State Egg Battles

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about the egg battle going on in California.

Here's the issue:

California voters set new standards for hen housing in 2008 when they approved a ballot measure that imposed more generous living conditions for egg layers in their state. When producers complained that the measure created a competitive disadvantage, the Legislature tacked on a law that mandated imported eggs be produced under the same standards.

It's the second action - the legislative prohibition against certain types of eggs coming into California - that has the attorney general of Missouri complaining about an interstate commerce clause violation.  California imports a little less than half the eggs it consumes from other states.  Missouri, in particular, supplies about 540 million eggs a year to California. Thus:

The Missouri attorney general has filed a lawsuit to block the California egg rules, and at least three other states are considering doing the same. The beef and pork lobbies are also lining up against the California rules in an effort to prevent any new restrictions on raising livestock.

The attorney general says: 

“I recognize that the California district courts and the Ninth Circuit have not been particularly friendly to this sort of assertion we’re making here, but I also have confidence that will not be the last word on this analysis,” he said. “The U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to allow a state to put this type of trade barrier in place in the agricultural arena or any other arena.” 

The briefly article discussed the potential price impacts of the new standards for California citizens.  I wished it would have spend a bit more time talking about consumer demand for "cage free" eggs and the interplay between market outcomes and regulated outcomes.  

The market share for cage free eggs in California was only about 10% and yet Prop 2 (which essentially banned the cages) passed with 63% of the vote.  If the population of shoppers is the same as the population of voters (which it isn't), this would mean about 53% of Californians voted to ban a product they regularly buy.  This "vote-buy" gap is not well understood, and we're working on research now to get a better handle on why and under what conditions it emerges.  

How Would Your State Vote on a Ballot Initiative to Ban Battery Cages and Gestation Crates?

The Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics just published a paper I co-authored with Bailey Norwood, Katie Smithson, and Max Corbin entitled: Predicting State-Wide Votes on Ballot Initiatives to Ban Battery Cages and Gestation Crates.

Here are a couple excerpts:

Using California data to project voting behavior on a hypothetical initiative in other states can be considered a thought experiment: an abstract, hypothetical scenario providing a useful index of each state’s concern for animal welfare as determined by their demographic profiles. There are a number of states where initiatives are not allowed, yet this study can still illuminate our understanding of those states also. For example, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Iowa are the three largest hog states but do not allow initiatives—yet these industries can still be affected by legislation sponsored by politicians with a personal interest in animal welfare or politicians influenced by a particular lobby. The absence of an initiative does not mean constituents have no influence nor does it imply constituent demographics are irrelevant. Which of these state’s constituents will be the most or least accepting of gestation crate bans according to the state’s demographics? This research has an answer.

and 

The bottom line for the hog industry is this. Over three-fourths of U.S. hog production is insulated from state-level initiatives banning gestation crates. The question is whether the bad publicity from initiatives in other states and groups, combined with the relatively small benefit of gestation crates, is strong enough to induce the hog industry as a whole to voluntarily discard gestation crates. The answer to this question is unknown. What this study does show is that a state-level initiative to ban gestation crates in Massachusetts, Nevada, Utah, and Washington is a real possibility.

Animal Agriculture Hits the Sunday Comics

From the comic strip B.C.

What caused the rise of "factory farms"?

An interesting insight into one of the key factors that precipitated  the development of "factory farms" from Maureen Ogle's forthcoming book In Meat We Trust: 

World War II also drained American agriculture of its labor supply, a fact that, as we'll see later, would have a profound impact on the way farmers raised livestock. Even before the United States entered the war, factories had geared up to supply warring countries with materiel, and men and women decamped from the farm for jobs those factories provided. In Georgia alone, between 1937 and 1941, 30 percent of agricultural workers left farm for factory. The shortage worsened after the United States declared war in late 1941. Everywhere in rural America, from dairy farms to cattle-feeding operations, from corn belt hog lots to rural Georgia chicken coops, labor vanished. When labor cannot be found, humans make a logical decision: they replace it with machinery. Americans had a long-standing tradition of doing so. For most of the nineteenth century, for example, the country suffered chronic shortages of labor that fostered a national passion for mechanization and automation. So, too, in the 1940s. Factory farming already had plenty of support both in and out of agriculture, and World War II affirmed that enthusiasm. Nowhere was this more true than in the broiler industry

The argument reminds me of an episode described by Joan Thirsk in her book Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day.  The severe labor shortage caused by the black death was, according to Thirsk, a big factor motivating change in the agricultural sector in the 14th century.  

It is amazing how an exogenous shock like plague or war can change perspectives on the relative risk and benefits of new food and farm technologies.  

The perfect American pig?

My wife forwarded me this story, which is interesting for a number of reasons.  It begins:

From California's Silicon Valley to the cornfields of Iowa, former computer engineer and now pig farmer, Carl Blake is reinventing the way that Americans eat their pork. Through his technology-based approach and good ol’ fashioned farming, he says he has bred the perfect tasting American pig.

There are a couple things to like about this guy's approach.  First, it shows that small-scale niche farming doesn't have to imply a rejection of modern technology.  

The quality of the pork also has to do with what the pigs are fed. Blake uses hydroponic technology, which grows fresh food in water. He is able to pay about $100 for seeds that will grow one-ton of food in six days. Compare that to the price tag of conventional feed prices of $500-$600 per ton. Blake said he doesn’t understand why more farms don’t use the same technology but hopes that it will eventually catch on.  

I'm a little skeptical about the claim that feed from hydroponic technology is substantially cheaper than typical hog feed, once one factors in the cost of labor, capital, etc.  But, more power to him if he can make it work.  And, if it is really increases quality and reduces costs, there's a good chance Tyson, Smithfield, and other large hog producers will be following shortly behind.

There are two things about this story that are worth picking on.  First, is something of a clarification.  Blake is right that meat from the so-called "heritage breeds" of pork are often juicier and tastier (and fatter) than what you'll normally find in the grocery store. As Blake put it:

If you wanted white meat, you buy a chicken. Pork is not meant to be a white meat,

But, we need to ask why the large hog producers make pork this way.  One is that it is probably healthier (at least in terms of fat content) and because, for most people, price trumps quality.  It is easy to decry "chicken-like pork" in the grocery store, but I think it is useful to take a step back and ask why this is the pork we have, and it is a result of a grand competitive process of consumers trying to tell hog producers what they want via their wallets at the store.  We all want cheaper pork.  We all want tastier pork.  That's not controversial.  The interesting thing is to see how that trade-off is manifested in the market, and at least have some respect for the outcome that has emerged.  Now, that's not to say there isn't merit in trying to grow a different kind of pork for someone who particularly values quality or has a few more $ to spend.  

Finally, I was intrigued with the farmer's claim that: 

This is an American pig that I developed in America and I developed it here in Iowa.

I think I know what he's getting at, but a little history is useful too.  Did you know hogs are not native to America?  They came over once Europeans started trekking back and forth in a process referred to as the Columbian exchange.  Here's a neat picture (taken from here) of some of the foods that are "new" to America: