(00:00:00) This Symposium was prompted by article in the spring 1981 issue of Foreign Affairs. In that essay on the grain export. Boom. Learn South argues that over the long run large-scale American green exports do both the United States and developing nations a disservice. Domestically sothe claims American farmers are mining our soil for excessive yields and thus turning a renewable resource into an non renewable or unproductive one. Internationally, he asserts that we deceive ourselves and our clients in developing countries. If we believe that American agriculture can always fill the gap between local production and famine. And so concludes with a challenging agenda. Plowing money fertilizer see technical assistance and above all applied Research into the agriculture of the developing countries would pay off far better than exhausting the soil productivity of America in order to supply the mounting World demand. two anybody at the University of Minnesota this article is also striking because practically everybody he quotes as an authority is a professor at the University of Minnesota in making his case. Mr. So cites the work of agricultural researchers, including three of our panelists. For a possible remedy to the Troublesome roller coaster of rising and then tumbling grain exports. So the endorses ideas Advanced by Willard W Cochran professor of agricultural economics at the University. Former Economist for the food and agricultural organization of the UN and a former member of the president's Commission on food and fiber Professor Cochran's most recent book is the development of American agriculture a historical analysis. Will you meet Larsen is a soil scientist with the US Department of Agriculture science and education Administration and a professor at the University of Minnesota. In a recent article on protecting the soil resource base to which mr. South refers Professor Larson argues that it's imperative for America to establish an improved soil resource conservation policy if our agriculture is to avoid the most serious consequences Philip M. Ralph is a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota long a student of land issues both in America and internationally. He has written frequently about our need to establish and develop a sense of land stewardship. And so this article Professor Ralph is quoted on the current land crisis in terms of competition for land. He says we've reached a degree of agricultural export and dependency for which parallels can be found only in the Antebellum cotton south or in our colonial era. And because of his extensive work on the impact of agricultural research and Innovation and on the complexities of transferring new technologies to less developed countries. We've also invited Vernon W Routan to join us. Also professor of agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He's recently published an article on agricultural scientists as reluctant revolutionaries of themes that seems especially appropriate to our discussion today Professor Ralph. That's a pretty dramatic quote that so has of yours how to agricultural exports compared to today with the way they've been going the (00:03:59) past total exports have been growing rather rapidly and so have agricultural exports but the statement that Lauren saw is quoted from my work was referance to the use of land and the percentage of our land that is devoted to production for export. And with that base we are now devoting more than one acre out of every three to production for export and that's a percentage that would be associated with only the most Colonial of the colonial dependencies. In fact, it's very difficult to find any nation that produced for export with over one-third of its total crop land (00:04:47) but the colonial countries were different in that they didn't do anything else and we produce some computers and even produce some automobiles still and are generally rather Diversified economy. So We're not quite as vulnerable as as that was that sounds are we (00:05:10) well, it depends on what you're looking at. If you looking as agricultural exports as a percentage of the total volume of US exports then if you choose to call it vulnerable, we're not that vulnerable. But if you look at the proportion of our total agricultural crop land acreage that is devoted for production sale abroad then we have virtually no parallel in modern history of that degree of dependency in our in our own tradition you have to go as I said to the cotton South before 1860 or to our colonial era in the days of rice culture and indigo in the Sea Island cotton growing area of the Southeast Atlantic Seaboard to find a comparable degree of export dependency in terms of return to land. (00:06:04) That and that's bad. Anyway, or is it bad just because we're in the process of depleting our (00:06:12) soil. No, I'm not sure you jump to conclusion that it's bad. I'm not sure it's bad. That's to be debated. (00:06:23) Some people think it's bad in your tone of voice. (00:06:26) Well, it's we are (00:06:28) vulnerable. We are vulnerable to external shock from Trends and markets conditions and price that we have over which we have no control or very little control so that in the sense that some very important things could happen to us without our ability to influence the major direction of that happening. We have become more vulnerable to external shock than we have been in modern times (00:06:55) on the export side and Grains and on the import side and oil. Exactly. Mr. Cochran. (00:07:02) Well, I wouldn't argue with Phil route with a guarded his (00:07:07) statement competition for (00:07:08) land