The Land — To read Dick Hagen’s article in the Dec. 25 issue of The Land — “Buhr: Agriculture becoming ‘externality driven’ industry” — was an exhilarating moment.

What was animating and hopeful was that an ag economist has included the consideration of externalities in discussing contemporary food production and modern day agriculture.

Up to this point it appears that the paradigm of providing adequate food for the ever-growing world population has been heavily focused on the corporate model with a diminishing regard for the individual owner/operator. Is this in itself a gestating negative externality given the huge amounts of entry-level capital needed in production agriculture and thus precluding an egalitarian food production system?

Furthermore, the industrial model as the best model may in itself be a perceived positive externality if based solely on the resulting cost of retail food. Is there an environmental cost, a social cost, a societal responsibility cost? If so, are these real, ethical or perceived externalities?

It is increasingly important to remember that almost any human activity of any size or consequence will have both negative and positive externalities. Perhaps the reason for little acknowledgment of the positive externalities is that they are the raison d’être for the activity in the first place. The positives have likely been vetted ahead of the activity being initiated. In most instances the negatives only surface later and evolve into consequences. Interestingly enough, perceived negatives have evolved into realities; the classic example being Silent Spring.

Externalities can have both positive and negative impacts as we all know, which in turn drill down to still more externalities — the cause-effect relationships inherent in any evolving society and social structure. Buhr references ethical externalities as they relate to animal husbandry.

Are there ethical externalities that might relate to the social structure of farm size, rural community viability or food systems infrastructure? Positive cost externalities for one sector of society may pose an ethical choice for another sector of society. Concentrated animal feeding operations and big box stores across the rural landscape come to mind.

The externalities, besides food costs and environmental concerns, are the impacts on owner-operator rural businesses, including farms, and the eventual effects on rural community social structures and the people who make up and support these rural community infrastructures.

The perceived, ethical or perhaps real externality relating to recombinant Bovine Somatatropin besides being about health is equally about the impacts on smaller dairy farms and their operators. Consumers have made an ethical decision about smaller dairy farms. This same rBST consumer concern, the industrial model, is what is driving the local foods initiative today. It is sensitizing more and more consumers to the realization that cheaper food may not be cheaper food.

Negative externalities did give birth to today’s organic food production system. Many of the organic standards are direct outcomes of the numerous negative and real externalities of conventional agriculture.

There is a major difference between perceived and ethical externalities. Lack of purposeful discussion about these impacts, for whatever reasons, is a subtle negative externality surrounding agriculture, conventional agriculture specifically, and very evident by Buhr’s reference to it: “The new battle over food and hunger is not being waged on science and policy issues but rather on ethics ... the ag community is not effectively engaging in this discussion but activists are. The ag community typically engages the cost efficiency and science arguments that are often self-serving. The agriculture sector must begin to clearly articulate the ethics of food production methods and if there are ethical conflicts, you must articulate these differences ...”

Unrealistic as it may be in these challenging economic and budget-tightening times, might not a rural sociology department provide the venue that Buhr encourages for carrying on meaningful dialogue and research to address these real, ethical or perceived externalities.

What I think Buhr is indicating is that meaningful dialogue directly relates to advancing our food production system. Its absence perpetuates a skewed perspective of technology and science alone being the only options for dealing with food to feed the planet.

Buhr’s concern is further demonstrated in the fact that negative externalities evolve and become polarizing, perhaps because we have inadequate venues with which to address them. Courtrooms, talk radio, or local cafes seem to be the best we can offer.

Again, the concerns speak to the need for rural sociology researchers and professors engaged on a level not unlike the Extension engagement in agronomic research.

In the end, what I think I hear Buhr saying is: Perception is reality until we dialogue respectfully to clear the “chaff from the grain.”

•••

This commentary was submitted by Carmen Fernholz, a Madison-area farmer.