| 摘要 | Read the full PDF.
Buy the book.
“Food and Agricultural Policy for the 1980s,” edited by D. Gale Johnson, consists of the proceedings of a conference on the agricultural legislation needed for the unfolding decade. The conference brought together some seventy participants, from universities, business, farm organizations, the US Department of Agriculture, and congressional staffs.
Foreword
A Conference on Food and Agricultural Policy was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute on October 2 and 3, 1980, and held at its offices in Washington, D.C.—three years after a similar conference was held. This conference was in response to requests from a number of policy makers who expressed the belief that a conference similar to the earlier one would make a contribution to the preparation of agricultural legislation that was required during the early part of 1981. The Food and Agriculture Act of 1977, which covers most of the legislation directly affecting farm prices, supply management, and reserves, expires with the 1981 crop year.
The conference was attended by approximately seventy people of varied backgrounds. They came from universities, business, farm organizations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and staffs of congressional committees and of the Congressional Budget Office. The discussion was lively and constructive.
The conference was organized into three major groups of presentations. The first group included two papers, one concerned with economic developments affecting food and agriculture in the United States during the 1970s and the other with various consequences of the farm policies followed during the 1970s. The second session consisted of two papers that made an effort to look ahead: one emphasized potential developments in world food production, consumption, trade, and farm policies and how they might affect U.S. agriculture; the other considered possible changes in the structure of U.S. agriculture. The third session was concerned with the future of U.S. farm policy, especially major issues of legislation concerning agricultural policy.
In this foreword I highlight some of the important points that were made and the significant areas of both agreement and disagreement concerning the appropriate policy directions for the 1980s. The major papers were summarized by their authors, and one participant had been asked to serve as a critic and discussant for each paper. Each of the three major sessions was followed by lively discussion and comments from the audience.
The first paper, presented by J. B. Penn, was about the major economic developments that shaped U.S. agriculture during the 1970s. His paper is a major work, worthy of careful study by anyone interested in understanding the major economic changes in American agriculture during the past decade. The first part of the paper presents a concise summary of farm sector developments, and the second part provides a profile of the farm sector as the 1980s begin. A brief final section draws out some of the major policy implications of the two previous sections.
The first of the farm sector developments discussed by Penn is “the emergence of relative resource equilibrium in the sector.” He notes that, as we entered the 1970s, the symptoms of the farm problem were still evident—large stocks of grain in governmental hands, high program costs, and a large amount of cropland idled by government programs. Penn argues, however, that certain changes, largely unnoticed at the time, resulted in a striking change in the economic setting for agriculture. One was the rapid growth in demand for U.S. agricultural exports due to significant growth in income and population in many developing countries. Other significant changes included the transformation of the centrally planned economies from net food exporters to net importers, the devaluation of the dollar, and the modest shortfall in world grain production in 1972. Penn points out that changes on the supply side had gone largely unnoticed, although he was kind enough to give me credit for having argued in early 1973 that there no longer existed significant excess resources in agriculture. He concludes that the slowing down of net out-migration from agriculture, the emerging near equality of the per capita incomes of farm and nonfarm people, and the full utilization of the readily available cropland strongly support an assertion that “the farm sector is now in near equilibrium and perhaps has been for several years.”
Penn discusses trends in land in farms, in the uses of that land, and in the distribution of ownership of the land. He notes the uncertainty concerning the amount of additional land that could be brought under cultivation. The decline of the farm population, which had fallen by half between 1940 and 1960 and by almost 40 percent during the 1960s, slowed during the 1970s. The slowdown in migration from farms may be attributed to the significantly improved income of farmers. He discusses the uncertain state of our knowledge concerning the growth of productivity in agriculture, especially whether the rate of such growth has slowed during the 1970s. If productivity growth is slowing and if land and labor resources continue to disappear, “the prospects for output expansion in the future are not bright, absent a major breakthrough in production technology.”
