more knowledgeable on the agricultural policy and the inner workings of the CAP than any of his colleagues on the European Council, including Gerhard Schröder, Germany’s newly elected Chancellor from the left who chaired the Berlin summit. As it was a period of co-habitation in the French government, Chirac was particularly concerned with appeasing a core right constituency, the agricultural community, specifically those in the beef and cereals sectors . Fischler was aware that Chirac was willing to go to great lengths to cater to these interests. As one high level Commission official recounted, Chirac made Fischler well-aware of his displeasure with Fischler’s reforms to the beef sector when Chirac visited Fischler in the middle of the night during the negotiations and told him, , “I am the father of beef intervention and you are trying to destroy my scheme” .

The MacSharry Reform thus had two main objectives. First, reformers needed to bring the budget under control in both the short and long term, with specific attention paid to the surplus problem. Second, a reform had to be adopted that would bring support for agriculture into compliance with liberalized GATT trade rules without prompting a rebellion among European farmers and their political allies. While the MacSharry Reform laid the groundwork for a GATT agreement, it failed to reduce CAP spending. Instead, CAP spending increased even further in the years following the MacSharry Reform and excess production continued, albeit at a lower level. Given the crisis conditions confronted, the MacSharry Reform should have been a prime opportunity for cuts to be imposed on agricultural spending, yet as my argument predicts, it proved impossible to cut spending on farmers. Farmers simply received that money from new sources. The final agreement of MacSharry Reform included four central components. The first was a series of price cuts for cereals, beef, and dairy. The second component paired these cuts with compensatory payments to offset losses incurred by farmers stemming from the newly lowered prices. These reforms marked what would be the beginning of the process of decoupling CAP payments from production. The third initiative was a set-aside program that required land to be removed from production, with farmers being compensated for this out-of-production land. Finally, the fourth reform was a package of three non-binding accompanying measures that affirmed the environmental role of farmers, offered subsidies for land afforestation ,equipment for vertical farming and set up an early retirement scheme for farmers.

The purpose of this chapter is to account for the content of the 1992 MacSharry Reform and to explain why, despite the fact that there was urgent need for major change, the reform failed to reduce spending. The confluence of two major crises, budgetary and trade-related, allowed Agricultural Commissioner Ray MacSharry to make bolder proposals than had ever before been seriously considered in a round of CAP reform. As my framework for CAP reform conditions predicts, a context of disruptive politics facilitated the proposal and consideration of more dynamic reforms than would have normally been possible. These extraordinary circumstances were not enough to hold back the influence of farmers and their representatives, however, or produce a reduction in CAP spending. The disparate needs and demands of the member states led to a watering down of the final version of the reform so that changes were more circumscribed than initially proposed or even entirely abandoned; there were also significant side-payments to farmers. Disruptive politics were therefore important in facilitating the serious discussion and consideration of fundamental changes but they were not enough to stop the farmers from significantly weakening the final agreement and extracting compensation. The composition of the final reform package is consistent with my claim that it is difficult if not impossible to cut agricultural spending. Decoupling support from production simply led to farmers being paid via a new program, and not to actual meaningful cuts in farmer supports. Finally, the CAP reform process shared many features with welfare state retrenchment. The most ambitious and far-reaching reforms, like price cuts, were significantly watered down, and some, like shifting compensation in favor of small farmers while limiting payments for large farmers, were defeated outright. The core reforms ended up following a “vice into virtue logic”: rather than eliminating programs, existing programs were adjusted to fix inefficiencies and problems with their operation.

