The Wisest Farmer- Wendell Berry

I was very pleased to have been asked to give a speech at the MacPahil Homestead, part of what's called the McRobie lectures. George McRobie was E.F. Schmachers friend and right-hand person, carrying on the "Small is Beautiful" legacy.  I talked about many of things I've written in this blog, essentially that it's not fair to short-change farmers in the marketplace, and then not expect them to short-change their farming practices, that  getting the economics right is essential to the kind of environmental stewardship we all want. Put another way: there are costs to cheap food that affect us all.

I was very pleased to see a day later an article in the New York Times interviewing Wendell Berry. And what was he talking about? The need to get economics right on the farm to protect the environment.

I did want to thank all of the people who came to the lecture. Thoughtful, mindful consumers are essential to getting our food system right and fair for everyone, and there was a whole roomful of these wonderful people that night. Inspiring for me.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/wendell-berry-agriculture-farm-bill.html

Wendell Berry’s Right Kind of Farming

Gracy Olmstead 

 

Agricultural choices must be made by these inescapable standards: the ecological health of the farm and the economic health of the farmer.

Ms. Olmstead is an Idaho native living and writing outside Washington, D.C.

"Wendell Berry"

How we farm matters. For the past two centuries, America’s farms have expanded and homogenized, and farming equipment and chemicals have replaced personnel. Farmers have grown older and more isolated and are retiring without successors.

Our embrace of industrialization and “factory farming” has not resulted in greater economic security for most American farmers. The nation has suffered a historic slump in prices for corn, soybeans, milk, wheat and other commodities. It has lost half its dairy farmers in the past 18 years. And The Wall Street Journal warned in early 2017 that “the next few years could bring the biggest wave of farm closures since the 1980s.”

The farmer, essayist and poet Wendell Berry has long argued that today’s agricultural practices are detrimental to ecology, community and the local economies that farms once served. A native Kentuckian, Mr. Berry has written over 40 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Humanities Medal and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

Mr. Berry argues that healthy forms of agriculture require intentional cultivation on the part of both consumers and farmers. Americans presume there will always be enough — money, clean soil, healthy water — to fulfill our desires. But our ravenous economic disposition goes against the very nature of our world and its finite resources. Advocates for sustainable agriculture argue that we ought to recognize the limits of our world and, as Mr. Berry writes, “live in it on its terms, not ours.”

This year’s proposed Farm Bill awards millions of dollars to wealthy agribusiness and factory farms in the form of commodity subsidies and crop insurance, while cutting funds for important conservation and stewardship programs and offering little to beginning farmers and ranchers or local farmers markets and local food promotion.

Mr. Berry, as an ally of Wes Jackson of the Land Institute and others, has long argued for a 50-year Farm Bill that would rejuvenate our nation’s ecosystems while fostering long-term food security in the United States.

Gracy Olmstead: The Farm Bill usually promotes short-term economic gains over long-term ecological health (something the 50-year Farm Bill seeks to fix). How do we get Washington politicians to support more sustainable forms of agriculture?

Wendell Berry: The problem here is not so much that of the shortness of the term of planning or of shortsightedness as it is of ecological and agricultural ignorance and a sort of moral blindness. The problems we ought to be dealing with are not problems because they are going to cause us trouble in the future. They are problems because they are obviously and clearly causing trouble right now. We ought to be doing our best to solve them right now.

If politicians and journalists want to know about the problems of agriculture, they are not likely to go out into “rural America” to observe the condition of the fields and the waterways or to talk to the farmers and the ex-farmers, the ex-merchants of the small towns, or to talk to the mayors and county judges of rural counties. Instead, they are very likely to talk to academic and bureaucratic experts, who are tightly bound within the industrial structure of agriculture, agri-science and agribusiness.

Alan Guebert was right when he said in one of his columns that this farm bill will be much like the last one insofar as it will not address the real problems of agriculture. Those problems, as you know, are soil erosion, soil degradation, the pollution of waterways by sediment and toxic chemicals, various ecological damages, the elimination of small farms, the destruction of the cultures of husbandry and the ruin of country towns and communities. And maybe we should add specifically the curse of overproduction, which at present, as often before, is the major and the cruelest problem.

Those problems could be summed up as the triumph of industrialism and industrial values over the lives of living creatures, and over the life of the living world. The preferences and choices of industrialism do not imply a limit of any kind. They rest instead upon the premises of limitless economic growth and limitless consumption, which of course implies limitless waste, and finally exhaustion.

Nothing can take form except within limits. No cure is possible, either in policy or practice, except within understood limits, which is to say within a correct diagnosis. This requires patience. A good solution has to begin with a description of the problem that is full, clear, and reliable.

Olmstead: The Farm Bill addresses many issues, including “rural development” — and rural communities desperately need help these days. Could the government help combat these issues, in your community and elsewhere?

Berry: A farm bill sincerely intending to help rural communities might begin by proposing a program of production controls and price supports for every product of farming and forestry. At present, for example, the dairy “industry” is increasing milk production by millions of gallons every year, thus reducing prices and driving small dairies out of business. This of course serves the interests of large dairies.

A bill intending to help rural communities, furthermore, might forbid the large chain stores to underprice their goods in order to destroy locally owned small stores. I don’t see why the government should not enforce honest prices for the same reason that it enforces honest weights and measures. I am sure that a lot of conservatives would object loudly to such “regulation.” But for small farms and small businesses, the “free market” is not a “level playing field.”

Olmstead: Many conservatives and libertarians see the Farm Bill’s handouts to large agribusinesses as the opposite of a free market. If small farmers are given a level playing field, they argue, more will succeed — and industrial agribusiness will no longer have a government-provided financial cushion.

Berry: I distrust entirely the terms “free market” and “level playing field.” Those phrases are intoned as if they were the names of gods, but what do they mean? How exactly do the conservatives and the libertarians think small farmers would be served by the free market and the level playing field?

The problem that has impoverished and destroyed farmers nearly always is that of low prices resulting from surplus production. That is also, obviously, a land-destroying problem. The only solution to that problem that can sustain the small farmers is the combination of production control and price supports as exemplified by the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association as it was reorganized in my region under the New Deal in 1941. I dislike recommending my own writing, but that organization and its work are explained pretty fully in “The Art of Loading Brush.” The conservative politicians and their friends in the Farm Bureau hated that program because it protected the small farmers, and they finally killed it. In its absence, our troubles have multiplied.

