U.S. Agricultural Policy is commonly referred to as “Farm Policy”. According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), “U.S. agricultural policy — often simply called farm policy — generally follows a 5-year legislative cycle that produces a wide-ranging “Farm Bill”. Farm Bills, or Farm Acts, govern programs related to farming, food and nutrition, and rural communities, as well as aspects of bioenergy and forestry.” Indeed, the Farm Bill gets a lot of attention, as it should. But in addition to the Farm Bill, there are a variety of other programs and regulations that affect U.S. food and agricultural policy governed by legislation.”
Common areas of farm policy discussed and studied by the USDA ERS include animal products, crops, the farm economy, food and nutrition assistance programs (including child nutrition programs and school lunch programs), food choices and human health, food markets and prices, food safety, and the rural economy and population. While some topics commonly referenced as farm policy reside on the farm, such as crops and livestock, the majority of these topics touch producers, consumers and a number of different marketplaces.
Recognizing the far-reaching implications of farm policy discussions, both within our agricultural production systems and in society more broadly, Purdue University’s Agricultural Economics Department is home to a long-standing Purdue Farm Policy Study Group which convenes twice a year to discuss some of the timely policy and regulatory debates impacting our world. Dr. Ken Foster currently leads the Farm Policy Study Group, coordinating the last two meetings to include presentations and discussions from experts in their fields, such as:
- Solar Energy: New threat or opportunity or farmland preservation by Dr. Sarah Mills of the Ford School at the University of Michigan;
- An examination of the community level dynamics related to the introduction of wind energy in Indiana by Dr. Russell Hillberry of the Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics;
- Carbon Markets for US Row Crop Producers: Opportunities and Challenges by Drs. Nathanael Thompson and Carson Reeling, both of the Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics;
- Science in political discourse and the Purdue Civics Literacy Credential by Dr. Robert X. Browning of the Purdue University Brian Lamb School of Communication; and
- Societal value statements and measuring willingness to preserve public well-being, by yours truly.
Now, what do societal values and willingness to participate in COVID-19 mitigation practices have to do with farm policy? Well, public health policy and farm policy may be more intertwined than they first appear. Without confidence in public health and pandemic control measures, people do not go into public unnecessarily, like lingering for long indulgent meals in restaurants where we consume quite differently than we do at home. Reduced consumer spending has impacts on the specific markets for which demand is lessened, and then changes in spending on one category impact spending on basically every other spending category, which impacts the demand for nearly all consumer goods in one way or another (some upward, some downward). In short, the markets for food and agricultural goods, and all of the inputs used to produce them (including land, labor, and capital), do not operate in a vacuum.
Given the current economic debates surrounding inflation rates, labor markets and capital markets, there is probably no better time than right now to remind ourselves that farm policy is societal policy, and that policies which agricultural industries may not have ‘claimed’ as obviously pertinent to their field (i.e., public health policy, healthcare, trade policy and labor regulations) may very well have both direct and indirect impacts on-farm.
You can freely access an entire decade’s worth of Purdue Farm Policy Study Group presentations and materials on topics from inflation to broadband investments to climate change to … lots more. Self-study is encouraged, because, again, no market operates in a vacuum, and we’re all intertwined.
ConsumerCorner.2022.Letter.26
