The highest inflation in 13 years is hitting American consumers. Since September 2020, overall food prices have risen by 4.6 percent, with eggs, poultry, meat, and fish being the most affected. As consumers scramble to make ends meet in a labor market that remains volatile, it stands to reason that U.S agriculture policy should follow suit.

Over in Europe, the situation for consumers is comparable: with food prices on a 3.4 percent inflation rate, automatic indexation systems in countries that apply them have already affected wages. However, not all European countries benefit from the same luxury, and even those getting a salary boost are still seeing their purchasing power reduced. Meanwhile, European Union lawmakers continue their push for mechanisms set out to make the food system more sustainable.

Sustainability in agriculture means different things depending on who you ask. For the EU, sustainability has long meant a reduction in crop protection tools (i.e. pesticides), even though there is no link between organic pesticides and a more environmentally-friendly food system. Since the early 2010s, the EU has been leading the way in confronting neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been accused of harming honeybee populations. On top of these bans, the EU now seeks to export its policy abroad: The European Commission has announced that food products grown with the help of two specific neonicotinoids will no longer be allowed to be sold in the EU.

There are two ways in which you can analyze this decision: 1) is it scientifically sound? and 2) is it suitable for trade? Uniquely, the European Commission gets it wrong on both ends.

Just this year, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency decided that the two neonicotinoids in question – clothianidin and thiamethoxam – were not harmful to pollinators, reversing its own 2018 decision. The entire conversation on “bee-harming pesticides” needs to get back to the facts, meaning that the European Commission needs to establish that these insecticides harm pollinators and should be transparent about the fact that bee populations are not declining. If it did those things, we would not be looking at increasingly dire situations for farmers needing to protect their crops from pests.

The other issue is that of international trade. This is not a food safety concern, per the idea that the imported foodstuffs are bad for European consumers. It applies European political and environmental conclusions to trade partners who did not reach those conclusions. Decisions like this need to come under close inspection by the WTO and have no place in an international food market based on free exchange. Consumers should have choices, including those choices that the European Commission disapproves of politically.

For consumers, reduced crop protection toolboxes for farmers is bad news. Unable to protect their crops from pests, farmers will see a significant reduction in output, leading to higher prices. This is not just theoretical. Just last year, France voted to cancel its ban on neonicotinoids because it saw a dire situation for its beet farmers, who saw a dramatic production decline. At the brink of needing to import sugar beet from abroad, French lawmakers abandoned the ban for three years.

In 2015, the French far-right National Front campaigned in the European Parliament for a ban on the insecticide sulfoxaflor, often named as an alternative to neonicotinoids. Back then, Marine Le Pen’s party was shot down politically on the issue, only for the French government to outlaw the substance early last year. One of many decisions that led to the crisis of beet farmers last year.

The United States cannot afford to follow the path of Europe. Increasingly, environmental groups have targeted insecticides, leading to a battle in New York between farmers and legislators wishing to outlaw the substances in question. For all the talk of listening to farmers in the push for sustainability, political actors have done very little of it. In fact, the policies seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all solution to farming will reduce agricultural output and increase prices at the time we can afford it the least.

Originally published here

Some myths have the tendency of never going away. Lightning does, in fact, strike at the same place twice, your zodiac sign doesn’t mean anything, and a penny dropped from the Empire State Building wouldn’t kill a person. More elaborate myths have benefited from popular supporters and even made their way into parliaments and governments, one of which being the infamous “Beepocalypse.”

The idea that bee populations are on the decline has been debunked for more than half a decade, most notably through reporting in the Washington Post, which pointed out that contrary to popular belief, bee populations are at record highs. In fact, only 2% of wild species provide 80% of crop pollination, and those 2% are thriving. However, legislators and activist organizations are still using “bee decline” as a common reference to support or enact legislation to ban neonicotinoid insecticides in the European Union.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a March 2018 Department of Agriculture report, and reports from Canada and Australia, there has been no proven link between neonicotinoids and harm to bee populations. Conversely, neonicotinoids are essential to maintain a productive farming system, which equals food security and price stability for consumers. 

The situation is similar for sulfoxaflor, a systemic insecticide used in certain areas as an alternative to neonicotinoids. Still blamed for a nonexistent decline in honeybee populations, the substance has since been found to have no effect on those same honeybees in a realistic exposure scenario. This did not stop Marine Le Pen’s far-right party from arguing for a ban back in 2015. Unsuccessful with the proposal at the time, the French government banned the substance early last year.

In fact, France has severely suffered from its ban on supposedly “bee-harming pesticides,” not least last year, when beet farmers were at the brink of collapse over the absence of any effective crop protection. To support farmers, the government enacted a three-year moratorium on the neonicotinoid ban — a decision deemed justified by the European Food Safety Authority.

When referring to actual problems facing bee populations, we can address the effects of habitat loss — a common issue facing all sorts of insects. Agriculture has an important role to play in habitat destruction. Thus, the challenge of modern farming ought to be to produce maximum yield with minimal use of resources. 

However, as politicians in the developed world call for an increase in organic farming (the European Union has even set a target of 25% in organic food production), they ignore the effect this has on overall land use. This includes the fact that USDA data have shown that organic agriculture produces yields 10-35% lower than conventional farming methods, meaning that in order to achieve the same outcome as existing farming techniques, organic farmers need considerably more resources, including land. This, in turn, drives out pollinators.

