Why Do Farmers Like To Swim?

The title's a smartass way of leading into a subject raised by the recent discussion of the Post's article on dairy. What's the subject--why dairy farmers and others like pools or cartels.

Imagine you're a dairy farmer. Twice a day [warning--this is based on information 50 years old] you milk your cows and put the milk in the cooled storage tank. You know the milk truck has to come to empty the tank, because the cows have to be milked or they'll go dry and there's no way to use the milk on your farm. You can't store it. You have to sell it or dump it.

Who do you sell it to--your local processor. Maybe you have a choice; maybe there are two processors within driving range. But even if you have a choice, you can't auction your milk off daily or weekly to the highest bidder. The processor will take all the milk you produce, knowing that cows produce soon more after calving than 6 months after, that quantity can vary by time of year (though I suspect less so now than 50 years ago when most cows still calved in the spring). So you choose your processor once and change very seldom.

The bottom line is that you've no leverage, no market power. Your processor doesn't have much more. If there's more milk than can be sold as fluid, it can be processed into butter, cheese, or powdered milk. That permits a temporary surplus to be stored.

So what do you do if you've no market power--you combine. It's a time-honored American tradition, whether it's a farmers cooperative, a labor union, an oil trust, or a steel cartel. You get yourselves together to pursue your common self-interest. That's why dairy farmers swim.

Surge or Not?

The Washington Post reports that some in the White House want to "surge" the troops; the military apparently is reluctant. If I understand, "surging" essentially means robbing Peter to pay Paul. You keep some troops on longer, you accelerate the deployment of other troops, and maybe you change some rules so you can use the Reserve/National Guard more often. Bottom line is you use assets today that you won't have tomorrow. So that gives some political logic to the WH position. Do the "surge". If it works, great. If not, even the right wing will say we've done all we could. That's cold logic for those who might be killed in the surge, but cold logic is the logic of statecraft.

NY Times and Organic Agriculture

Two articles in the Times today seem to me to be relevant to the organic agriculture debate: one describes the effects of iodine deficiency; the other describes how vodka sellers are getting $60 per bottle by packaging it in bottles that look like perfume. How do they relate:

• there's a fervency of belief in organic agriculture that can lead to mythology. The iodine article reminds us that just because we eat foods from nature doesn't mean that they're sufficient for our nutrition. We need to add iodine to our diet in most parts of the world because the food doesn't contain enough for mental development.
• some of the marketing of organic food (full disclosure, I own stock in Whole Foods) is the developing of tastes that have nothing to do with good nutrition or even with good taste. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Vodka is just another example of it. Farmers in developed countries should push this all they can, as the vineyards have. Most of us could care less about wine tasting, but we spend more money for the higher priced bottle for special occasions anyway.
  

Lack of Bureaucratic Imagination?

The Post today reported that a judge wants FEMA to give explanations of rejections:

"Leon [the judge] ruled that FEMA mishandled the transition from a short-term housing program to a longer-term program this spring and summer. Instead of explaining why funding was being cut, FEMA provided only computer-generated and sometimes conflicting program codes, Leon said.

The judge ordered FEMA to explain those decisions so thousands of evacuees can understand the reasoning and decide whether to appeal.

"I'm not looking for a doctoral dissertation," Leon said. "I'm looking for a couple of paragraphs in plain English."

Sitcov [FEMA's attorney] said FEMA's eight-year-old computer system is set up only to produce program codes. "

I'm jumping to conclusions, but it sounds fishy to me. At worst, any word processing package can generate canned letters--you simply write a paragraph(s) for each code, then enter name and address and codes and you get the letter. Even better, possibly the program can create a file of this information. At any rate, it sounds like FEMA is more interested in defending their turf against judicial intrusion than in working out a solution to the problem.

(In the interests of fair play, I should note that the software program was designed in the Clinton administration. Even 8 years ago a good system designer should have provided for letters of explanation from the system.)

How It All Plays at the Local Level

I've blogged on the "erroneous payments" issue before. Two pieces from local papers show how the effort to fix the defects works out at the local level.

From the Hillsboro Free Press.

From the Murray County News.

Women and Introverts

Fake out title. Two interesting links, one to a piece on "Networking for Introverts". Like many advice pieces I find the contents logical and worthy, but getting the resolve to do is the problem.

The other is to a Christopher Hitchens piece in Vanity Fair on why women aren't as funny as men. Amusing.

Put Up Walls Against the Dutch

I was commenting at volokh.com about the Post dairy article and did a Google seach on "Dutch dairy farmers". It is interesting--apparently Dutch dairymen have emigrated to a number of different states--apparently there's more freedom and cheaper land in the U.S. Yet British dairymen were envying the Dutch because they have more ownership of the whole milk chain (i.e., production, processing, distribution, sales).

