Cotton versus Grapes, NYTimes Farm Subsidy

Michael Egan has an interesting article including this:

"most other farmers here [California--Central Valley] in the nation's leading agriculture state who grow fruits, nuts and vegetables - nearly half of all American crops - generally get little or nothing from the government, because they have been viewed as self-sustaining.

But growers of wheat, corn, cotton, rice, soybeans - the big commodity crops in the world market - received the bulk of more than $130 billion given to farmers in the last nine years, a record. The rationale for the payments has been to keep domestic agriculture, or at least one segment of it, stable and competitive."

It's a good article, comparing cotton and grape producers, and pointing out the possibility that, if subsidies were ended, land now devoted to cotton might be used for other crops.

But, there's always a but. Historically (i.e., New Deal) crops subject to the farm programs were those with large acreages, broadly distributed (hence able to attract broad political support) and storable. Grains and fibers, tobacco, peanuts are all storable. Fruits and vegetables are not. The basic economics of agriculture (which include the inelastic demand curve and the large number of farmers compared to the small number of buyers, which makes prices volatile and leads in a free market to surpluses) work particularly when the commodity is storable. A surplus one year gets stored, which means prices are likely to be lower next year, which means that farmers will expand their production to get the same return, and the expanded production further increase the storage. Fruits and vegetables are not stable, just look at the price of grapefruit last fall after the hurricanes. Some of their economics are the same as for the staple crops (inelastic demand, price taking instead of price making) but it depends on the crop--annuals versus perennials in particular. The New Deal adopted different measures for different crops, Section 32 support for potatoes, marketing agreements for many fruits, etc.

The threat of the cotton producer to invade the fruit and vegetable market is half real. The fine print of the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996, which supposedly freed grain and cotton producers to produce anything, included a provision to protect fruit and vegetable growers. So the growers fear the threat. It's only half real because land, equipment, markets and expertise aren't fully interchangeable.

As for the subsidies that grape growers don't get, it all depends on the meaning of the word "subsidy". If it means a government check, that's one thing. Although I remember our making disaster payments to raisin growers in the mid 80's. (If if rains on grapes drying in the sun, is that a natural disaster? Bureaucrats worry about such things.) Grape growers do profit from "indirect subsidies", such as Federally subsidized crop insurance, and research on grape varieties and diseases (592 hits on the Agricultural Research Service site.) Typically the NYTimes, particularly its editorial page, includes indirect subsidies when they attack world spending on agriculture.

African -American Museum on Mall--Proposal

President Bush backed an African-American museum on the mall last week. Four sites are being considered--"The two possibilities on the Mall are the Smithsonian's aging Arts and Industries Building, on the south side of the Mall, just west of the Hirshhorn Museum, and an open block at 14th and Constitution, 250 yards northeast of the Washington Monument.

"The president's view does carry some weight, but everyone has to realize the realities of building on the Mall. The Arts and Industries Building would not be a signature building. Some people want a statement. The 14th and Constitution Avenue site might be controversial because of its proximity to the Washington Monument grounds," " said Sheila Burke, Smithsonian official quoted in the Post piece.

I've a modest proposal--take over the USDA Administration Building at the corner of 14th and Independence. The location is the best of any, being higher than the 14th and Constitution. I'm no architectural critic, but the Administration building is IMHO more impressive than the Arts and Industries building. Agriculture is the only department to have offices between Constitution and Independence. It would have a symbolic message as well, given both the historic connection of agriculture and blacks and more specifically the extensive litigation between black farmers and USDA. We could view it as symbolic reparations. As for any problems with USDA, the department is currently renovating the South Building on the south side of Independence, so plans could be changed to provide suitable space for the Secretary. (The northwest corner of the 6th floor has a great view of the White House and Mall, so the Secretary would still have prime real estate.)

Second Thoughts about Working the Dark Side

Right after 9/11, Vice President Cheney talked about having to "work the dark side", to collaborate with unsavory characters in order to combat Al Qaeda. Given the temper of the times, he had no critics that were heard. We Americans were all in the heat of revenge, ready to commit to anything.

Today's New York Times carries an article suggesting that the CIA now feels a lack of support for long term retention of detainees and for interrogation practices that may border on torture.

This is a classic case of how bureaucracies work, which is how humans work: A flush of emotion and the politicians create a new initiative. (Actually, in this case, the CIA may have reverted back to the derringdo days of William Casey or Allen Dulles.) The cautions that may have been offered by bureaucrats and lawyers in the CIA who remembered the pain of past Congressional investigations were overriden. Compare this to the flush of a new love, which may override the cautions of conscience or counselors.