The second part of Penn’s paper provides an illuminating profile of the farm sector as we enter the 1980s. The topics covered include farm numbers and sizes, the economic well-being of farm people, and the economic viability of farms. Penn emphasizes that the income of farm operator families from farm sources alone gives a misleading picture of their well-being. He presents data showing the importance of off-farm income, which has exceeded farm operator income since 1965. For farms with value of sales greater than $40,000, off-farm income during 1975–1978 equaled 25 percent of net farm income. One consequence of the growth of off-farm income has been a significant narrowing of income disparities within agriculture. In his discussion of the economic viability of farms, he compares the rate of return on equity investments from agriculture, common stocks, and long-term bonds. He finds that since 1965 the combined returns from current income and real capital gains from farm assets have significantly exceeded returns from either common stocks or long-term bonds.
The variability of farm prices and income was found to have increased significantly during the 1970s. During 1972–1978 farm prices were six times as variable and farm income was approximately three times as variable as they had been in 1955–1971. Nonfarm income, however, was quite stable during the 1970s as well as during the earlier years. Penn concludes that price and income variability during the 1980s is likely to be much greater than during the 1960s.
In summarizing his paper, Penn notes that the problems facing American agriculture are significantly different from those of the past several decades. After stressing the points referred to above, Penn emphasizes the potential growth in foreign demand for our farm products. He notes that the future may well bring forth increasing prices of farm products rather than the surpluses that our farm programs have been designed to deal with.
In his paper, “Consequences of Farm Policies during the 1970s,” Bruce Gardner notes that during the 1970s commodity programs were modified toward increased market orientation and that the “importance of government in determining farm incomes, asset prices, and labor returns declined.” He argues, however, that there were two areas in which governmental intervention increased, namely, in trying to deal with instability of prices and income and in protecting farmers and consumers against natural hazards and middlemen.
Gardner analyzes the view that farm programs of the 1970s were more market oriented than in earlier years. If the criteria are a significant decline in the real (deflated) levels of price supports and reduced efforts to control production, there was a clear increase in market orientation. Gardner argues, however, that if the criterion is the difference between average prices received and loan or support prices, the picture is less clear. Only in the cases of cotton and soybeans were the differences larger in the 1970s than in earlier years, and for the other major farm products there was no apparent increase in the differential. By another criterion of market orientation—the reduction in quantities of price-supported commodities owned by the government—there was a significant increase in such orientation for the major farm products except for dairy products. By still another criterion, the amount and importance of government payments, the programs were much more market oriented after 1973 than before.
Gardner argues that the farmer-owned reserve program is an example of reduced market orientation. He notes that there seems to be an effort to use the program for short-term price stabilization. In pursuing that objective, frequent changes in such important variables as price supports and release and trigger prices have been required. Gardner argues that the reserve program has done little to stabilize wheat and corn prices, primarily because it has not had much effect on the quantities of grain in storage.
Commenting on Penn’s paper, Phillip Sisson notes that the United States bears the brunt of variations in world supply and demand. He also observes that for several countries, especially Japan and Germany, the import prices of our corn and soybeans in their currencies increased hardly at all during the 1970s because of the sharp decline in the dollar exchange rate. The consumer prices of major food importers should reflect international market conditions. If they did, Sisson remarks, international market prices would be less variable.
W. E. Hamilton notes that Gardner’s emphasis upon the difference between the average price received by farmers and the support price has significant limitations as a measure of the degree of market orientation. He points out the substantial differences among the various commodity programs: In some cases loan rates are mandated by legislation while in others there is administrative discretion. For soybeans the loan rate is entirely discretionary, and for the 1970s the rate was substantially below market prices.
One of the conference participants raised a pertinent question in response to Penn’s paper: What is the justification for a 1981 farm bill if farmers’ incomes are equivalent to those of nonfarm residents? Penn responded that the rationale for intervention can be different from what it was in the past; the strongest rationale for new farm legislation may well be to deal with the problems of instability in prices and incomes.
Another participant asked whether it was U.S. policy to maximize exports. The response was that we had policies that permitted agricultural exports to grow and that the most accurate way of describing our programs as they relate to exports is that all we are doing is standing aside and letting the market function.
