Tag: horticulture

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.

This information is provided to allow the reader to have ready access to trade data in a form that facilitates consideration of export gains for California agriculture. The bottom line is that the KORUS FTA would make U.S. products relatively cheaper in Korea and, as a result, the Korean market for U.S. products would expand. Further, the larger difference in tariffs on agricultural goods means that there is substantial potential for gains from the KORUS FTA in agricultural trade for the United States and California.The United States and South Korea formally announced their intention to start negotiations leading to a free trade agreement on February 2, 2006. After negotiation sessions in Washington, D.C., and Seoul, follow-up meetings were held in Seattle, Washington, and on Jeju Island in South Korea in late October 2006. The negotiations were very strenuous given the complexity of trade relations between the two countries coupled with the short deadline to conclude the negotiations . In the United States, negotiations were authorized under trade promotion authority legislation. The most recent trade promotion negotiation authority was granted to the president under the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Act of 2002 and expired on July 1, 2007 . The TPA requires a 90-day presidential notification to Congress of intent to sign the agreement. The KORUS FTA was finalized on the last possible day, April 1, 2007, and on June 30, 2007, trade officials representing the United States and South Korea signed it. Once an agreement is signed, the U.S. Congress must pass implementing legislation before the trade agreement can take effect. There is no binding deadline for such legislation and implementation of FTAs has often been delayed until long after the agreements were signed. Under the TPA legislation, Congress must either pass or reject an agreement as signed and may not amend it. Trade observers consider this provision a requirement for any trade negotiation to proceed.

Clearly,vertical farming tower for sale trading partners would find it futile to negotiate with the United States if the agreement reached could subsequently be unilaterally changed by Congress. Besides the World Trade Organization negotiations in the Doha Round, the United States has used TPA to engage in free trade initiatives in the western hemisphere, East Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Africa. The United States has completed free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Central America-5 , Israel, Australia, Chile, Jordan, and Morocco and has signed an FTA with the Dominican Republic, Peru, Oman, and Bahrain .2 Under a simple definition, an FTA is a pact between or among two or more countries under which tariffs and similar non-tariff border restrictions are eliminated among the parties to the agreement. Many, if not all, FTAs achieve less than full free trade. Even when barriers are removed, the gradual scheduling of liberalization and other rules make the agreements complex . Korea has FTAs with Chile , Singapore , ASEAN-10 , and EFTA-4 . Korea has negotiations under consideration with Japan, Canada, Mexico, and India .3 Korea is also considering FTAs with New Zealand and Australia . Korea’s existing FTAs allow only limited access for agricultural trade. For example, the Korean FTA with the ASEAN-10, signed in May 2006, excluded a number of agricultural items, including rice . Previous Korean FTAs also contained provisions intended for gradual market opening, such as schedules for phasing out tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Furthermore, those FTAs granted a preferential status to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which houses South Korean companies near the North Korean city of Kaesong. Likewise, previous FTAs signed by the United States have included tariff reduction schedules and provisions for dispute resolution and related issues. Even though the United States and Korea have been political allies for many decades, they have a history of trade disputes that goes back long before the WTO entered into force in January 1995.

Since 1995, the two countries have fi led thirteen cases involving bilateral trade problems, seven by the United States and six by Korea. Six of the seven U.S. cases against Korea have involved problems with non-tariff protection in agriculture .South Korea has experienced phenomenal change in the last half century. It has gone from an extremely poor agrarian economy using nineteenth century technology at best to a wealthy modern society at the cutting edge of applied science and with some of the world’s most advanced technological firms dominating the economic landscape. In two generations, Korea went through changes that took 100 years or more in the United States and Europe. As GDP doubled and then doubled again and again, annual income went from only a few hundred dollars per capita to more than $20,000 per capita today. Meanwhile, manufacturing and services expanded and the share of agriculture in the economy declined from about 30% in 1970 to a little more than 3% now. The changes in dietary patterns in Korea were equally rapid. As recently as 1982, about 32% of monthly food expenditures went to cereal consumed at home. By 2005, that share had fallen to just 6%. Consumption of all other products at home, except processed products, has also fallen somewhat while food consumed away from home has jumped from just 6% of monthly expenditures to about 46% . The huge shift in expenditures on food away from home also indicates the nature of Korean society, in which most people live in urban apartments. They spend long hours away from home involved in school, work, commuting, and other activities. Of course, many of the food expenditures away from home are for food preparation and related services that are not included in food costs for home consumption. The same issues are reflected in data for the United States, where expenditures away from home have risen rapidly in recent decades. The rapid change in the Korean diet may also be gleaned from changes in nutrient consumption. In 1980, fully 75% of Korean calorie intake came from carbohydrates while 12% came from protein and 13% came from fat. By 2004, carbohydrate intake had fallen to 61% of calories and fat had risen to 26% .

The increased fat intake has been driven by increased consumption of meat and dairy products and the greater role of processed snacks and other processed foods in the diet. It also reflects the different composition of food consumed away from home. In the context of this economic and social revolution, agriculture has changed but not to the degree that industrial and service economies have. Under tight protection from imports,hydroponic vertical farm rice continued and even expanded as the dominant crop with 37% of acreage devoted to rice in 1970 and about 50% currently. Horticultural production has expanded substantially while barley and potato acreages have declined. The arable land devoted to fruit production has expanded from about 2% in 1970 to 8% today and greenhouse production grew from almost nothing to 2% of arable land . The dairy and beef industries have expanded to meet part of the increased domestic demand. Farm size has grown slowly in Korea but remains far below the average farm size of other industrial economies other than Japan. Korean agriculture has been like Japanese agriculture in another characteristic as well: protection from imports has kept much of agriculture insulated from competitive pressures from abroad, helped maintain rice as the dominant crop, and relied on high prices rather than farm size increases as the mechanism by which to maintain farm incomes relative to non-farm incomes. Per capita farm income in Korea grew along with the national average until the last decade. Since the early 1990s, per capita income of the farm population went from rough parity with the non-farm population to about 80% of non-farm incomes today . At the same time, a demographic transformation has occurred in the age pattern of the farm population . In 1970, more than 50% of the farm population was less than 20 years of age and only about 5% of the population was older than 65. In 2004, about 30% of the population was older than 65 and only about 15% was under 20 . This huge and rapid shift means that there are few young families with children left among farm families. There will be a huge turnover among farmers and, given the lack of successors available, farm consolidation is inevitable.Table 1.b reports the value of total merchandise trade for the two countries for the period 2000–2007. The United States incurred a significant trade deficit each year, while Korea has produced a trade surplus each year. The United States trades much more than Korea; in 2007, U.S. total trade was more than four times Korean trade in value. However, considering the relative size of the economy, it is important to note that trade has a more significant role in the Korean economy. In 2007, annual trade totaled about one quarter of U.S. GDP but about 80% for Korea. For the period 2000–2007, U.S. exports to Korea averaged close to $26 billion and about 3% of total U.S. exports go to Korea. U.S. merchandise exports to Korea declined sharply in 2001 but bounced back gradually, reaching the pre-slump level by 2005. During 2006/07, U.S. exports rose substantially, reaching $33 billion.

