USDA Policies Hold Back America’s Small Farms While Supporting Bigger Competitors
By Baylen J. Linnekin
USDA Grade Inflation
By Patricia Patnode
As I pointed out in a previous Farming Abundance blog on on food inspection,
“Certifying food production processes has been a historic challenge for local and national governments. New York tried to remedy the issue of fraudulent kosher food by establishing a state agency to perform inspections, but that state function was ruled unconstitutional in 2001. Luckily there was already robust private inspection market operating in parallel, at a national level to pickup where the state left off.”
President Lincoln created USDA during a time when the United States was expanding westward, and food security was a pressing national issue. Like every executive agency, its power and oversight responsibilities have grown with the nation. Today, USDA programs and regulatory authority touch every part of our food production process, and they are not necessarily improving the market or ensuring national food security. Baylen Linnekin’s article points out three big policies restricting farmer freedom.
Highlights:
“USDA Standards of Identify… protect the market share of big businesses. For that reason alone, they should be abolished.”
“Many small food producers argue the agency has used its oversight of organic-food labeling to water down the meaning of the term “organic” to the benefit of large agricultural producers".”
Key Recommendations:
Grading protects large producers and encourages uniformity. USDA grading should be narrowed to a smaller basket of products or phased out to prevent the government from picking industry winners at the expense of smaller firms.
Much like Kosher certification, private inspection and certification bodies for organic foods can apply a higher standard of quality and compliance with certain consumer preferences. The government should greatly reduce its organic certification authority to allow for firms to specialize in organic certification.
USDA Policies Hold Back America’s Small Farms While Supporting Bigger Competitors
By Baylen J. Linnekin
Many people are familiar by now with the dramatic problems inherent in USDA’s subsidization of our nation’s biggest farms.
While farm subsidies are a known problem, there are a few other ways USDA regulations harm farmers and ranchers—particularly small ones—while wasting taxpayers’ money in service of big food producers.
Food Standards of Identity
USDA Standards of Identify mandate what may, must, and may not appear in hundreds of different foods. They are most often proposed by special-interest groups that represent large incumbent food businesses. For example, as I explain in my book Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, the USDA requires that any food labeled as a hot dog must contain “raw skeletal muscle meat,” may contain “poultry skin” and pig lips, and may not contain more than 30 percent fat.
Like other standards of identity, the hot dog rules, published forty years ago, stifle innovation, allowing incumbent businesses to rest on their laurels by preventing new market entrants from offering better “hot dogs.” On the other hand, USDA (and FDA) standards of identity may also require the addition of non-traditional ingredients to foods—such as vitamins, for example. This can and does impact more traditional food sellers, especially those who specialize in natural, additive-free foods. In short, standards of identity do not effectively protect consumers. Rather, they protect the market share of big businesses. For that reason alone, they should be abolished.
Food Grading
Many consumers likely have a carton USDA “Grade A” eggs, a cut of “Choice” beef, or a bag of Number 2 carrots in their refrigerators right now. Confusing USDA standards like these—known as grading—are so pervasive today that the agency has at least 150 such standards in place for fruits and vegetables alone.
The problems with grading are manifold. But here are two specific issues (each of which I detail in my book). First, the grading standards are subjective—they have nothing to do with taste and little to do with quality—and (like standards of identity) are established at the behest of big food interests. An apple with at least 40% red skin earns a higher grade, for example, than one with less red coverage. Second, most grocers only carry meats, eggs, and produce that conform to these subjectively higher standards. So grading is yet another way the USDA protects large producers and uniformity at the expense of small farmers—who in turn may lack access to grocers that exclude their foods and likely fetch a smaller return for their foods thanks to grading.
Organic Food
While the public’s perception is that small farmers and ranchers benefit from the USDA’s organic label, the truth is largely the opposite. Many small food producers argue the agency has used its oversight of organic-food labeling to water down the meaning of the term “organic” to the benefit of large agricultural producers—and to the detriment of the consumers and small farmers the law was intended to benefit.
From USDA standards of identity to grading to the agency’s oversight of organic foods, these examples demonstrate how so-called “Big Government” and so-called “Big Food” regularly are in bed together. That must end. As I detail in my book, one key answer to fixing what ails the USDA is that the agency must stop crafting regulations that favor big food producers. Neither, though, should the agency favor small food producers. Instead, the UDSA should let the marketplace—and American consumers—make such choices.
Baylen Linnekin is the author of Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School and American University and an attorney.
Further Reading:
Farming Abundance | FDA’s Food Safety Law—FSMA—Is A Costly Boondoggle For America’s Farmers By Baylen J. Linnekin
Farming Abundance | Kosher Certification: The American Blueprint For Food Inspection by Patricia Patnode
Farming Abundance | Achieve Agricultural Abundance by Challenging the Status Quo | Agnes Gambill West
Farming Abundance | Where Are All The Vertical Farms? | By Owen Yingling