In his paper “World Food Production, Consumption, and International Trade,” Timothy Josling describes the dramatic growth in U.S. agricultural exports during the 1970s, emphasizing the shifts in export markets by region and commodities. He notes that although the value of agricultural imports from the United States to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union grew by 41 percent between 1970 and 1978, by 1978 that region accounted for a little less than 10 percent of all our agricultural exports. The two most important regional markets, each with about a third of the total in 1978, are Western Europe and Asia. Japan alone took 15 percent of our farm exports. By commodity groups, grains and oilseeds and products accounted for more than two-thirds of the value of our agricultural exports in 1978.
Josling argues that the sharp price increases that occurred in 1973 and 1974 had little impact on governmental policies affecting agriculture. It does not appear that such policies were modified in either the developing or the developed economies; he found no evidence that development priorities were shifted toward food production. Nor does he find that the 1970s brought any significant change in policies affecting trade in agricultural products. Self-sufficiency remains a strong priority in many countries. Developed countries continue to protect inefficient agricultural production.
The growth of U.S. agricultural exports depends on both the growth of demand and the degree of competition from other countries in providing the export supply. Josling concludes that U.S. agriculture is in a relatively favorable position compared with many other export sectors of the economy and that the potential threat to the U.S. export position “comes as much from the subsidized exports of countries with high levels of agricultural protection as from the more regular and more soundly based production of commercial exporters.” He notes that two countries—Brazil and Argentina—stand out as having considerable export potential.
In spite of the lack of progress toward reducing barriers to trade in agricultural products or achieving greater stability of international prices, Josling concludes that exports of U.S. agricultural products will continue to grow. He argues that the United States must do two things to ensure that growth: (1) ensure that market information and marketing facilities are adequate and (2) ensure that domestic market and income support policies are consistent with overseas trade realities. The latter point was emphasized by both G. Edward Schuh and me in our policy discussions.
In recent years there have been an increasing interest in and concern about agriculture structure. The extended and perceptive analysis by Luther Tweeten supports the view that trends in U.S. farm structure have had significantly more benefits than negative outcomes. He notes the following positive elements: incomes of farm people have improved relative to those of persons in the rest of the economy; the incidence of poverty in the farming sector has fallen dramatically; increases in farm productivity have permitted the growing demand to be met with a constant level of farm inputs; consumers have continued to spend a declining percentage of their incomes on food; and drudgery has been largely eliminated from farm work.
Tweeten expresses pessimism about the long-term outlook for the traditional family farm. He estimates that the required growth in size of family farms to keep farm incomes growing at the same rate as nonfarm incomes will need to be greater during the remainder of the century than for the past four decades. He also emphasizes that inflation puts particular pressure on agriculture, especially family farms, since only a part of inflation is passed on through higher product prices.
A striking point made by Tweeten is that farmland is not overpriced in relation to its prospective earning capacity. Current earnings on farmland have averaged about 4 percent per year since World War II. In addition, the value of farmland has increased faster than the rate of inflation by at least 4 percent per year in recent years. Thus farmland has been an excellent investment, and Tweeten expects it to continue to be. He does note that, since the current rate of return on farmland is significantly below recent interest rates on farm mortgages, recent purchasers of farms have been faced with severe cash flow problems.
Tweeten draws a number of important conclusions from his analysis. For example, commodity programs have had little effect on the number and size of farms; the increasing cost of energy will not improve the comparative advantage of small farms; the optimal size of farms will continue to increase; and the “social and economic vitality” of many rural towns and small cities has declined but on the whole has been maintained remarkably well in the face of declining employment on the farm.
The third part of the conference included three papers that addressed the agricultural policy issues for the 1980s. G. Edward Schuh stresses policy alternatives given that U.S. agriculture is a part of an interdependent world and the world’s largest trader in agricultural products. His paper is based on two major premises: in the 1980s we should move to even greater dependence on market forces, and we should recognize that general economic policies are now more important to the welfare of agriculture and rural people than farm commodity policies. Schuh includes monetary and fiscal policies, exchange rate policy, labor market policy, and trade policy among general market policies.