Recently, for example, 100 family dairy farms have been put out of business in this region, two of them in my county, because Walmart is building its own milk-bottling plant in Indiana. And so 100 self-employed, self-supporting, self-respecting farm families are being severely damaged or destroyed in order to increase the wealth of a family already far too rich. I am unsure what the farmers themselves have concluded, but I can conclude only what I already knew: They have no friends among the conservatives and libertarians. And if the Democrats and the liberals were to capture the government, those small farmers would find no friends among them, as they now are.

Both of the political sides, so far as I am concerned, have to accept responsibility for the emergence of Donald Trump, the autonomous man, the self-made man, economically “free” and sexually liberated, responsible only to himself, starting from scratch and inventing his own way of doing things. To get outside the trajectory that produced Trump, we will have to go back to tradition. I am unsure when we began to think of, for instance, the 15th Psalm and Jesus’s law of neighborly love as optional. They are not optional, as I think the Amish example proves, and as proved by present failure.

Olmstead: Our trade war with China has highlighted American farmers’ reliance on the global market. Do you believe this reliance is a necessary risk in today’s globalized economy? How can these farmers safeguard their own self-sufficiency and well-being?

Berry: I have been arguing for a long time, and I still argue, that an economy worthy of the name should begin with proper care of its sources in the natural world and in the local cultures of land use. Beyond that it should be based upon the principle of a reasonable self-sufficiency, from the household to the local community and on through the categories of political organization.

Such an economy, within the variables of weather and human capability, would be formed within certain prescribed limits. To the extent that it would be limited and formed or formal, we might assume that it would be stable. Because such an economy has never been tried, we should not think of it with too much confidence. But there is certainly nothing limited or stable in our present casting about the “globe” for supplies and demands. This, like our present society, is disorderly if not chaotic.

The so-called global economy, because it is predicated on the exhaustion of natural sources and of the land-use economies, is far from a sure thing. An interesting question, then, is whether we might intentionally reform our economies upon the principle of self-sufficiency or be forced to do so by the failure of the global economy. Farmers by themselves can’t protect themselves in a “free market” economy whether it is national or global. At present they have only the very limited self-protection of supporting their own lives so far as possible from their own land — that is, by producing their own food and fuel, and by harvesting energy from their own sunlight.

Olmstead: An Iowa farmer recently told me that industrial agriculture is inevitable — the natural fruit of technological progress and globalization. The farmer reminded me of others I have talked to who, when asked about farming practices that are industrialized and isolating, reply by saying “We must feed the world.”

Berry: If you can persuade farmers that their hardships are “inevitable,” then you have got them very securely trapped and they can be safely forgotten by their political representatives and exploited by agribusiness corporations. Inevitability and objectivity, like pessimism and optimism, are the names of programs offering freedom from choice and responsibility. If “technological progress” is the same as technological determinism, then there are no remedies.

It can pretty well be demonstrated, however, that technological progress is the result of choices that have been made all the way from the inventors and manufacturers of technologies to the people who buy and use and pay for them. The important questions all have to do with the standards by which these choices are made. If the standards were different, different choices would be made.

And in fact we have plenty of evidence that choices can be made that evidently were not made by your Iowa farmer. That the alternative choices often have to be made against powerful social pressures does not mean that they cannot be made or that they are not valid choices. The finally inescapable standards by which agricultural choices must be made are the ecological health of the farm and the economic health of the farmer.

The problem of feeding the world should be addressed, first of all, by calculating the waste — from farmland and topsoil to thrown-away food — in the world’s “food systems.” Perhaps somebody has done this. If so, that is the place to start. The people, fairly numerous and highly credentialed, who argue that only industrial agriculture as we now have it can feed the world are arguing in fact that we can feed the world only by an agriculture that destroys both farmland and farmers. There is a point, obviously, beyond which this kind of agriculture will not be able to feed much of anybody.

Olmstead: As farmers grow older, we seem unable to attract or keep young people on the land. For some, this is because of the cost of procuring land and starting a farm. But I have also talked to farmers who were told they were “too smart” to farm by high school counselors and mentors. These admonitions align with a larger cultural prejudice against manual labor and blue-collar work. Considering the challenge to farming’s future which this represents, how can we foster and renew a passion for farming?

Berry: That smart people are “too smart” to farm is one of the set of clichés by which industrial agriculture has maintained itself. Another is that farming is “drudgery” or “mind-numbing work.” Another is that ex-farmers have been “liberated” from their hard, narrow, and depressing lives.

These clichés are sustained by the “larger cultural prejudice against manual labor,” which you mention. But there also are active prejudices against farmers, country people, the country, small-town people and small towns. This at least begins the description of a large cultural problem. Because of such prejudices, and also because of economic adversity, farmers encourage their children to leave farming. Their departing children, so few of them as they now are, amount to an invaluable cultural and economic resource, to which our present economy attaches no value at all.

What can we do about this? First, those of us who care must keep trying to bring about improvements, which we can do, and are doing, locally — where, in any event, the improvements will have to be made. Second, we have got to be patient. That this is a cultural problem means that it can’t be simply or quickly solved. What you speak of as a “passion for farming” can grow only from an understanding of the intelligence and the learning involved in the right kind of farming, and we should add an understanding of the better cultures of husbandry and of the traditional agrarian values. These things we must try to keep alive, not because of their “potential value” but because they are now and forever right.

Gracy Olmstead is an Idaho native living and writing outside Washington.

Getting a Nafta Deal

I've written a lot over the years about my support for supply management. Canada cannot give up on it because of the mindless bullying of Donald Trump. But I think Canada must be willing to give up something.  There's a complicated part of this story that I first wrote about back in June.  It has to do with Canada exporting milk powder and competing with U.S. farmers. I think Canada should give this up, especially if it means retaining the basic integrity of the system. It gives Trump a win, and apparently it's the bottom line for U.S. agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue.  Here's the background from a column in the Island Farmer.




Looking a Little Deeper


Canada’s national newspapers have been very consistent over the years in their condemnation of supply management. President Trump’s erroneous bombast on dairy has given them fresh material to work with. However there was one editorial in the Globe and Mail that revealed more about the newspaper’s  biases than any problem with the regulated system itself.