In the same year, Korea was the seventh largest export market for the United States. Major export items from the United States to Korea include semiconductor chips, manufacturing equipment, aircraft, and agricultural goods. Korea is equally important as a source for U.S. imports as it is the seventh largest import source. Consistent with the overall U.S. trade deficit, the United States incurs a deficit in bilateral trade with Korea. The trade deficit was $14 billion at the beginning of the century and has remained in the range of $12 to $14 billion in recent years. Even though U.S. exports to Korea grew substantially, U.S. imports from Korea also increased and the trade deficit has changed little. Almost all imports from Korea are manufactured goods. Unlike the United States, which has run a trade deficit overall for decades, Korea has run a trade surplus for many years. However, the trade surplus in general is not large—about 5% of the country’s exports—because Korea has to rely on foreign sources for much its raw materials. Over the time period considered, Korea expanded trade rapidly, doubling exports as well as imports. Consistent with the global importance of the U.S. economy, the United States represents a much larger proportion of Korean trade than Korea does of U.S. trade. In 2007 Korea represented, at most, 3% of U.S. trade as a buyer of U.S. goods and as a seller in the U.S. market. During that same year, the United States had about 9% of the Korean market and about 12% of total exports by Korea were destined for the United States. Korea’s trade has been dominated mostly by three countries: the United States, China, and Japan. in a similar magnitude for both imports and exports as the United States but the EU is excluded from the list of individual countries.Prior to 2000, Japan and the United States traded the position of top source of imports into Korea. However, since 2000, Japanese exports to Korea have surpassed U.S. exports and Japan has remained as the top source of Korean imports. With the emergence of China, the United States’ relative position in Korea declined further. As shown in Table 1.c, since 2004 China has replaced the United States as the second source of Korean imports after Japan. China also is the largest market for Korean goods, having replaced the United States in 2003. Major Korean exports to the United States include cellular phones, cars, semiconductor circuits, televisions, fl at panel screens, and construction vehicles .Agricultural goods are important export commodities in the United States. Table 1.d provides values of agricultural trade for the United States and Korea for recent years. In 2007, agricultural trade occupied about 9% of U.S. merchandise exports and 4% of merchandise imports . The U.S. agricultural sector consistently produces a trade surplus and contributes to reducing the trade deficit .

Whether these ameliorants, or sorbents, such as zeolites or biochar, are effective agronomic treatments will depend on the system’s vulnerability to N losses. Experiments in controlled conditions have shown that sorbents can optimize NH+ 4 release considerably . Other technological interventions currently available include plastic mulch, now in widespread use in parts of China . While developed as a water conservation measure, plastic also heats soil and thereby accelerates N mineralization as the growing season progresses . However, the long term application of plastic mulching can lead to pollution that damages soil health and threatens long-term food security . Manipulating the microbes responsible for soil N cycling could be a fruitful frontier for future research. We are only now learning the functional importance of the myriad plant microbe associations that form the plant microbiome, and emerging evidence that plants can stimulate rhizosphere microbes to oxidize soil carbon implies that plants might also be bred or engineered to harness the micro-biome for N release. Or that the micro-biome might be intentionally composed to include microbes capable of mineralizing soil organic N when triggered by plant N demand. Additionally, slow-release N fertilizers or even cover crops might be created with an enhanced ability to release organic N when similarly triggered. Management of fertilizer N in paddy soils is notoriously difficult due to loss of N through NH3 volatilization from the floodwaters. The deep placement of urea granules is one technology to enhance N capture by rice and reduce losses, although demanding in terms of labor . Climate mitigation practices to reduce methane emissions from paddy rice call for periodic drainage ,raspberry cultivation pot which will make N management all the more difficult as organic N mineralizes to NH+ 4 that will then undergo nitrification to NO− 3 during drained periods with subsequent loss via denitrification upon re-wetting.

Losses can be mitigated with management that avoids the presence of excessive mineral N pools in the soil at these high risk time periods, such as split N applications, retaining crop residue, and keeping N balances in check.Precision agriculture is a farm management approach that seeks to identify practices that optimize the use of farm inputs . As a result, precision management relies on technologies that enable intensive data collection, processing, and evaluation needed to properly characterize and synthesize temporal and spatial variability. Theoretically, the variance in yield and environmental outcomes is attributable to measurable climatic, edaphic, and management factors. Precision agriculture is not exclusively focused upon N management, but improving NUE is a common goal given the potential variance of crop N demand across the landscape and with time. Site-specific management can help tailor N applications, improve NUE, increase profits, and/or minimize risk of N loss . NUE, as a performance outcome, can also be used to evaluate management decisions in fields characterized by high spatial and temporal variability in biophysical conditions . Coincidently, a cornerstone of tactical N management is fine-tuning in-season N management to meet crop N needs based upon the status of the plant. For example, the N nutritional index can be used to determine whether the crop N concentration is sub-optimal relative to the critical N dilution curve at maximum yield , while the N sufficiency index can assess status by referencing a well-fertilized area . A rapid, non-destructive assessment of field or sub-field NUE depends upon the remote or proximal sensing tools and algorithms that reliably monitor N concentrations in the crop . The working assumption is that crop N sufficiency status is functionally related to plant N either expressed as a concentration or accumulation in the leaf or plant. Though not always consistent across growth stage and fertilizer rate, chlorophyll or protein indicators can be used as proxies for N status due to the strong relationship between Ncontaining compounds and N content .

