Agriculture meets the environment: Communicating perspectives

Excerpt

We published an article on communications between agricultural and environmental interests in the May-June 1989 issue of the Journal. The premise of the article was that “people representing both perspectives can have trouble communicating with each other because of differing perceptions about what the problems are and how to view them, differing concepts of environmental quality and of the farm manager's responsibility and role in maintaining that quality, and differing institutional settings.” This article comments on changes in relationships between these interests in the past four years. Understanding these evolving changes is increasingly important as environmentalists become stronger players in agricultural policy, and as more agricultural activities are impacted by nonagricultural legislation.' When we wrote the 1989 article, the interjection of environ-mentalism into agricultural policy had been established. Environmentalists demonstrated clout by playing, for the first time in 1985, an important role in the farm bill; and data were beginning to confirm that agricultural activities cause environmental problems besides soil erosion. Agricultural interests were surprised, perhaps shocked, by enactment of some of the environmental provisions in the 1985 farm bill, and were starting to learn more about interacting with …