The factors above only add to the overall problems related to organic food, including its higher carbon dioxide emissions rate. A shift to an all-organic food system could ramp up carbon dioxide emissions between 21% and 70%, which also reveals organic food to be a not-so-sustainable alternative to conventional food products.

Ultimately, the choice of food products needs to be up to consumers, whether they go for organic food or conventional products. That said, politicians need to deal with facts. Consumers should be able to make choices in their supermarkets or with online retailers based on an informed conversation, not talking points that haven’t been updated in years.

Originally published here

To tackle climate change, the European Union has decided to go all organic. Europe’s green agriculture — outlined in the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy — seeks to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% percent. That looks very climate-friendly and revolutionary on paper. In reality, the F2F is extremely costly and will not help save the planet.

The U.S. should see the EU’s F2F as a lesson in how not to approach agriculture in the 21st century.

Pesticides are a critical tool for fighting pests and diseases that can decimate crops. They fall into the following categories: herbicides, which protect from the 30,000 weed species that deprive crops of space, water, sunlight, and soil nutrients; insecticides, which defend against 10,000 plant-eating species; and fungicides, which are used to prevent 50,000 plant diseases, such as mycotoxin contamination.

Limiting the use of pesticides will limit farmers’ ability to maximize food production, which will drive down food supply and drive up food prices. According to a recent study conducted by Dutch scientists, production will decline by 10 to 20%, or in some cases 30%.

Furthermore, the EU will attempt to impose this agenda on the rest of the world. Should that happen, about 185 million people will become food-insecure.

On top of that, organic agriculture is hardly climate-friendly. To name one example, a 2018 international Swedish study published in the journal Nature found that organic peas, farmed in Sweden, have around a 50% larger climate impact than conventionally farmed peas.

So far, the United States has been opposing the Farm to Fork strategy, calling it “protectionist.” However, with the recent launch of an EU-U.S. transatlantic platform on agriculture, it is unclear which approach will succeed in shaping the discourse. It is crucial that the U.S. doesn’t follow the EU’s flawed green lead.

Originally published here

American agriculture is an asset too precious for lawmakers to succumb to the pressure of people who would rather see the industry disappear than use the benefits of modern agricultural technology. 

A new bill supported by environmental organizations and co-sponsored by progressive lawmakers Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) would copy food rules in Europe and paste them in the United States. This bill disregards the American context and the way previous agriculture regulations were decided on and would downgrade the status of the United States from an agricultural powerhouse, which would be devastating to a state like California.

The bill is called the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PACTPA), and it would completely retool how America approves and licenses the use of pesticides and import a “precautionary” approach that has so far stunted innovative agriculture in Europe.

In 2019, activists sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the insecticide sulfoxaflor that helps farmers protect their crops from insects. The activist groups claimed that the substance harms pollinators, despite recent evidence showing the contrary. When used correctly, the chemical yields no major impact on honeybees, which is why the EPA has demanded that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reconsider its existing restrictions.

These activists belong to the same environmental groups that sought to ban pesticides like the neonic class of pesticides they blamed for the “bee-pocalypse.” Sulfoxaflor was once lauded as an alternative to neonic insecticides, but it now faces similar criticism.

In 2015, the Washington Post published “Call off the bee-pocalypse: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high,” an article highlighting the fact that bee populations are on the rise. And USDA numbers confirm that there is no worrying trend related to honeybees. Yet, the notion that chemical pesticides harm bees is so ingrained because it has been consistently repeated to further the goals of environmental activists. These activists aim, not to reduce pesticides by fifty percent by 2030—a goal the European Union is aiming to hit, but to achieve one hundred percent organic agriculture as soon as possible. 

The fact that consumers, when presented with the choice between organic and conventional agriculture, choose the latter and not the former, plays no important role in the views of these activists. There is no attempt to inform consumers about the facts of organic food—that it is not healthier or more nutritious than conventional food, that they do indeed use a wide array of pesticides, or that an all-organic shift would increase greenhouse-gas emissions by up to seventy percent.

Premiums on organic food products are upwards of one hundred percent, and environmental groups work closely with organic lobby groups to push for a mandated increase in organic food production. This push will only cause grocery bills to rise.

While some farmers might benefit from a shift to organic food, many others won’t. In Europe, farming representatives have criticized the push to increase organic food production from the current eight percent to twenty-five percent by 2030 because it can lead to a significant market imbalance. If consumers are presented with twenty-five percent organic but continue buying based on their existing preferences, then what happens to the excess seventeen percent? Will the government compensate farmers if prices drop because of deficient demand?

A European model of agriculture in which farmers are significantly more subsidized than their American counterparts might be appealing to some stateside farmers, but is that really the future of agriculture that Americans want? Do Americans want a model in which farmers are forever dependent on the federal government as opposed to a market economy where the relationship is between consumers and farmers?

U.S. secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack explained to the European Parliament in a virtual appearance that the differences in how Europe and the United States treat crop protection and genetic engineering are an obstacle to the two blocs trading. But civil society and legislative pressures are building, and they must be resisted.

American agriculture is an asset too precious for lawmakers to succumb to the pressure of people who would rather see the industry disappear than use the benefits of modern agricultural technology.

Of course, improvements can still be made. According to USDA, the number of pesticides used in the United States has been reduced by forty percent since 1960 and pesticide persistence has been cut in half. Innovative technologies such as smart sprayers help farmers use crop protection tools more efficiently to the benefit of their own balance sheets. Empowering farmers to innovate and consumers to be informed about farming realities and the food on their tables should be the goals for which we strive.

Originally published here