Outstanding Conservationist--Could Her Child Follow?

Article on the outstanding conservationist in Minnesota. She's been farming 53 years and milks 32 cows. I wonder, though, whether she's a good role model for the future. Could the next generation make their living * on 250 acres of dairy beef/calf operation?

*"living" defined as a modern life, frugal but with many mod cons, and the possibility of college for the kids.

What the article doesn't say is how many years she's been getting up at 4 a.m. to milk those cows and who's handling the milking while she's gadding about in the big city of St. Paul, MN.

A Bureaucrat and SCS

Many of the former county ASCS employees who came to work for me were a bit disdainful of the Soil Conservation Service--I remember one acid remark about SCS employees spending all their time riding around the county in their trucks, leaving the ASCS employee(s) to handle the people who showed up at the office.

But, time mellows even old loyalties, so here's an article on the founding father of SCS, an example of the difference the right person in the right place can make.

FSA's GIS Replacement

Not sure how I feel about this announcement in FCW (Federal computer week):

"The Agriculture Department is seeking information about methods for delivering, disseminating and integrating large geospatial datasets for its Farm Service Agency and other users. USDA is interested in commercial software and/or online mapping interface services that could replace FSA's current systems."

On the one hand, I hope they do better and faster than the System/36 replacement project(s). It's also interesting it's described as strictly FSA--NRCS is not mentioned.

On the other hand, they're pushing centralization. That's an idea which I approve of as a bureaucrat, but resist as a retiree thinking of the small towns of rural America.

As usual, I'm ambivalent.

South Dakota Swampbuster Case

"Swampbuster" is a provision, originating with the 1985 farm bill, which prohibits farmers who get farm program benefits from draining wetlands. That's the over-simplified version. This article describes a case in SD where a big partnership (brothers) receiving big bucks ($2.5 mill in 10 years) is fighting a determination by National Resource Conservation Service. There's enough description to show some of the complexities involved, though it doesn't say when the violation is said to have occurred.

Environmental Quality IMprovement Program Takes a Hit

This piece in the NY Times Week in Review takes after EQIP for helping large livestock producers in dealing with manure.

The questions, then, remain: Why should taxpayers foot the bill for manure lagoons, particularly under the flag of environmental conservation? Why should taxpayers subsidize expansion of livestock farms? And if livestock farms have created environmental problems, shouldn’t the polluters have to pay for the mess that they created, rather than the taxpayers?

Just another example of the falling support for farm programs.

Your NRCS at Work

Washington Post has an article on the problems of working with Mennonite dairy farmers to reduce pollution of waterways. A reminder of the variety and complexity of the nation.

NRCS and FSA II

Both sides are going at it, trying to get support for their position on who should hand out the checks for conservation programs. The National Association of Conservation Districts has an "Action Alert" while the National Association of State and County Office Employees has provided a letter to be sent to representatives and is talking to the press. (I have to say, if Congress used the respective web sites to judge which group was more efficient, I'm afraid NACD would win. A Google on "NASCOE" produces this as the first entry: "AllWebCo Website Templates and Pre-Made Websites. Very reasonable prices and a complete setup." (Searching on the full term produces the right result, but it's still incompatible with the Firefox browser.))

NASCOE claims that they have statistics on their side--the percentage of total money spent on administration is much less for FSA programs than NRCS. That factoid sends me off musing about charitable organizations, where oversight groups tend to focus on that percentage. It's not a great measure, but it's about all we have.

The showdown comes this afternoon (and Wed and Thurs).

NRCS vs FSA II--Moving the Money

Found the provision of the House farm bill, on page 101 of the conservation title.

101
H.L.C.
1 (c) ADMINISTRATION OF CONSERVATION PROGRAMS
2 BY FARM SERVICE AGENCY.—Section 1244 of the Food
3 Security Act of 1985 (16 U.S.C. 3844) is amended by in4
serting after subsection (f), as added by subsection (b),
5 the following new subsection:
6 ‘‘(g) ROLE OF FARM SERVICE AGENCY.—
7 ‘‘(1) ROLE.—The Secretary shall assign to the
8 Farm Service Agency the administrative duties asso9
ciated with delivering all programs under this title,
10 including administrative responsibility for making
11 such benefits available to participants in such pro12
grams.

I've left out the key bit--the next paragraph allows the Secretary to move the money to support this. That is the motivating bit--jobs and money.

I'm hardly an unbiased observer, but returning responsibility to FSA makes sense to me. In the ideal world, something like former Secretary Glickman's proposal to merge the administrative tails of the agencies serving farmers would be adopted. But that was killed late in the last century. As I understand, the question is basically who writes the checks. FSA and its predecessors have always prided themselves on being good check writers; NRCS and its predecessor have always prided themselves on their science and their education work. In 2002 the conservation lobby was strong enough to get NRCS assigned the checkwriting role for these programs. They seem to have had their problems (Harshaw's law--you never do things right the first time). In their defense, it's particularly difficult for them because their IT operations were even more decentralized than FSA's.

Anyhow FSA's lobby, notably its "union" (National Association of State and County Office Employees--NASCOE, but don't try its website using Firefox, use IE), has urged the return of these responsibilities to FSA and apparently has enough support on the Hill to make it into the draft. Here's its position paper.

I fully expect this fight to continue as long as I live, or the separate agencies do.