“Do we have to accept deforestation to feed the world?”

That was one of the provocative questions that Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow and land use expert Eric Lambin posed during a recent presentation of research with far-reaching implications for policymakers, businesses and consumers. Among the findings Lambin discussed with Stanford students and faculty during a Stanford Department of Environmental Earth System Science seminar: There is much less potentially available cropland (PAC) globally than previous estimates have suggested. Perhaps surprisingly, however, we don’t need to clear more land, including forests, to plant hunger-alleviating crops, Lambin said.

Previous PAC estimates by international organizations such as the World Bank have been consistently too high, according to Lambin giving decision-makers “carte blanche” to approve a variety of uses for large tracts of land.

By 2030, the additional land worldwide that will be needed for urban expansion, tree plantations and biofuel crops will equal the additional land that will likely be devoted to food crops, according to Lambin. This rapid transformation of the face of the planet makes it essential to get a handle on realistic PAC estimates. To do so, Lambin took a “bottom-up approach” that incorporated factors such as soil quality, land use restrictions, labor availability and occupation by smallholders. Lambin also considered trade-offs such as the carbon stocks lost and natural habitat destroyed by land conversion.

Lambin’s resulting PAC estimates in regions ranging from Argentina to Russia are, on average, only a third of other generally accepted estimates. Along the way, Lambin discovered some surprises. For example, what initially looked like good news – the fact that some countries have gone from net deforestation to net reforestation in recent years – turned out to be less hopeful. Lambin found that most countries in the developed and developing worlds that have stopped cutting down their forests have increased their imports of timber and wood products, often from tropical countries. This “outsourcing of deforestation” is one of several troubling global land trends.

On the other hand, Lambin pointed out that production of crops essential to alleviating hunger have increased in recent years, but their overall land use has not, due to more efficient and intensive agricultural methods. This net gain contradicts assertions that more land, including forests, needs to be cleared for farming in order to alleviate hunger, he said.

The real culprit for such land conversion, according to Lambin, is growing adoption of a Western diet heavy with meat, sugar and vegetable oils. Deforestation for agriculture is often driven by multinational companies that cultivate in tropical regions to export fatty and oily food products to urban markets in rich countries and emerging economies. These companies control a majority of global food supply chains and, in turn, local land use decisions. “Globalization has reshaped land governance,” Lambin said.

Globalization is not a bogeyman, though. In fact, Lambin said, it can be an engine for progress on these issues by allowing for new forms of market-based governance that effectively promote sustainable land use. Market mechanisms such as eco-certification labels and nongovernmental campaigns can promote and incentivize responsible land use, he noted, pointing to coffee farmers he studied with School of Earth Sciences Research Associate Ximena Rueda. The farmers increased tree cover on their plantations with the extra profit they reaped from eco-certified beans.

My wife and I are again spending the summer on our farm in Eastern Iowa. I am fourth-generation from land just a mile away, first settled by the Falcon family in 1858. My wife is also fourth-generation, from the farmstead we now own. Our land is a medium-sized corn, soybean, and cow and calf operation in the heart of a very rural Iowa county—though Starbucks is only seven miles away!  Summers here provide a pleasant change from my day job, which is as Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy at Stanford University.  It helps when teaching agriculture to have one’s feet in the soil.  In 2013, “in the mud” is a more appropriate phrase.

My farm notes from 2012 chronicled the problems of farming during one of Eastern Iowa’s most severe droughts. Because of high temperatures and low rainfall, it was a truly miserable production year for farmers—made only mediocre financially rather than miserable—by the widespread use of crop insurance. Drought affected many states, and last year the national federal subsidies on crop insurance were nearly $15 billion, more than the total that was spent combined on all of the other farm-related programs in the federal Farm Bill. 

But what a difference a year makes. We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. But what a difference a year makes.  We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. For Iowa, it was the wettest spring ever, eclipsing the 1892 record.  The riskiness of farming is something to see in real time; it is also very instructive to listen as farmers talk about coping with uncertainty. Listening to them is not very difficult if one is prepared to invest a bit of time.  In most rural areas, there is typically a restaurant, diner, or some other slightly disreputable place where farmers gather for early morning coffee.  For our group, it is the old limestone store in Waubeek—the limestone having been hauled by horses in 1868 from nearby quarries at Stone City, the historic home of Iowa’s most famous painter, Grant Wood. What have not changed from last year are the watery coffee, the stale cookies, and the energetic exchange of farm tales—mostly true, occasionally coarse, and sometimes more than a little embellished.

