USDA's Hiring Dutch Boys With Thumbs

IIRC there was a children's story about a leak in a dike in Holland, and the brave little Dutch boy who stuck his thumb in the hole to plug the leak and save the day.  That's what USDA needs now.

GovExec reports USDA is using the Reemployed Annuitants authority to offer work (part-time) to retired ERS and NIFA employees.  Apparently it will cover not only existing retirees, but those who accepted the $25K10K buyout as part of the move of the agencies to Kansas City.  Seems they're desperate to plug the gaps in expertise resulting from the move.

USDA and Its Scientists

I've lost track of what I've posted about the relocation of ERS and NIFA to Kansas City.

It seems, from outside, to have been rather mismanaged.  The latest problem is the reduction from $25K to $10 in the buyout payments to those who refused to move.  (To be fair, the initial letter said the "maximum" payment would be $25K, but if a good bureaucrat had been involved in the drafting she would have questioned why the adjective, leading to a discussion of the fact that the pot of available money for buyouts was limited, and subsequently a rewording of the letter.

The opponents of the relocation have played their card well, wrapping the ERS and NIFA in the robes of "scientists".  The story is a bit more complicated than that--ERS is social science and NIFA funds research.

Ex-Politician Speaks Truth? Mulvaney on Moves

Mulvaney is Trump's acting everything, currently chief of staff.  This Govexec article reports on his recent speech in his native South Carolina, discussing USDA's move of ERS and NIFA offices from DC to Kansas City.

“Now, it’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker,” he said. “I know that because a lot of them work for me. And I’ve tried. And you can’t do it. But simply saying to the people, you know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the Beltway, outside this liberal haven and move you out into the real part of the country, and they quit. What a wonderful way to streamline government and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time.” 

Meanwhile OIG says provisions in the appropriations law prevents USDA from spending money on the move.  USDA says the provisions are unconstitutional:

In an OGC opinion prepared to respond to the IG’s draft conclusions, USDA says the “committee approval” provisions in the omnibus act are unconstitutional.
“The department states that Supreme Court, Office of Legal Counsel, and Government Accountability Office (GAO) precedents support their position,” the IG said. “The department provided advance notification to the committees before obligating funds for office reorganizations and relocations to the extent they involve a reprogramming or the use of the identified interagency agreement or transfer authorities. The department states that it is not required to obtain committee approval of such actions.”


But the inspector general said that position conflicts with previous positions taken in litigation by USDA. “The department needs to communicate, in writing, this change of interpretation to USDA leaders at the sub-cabinet and agency levels.”

ERS on US Agriculture: the Case of Hay

Farm Policy has a post summarizing a recent ERS report on the characteristics of farms in the US.

There's the points which are not new to me: when considering total value of production the dominance of the family farm, except in the case of very high value crops and beef, especially what are known as "large-scale family farms", which are the modal and median farms in the ERS categorization  Except, except in the case of hay and poultry.

Because poultry is, I think, dominated by contract farming I won't comment on it.  But hay is interesting--I suspect in part it representatives the last gasp of small scale dairy farms, where the production pattern is harvesting hay in the summer and feeding the hay in the winter.  But dairy itself is dominated by the large-scale family farms, likely meaning their cows don't graze the pastures, but have their feed delivered to them in their barns/feed lots.   In that context a small farm can find a niche space--growing and harvesting hay is not that difficult to combine with getting income from elsewhere, like social security or off-farm employment.  And the the big dairies provide a market.

A Blast at Moving ERS from DC

The Hill publishes an opinion piece blasting USDA on its proposal to move ERS out of DC.

I don't know who would be the first and second ranked agricultural economics research institution in the world, but it says ERS is number three.

I've some sympathy with one argument for the move: finding a place where living costs are lower and a government salary  goes farther.

I remember talking with Keith Townsend, the program specialist in the state of Washington, about moving to DC and his counter arguments. That was before locality-based salaries came into effect, but I strongly suspect the adjustments probably feel inadequate to many.

USDA Reorganization--ERS

Government Executive has a good piece on the USDA announcement of a reorganization of the economics people, including a move of ERS outside of the DC area.  I've no expertise in this area, but when has that kept me from commenting?

My first reaction to the move was negative, but then I read the rationale in the piece: the difficulty of getting professionals to move to the high-cost DC area.  That makes sense to me.  I remember the problems we had back in the 80's and 90's in getting people to move--one reason why we ended up hiring program technicians from county offices under SCOAP.  Single women had less difficulty moving than did married men with families, the usual targets for hiring as program people in DC.