Schuh gives particular emphasis to the role of science and technology as a factor in agricultural productivity. He notes some evidence that the rate of growth of productivity in agriculture has declined, although he adds that the choice of base period affects the conclusion. More important, he observes, is that federal support for agricultural research has remained constant since 1965. The case for increased support of agricultural research turns on the benefits that result from such research; most of the benefits go to consumers either directly through lower food prices or indirectly as a result of large exports. Increased exports improve the foreign exchange value of the dollar, which reduces the dollar costs of our imports.
Schuh gives considerable emphasis to price instability, as does John Schnittker. In Schuh’s view, the commodity policies did not perform well in limiting price instability during the 1970s. Giving freer reign to market forces was desirable, but the market and the commodity programs were not “able to cope with the basic source of the instability, which has been the monetary and fiscal instability of the past decade.” Schuh notes, as does Gardner, that the farmer-owned reserve program added little to price stability, in part because of the politicization of the system and its failure to add significantly to the total quantity of grain stocks.
Schuh supports a continuation of the evolution of the 1973 and 1977 legislation in the direction of a free market commodity policy. He does believe, however, that there should be an “actuarially sound but subsidized income insurance program that could be developed by extending and improving the crop insurance program.” This program should replace the current disaster payments program, which has encouraged crop production in high-risk areas and has transferred income to many who are relatively well off.
Both Schuh and I call attention to enormous budget costs and economic waste associated with the production of alcohol from farm products. The gasohol program, if carried through as announced, could reach an annual subsidy level by 1990 of $10 billion, dwarfing the costs of all farm commodity programs. In addition, the gasohol program could pose a threat to the world’s food supply.
In my paper, “Agricultural Policy Alternatives for the 1980s,” I emphasize the continuity in the evolution of farm commodity programs during the past two decades. During this period there was a gradual movement toward increased market orientation. This increase in market orientation was followed by the large upsurge in agricultural exports and the gradual elimination of the excess resources in agriculture. I discuss what I consider the major policy issues relevant to the 1981 agricultural legislation and argue that price supports for the major crop products should be kept at levels that will permit the market to allocate the available supplies freely between domestic and foreign use. The primary purpose of price supports should be to assist farmers in the orderly marketing of their products by providing prompt and easy access to credit. I point out that, unlike the crop products, dairy products benefit from high/price supports, which have a major influence on domestic prices. As Gardner notes, the price supports for dairy products have not declined in real terms but, contrary to the experience with all other price supports, have increased during the past two decades.
I oppose the use of cost of production as the criterion for establishing target prices. Target prices have been set substantially higher, in relation to past market prices, for wheat, barley, and grain sorghums than for corn. I argue that target prices should bear approximately the same relationship to price support levels for each of the crops and should not be used to affect the allocation of resources significantly.
Though critical of the numerous changes that have been made in the support, release, and trigger prices for the farmer-owned reserve storage program, I do favor the retention of the program. In particular, I believe that the farmer-owned reserve program is superior to the previous control over stocks by the Commodity Credit Corporation. As I argue in my paper, the current supply management tools have not been very effective in limiting agricultural production; but since there is likely to be a rough balance between the growth of demand and of supply for U.S. farm output during the 1980s, I do not favor instituting more effective supply management tools in the 1981 legislation. I do favor continuing our present export policies and strongly oppose the replacement of the private trading system by a federal board or agency.
John A. Schnittker presents a scenario of future developments in supply and demand for U.S. farm products that differs significantly from the assumptions underlying the policy proposals made by Schuh and me. In consequence, Schnittker gives primary emphasis to policy instruments other than price supports, target prices, and deficiency payments. Schnittker argues that managing shortages of agricultural resources and commodities will probably become the focus of food and agricultural policy during the 1980s.
Schnittker supports the conclusion that the demand for agricultural products will be strong during the 1980s by referring to prospective circumstances in the developing countries and the centrally planned economies. Some developing countries that produce oil will neglect their agriculture; other developing countries will consume whatever agricultural successes they may have because of income and population growth. Schnittker believes that the centrally planned economies will continue to demand more grain, largely for livestock feeding, than they can supply. “Real prices of agricultural products seem likely to rise under such circumstances.” He does not indicate how much real prices may increase, but apparently it will be enough to generate quite radical changes in our agricultural policies.
