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Agricultural decisionmaking is ... distributed weirdly in many contexts. First, in many cases, the local operators (who are often not owners) are not especially autonomous, and may be acting on behalf of corporate concerns or decisions made far away, not infrequently in entirely different countries. To that extent, governmental regulation is a countervailing force to corporate power. Secondly, ag, food production generally (e.g., fishing and grazing), and forestry are classic cases of the somewhat maligned "tragedy of the commons" situation. Localised decisionmaking absolutely can and has resulted in long-term and permanent degradation of ecosystems and populations. This includes the deforestation of the Mediterranean basin as well as much of Europe, old-growth forests within the US, much of the Amazon jungle, and tropical woodlands throughout the world. (That some of this has occurred due to or subject to government planning doesn't negate the fact that much of the interest is corporate and commercial.) Even local small-scale decisionmaking can be exceptionally detrimental. Collapses of fisheries such as sardines off Monterey, California, cod off the Grand Banks, and elsewhere, commercial whaling, overgrazing throughout much of the world, and decimation of wild animal populations including the North American bison and passenger pigeon. Third, ag production is governed by a huge array of factors ranging from local soil quality and conservation (see the recent HN article on topsoil loss within the American Midwest), seasonal weather forecasts, and international trade policies, tarrifs, credits, and the like. In all, there are strong arguments against strictly local decisionmaking, no matter how unpopular that fact may be locally. In practice within the US, the Department of Agriculture is among the most distributed federal departments, with both a strong presence in the District of Columbia and numerous field, research, and teaching operations throughout the country. "Distant federal oversight" is a poor description of the actual situation. |
What you're describing is different priorities, which I completely understand. But if those changes are forcing farmers to take on more of a financial responsibility (as an example), then maybe the ones making those decisions should be more willing to consider that in their decision making.
It's not a matter of these farmers not understand, but that they don't agree.
It's like security people telling developers they're not allowed to execute powershell scripts on their local machine. It's easy for them to make that decision because they don't deal with the pain of it.