2015

Money for Nothing

WHY DECOUPLED AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES ARE JUST

DANIEL PILCHMAN, CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY, MARCH 2015

Money for Nothing: Why Decoupled Agricultural Subsidies Are Just

0.1 Introduction

Every year, our government pays farmers billions of tax dollars to grow nothing in the form

of decoupled agricultural subsidies. Such a practice seems, even after consideration, like an

unjustifiable use of public funds.1 On their face, such subsidies appear to use the power of

government to redistribute funds from taxpayers to farm owners without producing any

social benefit of public good. In fact, the arguments against are so salient, I wondered

whether any principled argument could be given in their favor. This essay is a first attempt

to do just that. In this paper, I will give two arguments, first that decoupled agricultural

subsidies are advisable because they mitigate pressing social justice issues concerning

quality of life and public health; second that decoupled agricultural subsidies are obligatory

as a matter of justice, at least for American society, because of the social and institutional

origins of these issues.

Accordingly, my argument proceeds in two stages. In stage one, I will investigate the social

and economic impact decoupled subsidies could have with respect to these morally

problematic issues. I will argue, I think plausibly, that decoupled agricultural subsidies,

judiciously structured and allocated, can incentivize systemic changes in agricultural

practice that ameliorate the perceived problems of obesity and food deserts. Moreover,

because we already have the accumulated administrative and infrastructural bases for such

an incentive scheme, decoupled subsidies are saliently available – they are possible with

respect to existing technologies and political sensibilities – which gives them a pragmatic

edge over competing corrective measures.

In stage two, I will argue that decoupled agricultural subsidies are not only advisable, they

are obligatory for us, the citizens of the United States, as a matter of justice. The current

obesity crisis and the emergence and persistence of food deserts in the United States have

not arisen spontaneously but are, in fact, partially caused by human social and political

activity. We do it to ourselves, and we do it through our political and commercial institutions.

This being the case, we, as a people, owe it to those of us caused to suffer the externalities of

our (and their) institutions to mitigate those morally problematic conditions through

available means. Failure to do so, in light of available solutions, would leave those

institutions – the moral standing of which is foundational for our claims to the rights and

privileges of membership and citizenship – open to significant moral objection. Because

decoupled agricultural subsidies represent such a solution, unless and until some better

alternative is proposed, we have an obligation to use them to address the problems of food

deserts and obesity.

1 For an example of popular objections to decoupled subsidies, see Gaul and Cohen, “Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm.”

These arguments, I believe, constructively reframe arguments about agricultural policy.

Perhaps contrary to readers’ expectations, it may be apparent already that my argument

does not produce a categorical demand for decoupled agricultural subsidies. Instead, it relies

heavily on empirical states of affairs and arguments about practical efficacy. I take this to be

a virtue of the view, rather than a shortcoming, because it invites further deliberation about

a now better-specified question. More specifically, by identifying the institutional roots of

obesity and food deserts, we can settle (a) instrumental questions about how to address

these moral problems, (b) moral questions about whether morally salient problems like

obesity and food deserts give anybody positive duties, and (c) moral questions about what

these duties are and who bears them. These argument allow us to trade in the tired question,

“Should our government fund decoupled agricultural subsidies?” for its more articulate

cousin, “In light of our obligation, as a people, to address the problems of obesity and food

deserts, and in light of the fact that decoupled agricultural subsidies are an available means

to discharge that obligation, is there any alternative means of address that would be more

effective or more harmonious with our other value commitments?”

0.2 Assumptions

I begin from a series of assumptions. First, I assume that, whether individual or corporate,

what agricultural producers grow is significantly and causally impacted by institutionalized

systems of incentives. When we subsidize crop insurance for corn farmers, people become

corn farmers. This assumption flows intuitively from two more basic assumptions that (1) a

significant number of farmers are indifferent to the crop they grow per se – though, of course,

they may be averse to growing crops other than what they are accustomed to for reasons of

convenience, expense, and inertia – and (2) a significant number of farmers, like anyone else,

prefer more money to less money.