and he has qualified himself with regard to percentage of exports but in terms of percentage of exports of total US exports, although agricultural exports have been going dramatically in recent years. So is total total exports so that over the last 20 years or so agricultural exports have fluctuated from about 18 percent to about 22 or 23 percent. So in terms of our total economy, we're not more vulnerable but in terms of Agriculture, he's right our total eye total product going abroad as measured in acres which he gives roughly 1 out of 3, which is it now a standard figure and because of the unpredictability Realities of these agricultural exports or the demand on the foreign side. Our agricultural sector is extremely vulnerable from foreign events such as a little war or a bad crop, but in terms of our total economy, our agriculture does not look like it did in them in the pre-civil war period when when cotton and cotton and tobacco amounted to approximately 80 percent of our total excess of total exports. So in terms of our total economy, the picture is very different, but in terms of vulnerability of agriculture agriculture has become exceedingly vulnerable to changes in demand emanating from foreign countries such as Soviet Union People's Republic of China and so on. (00:09:02) Running around (00:09:03) I'd like to make two qualifications one is that in terms of our domestic food supply are large exports are not a sole source of vulnerability but a source of long run protection that it gives us great. We have great possibilities of modestly modesty client's and exports making up for decades of future demand growth. The other thing I would like to point out is that the rest of the world is more vulnerable to u.s. Agricultural fluctuations and the u.s. Is to variations in demand. In other parts of the world a recent study that's just being completed at the University of Minnesota. For example indicates that variations in u.s. Output variations and u.s. Supply have been more important source of instability and World grain prices than for example, the u.s. Is the the erratic USSR purchases. (00:10:00) Mr. Larsen your Making expert on the subject. Is it true what the soul says here soil erosion is a far more important problem in maintaining agricultural resources than the loss of land agriculture for not non agricultural uses that is cities moving out and shopping centers and all that. (00:10:21) Yes. I think it is according to the National agricultural land study. We use we lose about three million Acres or we have lost about 3 million acres per year do none of agricultural land Farmland to have done Farm uses over the past two decades of this about a million acres is cropland. And another million acres is potential cropland. So we're Lou we have lost about 2 million Acres of either cropland or potential cropland each year for the past couple decades. But this figure is expected to slow down materially over the next decade. Now our best estimate is that we lose about a million and a half to two million Acres of cropland To None crop land uses due to erosion each year. In other words about a million and a half to two million Acres of cropland goes out of crop land because the soils been depleted due to erosion in addition to that. Of course, we have excessive erosion on something like an another hundred million acres of land or about a quarter of our total crop land has excessive erosion. And this is a slow degradation takes many years, but nevertheless it's real. Another estimate is that will lose about 10 to 15% of our productive capacity over the next 50 years due to erosion these are and this would be equivalent to 50 to 65 million Acres of cropland, which is again over 10 percent of our total. So those are sizable losses in addition of course erosion as other damages We spent about 83 million dollars a year dredging channels Harbors. We spend about 50 million Acres fifty million dollars a year because of overwash on bottom lands due to erosion and we spend another 25 million dollars a year taking the sediment out of domestic and Industrial Waters. So the total cost of erosion is tremendous in addition the cast study indicated that we lose about 1.2 billion dollars per year in Lost nutrients due to erosion. So all of these things add up and I would agree with mr. Sousa (00:12:56) Comet. What about the what about the connection he makes though between I can select Sports and erosion essentially he seems to be saying look we better not export so much because that puts too much pressure on the land and that's causing erosion. So let's lay off the (00:13:12) exports. I think that he has a point. We have increased our acreage of corn and soybeans particularly in the Corn Belt the central area of the Corn Belt over 80% of our crop land is now in either corn or soybeans the two most erosive crops. We grow in land resource area 110 in Illinois and Indiana over 90% of the total crop land is grown in those two crops corn and soybeans. We about 29 percent of our land has slopes of over six percent and these are the ones that are really difficult to get to Control erosion on and corn and soybeans are growing increasingly on the steeper slopes for example in land resource area 107 in Western Iowa 70% of the land cropland over 6% and slope have corn and soybeans, huh. So we have essentially moved corn and soybeans up the slopes up on the steeper slopes to some extent at least and this will have an effect on erosion (00:14:20) and there's no way technically to The gross corn and soybeans on on the steeper slopes without without that erosion (00:14:30) effect. Yes. I think we could we could do it