Many different vegetation indices are widely used to estimate crop N content or accumulation, alleviating confounding factors from soils or water, which are generally calculated from the leaf or canopy reflectance values of wavebands in the visible and near infrared regions . Rapid developments in sensing technologies coupled with machine learning have increased our abilities to accurately predict yield and non-destructively estimate plant N status . However, challenges persist for practitioners , including the influence of growth stage, cultivars, and N management across space and time, as well as the limitation imposed as indices approach saturation levels. Furthermore, canopy sensing data is often instantaneous, infrequent, and does not capture the N status of the entire plant , thus potentially missing dynamic N behavior in the plant pertinent to making timely recommendations. To combat these limitations, Fu et al. recommends that hyperspectral data be integrated with crop growth models and radiative transfer models to improve assessments. The variance in crop and soil data can also be used to delineate sub-field management zones through the combination of sensing, geostatistical, and interpolation techniques . However, when developing site specific N recommendations, precision agriculture tools must also account for the dynamic nature of soil N and crop uptake efficiencies across landscapes . Furthermore, recommendations that rely primarily on vegetation indices cannot guide pre-planting or pre-emergent N decisions. Therefore, an integrative site specific N management approach links georeferenced decision support models to dynamic biogeochemical models that simulate outcomes based upon relevant crop, soil, weather, management, and enterprise factors . Models that simulate N status can then be validated through field measurements collected throughout the growing season. Therefore, precision agriculture technologies are compatible within an adaptive N management framework, in which site specific empirical data is used to improve model accuracy on a field or sub-field level . Ultimately, data from these various sources can be fused through machine learning or other techniques to provide on-the-go assessments and automated recommendations . Crop sensing and georeferenced management data could be used to calculate and map NUE spatially and temporally for assessment purposes. As a performance indicator, NUE can help evaluate fertilizer management within the context of yield and crop quality goals, and even diagnose factors contributing to inefficiencies of fertilizer use . As an environmental indicator, NUE estimates can help farmers assess the risk of N losses from farms or fields, or relative to regional or supply chain estimates .

Variable rate N fertilizer technology could substantially reduce N losses by matching the low plant N demand in low fertility sub-field areas with appropriately reduced fertilizer rates,low round pots as could planting these areas to perennial conservation or bio-energy species. With current technology, the best way to capture unused N after the main crop’s growing season is by using cover crops planted to grow quickly following senescence of the main crop. The N that cover crops remove from the soil solution is N that is not lost to the environment and instead can be remobilized from cover crop biomass to provide N to the following year’s main crop. Although plants cannot use atmospheric N2 directly, it has been known for over a century that diverse bacteria and archaea, known as diazotrophs, can convert atmospheric N2 to NH3 through BNF and that the NH3 produced can be utilized directly or indirectly by plants for growth . Diazotrophs can be found in bulk soil, within the rhizosphere of plants, physically-associated with plant roots and other organs, and even inside plants within specialized, N fixing organs called nodules . Rates of BNF by free-living diazotrophs in soil are typically low, between 1 and 20 kg N ha−1 yr−1 , although associative N fixation by microbes in the rhizosphere or on plant surfaces may contribute significantly to plant growth in low-N input systems . In contrast, BNF in nodules is highly efficient, and in high-yield environments can exceed 300 kg N ha−1 yr−1 as nutrient exchange between plants and their intracellular bacterial endosymbionts is highly targeted , avoiding losses of plant-C and bacterialammonia to the soil and associated microbiome. However, BNF in nodules is confined largely to legumes and a few nonlegume plant families , while most crop species, including cereals, are unable to access atmospheric N2 in this way. The escalating global N problem has sparked renewed interest in BNF as a partial solution, deployable through: development and use of legumes and rhizobia with increased BNF potential; development of more-effective associative N fixation in non-legumes, especially the major cereals; and potentially through the engineering of nodule symbioses or even plants capable of fixing their own N . BNF in grain legumes remains an important source of N in many cropping systems, where it contributes to higher NUE, although the relative contribution of legumes in agriculture has declined with the increase in N fertilizer use. This was partly due to the emphasis on cereal production in the policies of the Green Revolution, which replaced traditional cereal-legume crop rotations in countries like India, leading to scarcity of grain legumes and even imports from Africa . Therefore, there is tremendous scope to increase the contribution of legume BNF to agriculture, via systems agronomy and plant breeding approaches , and by improving the effectiveness and resilience of rhizobium strains used as inoculants . Growing legumes, as grain or green manure crops, and recycling shoot biomass to the soil generally improves soil fertility, increases the yield of the subsequent crop, and reduces the requirement for synthetic N.

Many reports cite more grain production in cereals grown after a legume, than after a nonlegume or after a fallow . Legumes are often used in short-term rotation, such as cornsoybean, or in continuous corn with a legume winter cover crop. These systems offer farmers many benefits, and help to solve environmental problems associated with N use in agriculture. In many developing regions of the world, legumes are used extensively to meet protein requirements. Nevertheless, in past decades, the widespread availability of synthetic Nfertilizer and low yields of legumes relative to cereals have resulted either in a stagnation or a decrease in the area under cultivation of legumes in different regions . There are several environmental and economic constraints limiting legume yield and profitability that may be responsible for a decrease in legume cultivation. In a recent review, Vanlauwe et al. argued that although considerable progress has been made in understanding grain legume agronomy, the relationship between legumes and rhizobia populations, the benefits of BNF to farming systems, and the spatial and temporal integration of legumes in these systems are important knowledge gaps that prevent the formulation of recommendations that would further enhance the contributions of legumes to farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa . They recommend integration of BNF in breeding programs and improvements in overall agronomy to maximize the potential of symbiosis through eliminating various soil and other environmental constraints. Legumes are also an attractive option for mixed-crop systems where two crop species are grown simultaneously in the same field. But despite advantages of inter cropping that include greater resource use efficiency, including NUE, inter cropping remains ‘at the fringes of modern intensive agriculture’ . This may change when the benefits of inter cropping are realized, with a recent estimate that globally increased NUE of cereal-legume inter cropping reduces the requirements for fossil based fertilizer N by about 26% . Challenges will include planting using the same implements, weed management, and harvesting. There is growing interest in the development of effective associative N fixation for cereal crops, especially maize, rice, and wheat , and as well for perennial forage and bio-energy grasses . These range from simply isolating, testing, and deploying the most effective natural plant-associated diazotrophs of target plant species, based primarily on plant growth promotion , to current attempts to edit the genomes of such bacteria to remove genetic controls that prevent N fixation and NH3 release in agricultural soils containing potentially high levels of mineral and organic-N . Decades of genetic, genomic, and biochemical research and technology development provide a basis for attempts to edit or engineer diazotrophs for optimal association with non-legumes . However, it is difficult to estimate small amounts of BNF in the field and many recent claims of large amounts of fixed N in cereals result from flawed application of measurement methods .