As with last year, the talk is about weather—though now the signs have all been reversed.   Last spring it was dry; this spring it was wet. It rained and rained and rained.  During the critical planting period of April, May and June, it rained in significant amounts in our area for 40 days. We received 21 inches in total, as compared with less than 8 inches last year.  Much of it came in torrents, leading to significant erosion, runoff, and flooding. Moreover, the weather was cold.  The local weather station reports that average temperatures for May and June were about 6 degrees cooler than in 2012, which is huge as those kinds of comparisons go. 

Farmers have had plenty of time for morning conversations, since the fields were so wet there was not much else to do.  They commiserated about a lot of things, and here are some of things I heard and learned. Virtually everyone said planting had been delayed at least three weeks beyond the first week in May, the date most think is their optimal planting time.  Perhaps a quarter said that the delays were so bad that they were shifting some fields from corn to soybeans, since the latter typically do better than corn if planted in June.  Everyone spoke of having fields with low spots that would simply go unplanted, or if planted, were flooded out with zero yields expected.  (And everyone was checking the fine print of their crop insurance policies to determine coverage for land that could not be planted due to weather, so-called “prevented” acres.)

The temperatures were so cool that corn seeds often lay in the ground and rotted or only germinated partially.  They talked about the merits of re-planting—the costly process of “tearing out” what had already been planted to replace it with new seed.  The calculus of that decision is complicated, since it involves further delays in the crop cycle and, at a minimum, the cost of new seed and tractor fuel. New corn hybrids cost up to $100 per acre, depending on the special traits that have been stacked into the seeds, thus putting seed costs on par with those of nitrogen fertilizer.  All farmers grow genetically modified corn, and those who initially had paid extra for the more expensive, drought-resistant seed seemed more resigned—“the cost of doing business”—than angry.

There was also great concern about fertilization this year.  Agronomists have been urging farmers to put nitrogen into the ground (called side-dressing) when plants needed the nutrient, rather than prior to planting, to help prevent nitrogen losses due to runoff or into the atmosphere and groundwater.  My neighbors know that nitrogen runoff is a problem, but as one put it, “this year we are screwed; because of the rain, we can’t get back into the fields with supplemental nitrogen.”

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The number of rainy days was totally frustrating for livestock farmers as well, most of whom also grow alfalfa for forage.  There was barely a sequence of dry days long enough to make hay.  The quality of the alfalfa diminished, as it grew tall and coarse. On our farm, we actually baled hay on the 4^th of July. The lateness of this first cutting will mean the loss of at least one, and possibly two, later cuttings. The latter, of course, are the most valuable in terms of quality and price per bale.

The 4^th is also the traditional benchmarking date for the corn crop.  Historically, corn was supposed to be “knee high by the 4^th.”  But with new varieties of seed and early planting dates, corn is typically shoulder high. In 2013, however, it really was knee high and looking puny and yellowish.  The 4^th is traditionally also the start of the season for sweet corn—the best in the world!  But it too was delayed by more than two weeks.  The bit of good news is that the Japanese beetles, a fierce pest in 2011 and 2012 to both soybeans and home gardens, have yet to appear.

The flooding that accompanied the rain was huge. Iowa expects to lose substantial acres of corn because of flooded fields.  Almost every farmer I know was affected in some way or another.  The week after we arrived from California, for example, we had two severe storm warnings and one tornado warning in the first four days.  The tornado blew around us, but the latter of the storms came in torrents. With the rivers running high, and with the soils saturated, flash floods happen almost instantaneously, as we experienced first-hand.  Our large permanent pasture, summer home for the red Angus cow and calf herd, contains a medium sized creek.  It quickly overflowed flooding the entire pasture.  The cows and calves were understandably unhappy, bawling loudly and persistently, thereby triggering a 5 am rodeo in the rain as they got moved to the barn on higher ground.  (Rodeos in the rain are not fun, however glamorous and intriguing the thought may be. There is always one calf….) But it was a good thing the move was made.  For later in the morning, we saw that the flood had taken out 50 yards of fence, thus opening the pasture up to the adjacent highway.  And for those interested, repairing creek fences is not a whole lot of fun either.