Schnittker views the role of loan levels during the 1980s as that of determining how grain reserves will be accumulated and used; the role of target prices will be negligible when market prices are usually above direct production costs and acreage limitations are not in effect. The main policy problem he discusses is that of managing the volume of grain exports to maintain adequate supplies for all domestic users at “reasonable and competitive prices.” If U.S. and world demand outpaces production or poor world grain harvests dissipate reserve stocks in the years ahead, such limitations might be justified. This latter circumstance is likely in view of “the anticipated large decline in feed grain reserve stocks in 1981.”
Schnittker suggests that we might develop a number of arrangements with importing nations under which the United States would agree to supply a certain volume, though not unlimited quantities, of agricultural exports; he notes that the 1975 grain agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union “may well become a pattern for future bilateral trade agreements with our large customers.” Schnittker recognizes that general use of bilateral arrangements to control agricultural exports “would constitute a fundamental modification of our policies and our rhetoric on free and unlimited exports.” He adds that, if significant limits were imposed upon our exports, it might be necessary “to think the unthinkable and to design procedures for selling our products into a very demanding world market at a premium over prices prevailing in the United States.” To do so, he adds, would not require a federal export board or corporation.
After the three policy papers were presented, there was considerable discussion and disagreement concerning the prospective trend of real farm prices. J. B. Penn and John Mellor supported the view that real farm prices and real export prices for agricultural products would be likely to increase during the 1980s. Both Schuh and I disagreed with this view. Schuh emphasized three points in support of his view: (1) more developing countries will change their domestic farm policies because of balance-of-payments difficulties; (2) the developing countries will soon produce more farm products as a result of international research centers; and (3) the real value of the dollar in terms of foreign currencies will increase since the U.S. economy has made many adjustments, including increasing domestic energy prices and recognizing the need to improve productivity.
William Pearce agreed with Schnittker that the prospects were good for a high degree of price instability. If all countries played by the rules of market price equality, then international prices would not be unduly variable. Given the domestic price polices of most of the trading nations, however, it was agreed that, unless reserves were very large, we could look forward to substantial international price instability during the 1980s. There did not appear to be general agreement on the desirability of our controlling exports as a means of offsetting the effects of international price variability upon our domestic markets.
Commenting on my paper, Dale Hathaway emphasized that the creation of the farmer-owned reserve program was the major policy innovation of the 1970s and that over a broad range of demand and supply conditions, it is that program, and not simply the price support levels, that affects storage and other decisions. He also observed that the release price rather than the support price had been the important policy variable. He further argued that it was nonsensical to assume that there is no relation between cost of production, political factors, loan rates, and release and call prices. He supported the higher level of target prices for Great Plains crops because the variable costs had increased more than the similar costs for crops grown in the Corn Belt. Hathaway urged that target prices can be based on any of three criteria—a reasonably definite criterion such as some concept of cost of production, judgment, or current political pressures. His preference was for the reasonably definite criterion.
Don Paarlberg noted that the 1977 legislation was drafted at a time when it was uncertain what the price trends were to be. That legislation, he emphasized, was a two-track bill that provided for moderate price supports, deficiency payments, and supply management if farm prices remained low and for the phasing out of supply management and the elimination of most income transfers if farm prices increased. There appeared to be general agreement that the 1981 legislation should provide for sufficient flexibility to meet whatever underlying price pattern may emerge. In any case, there was no support for sharp increases in either support prices or target prices because of the expectation that real farm prices would be substantially higher during the 1980s than in the 1970s. It remains important that support prices be at levels that will permit our exports to be competitive and that target prices not encourage output expansion.
Several reservations were expressed about the potential effectiveness of the farmer-owned reserve in minimizing price instability. Some argued that there had been too much tinkering with the reserve while others expressed the view that the reserve simply did not significantly increase total stocks. The general, though not unanimous view, however, seemed to be that the farmer-owned reserve merited further trial.
D. Gale Johnson
D. Gale Johnson, a member of the AEI Council of Academic Advisers, is Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and chairman of the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago. |
