Spring, 1991 (v3n3)
by David Campbell SAREP
Editor's Note: David Campbell has joined SAREP as an
economics and public policy analyst. He also teaches in the UC
Davis political science department.
Kenneth Dahlberg lamented in New Directions in Agriculture
and Agricultural Research (1986) that "we have few conceptual
means, much less the necessary data sets, to assess either general
societal benefits or costs of agriculture and agricultural research."
He went on to call for "greater research into health, safety,
social, environmental and resource externalities."
SAREP has been working systematically to determine how our program
might sponsor research and education that meets the challenge
of linking food production practices to the broader economic and
political context. As reported in Vol.2, No.2 our Economics and
Public Policy Advisory Committee has developed a comprehensive
research agenda addressing economic, social and public policy
issues that affect agricultural sustainability. Specific recommendations
were made in four areas: food and agriculture policy, labor,
land use, and rural community development.
A prerequisite to pursuing many of the questions raised by the
committee is a clearer sense of how to build more complete cost-benefit
assessments into agricultural research. Traditional farming research
methods, grounded in narrowly conceived cost-benefit accounting,
fail to adequately account for the impact of farming practices
on the environment, public health, worker safety, and rural community
development. We need new methods, concepts and indicators that
include the effect of outside influences in the farming balance
sheet.
The World Resources Institute has developed a method of natural
resource accounting which makes possible quantitative measures
of sustainability. By taking soil erosion and depreciation into
account, they can compare the net economic value of conventional
and more environmentally sensitive farms in a way not possible
if one were only to measure net farm income. This as part of
a broader effort to redefine agricultural productivity to take
into account groundwater, soil fertility, and wildlife in addition
to the crop produced. (Reducing the Farm Bill: Agricultural
Policy and the Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices,
published this spring by The World Resources Institute).
Other examples of innovative methods exist, but little work has
been done to systematically identify these and ask how they might
be profitably incorporated into ongoing agricultural research.
SAREP staff members are laying the groundwork for educational
projects that would accomplish this objective. The aim is to
identity and link individuals doing relevant research; clarify
data availability and needs; highlight innovative new methods;
and allow sharing of concrete, ready-to-implement techniques for
integrating these methods into agricultural research projects.
We hope to build environmental and social costs assessments into
our research funding proposals in a systematic fashion and serve
as a model for other university research programs.
The effort to recast the methodological foundations for agricultural
research necessarily means greater involvement of social scientists
as part of interdisciplinary research teams. Most of the research
to document the true costs of agriculture has been by social scientists
grounded in their own disciplines with little or no ongoing connection
to agricultural research programs. Thus, no matter how persuasive
their analysis, they have tended to have little impact on the
direction of agricultural research. And, these social scientists
have not benefited in most cases from the perspective of production-oriented
researchers.
One of the contributions SAREP hopes to make in economics and
public policy is the development of interdisciplinary teams. that
address sustainability issues from many perspectives.
Having already sponsored interdisciplinary work in production-oriented
disciplines, we are aware of the personal and institutional difficulties
that accompany this team-building. Going forward with this broad
research is essential to addressing the sustainability question
in its most inclusive sense.
It is easy to become overwhelmed as we confront the dizzying array
of policies that affect agriculture at the national, state and
local levels, and the long list of neglected research questions
on the off-farm impacts of farming practices.
By focusing on the methodological and organizational tasks outlined
here, SAREP can began to establish a solid foundation for future
research.
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