perhaps not economically under present economics. We can tear us we can use reduce tillage or conservation tillage practices roughly on the slopes less than 6% a good conservation tillage practice will take care of the erosion problem. If it were used on most slopes less than 6% when you get over 6% we almost have to go to terracing agricultural Terraces which are very costly and do not lend themselves to the large farm equipment that we now use and most of our Farms. (00:15:07) It seems to me that in my whole lifetime. I've heard nothing from the farm community, but let's keep the exports up. Because we want to keep the prices up now here comes along an expert and says we've just got to stop pushing export so hard it could have secretary of agriculture survive for a week. If he came out with such a suggestion. Let's Cochrane. (00:15:33) Well, not much longer than a week. I think this is the most popular solution to the farm problem that we have Farmers love it agribusiness Community loves it because it means lots of volume to handle in the process and really politicians love it because it doesn't involve nasty things like production control and and budgets to a store product. So it's this is a this is a popular solution all the way all through our whole food and agriculture sector and Up until those came out with his article there have been a few Rumblings in this direction, but most Farm leaders and I think probably most agricultural economists have been very pleased with the strong export demand that we have experienced and almost everyone is considered this to be on the good side. The problem it seems to me is that if if you have a race between product prices and input prices such as farmers are experiencing Farmers want some way to get to keep their product prices increasing and in this situation they're going to they're going to do everything they can to increase their product to maintain their grocery turns and whether this pressure to support product price. Comes from exports whether it comes from domestic demand or whether it comes from government programs. Any any one of these things that has the effect of helping Farmers maintain their product prices in the in the inflationary situation we have is going to is going to induce Farmers to try to plant from fencerow to fencerow. So if if we don't have the exports then this is going to cause pressure to up the government programs to support Farm prices the it seems to me we've got to the devil here is is not so much exports as it is the The Continuous pressure of input prices on product prices. Just which is causing Farmers to want to expand output at all cost and somehow we've got to find a way to moderate that pressure and I would hope in the discussion that we will we will get to that exports in the last 10 years have been the way in which Farm prices have been pushed up. But if it hadn't been for exports the they would have been have been tremendous pressure on the government to do something. So I think we've got to we've got to view exports in the in the context of the whole Farm economic (00:18:59) situation. Mr. Ralph. Yeah. I'd like to pick up on your comment about the political significance of this shift. (00:19:07) Historically, we had had (00:19:09) two segments of the American Agricultural community that was interested in exports. It was the traditional posture of the cotton South. and then later of the tobacco and cotton South and of Great Plains wheat the both of these areas through up leaders in the Congress and leaders in farm organizations that one time or another in the last three quarters of a century have been prominent in giving the United States the external appearance of being interested in World Export trade and contrary the heart of the Corn Belt had more or less settled for a semi Monopoly on the domestic market and that is what livestock production generally has meant Dairy is not exported significantly meat is not exported in large quantities consequently (00:20:07) the whole of the heart of the area that is (00:20:10) eroding most rapidly that collage and just spoke about had been Turned inward had not been dependent on exports (00:20:20) had not been (00:20:20) looking abroad and threw up political leaders who turned their back on the external World some of them quite dramatically like taking their organization out of international conferences. Now, the irony of the present situation is that the area that is most dependent on these exports is the heartland of (00:20:42) this area that (00:20:43) was once associated with America First sentiments with a turning of the back to the rest of the world and that had supported throughout the 20s and the 30s and the 40s and the 50s a political attitude domestically that was opposed to free trade Theory 328 philosophy and it more or less had decided that they would settle for a be reduced or a protectionist policy with respect to American agriculture. Now, that's the area that supplying the corn and the soybeans Which are three out of every four dollars earned in export trade today. I should like to say also that this proportion that we've been talking about of one-third of the crop because producing for export is very misleading because it's not equally divided overall crop acres and in significant areas. It's more like half of all crop Acres producing for export for example that this year will export wheat equal to 64 percent of last year's crop and we are exporting soybeans to equal to be in the last few years equal to about 55% of the current Year's crop and our rice crop is more than 50% exported. So the areas that are deported dependent on wheat soybeans