Opponents of supply management get one thing right. Canadian consumers do pay more for dairy poultry and eggs than Americans, who enjoy the cheapest food in the world (underpinned of course by $25 Billion a year in taxpayer subsidies to farmers).  Canadian dairy, poultry and egg farmers get no government support. What was revealing is how the Globe characterized the way the farm gate price is determined. Here’s what was written: “Canada’s agricultural supply management system is an outdated, protectionist racket that uses tariffs and quotas to limit the country’s supply of dairy, eggs and poultry, and sets prices for them based on production costs instead of demand.”

That last part is true. What’s shocking is that the Globe thinks there’s something wrong with this.  Think about it for a second. Consider if there is any other industry where a smart editorial writer would argue that recovering the cost of producing a product shows there’s something wrong with the price. We’ve seen how taxpayers had to bail out the auto industry when it wasn’t recovering costs. We’ve seen giant retailers fail for the same reason.  If the Globe had written that there’s excess profit because of protectionism (hello Canadian banks and airlines),  fine, let’s argue about that. But this is saying when farmers can pay their bills it’s wrong.

Even Sonny Perdue, the U.S. agriculture secretary who travelled to Lawrence MacAulay’s farm in Midgell two weeks ago to do a little fence mending after the G7 fiasco, had smarter things to say. Defying his boss he said Canada can keep supply management. What he doesn’t like is a new pricing agreement between Canadian farmers and processors for what’s called “class 7” milk. In simplest terms: northern U.S. dairies had been exporting diafiltered milk (think of protein powder) to Canadian cheese producers. It was a product created after NAFTA was signed, so came into Canada duty free (think cheap). Canadian farmers have now agreed to produce milk at the same price, so the Americans lost the market.  As well, international trade rules prevent Canadian dairies from exporting dairy products at prices below what farmers get in Canada (always higher than the world price until now).  The new class 7 has created a cheaper domestic price for skim-milk powder.  Combine that with the low Canadian dollar, and now small amounts of Canadian powder are competing in traditional American export markets. Perdue put it this way: “You just need to manage it and not overproduce to create a glut of milk solids on the world market that’s being dumped at unfair prices.”   That’s not an unreasonable concern, although the amount of product Canada puts on export markets is tiny and hardly the cause of U.S. dairy farmers problems.  We will probably see complaints to the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the World Trade Organization on this issue.

One more thought on milk. Maybe the U.S. dairy industry should stop using Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) to artificially increase milk production in cows (it’s outlawed in Canada). There are well documented health concerns for both consumers and cows from its use.  Banning the product would cut farmers’ costs,  decrease the over production of milk,  and help with the bottom line. And the U.S. would join the many other countries who ban this product.  I know this won’t happen.

How Columnists Get Into Trouble

When writing a column you do want feedback. The ones below gave me a little more blowback than usual, and from both sides of the issue (a good thing??).  So I guess it's important to read both, and love to know what you think. These first appeared in the Island Farmer.



A Better Way to Find Justice

It was the retrial of Brookfield Gardens earlier this month on charges related to a fish kill in the North River 4 years ago that got me thinking about how the justice system deals with environmental infractions. Understandably we want those responsible for fish kills or other environmental violations held accountable, but these trials create enormous bitterness and cynicism amongst farmers, the very people we want using good sense and judgement in their day to day use of pesticides. Is there a better way?

Restorative justice is a legal concept that’s gaining support for dealing with certain kinds of crimes, where there has been loss of, or harm to,  property not persons. It’s based on the idea that the person found culpable acknowledges and takes responsibility for the harm done in a way that satisfies the people who were harmed, and because of that understanding doesn’t re-offend.  I know it sounds a little soft-headed, but let’s think about how these cases are handled now.

Investigations of fish kills aren’t easy. Soil samples, and water runoff  are collected, dead fish are analysed. Finding a “smoking gun” only happens occasionally.  Instead spraying records are collected from all farmers in the watershed.  In some cases charges stem from this paperwork investigation that have no actual link to the fish kill.  Alex Docherty, a high profile potato grower has never been shy about arguing he’s the victim of a witch hunt related to a fish kill in the Clyde River 2 years ago. There’s been no evidence presented so far that he had anything to do directly with the fish kill, but he was charged with administrative offences under the Pesticide Act related to spraying a neighbour’s field.  To Docherty it feels like there was political pressure to lay some charges related to this fish kill, and he was a good catch.  Emails Docherty has collected through an access to information request show a variety of government officials including in the premier’s office were informed once the charges were laid.

It’s the cynicism and lack of respect Docherty and many other farmers have developed for the enforcement system that worry me the most. Why?  It’s the farmers themselves responsible for filling out the paperwork that is so important to these investigations:  wind speed, air temperature and so on.  I can’t help but think that if I had had to fill out paperwork every night about how fast I was driving commuting to Charlottetown I’d never admit to more than 10 clicks over the speed limit and probably not even that, even though I always drove much faster. Are farmers any different? 

Then when farmers do end up in court smart and very expensive defence lawyers twist and turn words to try to get their clients off: What’s the definition of a waterway? What does cultivate mean? This just feels so unproductive.

Let’s think about Brookfield Gardens again.   Anybody who knows them recognizes that the owners, the Dykermans,   are good people, producing a variety of important vegetable crops, and transitioning over the last decade to an organic operation. They acknowledge that they made a bad mistake  in the summer of 2014, producing a conventional carrot crop on sloping land. Some of the charges they faced were because they were trying to add forage  to expand the buffer zone to prevent run-off. Chief justice Nancy Orr, who’s shown common sense in cases like this, found Brookfield not guilty in the original trial. However her decision was later overturned  because other judges ruled she didn’t have enough evidence to support the verdict.  I think she did,  because she knew the most important thing: these farmers would never do this again. Had it been handled through restorative justice, the Dykermans could have acknowledged their mistake to the community, the local watershed group, and recommitted to the good farming practices they already use.  That’s how you develop accountability.

One more example of the importance of farmers finding the right reason to farm responsibly, rather than just fear of the law.  There is a lot of sloping land, and potato farming in and around Souris, but so far no fish kills over the years.  Can this be linked to the long standing effort of the local watershed group to have farmers and others talk to each other and try to understand the challenges farmers face, and the need to preserve natural areas to support fishing and tourism?  That’s very different from other rural communities where farmers can be regarded as troublemakers and even shunned.

