Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
between farmers and agency staff would jeopardize their credibility, as
well as stable food production in the region.
The listening tour discovered that tremendous changes were taking
place in Washington State agriculture, led by bright, educated, knowl-
edgeable, and innovative people. Some farmers were reducing water
consumption and addressing the threat of groundwater contamination,
and at the same time trying to enhance their profitability, such as by
deploying drip irrigation on crops that had never used them before.
The CPAI team had known they were going to have to create new
approaches to working with the rural communities, but it was surprised
to discover how difficult it was to persuade their colleagues of the merit
of a constructive engagement with agriculture. They discovered how
deeply entrenched the regulatory and law enforcement approach were in
the culture of their own agency. Back in Seattle, they reported the
broader implications for their agency's practice of a community-based
approach to environmental protection. They explained that some of the
complaints against the agency had some merit, and that the agency
would have to develop new ways of fostering trust among the people
whose activities it regulated. To succeed, the USEPA was going to have
to understand much more about the structure, logic, and economics of
agriculture—indeed the culture of agriculture. The agency was used to
negotiating with industry lawyers, but CPAI was going to require them
to get their boots dirty. To build a partnership with farmers, the USEPA
was going to have to earn their trust.
Perhaps the most important lesson was appreciating the dignity of the
farmers in the region. USEPA staffers discovered that the stereotypes they
held of farmers as ignorant, needlessly destructive, or environmentally
indifferent eroded in the face of meeting real farmers in specific circum-
stances. The listening tour did not encounter any farmers environmen-
tally irresponsible, although there was a wide range in their perception
of the seriousness of agriculture's environmental problems. The team dis-
covered that farmers for the most part were conscientious land stewards,
but that their choices were circumscribed by economic and structural
issues in agriculture; some wanted to improve their farming systems, but
lacked the power to change industrial agriculture's economic incentives.
One particularly poignant meeting during the listening tour took place
in Lincoln County. After a potluck dinner marked by wariness, Karl