The final package included a number of side-payments, concessions, and exemptions in order to facilitate the agreement and overall spending levels increased, rather than decreased. The timing, negotiations, and content of the MacSharry Reform were fundamentally shaped by two pressing issues: rapidly ballooning spending that was pushing the CAP budget to the brink of sustainability and GATT Uruguay Round negotiations that were being held up by agriculture. Both of these pressures threatened the CAP’s continued existence. Without a correction to spending related to high prices and out of control production, agricultural expenditures would grow beyond the point of sustainability. A failed GATT Uruguay Round, with agriculture as the clear culprit, was expected to spark serious backlash against the CAP, both within the Commission and among member state governments. Consistent with my framework, the critical situation of the CAP and the serious nature of the pressures driving reform broke with politics as usual and created an opportunity for MacSharry to propose and advocate for major reforms. Previous CAP reform efforts had only tinkered with the policy. The MacSharry Reform, however, occurred at a time of “disruptive politics”, which gave reformers an opening to alter the fundamental operation of the CAP. GATT pressures informed the content of the proposed reforms, facilitating the consideration of policies that made the CAP less trade distorting. The surplus-induced budgetary crisis allowed debate over policies that would affect both how farmers were supported and the ways in which production was managed and controlled. Crucially, however, while disruptive politics may have facilitated systemic CAP reform, they were not enough to produce cuts to the farmers’ bottom line. By the late 1980s, surplus production of core European goods, most notably cereals, beef, butter, and milk, contributed to a budget that was also growing out of control. Overproduction was so severe that the EU, having filled all of its existing stores, had taken to storing food on ships in the North Atlantic .

Vividly demonstrating the problem of excess production, DGVI, the Directorate General for Agriculture, actually calculated that with the butter on hand in storage, “the road between Brussels and the southern end of Italy could be buttered as though it were bread” . These stocks began to build up in the early 1970s as did exports onto an already stagnant world market . While production in the EU increased 2% annually between 1973 and 1988, consumption grew only 0.5% annually over the same period . Over a twelve-year period, from 1980- 1992, the CAP budget tripled . The collapse of the world cereals market in 1991 made matters even worse for CAP spending, as export refunds to the sector increased fourfold,vertical farming systems adding another 5-6 billion ECU10 to CAP expenditure . The Commission estimated that CAP spending would increase by a further 20% in 1992 . Virtually all of this money was dedicated to keeping pace with the main costs of the CAP, which related to surplus disposal: intervention purchases, storage costs, and export refunds. Moreover, despite the rapidly expanding CAP budget, the income gap between “the highly productive minority and the economically less efficient but socially more important [majority] continued to widen” . A core problem with which the CAP reform would have to contend was the traditional system of high prices paid to farmers for their products. Ironically, it was also damaging the ability of farmers, particularly grain farmers, to compete. Because prices were so high, grain farmers who produced cereals for animal consumption were losing market share to cheaper animal feed substitutes, whose prices were not set by the CAP. In addition to immediate concerns about surpluses and the sustainability of the budget, CAP spending threatened the impending transition to the single market as outlined under the recently signed Single European Act . With the accession of Greece, Portugal, and Spain and the reunification of Germany, economic disparities within the Union increased. Greece, Portugal, Spain, and East Germany were comparatively underdeveloped, lagging behind their fellow member states, particularly in infrastructure. In order to improve competitiveness and enhance harmonization among the member states, massive structural development investments were needed in these countries. EU leaders viewed these investments and income transfers as essential, preparing the poorer member states for entrance into the Single Market and eventually, a currency union . The current share of agricultural spending, roughly 80% of the total budget, was already seen as an impediment to creating a redistributive function in the budget and as posing a threat to meeting the objectives outlined in the SEA. If CAP production continued unchecked and spending on agriculture increased as projected, the EU would be unable to fund regional development programs, putting progress toward the Single Market at serious risk. Commitments to these structural programs could not be easily ignored or delayed. A 1988 agreement, complementary to the SEA, committed the EU to a doubling of structural funds by 1993 and further stipulated that those funds would be aimed at supporting the cohesion countries of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain .

For this reason, the general consensus was that the CAP budget could not be allowed to increase any further. Another major pressure to reform the CAP stemmed from the Uruguay Round negotiations of the GATT. Little progress had been made since the launching of the round in 1986 placed further pressure on the CAP. The preferences of the US along with the Cairns Group11 were diametrically opposed to those of the European Union. The US saw government support as the root of trouble in farm trade while the EU blamed the market . Specifically, the US called for dramatic liberalization primarily by reducing the protection and support afforded to European farmers under the CAP. The EU, however, argued that the aim of negotiations should be to “progressively reduce support to the extent necessary to reestablish balanced markets and a more market oriented agricultural trading system” but not to phase out support and protection entirely . The US, the Cairns Group, and many developing countries were frustrated by the lack of access to EU markets, privileged trade within the EU, and EU surplus dumping on world markets . If the talks failed, there was the very real threat that the EU would suffer retaliation from the Cairns Group . In December of 1990, GATT talks over agriculture completely collapsed at the Heysel Conference, which had been scheduled for the purpose of concluding the negotiations. The lack of progress in agriculture was a concern for all sectors. The agreement launching the UR stipulated that the round could not be formally concluded without an agreement in agriculture. By this time, key European leaders, most notably President of the European Commission Jacques Delors, French President François Mitterrand, and Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl, recognized that European farming interests were threatening the benefits that important sectors of the economy would realize from a new global trade agreement . Three areas of importance for the EU and its member states, trade, services, and intellectual property rights, stood to benefit significantly from the agreement. American domestic politics added a sense of urgency to finding an agreement in agriculture. The coming election presented the possibility that Bill Clinton, who had already expressed a desire to re-evaluate the US stance, would succeed George H. W. Bush. In addition, Congress’ “fast-track authority”, which requires Congress to accept or reject an international agreement in its entirety quickly and without altering the substance, was set to expire in 1993 . Given the position of the EU relative to the other major negotiating parties in the GATT, it was clear that CAP reform was required in order to reach an agreement on agriculture and thus conclude the Uruguay Round. Agricultural Commissioner Raymond “Ray” MacSharry knew, however, that he could not openly and directly link his CAP reforms to the GATT UR. Connecting CAP reform to the GATT would lead to the perception among the public and member state representatives in the Council of Ministers that “reforms were being made for the benefit of the Americans” . If the perception that CAP reform was being done for the sake of a GATT agreement took hold, MacSharry knew that his “reforms would be dead in the water” . For this reason, the reform package was presented as being constructed to deal with problems related to the budget and surplus production only . Any consequences these reforms might have for the GATT negotiations were, ostensibly, secondary. The combination of pressures confronting the CAP at the time of MacSharry’s reform, most notably concerns related to the GATT and how budget overruns would affect the SEA, meant that reformers were operating at a time of “disruptive politics”.

These tactics include: obscuring cuts or spreading them out over time; imposing retrenchment on only one segment of agricultural producers; and coupling cuts with side-payments or measures to make the CAP more equitable.The influence of farmers today stems from several sources including: organizations, public opinion, control of the policy space, and the nature of agricultural production. Each source provides farmers with access to and influence over agricultural policy making. Together, they make it difficult for those seeking to reform the CAP, whether technocrats or environmentalists, to override farmer preferences. Farmers in advanced industrialized countries are generally organized into and represented by a single organization, though sectoral and rival organizations do exist. The organizations have strong membership rates, an impressive capacity to mobilize their membership, and well disciplined and tightly coordinated sub-national branches. Examples of these farmer organizations include France’s Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles , the Netherlands’ Land- en Tuinbouw Organisatie and the UK’s National Farmers’ Union . The FNSEA has over 320,000 members, representing well over 50% of France’s farming population. There are also a number of smaller French farmer representative organizations, including the Coordination Rurale, with roughly 15,000 members, the Confédération Paysanne,vertical farming technology with about 10,000 adherents, and MODEF the communist-leaning organization created to be a dissenting voice to the FNSEA, which has, at most, a few thousand members . The Dutch LTO organizes just under 70% of farmers. Finally, the NFU represents roughly 75% of all farmers in the United Kingdom . The Comité des Organisations Professionnelles Agricoles is the umbrella organization that represents all of the member states’ farmer unions to the European Union.