But as time goes by, the people involved in the effort are subject to other influences. Practical concerns that may have been ignored initially (what do you do with a terrorist after you've gotten all his information?) come to the fore, values that were forgotten and self-images that are precious (Americans are humane, not torturers, we give to tsunami victims, we don't waterboard) revive. The media that once egged on the initiative (consider what would have happened if our Vice President on September 20, 2001 had said it's more important to follow the rule of law than to get bin Laden) now find stories in the faults of the initiative. Compare this to the remorse suffered by someone who couldn't cope with the results of the initial decision.

Bureaucrats are sometimes the voice of reason, but they're sometimes the dead hand of the past.

The Sieve of Love

Three interesting articles on love Sunday and Monday, all of which touch on the fact that people are marrying later and later.

1 Here in the Post magazine a Washington Post editor describes the "Rules of Engagement" imposed in the very businesslike marriage counseling sessions in the suburban church she and her fiance belong to. Very realistic, very strict (almost like Bob Jones University rules for dating) and very different from the 1 day session my wife and I had in the Catholic Church 20+ years ago. The church appears to be one of the growing nondenominational evangelical churches that seem so common these days.

2 Here in the NY Times magazine is an article on three different modern matchmakers, two doing it for money. All seem to be working in the professional classes, professors, lawyers, stockbrokers and such. (One charges $20K for her services.!) They seem to function as screeners, winnowing out the unsuitable, nudging along the process, convincing people to be realistic and not unrealistically choosy.

3 Finally, William Raspberry, a columnist I like very much, in today's Post discusses the decline of romance on the Duke campus, where he's teaching. Dating is out, "hooking up" is in. I thought the key was in this quote: "Several young women said -- sadly, I thought -- that they don't really expect to find their future husbands in such encounters [hooking up]. They see it, they told me, as a college thing, a phase. Grad school is soon enough to start taking relationships seriously."

I think that's the key, with the emphasis on degrees and success, people don't plan to find their spouse in college, but after college. That means they have the world to choose from, but narrowing down the choices is hard, there's no convenient way to sieve the grain from the chaff. (See the Paradox of Choice, a book I mean to read, for discussion of problems resulting from having too many choices.) Some may do it by joining churches, others may invest in dating services, or if they have lots of money, a matchmaker.

A Question of Type

To a bureaucrat, Richard Clarke's Jan. 25, 2001 Memo to Condi: is interesting on a couple of points.

First is evidence of scrambling to get the ear of the new administration, using any opening available. That's standard. It fits one picture of Clarke, as someone sharp, with sharp elbows, who pushes his position and himself. It's not clear from the press reports, nor from the fast read I gave his book, whether he's the stereotypical staff person, skilled in holding meetings and coordination, or someone who can get something done. (Note my biases--I view myself as the latter, not the former, though I held a hell of a lot of coordination meetings. The problem with coordination is that you end up dealing with human inertia, which leads to the second point.)


Second is that the memo is monospaced type, not proportional space. This is an obsession of mine. The tipoff that Rathergate's documents were forged was the fact that they were proportional spaced, rather than the monospacing typical of typewriters and most early word processors. It took the laser printer to make proportional spacing really feasible. So it's been 15 years or so--why is Clarke still using monospacing? (Proportional spacing not only looks better, it's more efficient, readers comprehend text in well designed fonts faster and better.) Answer: inertia. And the lack of competition to trigger a change.

The Burden of the Past

USAID in 1999 was still using all caps and Courier 10 according to this excerpt from their on-line instruction manual:

OFDA Cable Course: "

What are all the fields at the top of the cable? Why are all-caps used when writing a cable?

The cable is composed of two general areas: the 'header' and the 'content' areas. The header contains all the addressing information (for action and information), as well as information about who generated the cable, who authorized the cable to be sent, who was included on the cable's distribution, when and from where it was sent. Because of the relative antiquity of the cabling system, all-caps are used as a convention- the cable processing system is programmed to recognize these characters. For the same reason, cables must be written using Courier 10 font only. The State Department is working on a more updated system of cable generation and transmission, though this is still some time distant."

All caps dates back to the days of the teletype. A Teletype model 33 could just handle all caps, using a 64 character sub set of ASCII. (That was the printer used for the first PC's, back before they were PC's.) Going to lower case doubled your memory requirement. As a result, some think that God spoke in all caps. Courier and Elite were the two popular mono-spaced type faces used on all typewriters before the advent of the IBM Selectric with its golf ball font element. With all the characters on the ball, you could change type faces easily, though they still had to be monospaced. Monospacing was also key to easy OCR (by the mid-60's, we had OCR that worked with special type faces. From the excerpt, it sounds as if State used OCR on their incoming cables. Of course, between 1965 and 1999 there's been 34 years of advance in OCR, so there's no excuse to using Courier 10 these days.

