It wasn’t really relevant to this post, so I’ve responded to your comments on Julian Simon’s message on my own blog.

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2009/02/julian-simons-message.html

Mark

I apologize. Perhaps we’re misunderstanding one another. I think from your final statement that we probably are. You write:

“To suggest that government policies have had no role (in agricultural productivity) is just silly.”

Well, that may be the case, but that wasn’t what I was suggesting. (And perhaps *you* weren’t suggesting that federal government extension service spending was solely responsible for the rise in agricultural productivity in the past century, but that’s what I inferred from your question simply about the trend in agricultural productivity.)

The original issue–what Dan Sarewitz was talking about–was the effect of *federal* spending on agriculture. And specifically the effect of *federal* spending on *agricultural extension service* work.

I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to say that *federal* spending on *agicultural extension services* did not have a significant impact on agricultural productivity in the United States in the past century.

To start with, federal spending on agricultural extension work is not a huge amount. The latest figure I found (circa 2006) was $550 million per year. That’s not a huge amount of money. Further, even the article you reference calculates the social rate of return of agricultural extension service research as being the lowest among research types evaluated (see Table 2).

Perhaps we’re talking past each other in the same way that pro- and anti-AGW people do, with neither side acknowledging that it’s not a 100%-one-or-the-other situation.

But even after reading the article you referenced, I still maintain that *federal* spending on agricultural extension services did not have a significant effect on agricultural productivity in the past 100 years (e.g., federal spending on agricultural extension services was responsible for less than a quarter of the agricultural productivity growth in the last 100 years).

P.S. Now, it’s quite possible that OTHER federal research–e.g. federal basic research, and federal applied research–has indeed had a significant effect on farm productivity. From the discussion of Table 2:

“The rate of return seems highest for publicly supported basic research, followed by applied public research, private research, farmers’ education, and, finally, public extension (table 2).”

(To know whether federal basic research and federal applied research had a significant effect on farm productivity, we’d need to know not only the rates of return on those types of research, but also how much was spent on those types of research.)

I could do without the snark.

Much has been written on the role of agricultural policies on productivity, see, e.g.,

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib740/aib740.pdf

“Several factors have been identified in the social science
literature as the most important sources of productivity
change in agriculture:

• Research and development,
• Extension,
• Education,
• Infrastructure, and
• Government programs.”

To suggest that government policies have had no role is just silly.

You write, “But you lose me when you say that aggregate trends in prices and production “doesn’t necessarily” have anything to do with federal policy,…”

Ummm…”correlation does not mean causality”? You’re not familiar with that?

In the last 100 years, the size of optical telescopes have increased tremendously, but it’s pretty clear that the increases in optical telescope size haven’t increased agricultural productivity, isn’t it?

And even though the correlation is positively uncanny, you wouldn’t say that U.S. patents cause weather-related disasters, would you?:

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2007/04/us_patents_caus.html

In order to figure out whether the U.S. federal government agricultural extension program has had any effect on agricultural productivity or food prices, we would need to look at what caused the increases in agricultural and reduced food prices, and see if the federal agricultural extension program was somehow involved in those things.

For example, one huge factor of which I’m aware is the development of artificial nitrogenous fertilizers (via the Haber-Bosch process):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Did the U.S. federal agricultural extension service have anything to do with developing or deploying this process? Not that I know of.

Also, certainly developments in tractors/mechanized farm equipment have had a huge effect. Has the federal agricultural extension service been heavily involved with developing this equipment? Not that I know of.

(But I don’t know anything about this subject.)

Again, just because the U.S. federal government has had an agricultural extension service for the last 100 years, and farm productivity has increased, and prices have gone down, doesn’t mean that the latter two have been *caused* by the federal agricultural extension service.

You conclude, “It is complicated, yes, but what is remarkable about innovation in agriculture (as measured by prices and productivity) is that it has been sustained even in the context of price supports, trade policies, and subsidies (among other policies) that work in the other direction. This is another reason why Sarewitz’s analogy is a good one.”

No, it says nothing about Sarewitz’s analogy. Sarewitz didn’t supply any evidence that the increases in agricultural productivity or decreases in food prices were *caused* by the federal agricultural extension service. To do that, Sarewitz would have to identify the factors that caused increased agricultural productivity and decreases in food prices, and explain how the federal agricultural extension service was involved in those factors. For example, did the federal agricultural extension service have something to do with the development of artificial fertilizers? Or developments in farm mechanization? (Or whatever caused the impressive gains in productivity and reduced food prices?)

Yes, I agree. I just thought it was important to point out, if the federal government is being credited with doing wonderful for agriculture, that the overall effect of the federal government on agriculture has been far less rosy.

The latest funding I found for the agricultural extension program was $550 million a year.

In contrast, federal subsidies for sugar are estimated by the GOA to cost taxpayers $1.9 billion per year. And corn ethanol subsidies were $7.0 billion in 2006:

http://zfacts.com/p/63.html

P.S. Of course, ethanol subsidies might help farmers…but they sure don’t “make food more abundant and affordable.”

