Can agricultural economists contribute to good public policy? - Farm Bill 02 Choices

Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm and Resource Issues,  Fall, 2002  by John E. Lee

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

The performance of the general economy. (Americans spend so little on food that they have extra disposable income for other things. Does this help drive the consumer economy? If so, does this make expenditures on farm programs a good investment? If this is true, are there other ways to achieve the same results more efficiently?)

The public money spent on agricultural support programs could be used in other ways. (What other activities are foregone in order to continue to subsidize agriculture?)

The links, if any, between large subsidies for American farmers and increased poverty, hopelessness, and violence in third world countries.

Many policies defy evaluation in purely economic terms. Such policies are based on issues that are as much social and political as they are economic. Even so, this must not be used as an excuse to avoid appropriate economic analyses. Policy makers and others need to know the opportunity costs of decisions even if economics is subordinated to political and social objectives. When Don Paarlberg was Director of Economics for USDA in the 1970s, he told a group of ERS analysts, "Don't try to anticipate what I want to hear. Just give me honest and accurate analyses. That way, if I have to make a political decision that does not square with your analysis, I will know the cost of that decision." An important part of transparency centers on knowledge and understanding of the opportunity costs of public policy decisions.

The analysis must be as objective as possible. The sub-discipline "agricultural economics" came into being at a time when the economic status of farmers was seen to be a major social problem. Many agricultural economists, then and now, came from farming backgrounds that gave them a natural sympathy for farmers. Many among the profession's ranks today still see agricultural producers as their most important clients, and serving the interests of this clientele as their major responsibility. As the well-being of people in agriculture has improved relative to the rest of the U.S. population, the profession's view of its clientele has lagged. We do not have a strong tradition of providing comprehensive transparency to the larger public. This transparency is needed to assure policy decisions that serve the public good.

The results of our work must be communicated. Transparency has not been achieved if economic insights and findings are not known and understood by all who are involved with policy decisions. Publishing technical results in journal articles or presenting them in papers at professional meetings is critically important for validation by professional peers. However, such outlet activity should be the beginning, not the end, of communicating economic information and knowledge.

Information contributes to transparency only after it becomes a part of the common knowledge base of farmers, legislators, taxpayers, and the media. This means that teachers, the media, administrators, and those who fund economic research must be able to understand the results associated with agricultural economics research. Researchers and analysts themselves must accept major responsibility for helping non-economists understand the consequences of public policies.