Studies in the California Delta have suggested that while C loss and subsidence rates have both been declining over time relative to the rapid losses after initial drainage, the relative importance of SOM mineralization losses has been increasing. Deverel and Leighton estimated that 67% of subsidence since 1995 could be attributed to SOM losses on a neighboring Delta island, a value which agrees with work from other drained peat lands showing an increase in the relative importance of mineralization over time.The estimated annual subsidence by this method was 0.11 cm yr-1 at Site 1 and 0.07 cm yr-1 at Site 2. Some caution is needed, however, in interpreting these subsidence estimates because of the assumptions involved in calculating them, particularly the use of the soil bulk density and fraction of subsidence due to SOM loss. Yet these results are in close agreement with Hatala et al. who estimated 0.10–0.14 cm yr-1 subsidence loss at this site using eddy covariance tower measurements to develop and C budget. Both these studies suggest that rice systems reduce subsidence relative to regional averages of 1–3 cm yr-1, and rates measured in a maize field at the same site of 2.5 cm yr-1. Our analysis also indicates that after the first four years since conversion to rice agriculture, seasonal flooding is however not adequate to achieve soil gains similar to those observed in constructed wetlands. Measuring subsidence directly in a dynamic, intensely managed agricultural system is difficult,hydroponic net pots and thus all methods provide only estimates. Methods using extensometers to estimate the surface elevation relative to fixed anchors [c.f. 16] require specialized equipment and many years to examine a trend in the data.

In this context, using this N budget approach may be preferable as it is less resource intensive and can easily be integrated with a farmer’s management practices on a small portion of land, and further study that could refine bulk density and consolidation measurements including an assessment of temporal change in these factors would be valuable to more directly link SOM-N mineralization estimates with ongoing subsidence in the field.alifornia has led the nation in farm sales since 1950, largely because of the state’s specialization in high-value fruit and vegetable crops. California’s farm sales of $54 billion in 2014 included $20.8 billion worth of fruits and nuts, $8.3 billion worth of vegetables and melons and $5.4 billion worth of horticultural specialties such as greenhouse and nursery products. The value of field crops such as cotton, hay and rice was $4 billion, making crop sales of $38 billion almost three-fourths of the state’s farm sales. Livestock and poultry sales were $16 billion, including $9 billion from milk. Fruit, vegetable and horticultural crops accounted for 90% of the state’s crop sales and two-thirds of its farm sales. The production of many fruits and vegetables is relatively labor intensive, with labor representing 20% to 40% of production costs. California growers reported paying $11.4 billion in wages in 2014, making labor costs over 20% of farm sales. Almost 45% of these labor costs was for support activities for crop production, primarily payments to farm labor contractors, custom harvesters and other non–farm businesses that bring workers to farms. Hired workers, rather than self-employed farm operators and their families, do most of the work on the state’s largest farms that produce almost all labor-intensive FVH crops. Most California farm workers were born in Mexico, and 60% of crop workers employed on the state’s crop farms have been unauthorized for the past decade, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, which is 10 percentage points higher than the U.S. average of 50%.

Farm employers say that farm workers present seemingly valid documentation and Social Security numbers when they are hired, so they do not know who is unauthorized. Several factors, including increased production of labor-intensive crops, a tightening of border controls that has slowed arrivals of new farm workers, and proposals to give some unauthorized foreigners a temporary legal status, have intensified interest in current and future farm workers, with farm employers arguing that there are farm labor shortages and worker advocates countering that there is only a shortage of wages to attract and retain farm workers. While California regularly reports the number of jobs on farms across the state, it does not report the number of wage and salary workers who fill them. Our objective was to provide a clearer picture of California’s agricultural workforce by determining the actual number of wage and salary workers in agriculture.The state’s Employment Development Department obtains data on farm workers and wages paid when it collects unemployment insurance taxes from employers. Employers who pay more than $100 in quarterly wages are required to register with the EDD and pay taxes of up to 6% on the first $7,000 of each worker’s earnings to cover the cost of unemployment insurance benefits for laid-off workers. We extracted all wage and salary workers reported by California agricultural employers in 2014 and tabulated all of their farm and non–farm jobs and earnings in the state; we excluded wage and salary workers in forestry, fishing and hunting. This allowed us to assign workers with more than one job to their primary industry, that is, to the NAICS code of the employer where they had their maximum earnings. We excluded about 800 SSNs because of apparent problems, such as excessive number of jobs reported in a quarter .Average employment on the state’s farms is derived from employer reports of workers on the payroll for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. Most farm workers are paid weekly, so an average 410,900 workers employed in 2014 means that this is the average employment of workers on agricultural payrolls during the second week of the month. Workers employed during the month but not during the payroll period that includes the 12th are not included in published average employment data because it is a monthly snapshot, summed and divided by 12 months. Our analysis, however, captures these additional workers because we obtain data on all wage and salary workers hired by agricultural employers at any time, including farm workers, managers and office workers.