I’m not suggesting we can all have a “kumbaya” moment and everything will be OK, or that regulations and an enforcement regime aren’t needed.  I want responsible people handling pesticides, committed to protecting the health of their neighbours, local wildlife and waterways. I want caution and good judgement, not a tape measure used to determine the size of buffer zones.   I’m not convinced that lots of red tape and paperwork, and the threat of the heavy hand of the justice system, gets us that.





I’ve Got Some Explaining To Do

I’ve had a fair bit of reaction to my last column, some positive, much more of it negative. I always appreciate the feedback. I’d argued that a legal concept called restorative justice might be a better way to handle some environmental infractions like fish kills.  Anyone found responsible would have to answer to the community of people who were harmed rather than the courts. I’m going to dig the hole I’m in a little deeper.

My concern is that too many farmers, most who act very responsibly,  feel cynicism and disrespect for environmental regulations and the people who enforce them.  If they are charged it’s like the rest of us stopped for speeding, anger at getting caught, rather than any sense of guilt.   At the same time many in the public have little confidence in the willingness and the ability of the province to properly manage farmers, especially in the use of pesticides. They feel that the system is too full of carrots and not enough sticks.

What makes environmental laws different from other criminal matters is that those charged are guilty until proven innocent (thanks to a course I’ve been taking at Holland College on water management for that).   Something has happened, and the person responsible is considered guilty and liable for punishment.  The only defense is “due diligence”, did the person take all the reasonable steps expected to prevent the damage from occurring.   This can frustrate many because judges will issue “not guilty" verdicts even though the persons charged were clearly responsible.

It’s why record keeping is so important. It’s the only way someone can prove that he/she did practice “due diligence”.  Unfortunately most farmers don’t see it that way, but simply more paperwork and red tape.  And it gets worse.  In the last column I raised questions about whether farmers (or anyone) would voluntarily record damning information. As some farmers have put it  “Why would I provide  evidence for my own prosecution?”

And we have to remember there’s another kind of “due diligence” farmers have to practice.  Banks and other lenders, crop insurance agreements, contracted buyers  and so on require farmers to manage their crop properly, including using pesticides to control disease and insect damage.


Most of the criticism I received (from people I respect)  was that restorative justice doesn’t properly punish those  who commit serious environmental crimes, that farmers who treat the legal system and the environment with contempt shouldn’t be given another “get out of jail free card”.

When I first read about restorative justice a decade ago I had much the same feeling, that the courts, crown attorneys and judges, were the best way to judge crimes, and meet out punishment.  I began to think a little differently because of an idea that’s central to restorative justice:  normally those charged feel they’re answering to “the state”, with all of the resources and power that entails. They feel every right to fight back, and resent the fact that, in their minds, it’s not a fair fight.  With restorative justice they’re answering to the actual people who were harmed, made to understand the damage done. The people who were harmed get to agree on restitution, how to make things right.  Restorative justice supporters say when people have a proper understanding of the harm they’ve done, rather than anger and resentment towards the legal system,  there’s a much better chance at deterrence. 

I’m not so dumb that I don’t recognize that there are cases where farmers are not prepared to meet with neighbours or local watershed groups, or even acknowledge they’ve done anything wrong.  These cases can continue to go through the normal court system including, where appropriate, use of the much heavier fines under the federal Fisheries Act, for allowing a “deleterious substance” to enter a waterway.

I also think there are generational issues here. Most of todays older farmers started driving tractors, cultivating and spraying when they were teenagers or younger. They’re now being told they have to write tests,  keep records, and many resent it. The next generation is probably more prepared to accept food safety protocols, traceability requirements, the need for certification, and so on.  They don’t necessarily like it, but know this is what’s required to satisfy the demands of the marketplace. (I wish they could be properly compensated for the extra work.) 

Technology is helping too. Newer sprayers can better calibrate application rates and use GPS to prevent spraying in environmentally sensitive areas. The sprayers don’t have surplus mixed pesticide at the end that has to be dumped.  These sprayers are not cheap, but will better protect people including the applicator, and the environment. 

I wrote about this because I’m concerned we’re becoming very tribal when it comes to pesticide use, unwilling to listen to or believe “the other”. With extreme weather becoming the norm, the day to day decisions of farmers are becoming that much more critical.  PEI doesn’t have the resources or the political will to monitor every farmer (a drone over every field?) so we have to find other ways to have confidence that farmers are acting responsibly.  Using fear of the justice system, layering on the paperwork, is one way to do this.  Is there a better way?

You Just Knew This Woudn't End Well

For all the bombast of Donald Trump on the evils of Canada's supply management system, it was refreshing to hear U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue defy his boss and speak a little truth about what's going on. Perdue came to Lawrence MacAulay's farm in Midgell, PEI to do a little fence mending after the G7 fiasco a couple of weeks ago.  Perdue said Canada can keep supply management, it's the pricing of a new class of milk in Canada (class 7) that has him worried.  It's a cheaper product that allows Canadian farmers to compete with low cost U.S. diafiltered milk imports used to make cheese. In effect dairy farmers here makes it unnecessary for Canadian dairies to import the U.S. product because they can get it for the same price here in Canada. And today Saputo boss (a large Montreal based dairy with processing interests around the world) Lino Saputo Jr. essentially agreed with Perdue.  Saputo has some history with this problem, and it's not surprising that he would break ranks, because his company started the problem in the first place. 

I had first written about this almost 2 years ago, and you could sense it wouldn't end well.

December 2015

A Shortage of Butter: Not Good News for Dairy Farmers

This is a classic case of a loophole, big business capitalizing on any chance to improve the bottom line, and serious unintended consequences.  The impact of what appeared to be a minor bureaucratic decision  is being felt in Canadian kitchens, food processing plants,  and disturbingly, could do serious economic damage to Canada’s dairy farmers.

A few years ago Federal officials were trying to decide where so called “protein isolates” would fit into the stiff tariff schedule that limits imports of cheaper dairy products like yogurt and cheese. These high tariffs maintain the integrity of Canada’s supply management system that tailors milk supply to Canadian demand using quotas, while assuring farmers a fair price.  Protein isolates are essentially raw protein, like the whey protein used as a dietary supplement. Think of whole milk with the fat and minerals stripped out.  The bureaucrats decided the isolates are a protein “substitute”, not necessarily a dairy product, so they come into Canada tariff-free.  No one paid too much attention then,  but  slowly, over time, a trickle of cheaper protein isolates, almost all from the United States,  has become a tidal wave.  Now Canada’s largest dairy processors like  Parmalat, Saputo,  and Agropur, are helping their bottom line by using the cheaper protein in their cheeses and other dairy products. But there’s a  wrinkle, the processors still need the fat from whole milk to mix with the raw imported protein to produce their cheeses.   This is happening at the same time that dieticians and doctors are telling Canadians it’s OK to eat butter again.  So over the last year  butter, and butterfat, are again in big demand, and for some, short supply.  Farmers nationally have stepped up production by more than 7% on a butterfat basis to meet the shortfall, but because there’s no additional demand for the protein in the whole milk  (usually made into skim milk powder), farmers aren’t paid the full cost of production price for this additional milk, and a lot of the surplus skim milk is being dumped or fed to livestock.