My third reaction is triggered by the discussion in the piece.  Distance in bureaucracy is critical.  The problem in attracting professionals to DC is not limited to ERS or USDA.  Apparently the locality pay differential doesn't work at these levels, and also USDA hasn't gotten the authority to offer bigger money for such positions (like doctors in HHS/NIH or attorneys elsewhere get).

Are Farmers Wealthy Parasites?

That's a question raised by this excerpt from a farmgate post on ERS research:

" For more than 10 years the median income for farm household has surpassed that of the average US family by a margin of anywhere from 3 to 21%, and farm family wealth has been 4 to 5 times [emphasis added] that of the average US family...."

Of course, my mother would add that farmers are land rich and money poor.  And the rest of the story/sentence is:

"but economists say farm family budgets are either very solid or very weak and 5 to 8% of farm families have negative household income each year, and there is a larger percentage of farm families in the poverty level than the percentage of non farm households. In brief, farm income is highly variable from year to year."

So, the plight of the families at the bottom end of the range is a justification for programs which help the whole range?  Are the fulminations of the greens true--that the programs favor the big farmers and not the people who are really in need?  Maybe, but consider this:

"USDA’s examination of farm households discovered that large farms, which were defined as $100,000+ in sales, had higher instances of both wealth and poverty than farms as a whole and all US families as a whole. Those farms make up only 16% of all farms, but income poverty is 22% among persons living in those households, compared to 14% for all farm families and 12% for all US families.

That counters the stereotype of small poor farms.  All in all, data to support and challenge all preconceptions.

Organic REport

This is from the summary of an ERS report on organic farming:

The number and variety of consumers of organic products has increased, but those consumers are not easily categorized. The one factor that consistently influences the likelihood of a consumer’s buying organic products is education. Consumers of all ages, races, and ethic groups who have higher levels of education are more likely to buy organic products than less-educated consumers. Other factors, such as race, presence of children in the household, and income do not have a consistent effect on the likelihood of buying organic products.

Retailing of organic products has evolved since 1997, when natural foods stores were the main outlet. By the late 2000s, nearly half of all organic foods were purchased in conventional supermarkets, club stores, and big-box stores. Although produce remained the top-selling organic category, sales of dairy products, beverages, packaged and prepared foods, and breads and grains had reached significant levels.

On the wholesale level, by 2007, the share of organic handlers’ sales to conventional retailers and club stores increased, while the share of sales to wholesalers and other distributors declined. Organic handlers are firms that buy organic products from farmers and other suppliers, process or repack the goods, and then sell the value-added resulting products to retailers, institutions, and other handlers, or directly to consumers or restaurants. Because of the competition for organic ingredients, handlers in recent years have relied on contracts versus spot-market sales to procure needed inputs.

While organic farmland acreage increased from 1997 to 2005, growth was not swift enough to prevent periodic shortages of some organic products. Certified organic farmland designated for raising grains and soybeans grew slowly, placing pressure on sectors such as dairy and meat sectors that depend on these inputs. The 2002 USDA National Organic Standards regulation in most cases requires farmland to be dedicated to organic farming for 3 years before that
farm’s products can be labeled as organic. This creates a lag between increases in retail demand and supply from farms.

Sen. Proxmire Rises from the Grave

The late Senator from Wisconsin used to mock government science projects by awarding a "golden fleece" award monthly to the most useless expenditure of government money. Some of his mockery was directed at earmarks, some was earned, some was mistaken.

But I thought of him when I read this summary of research from ERS--funded by them but actually conducted by a private firm. I've bolded the bits which struck me.

"This study investigated factors that influence students’ participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). The analysis used recently collected data on a large, nationally representative sample of students certified for free and reduced-price meals during the 2005–06 school year. Results show that, although eligible students are very likely to participate in the programs (i.e. pick up the meal offered that day), eligible elementary school students are more likely to participate than are middle or high school students. Likewise, students who like the taste of the meals are more likely to participate than are students who do not like the taste. In addition, if students now eligible for reduced-price lunches were instead given free lunches, they would participate more than they do now. The same was not strictly the case, however, for breakfast. Finally, the study suggests that analysts should use caution in relying on parents’ reports of a student’s participation to estimate yearly school meal participation. Parental reports of the previous day’s or previous week’s participation tend to overstate participation, which results in higher reported annual participation rates than is true according to administrative data."

I hasten to add I've not read the report and there's value in quantifying the obvious--we know parents don't know what their kids do, but what's the extent of their ignorance?