Why does it matter? Tests have proved that typeface design makes a significant difference in reader comprehension and the visual appeal of the printed copy. Maybe if Dean Rusk and McNamara hadn't been forced to read Courier 10, we never would have made the commitments in Vietnam that we did.

Klinkenborg, Revisited

Klinkenborg's column attracted 3 letters. One said diverse agriculture in Iowa needed to develop, one said Iowa needs to focus on getting people to return (as opposed to keeping the young) and one said the problem is bigger than industrial agriculture:

The New York Times > Opinion > Try to Imagine the Iowa of My Dreams (3 Letters): "I left Iowa after high school eight years ago in order to learn from a broader diversity of people and experiences than Iowa could offer. I cherished my Iowa roots, but I needed to see the world."

I suspect the original column and the letters partially explain the big expenditures on farm programs. All of us who left the farm are nostalgic and maybe a bit guilty about the decision. And those who never lived on a farm are still subject to the sentimentality. Interest groups are another part of the explanation.

Washington's Crossing

Amazon.com: Books: Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History)

I recommend this book by David Hackett Fischer. Well written, thoroughly researched, and thought provoking. Essentially covers about a year, the spring of 1776 to spring of 1777, from Washington's loss of New York City, through the battles of Trenton and Princeton, then the "forage war" in New Jersey. It's thorough and balanced. One thing surprising to me was his description of the American emphasis on technology, they used proportionately more artillery for their formations than did the British. I'd been reared on the Green Mountain Boys capturing Fort Ticonderoga, then Henry Knox dragging the cannon from the Fort to Boston in order to drive out the Brits. That gave me the impression that Washington was always short of artillery. Apparently not true. Fischer ties this into the American way of war--an emphasis on avoiding casualties, particularly important for a democracy.

I've also seen arguments that in the 20th century we relied on overwhelming materiel to win, rather than the quality of our soldiers and generals. It ties into the idea that Europeans conquered the Americas by the intimidation of their technology (see Prescott's book on The Conquest of Mexico, a book I read several times growing up). But there's the counter argument that the technology wasn't that great--see Ben Franklin's argument for bows and arrows. There was also a note in the DVD of "Lonesome Dove" saying that the Indian-white wars in Texas were balanced until multiple shot revolvers arrived.

But back to Fischer--he also has an interesting essay on the historiography and iconography of the crossing that in itself is a window into American intellectual history.

Verlyn Klinkenborg and "the pollution of factory farming"

Mr. Klinkenborg writes periodically on the NY Times editorial page, mostly on nature and rural living. I usually enjoy him, as he's a good writer and often elicits my nostalgia for the farm of my youth. But romantic visions can be misleading, and today he went too far for my taste. He goes back to Iowa, where he was born, to talk about the loss of population:

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial Observer: Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota: "The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes or the lack of a body of water larger than Rathbun Lake - an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir sometimes known as 'Iowa's ocean.' It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming."

My problem is with the last sentence. "Industrial agriculture" is pejorative, not descriptive. "Market agriculture" is more neutral, with "mass market agriculture" close to what he wants to attack. Most ordinary Iowans, like most ordinary Americans, have embraced most aspects of the market economy for generations. Indeed, cities began when some farmers had a marketable surplus to sell to city people. Urban dwellers could spend their time on governance, war, justice, art, and writing editorials to be distributed through a network produced by industry, all made possible by efficient agriculture.

Are there problems with the current structure of agriculture? Sure. But we need to recognize agriculture for what it is, the result of the individual decisions of millions of people over the years. Now many people have the disposable income to pay premiums for organic and exotic products (and I hope they all patronize Whole Foods, I've got stock in it), but please don't demonize. The "industrial" farmers today are caught in much the same vice as those 150 years ago: get bigger, get more efficient, or go under. It's the economic logic of mass market agriculture. When the first farmer replaced the digging stick with an ox or horse drawn plow, he was starting down the road to the pollution of factory farming.

