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Why are cows more productive?

I've written frequently about the incredible productivity gains witnessed in agriculture, and I often mention such statistics in talks I give.  

But, what does the average person think when they hear this sort of evidence?

I decided to find out.  In the latest edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS), I provided respondents with some statistics on increased productivity in dairy production based on some data compiled by Bailey Norwood (I should note that Bailey mentioned that he is revisiting these figures, and thinks current water usage is likely higher than 2 gallons) .  

Here's what was asked:

“In 1945, it took about 10 gallons of water and 50 lbs of feed to produce a gallon of milk. Today, it only takes about 2 gallons of water and 10 lbs of feed to produce a gallon of milk. Each dairy cow today produces about 200% more milk compared to one in 1960. How do you think this change happened?”

People were then prompted to provide an open-ended response.   They could type anything they wanted.

As you might suspect, answers were all over the board (a complete, unedited list of the more than 1,000 responses is here) from "Witchcraft" to "corruption" to "I have no idea".

A keyword search was conducted among the open-ended responses.  Some of the main keywords mentioned were: hormones (69), growth hormones (41), feed (28), technology (25), and selective breeding (20). 

Looking through the responses it seems some variation on "hormones" ("hormones" or "growth hormones" or "steroids" or "drugs") were particularly common.  This is interesting because hormones aren't much used in milk production.  Some dairy cows are given the hormone rBST to boost production, and adoption of the increased in the 1990s and peaked sometime in the early 2000s and then has fallen off since then.  According to one USDA source, only about 22% of cows in the US received rBST in 2002. This paper reports that only 9.5% of dairy producers used rBST in 2010.  Thus, there appears to be something of a disconnect between how people think productivity gains occur vs. the reality on the ground.

Individual responses were placed into seven different categories related to:

  • hormones (134 responses)
  • feed chooses (78 responses)
  • science (61 responses)
  • breeding and genetics (61 responses)
  • drugs and steroids (30 responses) 
  • farming techniques (27 responses)
  • economics (6 responses)
  • others

You can read more about the responses in latest edition of FooDS.

 

How should food policy issues be decided?

Not only is it the case that people are likely to differ in their opinions about the desirability of mandatory GMO labeling or soda taxes, but they are also likely to differ in how they think such issues should be decided.  

A while back, I ran across this paper by Gaskell and colleagues published in Science.  They sought to categorized citizens in terms of their attitudes about how technology should be governed by asking two questions relating to whether decisions about technology should be made by 1) experts vs. average Americans and 2) moral and ethical issues vs. scientific evidence on benefits/costs.  

In the latest edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS), I applied these questions to five food policy issues.  Unlike Gaskell's work I also allowed respondents to have different answers for different issues.  

The first question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views and advice of experts OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views of the average American.”  The second question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the moral and ethical issues involved OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the scientific evidence of risk and benefit.”  Then five food policy issues were listed in random order: labeling of genetically modified food, use of growth hormones, legality of selling raw, unpasteurized milk, use of the term "natural" on packaging, and the tax charged on sugar sodas.

Here's what we found.

More than 70% of respondents wanted policy decisions related to GMO labeling and use of growth hormones to be based on expert advice rather than the views of the average American. I find that result rather striking in light of the fact that opinion polls show large numbers of people saying they want GMO labeling.  Here, we see that a large majority thinks this sort of issue should NOT be decided by the views of the average American.  That would seem to imply that folks do not think GMO labeling should be settled by ballot initiative.  

In stark contrast to the other food policy issues, almost 70% wanted decisions about soda taxes to be based on the views of the average American rather than the "elites".  

Recall that we also asked about whether decisions should be based on morals and ethics or based on scientific evidence on risk and benefit.

For three issues, milk pasteurization, hormones, and GMO labeling, the majority thought decisions should be based on science.  There was a split on natural labeling.  For soda taxes, the majority thought moral issues should be the deciding factor.

As with the prior research, we used the answers to categorized people into one of four categories for each of the five food policy issues.  “Scientific elitists” wanted policy decisions made by experts on the basis of scientific evidence, “moral elitists” wanted policy decisions based made by experts on the basis of moral issues, “scientific populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, and “moral populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of moral issues.

A plurality of respondents were "scientific elitists" for GMO labeling, use of growth hormones, and legality of selling raw milk.  The same was true for use of the term "natural" on labeling, but there was a larger share of "moral elitists" in regard to this issue than for others.  Finally, for soda taxes, "moral populists" described the largest share of respondents.

A natural question is whether these categories explain people's attitudes about the food policies.  Gaskell et al. showed that "scientific elitists" in regard to general technology were the majority citizen type in their surveys and this type had more favorable attitudes toward biotechnology and nanotechnology than other consumer types - particularly moral populists.

I find something similar here as well.  Take for example, the 4-category breakdown on GMO labeling.  I find that "scientific elitists" on GMO labeling express the lowest level of concern about eating GMOs (an average score of 3.06 on a 1 to 5 scale of concern), whereas "moral elitists" and "scientific populists" had scores of 3.41 and 3.43.  Moral populists averaged 3.34.  There also seems to be a political dimension to people's views about how these food policy issues should be decided.  For example, scientific elitists and scientific populists were slightly more conservative (about 3.05 on a 1 to 5 scale of liberal to conservative) than were those who focus more on moral/ethical issues (score of about 2.9 on the scale).  Those identifying with the Democratic party were more heavily represented in the "moral elitist" category than they were in other categories.  

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - July 2014

The July 2014 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out.

There was a  decline in consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for all food products, primarily because WTP last month was abnormally high.  In fact, WTP for all meat products is higher this month than was the case a year ago.

Consumers continue to expect to see higher meat prices in the coming weeks, but there is reduction in inflationary expectations in comparison to last month, particularly for beef.

There is a reduction in concern for all food issues this month relative to last, particularly for Salmonella, E. Coli, and "pink slime."  

We added three new "ad hoc" questions that I'll discuss in separate posts.

What will it take to reduce obesity rates?

We've witnessed a lot of positive change in the past 30 to 40 years.  More convenient transportation, more air conditioning, less strenuous jobs, less smoking, less expensive food, etc., etc.  All of those changes are cause for celebration.  They are, however, also all factors that likely contributed to rising rates of obesity we've witnessed over the past several decades.

Here's what I had to say about it in the Food Police

“We can’t disentangle all the bad stuff we don’t like about obesity with all the other good things we enjoy like driving, eating snacks, cooking more quickly, and having less strenuous jobs. Yes, we can have less obesity but at the cost of other things we enjoy.

When you hear we need a fundamental change to get our waistlines back down to where they were three decades ago, beware that it might take a world that looks like it did three decades ago. I for one am not willing to give up power steering, microwaves, and inexpensive take-out even if my pants now fit a little more snugly.”

Now comes this paper from Åsa Ljungvall at Lund University in Sweden providing some further empirical evidence for this phenomenon:

“The empirical analysis is based on a panel of 31 high-income countries and data for the period 1983 to 2008. It finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between the level of economic freedom and both the level of, and five-year change in, BMI. Decomposing the freedom index into sub-indices measuring economic freedom in five sub-areas (government, legal structure, sound money, trade, and regulations) shows that freedom in the regulations dimension is the most consistent contributor to this result.”

It's tough to know whether this is causation or just correlation, but I do think it represents the tough trade-offs we face in life.  We could all be a bit thinner if we lived in North Korea.  I doubt many of us would be willing to trade our freedom just to drop a few pounds.