That’s unfortunate, but the more serious impact I think is that it’s given the business media a fresh opportunity to attack supply management.  “Supply management falls butter-side down”  in the Globe and Mail,  and  “Supply management is expensive, irrational — and doomed” in i-Politics amongst others.   What especially irritates me about these articles is that they blame dairy farmers (and always the articles are  accompanied by shots of Holsteins) for lobbying to protect a “broken” system, when it’s large multi-national dairy processors that have created the problem. There’s no benefit flowing back to dairy farmers from  the importation of this cheap protein (other than Quebec farmer-owned Agropur, shame on it.  Parmalat is owned by a large Italian dairy, and Saputo by a Montreal family).

Here’s some better news. As Islanders, we can celebrate the fact that PEI’s dairies, ADL and Purity, do not use this imported protein.  And let’s also enjoy the world recognition ADL cheeses have received recently:  ADL, using a recipe from Cows, produces the Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar that won SuperGold at the World Cheese Awards in England  in late November. And ADL’s own labeled cheddars won several awards at the British Empire Cheese Show in Ontario in mid-November.  I’m not an expert, but maybe the fact that only PEI whole milk, rather than a tasteless imported protein isolate, is used to make these cheeses had something to do with these successes.  

One more thing for consumers to watch for. There is a symbol:

 that says 100% Canadian milk.  That’s your guarantee too that there’s no imported protein in the dairy products. 

Unfortunately for farmers  the trade in protein isolates won’t end quickly. The U.S. dairy industry would launch a trade investigation before the ink was dry on any new government regulation trying to control it.  The big multi-national dairies themselves are playing a game of economic chicken saying they’ll stop only if the others do.  As well they’re getting ready for more competition from cheaper European cheeses if the big EU trade agreement is ever ratified.   So consumers will have to step up if there’s going to be any solution. On PEI at least that’s easily done.

Price vs Value.. An example of the difference

 The Toronto Star, a generally progressive newspaper, has jumped on the anti supply management bandwagon.  Here's their take and a recent column I wrote for the Island farmer. This is one fight I won't give up, and gives me another chance to take a swipe at Walmart.

Angry about bread prices? Save some for supply management

• By Star Editorial Board, www.thestar.com
• December 20th, 2017

This costs the average Canadian consumer a lot. In 2014 the Conference Board of Canada estimated that higher prices for dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt and so on) alone cost the average family $276 a year.
Another study in the journal Canadian Public Policy put the cost of all supply management policies at an average of $444 per family per year. That adds up to an awful lot. The OECD at one point estimated that supply management cost Canadian consumers a staggering $2.6 billion a year.
All these figures, of course, are sharply contested by the dairy and poultry industries, which profit hugely from existing policies. And it’s perfectly reasonable to defend supply management if you value keeping dairy and poultry farmers prosperous and stable and don’t mind putting the cost of that onto consumers.
Others argue that Canada should value “food security” over having the lowest possible consumer prices. And, even with supply management in place, food is cheaper in this country relative to average earnings than almost anywhere else in the world.
What’s harder to argue is that collusion on the price of some bread products on a scale that can be compensated for by a $25 gift card merits special public outrage while official policy dictates that Canadian consumers must pay far, far more than they need to for other basic foodstuffs.
To be clear, price-fixing on bread is illegal and wrong. But anyone angered by those revelations should bottle that feeling and direct it where it would count a lot more: against Canada’s consumer-unfriendly policies that hike the prices families must pay for milk, cheese, chicken and eggs.

From the Island Farmer


Unintended Consequences

We live in a time when most of us have easy access to endless amounts of information. We have to be smart about what to believe, but anyone with an even remote interest in economics and trade must remember the role our pals at Walmart played to shift production of consumer products from the United States to China during the 1980’s.  I haven’t read one word in the media about this drive to ensure low prices for consumers being at the heart of the huge trade imbalance  between the two countries, close to $350 Billion last year.  President Trump says China outsmarted the U.S., and he’s going to change that.  I’d argue the U.S. went into this relationship with its eyes wide open.

Walmart has done a lot of good work recently to upgrade its own environmental standards and those of its suppliers including companies in China.  However that doesn’t take away from Walmart’s direct involvement in U.S. job losses over the last twenty years, jobs President Trump says he’s going to get back. Good luck with that. 

This started with Sam Walton’s insistence on the lowest possible price for consumers, always.   Even when the company went on a well publicized “Buy American” campaign in the 1990’s (and set-up a wholly owned buying agent to continue overseas purchases)  it wanted U.S. producers to match Chinese prices, forcing even more out of business.  Sam Walton himself wrote in 1992 "We're not interested in charity here, we don't believe in subsidizing substandard work or inefficiency…"   Of course other big retailers followed suit, and the results are predictable.   A recent report  (http://www.epi.org/publication/the-wal-mart-effect/ )  pegs job losses caused by Walmart on its own at 400,000 between 2001-2013.   Throw in other retailers and the numbers climb.  According to the article: “The growing goods trade deficit with China displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2013, and it has been a prime contributor to the crisis in manufacturing employment over the past 15 years.”    These displaced workers  were a big reason Trump was elected a year ago with his promise to “Make America Great Again.” 

I’m not on an anti-globalization rant here.  I accept that trade between countries with structural or climate differences can benefit buyers and sellers, and lift people out of poverty.  I’m trying to get back to the origins of the unintended consequences of this particular trade mis-match: Sam Walton’s determination that nothing else matters but delivering the cheapest goods to consumers. 

You can see where this is going.   Did you see these recent headlines:  “Supply Management is literally driving tens of thousands of Canadians into poverty” in the Financial Post, or “You’re Paying Too Much for Milk” in the Walrus, and there were many more.   After calling for an end to supply management what follows is advice like this from the usually very smart journalist David Akin  “… done right it would make dairy farmers even more prosperous because they could sell their wonderful product to the world.”

Well yes they could if there were markets in a world awash with surplus milk and dairy products, and more importantly willing to sell at the “world” price.  What Akin and others refuse to understand, much like Sam Walton, are the unintended consequences of always chasing cheaper.  When it comes to farming it goes beyond lost jobs to its severe  impact on the environment.  Just last week the Economist, hardly a radical publication, had this headline “Dairy Farming Polluting New Zealand Water.”   It outlines what happens as dairy farmers there try to produce milk at the low price needed to keep New Zealand an export powerhouse, the competition Canada would run into at every turn.  Intensive dairy farming has led to groundwater polluted with nitrates, and waterways full of algae and dangerous bacteria. From the article  “In Canterbury, one of the most polluted areas, expectant mothers are told to test tap water to avoid “blue baby syndrome”, a potentially fatal ailment thought to be caused by nitrates. The poisonous blooms have killed dogs.”

I can remember doing a  story on a dairy farm next to the Hillsborough River. The farmer worked with Ducks Unlimited to build a pond full of cattails to capture run-off from fields and the milk house before they get to the river. The farmer said the steady income he had from supply management allowed him to do this.  It reminds me now of the importance of the old Oscar Wilde quote:  “What is a cynic. Someone who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”  Let’s stop being cynical about supply management, and recognize its value.

Time to Talk About Debt

This is from a column I wrote for the Island Farmer.

Debt is something most Canadians now accept as almost essential to getting by.  Many economists worry that record levels of household debt will be unsustainable as interest rates rise,  as expected.  What about farmers?  They’re clearly on the same path.  A recent headline  “Canadian Farmers Held Record Amount of Debt in 2016” received virtually no attention.  I think it matters.

I’m no puritan when it comes to debt. I’ve never forgotten reading John Kenneth Galbraith at university on the Great Depression. He wrote that there were excellent carpenters who needed work,  lumber, hammers and nails, people who desperately needed homes. What was missing was the capital required to finance building, and governments and banks were just too  stubborn to make it available.  Galbraith says the misery and suffering caused by this was unforgiveable.   Galbraith’s professional career took him to a number of top economic and diplomatic posts in the United States, but his roots gave him, in my opinion, an extraordinary amount of common sense.  He grew up on a farm in Iona Station, Ontario, and often said the long days and hard work of farming made everything else seem easy.

So let’s try to bring some common sense to farm debt.  The amount of money is one thing, $90.8 Billion nationally in 2016  (not including household debt like home mortgages and car loans), up 7.5% from the year before.  What’s more troubling  is that collectively debt levels continue to rise year after year.  Put differently, debt has not been paid down since 1993, despite what Statistics Canada has reported as some very good years for farmers.   On PEI some debt was paid down in 2012, but since then debt levels have gone up by $150 Million to more than it’s ever been,  $783 Million in 2016.  Loans from provincial agencies are also at record levels, up to almost $48 Million. What’s more worrying here was the increase last year in what’s called “trade credit’, up 16%.  Farmers use it when they can’t borrow any more from traditional lenders like banks. It can sometimes come from friends or family, but most often from suppliers or buyers.   The down side for farmers is that they lose control over where they’ll sell their crop,  and at what price. It’s virtually pledged to whoever supplied the credit, and dealers and processors can take advantage of this.  It keeps farmers in financial trouble in business for one more year,  one more roll of the dice, but a price is paid by the loss of control.   

Debt obviously isn’t always bad.  Money can be borrowed to buy more land or farm machinery, construct new buildings,  all can make a farm more productive. What I’ve seen over the years however is that farmers are continually chasing the market, which is always demanding lower prices, even as costs go up.  If the margins keep shrinking  then more volume can look like a solution. Until it isn’t, especially if other farmers are on the same track and markets become over supplied.  So yes borrowing can make a farm more efficient but not necessarily more profitable. What we do know is that the pressure on farmers to be more productive is relentless.

I’m certainly not saying that every farm is losing money every year. The smartest thing I was ever told about farm finances is that one third of farmers are making money, and another third are losing, all because of good luck and market conditions elsewhere. It’s the middle third you have to pay attention to. I’ve called them the solid family farmers, the ones who don’t brag or complain.  What I do hear from those willing to share  is that they’re treading water at best, or slowly eating into their equity year by year at worst, not enough to alarm their creditors,  but enough that the future looks uncertain. 

Equity is the final piece of the debt puzzle that looks worrying. Land and building values have been going up steadily,  10.9%  a year nationally for the last 4 years, but Farm Credit  is predicting just 4% growth this year, and 1% next.  PEI farmers have benefited (or been hurt if a farmer is looking to buy land) by farm purchases by Taiwanese monks, and Amish families from Ontario. 

Then there’s this.   A Farm Credit  economist  Craig Klemmer uses something he calls liquidity to measure the financial health of farmers. It’s the ratio of current assets to liabilities, and it determines the ability of farms to weather setbacks like poor harvests, or very low prices.  Grain, oilseed and poultry operations have the best liquidity numbers. The worst? Potatoes and dairy, two of the most important commodities on PEI.  Klemmer says the low number for dairy isn’t a problem because of “continuous production and predictable cash flows.”    He indicates about a third of potato producers nationally are on very poor footing financially, and that’s clearly not good for PEI.  I do worry many potato producers here feel boxed in by debt.    

But perhaps John Kenneth Galbraith can cheer us up a bit with one of his famous comments:  “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”  Maybe everything will work out. Maybe.

Monsanto Creating Its Own Myths

Monsanto calls  it myth busting.  I think there's another term for it.  Here's what the company says:


Busting 3 Common Myths About Weed Resistance
  
Weed control has always been a critical challenge for farmers, and herbicides are an important weed control tool. However, changes can occur in response to herbicide use and other management decisions. Changes in weed populations begin when a small number of plants within a species, called a "biotype," have a distinct genetic makeup that allows them to tolerate a particular herbicide application. Multiple weed biotypes can exist in a single field.
This myth-busting list debunks three common misconceptions about herbicide resistance.
MYTH 1: Overuse of glyphosate causes weed resistance.
BUSTED: According to the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA), the first reports of weed resistance occurred back in the 1950s. To date, there has been no evidence of glyphosate (or any other active ingredient) causing herbicide-induced mutation in any plant species. That is to say herbicides did not and do not cause resistance. Herbicide resistance is actually the plant's naturally inherited ability to survive and reproduce after exposure to what is considered to be a lethal dose of chemicals.
As a farmer continues to use a particular herbicide without any other herbicide modes of action, or doesn't use any other cultural practices (tillage, crop rotation, etc.), the resistant biotypes continues to survive and produce seed. Subsequent populations of the resistant biotype will continue to increase until they are the dominant weed in the field.
Common factors that are often present in areas where glyphosate resistance has developed are:
    •    Limited or no crop rotation
    •    Limited or no tillage practices
    •    Use of glyphosate alone or limited use of other actives
    •    Reduced or “cut” rates of glyphosate
Particular weed characteristics that can facilitate development of herbicide resistance include:
    •    Large amount of seeds produced per plant
    •    High level of germination of those seeds
    •    Several weed flushes per season
    •    High frequency of resistant genes

The best way to keep glyphosate powerful is to use it effectively. That mean including an effective tank-mix partner once per growing season and using a diverse crop rotation on your farm.

MYTH 2: Harsh residual chemicals are being used to control glyphosate resistant weeds.
BUSTED: All herbicides have to undergo the same testing and must meet the same health, safety and environmental standards.
Many farmers have grown accustomed to the convenience and effectiveness of using glyphosate alone. The best way to preserve its long-term effectiveness on weeds is to bring in other herbicide modes of action to support it. These complementary herbicides used with glyphosate are not “harsher”; they simply interact with the target weeds differently. They have met the same regulatory standards and have been through the same thorough health, safety and environmental evaluations as glyphosate.
MYTH 3: Herbicides are the solution to all our weed control problems.
BUSTED: Spraying alone is not enough – experts agree that herbicides are important, but other practices should also be implemented.
A successful Integrated Weed Management strategy includes agronomic best practices to limit the introduction and spread of weeds, including:
    •    Crop rotations
    •    Periodic tillage
    •    Seeding rates to promote crop competition
    •    Planting certified seed
    •    Cleaning equipment to minimize spread of weeds
Benefits of residuals:
Tank mixing with a herbicide that offers lasting residual effects is an added benefit of keeping fields cleaner, longer. Products like Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend™ soybeans are tolerant to both glyphosate and dicamba, allowing for the use of multiple modes of action and residual weed control.
Herbicides by the numbers
    •    Herbicide modes of action found to date: 20
    •    Most recent discovery of new herbicide: 80’s
    •    Anticipated time until discovery of new herbicide: 10+ years

Sources:
Weed Science Society of America. Weed Myths. (verified 04/12/14) http://wssa.net/
Ross, M. Childs, D. Herbicide Mode-of-Action Summary. Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. Purdue University Cooperative Extension Services. (verified 04/12/14)https://www.extension.purdue.edu/
 ______________________________________________________________________________

No one that I've read who's been critical of Monsanto's profitable adventures selling both "Round-up Ready" seeds (soybean, corn, etc.), and glyphosate herbicide (Round-up), has ever implied that glyphosate on its own has created resistance in weeds. It's HOW it's used, and simple biology that's led to resistant weeds. 

Developing commercial GMO "Round-up Ready" crops that can survive glyphosate allows farmers to blanket spray tens of millions of acres every season, vastly increasing the biological certainty  of  "a small number of plants within a species, called a "biotype," have a distinct genetic makeup that allows them to tolerate a particular herbicide".   In other words it's the combination of the two (GMO seeds, and use of Round-up, both profit centres for Monsanto)  that's created the problem.  Rolling dice a hundred times and the chance of snake-eyes is slim. Roll them millions of times and the chances get much better.

Some of the most critical comments have come from scientists not worried  about the use or safety of glyphosate, but that it's usefulness will disappear because of  widespread use of Round-up Ready crops. That's on top of the growing concern about glyphosate's possible link to cancer.

There's lots to worry about and question when it comes to glyphosate, but this issue of weed resistance is the most serious legal and technical issue. Monsanto is very clear in its submissions to have Round-up Ready crops approved that resistance wouldn't be a problem. It is.  If the cancer lawsuits weren't underway I suspect this would be the basis of more legal action.

Then there's the question of the newer herbicides needed  to replace glyphosate. One is called dicamba. A recent article in the Washington Post reported that spray drift from dicamba onto crops that have no resistance is a serious and growing problem. 





The genie is out of the bottle I know, but let's at least speak honestly about these things.









https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-miracle-weed-killer-was-supposed-to-save-farms-instead-its-devastating-them/2017/08/29/33a21a56-88e3-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html?utm_term=.0c50f83731d9

This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms. Instead, it’s devastating them.

• By Caitlin Dewey, www.washingtonpost.com
• August 29th, 2017

Lyle Hadden, a soybean farmer, walks through a field he's planted that shows signs of being affected by the herbicide dicamba. Photo by: Andrea Morales/For The Washington Post

BLYTHEVILLE, ARK. — Clay Mayes slams on the brakes of his Chevy Silverado and jumps out with the engine running, yelling at a dogwood by the side of the dirt road as if it had said something insulting.
Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It’s the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.
“This is crazy. Crazy!” shouts Mayes, a farm manager, gesticulating toward the shriveled canopy off Highway 61. “I just think if this keeps going on . . .”
“Everything’ll be dead,” says Brian Smith, his passenger.
The damage here in northeast Arkansas and across the Midwest — sickly soybeans, trees and other crops — has become emblematic of a deepening crisis in American agriculture.
Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers.
The dicamba system, approved for use for the first time this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide — used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba-resistant soybean — promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers.
The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics say that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.
Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system worked as Congress designed it.

Leaves and a stalk from a soybean plant showing signs of being affected by dicamba. Photo by: Andrea Morales/For The Washington Post

The backlash against dicamba has spurred lawsuits, state and federal investigations, and one argument that ended in a farmer’s shooting death and related murder charges.
“This should be a wake-up call,” said David Mortensen, a weed scientist at Pennsylvania State University.
Herbicide-resistant weeds are thought to cost U.S. agriculture millions of dollars per year in lost crops.
After the Environmental Protection Agency approved the updated formulation of the herbicide for use this spring and summer, farmers across the country planted more than 20 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans, according to Monsanto.
But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it “volatilizes,” or re-vaporizes and travels to other fields. That harms nearby trees, such as the dogwood outside Blytheville, as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.
According to a 2004 assessment, dicamba is 75 to 400 times more dangerous to off-target plants than the common weed killer glyphosate, even at very low doses. It is particularly toxic to soybeans — the very crop it was designed to protect — that haven’t been modified for resistance.
Kevin Bradley, a University of Missouri researcher, estimates that more than 3.1 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba in at least 16 states, including major producers such as Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. That figure is probably low, according to researchers, and it represents almost 4 percent of all U.S. soybean acres.
“It’s really hard to get a handle on how widespread the damage is,” said Bob Hartzler, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that [dicamba] is not manageable.”

