Search the archive.

Humans have fought over food and the means of producing it for 20,000 years, as rock art in Australia shows. Food, water and land scarcity are primary drivers in two thirds of modern conflicts today. Indeed, many people seem to have forgotten that the primary German war aim in World War II was to take farmland from the Soviets and put German farmers on it. It is very likely that controlling the Ukraine’s bountiful and reliable food bowl is among Putin’s main aims also. In the short run this is imposing hunger and even starvation on hundreds of millions of people far beyond Europe.

Spreading hunger in turn snowballs into government failures, civil wars and refugee tsunamis around the world – as it did in 2008 when a shortfall in Ukrainian grain exports led to revolutions in three Arab countries. Already, a third of a billion people – equal to the entire population of Europe – leave their homes each year, either as refugees or economic migrants, to seek better lives in countries which seem more stable and food secure. War will add to the flood.

In a time of economic uncertainty, American consumers and pork producers face significant challenges threatening their livelihoods, the stability of our agricultural sector, and food security. Fortunately, House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson’s Farm Bill offers a beacon of hope, addressing many critical issues that could help stabilize the marketplace and secure the future of American agriculture.

Farming inherently involves a lot of risk and uncertainty. That is why it is crucial to minimize that risk and bring clarity when possible, allowing farmers to focus on what they do best - producing healthy food that sustains and nourishes communities everywhere. The Farm Bill is essential and represents a bipartisan effort to support American farming, consumer food affordability, and our nation’s economic vitality.

While Congress is flailing—moving from one near government shutdown to another—crucial legislation that supports our communities lies in limbo.

That includes the Farm Bill, a vital legislative package responsible for funding everything from farm subsidies and SNAP benefits to international food aid, the urgency to assist war-torn countries, combat rising hunger, and protect our farmlands.

This year, drought is contributing to the largest abandonment of winter wheat acres since 1917 and the shrinking of the U.S. cattle herd, now the smallest in 60 years. In addition to increased drought, climate change is driving rising temperatures, wildfires and torrential rains, and is already affecting food production in the U.S. Yet, as Congress works on a new five-year Farm Bill, there are few signs that members grasp the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for dramatic policy shifts to address escalating challenges for both farmers and consumers.

Last week, the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment (which includes family farm groups in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and South Dakota, plus IATP and Food & Water Watch), published a new report outlining how the Farm Bill could help protect the country’s food supply, stabilize agriculture markets with fair prices for farmers and promote greater climate resilience in our food system. The report examines proposed farm policies that include grain reserves, a price floor and ceiling, and a set aside program to better manage supplies of key agriculture commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans. When integrated with popular conservation programs that support practices, such as more diverse crop rotations, perennial grasses, regenerative grazing or cover crops, these policies would make progress toward protecting the food system against incoming climate shocks. These proposed policies also would remove a critical subsidy in the form of cheap, below-cost feed to a high greenhouse gas emitting factory farm system of animal and dairy production.

Support domestic efforts to promote climate resilience in food systems: The credibility and potency of our leadership at global levels begins with our commitment to change and improve our own priorities. Very public controversies around the alleged suppression of research regarding the impact of climate change on food production from the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has brought into question the administration’s ability to lead by example. For continued progress in reducing agriculture’s global greenhouse gas footprint and improving adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, the United States must walk the walk here at home. Climate-smart interventions are not limited to developing country contexts. In the United States, cover cropping, for example, has increased considerably, but the practice still represents only a small percentage of planted area. These and other regenerative practices are being rolled out in the United States thanks, in part, to USDA’s 10 regional Climate Hubs, led by the Agricultural Research Service and the Forest Service. In this same spirit, the United States should continue and expand its leveraging of domestic university research programs for developing global climate solutions in agriculture. U.S. universities, through the Feed the Future Innovation Labs, are currently involved in research on climate resilient sorghum, wheat, millet, cowpea, chickpea, and beans.64 Finally, recent years have seen the emergence of several mechanisms that compensate U.S. farmers for storing carbon in their agricultural soils, including in California and several non-profit and private sector initiatives. These initiatives require federal support to be sustainable in the long run, a step that should be explored within USDA’s existing authorities or in the next Farm Bill cycle.

Funding for climate-smart agriculture is under threat. The Chair of the House Committee on Agriculture has proposed moving billions of dollars away from climate-smart agriculture in the next farm bill, despite the fact that related programs have been underfunded for years. Retaining this funding is critical to provide benefits to all the farmers, forest landowners, and ranchers across the country who want to implement climate-smart practices on their lands. Just-released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) further confirm that climate-smart funding has already benefited farmers, forest landowners, and ranchers in every state, but it won’t continue to do so if it is not preserved.

Inflation Reduction Act funding benefits farmers and nearby communities

The $1.5 trillion farm bill that lawmakers are expected to advance this week is pitting Democratic climate priorities against the political realities of an election year.