and rice, the percentage is not one acre out of three. It's more like one acre out of two or even more so the focus of this significant sensitivity to what happens. The export trade is much more sharply identified with geographic regions. Then these overall percentage figures would lead you to think (00:22:25) it has of course been US policy for quite a long time to encourage everybody else to grow their own food How likely is it that all these Ambitions of the others and of us for them? Are likely to produce so much food that that our exports become unnecessary? (00:22:49) Well, this likelihood has become much more realistic in the last half dozen years. The present conventional wisdom is to regard the export Market as virtually. Capable of infinite expansion and much of the talk about the rate of population growth in the world as a whole has encouraged that belief a good many signals coming through now from India from China from Eastern Europe that indicate that some of the markets that gave the buoyancy to our exports in the last decade are approaching saturation. I'm not likely to be as eager to take our product in the next decade as they were in the past decade. I would disagree with that in the next episode of time. I might I might agree with you over a longer run. But while I can see if I see a few cases like India that have done very well in the last decade. I see very rapid growth of income in a group of middle income countries that are moving very rapidly to pick up rather large exports and I see a great difficulty in institutionalizing the capacity the research capacity. It's going to take to undergird increase production in a great many politically unstable areas in the world. I would expect in the next decade. One period of a few years that would look like a global food crisis one Global food crisis year or two. I would also expect one or two years that looked like Global food surplus areas and I would expect people to get very excited that finally we have either solve the food problem or finally or now. It's time we are now in a permanent Shorty's period both of those views will be wrong, but I think the demands on us agricultural exports over the next decade or decade-and-a-half are going to continue on average to grow (00:25:05) rapidly. I'd like I'd like to the Cochran get into this and a little more on the side of (00:25:12) Professor Rutan a (00:25:15) large part of the growth in the export demand for American Products is come from countries like Japan South Korea. Also from the central planned economies in Eastern Europe where we can expect their continued increase in development and increase in incomes, these people still have very low consumption of animal products, they like animal products and as their incomes increase they're going to demand more of these feed grains and soybeans to produce animal products. Also, I second Professor who tends statement that we have some very unstable less developed countries around the world particularly in Africa, which where we're going to get my opinion very slow development, but still rapid population growth in the next decade and they're going to be prime candidates for various kinds of food Aid India, it's true as done very well in the last Five years. Also India has benefited from unusually good weather in the last five years and I fully expect to see India have some bad monsoons in the next decade. So I what I see is a very strong export demand from the high from the high-income countries of Europe and the Western periphery of Asia. I see as a very growing demand in the middle level developing countries, like Venezuela and Mexico and I see food needs of various kinds of food. Aid is going to be demanded from parts of Africa and perhaps India. So I see a strengthening of demand and a tightening of the World Market and in this of course, it will not go smoothly. We're going to have Think of a world food crisis and we may have a surplus situation. Although I think the Surplus situation will be more like that of the the last half of the 70s which in no sense Compares with the Surplus situation of the last half of the 50s so I can see some surpluses of a moderate nature developing. I will be the most surprised man in the world. If we don't have another world food crisis in the next decade and I have said many many times and I'll say it again and I believe it fervently that the real price of food is going to rise a not evenly over the next decade which means then that this pressure to export in my judgment is going to continue and be very strong (00:28:17) you're predicting surpluses new predicting a price rise when I went to when I took economics it didn't work that (00:28:24) way. I'm predicting. I'm predicting an increase on a trend basis, but this trend is going to have all kinds of fluctuations in it. But on a trend basis, I'm predicting an increase in the real price of food around the world resulting from the strong export demand, but as mr. Root n said there may be a year or two in here, which is totally unpredictable in which will just have some very good crop so that we have we have temporary surpluses, but I would argue nothing like we had between 1953 and 1970. I want to come back to the basic issue as I see it and that is (00:29:09) the tendency to impute developed country income elasticity of demand. (00:29:16) To the (00:29:16) probable course of demand growth in the next generation of countries that will move from less-developed status into intermediate or moderately develop status and I ask you to consider the following virtually all of the expansion of our export markets in the last 15 years has come from demand that was either north or south of the 35th parallels. It's been episodic demand from the band of countries that fall between the 35th parallels. But it has not been the demand that has excited our agricultural secretaries or our farm leaders who are interested in a continuous expansion of export demand for American products for the for those of us who (00:30:07) don't carry the map around in our heads. Maybe you better give some examples of features (00:30:11) above and below the southern border of (00:30:15) Kansas was the Kansas Missouri Arkansas border extended around the world. The demand as has already been pointed out Mason-Dixon Line, (00:30:29) not bad pretty (00:30:30) much the Mason-Dixon Line. The band has been for the products of grain that could be used to produce meat and demand has been a meat oriented demand. We sell some grain to people who eat it as great buy it because they're hungry and we've sold quite a bit this year to the Chinese who have almost surely bought it because they were hungry. But that I think is episodic. I believe we have been slow to realize the significance of the population policies that the Chinese have adopted in the last three years and the target of a Chinese population of 700 million to 750 million, which they have set up for themselves and the Draconian methods they have adopted to reach that Target the the sharp tax penalties on children and families that have more than two (00:31:23) children which would actually be negative growth involved in their population presumably all yes. (00:31:27) It's now at or near a billion people. So they are contemplating a reduction in population of in the scale of 1 third course, they never (00:31:37) 1/4 to 1/3. Nobody's ever counted the Chinese population. So the margin of error is about a hundred million people, but (00:31:43) well, I remember an old Chinese who said to me Professor Ralph remember in my country the error of estimation is greater than the population of your country. I think we'll continue to export quite a lot of agricultural products in the coming say to the end of the century and I quite agree with Willie Cochrane and Vernon root n that we're likely to see some years in that period of extreme drought or extreme food shortage in some areas. I have however quite a different interpretation of the long-run trend it grows out of the fact that the capacity for improving the utilization of already produced food is so great in several of the important food producing countries that I'm afraid. We're in danger of being booby-trapped. Anytime the Soviet Union decides to straighten out their domestic situation. They should really enter the export market and by rights. They should be in the re-export in the export market now. For example there wastage and dockage and spoilage alone. This year's estimated at 28 million tons. The shortage that is caused by inadequate transport is estimated as somewhere in the range of half their total import requirements. We've got it but they can't get to where they need it or its spoils or is not utilized adequately because of a transport bottleneck Brazil feeds for head of cattle to get a ton of meat relative to the one head that we need to feed to get a ton of me. In other words. They have four times as many cattle in their cattle herd pertussis and tons of meat as produced as we do that means that they need only improve their utilization of their livestock forages by 50% to tremendously increase the production of meat for their own Community or to release some of their land to produce for export and they are already producing soybeans for export they already capable of expanding some of the other grain crops. So I think the possibility of Countries not now in the export Market coming in in the next decade is quite large quite High. (00:33:57) Why don't we have the kind of world food Reserve that has always been the obvious answer to those short-term crisis. (00:34:11) That was as World War II was coming to a close. It was a great debate between the state department the USDA as to whether we would release American production capacity. The state department was worried about the next winter in in Europe whether there would be food American farmers were wondering whether prices were going to collapse. In the early 1970s, we went through this again that farmers simply don't want to see food reserves too large because they want to be able to take advantage of the higher prices when the demand Rises. So I think there are very strong political pressures against maintaining large reserves that can be released easily. I I don't expect us to solve the reserve problem, but it does seem to me that the reserve problem that when we talk about the reserve problem were primarily talking about the crisis years. We're not talking about this steady this need to steadily increase production year by year in the developing World by three four four and a half percent the outside the range of increase that we've ever had to achieve. (00:35:22) There is the problem of the food security of the poorest of the poor like Bangladesh and countries such as this now we've learned with Hannah's properly pointed out that much of our food Aid has been has been Surplus disposal as opposed to charity nonetheless. I think there's pretty good agreement among the opulent nations of the world that we do need to maintain pretty regularly a food security reserve of maybe 10 million tons and our farmers will go along with that. Our farm leaders go along with that even the French go along with that and so you don't in international meetings get much argument about the establishment and not the