It is the supranational lobby organization whose presidency rotates among the heads of the national farming unions. Combining the membership of all the constituent unions, COPA represents roughly 13 million farmers. Both the FNSEA and LTO are multi-tiered organizations that have local and regional branches united under a single national office. The NFU, meanwhile, is divided into three main branches, one representing England and Wales , another Scotland , and the third Northern Ireland . The three main branches, like the French and Dutch farmers’ unions, have many more regional and local offices. NFU England and Wales typically takes the lead in representing the NFU supranationally in consultation with the Scottish and Northern Irish branches. While certain types of farming may be concentrated in particular regions, farming in general is undertaken nationwide, meaning that farmers are professionally organized across the entire country. This type of organizational structure is distinct from that of most other interest groups, such as trade unions. Other interest organizations often lack either local-level representation throughout the country or tight coordination between national and sub–national branches. Country-wide coordination between national and sub–national branches permits farmer organizations to be actively engaged in political discussions at all levels of government. As one local politician from the Netherlands noted, the LTO has representatives at every single council meeting and is the only representative organization, professional or otherwise, that regularly attends . This strong presence in local politics allows farmers to form tight bonds with key local actors and shape the ways that important policies are implemented at the local level.In addition to regularly participating in local and regional politics, farmer organizations routinely engage with national politicians of the left and the right in the capital and in their home constituency. For example, a member of the left wing of the Assemblée Nationale stated that he had “regular monthly meetings” with representatives of the FNSEA while a member of the right leaning Les Républicains noted that he “meets regularly with [the FNSEA] and helps them advance legislative texts”3 .

The effect of regular contact with politicians locally and nationally is maximized in cases such as France where politicians hold multiple mandates. For example, a member of the parliament can also be a mayor. Multiple mandates allow farmers to lobby politicians in two capacities, as both a national and local office-holder. Local lobbying can be particularly powerful because of the additional pressure that the national government can put on local officials to keep their towns in order and minimize conflict. The influence of the farmer organizations is not just limited to national farmers’ unions. Other lobbying organizations include agricultural research centers or institutes, universities, such as the highly regarded Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and representative organizations, similar to the national farmers’ lobbies, that focus on one crop. In addition to their national offices, these sectoral organizations, such as the Association Générale des Producteurs de Blé in France, typically maintain offices in Brussels, allowing them to lobby directly about those aspects of the CAP that are most important to their constituents. In France, the broader farming lobby also includes the Chambres d’Agriculture. France is divided into 18 regions , with each region further divided into multiple departments , for a total of 94 across mainland France. Each département has its own Chambre d’Agriculture . Each région also has its own Chambre d’Agriculture, with the regional representatives coming from the chambres départementales. Finally, the 94 Chambres d’Agriculture are organized nationally into the Assemblée Permanente des Chambres d’Agriculture . The collective Chambres d’Agriculture thus afford the French farming community yet another avenue through which to lobby the government and influence policy at the departmental, regional, and national levels. Another source of influence for farmer organizations is their monopoly on expert knowledge. Agricultural policy is incredibly complex- both to create and even to understand . As a result, government representatives and officials, and even sometimes the ministry of agriculture, will rely on the research centers, technical institutes, or various national and sectoral representative organizations to provide expert advice, research, and data on various aspects of agricultural policy.

