subsidizing the decline of food security

Subtitle: remembering to use science to improve technology

Experts say the [expansion of fishing industry] has been driven by growing populations and prosperity around the world. Almost a billion people now rely primarily on fish for protein. [emphasis mine]

As always, I’m delighted to find any reference to the problems caused by population and consumption growth in the mainstream media, even in a four year old article from the NYT Science section. This one is from July 2003: Has the Sea Given Up Its Bounty? by William J. Broad and Andrew C. Revkin which I found by following a link in this post on the new environment blog at the New York Times called Dot Earth.

Having just read the NYT op-ed Weed It and Reap by Michael Pollan, a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley who has written extensively on agriculture and the food industries one commonality between the two articles stood out: Government subsidies for the fishing and agricultural industries, subsidies which once may have been well-motivated, are now supporting activities which clearly threaten our well-being.

subsidizing bad agriculture

Referring to the current farm bill working its way through the US Congress, Pollan writes:

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply.

Why are Americans asking such an impertinent questions now? For decades those backing farm subsidies have have had to fend off questions from libertarians and conservatives about the role of government in the economy, but today another interest group is engaging in the debate, a group that deserves a hearing:

For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water.

Pollan has a way with words. Perhaps if the free-marketeers can’t get any leverage, parents struggling to raise healthy children can. And appealing to another constituency he notes:

Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.

We will live in a safer, saner world when every country can feed itself. If American agricultural policies undermine Mexico and Nigeria in being self-sufficient in food, are we really improving the security of the United States? To say nothing of the basic human decency to be found in wealthy nations helping developing ones to become more self-reliant.

By appealing to the concerns of free-marketeers, parents, left-wing do-gooders, and public health advocates, Pollan makes a case for a strange and wonderfully powerful coalition and exposes our agricultural subsidies for what they are: old fashion political lobbying for the benefit of the already powerful.

subsidizing bad aquaculture

Let’s turn back to the Broad’s and Revkin’s article on the fishing industry. After noting the expansion of fishing industry has been driven by growing population and prosperity around the world, they point out:

Another factor is persistent subsidies that give fishing fleets breaks on fuel costs, vessel construction, insurance or other expenses. All told, according to private analysts and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the subsidies amount to about $15 billion a year, or more than a quarter of the $55 billion in annual global trade in seafood.

Japan alone provides close to $3 billion in support for its fishing fleets. Support in the United States includes $150 million a year in tax rebates on marine diesel fuel, according to the World Resources Institute, a private research group.

The subsidies are challenged by environmental groups and conservative organizations espousing free markets, including the Cato Institute. The problem, they all say, is simply that such aid results in too many boats for the available fish.

This would be an academic argument about economic philosophy if it weren’t for the specter of the our oceans being permanently depleted of their living harvest:

More than 70 percent of commercial fish stocks are now considered fully exploited, overfished or collapsed. … In the early 20th century, harpooned swordfish were routinely 300 pounds apiece. Swordfish caught on long-line hooks by the mid-1990’s averaged less than 90 pounds, barely big enough to reproduce. … Cod, which once could reach six feet in length, have essentially vanished off eastern Canada. Despite closures of fishing grounds, they may never come back, biologists say, because overfishing has so profoundly changed the ecosystem. … [P]opulations of 22 species, including various skates, sturgeons and groupers, had almost vanished. … The global fleets are sustaining harvests only by moving into untapped resources,…

Again, there are some strange bedfellows supporting an end to fishing industry subsidies. Environmentalists want to save species and protect biodiversity; libertarians and conservatives don’t want governments interfering with free markets; some do-gooders just don’t want to see that last cod disappear forever; and more than a few fishermen would like assurance that their way of life won’t be extinguished.

Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at Cato [the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, supports "Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace"], said that regulating fishing fleets while supporting them financially was “like trying to drive a car by hammering the brake and accelerator at the same time.”

technology doesn’t kill people, people kill people

In the 19th and early 20th centuries some fairly primitive technology was able to decimate whales, but it didn’t make a dent in cod or tuna. Only more modern technology could do that.

Another factor [in the expansion of the fishing industry] has been rapid advances in fishing technology. Much of the progress has been electronic: satellites of the Global Positioning System let fleets know their exact location, while increasingly sensitive and powerful sonar gear produces detailed readouts of schools and nooks where fish may lurk.

The era of The Old Man and the Sea in which only the experience and toughness of an individual was responsible for bring in the catch is long past. Now, through amazing technological progress, we have the means to empty the oceans once and for all of what used to be thought of as a perennial harvest — and a bountiful one. Is that the fault of technology?

Ted Brockett, president of Sound Ocean Systems in Redmond, Wash., which makes and sells devices for ocean vessels, said technology could help stem fishing damage if fleets used the innovations not to pursue the last fish but to find the right fish — the size or species that can be harvested without degrading ecosystems.

Perhaps, if we must place the blame somewhere, we should look to increasing population, growing consumption, and lack of intelligent resource management.

technology and science, sadly in that order

Dr. Patrick M. Gaffney, a marine biologist at the University of Delaware, said the biggest problem was that science trailed the fishing fleets. “Oftentimes,” he said, “you only start studying a species in its death throes or terminal decline.”

