food policy quiz 1

Policy

A course of action adopted and pursued by a particular organization, government, etc.

• Laws, regulations, decisions, and actions

Policy example

GMO Labeling Policy in the U.S.

• State-wide labels

• Final rules issued in 2018, “bioengineered food” “contains a bioengineered good ingreident”

• USDA label, QR code with phone number, text message disclosure, etc.

The Policy Cycle

Agenda Setting → Policy Formulation → Decision Making → Implementation → Policy Evaluation → back to agenda setting

How a bill becomes a law

1. Originates somewhere (Either House of Representatives or the Senate have to introduce the bill, but citizens can propose the idea)

2. Goes to a committee (in either the house or senate)

3. Goes back to congress to debate → majority to pass to the other chamber (house/senate)

4. President can sign or veto (veto can be overridden by 2/3 majority in house and senate)

The Executive Branch

• Write and oversee rules and regulations of laws passed by Congress

• Agencies implement them

Rule making process

Agency develops draft proposed rule

→ OIRA (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) reviews draft proposed rule

→ Agency publishes proposed rule → Agency receives comments and makes changes to proposed rule

→ OIRA reviews draft final rule

→ Agency publishes final rule

→ Judicial Review & Congressional Review

Chevron Deference

A legal doctrine that required federal courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute (agencies have expertise in certain fields), U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned Chevron deference in June 2024 in the case (executive branch losing power, gives judges more power)

Portion Cap Rule (Soda Ban)

• Proposed by Mayor of NYC in 2012, Mike Bloomberg

• Ban the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters, and street carts (includes energy drinks and pre-sweetened teas, etc.)

• Meant to address health and obesity

• Would ban 16 oz. sizes and larger

Exemptions to the soda ban

• Would not affect diet soda, fruit juices, and alcoholic drinks

• Only for service industries, not convenience stores

Other policy approaches to the soda ban

• Soda tax

• Education on the health problems with soda and other sugary drinks (more labels, programs)

How did the soda ban end?

• Struck down in Court of Appeals

• NYC’s Board of Health exceeded “health powers”

• American Beverage Association challenged board of Health for exceeding their power, and the judge agreed

Food marketing chain

Inputs → Agriculture → Manufacturing → Retailing/Restaurants → Consumers

Food spending per consumer

Decrease in food spent, 17% of all personal income in 1960 to 9.7% of disposable income in 2025

• Increase in spending on food away from home, people are eating out more compared to buying food from grocery stores

Share of disposable personal income spent on food in the U.S. graph trends

Decrease in total food

Decrease in food at home

Increase in food away from home

Policy purposes

Government policies are meant to correct market failures

Government can step in and help with:

• Insufficient public goods (things everyone would use, ex. roads, national defense)

• Negative externalities (ex. if a factory is making a bunch of goods but produces more pollution)

• Imperfect information (if no clear information, the government can step in ex. nutrition labels)

• Monopoly or oligopoly (market concentration: one company sells a particular good OR if there are only a few companies selling that good)

Advocacy coalitions

Industry associations and public interest organizations attempt to influence policy

Brooke Rollins

• Secretary of Agriculture (head of the USDA)

• American First Policy Institute

• Previously a policy director to Texas governor Rick Perry

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Secretary of Health and Human Services (head of the EPA)

• Previously an environmental attorney, skeptic of vaccines, concerned about dyes and unhealthy foods

Farm Bill

• A massive, comprehensive package of legislation that sets national agriculture, nutrition, conservation, and forestry policy in the United States

• Farm bill fails to advance to the senate floor (august 2026)

Who writes the Farm Bill?

