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Terrific Bunny Tacos
Zienna P. (original recipe)
I imagined writing a long, comprehensive post with a compelling vision for agricultural policy in the U.S., but that was before I put this project on hiatus for half the year and so now I am scrambling to finish my tour of America by Election Day. Thus, I will not offer a detailed plan as I'd hoped, but rather try to build consensus around broad themes.
Hmmm. I just read my notes from early days of this project and it's tempting to just post those even though it's mostly stream of consciousness. I was supposed to think about it more, and it's kind of long-winded, but for first impressions, I'm pretty impressed. It would save me a lot of work, and more importantly time, which is in short supply. OK. Here is.
I guess I will offer some quick context first. Agriculture accounts for half of U.S. land area. It is hugely consequential, for all of us, especially those of us who care about grassland ecosystems, as well as in other ways I'll touch upon in the notes that follow. We talk about abortion, we talk about the border, what about ag policy? Maybe I don't have all the answers but this is a discussion we ain't having and we desperately need to! If you REALLY don't care, you can skip this, but maybe people in Nebraska will find it interesting and you are welcome to email me with your insights or rebuttals. At least I care! At least I try to understand, what's going on, what could be. Together we'll work it out! So with that,
Begin notes---
Ag: we already don't have a lot of farmers, we could literally support more farmers if we just shrunk the farms... grow less... feed fewer animals...
I guess we should probably maintain ag exports if people are buying good products
I need to read about this
Basically though we can transform our ag sector, painlessly!
Victory gardens? [<--maybe not the big answer but interesting history!]
Alternatives to trickle down ag dollars
Services in rural places, more families farming
why not farm? hard to make a livelihood, lack of familiarity (school gardens, 4H programs?)
what are our goals? reduce climate footprint of ag, reduce pressure on habitat, make healthy food cheaper and more accessible (right now we subsidize unhealthy food!)
organic is worth mentioning. It's basically a binary measure that you are trying to do the right thing (except for things like the CAFO loophole). it basically makes economic sense, but farmers don't do it because there is so much institutional support for non-organic systems. so, that sounds a gear the gov could oil dunno the metaphor. If all food were organic it would be more expensive but if we are clever about it the transfer of wealth would be from big chemical input companies to more rural livelihoods, more people working to grow better food and using less land. So, I mean, we can subsidize food if it's too expensive, we're massively subsidizing shitty food, but maybe we should be optimizing the economic, social, and environmental potential of our landscapes! Duh, ecoagriculture.
Some of this would be easier as state policy, but really thinking NYS isn't thinking big enough, I'm discussing ag but the climate footprint of ag is a big aspect of that. Right now we aren't looking at production controls -- farmers grow first, then figure out who to sell it to. The more you grow, the more money you can make. It's capitalism, I guess. So, if Americans ate less meat, farmers would probably try to figure out how to sell all the extra crop that would otherwise be saved. It's that way with paper recycling. You think recycling paper is reducing demand [for virgin resources], but what's really happening is that someone looks at a stand of trees and says, how can I get people using more paper? So recycling is good, it lowers the value of converting that tree stand and therefore the odds, but the owner of that tree stand is still interested in a payday (even a smaller one) and the bigger the landowner, the more likely they can bend the market to their will. Recycling in general is pretty fraught. It is addressing the symptom and not the problem. But that's an aside.
I am reading my writing about the Farm Bill and it's pretty wonky. I guess the take-home point is that it is like a giant beast working against itself. We spend a lot of money on agriculture in pursuit of conflicting goals. My professor would have me describe what the system is good at doing. Maybe this is too weird but it's like the farmers are just another commodity in the system. It's the supporting industries that reap the real benefits. Especially because of how our system works. They get the ag products for cheap, because we grow too much. But they are also making money on the volume they can sell, both the inputs and final products. So, yeah, grow too much! Put the liability on the farmers, reap reliable profits. That's what the system is good at. And maybe we can save species from extinction on the margins but the black-footed ferret seems to show that is an afterthought. Am I reading too much into ferrets because they are so cool? Or am I able to make a complex argument because they are so cool?
I share your hesitancy to mess with the hand that feeds us, because change can be scary, but farmers are hanging themselves this system isn't working well for the many, only for the few, and we spend billions of dollars that could be better focused.