established but the the maintenance of a concept of that The rich countries of the world will in bad years put up 10 million tons one way or another there's pretty pretty good agreement on that where the where the agreement breaks down is the establishment of a of a large reserve of say we're talking now of 50 to 70 million tonnes that would have the capacity to put a top over the kind of price rise. We had in 72 73 and mr. Ratan has perfectly correct. Our Farmers don't want that. They want that opportunity to make a killing every every 10 years or thereabouts. So our farm politicians are opposed to any reserve that can that has the capacity to level off prices in in He's kind of a crisis years that were talking about on the other hand. I would say that American farmers have over the years felt. It was their inalienable right to have a support level. So we have a we have the unusual not maybe it's not the unusual situation, but we had the situation I states where we have a support under our Farmers, but the consumers of the world have no protection against skyrocketing food prices and (00:37:58) producers always always want a floor no (00:38:00) ceiling right and that's what they've got and and (00:38:03) they've been so baek or whoever (00:38:05) they've been successful so far in the in warding off any ceiling they're willing they're willing to put up a charity a real charity Reserve as I've indicated to say some 10 million 10 million tons to deal with the Those starving in the poorest of the poor situations, but the the Australians the Canadians the American farmers, they don't want any kind of a reserve constructed that has the capacity to Lop off the top of those great upward price swings such as we experience and 72-73. (00:38:48) Could I remark on that point? First place I think we should have some sympathy with the farmers in this situation because (00:38:59) they are (00:39:00) asked to maintain a relatively free market structure in a world in which other markets are increasingly rigged are controlled against them and they remain one of the more volatile sections in our market economy. If you look at the prices of other Commodities the price of other products the price of Labor and other Employments, it doesn't go up and down as rapidly as it has in agriculture. It's still true that American agriculture is a limited constrained but realistic form of a free market economy and that works only when you can balance out your bad years with some good years. Now the debate is really over. How good is good. And it's been true. I believe that there have been some ways found to put ceilings on this upward price move. We it's true that the one phenomenal price increase after the Russian grain purchase in 72. Created expectations that were never realized in any repetition or I believe was likely are likely to be realized in any likely repetition in in our time. But in the meantime, the vulnerability that exists is due to the fact that those expectations have been capitalized in to land values people have bought sold traded held inherited land chosen not to dispose of land on the assumption that there would be this bailout opportunity. And so we now have a structure of land values that makes no sense. Unless one of these hires comes along every decade or so and if that doesn't happen if there isn't going to be this opportunity to unload a large storage Surplus in a period of high World prices, then the extent of the vulnerability is measured many dimensions, but one very real Dimension is our lands are overpriced seriously overpriced and that means the credit structure is inflated at means in the old terminology. There's a lot of water in the stock of American Agriculture and it will be squeezed out in some crisis operation. Now, that's what worries people in agriculture. And that's the measure of the vulnerability that impresses them sure. (00:41:32) I agree but we have a reasonably good safety net for I'm not perfect but we have a whole set of programs that puts a floor under agriculture and I think if farmers are willing to accept that floor, then they should be also willing to accept some kind of a ceiling for all the rest of us and Professor Rob in his last statement made a statement which I think is very Important. He said we do find some ways to put a ceiling on this thing. What are those some ways? They're usually are they having the last decade been and in an ad hoc embargo that just goes on when when when prices get out of hand and consumers feel that they're really being taken and if there's anything that's disruptive to International Trade, it's these it's these ad hoc queries that we have engaged in and the last decade of either formal or informal embargos as a way of at the last minute dealing with Runaway Farm and food prices thus I'm I argue that That we are going to have a very difficult time getting any satisfactory Reserve that has the capacity to deal with these great upward surge has but even though it's difficult. I think that that intellectual leaders and farm leaders should should continue to Grapple with this problem because it seems to me it's sheer nonsense in a world which many people think now is going to be one of tightening Food Supplies, at least for the next ten years to go into such a situation with without any kind of a legitimate effective grain reserve (00:43:38) the thing that puzzles me in this discussion. One of the things that puzzles me is that we do not use our agricultural land resources in United States, very intensively either on an international comparative standard or on it. Starkel standard, we don't use it as intensively as many countries. Secondly. We