I wonder whether they may not be more successful than American dairy farmers simply because they have a fresh start--a son (or daughter) taking over an existing dairy farm is bound by all sorts of tangible and intangible things and finds it harder to change and innovate.

Dairy Woes

Morgan, Cohen, and Gaul (almost sounds like an FDR speech) have an article in Sunday's Post on the dairy program, focusing on the "crushing" of an independent operator. If I understand, Mr. Hettinga started as a dairyman, expanded into processing, and eventually started selling his milk through Costco at $.20 per gallon below the price elsewhere. The story gets complicated very quickly. (Confession: though I grew up on a dairy farm and went to work for USDA, I never really bothered to understand how the program works. But here goes: in the beginning all the dairies in an area (i.e., Wisconsin, New England, etc.) were in a "pool" and everyone in the pool got the same price. The government, in the form of Commodity Credit Corporation, bought butter and cheese when milk was in surplus in order to maintain the price. In the last 25 years, particularly in the 2002 farm bill, there have been changes and additions to the program. There's also been a 75 percent loss of dairies.)

So two big issues are who is in the "pool" and whether production can flow from one pool to another. Hettinga was outside the pool, because he was both a producer and a processor. Long story short, through complex maneuvering on the Hill, he got forced into the pool. Such maneuvering is an old story--Nixon got dairy cash and Hillary and Leahy worried about milk pools, etc.

I can't cry any tears for someone with a private plane and his own lobbyist and Congressman. I'm more sympathetic for the 30 cow dairyman who is no longer operational. The problem is, dairies in the West are more efficient than in New York and big dairies with confined feeding are more efficient than small dairies with pasture. So you can't fight Progress.

An Accomplishment of the Republican Majority (1995-2006)

I was googling on dairy and Watergate and hit this article in Reason .

I can't resist quoting the last paragraph:

"Dairy price supports will be phased out by 2000, thanks to the 1996 farm bill. But throwing programs that were ill-conceived and illegitimate to begin with out of the federal realm and into regionalized cartels is no improvement. As states and localities step forward to shoulder formerly federal burdens, they need to ask not just who should manage a given program but whether it should exist at all. For now, regional cartels seem prepared to make sure that famous milk moustache continues to hide the sly grin of agribusiness as it milks the public."

Of course, they were prematurely optimistic about the end of price supports. Indeed, the Republicans (and Democrats) in the 2002 Farm Bill seem to have added programs. In the old days (tell it, grandpa) FSA/ASCS had little direct contact with dairy farmers, except for cost-sharing for liming or farm ponds under ACP. The dairy program operated through the processors, not directly with farmers. That's changed.

Lame Excuses and Contracting Out

The Times has an article today (Post had one yesterday) on the Coast Guard's ill-fated Deepwater program for getting a new fleet of ship and planes. One thing I learned in the 1970's when I was programming (in COBOL). The computer does not hiccup. It may be frustrating, but when you're writing and testing a program, it's not the computer's fault when it doesn't work, it's yours. An excerpt:

"In September 2004, more serious flaws in the boat conversion program became obvious after the first one, the Matagorda, was launched. As it traveled in relatively heavy seas from Key West to Miami, large cracks appeared in the hull and deck.

Giant steel straps that looked like Band-Aids were affixed to the side of the boats, and the vessels were barred from venturing out in rough water. But cracks and bulges continued to scar the Matagorda and other converted ships, followed by a series of mechanical problems.

Bollinger, it turned out, had overestimated how much stress the modified boats could handle, a miscalculation it cannot fully explain. “The computer broke for some reason,” said T. R. Hamlin, a senior Bollinger manager. “Whether it was a power surge or something, who knows?” The cursory oversight by the Coast Guard meant the mistake was not caught in time."

That excuse is worse than: "my dog ate my homework". Any professional organization would have its power supply regulated.

Overall, the article is cautionary. If memory serves, the former deputy of Homeland Security was the admiral who used to head the Coast Guard. He got good ink from the media, which seems now to have been undeserved. To make a long story short: the Coast Guard lacks sex appeal so it's had trouble getting money to maintain and replace its equipment. So someone (the admiral? or an eager staffer) came up with an idea: package all its needs in one package that big contractors would bid on, spreading the work around to locations that would pull in enough members of Congress to get approval for the appropriations. It worked, except the contractors (a partnership of Lockheed and Northrup (and I'd cynically believe that the partnership in itself contributed to problems)) contracted out much of the work (i.e., to Bollinger) and the Coast Guard trusted its contractors. They forgot Reagan's advice about verifying.