Bureaucratic delays hurting farmers

By Buck Leonards
Agriculture functions in a global market. We eat Mexican tomatoes, drink Indonesian coffee, cook with spices grown in Morocco or Thailand. We export rice, corn, wheat, and soybeans – among countless other products – worth hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
This globalized market has created millions of jobs here in America and supported American families and communities for decade after decade. But global growth in this industry is not taking place here at home – it’s taking place overseas. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the next decade’s agricultural surge won’t come from America. It’ll come from Africa, from the Middle East, from a whole host of other regions and countries around the world.
There’s a reason. It’s not laziness or lack of ambition, it’s not due to flooding or drought, it’s not because another farmer in another country is producing a higher-quality product. It’s because our government hasn’t caught up to our science.
The USDA and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have held up the release of numerous new products and techniques designed to boost American yields and bring our farms into the 21st century. These include new feed stocks for biofuels and new varieties of corn, soybeans, cotton, and other crops which allow for the control of pests and weeds now choking out farms in the majority of U.S. states. Some of these products have been held up for years – some as many as five years! Meanwhile, other countries like Canada are moving ahead, giving their farmers the most modern tools and techniques.
Environmental reviews are important and fundamentally valuable. But bureaucratic inefficiencies and political obstruction are not. Unnecessary delays – unsupported by any scientific finding – choke out American farms just as unequivocally as the weeds themselves do.
America has a unique opportunity over the coming decades. The developing countries of the world are expected to see an explosion in their agricultural production, but their demand will rise even faster. When India has to feed its citizens or Brazil wants to expand its biofuel production, they will see a vast void between their output and their needs. Canada and other countries are gearing up to fill that gap. We should let our farmers get to work.
Buck Leonards is a farmer in Acadia Parish and publisher of Louisiana Farm and Ranch Magazine.