haven't increased our out as much as we brag about the performance of us agriculture output growth is only been about 2% per year the increase in output that compares two three and a half or four percent in India during this last 20 years. So we don't we haven't grown very rapidly. Our ability to export is dependent more on our on the slow rate of growth in domestic demand then and then in Rapid growth of production now, I guess the thing I'd like to see I'd like to ask. Mr. Larson is what is the potential for extent expanded productivity growth given the fact that we are not using our land is intensively as many countries that are rate of growth has has not been awfully high in the future in the past Kent. Can we can we Double grain production again in the next 20 years. (00:44:58) I don't think so. I think that the signs are that if anything our rate of productivity and growth agricultural production May decrease rather than increase for example much of our increase over the past 20 years has been from fertilizer in the 60s. We increase the fertilizer use about 8% a year in the 70s about four and a half percent and all the estimates for the 80s are that we're going to increase fertilizer use by about 2% So I think this says we're reaching that Plateau on the yield fertilizer curve. I don't think we've put the resources into research agricultural research that are needed. I don't think that we have in our scientists notebook across the country the the means to increase production by large amounts over the next 20 years. It's true who's mr. Ratan says we don't have the productivity of a lot of foreign Nations on the other hand. Our agriculture isn't built like there. There's his ass much smaller much smaller farmer operator type agriculture where they do use organic manure is organic residues much more effectively and I think for us to go back to that would require quite a change in our agriculture. I've talked to some of our plant breeders and they don't feel that the breakthroughs are in sight for any major breakthrough in plant breeding that is in genetic Improvement, maybe in maybe over the long run but not over the next decade or two. So I'm a little pessimistic about any major increases in agricultural (00:46:55) productivity. Would you said the same thing 20 years ago about the last 20 about the extraordinary record of the last 20 (00:47:02) years. I imagine we would have I (00:47:04) imagined when are you Are you are you somewhat surprised that how well we've done? Yes, right. Would you be surprised to be surprised again? (00:47:14) In the next one. I guess I would be surprised again. But nevertheless as I for the reasons I gave the the fertile I were plateauing on that fertilizer yield curve don't think there's the genetic possibilities immediately that we've had. We've improved a lot in terms of tillage and mechanical practices, but I don't see those on the horizon. I just don't think we put the resources into research and I think we're much closer. Another point is I think we're much closer to the good farmer out here is much closer to adoption of the optimum (00:47:56) practices, and he was 20 years ago. In (00:47:59) other words. He's pretty well our extension services pretty well carried the word to the farmer and he's pretty close to the researchers in terms of production. (00:48:11) Well, I think here again. (00:48:14) The (00:48:16) argument is very plausible. And I find I'm sympathetic to it. I'm also for that reason because I find it so plausible and because I find myself empathizing with it. I'm suspicious of my my own reactions to it (00:48:32) argument. What argument is it that you're empathizing with (00:48:35) that we have run out of the rootstock of productivity growth in American agriculture that is going to slow down. And the reason I'm suspicious is that I look at several possible areas in which this growth could be resumed one is in the intensity of land use not measured in terms of fertilizer use per acre but measured in terms of multiple cropping we virtually do know multiple cropping in America. That's not literally true. But figuratively it's correct. I reflect on the fact that we have in the Mississippi Delta an area about a thousand miles long and varying from 30 to 300 miles wide depending on the region one of the most magnificent deposits of (00:49:26) silt and (00:49:27) productive potentially productive soils in the world at a Latitude that is not too far into the tropics to suffer from leaching and from the diseases of soils in the tropics and is not too far north to be Deprived of Degree Days in the growing seasons and this multiple cropping potential in our Delta must be many times that of the Nile in its Delta or of the great rivers of India and Bangladesh in their Deltas or of China and we virtually don't touch it in the terms of intensity that is customary in those countries today. Now another reason why I'm suspicious is that I'm afraid we're trapped in the same very common. Experience that was noted a moment ago with respect to the imputation of demand elasticity's from presently developing countries to the next generation of developing countries. I think that's dangerous and probably wrong and I think we are also imputing experience with productivity growth that grew out of fertilizer use and also we should say the very dramatic increase in irrigation that is water management of the last three decades now, I think it quite true that the next generation of fertilizer experiments and irrigation technology is not going to lead the productivity growth that they did in the last 20 or 30 years, but I don't believe it's true that this