Trying to Explain NAIS from the Perspective of Computer Chips
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 10:05PM 
When I try to explain Greg Niewendorp’s civil disobedience to friends or acquaintances who aren’t familiar with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), I usually get this response: So what’s so bad about tracking farm animals? Won't that help prevent disease?
Implied in these questions is this: the diseases are so terrible, and the “solution” seems so harmless. What’s the big deal?
I sometimes find myself stammering in response…it’s costly to farmers…it violates their privacy…it’s a prelude to tagging and monitoring people…etc., etc.
But in watching the intense debate about Greg Niewendorp unfold around my original post, I realize there is something much more fundamental involved. It’s about our ongoing desire to systematize business to the Nth degree, and appreciating why small-farm agriculture doesn’t necessarily fit into that tendency. (I am amazed at the depth of many of the responses, and especially want to thank MichiganFarmer-Trish for her first-hand insights into farming.)
In many product industries, systematization works well. The classic example is ever-cheaper and more powerful computer chips, which enable us to use laptop computers to easily produce blogs and huge e-commerce web sites and communicate with ease via email (among many other applications).
Once living things are involved in such moves to ever-increasing efficiency, there can be glitches. Witness the ever-increasing difficulty of traveling via air, and specifically the JetBlue fiasco of the last few weeks.
There is a natural desire to apply this same mentality to agriculture. Indeed, it has been applied. Unfortunately, there are some big problems. Fast-spreading disease, loss of nutritional benefit, small-dose poisoning from antibiotics and hormones, pollution of steams and fields around hog-production sites and the squeezing out of the little guy. Now, from a business viewpoint, I know this last problem is viewed as “something we can live with, if it benefits the larger society.”
But there are other even larger problems. The systematization that has occurred in computer chips has been the result of intense competition. Indeed, we might even say it’s a result of a hands-off attitude by the government. Let the chip companies battle it out, and the market will be the ultimate arbiter.
But the systematization now being pushed in agriculture in the form of NAIS is coming from the government. And not even from our elected representatives, but rather from bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state departments of agriculture.
If it was just competition driving small farms out of business, that would be one thing. But when the government is pushing them out because they won’t conform to increased regimentation that they are resisting for sound business and animal health reasons, well, that is something else.
Small farms increasingly apply techniques that avoid the problems of industrial farms. Fewer animals. No antibiotics. Farm grazing. Recycling of wastes. Perhaps most important in this discussion, there is a lower risk for disease because of such seemingly uneconomic techniques.
The small farms understandably don’t want to be forced into a system that promotes values they are avoiding. Unfortunately, this explanation doesn’t conform well to a 30-second sound bite.
Reader Comments (4)
If that's too vague a problem for our bureaucrats to grasp, consider the very real problem of economy-shattering big-business failure, a whopper that came home of course in the late 70s when Chrysler hit the skids, and government stepped up with 1.2 billion dollars in taxpayer guaranteed loans. Things have only gotten worse since.
The consequences of big-business failure are horrific in any arena, but in food production, they are too terrible to consider. Food is too important to risk with centralized control. For health protection, and for supply protection, LOCAL production is necesssary.
OCM Calls for Competition Title in Farm Bill
The Organization for Competitive Markets joined over 200 organizations calling for a Competition Title in the next Farm Bill. The tremendous number of signatories shows the tremendous demand for improving our agricultural market system. Farm, food, consumer, environmental and religious groups representing millions of Americans want to restore fair, open, and competitive markets to our food and agriculture system.
The letter, sent to the House and Senate Agriculture Committee, said:
“Today, a small handful of corporations overwhelmingly dominate our food supply. The concentration of market control in the top four firms in U.S. food retailing, grain processing, red meat processing, poultry processing, milk processing, and nearly every category of food manufacturing is at an all time high. Corporate mergers and buyouts have concentrated the power of these firms and increased their ability to unfairly manipulate market conditions in their favor. This unprecedented level of horizontal market consolidation effectively eliminates free market competition to the detriment of independent family farmers and consumers.”
http://www.competitivemarkets.com/news_and_events/press_releases/2007/1-18FarmBill.htm
Too many large corporations have squeezed out the "mom and pop" operations that had been in business for many decades and we need to get them back into the american business picture.
The move I took was calculated to show that refusing to cooperate causes unelected officials to have to explain their position.
They are forced to do things they would just as soon not. They are no longer in control of future events. The element of the unpredictable? I see it as stepping out in faith where events may not go my way. Neither will it for them. They are now assessing the risk associated with proceeding with their draconian measures.
Cooperating and providing your signature allows them to continue.
Greg