Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term. Daren Bakst is the author of Chapter 10: Department of Agriculture [USDA]. Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. He is also an advocate for Free Market Environmentalism. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee. 

This post will consist of selected excerpts (numbered) from Chapter 10, followed by my comments (italicized).

1. Congress must limit the USDA’s role. A proper mission would clarify that the department’s primary focus is on agriculture and that the USDA serves all Americans. The USDA’s “client” is the American people in general, not a subset of interests, such as farmers, meatpackers, environmental groups, etc. 

What does that mean in practice? Sounds like a zero-sum mentality. Interest groups sometimes have good policy ideas, which if implemented would not only address their concerns and preferences but serve the common good as well.

2. From the outset, the next Administration should denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability when it comes to agriculture. 

Why is climate change an “ancillary issue”?  Isn’t climate change a threat to long-term food productivity and affordability? Wouldn’t we want the USDA to anticipate and prepare for possible threats that might jeopardize its core mission?

3. From the outset, the next Administration should remove the U.S. from any association with U.N. and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production. 

Why disassociate from all of the UN’s sustainable schemes related to food production? Sure, some of the UN’s sustainability schemes are lame-brained (e.g., anti-GMO campaign, promoting labor-intensive farming), but others are pretty good ideas (e.g., restore degraded forests)  Why can’t we just reject the loony parts of the UN’s sustainability program and support the ones that show promise. Or is there something inherently problematic about the idea of “sustainability”?  And what would that be? It’s association with environmentalists?

4. Subsidies should not influence planting decisions, discourage proper risk management and innovation, incentivize planting on environmentally sensitive land, or create barriers to entry for new farmers.

What are subsidies for, then?  What’s wrong with using subsidizes to nudge farmers towards more environmentally-friendly practices, such as targeted insecticides, cover crops and filter strips? Of course, subsidies should be phased out eventually, but by nudging cautious farmers to try something new, subsidies enlarge the database for evaluating how well these practices work and what tweaks might be necessary to make them more effective.

5. The overall goal should be to eliminate subsidy dependence. 

I agree as a general principle. You eliminate subsidy dependence with political courage and well-designed subsidies. Ideally, subsidy programs should have regular performance/outcome reviews, phase-outs plans , and expiration dates. That said, even well-designed subsidies can become entrenched, especially when politicians need the support of subsidy beneficiaries to get elected. That’s where political courage comes in: the willingness to say “no more”. Yeah, easier said than done - try being against corn subsidies and winning the Iowa primary. For more on that topic, see What Would Stop US Farmers from Converting Natural Landcover into Cropland?,  Behind the Headlines: Is Ethanol Cheaper than Gasoline?, and How Increased Biofuel Production Harms the Environment and Contributes to Climate Change.

6. As a general matter, the next Administration should ensure that [conservation] programs address genuine and specific environmental concerns with a focus on currently existing environmental problems, not those that are speculative in nature.  

There’s a huge gap between “currently existing” and “speculative”.  Predictions vary in probability and timescale. Just because some envisioned futures are highly speculative doesn’t mean agricultural policy should simply ignore trends or predicted changes in current conditions.  Farmers plan for the future, why shouldn’t the USDA?

7. These conservation programs should have clearly identifiable goals, with the success or failure of these programs being directly measurable. Any assistance to farmers to take specific actions should not be provided unless the assistance will directly and clearly help to address a specific environmental problem. 

What does that mean in practice?  What would be some examples of “nonspecific” environmental problems?  Would “loss of wild habitat” as a general problem in the country (and the world) count as insufficiently specific? Would conservation programs that seek to expand wildlife habitat as a broad objective be unacceptable? Given that the author also recommends eliminating the Conservative Reserve program, I’d say the answer to these last two questions would be an unequivocal ‘yes’.

Also, what counts as “indirect” measurements and why shouldn’t they be used? Indirect measurements are used for things that are difficult to measure directly. For example, wildlife agencies may use indirect measurements, such as scat, to determine the presence of creatures that avoid human contact. Is something wrong with that?

8. Further, any assistance to encourage farmers to engage in certain practices should only be provided if farmers would not have adopted the practices in the first place. 

How does one determine if farmers would not have adopted the practice in the first place? The decision to adopt a new practice involves many considerations: buzz within the farming community, time and labor requirements, ease of adoption, learning curve, cost/benefits (including environmental), return-on-investment, etc. The USDA has long provided farmers with education, training, guidance, and financial incentives to encourage adoption of best practices.  What exactly is wrong with that?  I suspect the author’s problem isn’t with assistance per se but the type of practice being encouraged. As in practices designed to reduce emissions and environmental impact.

9. The next Administration should champion the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program. Farmers should not be paid in such a sweeping way not to farm their land. If there is a desire to ensure that extremely sensitive land is not farmed, this should be addressed through targeted efforts that are clearly connected to addressing a specific and concrete environmental harm. The USDA should work with Congress to eliminate this overbroad program. 

Note that the Conservation Reserve program, established during the Reagan administration, already targets highly erodible land and areas with “significant adverse water quality, wildlife habitat, or other natural resource impacts related to activities of agricultural production”.  Those are specific and concrete environmental harms – not overly broad at all.

10. Despite the importance of agricultural biotechnology, in 2016, Congress passed a federal mandate to label genetically engineered food. This legislation was arguably just a means to try to provide a negative connotation to GE food. The next Administration should… repeal the federal labeling mandate. 

I actually agree. For reasons, see Genetically Modified Crops: Benefits, Concerns and Risks. 

11. The Forest Service should…[reform wildfire management by] focusing on addressing the precipitous annual amassing of biomass in the national forests that drive the behavior of wildfires. By thinning trees, removing live fuels and deadwood, and taking other preventive steps, the Forest Service can help to minimize the consequences of wildfires. Increasing timber sales could also play an important role in the effort to change the behavior of wildfire because there would be less biomass.  

I also agree here. For reasons, see: The Decades-Long Battle against Forest Thinning: A Case of Pure Motives and Bad Outcomes

--

* The USDA currently has a wide mandate, including programs addressing poverty and nutrition, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, colloquially known as “food stamps”). The excerpts and comments in this post pertain to USDA environmental programs and policies only.

Reference:  

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves. https://www.project2025.org/policy/ Chapter 10: Department of Agriculture, by Daren Bakst, pp 289-318.