THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AGRICULTURE,GROUND WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT,AND AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH1

ABSTRACT: The growing problem of nonpoint source ground water contamination from agricultural chemicals is conceptualized as an historical outcome of the production environment of capitalist agriculture in the Corn Belt. Chronic overproduction and ground water contamination reveal different aspects of the same technological treadmill. The debate over Iowa's 1987 Ground Water Protection Act symbolizes the contradiction between popular demand for clean water and structural limits on policymaking. Although the Act does provide for expanded research, education, and monitoring, a coalition of commercial farmers, local chemical dealers, and the national chemical industry defeated a tax on pesticide use. Analysis of alternate policy responses - Best Management Practices (BMPs), cross compliance, site-specific regulation of chemical use, and taxation of synthetic chemicals - reveals that all tend to founder on the same structural constraints. Without practical, profitable, low-input technologies that farmers, over time, would choose to adopt, both voluntary and regulatory approaches encounter major political or implementation difficulties. The public agricultural research agenda, therefore, emerges as a central control variable for ground water quality management and a central focus for political struggle.