I will readily admit that the US has often pursued conflicting goals in its long term agricultural policies. But you lose me when you say that aggregate trends in prices and production “doesn’t necessarily” have anything to do with federal policy, or even stronger, that the federal role has “worked against” increasing productivity and decreasing prices. Ausubel argues that energy policies “don’t matter” and I suppose your argument is similar in this context.

It is complicated, yes, but what is remarkable about innovation in agriculture (as measured by prices and productivity) is that it has been sustained even in the context of price supports, trade policies, and subsidies (among other policies) that work in the other direction. This is another reason why Sarewitz’s analogy is a good one.

You ask, “What are century-long trends in agricultural productivity and prices? ”

I’m not sure what the “wink” means, but I hope it means, “I know my question isn’t relevant!”

As I’m sure you know, the century-long trend in U.S. agricultural productivity is strongly upward, and the century-long trend in U.S. prices for agricultural goods is strongly downward. But that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the federal government’s spending or involvement in agriculture.

In fact, I think a good case can be made that the federal government’s spending and involvement in agriculture (e.g., Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which is arguably the earliest example of massive federal government involvement in agriculture) has actually worked against the trends of increasing productivity and decreasing prices.

So I hope the wink meant, “I recognize that ‘cum hoc, ergo propter hoc’ is a logical fallacy.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Best wishes,
Mark

Why, indeed? That is exactly the point.

“I agree that a 90-95% reduction in U.S. CO2 emissions does require a breakthrough in technology, but that’s not necessarily going to happen in time to solve the whole problem. To buy time until the technology arrives, we may indeed need to sacrifice some of our consumption for a number of decades.”

Saying “we need to sacrifice some of our consumption” makes it sound like it’s no big deal. But to sacrifice 90-95% of our consumption is a very big deal. Reductions in consumption, increases in efficiency, etc. are not going to get us there, even though that seems to be implied by those arguing against emphasizing technology. Promoting efficiency, etc., is good — I’m all in favor of it — but, like those who were saying a while back (about a somewhat different problem) that “we can’t drill our way out of this”, I say that we can’t conserve our way out of it, either. While efficiency, etc., are good, the real solution (if there is one) will come through technology — or massive reduction in population, but I don’t think we want to go there…

What are century-long trends in agricultural productivity and prices?

Jonathan-

I can’t speak for Dan, but even under the most aggressive scenarios of energy efficiency gains, total global and US energy demand will increase in the future. It is not a matter of “if” but “by how much”. Efficiency is a huge part of the solution, but not the whole thing.

Like Sarewitz, I am of the view that technological change is far easier to accomplish than global behavioral change.

Docpine-

Yes, your interpretation of Sarewitz’s analogy seems right to me, though of course it was exactly this model that contributed to declining prices and increasing productivity over a century.

Jonathan-

What is wrong with “cheerfully inventing ourselves out of any dilemma”?

Tokyo Tom-

I’m all for a tax on carbon (as I’ve argued with Chris Green), so no disagreement there. i just don’t think it can do the job.

Interestingly enough, as Jesse Ausubel has argued the world has already dramatically decarbonized without any such global agreement aimed at that end. Mitigation seeks to accelerate that process. The exact same dynamics that you ascribe to adaptation I think also apply to mitigation. A carbon tax can be part of that equation, but in reality can only go so far.

Thanks all!

First, I think I’m with Mark on agriculture: the US government did NOT “create[] a highly successful, century-long effort to make food more abundant and affordable”. Credit for the successes of US agriculture is due largely to farmers, property rights and voluntary cooperation with bankers and researchers. The government has played a limited role in successes, while contributing heavily to failures and ongoing problems.

Second, while I agree with Sarewitz’s skepticism as to whether “politicians can deliberately manage a transformation of [any large] scale, either through legislation or through climate treaties,” his suggestion of “many many small decisions made across many agencies, many types of policies, many domains, set the conditions for moving in the right direction without demanding that people accept that this is the most important problem in the world,” works only for ADAPTATION efforts, which cannot be centrally coordinated and essentially involve individual and cooperative responses across the world. On the MITIGATION side, “tak[ing] the political heat off of climate change and instead mov[ing] this into the realm of policy wonkdom” is both a recipe for wasting alot of taxpayer dollars via political and bureaucratic decisions, and won’t work because the nature of the commons involved is global – and so global coorperation in required.

In this connection, while the problem of coordination is difficult, I think that Sarewitz has both overstated it and misstated it. It is not the job of government to “creat[e] a whole new basis for the global economy,” nor is it necessary to “ask[] people to … pay a huge upfront cost for benefits many decades down the road that they can’t even anticipate or predict”. The government can simply move from taxing income to taxing consumption, with a particular emphasis on carbon – which would leave citizens with roughly the same amount of money in their pockets while encoraging private investment in way that economists have been calling for for decades – and it can coordinate this with other countries through aid and trade efforts.