About a dozen swing-district House Democrats are facing pressure from party leadership to oppose the bill, introduced last week by House Agriculture Chair Glenn “G.T.” Thompson of Pennsylvania. But jeopardizing timely passage of the five-year, must-pass policy package might not go over well with rural voters come November.

The stakes are high as Congress begins serious discussions to reauthorize the farm bill, which expires at the end of September 2023. Among other things, this legislation represents a major opportunity to enable private landowners, farmers, ranchers, and rural communities to take action to address the crises of climate change and nature loss.

In fact, in a divided Congress where House majority leadership has staked out an obstructionist position on most climate action, the must-pass farm bill may represent the only meaningful opportunity to make progress on these issues in the 118th Congress. Conversely, if extreme positions prevail and Congress strips away farm bill program investments made in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, America will take a massive step backward on climate, conservation, and rural prosperity.

Normally, you don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen. It spoils the broth, as the saying goes. But when it comes to debating, amending, and rewriting the U.S. Farm Bill, lawmakers in Congress need all the help they can get. Congress should listen to the hundreds of chefs and food industry pros who are asking them to include climate programs that help farmers implement sustainable practices and diversify supply chains.

The Farm Bill, which is supposed to be reauthorized by Congress every five years, sets national food and agricultural policy—everything from environmental conservation programs to protections for American farmers to food assistance for low-income families. There was talk back in 2023 about how the Farm Bill would be “the most important climate bill” of the year, because of the connection between carbon, methane, and agriculture. Congress missed its 2023 deadline and passed an extension so now the Farm Bill will be the most important climate bill that Congress touches in 2024. The House Agriculture Committee takes up the five-year bill, known officially as the “Farm, Food and National Security Act,” on Thursday.

The universe of possibilities for the Biden administration radically expanded after the Democrats clinched the Senate majority, but the increase in political capital isn’t infinite. When deciding which problems to tackle first, President Joe Biden should prioritize initiatives that address the pandemic while moving the nation toward long-term goals for public health and green-energy stimulus.

Biden can learn from the experience of Barack Obama, whose focus on health-insurance reform provoked a midterm backlash and probably forfeited a chance to boost the country out of the Great Recession sooner.

3. Institutional path dependence. — Cost-benefit analysis also benefits from path dependence. The simple idea behind path dependence is that institutions tend to continue operating in the ways they have in the past.102 In the federal government context, one reason for path dependence is that it is costly for senior Executive Branch officials to change policies or procedures.103 Any given reform can consume time and political capital, which in turn can have high opportunity costs given the many policy objectives on any administration’s agenda. Another reason is that particular actors— both within and outside the Executive Branch—may seek to entrench the status quo. Political appointees necessarily rely on civil servants to implement their agendas.104 The extensive literature on the “internal separation of powers” emphasizes the ways in which civil servants within the Executive Branch can push back on agendas pursued by political appointees.105

BROOKE GLADSTONE Let me return to David Sirota's Guardian piece from earlier this month for a minute. He actually responded to your Green Lantern theory formulation by saying, hey, if we adopted your position, we'd be succumbing to what he calls the, quote, powerless president narrative. Is it possible that by invoking the Green Lantern theory, you're basically dismissing criticism of Biden's efforts and letting him or any other president off the hook?

BRENDAN NYHAN I can't say that the term or the theory is always applied in a way I would agree with, and I certainly am not saying that the Biden administration's legislative strategy is perfect. I do question, though, the assumption that people who are the absolute top of national politics don't know how to get votes and are unable to see how easily they could win members of Congress or the public to their side. That seems like a strange preconception to have, and when it's offered by activists with obvious ideological axes to grind, I'm suspicious. I certainly can't rule it out, but the historical record suggests more often these claims are at least unsupported and unproven. Again, it doesn't mean the president shouldn't try, but these constraints are real, and, Brooke let me just add one more thing: when people call for the president to try, they often fail to take into account the costs of trying. Every issue that is prioritized by a president means that other issues don't get prioritized. Every legislative push in Congress means another priority doesn't get attention, so it's not just simply a matter of trying. And if you don't try, you don't care, it's a matter of prioritizing among many issues and policies that a president cares about. In some cases, the people at the top, they're making a calculation about where to allocate their effort and attention. And rather than throw a Hail Mary on some issue where the chances of success are slim, they'd rather focus our attention where they think they have a better chance.

Governments make many different policy decisions. In doing so, they often face pressures from different special interest groups who each care about one particular policy. These groups lobby for their special interest, which is often not aligned with overall welfare. Faced with many groups lobbying for many different policies, a government may not have the resources to get its way on every policy decision. So in practice, a government may ‘pick its battles’ — specifically, seek to do deals with some special interest groups to avoid a fight. However, existing models of lobbying struggle to engage with this intuition because they do not allow the government to do deals to avoid fights.

