Excerpt
IN admonitions heard throughout America's agricultural sector, we have been told that free market forces ought to reign. But which free market should guide resource protection? The monetary free market does not care about returning conservation costs in commodity prices, much less other costs of production. The monetary free market does not care if land is destroyed in growing a crop, even as prices rise with declining yields.
If the monetary free market does not return conservation costs, then for conservation assistance we must turn to the free market of ideas—the assemblies of government where policymakers work to curb, offset, and prevent the blindness and excess of the monetary free market.
In assessing that government policy, conservationists should take a close look at the financial assistance provided to industry by government to offset wear-and-tear expenses. For decades now Congress and the executive branch have recognized the need to assist the manufacturing sector in keeping plant and equipment inventories in top condition. The government provides generous financial assistance to achieve this goal in the depreciation categories of the tax code. Depreciation ensures that new equipment continues to be financed and factories are at their peak …
Footnotes
Tom Barlow, Barlow, Kentucky 42024, writes on farm and natural resource issues. He is director of the Greater Mississippi Valley Coalition for Economic Improvements on Agriculture.
- Copyright 1986 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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