Most people think of science as preceding technology: scientists discover new properties which technologists then find ways to exploit. Surely, it sometimes happens that way, but just as often or maybe more often useful technology gets cobbled together by someone with no understanding of the underlying science. They just need something to work — it doesn’t matter how.

Centuries ago fine, tempered-steel swords were made by craftsmen who had no understanding of the science of metallurgy. Through trial and error they figured out what worked and what didn’t. When the Europeans turned to coal as a primary energy source in the 16th and 17th centuries it wasn’t because science informed them that coal carried a high energy content that was easily exploited; it was because they had cut down their forests and had no other option. A while later, the industrial revolution was born, based on coal.

There’s a case to be made for science following technological innovation.

• Technology is driven by human need. Our ancestors developed flint tools because they needed to cut and scrape more efficiently.
• The needs of technology drive science. The utility of steam power pushed scientists to study metallurgy and properties of water in its a liquid and gaseous states.
• The results of good science are then fed back to improve technology. Steam power was improved by the scientific understanding of metallurgy and the properties of water which enabled the predictable and safe exploitation of superheated steam and the ability to design safe industrial boilers for a variety of uses.

In a similar way, technology has enabled us to exploit agriculture and aquaculture. Now science steps in, the sciences of ecology and the environment, to inform us about how to use this new technology of “biomass harvesting” more effectively.

Right now, we’re like the early steam power innovators who had just constructed a steam engine. As they studied the effects of increasing the heat under the boiler, thrilled at the increasing power output, they learned to their misfortune about limits. At some point the thing exploded, and they couldn’t be sure about when and why. Then science began to provide them with the information they needed to avoid the disasters caused by their trail-and-error experiments. Deep understanding of metals and and water properties allowed them to confidently construct high-pressure boilers with predictable and safe results.

We are in the same place now with agri- and aqua-culture. We can use our technology to destroy the very biosphere we depend on for survival (a one-time trail-and-error sort of experiment), or we can listen to ecological and environmental scientists, we can invest more in their area of expertise, and fine-tune our technology.

There’s no shame in the technology of bio-harvesting being improved by science. That’s the way of progress. Right now we are like those early steam-power innovators. Our use of the land and sea — unguided by a deeper understanding of the science involved — may very well blow up in our faces. The difference between us and those other pioneers is we only get to do this worldwide trial just once. If it blows up we — humanity — have damaged our planet and therefore our childrens’ future permanently.

Ecological and environmental science are not some left-wing plot looking to destroy the benefits of capitalism and the notion of free markets. Instead, they are new, important, creative human endeavors we can use to promote the best, the most efficient, the most long lasting civilization the world has ever known.

update

The bullet point summary:

• Increasing population and growing per capita consumpton (otherwise known as prosperity) have driven the development of fishing and farming technology, but our use of those technologies is narrowly focused on ever increasing yields even when we can see (and science can measure) the damage caused by over-fishing, over-grazing, monocropping, high-levels of fertilizer and pesticide use, etc.
• Modern fishing and farming have become divorced from environment, and science — the ecological and environmental sciences — must come to the rescue. We need to apply the findings these sciences to our use of technology before we permanently damage the planet and end up reducing its overall fecundity.
• Many scientists believe we’ve already surpassed the long-term carrying capacity of the planet. Reducing Earth’s ability to produce food by applying technology recklessly to achieve high yields at the cost of sustainability is short-sighted, and subsidizing such behavior with government money is insane.
• The ecological and environmental sciences are relatively young, (mostly) born because people began to notice the damage caused by our simply throwing more and more technology at the problems related to food production. It’s no accident that this occurred on the heels of the Green Revolution during a time of cheap and plentiful fossil fuel.
• The ecology of the earth allows for only so many humans to exist in harmony with each other and the rest of the environment. If we don’t find ways to compassionately lower the population, nature will certainly take a much harsher course.

dedication

This post is dedicated to my father, an expert engineer in boiler and heat transfer technology who, after a severe stroke, has been living in a nursing home for many years. He taught me to use a slide rule, respect both engineering and science, and, even as I diverged from his conservative views, encouraged me to follow the path my own reasoning dictated.

I remember when, back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, he came home from work one day and recalled approvingly the words of a colleague, “If Ralph Nader has his way, we won’t be able to use a paring knife in the kitchen for fear of hurting someone.”

Yet, he was also the person who sat down for hours with a high school classmate of mine tasked with writing a paper and patiently explained the chemistry of acid rain. At that time it was a novel concept and I’m fairly sure Dad didn’t put much stock in it. Still, he knew the science involved and was quite happy to explain it to my friend.

Today, if he was able, I think he’d have come full circle — just as I have. We need to attend to what the scientists are telling us about our world and its limits.

photo credits

Fishing fleet, cropped from this one which has a Creative Commons license.

Corn field, cropped from this one which also has a Creative Commons license.