We assume the government has limited resources. This gives rise to the possibility that some special interest groups get their way. Crucially, we also allow the government to cede a policy decision to a special interest group, and for special interest groups to make transfers to the government. Our key contribution is to show that this happens, and to explain why: in equilibrium, the government will not try to fight all the special interest groups but will pick its battles. Specifically, it either engages in a contest and wins with certainty, or it does a deal where it takes a contribution in exchange for ceding the contest to the special interest group. Note that there are three key components of a deal in our model: (1) a special interest group gives some resources, (2) which the government uses either directly or indirectly to win other contests, (3) in exchange for ceding the contest the special interest group cares about.

President Joe Biden is wading into the high-stakes negotiations over the farm bill, amid growing concerns the debt limit stand-off could knock that must-pass piece of legislation off track.

Biden has invited a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers to the White House Thursday to discuss the upcoming farm bill reauthorization, according to four people familiar with the plans who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Congress is aiming to write and pass what is expected to be a $1 trillion-plus bill, which will authorize U.S. food and agriculture spending for the next decade, by this fall. But even senior Senate Republicans are increasingly wary that the mounting debt crisis could derail the traditionally bipartisan farm bill.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Biden administration will defend funding for climate-smart farming in the $430 billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) if Republican lawmakers seek to cut it during negotiations for the next farm bill, an official said Tuesday.

The IRA, which aims to cut emissions across the U.S. economy, includes $20 billion to support farmers in implementing carbon-sequestering conservation practices on their land.

The House version of the Farm Bill has made it through a pivotal phase, after passing the Ag Committee. We are now hearing from leaders on the Senate side.

Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow expressed optimism about advancing the 2024 Farm bill but acknowledged challenges in achieving consensus. Ranking Member John Boozman praised progress but emphasized the need to address inflation and market challenges. House Ag Chair GT Thompson says he will coordinate with the Senate and hopes to have a floor vote by September.

Skeptics of these proposed amendments to the legislation will likely have concerns regarding whether a bill with such stringent requirements could ever be passed by Congress. These critics have proper cause for concern. Demanding more from e-commerce platforms could dwindle support for the bill from e-commerce platforms who are likely to be hesitant to incur significant additional responsibilities in order to evade liability where such liability has not been imposed in the past.259 Moreover, congresspeople voting on this bill will strongly consider the interests and demands of the entities that back them.260 The influence these wealthy platforms exert pursuant to the current rules of campaign finance is undeniable;2 61 however, there are intensifying concerns about Big Tech that have recently given legislators from both parties common ground to stand on.26 2 This new unifying factor stemming from antitrust concerns is favorable to the bill's passage because Big Tech significantly overlaps with e-commerce platforms. Amazon and Facebook-which owns Facebook and Instagram-have been heavily criticized in the antitrust context for having gained too much power.263 This power makes "[l]awmakers of all political stripes seem[] uncomfortable with the knowledge [and influence] that [these] companies have...."264 These mounting concerns are further demonstrated by the recent successes of the contemporary neo-Brandeisian school of thought in antitrust law.265

Artificial intelligence companies may have to become a lot more transparent about how they train their models, if a new bill from Rep. Adam Schiff passes in Congress. Schiff has proposed the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require firms like OpenAI to list the copyrighted works they use to build generative-AI systems. The bill comes amid a growing outcry about the burgeoning industry using copyrighted materials to inform their large language models, and it’s the latest in a number of Congressional pushes to regulate the technology and protect human content creators.

“AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives,” Schiff said in a statement. “We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections. . . . This is about respecting creativity in the age of AI and marrying technological progress with fairness.”

The other night I attended a press dinner hosted by an enterprise company called Box. Other guests included the leaders of two data-oriented companies, Datadog and MongoDB. Usually the executives at these soirees are on their best behavior, especially when the discussion is on the record, like this one. So I was startled by an exchange with Box CEO Aaron Levie, who told us he had a hard stop at dessert because he was flying that night to Washington, DC. He was headed to a special-interest-thon called TechNet Day, where Silicon Valley gets to speed-date with dozens of Congress critters to shape what the (uninvited) public will have to live with. And what did he want from that legislation? “As little as possible,” Levie replied. “I will be single-handedly responsible for stopping the government.”

He was joking about that. Sort of. He went on to say that while regulating clear abuses of AI like deepfakes makes sense, it’s way too early to consider restraints like forcing companies to submit large language models to government-approved AI cops, or scanning chatbots for things like bias or the ability to hack real-life infrastructure. He pointed to Europe, which has already adopted restraints on AI as an example of what not to do. “What Europe is doing is quite risky,” he said. “There's this view in the EU that if you regulate first, you kind of create an atmosphere of innovation,” Levie said. “That empirically has been proven wrong.”

WASHINGTON--With a new administration and a Democratic Congress, now is the time to overhaul copyright law, advocates for reform said Wednesday--but the complex nature of the issue makes copyright legislation nearly as unrealistic as ever.

Representatives of songwriters and the recording industry faced off against open Internet advocates at the Future of Music Coalition's Policy Day here in Washington, demonstrating the entrenched divisions that remain within Democratic constituencies over copyright issues.