The government’s reliance on these organizations affords the broader farming lobby even more political power and influence. On all matters of agricultural policy, including creation and reform, the government is very dependent on farmer organizations for both expert advice and implementation. This dependence allows farmers to wield more influence than other interlocutors. For example, they can reject non-preferred alternatives as implausible or difficult to implement. In addition,vertical tower planter the government’s reliance on the expertise of farmer organizations in the research and policy development phase affords these groups privileged access and a first mover advantage; they can exert influence before other actors gain access to the debate. Sometimes, due to their expert knowledge farmers and their representative organizations are permitted to implement policies, creating further opportunities for them to shape the policy. A third source of political power and influence is the relationship between farmers and the public. Public opinion data demonstrate that Europe’s farmers benefit from a sympathetic public. According to the 2014 Eurobarometer survey, only 17% of French respondents think CAP spending is too high, while 69% believe spending is at the right level or too low. In general, the French public is supportive of its farmers and takes great pride in the myriad specialized wines, cheese, and other foodstuffs they produce. French farmer organizations, like the FNSEA have recognized that the farmers’ relationship with the public can be a powerful source of political influence. Indeed, the FNSEA routinely manipulates public opinion to serve its purposes. Often, its marketing highlights the plight of the small, family farmer while its political lobbying tends to privilege the interests of the large cereals producers. As Table 1.1 illustrates, strong public sympathy for farmers is not confined to countries like France. British farmers also benefit from a positive and sympathetic relationship with the public. According to the most recent Eurobarometer survey , only 16% of the British public believes that CAP spending is too high, while 72% believes that CAP spending is at the right level, or too low. This strong support for the CAP is all the more surprising given the British context. A series of public health scares have given British farmers a particularly bad reputation . In addition, the general public in the UK is among the most Euroskeptical in the EU. The belief that the UK pays far more into the EU than it gets out is widespread and contributed to the Brexit vote and the UK’s decision to leave the Union. Despite past issues with food safety and growing Euroskepticism, the British public maintains something of a soft spot for the CAP and for British farmers more broadly. A sympathetic public can be a key tool for the farmer lobby, and is one that many farmer organizations commit significant resources to maintaining . Favorable public opinion permits farmers to take disruptive action without concern for push back from those who are inconvenienced.

It also allows farmers to demand a high price for their products because publics are willing to pay more to subsidize domestic production. Finally, public sympathy gives politicians the political cover necessary to direct costly programs of aid to an already heavily funded and small portion of the population instead of towards more economically promising sectors or other needy social groups. The ways in which farmers produce and the type of products that they cultivate allow farmers to marshal a wide range of arguments for continuing agricultural income assistance. When farmers are small or inefficient producers, the narrative of caring for farmers in need and investing in small-family enterprises is advanced. Appeals are also made to sustain and preserve traditional rural life and practices. These arguments tie into a desire to protect a country’s rural heritage. When farms are large and efficient, aid is justified on different grounds. Farming is presented as a successful sector, generating jobs and exports and serving as the foundation for the much larger food industry, which includes processing and shipping. It can also be a source of pride or cultural influence for high-end products like cheese or wine. These arguments associate support for farmers with the protection of national culinary traditions and the defense of the culinary patrimony of the nation. Control of the policy space is a fourth and final source of political power and influence for farmers. The EU’s Directorate General for Agriculture which is responsible for developing and implementing CAP policy, is not only bigger than any other directorate, but also has effectively managed to isolate the agricultural policy making process , Keeler , and Knudsen. In CAP negotiations, the agricultural commissioner is the only one actively involved in the meetings. Other commissioners who may have an interest in the outcome of negotiations, like those for trade, budget and finance, competition, the environment, health and food safety, and competition are not party to the negotiations. In addition to excluding other commissioners, control of the policy space also keeps out groups representing other interests such as consumers, industry, and environmentalists. The exclusion of other actors allows agricultural interests to further dominate policy debates, while potential opponents, and the dissenting or alternative perspectives they can offer, are marginalized. Agricultural policy is similarly isolated in trade negotiations. In the Uruguay Round of the GATT, for example, the agricultural component of the agreement was negotiated separately from the rest of the trade deal. In addition, interviews with members of national legislators across countries, including the UK, Netherlands, and France, reveal that, when making agricultural policy, little effort is made to reach out to and incorporate other groups who may be interested in reform outcomes such as environmental or consumer groups . Instead, they consult agricultural interests almost exclusively. By controlling the policy space, agricultural interests can ensure that their preferences are voiced, while potential opponents have little or no opportunity to participate in policy making. Though farmers have seen their numbers decline, they have been able to preserve their influence. Organizations help farmers mobilize for collective action and access policymakers at all levels of the political system. Sympathetic publics permit farmers to ask for policies that are often burdensome for the consumer and tax payer. Control of the policy space prevents opponents from challenging farmers’ policy preferences and putting forward alternative reforms. Finally, the nature of agricultural production allows farmers to advance a variety of arguments about the continued relevance of the agricultural sector. Ultimately, these are the sources of influence that reformers must navigate and that have helped farmers avoid the political irrelevance they seemed destined for as their economic and demographic power declined.