Figure 1 shows average employment in California agriculture since 1990. Average employment rose 10%, reflecting a decline in direct-hire employment on crop farms , stable employment in animal agriculture , and a 50% increase in crop support employment , most of which is with farm labor contractors. Since 2010, average employment reported by crop support establishments has been rising by 10,000 a year, so that in 2014 non–farm crop support firms brought more workers to crop farms, an average of over 205,000, than crop farms hired directly, 175,000. In 2014, two-thirds of average employment in crop support services, 207,600, involved farm labor contractors. Very few workers are employed in livestock support services. Average employment can be considered to be an estimate of full-time equivalent jobs, but it is not the total number of farm workers. When average employment in California agriculture was 410,900 in 2014, there were 829,000 unique SSNs reported by agricultural establishments, a two-to-one worker-to-job ratio . In 2012,blueberry grow pot when average employment was 395,400, there were 802,600 unique SSNs, also a two-to-one worker-to-job ratio. There was a similar two-to-one ratio of workers to average jobs in 2007. The 829,000 people employed in agriculture during 2014 earned $11.4 billion from agricultural employers and another $4.5 billion from non-farm employers. Average earnings for all workers with at least one farm employer were over $19,000 in 2014, while average earnings for workers who had their maximum earnings in agriculture were $16,500, up almost 8% from $15,300 in 2012. The California jobs of the workers reported by California farm employers can be tabulated, and workers can be assigned to the NAICS or commodity in which they had the highest earnings. For example, approximately 692,000 of the 829,000 workers employed in agriculture had their highest earnings from a farm employer in 2014, and 499,000 of these primary farm workers had only one agricultural employer . In 2014, the crop support and fruit and nut sectors had the lowest average earnings, with $12,719 for crop support and $17,600 for fruits and nuts. This explains why the overall average earnings of primary farm workers were only $16,500 even though all commodities except crop support and fruit and nut had higher average earnings, such as the $29,223 average earnings in cattle ranching. Over three-fourths of the $11.4 billion in agricultural earnings were from three NAICS codes: 1151 crop support activities , 1113 fruits and nuts and 1112 vegetables . Other major sources of agricultural earnings were NAICS 1114 greenhouses and nurseries and 1121 cattle and dairy .

By assigning all of the state’s 829,300 farm workers to the NAICS code of the employer where they had maximum earnings in 2014, we identified several groups. First, almost 692,000 of farm workers had their maximum earnings from agricultural establishments, including 392,000 whose maximum earnings were from NAICS 1151 crop support establishments, 154,000 whose maximum earnings were from NAICS 1113 fruit and nut establishments and 45,000 whose maximum earnings were from NAICS 1112 vegetable establishments. There are over 20 agricultural NAICS codes, but three sectors — crop support firms , fruit and nut farms, and vegetable and melon farms — accounted for 85% of all primary farm workers in 2014. Second, almost 500,000 farm workers, or 72% of primary farm workers, had only one job in 2014, meaning that three-fourths of workers whose maximum earnings were from agricultural establishments worked for only one agricultural employer in California. These “one-farm employer” workers were in the same three types of establishments as all primary farm workers: 288,000 were in NAICS 1151 crop support establishments, 103,000 were in NAICS 1113 fruit and nut establishments and 31,000 were in NAICS 1112 vegetable establishments. A closer look at workers whose maximum earnings were in particular NAICS codes found that 103,000, or two-thirds of the 154,000 directly hired fruit and nut workers, were employed by just one fruit and nut establishment. Similarly, over 288,000, or almost three-fourths of the 392,000 workers whose maximum earnings were in crop support, had only one crop-support employer, although crop support employees may work on multiple farms during the year. Over three-fourths of workers in livestock production were employed by one livestock establishment. Third, there were 94,000 primary farm workers with at least two farm employers in 2014. Of these, half had their maximum earnings from NAICS 1151 crop support establishments , but only an eighth of crop support workers had two farm employers. About 20% of those whose maximum earnings were from fruit and vegetable growers had at least two farm employers. Almost 72,000 farm workers had at least one farm and at least one non-farm employer in 2014, and almost 60% of these workers had their maximum earnings from NAICS 1151 crop support establishments, followed by 18% whose maximum earnings were from fruit growers. The most common non-farm jobs were in manufacturing; professional, scientific and technical services; and accommodation and food services. Finally, some 26,000 workers whose maximum earnings were in agriculture had at least two farm employers and at least one non-farm employer. Over half of these workers had their maximum earnings in crop support services and over a quarter in fruit and tree nut farming . The combined 220,500 workers with at least two employers in 2014 were most often employed in the same county. For example, over 8% of these two employer workers had two jobs in Kern County, followed by 6% with two jobs in Fresno County and 5% with two jobs in Monterey County. Approximately 22% of workers with two jobs in 2014 were employed in 1113 fruits and nuts and 1151 crop support, followed by 5% to 6% who combined 1151 with 5613 employment services, 1113 fruits and nuts with another 1113 job, at least two 1151 crop support jobs, and 1112 vegetables with 1151 crop support.The number of wage and salary workers employed on California farms is of great interest because of fears that farm labor shortages could reduce the state’s production of labor-intensive crops.

To obtain an initial sense of the dispersion of agricultural production across market catchment areas, I use a comprehensive database of the caloric value of food crops in Africa to assign an approximate caloric level per unit weight to all staple carbohydrates and convert production data into calories. The median market catchment area had a 2010 population of 2.37 million and has an average production per capita of 1,863 kcal per day of staple carbohydrates during my study period. Average production ranges from 0 to 10,347 kcal per person per day with 63 markets producing less than 1,000 kcal per person per day and 54 markets producing more than 3,000 kcal per person per day, suggesting significant opportunities for net trade between markets.My model uses the notation and basic framework of the one-commodity, two-market rational expectations storage and trade model of Williams and Wright 1991, chapter 9, which I extend to include the storage and trade of 6 grains across the network of 230 African markets and the world market built in the previous section. I embed this storage and trade model within a simple general equilibrium setting by including a composite outside good. While the six grains are subject to trade costs between locations , the outside good has no trade costs so that its price is the same in all locations, and I choose units so as to normalize its price to 110. Production of the outside good is used either for final consumption or for trade and storage services in the agricultural sector. In my simplest baseline case reflective of the short-term, I abstract away from production decisions by letting production of both the 6 grains and the outside good be an exogenous endowment that is unaffected by price changes. In an extension presented at the end of this section, I explicitly model production in each sector and allow for reallocation of factors of production between sectors in response to price changes.