The House and Senate agriculture committees

2018 Farm Bill

Money for commodities, conservation, trade, nutrition, rural development, forestry, energy, crop insurance

Farm resource regions map

• Based on climate and production patterns

• Percentage of U.S. gross cash farm income from nine USDA farm resource regions (come back to the map for this)

• Gross cash: What farmers get from sales and government subsidies through govt. programs (as opposed to net cash, the farmers profit)

• Heartland has the highest percentage, but it includes the money they are given to help, not just what they make (grow lots of corn, need lots of help)

• Fruitful Rim also has a high percentage because government helps with fruit production, not much that farmers directly profit from and it is more expensive

Farming trends bar graph

• Majority of farms in the U.S. are considered small and make less than $350K

• Majority of food (share production) comes from large-scale farms (GCFI $1M or more)

• U.S. farms and their value of production by farm type (how much money they make, not necessarily their size/acres)

Grains and oilseeds

• Corn, animal feed, biofuels, sweeteners, rice, wheat, soybean, vegetable oil

• More intensive use of fertilizer and energy inputs

• Mechanized labor

• Majority of subsidies

• Majority export

U.S. agricultural trade graph 2005-2025

• Imports increased and now higher than exports

• Shift in 2020 where exports were higher, now imports are

• We import more than we export

• Export animal meats, oilseeds, grains

• Imports are heavily horticultural products, sugar and tropical products

Fruits, vegetables, and nuts

• Costs for these are higher, a lot of labor necessary

• Almonds, potatoes, oranges, blueberries

Cattle

• China is #1 in meat production (mainly pork)

• Farms and ranches

• Feedlots → lots of land, fair amount of beef

Dairy

• California is largest dairy state

• Policy → Keeping dairy farmers in business

• Milk in particular is a difficult commodity to manage and keep prices stable, always given in school lunches → Very perishable, difficult to store, production, is not predictable, seasonal supply and demand is off (produced in summer but higher demand in winter)

• Dairy cooperatives (negotiate prices, help process and/or market their products to wholesalers, retailers)

• Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 → Allowed industries to have cooperatives and won’t be accused as a monopoly

Hogs, poultry, eggs

• Vertical integration: Coordination among different marketing levels (retailers, manufacturers, growers) using contracts or ownership structures

• farmers → manufacturers → retailers → consumers

• Good part: Tracking back where products are from

• Bad: Monopoly, total control, less jobs and low prices undermine farmers

Interest Groups in U.S. Farm Policy

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Notional Chicken Council, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, The American Peanut Council, The Almond Board of California, U.S. Apple Association

Subsidies

Government payments or other types of support intended to help farmers stay in business

• Trump administration gives tons of money to farmers because of the economy, Americans, and his voting base

Purchase and removal policy

• Government offers to purchase quantity farmers want to sell at specified support price

• Because this reduces the volume of the product, the market price will usually increase

• USAID: International food aid - got dissolved b/c Trump believes Americans come first → purchases for aid, some farms experiencing/noticing this decrease

Nonrecourse loan

The government offers farmers a loan at specified loan rate

Policy 1: Price Supports

• Temporary, government intervention, rent prices increase but may not accurately represent market

• Nonrecourse loan

• When farmers sell crop they can either repay loan or forfeit their crop as loan payment → Encourage over production, but distorts the market

Policy 2: Supply Controls

• Meant to reduce the quantity planted or sold → Increase the market price

• Farmers are given a production quota → Don’t want to stop producing if no need to

• Conservation programs

Policy 3: Deficiency Payments

• Government pays farmers the difference between a target price and buyer price (usually a manufacturer), sets a target price

• Farmers can market it at a lower price

• Problems: Encourages overproduction, overproduction leads to decreased market prices, this then can lead increase in deficiency payments by the government, expensive policy for the government

Policy 4: Direct Payments

• Literally a check in the mail

• Not tied to current production levels - based on historical production

• Terminated in the 2014 Farm Bill

• Does not encourage overproduction

Policy 5: Countercyclical Payments

• Government payments meant to help encounter the market, only distributed when market prices are low

• Ex. price loss coverage

Policy 6: Crop Insurance

• Similar to health insurance - Farmers pay a premium in case their crop is lost → Weather, disease, insect infestation, or declines in crop prices

• Private companies administer payments

• Government subsidizes premiums

• Moral hazard: Someone shielded from the consequences of poor decision-making → risky behavior

Policy 7: Demand Expansion

• How can we increase demand to increase the market price?