means that there are no technological Frontiers that we could reach that would lead to productivity growth. I just mean I just think it's true that we attend to be trapped into habitual modes of thought with respect to the potential. (00:51:21) I want a 4-1 say that 30 years ago. I was the most optimistic man alive and thought the technological Revolution would never come to an end because I saw the great capacity of hybrid Seed corn and I saw what was happening in potatoes. I saw what was happening in Cotton research and I was a gung-ho technologist. But what I see is what? Mr. Larson is sung my song for me perfectly. I see we have we are plateauing on one particular strategy namely try to breed plants that can use fertilizer get that water at fertilizer and solution and depend on that and that strategy I think is wearing out now. I also agree with with my friend Phil Rob. I think someday we're going to get More breakthroughs, but I don't see those breakthroughs in the next 10 years and and hence because I think the strategy we've been living with is plateauing. I don't see the new Big breakthroughs. Although I assume we're going to work on him and one of these days they'll come along. Therefore. I see the next ten years as basically very rough in terms of world a man pressing on supplies and I come back to hence her increase in the real income of the real price of food and hence to get back to so sorry tackle. I see a very great pressure in the United States to keep farming fencerow to fencerow and a very great pressure on the degradation of our soils and the cell depletion problem I think is going to increase and become much more. Are significant in the next decade (00:53:25) with her time. I'd like to second with Professor Cochran's point about that the low-income countries have done poorly not in an absolute sense, but only in relationship to what they need to do. Now, the distribution of that performance has been varies greatly among countries. India has done very well. Indonesia is doing very well, but a great many countries are not doing well. The other interesting thing is that the total number of agricultural scientists in the developing world is about equal to the combined number in the u.s. And Japan. And of that number two thirds are in five countries. Those are countries like India and Brazil. That means that most countries do not even have the capacity to effectively borrow technology. They don't have the scientific capacity to screen it and borrow it and it seems to be what we are going to have to put in place if we're going if these it's the other countries are going to perform as well as India and Brazil, we're going to have to put in place research capacity for every crop in every Agro climatic region. And if that isn't put in place, then we are going to see very the very difficult food problems. We are it seems to me we are running into the capacitor into the limit into a limit of what can be transferred readily even what can be transferred from the international research institute's that are located in the tropics to transfer technical capacity. You have to Have the experiment station capacity domestically the screen and borrow and Guan and adapt in advance. I've a little bit ill at ease with the argument that we should export these research capacities. We should train people to develop their own research capacities. I agree with it, but there's a tendency for people to believe that this is something you buy over the counter like you go into a supermarket and say give me so much research capacity. In other words. This is a version of throwing money at the problem that is necessary unquestionably necessary. But also May ignore the fact that much of the reason for this delinquent development of research capacity is inherent in the structure in the culture of the countries concerned you are not going to graft on to that culture or to that structure of Agriculture the kind of research capacity that we might all around the table agree is necessary. So As I have been saying to some of my students in my class recently and you are going to some of these developing countries and promoting development the concept of development you are in effect saying to them you must change your religious beliefs. And then nobody has the guts to come out and say that flatly but that is involved. And in this country. It has a variation in that when we talk about vulnerability we talk about these surpluses that may build up and may lead to political demand for government action to store the Surplus take them off the market. I think what we forget is that the reason we're vulnerable is we've shifted to essentially a monoculture form of Agriculture. We have lost the livestock from the middle west and that's why this erosion is so serious. That's why this soil mining through exporting is dangerous. We've taken the cattle to the southern Great Plains. We've concentrated the poultry in the pigs in a few big installations. We broken the livestock crop biological cycle that was linked through the distribution of animal manures. We have lost more fertility maintenance through concentrating beef cattle feeding in Western Kansas than I think we've lost through exporting and nobody talks about that. So if you really want to get concerned about loss of fertility through our present cropping practices, we should get concerned about the fact that the Corn Belt has essentially gone out of Agriculture. As far as the individual Farms are concerned. There's a lot of Agricultural Product being produced, but the fertility that should be recycled is not being recycled. There's no way of doing it economically.