A 20-year debate on agriculture in the United States

Introduction: new page 1 (Bao Yueyang, China economic times) On the afternoon and noon of July 16, we visited two agricultural related units, one is the Agricultural Trade Policy Institute of Minneapolis, the other is the Department of agriculture of Minnesota We didn't expect to hear two kinds of tit for tat views on American agriculture Let's first come to the Agricultural Trade Policy Institute, which is located on the outskirts of Minneapolis The executive director of the Institute went to the conference room to welcome us and said that they have been committed to "fighting for the countryside and the environment around the world" Then, Mr Steven Suppan, director of trade and Agricultural Research Department of the Institute, introduced the situation of the Institute His colleagues, Mr niet Ritchie and Ms Sophia Murphy, introduced their respective research fields and main viewpoints The Institute was founded in 1986 by Mark Ritchie, formerly the research director of agricultural policy in Mingzhou Now mark Ritchie is the president of the Institute Before 1994, the Institute had two main departments, one for international trade and the other for environmental policy In 1995, the Institute launched the agricultural environment project, which, according to Mr supan, is closely linked to the United Nations Scholar's point of view 1: the disappearance of small farms is the tragedy of American agriculture From the early 19th century to the 1950s, small and medium-sized farms played an important role in the United States In the past 50 years, due to policy factors, small and medium-sized farms in the United States have been disappearing, and now there are less than 2 million in the country Before the 1950s, the United States only produced enough food and other agricultural products for its own consumption Since then, there has been a surplus of food production On the surface, the U.S government has set up a buffer zone between farmers and market fluctuations, so it has taken many measures The most basic is to establish a food reserve system to provide price subsidies to farmers However, since the 1960s, the large companies engaged in the purchase, processing and trade of agricultural products have become more and more powerful Their actions have made the government policy gradually invalid and lost the protection and buffer effect on farmers Generally speaking, in the past 30 years, the price policy of the federal government has made farmers grow food without losing money Now, American farmers still lose money even if they enjoy subsidies The logical relationship between them is: because the government's way of subsidy is to give money directly, the farmers will work hard to get subsidies, so there will be overproduction, and the price will fall; because the unit price is low, the farmers have to produce more agricultural products to try to get a certain income, and the price will be even lower More and more farmers are producing, and more and more money is put out by taxpayers to subsidize farmers Last year, US agricultural subsidies reached US $28 billion This is certainly not sustainable Mr Knight Richter said that he believed that farmers should not rely on government subsidies to maintain production, but should get reasonable prices in the market He said that the agricultural product processing industry is becoming larger and larger, and has developed to manipulate market prices, while the government does not intervene, which is dangerous China should pay attention to avoid this situation He said that it is terrible to form a world-wide industrialization of agricultural production, which is not sustainable from the economic point of view, nor is it sustainable from the environmental point of view Mr Knight Richter said that the impact of low agricultural prices and overproduction was multifaceted Due to the low price of grain, people's enthusiasm to develop the breeding industry has increased, and many places that are not suitable for livestock breeding have begun to raise livestock In the United States, agricultural diversity no longer exists In the past, farms used to plant different crops in rotation on one piece of land, and different farmers grow different crops Now, people often only grow corn and soybeans In large-scale pig and cattle farming, feces can not be handled in time, often causing damage to the environment In a word, agriculture is becoming more and more intensive, and the scale of farms is becoming larger and larger, while the crops of large farms are single, and the land is used predatorily year after year, and a large number of pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used, which will cause more and more damage to the land and water resources He believes that the way out for American agriculture is to adjust policies so that small farms can also make money and develop He also believes that any country developing agriculture should be based on its domestic market, not always want to export agricultural products like the United States, and the result is the predatory use of its land This is bad in the long run, because in the future the United States may not be able to produce enough food for itself Scholar's point of view 2: Sophia Murphy is the director of the Institute's trade and agriculture program, because of the lack of competition in the world's agricultural products market caused by the manipulation of large companies She introduced some situations of agricultural agreements in the WTO negotiations to us She said: 'our organization got involved in the world trade negotiations from the very beginning There are two main problems in world agricultural trade One is dumping Dumping generally refers to the sale price in the foreign market is lower than the domestic price and lower than the cost American agricultural products are sold below cost at home, so there is no doubt that there is a dumping tendency We want the United States to solve the problem of agriculture, but we don't pass the crisis on to farmers in other countries Second, international agricultural products are under the control of large companies and lack of competition Asked about the impact of the world trade agreement on agriculture between China and the United States, Ms Sophia Murphy said that the agreement has not yet been implemented, and can only be guessed She said that the United States, Japan and the European Union have always attached great importance to the government investment in agriculture, but later the countries that joined the WTO will not be allowed to have too much government investment In the WTO agreement, the Chinese government's investment in agriculture must be below the standard line She said that at the time of signing the WTO Agreement on agriculture, developed countries had negotiated to maintain their government investment and maintain their advantages, which other countries did not have Reporter: will government subsidies affect the spirit of free trade in agriculture? She said it must have an impact But free trade has always been a myth, which is impossible to achieve We can only look for something close to perfection She believes that the current feasible way is to moderately regulate large companies, or to some extent manage them so that they cannot manipulate the market, so as to keep the market competitive State agriculture minister's view: agriculture must adapt to the changes of the times, but when we visit the Minnesota Department of agriculture next, Hou Jin'an, Minister of agriculture, disagrees with them When asked about the impact of big companies and farms on the United States, and introduced the views of the Institute of trade and agricultural policy to the minister, Hou said that everyone has the right to express their own views, often seeing that some people are neither engaged in agriculture nor engaged in direct agricultural research, but have a lot of opinions on agriculture He said that agriculture is an enterprise and must be profitable In order to make profits and ensure economic benefits, it is inevitable to expand business scale We believe that some farmers still have the opportunity to engage in small-scale operation, but whether it is small-scale or large-scale, it should be decided by the farmers themselves, not promoted by the government Of course, we hope that the small farms of 20 years ago will continue to exist, but throughout the world, all business undertakings are constantly changing and developing towards a large scale When it comes to environmental and ecological issues, in fact, large-scale farms are more capable of adopting environmentally friendly farming techniques and livestock manure treatment techniques than small farmers He said many of the farms here have no more than 150 years of farming history 150 years ago, the Indians lived by hunting bison here After the first generation of white immigrants came, they built the farm by the river because there was water to irrigate and raise livestock This is the traditional American farm This traditional farm often brings pollution to the river water In contrast, the damage to the environment of factory farms is far less than that of traditional small farms Hou said that for Mingzhou agriculture, the more large-scale processing enterprises, the better, the competition between them can make Mingzhou farmers' products have a wider market and make farmers more profitable He said the debate on the scale of agriculture and the advantages and disadvantages of agricultural modernization has been going on for 20 years and may continue We live in a dramatically changing world, and so does agriculture We don't like change sometimes, but life is like this I think in modern agriculture, farms that can adapt to changes and make profits can stand I believe that China's agriculture will also undergo profound changes, from labor-intensive to capital technology intensive Mingzhou agriculture is undergoing this change, but it has not yet been completed At present, the farmers engaged in processing industry in Mingzhou have exceeded those engaged in planting and breeding industry, and more farmers may be engaged in agricultural products processing This is because the profit of processing industry is bigger than that of primitive agriculture To return to the original problem, people must be willing to adjust themselves, adapt to the market and change, which is the same for both Chinese and American farmers (written in Minneapolis on the evening of July 16) e4q