Wu follows most critics, and cites Jack London on this point, in identifying Norris’s position with Presley’s, as I have also done in this chapter. The curious point about the afterword, however, is the complete absence of the topic this chapter has focused on: China. While Wu claims that the novel is worth reading for its detailed description of monopoly capitalism, what these details are—including the necessity of the China market to the future of American production—goes unremarked. What is important about monopoly capitalism, like any other kind, is that it is bad for the worker. Summarizing the novel’s conclusion, he says only that Presley “decides to take a trip to India,” as if on a passenger liner, omitting that he is accompanying a shipment of famine-relief wheat intended to open transpacific distribution, a practice that Mao had explicitly condemned. What should we make of this conspicuous omission? The translator effectively glosses over the representation of Indian and Chinese peasants as starving, and the notion that American farming was sufficiently productive to send a surplus across the ocean. A Marxist analysis of monopoly capitalism—the ostensible reason for investing in a translation of the 700-page novel—would emphasize the decisive role for Norris of the overproduction crisis,30 planter pot and the need for ever-expanded markets. Such an exercise, however, cannot be seen to impinge on the nationalist triumphalism of the CCP.

As I will examine in chapter four, during the 1950’s China was engaged in a fierce propaganda battle with the U.S. over its socialist modernization of agricultural production, officially rejecting the advice of American academics from previous decades . Attention to the history of U.S.-Chinese transnational connections would be a political liability in both countries at this time. Ironically, the Chinese of the novel, including those working on the Derrick’s the ranch, the site of production itself, must be “excluded” from the account of the novel in order to preserve the nationalist conflict. Nevertheless, it is significant that the first explicitly-nationalist Chinese social movement was the boycott of American goods. The CCP effectively hoped to realize the dream of the 1905 boycott, throwing out the American flour and, as in Extraordinary Speeches of the Boycott, building up agricultural production to secure national independence. Where The Octopus uses naturalist form to portray U.S. capital, empire, and racialization as unstoppable historical forces, the boycott literary and cultural production uses sentimentalism to call the people to action and realism to reflect on political possibilities. This ongoing competition would produce several competing forms of representation over the following decades.Under its ambitious goals and deadlines, Member States need to significantly alter their approach to water regulation . Transitioning from predominantly voluntary initiatives to comprehensive River Basin Management Plans, the Directive has drawn international attention as a potential model for water quality improvement . Over a decade later, however, much work still needs to be done to bring the agricultural sector into compliance with the WFD.

Because each of the 50 states in the U.S. and each river basin in the 28 E.U. member states has devised its own plan to comply with water quality standards, hundreds of natural experiments of agriculture non-point source pollution control exist. The number of regulatory approaches is both impressive and discouraging: “Impressive because of the diversity and ubiquity of state legal mechanisms. Discouraging because of the inconsistent treatment of similar problems from one state to the next, and because of the significant gaps in coverage that still exist in many states” . Using a policy tool framework , this chapter will explore the prospects for effectively governing agricultural non-point source pollution.For decades, local, state and federal agencies in the U.S. and Europe have relied heavily on voluntary financial incentive tools. Also called “Pay the Polluter” initiatives , financial and technical assistance are provided to farmers to motivate practices that reduce pollution. The basic assumption is that farmers will respond to positive payoffs by choosing activities that improve environmental conditions . The activities that might qualify for payments vary from Best Management Practices or technologies to environmental improvements . Ideally, financial incentives would be linked to environmental or water quality improvements, and payments would be made based on the extent of improvements . However, due to the challenges of measuring the environmental gains resulting from agricultural practices, most incentive schemes simply target the implementation of Best Management Practices themselves . A variety of BMPs have been identified and developed to reduce water pollution from agriculture. No single set of on-farm BMPs applies to all agricultural settings and for all purposes, but a wide range exists to best suit environmental and farm needs.

Nationally recognized water pollution abatement schemes include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Core 4”: conservation tillage, crop nutrient management, pest management, and conservation buffers. Other BMPs include irrigation water management and erosion and sediment control . To choose the most appropriate BMP for a field or farm, information about current nutrient and water management practices, as well as local soil, climatic, and water quality conditions are needed. Tailoring BMPs to a specific site is perhaps the most effective means of improving nearby water bodies and has the added benefits of stakeholder participation. However, designing policies on a field-by-field basis can be prohibitively costly if reliant on expensive computer modeling technology; however, new technologies will continue to reduce their costs. The two most distinguished financial incentive schemes pertaining to agricultural and water quality in the U.S.—USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Reserve Program —use contracts to reward farmers for implementing conservation practices or for removing environmentally sensitive land from production . Incentivizing certain BMPs, such as land retirement, has the possible, but not certain, benefit of stopping or diminishing pollutants from entering into nearby water bodies. Economic scholars contend that financial incentives could outperform other types of policy tools, such as effluent estimated emissions standards and estimated runoff incentives . Incentives have the added benefits of encouraging technological innovation and providing flexibility to alter management practices. However, the lack of political will to tax or reallocate budgets to purchase sufficient water quality improvements make the success of this approach highly unlikely . If financial incentives could be tied to performance with the use of modeling programs,plastic growers pots it might bolster financial programs. While such programs are popular among farmers, and while there have been local PTP success stories, the past four decades of experimenting with voluntary financial incentives in the U.S. and E.U. overwhelmingly indicates that the PTP approach should not be a stand-alone policy tool. In fact, there has been widespread interest in both scholarly circles and regulatory programs in moving away from voluntary incentive-based schemes towards enforceable requirements . England is illustrative of this transition. Initially, in 1990, England responded to the E.U. Nitrate Directive with a voluntary contract system that compensated farmers for reducing nitrogen application . Though moderately effective, reducing N inputs and leaching by about 20% , the country has decided to transition to the use of enforceable mandates on the type, quantity and timing of fertilizers in all Nitrate Vulnerable Zones . Mandated standards will be discussed further in the performance tool section, below. Situated on the opposite end of the continuum from Pay the Polluter approaches are negative financial incentive or disincentive schemes—sometimes referred to as Polluter Pays Principle .