In each location,dutch bucket for tomatoes a representative consumer chooses monthly consumption of each grain and the outside good to maximize utility and a representative competitive grain trader with rational expectations chooses monthly storage, trade, and local sales of each grain to maximize profits. I proceed by considering each of these agents in turn. Having estimated both the demand parameters and the cost parameters, I proceed to use the estimated parameters to solve the model for equilibrium storage, trade, consumption, and prices of every grain in every market in every month. Before proceeding to my counterfactual analysis in the next section, it is important to verify the goodness of fit of the baseline estimated model. Of the four equilibrium variables, the only one I observe at the monthly, market level is prices, so I focus on comparing the model-generated equilibrium prices to the price data. Figure 1.5 shows the actual maize price series from the 4 markets in Kenya and Tanzania from figure 1.1 together with the model-generated price series for these markets. In general, the correlation of the levels of the actual and model-generated price series is high. The correlation coefficient for the average prices for a given market and crop is 0.787. Within markets for all pairs of two crops, the model correctly predicts which crop has a higher average price 83.3% of the time. The correlation of the model-generated prices and the price data within a particular price series seems lower, although the goodness of fit is more difficult to measure. The median correlation coefficient within price series is 0.385. As is clear from the sample price series in figure 1.5, there are many month-to-month price fluctuations that cannot be explained by the parsimonious data used by the representative traders in my model. It is also the case that the correlation coefficient does not fully reflect the goodness of fit of the price series.

The maize price series from figure 1.5, for instance, have within series correlation coefficients of 0.136 , 0.217 , 0.171 , and 0.174 for this period despite the fact that the overall shapes of the series appear quite similar between the data and the model. In addition to monthly, market-level prices, I also observe annual, country-level trade flows as reported in national trade statistics and compiled by CEPII’s BACI project , which includes 37 of my 42 countries of interest as well as the rest of the world, which I group together into a 38th country. Although these data are much less detailed than my model-generated trade data , I can aggregate up my monthly, market-level equilibrium trade quantities and compare them to the annual, country-level data. In table 1.11, I compare net trade flows in the model and the data at different levels of aggregation. The first four rows compare net trade flows at the country level without distinguishing between specific origins and destinations, while in the bottom four rows I attempt to make this distinction by assigning observed trade with non-contiguous partner countries to the adjacent country through which such trade would have to pass so as to enable comparison with my model-generated trade flows. Correlation coefficients between net trade flows in the model and the data are generally very high, although they are somewhat lower at the lowest levels of aggregation. Despite high correlation coefficients, the model appears to perform only moderately well at predicting whether net trade flows are positive, negative, or zero in the data. However, this is largely due to sign discrepancies for very small or zero net trade flows. Once trade flows below a minimum threshold are dropped, the model predicts the correct sign for net trade flows for well above 80% of observations at all levels of aggregation. Discrepancies between the model and the data — particularly for small trade volumes — are likely due in part to the existence of significant informal grain trade flows across borders in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, which are not captured by official trade statistics.

Tschirley and Jayne2010, for instance, cite estimates of informal, unrecorded cross-border trade flows of maize between Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe exceeding 100,000 t/year. Having estimated the model and established that it can reproduce both the price data and annual, country-level trade data reasonably well, in the next section I conduct my counterfactual analysis in which I compare equilibrium outcomes under the baseline model to outcomes under counter factuals in which I change some of the demand parameters, cost parameters, or exogenous variables. Standard errors in table 1.12 were obtained using a computationally-intensive bootstrapping procedure with 40 iterations. For each iteration, I re-solved the model for equilibrium storage, trade, consumption, and prices under both high and low trade costs using different demand and cost parameter estimates obtained by re-sampling the data used to estimate each parameter with replacement. Due to the lengthy run-time, I limit my iterations to 40 and do not report standard errors for the later counter factuals in this chapter. In addition to the direct effect on price levels, lowering trade costs also affects local price volatility. In absolute terms, the average standard deviation of prices for the 511 grain price series falls from 0.188 to 0.123 under low trade costs. However, in relative terms, the average coefficient of variation increases from 0.330 to 0.387 due to the fall in the mean prices. In absolute terms,blueberry grow pot the frequency of grain prices over 1 USD/kg falls dramatically from 12.5% to 0.9% when trade costs are lowered. In relative terms, the frequency of grain prices exceeding double the series mean increases slightly from 2.0% to 2.1%. Lowering trade costs does therefore appear to be effective at preventing local prices from far exceeding regional and international levels as they have during events like the Horn of Africa famine , but relative price volatility remains significant as high storage costs and similar agricultural calendars within regions mean that seasonal price fluctuations continue to be substantial . The aggregate results in table 1.12 do not reflect the heterogeneity of the effects of reducing trade costs across African markets and countries. Table 1.13 summarizes this heterogeneity by grouping markets and countries according to the sign of the changes they experience in their average grain price index, their net agricultural revenues, and their overall welfare when trade costs are lowered.