That same storm had countywide effects as well.  The Linn County Fair was to open on June 26th, and unfortunately the fair grounds sit alongside the good-sized Wapsipinicon River.  The storm had pelted areas upstream and the river was rising rapidly. There was a decision to be made.  National and local weather service models projected a crest of 25 feet, which would mean four feet of water in the grandstand, and a small lake where the exhibits were to be.  The fair was called off, and that is a BIG decision for a rural area. It affected almost every farm family, especially the farm boys and girls who had spent literally a year preparing their 4-H and F.F.A. (Future Farmers) projects—from livestock to sewing—for the competition. Everyone then waited in gloom for the fairground to flood.  But it didn’t!  The fair had been canceled for naught.

The forecasters had missed the river crest, and missed badly. What was estimated at 25 feet, turned out in fact to be 14.95 feet. Everyone thought that a miss by one foot was understandable, but that a miss by ten feet was sheer incompetence!  They were relieved that the flood had passed, and bore no ill will against the fair committee.  But the coffee conversations the next few days were blue about government forecasters.  I cringed, given my day job, when one of my neighbors said, “those weather guys are even worse than the damned economists.”   And that comment then triggered a lengthy conversation about the Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts for the size of the new (2013) corn crop.

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Despite the wetness in the Midwest, the USDA at the time was predicting a record corn harvest for 2013.  Farmers, who tend to be a bit myopic and to see and think the whole world is like their county, simply didn’t believe the numbers—neither the area nor the yield forecasts.  Those estimates of a big crop were helping to drive prices for the 2013 crop down to about $5 per bushel for corn, relative to the $7 per bushel farmers had received during 2012 and the early months of 2013.  Several of them argued that it was a deliberate attempt by the government to drive down prices. I suggested that it wasn’t what the government thought, but what markets believed that was important.  But they had a point, because the markets couldn’t figure out the estimates either, with a great deal of day-to-day variation in prices based on weather assumptions, both in the U.S. and in China.

At last the rains finally broke and there was a week of dry weather.  What happened in the countryside then was nothing short of amazing. Farmers, typically with help from their spouses and extended families, worked 24/7.  Tractors, with lights, comfort cabs, and sophisticated GPS systems to do virtually all of the steering, pulled 16- or even 24-row planters; they were everywhere one looked. So much planting took place in those few days that fertilizer dealers were overwhelmed by the logistics of moving sufficient quantities of starter fertilizer into the countryside. During that one week alone, 56 per cent of Iowa’s entire corn crop was planted!

These notes are being written in real time, and what this year’s harvest will bring eventually is now anyone’s guess.  At a minimum, the harvest will be late, which means that an early frost could be a very serious problem.  Farmers now are beginning also to worry about late-season precipitation. (My wife is convinced that we have had our rain for the season, and that from now on we will see drought.) Farmers are not an optimistic lot when it comes to forecasting weather! But at this point in the season, most of farming is waiting.

My clearest conclusions from the last two years are about risk.  Farmers and farming communities face lots of it, and in almost every direction they turn.  (I smile inwardly every time I am told by neighbors, “I don’t see how you can live in California with all those earthquakes!”) Modern corn-belt agriculture is complicated, capital-intensive, and uncertain. That is why federal crop insurance is already such a key element in the new Farm Bill, and likely to become even more so in the context of future climate variability and change.  Finally, anyone who believes that farming is done by those who can’t do anything else, or that farms are quiet, idyllic places, ought really to spend a summer on an Iowa farm. 

Japan Studies Program at Shorenstein APARC has received a grant from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan for the New Channels project.  The project aims to broaden the dialogue and understanding between the United States and Japan and to reinvigorate the alliance with a focus on 21^st century challenges faced by both nations.

Under this multi-year project, the center will lead a new bilateral policy dialogue on U.S.-Japan relations in the 21^st century.  The annual dialogue will be held alternately at Stanford and at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, between Japanese scholars, entrepreneurs, and policymakers and their American counterparts, mostly from the West Coast of the United States, with an emphasis on engaging the rising experts in both countries. 