Second, I assume that the current obesity crisis and the emergence, prevalence, and

persistence of food deserts are morally problematic. While not all individuals are obese in

our country, many are. While most people have access to fresh and nutritious food, many do

not. Worse, these conditions appear to be intransigent and prevail among our least affluent

and most vulnerable. We might characterize these conditions as morally problematic in

many ways. They not only directly and independently undermine quality of life, they impinge

on the liberal ideal of being able to pursue one’s own conception of the good, at least within

reason.2 They evoke sympathy, sadness, and perhaps guilt. They reduce the sum total of

happiness in the world. A world without intransigent obesity and without food deserts

would be better than a world with them. They instantiate pernicious power relations. My

arguments will not rely on any one of these being the reason why the obesity crisis and food

deserts are bad, so my reader may pick her favorite. My assumption is merely that, whether

for these precise reasons or for some other, and in an as yet unspecified sense, we can agree

that food deserts and the obesity crisis are morally problematic.

2 For one example among many of the impact on obesity rates and population-wide welfare issues, see Nguyen and Lau, “The Obesity Epidemic and Its Impact on Hypertension.”

1.1 Obesity and Food Deserts: The Current State of Affairs

At the moment, we as a country are facing two distinct but importantly related moral

problems: widespread obesity and food deserts. In the first place, a large segment of our

population is overweight to the point that their health and quality of life are demonstrably

reduced.3 Not only does obesity contribute to problems with mobility and access, it

correlates with higher incidence of public health concerns like early onset and childhood

diabetes. Given the diversity of explanations for what has caused this trend in public health

– diet, lack of exercise, advertising, cultural traditions, passive entertainment like television

– it would be a mistake here to start pointing fingers and assigning blame. We need only

agree, at this early stage of the argument, that obesity represents a growing public health

concern that is morally salient because it directly affects the welfare of moral persons.

In the second, certain American communities inhabit what are called “Food Deserts”.4 By

way of a simple definition, a food desert is any residential area whose inhabitants lack

reliable access to fresh and nutritious foods. This definition can be and has been specified

further by different groups. The USDA, for instance, defines food deserts as any census tract

wherein 20% of the population is in poverty and 33% of the population lives more than one

mile from a supermarket in an urban area or ten miles in a rural area.5 In conversation, I find

that some think this a weak and over-inclusive definition. But it is worth remembering the

vast number of people who can live within a one mile radius in an urban area. Now

considering that, in a food desert, these many thousands of people and more would have to

be served by a single supermarket, one can see how this might result in limited access to

fresh foods. It is important to remember: being a food desert is not just about lack of access

to fresh foods full stop, it is about lack of access to sufficient amounts of fresh foods to

provide access for every member of a community. Again, we need not and it would be

inappropriate to address the causes of food deserts, although this is a very interesting

question for sociologists public health researchers. Instead, we need only begin from

agreement that lack of access to fresh and healthy foods is a morally salient problem because

it directly affects the welfare of moral persons.

1.2 Decoupled Agricultural Subsidies

And now for something (apparently) completely different. The United States government

subsidizes agriculture through various economic vehicles. Even after considerable research,

3 Flegal KM et al., “Prevalence and Trends in Obesity among Us Adults, 1999-2000”; Wang et al., “Will All Americans Become Overweight or Obese?”. 4 Wrigley et al., “Assessing the Impact of Improved Retail Access on Diet in a ‘Food Desert’”; Bitto et al., “Grocery Store Acess Patterns In Rural Food Deserts”; Neil Wrigley et al., “The Leeds ‘food Deserts’ Intervention Study”; Walker, Keane, and Burke, “Disparities and Access to Healthy Food in the United States”; Donald, “Food Retail and Access after the Crash” For a contrary perspective, see Pearson et al., “Do ‘food Deserts’ Influence Fruit and Vegetable Consumption?”. While Pearson provides an important critical perspective, I think that he underestimates the value of access per se, even when individual consumers do not avail themselves of increased opportunity. 5 USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, “Food Deserts.”

I still find the full picture somewhat mysterious, but I will here try to offer a sufficiently clear

and helpful presentation of the basics.

Farming is a notoriously fickle business. If farmers produce too little, they do not have

enough to sell to pay the bills. If there is a bumper crop, prices drop and farmers cannot sell

enough to pay the bills. Crops are uniquely susceptible to bad weather, pests, and shifts in

technology. In a given year, any farmer could find themselves on the wrong end of any of

these; over the course of a career, every famer can expect to find themselves on the wrong

end at some point. The result is the same: farmers earn too little to pay their bills and face

displacement and bankruptcy.

In most basic terms, agricultural subsidies are payments from the government, largely

funded through taxation, to help farmers make sufficient money to stay in business. In the

simplest cases, they help insulate farmers from these problems by supplementing income

earned through crop sales. This is in a government’s interest for many reasons, not least

because it helps to sustain a healthy agricultural sector, which translates into political

benefits at home and abroad. In 2014, the US Congress allocated approximately $134 billion

of federal assistance for farmers ($44 billion for commodity programs, and $90 billion for

crop insurance assistance).

Let me give an oversimplified example of the basic function of agriculture subsidization:

Suppose that Fran is growing corn. She takes out a loan to pay for seed, fertilizer, labor, and

machinery. She bases her investment on the reasonable assumption that she will grow one

thousand units of corn and will be able to sell it at $2 per unit, which has been the average

over the last five years, and which will allow her to pay back the initial loan while keeping a

tidy sum for herself. Weather that year is great, and she and all of her neighbors grow vastly

more corn than in recent years. While this gives Fran more corn to sell, it also floods the

market and so lowers the price of corn to $1.50 per unit. At this price, her earnings will fall

far short of what she needs to pay off the initial loans. Fortunately, the government has

subsidized corn such that it will make up the difference between what farmers can sell their

crops for this year ($1.50) and what they are usually able to sell it for ($2). Fran is able to

pay her loans and prepare for the next season. While this example glosses over many details,

I believe that it captures the major aspects relevant for normative theorization.

To get a more faithful picture of how agricultural subsidies actually work, we will need to

introduce two distinctions. The first distinguishes between subsidization through direct

payments and through crop insurance. The above is an example of direct payments: farmers

who suffer a loss, or are at risk of a loss, receive a check in the mail, so to speak, to address

that loss or risk. As of 2014, the US government has moved away from direct payments and

towards subsidizing agriculture through crop insurance.6 As consumers do with many other

kinds of risks like driving and healthcare, farmers buy crop insurance to insulate against crop

failures and market irregularities. Because farming is expensive, crop insurance premia can

6 USDA, “2014 Farm Bill Highlights.”

represent major expenditures for farmers. Largely because of legislative entanglements that

limited how much government could give in direct payments, subsidies for crop insurance

have become the primary, and now exclusive, vehicle for the subsidization of agriculture

because they are not subject to the same limitations. Essentially, the government helps pay

for crop insurance in hopes that money the money that farmers would have used to pay

insurance premia can be used to offset any losses due to production and market behavior.

The second distinction is between coupled and decoupled payments. Coupled payments are

subsidies linked to what a farmer grows. In the example above, the government was

subsidizing corn. Fran could avail herself of these payments because she was growing corn.

Had she been growing something else, like potatoes, she might not have been able to avail

herself of these payments because they payments are coupled to corn. Decoupled payments,

on the other hand, subsidize farming activity regardless of what crop the farmer is growing,

and, in some cases, regardless of whether a farmer is growing anything at all. Instead, as

practiced in the US, farmers are paid on the basis of “base acres”, land specially registered at

certain points in history. Decoupled subsidies are seen by many as “historical entitlements”

simply for having owned and worked a plot of land over time.7

The fact that decoupled subsidies have been widely criticized will not, I suspect, surprise

many readers. The idea of social safety nets like food stamps, public education, and coupled

subsidies already repulses a sizeable audience, so the idea that farm owners could collect

taxpayer money for doing virtually nothing will seem outrageous. This outage is only

exacerbated by the additional observation that, rather than small farm owners and families,

two of the major beneficiaries of decoupled subsidies are large agricultural corporations and

insurance companies. I will address direct objections more fully at the end of this essay, once

I have set out my positive view, but here mean only to recognize a strong and relevant

political impulse only to set it aside until later.

1.3 Decoupled Subsidies are Advisable to Address Obesity and Food Deserts

But I wonder whether nothing can be said on behalf of decoupled subsidies. Despite this

immediate impulse, with which it would be difficult not to sympathize, decoupled subsidies

have been used in this and other countries for decades. One can understand their popularity

among rural communities largely populated by the recipients of these benefits, but that does

not necessarily mean that decoupled subsidies are merely the unjustified offspring of

realpolitik.

Indeed, our earlier discussion of obesity and food deserts, two morally salient problems in

our country, suggests one reason why decoupled subsidies might be advisable. Still without

thinking about their causes, one might argue that decoupled subsidies could be an important

part of their resolution. Here is what I have in mind: While the most obvious impact of

decoupled agricultural subsidies is the augmentation of wealth for farming households,

there is another more subtle consequence. One major consideration for anyone investing

7 USDA Economic Research Service, "What Is Meant by Decoupling?”.

capital in an uncertain venture, like farmers choosing crops, is the risk associated with

receiving returns on their investment. Decoupled subsidies assuage anxiety about those

risks because they assure farmers that, whatever they choose to do with their land, they will

end the season or year with sufficient money to meet their household needs.8 Agricultural

systems that rely on coupled payments not only encourage farmers to grow certain crops,

but as a consequence, they discourage experimentation with growing anything else including

crops that might support important social goods. Decoupled subsidies do not discourage

such experimentation.

As a consequence, decoupled subsidies provide an opportunity to augment access to and

affordability of fresh produce in two ways. First, many households that lack access to fresh

produce actually live in rural farmland, but the nearby farms grow crops like corn for animal

feed rather than fruits and vegetables. This is often due to factors like farmers’

(understandable) aversion to economic risk-taking. Decoupled subsidies could give farmers

the assurance necessary for them to risk not planting reliable crops like feed corn in order

to develop the technical ability to produce the specialty crops like fruits and vegetables that

could then be sold locally. In simpler terms, decoupled subsidies would remove an existing

disincentive that keeps farmers from growing fresh produce to be consumed by local

households.

Second, a national program of decoupled subsidies, made sufficiently appealing to farm

operators, would augment production of fresh produce. According to standard economic

theory, these increases in production would result in lower crop prices. Distributors like

supermarkets could afford to buy and provide more of these goods to their consumers at

proportionately lower prices, thus augmenting both access to and affordability of fruits and

vegetables even for households far away from farms.

In this way, decoupled subsidies could address the morally salient problems with which we

began. Whatever their causes, there is evidence that the current rise in the prevalence of

obesity and the persistence of food deserts could be at least partially addressed by making

fresh and healthy foods more affordable and easily available to consumers. This is trivially

true for the problem of food deserts, since that problem is explicitly about access. As for the

more indirect case of obesity, if there is in fact a meaningful connection between personal

health and the consumption of fresh produce (and there is ample evidence that such a

connection does in fact exist), then increased affordability and access to fresh produce would

provide consumers the material opportunities necessary to address obesity in their own

lives.9

8 Westcott and Young, “Influences of Decoupled Farm Programs on Agricultural Production.” 9 Note that I do not claim that access to healthy produce will eliminate obesity. Considered on the individual level, mere access will not necessarily change dietary habits or personal welfare. However, we can agree with the more modest claims that access is a necessary precondition for dietary change and that dietary change, though not the only way, is one promising way to address this public health concern.

Decoupled agricultural subsidies use known economic vehicles to manage and address

urgent and morally salient problems facing our society today. If my argument is correct, then

this should suffice to conclude that decoupled subsidies are advisable.

2.1 From Advisable to Obligatory

I have offered what is essentially a consequentialist argument for the conclusion that

decoupled agricultural subsidies are advisable, but can any argument be made for the further

claim that we, as a country, have a political obligation to provide such subsidies? To my

knowledge, this has never been done in any philosophically rigorous way, but it seems that

an attempt can both shed light on the case at hand as well as on more fundamental questions

about the nature of political obligation itself. It seems to me that many different arguments

could be given along the lines of an author’s preferred political philosophy, and I hope others

will explore these. As a consequence, the argument provided below is only one among many

– though preferable for reasons that I will not address here.

2.2 Associative Obligations within a Social Practice: The Practice Approach

Other authors and I have argued elsewhere for a theory of political obligation that called the

“Practice Approach”.10 Unlike many competing normative theories, the practice approach

takes empirical facts seriously not only as the context for normative claims but also as their

grounds. This contradicts, or appears to contradict, the inherited wisdom that we cannot

derive an “ought” from an “is”, but many of us have come to believe that the connection

between the two is much more robust than has long been assumed.

The practice approach, as I conceive it and in simplest terms, proposes that political

obligations are justified when they correct well for the systemic moral problems of existing

political institutions that otherwise serve widely acceptable purposes. The intuitive idea is

that justice is not just about what kinds of social institutions we should have, but also how

those institutions should be organized and managed, and that once we find ourselves within

an existing and largely just social practice, arguments for its revision must speak to its

continued well functioning both practically and morally. This sheds light on simple cases that

would otherwise be puzzling. For instance, on my view, drivers have an obligation to comply

with individual traffic laws because that body of law generally manages the risk of collision

inherent in the practice of private operation of motor vehicles. States are bound by individual

treaty obligations not (just) because of consent, as is often assumed, but because the practice

of treating, in general, addresses the problem of state coordination within the practice of

state-based politics. If one wants to argue for the obligatory character of some additional law

or treaty, one must explain how this addition will solve a specific problem while also

assisting the broader purpose of the practice.