Negative financial incentives include charges, taxes, and sanctions. In the 1980s, a series of environmental economic papers reignited discussions about a particular type of financial disincentive tool—taxation—as a form of pollution control specifically for the use on non-point sources. Two separate bodies of work are distinguished based on what would be subject to tax. Griffin and Bromley and Shortle and Dunn’s seminal pieces target inputs, while Segerson and subsequent scholars chose to focus on ambientstandardsas the base for modeling tax instruments. Both taxation tools rely on the use of proxies, or models that estimate pollutant loadings. The ideal means to reduce pollutants through taxation, or any other tool, would be to control discharges directly. Since policymakers are unable to use pollution abatement tools that are directly tied to emissions, they must instead choose between constructs based on emission proxies or choose other tools that circumvent emissions altogether . Economic scholars have written and researched prolifically on design models that predict the impact of a farm’s discharges based on inputs or management practices. Unfortunately, no matter how complex or comprehensive such models are, they cannot fully capture the diversity of variables affecting the transport of pollutants from source to receiving water body ; and generally do not have the level of accuracy necessary for regulatory applications . Tools based on models and proxies are considered “second-best” and less effective because of uncertainty that water quality improvements will be made .A performance-based tax was successfully employed in the Netherlands under the E.U.’s Nitrate Directive. In 1998, the Dutch introduced an Input-Output manure management policy entitled the Minerals Accounting System . All net surpluses of nitrogen or phosphorus were subject to a hefty penalty—seven times the cost of fertilizer at the time . This performance-based tax tool proved to be effective in achieving its intended objective: One monitoring study showed that nitrogen surpluses in agricultural areas fell substantially as a result of its implementation . However, high transaction costs and prohibitively high penalties forced the Dutch to replace the nitrate tax with technology-based standards that limit the input of fertilizers .Simulated models and theoretical economic research corroborate the Netherlands’ successful tax experience. When tested in a computer simulation, taxes have been shown to be one of, if not the most effective means of improving water quality. Yet which tax instrument is most cost-effective remains unsettled . In their study on optimal tax schemes for conserving water and reducing pollution, Dinar and Xepadadeas found that an instrument or two instruments that mix a tax on water use and a tax on emissions are most effective. They argue that this mixed tax tool need not monitor or regulate inputs because the external effects of inputs will be internalized through the tax on emissions. In their seminal paper on cost-effective tax instruments, Griffin and Bromley compared four pollution policies: input taxes, emission taxes, performance standards, and best management practices. They found that the four policies were equally efficient. A European case study in Southern England’s Kennet Catchment, on the other hand, found a tax on nitrogen, an input-based tax, to be the most effective policy tool . Other studies show that taxes based on emissions proxies are more cost-effective than taxes on inputs . Taxes, whether input or emission-based, can be extremely effective if levied at high enough levels . Nevertheless, taxes are arguably the most unpopular policy tool among the regulated group. Given the political clout of the American agricultural industry and high costs of modeling estimated emissions, taxation schemes have rarely been employed in the U.S., leaving few on-the-ground cases to test their efficacy. When agricultural taxes are used, they are levied at such low rates that they offer little incentive to change behavior . Another type of market-based approach is water quality trading , advocated by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental economic scholars as one of the most cost-effective means of achieving water quality goals . Emissions trading provide individual dischargers a limited right to pollute and the option to trade those rights with others . Trading programs became popular in the 1990s with the success of sulfur dioxide trading under the U.S. Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain Program , which saved an estimated one billion U.S. dollars compared to traditional regulatory alternatives, and more recently the E.U.’s 2005 carbon dioxide Emissions Trading Scheme . Interest in WQT as a means to achieve water quality standards in the U.S. was provoked in part by the success of other trading programs, but also by a series of citizen lawsuits in the 1980s pressing the U.S. EPA to clean impaired waters . Unfortunately, agricultural non-point sources pose significant technical challenges in water quality trading programs for several reasons. First, the entry of non-point source polluters into the trading market is commonly voluntary, not enforced.