[Forget GMOs. The next big battle is over genetically edited foods.]

The dicamba crisis comes on top of lower-than-forecast soybean prices and 14 straight quarters of declining farm income. The pressures on farmers are intense.
One Arkansas man is facing murder charges after he shot a farmer who had come to confront him about dicamba drift, according to law enforcement officials.
Thirty minutes down the road, Arkansas farmer Wally Smith is unsure how much more he can take.
Smith’s farm employs five people — including his son, Hughes, his nephew, Brian, and the farm manager, Mayes. None of the men are quite sure what else they’d do for work in this corner of Mississippi County.
Dicamba has hit the Blytheville — pronounced “Bly-vul” — region hard. For miles in any direction out of town, the soybeans that stretch from the road to the distant tree line are curled and stunted. A nearby organic farm suspended its summer sales after finding dicamba contamination in its produce.

Eddie Dunigan, Photo by: center

At the Smiths’ farm, several thousand acres of soybeans are growing too slowly because of dicamba, representing losses on a $2 million investment.
“This is a fact,” the elder Smith said. “If the yield goes down, we’ll be out of business.”
The new formulations of dicamba were approved on the promise that they were less risky and volatile than earlier versions.
Critics say that the approval process proceeded without adequate data and under enormous pressure from state agriculture departments, industry groups and farmers associations. Those groups said that farmers desperately needed the new herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients.
Such weeds have grown stronger and more numerous over the past 20 years — a result of herbicide overuse. By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly.

The new dicamba formulations were supposed to attack those resistant weeds without floating to other fields.
But during a July 29 call with EPA officials, a dozen state weed scientists expressed unanimous concern that dicamba is more volatile than manufacturers have indicated, according to several scientists on the call. Field tests by researchers at the Universities of Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas have since found that the new dicamba herbicides can volatilize and float to other fields as long as 72 hours after application.
Regulators did not have access to much of this data. Although Monsanto and BASF submitted hundreds of studies to the EPA, only a handful of reports considered volatility in a real-world field setting, as opposed to a greenhouse or a lab, according to regulatory filings. Under EPA rules, manufacturers are responsible for funding and conducting the safety tests the agency uses to evaluate products.

Pigweed, a highly competitive plant that grows in cotton and soybean fields and has developed resistance to some pesticides, grows tall over soybean fields weakened by nearby dicamba use. Photo by: Andrea Morales/For The Washington Post

And although pesticide-makers often supply new products to university researchers to conduct field tests in varied environments, Monsanto acknowledged it did not allow that testing on its commercialized dicamba because it did not want to delay registration, and scientists said BASF limited it.
Frustrated scientists say that allowed chemical companies to cherry-pick the data available to regulators.
“Monsanto in particular did very little volatility field work,” said Jason Norsworthy, an agronomy professor at the University of Arkansas who was denied access to test the volatility of Monsanto’s product.
The EPA and chemical manufacturers deny that there was anything amiss in the dicamba approval process.
“The applicant for registration is required to submit the required data to support registration,” the agency said in a statement. “Congress placed this obligation on the pesticide manufacturer rather than requiring others to develop and fund such data development.”

[Trump’s FDA just took another swipe at Michelle Obama’s food legacy]

Manufacturers say that volatility is not to blame. In a statement, BASF spokeswoman Odessa Patricia Hines said the company brought its dicamba product to market “after years of research, farm trials and reviews by universities and regulatory authorities.”
Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of global strategy, thinks some farmers have illegally sprayed older, more volatile dicamba formulations or used the herbicide with the wrong equipment.
The company, which last year approved $1 billion investment in its dicamba production plant over the next three years, has deployed a fleet of agronomists and climate scientists to figure out what went wrong.
“We’re visiting every grower and every field,” Partridge said. “If there are improvements that can be made to this product, we’re going to do it.”
Regulators in the most-affected states are also taking action. In July, Arkansas banned spraying for the remainder of the season and raised the penalties on illegal applications.
Missouri and Tennessee have tightened their rules on dicamba use, while nearly a dozen states have complained to the EPA.
The agency signaled in early August that it might consider taking the new dicamba herbicides off the market, according to several scientists who spoke to regulators.
The agency would not comment directly on its plans. “EPA is very concerned about the recent reports of crop damage related to the use of dicamba in Arkansas and elsewhere,” an agency representative said.
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit alleges that dicamba manufacturers misrepresented the risk of their products. The Smiths are considering signing up. Monsanto says the suit is baseless.
There are also early indications that dicamba may not work for long. Researchers have shown that pigweed can develop dicamba resistance within as few as three years. Suspected instances of dicamba-resistant pigweed have been found in Tennessee and Arkansas.
A spokeswoman for Monsanto said the company was “not aware of any confirmed instances of pigweed resistance” to dicamba.

Soybean farmer Brad Rose's truck kicks up dust while heading down a road near his farm. Photo by: Andrea Morales/For The Washington Post

Some critics of chemical-intensive agriculture have begun to see the crisis as a parable — and a prediction — for the future of farming in the United States. Scott Faber, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, said farmers have become “trapped on a chemical treadmill” driven by the biotech industry. Many farmers say they think they could not continue farming without new herbicide technology.
“We’re on a road to nowhere,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The next story is resistance to a third chemical, and then a fourth chemical — you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see where that will end.
“The real issue here is that people are using ever-more complicated combinations of poisons on crops, with ever-more complex consequences.”
In Blytheville, at least, one consequence is increasingly obvious: It’s a short, scraggly plant with cupped green leaves and a few empty pods hanging near its stem. At this time of year, this plant should have more pods and be eight inches taller, Mayes said.
“This is what we’re dealing with here,” he said, before shaking his head and turning back to his truck. “We go to work every day wondering if next year we’re still going to have a job.”