The dialogue will be supported by creation of a Sasakawa Peace Fellowship in U.S.-Japan Relations at Stanford University, based at Shorenstein APARC.  This fellowship will bring top notch scholars or policymakers to Shorenstein APARC for extended visits with responsibility for organizing the annual dialogue. 

The close U.S.-Japan relationship has endured for 60 years, a tribute to the shared interests and friendship forged in the aftermath of World War II between the two former foes.  It now must reinvigorate itself in the new century to face not only the traditional challenges of security but also common concerns that both countries are now facing in the era of globalization.  Stanford University and the Shorenstein APARC look forward to taking on the challenge of creating New 21^st Century Channels between the U.S. and Japan.

Update:  In the elections held on July 21, Hirofumi Takinami was voted in as a member of the upper house.  Takinami won the Fukui District, garnering over 70 percent of the votes, which is the largest vote margin in the history of the district.  Takinami is not only the first non-incumbent to be elected in 18 years, but also the youngest candidate ever to be elected in the district.

The forthcoming Japanese upper-house election scheduled for July 21 will determine whether the ruling Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition, which returned to office last December, can gain a powerful majority in both houses of Japan’s parliament. But the election will also have a particular interest for the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Hirofumi Takinami, one of the LDP candidates for the upper house, running in the Fukui Prefecture, is a proud alum of Shorenstein APARC. Takinami spent two years (2009-2011) at Stanford as a visiting fellow in the Corporate Affiliates Program at Shorenstein APARC while he was employed in Japan’s Ministry of Finance. During his time here, he worked closely with APARC faculty, including former Ambassador to Japan and Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow Dr. Michael Armacost and Dr. Phillip Lipscy, on research that focused on the political economy of the financial crises in Japan and the United States. Takinami also co-authored a paper with Dr. Lipscy comparing financial crisis response in Japan and the United States, which is forthcoming in the Japanese Journal of Political Science.      

Over the past few months, Takinami has been busy travelling all over Fukui Prefecture, which has received attention in recent years due to a city that shares its name with the current U.S. president, Obama. On some days Takinami might travel two hundred miles, visit more than ten different places, and meet a thousand people, but Takinami feels that the hard work will all be worthwhile. 

When asked what inspired him to run for office, Takinami replied:

Starting from 1989, the ruling party of Japan has been annoyed by its weak power in the upper house. Thus, the upper house has been the center of a “political war” in Japan, which was one of the major reasons for the delayed policies of Japan during the “two lost decades.” In order to regain a decisive and progressive Japan, I determined I would run for the election.

Should Takinami be successful in his campaign, his term as a member of the upper house, or sangi-in, will be six years.  Lipscy commented that Takinami’s chances for victory are very high: “Not only is Takinami well-qualified for the position, but the LDP is traditionally strong in Fukui and riding high on the popularity of Abenomics,” referring to the economic growth policies being pursued by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Should Takinami win office, we hope his experience here at Stanford will help to contribute to his goals for Japan.

According to a common view in Mexico today, the attempt to transform Mexican political institutions according to liberal values since the nineteenth century has been a complete failure. On this view, the reasons for this failure are, primarily, that liberal values and ideas were “foreign” and “imported”, such that they could hardly have taken root in a society that had recently emerged from three centuries of colonial rule and was, therefore, backwards and “traditional”. Scholars often complain that liberals failed to realize the values of freedom and equality, that there is no rule of law, no public culture of toleration, and no effective enforcement of fundamental individual rights either civil or political.

On May 10-11, 2010 the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World at CDDRL held its international inaugural conference. In line with the Arab Reform Program's vision, the conference featured internationally renowned scholars, activists, and practitioners from the Arab world, Europe and the United States. Over the two days, conference participants engaged in multidisciplinary debates addressing hard politics as well as soft politics, and analyzing political reform from different angles, with panels on the economy, state systems, the media, civil society, political opposition, youth politics, and the role of international actors. Problems facing political reform in the Arab world today were discussed and scrutinized, as were possible paths forward. The conference debates unearthed the need for a deep understanding of the problems facing political reform in the region that is driven by an analysis of long-term and often ignored issues that are at the core of political developments. The debates also highlighted that problems and prospects for reform are different in each Arab country because each country has its own unique set of issues and because within each country different ethnic groups, classes, and locales have different takes on and stakes in political developments. The conference closed with a speech by Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim.