Washington Insider -- Monday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

EPA Set to Announce New Carbon Emissions Rules

The Environmental Protection Agency today is expected to release new greenhouse gas emission rules for power plants, and most observers are expecting significant pushback from the energy industry, congressional Republicans and coal-state Democrats, regardless of contents of the proposal.

Republicans fear the proposed regulation will harm electric reliability, cost jobs and provide few discernible environmental benefits without corresponding actions from China and India. And moderate Democrats have discussed the forthcoming guidelines, share similar concerns and believe it will complicate their election campaigns this fall.

The White House is said to be bracing for a floor fight in the House in which Republicans will seek to embarrass the president with a vote against the rule. Democrats know they'll lose some coal-state members in such a vote, and they reportedly are working to keep the number of Democratic defections as small as possible. Regardless of what happens in the House, it is unlikely Republicans could muster the votes needed to overturn the rule in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The speculation is that EPA will seek reductions in carbon emissions of as much as 30% of 2005 levels. We will learn the official details later this morning.

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Opposition to TPP Trade Agreement Focusing on Worker Rights

Organized labor in the United States is highly skeptical about the ongoing talks on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, so it is not surprising that Democratic allies in Congress are echoing that sentiment.

Last week, a group of House Democrats led by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., called on U.S. trade negotiators to include tough worker protections as a core part of the TPP, rather than as a side agreement, a plan that has been reported by some media. The members say the United States should focus on TPP countries that they say have a history of denying workers' rights, including Vietnam, Mexico, Malaysia and Brunei. These countries, Democrats say, should be required to adopt strong, enforceable plans to protect the free association and collective bargaining rights of their workers as well as to ensure safe working conditions and fair wages.

Of the four, communist Vietnam is seen as the country most unlikely to grant to its workers the rights outlined above. And for its part, Mexico already is seeking to transform its economy through a broad-range of legislative changes in energy, finance, tax, telecommunications, education and voting rights, independent of TPP requirements.

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Washington Insider: Food Faddist Guide to Questionable Policy

Mark Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times who is never ashamed to offer food policy "solutions," even for the world. He has embarrassed himself in the past by pronouncing that sugar is the root of U.S. obesity at the same time the Times' science writers using real data pointed fingers at several other foods, and for proposing highly "interventionist" food policies.

Last week, Bittman weighed in again against the current global food system and somewhat weirdly, uses evidence of change to preach disaster. No, this is not about global warming. It is sort of about "food democracy," whatever that is, and how it can oppose "productivism."

Actually, Bittman is writing about the ideas of Oliver de Schutter, a former human rights lawyer who for the past several years has been United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food. Bittman calls De Schutter an "impartial observer" of the global food system who sees an international food crisis that is international and systemic, with common threads in countries rich and poor.

Still, he uses glimpses of progress to describe threats. In countries as disparate as Malaysia and Mexico he says the world is moving away from chemically intensive monocrop agriculture with high yields and cash profits as the main goals. The wave of the future, he discerns, is agroecology, a sustainable form of agriculture that draws on science, tradition and wisdom to treat farmers, earth and consumers "respectfully."

De Schutter argues his strange view that investing in growth of cereals or soybeans may produce a lot of calories but it does not contribute to adequate diets, and linking of nutrition to agricultural policies, he says, is a big shift. "Producing an adequate number of calories to feed the world has not resulted in either feeding the world completely or well: People still go hungry, and dietary diseases among seemingly well-fed people are the result of failed agricultural policies and malevolent marketing practices." Big talk, presented without any evidence.

One thing in all this seems clear; Bittman and de Schutter both dislike and mistrust economics while they favor global intervention on behalf of "food justice." Poor countries, Bittman says, should be supported, "not by dumping food on their local markets –– that is, by outside aid –– but by helping them reinvest in their own local food systems, by investing in helping them feed themselves."

Then in a truly bizarre note, he argues that "this is especially true of farmers who may be driven off the land by an inability to compete at international commodity prices" and people who subsequently cannot afford that commoditized food." Imagine that: nobody can afford food because it is too cheap. The local food will be more expensive, he suggests, but more affordable. Go figure.

Bittman then reveals that he has spoken to De Schutter and in spite of the current global "anti-regulatory climate" the answer will be to consider at least some foods "like tobacco" and treat them in the same way. In that fight, he says, the United Nations established "the right of all people to the highest standard of health."

However, there's more. Bittman quotes De Schutter, "It isn't the regulations that make civilization shift, but social norms." People consuming gluttonous quantities of junk food, candies and sugary drinks would be offered better choices –– with that support, their behavior would change." But now, he says, "advertising and availability are so pervasive and unavoidable that in many places people cannot choose to exist in a healthy environment; we must give them that choice." So much for social norms.

No one doubts that obesity is a national problem in the United States and around the world, but many believe that Bittman and other food faddists like De Schutter have no real strategy to deal with the problem. Therefore, they want to use blunt regulations to attack. It seems that these "experts" are willing to pretend they know what will cure the problem in spite of the fact that they have proved over and over that they don't know the cause of obesity and there are reasons to doubt that the government regulations they advocate would make things better.

In addition, Bittman should be careful in his efforts to hamstring the "productivism" he dislikes, since it offers broad benefits the food faddists can never approach, Washington Insider believes.

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