Renewable Revolution

James Maroney 

July 10, 2015 at 10:43 am


The farm crisis has its roots in the Industrial Revolution, in the opening of the Erie Canal, in Free Market Capitalism, in the federal water reclamation projects of the 1920s, in federal agricultural policies initiated in the 1930s, in the adoption of “advanced” technologies and in state land use policies. In a word, all these developments have contributed to the malaise affecting Vermont’s agricultural economy. To address these symptoms, the state has for two generations allocated roughly $60/80M/year to “save our farms” and “protect the lake,” chiefly by relieving farmers of property and sales taxes. Lower costs undoubtedly eased the pain but Vermont farmers cannot survive without an economic purpose, i.e., they cannot survive without making a profit.

Vermont’s dairy farmers did not devise the policies that brought them to the their present circumstances. Those who wished to survive learned long ago to convert taxpayer support to new capacity. They went to the bank to take on more debt, with which to consolidate their neighbors, with which to build larger barns, in which to house more cows and to acquire more land on which to grow more corn with petroleum-based fertilizers and herbicides.

Rush Limbaugh likes to remind his audience that when the government subsidizes something, we get more of it, but in this case, what we got more of was not farms, which arguably we wanted, but milk, which we did not. In spite of all the happy talk emanating from VAAF&M boasting that Vermont agriculture leads the nation in Farm to School, Farm to Plate and Farmers Markets, Vermont consumers spend 95% of their grocery money for food imported from out of state. Vermont’s largest agricultural sector is conventional dairy, which produces barely 1% of the national supply. Our farms produce no measurable portion of in state demand for meat, fish, grain, fruit or vegetables. If, in fact, Vermont farmers were to all go suddenly out of business tomorrow, no one would notice. We do not, in other words, farm to grow our food; we farm to sustain the illusion that we do, or, to put it bluntly, for appearances only. This means that Vermont allocates $60/80M/year, and with the new “clean water law” another $7.5M/year, for over production, low farm prices, farm attrition and lake pollution.

Vermont has adopted a policy to require that we get 90% of our energy from renewable sources by 2050, which is laudable. But conventional agriculture is the second largest source of global greenhouse gases, behind only electrical and heat generation and ahead of the entire transportation sector. Vermont’s energy policies turn a blind eye toward the profligacy of conventional dairy, planning instead to treat manure as a “renewable” feedstock for methane digesters. In other words, our new energy policy will ask the taxpayers to support the state’s largest contributor to water pollution in its push for sustainable energy. And since the most conspicuous results of Vermont’s agricultural policies are over production, low farm prices, farm attrition and lake pollution, it would appear to this writer that we are working at cross purposes.

Let us suppose that the state has adopted a policy that it is henceforth impermissible for any person or any industry to pollute the lake. All persons and all industries must henceforth adjust their production models to conform to this policy. The state has submitted a plan to the EPA by which it proposes to meet its TMDL, or to “clean up the lake” but the plan imposes virtually no material constraints upon conventional dairy. This means that the state esteems conventional dairy and its attendant environmental and social consequences above the attainment of its federally mandated water quality standards. Call your representative or senator if you think this makes no sense.