EWG || Farm Subsidy Database

EWG || Farm Subsidy Database:
This shows the top ranking recipients of farm subsidies for 2003
"Rank Recipient* Location Total USDA - Subsidies
2003
1 Riceland Foods Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $68,942,419
2 Producers Rice Mill Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $51,400,838
3 Farmers Rice Coop Sacramento, CA 95851 $17,914,254
4 Pilgrim's Pride Corporation Pittsburg, TX 75686 $11,401,045
5 Ducks Unlimited Inc Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 $7,078,200
6 Cargill Turkey Products Harrisonburg, VA 22801 $6,693,286
7 Ute Mountain Tribe Towaoc, CO 81334 $4,035,347
8 Dnrc Trust Land Management - Exem Helena, MT 59620 $3,106,805
9 Attebury Grain Co Amarillo, TX 79105 $2,971,143
10 Bureau Of Indian Affairs Horton, KS 66439 $2,655,353
11 Ute Mountain Ute Farm & Ranch Ent Towaoc, CO 81334 $2,606,189
12 Colorado River Indian Tribes Farm Parker, AZ 85344 $2,479,854
13 Dublin Farms Corcoran, CA 93212 $2,442,748
14 Richmond Farming Altheimer, AR 72004 $2,208,672
15 Dale Bone Farms Partnership Nashville, NC 27856 $2,106,825
16 Tyler Farms Helena, AR 72342 $2,102,799
17 Perthshire Farms Gunnison, MS 38746 $2,101,931
18 Phillips Farms Holly Bluff, MS 39088 $2,065,876
19 Catron Farms Helena, AR 72342 $2,025,697
20 Ak-chin Farms Maricopa, AZ 85239 $2,001,025"

1	Riceland Foods Inc	Stuttgart, AR 72160	$68,942,419
2	Producers Rice Mill Inc	Stuttgart, AR 72160	$51,400,838
3	Farmers Rice Coop	Sacramento, CA 95851	$17,914,254
4	Pilgrim's Pride Corporation	Pittsburg, TX 75686	$11,401,045
5	Ducks Unlimited Inc	Rancho Cordova, CA 95670	$7,078,200
6	Cargill Turkey Products	Harrisonburg, VA 22801	$6,693,286
7	Ute Mountain Tribe	Towaoc, CO 81334	$4,035,347
8	Dnrc Trust Land Management - Exem	Helena, MT 59620	$3,106,805
9	Attebury Grain Co	Amarillo, TX 79105	$2,971,143
10	Bureau Of Indian Affairs	Horton, KS 66439	$2,655,353
11	Ute Mountain Ute Farm & Ranch Ent	Towaoc, CO 81334	$2,606,189
12	Colorado River Indian Tribes Farm	Parker, AZ 85344	$2,479,854
13	Dublin Farms	Corcoran, CA 93212	$2,442,748
14	Richmond Farming	Altheimer, AR 72004	$2,208,672
15	Dale Bone Farms Partnership	Nashville, NC 27856	$2,106,825
16	Tyler Farms	Helena, AR 72342	$2,102,799
17	Perthshire Farms	Gunnison, MS 38746	$2,101,931
18	Phillips Farms	Holly Bluff, MS 39088	$2,065,876
19	Catron Farms	Helena, AR 72342	$2,025,697
20	Ak-chin Farms	Maricopa, AZ 85239	$2,001,025

Some comments by number--
1, 2, and 3 are all rice marketing cooperatives--organizations that market rice on behalf of their members and therefore collect some subsidies on their behalf as well. Thus it's misleading to have them at the top. (I assume for whatever reason USDA hasn't given, or EWG hasn't tried to get, the data necessary to break the money down to the member level.
No. 4 Pilgrim's Pride got 99 percent of its money under Avian Influenza Indemnity program.
No. 5 Ducks Unlimited got 99 percent of its money under the Wetland Reserve program.
No. 6 Cargill got 99 percent of its money under the Avian Influenza Indemnity program.
No. 7 Ute Mountain tribe appears to be an Indian tribe, 99 percent of money under 2003 disaster.
No. 8, DNRC is the state of Montana, which retained a lot of public domain land from the 19th century and leases it out. States and some other public institutions have been exempt from the payment limitation in the past.
No. 9 Attebury Farm got most of its money under disaster--Karnal Bunt program.
No.10, BIA, is receiving subsidies on behalf of Indians who own allotment land (dating back to the days when the white man was breaking up reservations, alloting land to Indians with the hope they'd become "civilized". (Farm subsidies is a small part of the money that BIA didn't keep good records of, hence the lawsuit before Judge Sentelle.
No. 11--might be also Indian, see 7.
No. 12 sounds like a tribal entity to me--where checks are written to the tribe, which is then responsible for distributing the money.
No. 12 is cotton
No. 13 Dublin Farms is cotton and rice. (Note-- if you follow down and find its ownership interests it's owned by 17 corporations (all Irish names).
No. 14 is cotton and rice, again with corporations as owners
No. 15 Dale Boone is a newish corporation with individual owners
No. 16 Tyler fArms is cotton and rice with no ownership shown.
No. 17-20 look to be delta cotton and rice farms.