Let's write thoughts. I'm hung up on organic because it represents the concept of a standard. We can and should debate what exactly it means. But we have an enormous opportunity here. Most of all, farmers want to farm and sell their produce and make a living that way. They can get a better price for organic produce because it requires more labor, it is a more premium product, literally, the high water point for Americans working in agriculture was something like 1930, higher prices is the direct result of supporting a larger number of livelihoods, so this is great, this is what farmers want. Rich people already buy organic (or we can ask them nicely). What about the poor? 75% of the Farm Bill is SNAP. SNAP already excludes certain categories of purchases, like booze or warm meals (go figure), so it wouldn't necessarily be a quantum leap of sophistication to offer a discount on American-grown organic products for SNAP beneficiaries. This could end up getting pretty expensive but we'd be saving money (through other provisions?) on subsidies for food no one wants (without a lot of marketing). During the pandemic, farm income hit 40% government payments. Big farms reap a disproportionate benefit of these payments and farmers really don't want the government to be paying them to farm when they could be making a living selling their product. I have to address the middle class, but this is stream of consciousness and I realize that, of course, farmers don't want to be paid not to farm either. I think this is going to have to be a change in mindstate. If your property produces crops and ecosystem services, you should be compensated for both, on some level. I am up against my capitalist upbringing. We can stop subsidizing overproduction, and we can stop you from farming (very) critical habitat, but what if the math is still more acres (plus intensification) = more money? But if you look at yourself as an Ecoagricultural Landscape Manager, then you are trying to optimize ecosystem services, or biodiversity, or whatever measure we come up with, of your landscape, along with agricultural productivity and your own livelihood (and those of others). And PES [payments for ecosystem services] seems a reasonable lens, a nice clean way to allocate resources. The tricky question is do we then have to pay all landowners for the ecosystem services? Morally, no, but then farming otherwise pristine land would suddenly allow for the collection of money sitting on the table. Aside - healthcare would make such a difference. I mean, I don't mind paying everyone, it will kind of wash out in the taxes, but I'm trying to work with you people and the stupid systems you've set up. Maybe the program is for farms but non-farms could sign on if they meet certain standards. In theory if you need to put in not-quite-as-much-effort as to farm a minimum acreage, then we can keep people with land lacking agricultural value from turning to farming unnecessarily or making use of the PES program. PES is interesting because it has knobs. For instance, PES that support species recovery (I'm thinking of ferrets) could be valued more aggressively than conserving low-value, possibly highly fractured habitat. That said, they should realistically reflect the ecosystem services provided. F***, I keep wishing I'd been encouraged to do my first thesis topic. What I studied is arguably more consequential and of higher educational value, but all the same.
I guess I should figure out how to adapt the existing system to achieve our goals of system change.
Organics should have animal care standards. These can get more aggressive over time. Actually maybe this should apply to all ag. It will make animal products more expensive, but for a reason! Because you are treating animals better. It's closer to the true cost.
Back to the middle class. Why not type. I guess this is an argument for a transition period. Hopefully the price of organic produce comes down, but only so far? If we want cheap food, then I guess we still need to subsidize farmer livelihoods, which we do today only less fairly. The middle class will have to decide what they can afford and prioritize, during the transition period. F***. This is why we hate means testing. But I guess this is an inherent problem with food stamps. Remember, we are just subsidizing American-grown organic products so there is price parity with regular products. We are saying, if we are going to buy food for the poor, then let's buy ethically as another policy objective, while the middle (and upper) economic classes have to make the choice, to support sound agricultural practices, and hopefully they will, but we will let you vote with your pocket book as our policies generally carve out a place for middle class aspirations. Otherwise you can always make the rich pay, but that is not an argument against efficiency. Fundamentally we want to get the most value out of our land, agricultural production, livelihoods, and conservation priorities. So that means sustainable agriculture; organic certification is a potential tool to shift agricultural practices in a sustainable direction and allows a lot of consumer sovereignty in the transition period.
Let's think. So what if the government starts buying organic food for the poor. That's money in. But hopefully farmers are getting better prices so that cuts into our subsidy payouts, or else, it's gonna need to. So it will begin to pay back. Wait, this isn't as simple as a farming tax credit, is it? +Healthcare, obviously, +PES?. So we know at its worst farmers were getting 40% of their income from the government.
So basically we need to establish healthcare before we start tinkering too hard with our ag system
There's a lot of room for reform within the current manifestation
---End notes.
Woot! That looked long but it's actually a quick read if a little disorganized. I feel a little ashamed I didn't interpret my notes for you but this project is down to the wire!
I kind of love driving through the middle of the country. OK, maybe miles and miles of corn fields is a little repetitive, but as long as you have podcasts to listen to, it's peaceful and pleasant and really makes you feel like you're accomplishing something with each day's progress toward your destination. Incidentally, I just realized this is a rare occasion to shit on Canada! (Not the only one, ask a Canadian environmentalist!) But I've driven across the Canadian Great Plains and the U.S. Great Plains and I generally prefer the U.S. experience. Maybe because I've done it more often, but also because there were SO MANY BUGS in Manitoba and Saskatchewan that we literally had to stop at EVERY gas station to squeegee the windshield or else there was literally zero visibility! I guess abundant insects is a good sign but it's hell to drive through. I haven't road tripped since my youth and in many ways these were my absolute happiest times so I have great nostalgia for Nebraska and your topographically unremarkable landscape. I promise I love you more than Trump or KL does, for what that's worth. Shout out to the museum theatre (it was an IMAX at the time, it has since gone digital) in Hastings, Nebraska! We skipped the exhibits but the gift shop was also great. Not to be confused with Hastings, England (been there too).
Don't forget, there is also a recipe here! Zienna might win the contest for best child's name. Concerning the food, the reader may be getting a little tired of bunny mince meat (surely never tacos!) but don't worry, this is kind of a weird streak we're on and like most everything, it will pass. I'm sticking with bunny but I think we'll add fajita peppers on a whim because, well, sounds even more terrific!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cube No-chicken bouillon
Preparation
Check back later!
Discussion
**WARNING** I have not yet made this recipe and so I can't vouch for the results.
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West Virginia