Operationalized, the practice approach might be summarized in five steps:

10 Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights; James, Fairness in Practice; Dworkin, “A New Philosophy for International Law”; Kumm, “Constitutionalism and the Cosmopolitan State”; [Redacted Author information]

First, identify and specify the proposed normative claim or obligation to be justified.

Second, identify the social practice or institution that this claim would regulate (and partially

constitute if justified) including interpretive claims about the most general purpose(s) of

that practice. Social practices are bodies of norms that both describe and regulate individual

behavior, and are organized around purposes. The norms that constitute practices are

justified, and the practice itself is legitimate, only if that purpose is reasonably

unobjectionable.

Third, identify systemic and morally salient problems, the pathologies, inherent in such a

practice. Pathologies are a special class of moral problems, due to the structure of a social

practice, present even favorable circumstances, and persistent despite perfect compliance. I

have written, at length, about pathologies elsewhere.11

Fourth, (a) argue how adoption of the proposed obligation into the practice would resolve

these problems better than available alternatives and (b) argue that adoption of the

proposed obligation would not change the practice such that its best interpretation included

a purpose that was no longer widely acceptable.

Fifth and finally, argue that competing corrective measures are either morally or practically

inferior.

If these five steps can be successfully completed, I contend, their union suffices to justify the

proposed political obligation.12

2.3 Ought We to Provide Decoupled Subsidies?

Do we, as a society, have an obligation to provide decoupled subsidies to farmers? The

practice approach offers one way to answer that question. Let us see whether the five steps

outlined above can be satisfied.

First, we can specify the proposed obligation: An obligation for us, the citizens of the United

States, to create and enable decoupled subsidy programs for farmers both through

administrative legislation and a willingness to support such programs (most likely through

paying taxes).

Second, we can specify a social institution that such an obligation would both regulate and

constitute. Food in our country is not produced and distributed haphazardly. In fact, these

two important activities are carried out through a highly sophisticated agricultural system.

Farmers makes decisions about planting and crop distribution based on market projections

and policy changes. The farmer’s relationship to the crops they grow is mediated by social

and legal standards of property, and their relationship to consumers is mediated by norms

11 [redacted author information] 12 The most complete presentation of this view was in Ch. 4 of [redacted author information]. The argument has much in common with similar arguments in the social contract tradition, especially those like the “fair play” argument that seek to establish contract-like relations between parties even absent consent.

regarding market exchange. The relationship between producer and consumer is also

mediated by a system of distribution – public roads, private shipping companies,

supermarkets. And this whole chain of production and distribution is regulated and overseen

by quasi-democratically elected political bodies, most especially the USDA and FDA.

Altogether, these standards, roles, and customary ways of doing business constitute what we

might call the US agricultural system.

As participants in this system, farmers, distributors, and consumers all presume to have

certain rights on the basis of their participation. Farmers presume ownership of their crops

and the right to benefit from the exchange of those crops on a market. Distributors assume

the right to buy and resell produce, to use public infrastructure (such as roads), and to move

produce wherever they hope to sell it. Far from natural, these rights are highly specific to the

American agricultural system and have been specified over time through legislation,

litigation, and custom within that system.

What is the purpose of the US agricultural system? This is a difficult interpretive question,

and one that I am not certain has been given enough attention. Certainly it has to do with the

production and distribution of food to the American people. The USDA is certainly in the

business of ensuring the quality and healthfulness of food, educating citizens about healthy

eating, so perhaps we would not be mistaken to include some mention of health or wellbeing.

There is also an element of self-perpetuation and maintenance of a robust agricultural

system for reasons of food sovereignty and agricultural independence on the world scene,

so perhaps that should be in too. It is not hard to see why identifying the purpose of a system

is a difficult interpretive task, and is as much as task for normative philosophers as it is for

sociologists and other social scientists. Let us settle for this modest proposal: The purpose

of the US agricultural system is to provide kinds and amounts of food sufficient for all

individual citizens to enjoy healthy lives. That this purpose is not reasonably objectionable

seems uncontroversial.