The 181 markets and 37 countries in Group A are primarily net grain importers and experience changes similar to the continent-wide aggregate with falling prices and revenues and increasing welfare. The 14 markets and 2 countries in Group B are primarily net grain exporters who experience price increases, revenue increases, and welfare increases under lower trade costs. This is not the case for all exporting regions: the 24 markets in Group C are net exporters that experience price decreases, revenue decreases, and welfare losses. These are mostly landlocked surplus regions that experience negative terms-of-trade effects when the urban and coastal regions they trade with are able to access cheaper grain imports from the world market. Finally, a small group of 10 markets and 2 countries in Group D experience price decreases, revenue gains, and welfare gains due to their particular crop mix and/or their changing export position over time. The results discussed thus far reflect the effects of reducing trade costs in the short run when factors of production cannot reallocate between sectors. In the longer run, the large price changes that my model predicts under lower trade costs are likely to lead to the reallocation of factors of production. In the majority of markets , the decrease in the relative price of grains would lead to a shift of factors of production out of agriculture and into the outside good sector. Using my production model developed previously, I use the actual harvests and the baseline equilibrium prices to back out the implied productivity shocks Bimt and then re-solve the counterfactual with an endogenous supply response using different values for the price elasticity of supply η. Roberts and Schlenker estimate the year-to-year price elasticity of supply for staple grains at 0.097. In the longer run, η may be larger , while a value of η = 1 would be considered unusually high in the agriculture literature. My model and estimation strategy included several important assumptions. In this section, I explore the effects of relaxing some of these assumptions. When defining market catchment areas, I allocated all agricultural production in my 42 countries of interest to the 230 markets in my network. As an alternative, I define market catchment areas for all 263 markets on my initial ideal list and then drop production in the catchment areas of the 33 markets for which I was unable to obtain price data. Re-solving the model for both baseline and counterfactual scenarios using these revised production data does not change my results substantially. Results for all indicators in table 1.12 are well within 95% confidence intervals constructed using the standard errors reported there. For my baseline estimation, I used the Cobb-Douglas elasticity of substitution and set the price elasticity of demand for grains to match the estimate of Roberts and Schlenker 2013 . Both of these values are at the lower end of elasticity estimates in the literature. In table 1.15, I compare my baseline results to results obtained using larger elasticities in my estimation. Each time I change an elasticity, I re-estimate the other demand parameters using the new elasticities, re-solve the model under both existing high trade costs and counterfactual low trade costs, and report the aggregate effects of lowering trade costs in table 1.15. Increasing the elasticity of substitution σ to 3 has virtually no impact on my aggregate results. Increasing the price elasticity of demand to −0.5 leads to less of a fall in expenditure on grains and net agricultural revenues, as consumers increase expenditure more under lower prices. However, the average fall in the grain price index is nearly the same as before, with net grain imports from the world market increasing by nearly eight times as much to cover increased demand. The overall welfare increase from decreasing trade costs does not change significantly from my baseline case. I next analyse the effects of my assumption about trader expectations, which is necessary for model tractability but is likely to lead to underestimates of equilibrium storage by eliminating the effects of uncertainty.

In addition, the number of households that rely on a single water supply source is only 22 on average, and more communities have access to surface water as drinking water supply source.About half of the final Ag-MAR parcels are associated with extremely and very highly vulnerable communities; most are located within Tulare County . A total of 1,334 parcels are associated with communities with high and moderate vulnerability, while 150 Ag-MAR parcel are associated with low vulnerability communities. Among the Ag-MAR parcels associated with extremely, very highly, and highly vulnerable communities, about 68% of the parcels have excellent soil suitability and are planted with vineyards . Likewise, Ag-MAR parcels associated with moderate and low vulnerability communities have predominantly excellent soil suitability and the majority of the parcels are either vineyards, planted with field crops, or idle . There are fewer Ag-MAR parcels surrounding rural communities in the southern part of the study area where large urban centers provide less opportunity to implement Ag-MAR as a mitigation strategy. Figure 7a also indicates that there are some communities, particularly in the western and southwestern part of the study area, where no suitable Ag-MAR parcels could be found within the well capture zones. In fact, suitable Ag-MAR parcels could only be identified for about half of the 288 communities,vertical hydroponic nft system leaving 139 communities without nearby Ag-MAR sites. For these communities, Ag-MAR potential was mainly diminished by soil suitability and lack of surface water conveyance infrastructure . Of the 149 communities for which suitable Ag-MAR parcels could be identified, 88 communities had at least 10 associated Ag-MAR parcels, and 60 communities had at least 20 associated parcels.

There were 61 communities with less than 10 associated parcels, 14 of which had only one associated parcel.Although a wide variety of decision support tools are available for general surface and groundwater management and drinking water quality in California ; none of these tools provide information on mitigation or remediation options for chronic groundwater overdraft or contamination. This study is the first effort to systematically explore the potential for targeted Ag-MAR to directly improve the drinking water supply from groundwater in rural communities. In past decades, MAR has been used to achieve varying objectives , however, implementation of MAR is often limited by challenges of recharge water availability , locating suitable groundwater recharge zones, regulatory constraints, and funding obstacles . Ag-MAR overcomes many of these challenges due to low capital cost and permitting requirements , and with appropriate planning can be used to provide multiple benefits to a region including stabilized domestic and agricultural water supply, flood control, and climate change mitigation . However, Ag-MAR implementation in the southern CV might be constrained by the existing surface water conveyance capacity, which Hanak et al. deemed inadequate for capturing and moving high flows to suitable recharge locations. Conveyance capacity data were not available for this analysis, but according to Hanak et al. represents one of the major limitations for MAR implementation. In this study, almost 3,000 land parcels suitable for Ag-MAR ranging in size from 0.2 to 260 ha have been located within the well capture zones of rural communities. Of the 288 rural communities included in this analysis, 253 communities rely on groundwater as their main source of drinking water. However, suitable Ag-MAR parcels could only be identified within the capture zones of 149 of the 288 communities, 144 of which are reliant on groundwater for their drinking water supply. Most of the communities for which no nearby AgMAR parcels could be identified are located near large urban areas or near the CV rim, where topography and a lack of conveyance infrastructure prohibit Ag-MAR. A complex political and socio-economic environment around water governance in the region has historically prevented more inclusive water management but for these communities, other types of MAR , well head treatment, or incorporation into nearby public water supply systems might be the only options to improve the quantity and quality of drinking water supplies.

For reference, 118 of the 288 communities studied have no access to public water supply sources but 56% of these communities are within the boundaries of existing public water supply systems.MAR site selection studies using GIS-based MCDA approaches have been developed in many regions across the world . The majority of these studies use slope, land use, geology and soil type as the main criteria for identifying MAR sites . Similarly, our study uses soil characteristics and land use as the main criteria to determine Ag-MAR site suitability, but differs from earlier studies in that we refine suitable sites by linking the GIS analysis with deterministic groundwater modeling and particle tracking to only select sites with potential to benefit the drinking water supply in rural communities. The integration of groundwater modeling and particle tracking also ensured the inclusion of climate and hydrogeological data in the analysis. However, the groundwater modeling also introduced uncertainty in the estimated well capture zones, due to the spatio-temporal resolution of the model and because a quasisteady-state groundwater flow field was used for the particle tracking. The generalized groundwater flow field likely does not capture local spatio-temporal dynamics in the flow field caused by seasonal pumping, which can change or reverse some of the flow directions depicted in Figure 5. These seasonal dynamics should be considered in the final selection of Ag-MAR locations using field-level studies. In addition, in groundwater-dependent regions where an integrated surface water-groundwater model is not available, well capture zones may need to be derived from field observations. The Ag-MAR locations identified in this study relied on the integration of regionally specific data for the southern CV, but the methodology can be applied to other groundwater-dependent regions. To implement the Ag-MAR site suitability analysis, regional soil or geomorphology data can be used instead of SAGBI, and land use and surface water hydrology can be inferred from air photographs and satellite images.

Similarly, data descriptive of the socio-economic status of rural communities in groundwater-dependent regions or adverse environmental effects of human activities and groundwater overdraft on rural populations can be substituted with locally available demographic data or remote sensing data , respectively. In regions where little geologic or physiographic data exists, nft hydroponic system growing availability of high-resolution remote sensing data of land surface and subsurface characteristics may be useful . Many previous MAR site suitability studies were conducted to inform sustainable groundwater management , to serve as guidelines and decision support for farmers and policy makers , or to raise general interest for MAR development . However, as showcased in this study, GIS-based MCDA can also be used to identify priority areas for intervention or disaster management if site suitability analysis is combined with vulnerability analysis . This combination can be particularly useful in water resources management because the outputs can provide easily interpretable visual information, help refine the spatial focus of the problem, support priority development, and allow for assessment of different management scenarios before field-level investigations begin.To date, few MAR site suitability studies have conducted a sensitivity analysis or validation of recommended sites . Previous MAR suitability assessment studies have used indirect methods to validate MAR locations , while few have used numerical models and in situ observations . With this study, we propose to guide selection of suitable MAR sites by ensuring quantifiable benefits to groundwater levels, storage, water quality, and land subsidence. Although water management agencies maintain multiple MAR basins in the southern CV, most of these facilities have not been implemented to benefit the domestic water supply to rural communities. The Tulare Irrigation District has a 42 ha MAR basin located south of the Okieville community that has been operational since the 1940 . The recharge basin overlays the capture zone of the community’s southern groundwater wells. Its location was accurately identified by this study as suitable Ag-MAR location . Data from Okieville domestic wells show groundwater quality improvements from MAR, including lower nitrate, uranium and arsenic concentrations, which are well below the groundwater concentrations of nearby communities . These indicate that our methodology has positively identified locations where recharge can improve the drinking water supply of rural communities in a region of our study area. Although many studies have used GIS-based MCDA for MAR suitability studies, there is no consensus on appropriate criteria, weights, and methods as these are generally dependent on the study objective, data availability, and local experience .

The assignment of weights to each thematic layer or feature is one of the most subjective factors of MCDA and thus, one of the main sources of uncertainty . To address this issue, AHP is increasingly used to convert subjective assessments of relative importance into a set of weights , though sometimes the relative importance of themes may not be discernable . In this study, local experts in hydrology and human ecology similarly recommended the use of equal weights for thematic layers in both the site suitability and community vulnerability analyses. However, future iterations of these analyses will require the active involvement of local stakeholders , a process that may benefit greatly from the integration of AHP into the GIS-based MCDA . One main difficulty when estimating suitable recharge areas is the spatial and temporal variability of the physical system. We acknowledge that our analysis mainly uses land surface characteristics to determine suitable Ag-MAR sites, while subsurface characteristics were not directly included. Other factors not accounted for in our analysis include water availability, water quality, unsaturated zone transport, and willingness of landowners to flood agricultural land. Although robust quality control measures were taken, the accuracy of our results relies on the integrity of input data. Issues of accuracy and completeness of proprietary, hand-digitized, or self-reported data are inevitable, hence field-level studies of local surface and subsurface characteristics should be completed as part of project scoping and pilot testing. They are also essential to assess soil surface conditions, the presence of potential unprotected wellheads, capacity of connected surface water conveyance systems, feasible Ag-MAR water application amounts , and cropping and agro-chemical application history to determine potential legacy contaminant loading in the unsaturated zone that could be mobilized by recharge . Although nitrate loading to groundwater has been assessed at larger scales in California’s CV , parcel-level data on fertilizer application rates and nitrogen removal by crops is not publicly available, preventing the assessment of legacy nitrate loading in the unsaturated zone. Future improvements of this methodology should include the addition of contaminant transport modeling or site-specific simulation of drinking water contaminants to address this gap. Climate projections and impacts on surface water availability for recharge require further investigation . As shown by Bachand et al. , despite its semiarid climate, the southern CV faces frequent flood risks. Along the Kings River, flows have exceeded the flood stage almost once every 7 years in the last 4 decades, creating total losses exceeding $1.2 billion . Kocis & Dahlke showed that excess surface water from high flows occur on average every 4.7 out of 10 years with total amounts reaching up to 1.6 km3 between November and April in years when high flows are available. Water scarcity is expected to increase as the southern CV experiences more frequent and longer droughts and more frequent extreme events during wet years . Integrated water management solutions like Ag-MAR are urgently needed to stabilize groundwater supplies in the region.As the world strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, natural forest regrowth and active tree planting are frequently proposed as mitigation pathways to sequester carbon through increases in above- and below-ground biomass and soil organic matter . This reforestation process requires land. Although the portion of the Earth’s land surface used for agriculture continues to expand , a growing literature uses remotely sensed biophysical and land cover data to map the distribution of so-called “abandoned agricultural land” in high, middle, and low income countries. Goga et al. and Yin et al. estimate a great deal of abandoned agricultural land, whereas Crawford et al. and Potapov et al. indicate far less and even diminishing amounts. This estimation discrepancy may be due to differences in land cover measurement, but we argue that it also likely arises from the omission of information about landholding status and the complex landholder decision-making process.