• Renewable Fuels Standard: Required certain amount of renewable fuel (ethanol) in gasoline

• More research and advertising directed toward certain productions

Farm Subsidy Database

• A few recipients receive lots of money

• Top 10% were paid 60% of 13.4 billion (very few farmers)

• Some people think it should be the other way around: small farms should get more money

What we eat is tied to environment:

Resource use, environmental degradation, pollution, regenerative, sustainable, organic

CAFO

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, which is a formal, legal term for an industrial agricultural facility—commonly known as a factory farm—that raises large numbers of animals in a confined space

Ogallala Aquifer

depleting significantly - not enough time given to recharge

California water scarcity

Conflict over water use for agriculture vs. urban populations

CA’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act 2014

A 2014 legislative package in California designed to halt overpumping and achieve long-term groundwater sustainability

Colorado River Management Plan

• Excess nutrients in run-off

• Only 30-50% of the nitrogen fertilizer is used by plants

• Eutrophication

• Clean Water Act → Chesapeake Bay TMDLs

Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)

A regulatory "pollution budget" that sets the maximum amount of a specific pollutant a water body can receive and still meet clean water standards.

Soil Quality

• Depletion of nutrients, Erosion

• SOLUTIONS: Crop rotation, cover crops, contour-farming, buffers, conservation tillage

Crop rotation

The practice of planting different types of crops sequentially on the same plot of land across a sequence of growing seasons

Cover crops

plants grown to improve and protect the soil rather than to be harvested for sale or food (naturally adds nitrogen to soil, helps nutrients)

Contour-farming

Less run-off and erosion because they are planted horizontally to the slope instead of vertically

Buffers

strips of permanent vegetation—such as grass, shrubs, or trees—placed in and around agricultural fields to protect natural resources and improve farm sustainability

Conservation tillage

Farmers leave part of the soil covered by plant residue (not everything is tilled, limits bare soil exposed to prevent erosion)

Conservation programs

• Farmers receive a subsidy for a voluntary action that protects the environment

• Land retirement programs → Retiring a piece of land for a few years

• Working lands programs → Farming land with certain practices

Conservation Reserve Program

Farmers receive payment for each acre of land they retire

• Help farmers by taking land out of production and reduces their supply, so their prices increase

Environmental Quality Incentives Program

• Improve water quality

• Reduce soil erosion

• Improve or create wildlife habitat

• Improve waste storage in manure lagoons by CAFOs

• All voluntary, farmers choose to take advantage of these programs, short term but have long term economic advantage

Reducing food loss and waste

• 1/3 of food produced in the U.S. is never eaten

• 24% of municipal solid waste

• Methane

• Ways to address food waste: donating food, food pantries, composting, feed animals, etc.

New York State - Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling

• Passed in 2019, effective in 2022

• requires large commercial food generators to donate edible surplus and recycle remaining food waste

Businesses and Institutions who generate 2 tons of wasted food per week must:

1. Donate excess edible food

2. Recycle all remaining food scraps if they are within 25 miles of an organics recycler (composting facility, anaerobic digester, etc.)

Vermont - Universal Recycling Law 2012

Bans food scraps from residential trash, advocate for composting and separating garbage from recycling, not about going through trash, just trying to advocate for more recycling.

Endangered Species Act

• Conserve threatened plants and animals and their habitats

• Can’t purposefully harm endangered species

• Can hurt farmers when endangered species may be killing their crops and they can’t kill the species or use pesticides on them

San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta

• Delta smelt

• President Trump to California Farmers in 2016: confused about the water being sent to sea to protect fish rather than being given to farmers, so they were not receiving a lot of water for their crops

Pet and Livestock Protection Act

• Gray wolves being protected → livestock at risk of being eaten affects ranchers raising their livestock

• Still protected under ESA

Sustainable Dietary Guidelines

• Dietary Guidelines for Americans

• Environmental consequences of food choices: What is good for us and the environment?

Contemporary Food Movements

Voting with your fork: means using daily food choices to support personal ethical, environmental, and political values

Organic Food Movement

• Reduced pesticide residues in water and food

• Reduced nutrient runoff

• Improved soil organic matter

• 1990 Organic Foods Production Act - USDA’s National Organic Program regulations → Prohibits synthetic pesticides, petroleum based fertilizers, sewage sludge and genetic engineering

• Animals are given organic feed, cannot be given antibiotics for growth factor, must have access to the outdoors