Third, we can attribute at least two significant pathologies to the agricultural system: current

trends in obesity and the persistence of food deserts. This is a controversial claim, especially

with respect to obesity, but there is significant evidence to support the claim that the

structure of the current agricultural system contributes significantly to both problems.13 The

norms that shape what food we produce, its cost, and its availability certainly impact what

consumers purchase and eat. It would be surprising to discover that trends in weight were

entirely divorced from what people eat. It would be incredible to discover that the norms

and policies that govern how much of what is grown and where it is sent have nothing to do

with access to fresh produce. Insofar as we are faced with morally salient problems that are

aggravated if not outright caused by facts about how much is produced and how it is

13 For just a small sampling of the popular and academic publication record on this topic, see “Stop Subsidizing Obesity”; “Agriculture Subsidies Promote Obesity, Charges New Study”; Anderson and Butcher, “Childhood Obesity”; Wang and Lim, “The Global Childhood Obesity Epidemic and the Association between Socio-Economic Status and Childhood Obesity.”

distributed, and insofar as these facts are determined by the US agricultural system, these

problems are pathologies of that system.

The problem with pathologies is not just that they represent moral problems in our world –

it is more complicated than that. As we saw in step two, social practices (like the agricultural

system) are constituted by norms (like patterns in what is grown, how prices are set, how

food is distributed). Interpreting what a body of norms is about identifies the purpose of a

social practice. But pathologies are norms too, and so constitute the social practices that they

plague. As a consequence, they also figure into any interpretive argument about the purpose

of the practice. As pathologies become more prominent or persist without being addressed,

especially while means of address are available, they become harder to exclude as dominant

features of the interpretation of the practice. In other words, pathologies threaten to change

the most faithful interpretation of the purpose of the practice to something that is reasonably

objectionable. This would undermine the institutionally specified rights that participants

like farmers, distributors, and consumers presume to have, including their claims to the

benefits of the practice.

Fourth, as I argued in the first section of this paper, a federal and tax-based program of

decoupled subsidies could address these problems by (a) removing economic disincentives

that discourage small farmers in rural areas from growing specialty crops like fruits and

vegetables for their local markets, (b) indirectly lowering prices on specialty cops in urban

areas by giving financial assurance to farmers willing to experiment with switching crops.

Properly overseen, distributed, and limited, these subsidies would not significantly change

the practice’s overall purpose of providing food to citizens, but would in fact contribute to it.

Finally, it is not obvious that there are other available and competing corrective measures

that could better fulfill this corrective function. One might propose that we ought to use

coupled subsidies – coupled to fruits and vegetables. This way, we can proactively encourage

farmers to grow the kinds of crops that we want people to eat and have access to. But it seems

to me that in order for farmers to identify the kinds of crops that they can successfully and

profitably grow, they will need a fair amount of latitude with respect to what they grow for

many years. Perhaps, once farmers are able to identify profitable and healthful crops that

they can grow in their specific climates we might move to a system of subsidies coupled to

those crops. In the meantime, the flexibility of decoupled subsidies seems to give them a

distinct practical advantage.

To summarize: As participants in this agricultural system, we owe it to one another to know

when our practice is harming our members, and to address those harms responsibly and

efficiently. In this case, our system is contributing to significant reductions in personal

welfare by failing to provide sufficient access to healthful foods. We can solve this problem,

without undermining the otherwise admirable purposes of our agricultural system, through

a federal program of tax-supported decoupled agricultural subsidies. In the absence of

superior alternatives, we each have an obligation to do our part in creating and enabling such

a program.

3.1 Four Objections

There are a number of objections that a reader might raise against the arguments presented

above. I will address a few of what seem to me to be the most important ones. Even if a reader

decides that my answers are inadequate, the discussion will be valuable nevertheless as an

example of how the practice approach to political obligation can help to advance the existing

political discourse about agricultural policy.

3.2 Two Objections: The Claim that Obesity and Food Deserts Have Institutional Roots is

Empirically False and There are More Efficient Alternatives

The above arguments in favor of decoupled agricultural subsidies depend on two empirical

claims: first a set of predictions about the impact that policy change will have on the

behaviors of farmers and distributors. Second, empirical judgments about the superior

efficacy of decoupled subsidies over alternative policies. These two empirical claims

correspond to two objections: First, one might object on empirical grounds that the

predictions are false.14 Decoupled subsidies would not remove existing obstacles that deter

farmers from switching crops, or even if they do, they will not ultimately result in the levels

of switching necessary to augment access to fresh foods necessary to address the problems

of obesity and food deserts. Second, one might object that alternative and practicable policies

would in fact be more efficacious.

