Dramatically increasing food prices and the implications for poverty and hunger around the world have commanded front-page headlines for the past six months. Serious attention is now being given to the long-term challenges posed by this food crisis. The Food Summit in Rome during the first week of June, convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was intended to address short, medium, and long-term challenges. Last month, I wrote in Daily Kos about the role of ‘markets’ in addressing this food crisis. Here, I address interrelated issues of resource limits and technological change.

I made several trips to India and Pakistan between the late-1960s and the early-1980s. The ‘Green Revolution’ was just emerging during my first trip in 1967-68, when I spent 6 months collecting agricultural data for my Ph.D. dissertation near Allahabad, on the fertile Gangetic Plain of northern India. I later lived for 1-½ years in Pakistan during the mid-1970s, as an agricultural economist with the U.S. Agency for International Development. By the time of my stay in Pakistan, the Green Revolution pace of change in the subcontinent had begun to slow. During and immediately following my various trips, I was always struck by the contrast between the prevailing U.S. view of ‘markets’ and the views of Indian and Pakistani governments. It seemed to me that India and Pakistan needed to place more reliance on markets and the U.S. needed more regulation of markets.

I was recently invited to present testimony as part of an economics panel assembled by the Committee for “Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture”. This committee was created by the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR), a program unit of the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC functions under the auspices of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. The purpose of this Committee was presented in my most recent Daily Kos posting, drawing from the BANR website in early March. The Committee asked me to address four areas when it met in Kansas City on March 27th. I summarized the major points of my testimony in one area in my ‘Part 1’ Daily Kos posting. Here, in ‘Part 2’ I summarize my testimony about policy lessons and models from Europe.

I was recently invited to present testimony as part of an economics panel assembled by the Committee for “Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture”. This committee was created by the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR), a program unit of the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC functions under the auspices of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. The Committee asked me to address four areas when it met in Kansas City on March 27th: (1) the economic and policy conditions necessary to foster sustainable food and farm systems; (2) the policy lessons and models from Europe and other countries that might help the Committee frame issues; (3) alternative agriculture and the value chain—making alternative agriculture successful in today’s economic structure; and, if time permits, (4) the financial aspects of sustainable practices in the Midwest. In this posting, I summarize the major points I made in area (1). In a subsequent posting, I will summarize my testimony in area (2).

The past year was one of lost opportunities in Congressional action on what was to be the 2007 Federal farm bill. Going into 2007, an unusual set of forces from both the left and the right had proposed a series of reforms in crop commodity subsidies and conservation programs. The stage was set for the kind of new directions that occurred with the 1985 farm bill, when agricultural producer and environmental groups agreed to continuation of commodity subsidies in return for major new conservation provisions and programs.

The House of Representatives passed its version of a new farm bill in July, but it was not until December that the Senate passed its version. Conference Committee deliberations to resolve differences in the two bills are expected to begin soon. However, unless the President’s threat of veto forces Congress to make major changes, resulting legislation is likely to fall far short of hopes expressed in most of the progressive reform agendas.

Failures and modest successes in the farm and food policy process to date, as we enter the Conference Committee stage, can be grouped in three areas: (1) commodity subsidies; (2) agri-environmental programs; and (3) healthy food initiatives.