In 2016 and 2020 , farmers overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president. The track record of his administration justifies the choice, as Trump appointed agency directors who reversed unnecessarily strict Obama-era regulations on chemical crop protection products that are essential for fighting pests and preserving yields. 

Now, with President Joe Biden nearing the end of his term and having gone back to much of the Obama years of the Environmental Protection Agency opening the floodgates on pesticide regulation while injecting large green stimulus into the farm sector, where is agriculture as an issue in the national debate?

Much of the presidential debates involve rehashing points of the last two presidential terms. Gun rights, immigration, and the conduct of Trump during his time in office are certainly important topics, but the impact of farming policy on consumers cannot be understated. In recent years, matters such as repeated fires at livestock farms (which killed half a million farm animals in 2022), the increase in farm pests due to climate change, supply shortages and higher costs due to hurricanes , the nationwide herbicide shortage , and 5% food price inflation hitting consumers all contributed to a less resilient farm and food system in the United States.

Meanwhile, the debates on the 2023 Farm Bill once again focus mostly on SNAP benefits and eligibility , leaving aside a much more opportune conversation on the productivity and independence of the farm system. What are practical solutions to the fertilizer shortage during a sanctions regime on Russia? How much of a role should the government have in conservation or organic agriculture through farm subsidies? Is it reasonable that the U.S. continues a long array of court battles over pesticides when decisions over authorizations should instead be made in Congress after advice from scientific bodies? These are questions that aren’t being asked to presidential candidates, even though once in office, the president has a key impact on those matters through his or her agency appointments.

It is true that farmers aren’t regarded as a significant enough voting bloc during elections. Direct-on-farm employment represented a little over 1% of total employment in 2023. That said, when we take all of the agricultural and food sectors into account, that makes for a good 10% of the total workforce, which gains exponential importance, especially in key swing states. 

It may also be that farmers have fallen victim to the effect of being taken for granted. As they overwhelmingly support Republican candidates, Democrats feel like it is easier for them to paint farming as an environmental problem rather than addressing the intricacies and challenges of modern farming and the real hardships that professionals face. This is why farmer representatives would be better served to align their interests with those of consumers.

onsumers are often unaware of the backbreaking work put into their food supply and how regulatory changes affect the prices they see in supermarkets. When appeals to an administration are made not merely to protect the interests of farmers but also of those who buy their products, that is where the voter base inflates.

Framing agriculture not merely as a niche policy issue but as one that affects purchasing power and consumer well-being can help shed more light on the views of presidential candidates, and it can pull agriculture out of its obscurity into the spotlight it deserves.

Originally published here

The Hungarian government is not planning to change its strategy of keeping the country’s agriculture free of GMOs, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday, noting that the European Union had started negotiations on the regulation of new genetic technologies (NGT).

According to a draft published by the European Commission last week, produce created using NGT would fall into two categories, the first of which would no longer be governed by current GMO regulations, the ministry said, adding that in the absence of any prior risk assessment, labelling or monitoring, organisms may enter the environment. As for the second category, licensing procedures would be made much easier, “with far less data and impact analyses than that which apply to existing GMO“. Moreover, in the case of some organisms, “follow up would be absent and any harmful effects would never be assessed.”

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Through recently passed legislation, the New York state legislature aims to abolish certain insecticides in defense of the “birds and bees.” 

The chemicals in question, called neonicotinoids, are commonly used in crop production to shield crops from undesired insects — including aphids, which spread the beet yellows virus. 

Lawmakers have been convinced by environmental activist groups that these products kill large swaths of pollinators, and should thus be banned for use by farmers in the state. 

Yet they’ve been misled. If the Birds and Bees Protection Act is signed into law by Governor Hochul, the effects on farmers will be severe, and pesticide use in the Empire State will only increase.

Like most poor public policy, the Birds and Bees Protection Act is built on faulty premises and a feel-good name. The statistics on pollinator decline and colony collapse disorder have long been falsely associated with the use of insecticides. 

Before insecticides were blamed for “killing the bees,” it used to be bioengineered food that was in the crosshairs of activists. 

This assumption was never backed up by evidence, and administrations on both sides of the aisle have come to recognize the incredible climate mitigation and efficiency opportunities associated with genetically engineered food. 

Bees are mostly affected by viruses and habitat loss. While it is possible for regional declines to occur, it is important to note that the honeybee population is well managed, and in no way threatened by extinction. 

The size of the honeybee population is one of the causes of threats to other bee species, and has researchers frustrated by the misguided attention brought solely onto neonics. Effects on non-managed — or wild — bees are harder to count because they are… wild, and thus hard to count. 

Significant problems exist with the methodology applied to identify declines in wild bees. The same flawed methods have been applied to prove a broader insect decline, which also have also been consistently debunked.

It’s impossible to ignore the demography behind legislation like the so-called Birds and Bees Protection Act. 

City-dwelling liberals have a rather romanticized understanding of food production and ecosystem management based on their knack for beekeeping in relatively small backyard gardens. 

Rural communities who produce and manage New York’s food supply, as well as its vital relationship to pollinators, do in fact know better. We’ve already seen how this plays out based on neonics bans in Europe which backfired on farmers, consumers and pollinators alike.

In the European Union, several countries implemented exemptions on neonic bans after they were close to ruining local farmers. The European exemption policy is not just nerve-wracking for all involved actors, it also gives farmers no certainty for the future. 

The Birds and Bees Protection Act circumvents regulatory agencies by banning the products outright, then requires those agencies to make lengthy determinations on appropriate emergency use. It is a cumbersome process that isn’t fair to farmers.

Cutting out regulatory agencies from the process was notably why Governor Newsom of California vetoed a bill that would have similarly banned neonics for non-agricultural use late last year.

Advocates for pollinators mean well, but don’t understand agriculture. One of the known effects of neonics bans in Europe has been that farmers turn to alternative types of chemicals to shield their crops. It has been shown that the use of substitute products reduces their yield and increases insect resistance — all factors that end up being worse for the environment and biodiversity. 

Are we telling farmers that they should acquire more land to account for crop losses, or use products that are sometimes ill-equipped to adequately protect their fields? 

That would be grim news for the over 25,000 farm employees in New York State, who rely on stable yields and a toolbox of reliable methods to protect their farms from invasive species. 

If yields aren’t guaranteed, then we could — as happened in France — expect rising prices in the crop production sector. For New Yorkers already eating the cost of rapid inflation, agricultural regulation of this sort is not responsible. 

Legislation should require more than a noble sounding name and good intentions to become law, and the Birds and Bees Protection Act offers nothing more than that. 

Originally published here