Impact of Bird Flu on Turkey Producers

There's an interesting new paper in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy by Cakir, Boland, and Wang that studies the impacts of the   2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI or avian flu) outbreak in the US.  The authors draw attention to the free-trade deals signed by our trading partners and highlight a beneficial aspect of those trade deals that allow other countries to place bans on imports only only those specific regions or states that have infected animals.  As the authors show, the economic losses from the bird flu outbreak would have been much worse had other countries simply banned all imports of US turkey.  

Here are the author's main findings:

“Our main findings show that the U.S. turkey producers lost approximately $225 million due to the 2015 HPAI outbreak. Of the $225 million, $101 million is borne by the producers in Minnesota and $124 million is borne by the producers in other states outside Minnesota. Furthermore, the results show that $207 million of the total loss to turkey producers is due to the loss in exports. In particular, the decrease in exports affects the producers in states outside Minnesota, costing them about $181 million. The additional loss to Minnesota producers due to the loss in exports is about $26 million. The counterfactual decrease in exports had the importing countries not used rolling bans during the 2015 outbreak is unknown. However, the model estimates indicate that for every percentage point of additional exports during the outbreak the U.S. turkey producers avoided a loss of about $6 million.”

This is from the conclusions:

“Our ex-post analysis of the 2015 HPAI outbreak provides important insight into the value of effective communication with domestic stakeholders and trading partners. Many national media predicted that the economic impact of the avian flu on the U.S. turkey industry was going to be dramatic in early 2015. There is no doubt that the economic impact was great. However, the total estimated producer loss would have been much greater if a domestic food scare had happened or if many of the importing countries did not implement regional bans. The ability of the U.S. turkey industry to work with U.S. and international stakeholders who included scientists, veterinarians, and others through protocols established in SPS policies in free trade agreements facilitated trade in U.S. turkey products to continue. This provided great benefits to the turkey producers during a difficult period. In fact, the model estimates indicate that for every percentage point of additional exports during the outbreak the U.S. turkey producers avoided a loss of about $6 million.”

Investments in Land Grant Universities?

This was from POLITICO's Morning Agriculture report yesterday: 

“CAN TRUMP SOLVE THE LAND-GRANT AG RESEARCH PROBLEM? Deferred maintenance on facilities at land-grant universities across the country is threatening to undercut U.S. agricultural research efforts and, with that, the long-term competitiveness of the American farmer. President Donald Trump’s promised infrastructure package could be a solution to the staggering backlog, but competition for federal dollars if Trump comes through will be fierce. Anticipating that, the Association for Public Land-grant Universities is working with farm groups to prepare a pitch to get Congress and the administration to use the expected infusion of cash to help fix or replace aging labs, greenhouses and other facilities, where researchers labor in an effort to develop solutions to feed the world’s growing population, Pro Agriculture’s Jenny Hopkinson reports this morning. The ask: somewhere in the ballpark of $10 billion over the next 10 years, a sum the groups believe can be leveraged into several times that in private investments.”

Fights over Pigweed

None of this will be new to the farmers out there (indeed, there is already an ongoing lawsuit), but this episode of NPR's Planet Money podcast covers a problem that can arise when one farmer's pesticide winds up killing another farmer's crops.  Here's a summary of the story:

“Farmers are in constant conflict with the weed. Some have turned to a powerful pesticide called Dicamba. Dicamba kills the pigweed, but it also kills the neighbors’ plants, including farmer Mike Wallace’s crops. The conflict was no longer farmer versus weed, but also farmer versus farmer. When his neighbors illegally sprayed the pesticide, Wallace reported it. After harvest, Wallace was shot and killed.”

The story is a powerful lesson about externalities that can arise with herbicide resistant genetically engineered crops (this one is largely negative, but note that GE Bt crops can create positive externalities). Who's to blame in this case?  Monsanto for releasing GE Dicamba-resistant seed before a new version of Dicamba was released? Regulators for their slowness in approving the new Dicamba? Farmers who improperly used and applied the old version of Dicamba?  You'll have to listen and form your own judgement.    

Changes in consumer perceptions of GMOs over time

A new article by Kristin Runge et al. in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly pulls together polling results over the past few decades in an attempt to ascertain changes in public opinion about biotechnology and GMOs.  Here's the abstract.

“Over the past 50 years, the food industry has transformed. The first food-related crops containing gene modifications were commercialized in the late 1990s, and researchers began documenting trends toward consumption of larger portions of food, increased reliance on fast food, and the health impacts of living in “food deserts.” Polls examined here document a general, though not monotonic, decline in confidence that the federal government can ensure the safety of the food supply, a similar decline in confidence that food in restaurants or grocery stores is safe to eat, a decline in the belief that packaged-food companies are doing a good job, and an increased sensitivity to the negative aspects of GMO foods. At the same time, we find that fewer people are attending to biotechnology-related news or the information on food packaging, but increasingly attending to food warnings and nutritional recommendations.”

It is an interesting article focusing on more than just biotechnology, but misses some of the other attempts to aggregate polling results on these issues over the years from, for examples, Pew and IFIC.  Also, one shouldn't discount the many meta analyses that have been done on this topic relying on the academic literature (e.g., here, here, or here), which doesn't show much trend toward increasing concern about biotechnology or GMOs.  The results from my Food Demand Survey (FooDS) also shows very little evidence of changes in awareness or concern about GMOs over the past four years.  

FDA's New Effort to Educate about GMOs

AgriPulse recently ran an article about a new Congressionally mandated effort to educate consumers about biotechnology.  According to the article:

“The fiscal 2017 spending bill enacted at the end of April includes $3 million earmarked for the FDA to coordinate with the Agriculture Department on a consumer outreach and education effort. The stated goal under the legislation is to educate consumers “on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts of such biotechnology, foodstuffs, and feed.””

The article includes several quotes from yours truly.  I was asked whether the spending will make any real difference with consumer attitudes based and whether the effort could harm FDA’s credibility as a regulator.  Here is the (slightly edited) responses I gave to the article's author.  

On the second question: can information affect public perceptions?  The answer is yes - at least a bit.  Most of our research shows consumers remain highly uniform (and often misinformed) about the technology.  As a result, subtle changes in wording, descriptions of benefits of the technology, etc. can be persuasive.  I think this can be seen most directly in the various state ballot initiatives on mandatory GE labeling.  Early polling in all the states showed that voters approved of the laws by a wide margin.  But as the vote neared and biotech companies and others started running ads, support eroded to such a point that the mandatory GE labeling laws failed in every state where they were put on the ballot.  This is fairly strong evidence that information mattered in the "real world."  That said, the USDA and FDA have communicated on these issues in the past, and it is unclear what effects they had.  

All this suggests that the form of the communication matters.  Information that is scientifically accurate but focused on the perspective of the farmers/consumers who benefit is likely to be most persuasive.

Could credibility be harmed?  Well, I don't believe the government should promote a particular company or industry per se (though of course it already does that in a variety of direct and indirect ways such as encouraging conversion to organic, facilitating labeling programs and marketing orders, etc), but providing the public with accurate, scientific information on matters of public concern seems a legitimate role for government.  Focusing on the wide range of applications in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors is one way of perhaps avoiding perceptions of impropriety.  Also being honest about possible downsides and trade-offs is important. Also, not overselling - biotech is a tool but it's not a universal savior.