It would be simple enough to wave these off as “mere” empirical questions, as is

commonplace in moral and political philosophy, but the methodology that I have adopted in

this paper prohibits that rhetorical dodge. While the practice approach itself may not stand

or fall with the empirical claims that my ultimate prescriptions depend on, those

prescriptions surely do. So, in a way, I have to bite the bullet. Whether decoupled subsidies

are obligatory depends, in part, on whether they will in fact mitigate the problems produced

by our agricultural system. That said, I have provided arguments that they will as well as

credible evidence that those arguments are substantiated in fact. But those arguments can

be defeated empirically.

Rather than a weakness of the view, however, I take this to be a strength. It would be

incredible, in my opinion, if it turned out that a question as sophisticated as those about the

form of agricultural subsidies within an existing political structure could be addressed

without reference to the empirical realities of that system. What the view I have presented

does, however, is shed some light on what the relationship between normative and empirical

claims is with respect to questions of political obligation, on which empirical questions we

need to answer to come to justified normative conclusions about the internal structure of

political systems, and on which questions we do not need to ask. It gives shape to a currently

amorphous political discourse.

14 Schaffer, Hunt, and Ray, “US Agriculture Commodity Policy and Its Relationship to Obesity”; Food and Water Watch and Public Health Institute, Do Farm Subsidies Cause Obesity?.

3.3 Objection: Decoupled Subsidies are Unavailable

A similar objection would be that it there is no way to adopt decoupled subsidies in the

current political context: they are, in a word, unavailable. As an analogy to clarify: we could

solve the problem of world poverty if the UN would impose a tax on the wealthiest countries

and then redistribute those revenues to the poor. Setting aside moral objections about

property rights, such redistributive policy is not realistic. We lack the political technology to

make it happen; we lack the enforcement mechanisms necessary to stop tax evasion; and we

lack the global political will to do something like this even if we could. It is unavailable. One

might argue that the same is true of decoupled subsidies.

But this is not the case. For decades, decoupled subsidies have been a part of our agricultural

system. We have the economic and political techne to manage them. We have a sufficiently

wealthy population to fund them through taxation without being driven to poverty

themselves. What is changing in recent years, and what threatens to make decoupled

subsidies unavailable, is the political will to keep them. Speculating, this may have to do with

the urbanization of the American population, to whom the idea that farmers might be paid

by the government for growing nothing seems outrageous. And they have a point. So

decoupled subsidies seem ripe for political discussion. But it appears that if we do not have

that discussion soon, while we still have a rural population large enough to be politically

significant on the national level, political will may shift away so completely that we miss an

opportunity to address problems of food access meaningfully.

3.4 Objection: Violating Property Rights

Any redistributive policy must be prepared to answer this challenge: tax-based subsidies

compel people to give up some amount of their hard-earned wealth even though they neither

consent nor benefit from its redistribution. This amounts to a form of theft and violates

persons’ basic rights to property and autonomy. This objection is not unique to the

arguments given here nor even to the practice approach generally, so I will be in good

company with the following answers. First, it is a mistake to think that even the citizens most

distant from the problems of obesity and food deserts do not benefit by living in a well-fed

society. Second, even if certain citizens did not benefit from decoupled subsidies themselves,

certainly they have benefitted from the presence and persistence of the agricultural system.

Taking care of the unfortunate externalities of that system, in this case by paying taxes, is the

fair price we all have to pay for getting to enjoy the food we have.

4.1 Conclusion

Decoupled agricultural subsidies may initially seem objectionable because they appear to

pay farmers for nothing. In fact, decoupled subsidies could help to mitigate the problems of

obesity and food deserts by improving access to and affordability of fresh foods. This fact

along makes them advisable. The practice approach allows us to take the argument a step

further. By highlighting how obesity and food deserts are at least partially caused by the

existing structure of the US agricultural system, it grounds the claim that we, as citizens of

the United States and participants in the US agricultural system, have an obligation to each

other to effectively address those problems. Because decoupled subsidies represent a

promising way to mitigate precisely those problems, there appears to be a strong case for

the claim that we have an obligation to create and support such agricultural policies so long

as no better alternative is available.

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