How To Handle Limitations on Farm Payments

The USDA farm bill proposes changes on payment limitations, including making farmers ineligible if their adjusted gross income (AGI) is $200,000 or more (now $2.5 million). My guess, without doing much research, is that this is just another proposal that won't be enacted. That's the history of changes in payment limitation; lots more get proposed than get enacted.

There are at least two aspects of the proposal, aside from the general opposition to payment limitations, that will play into the prospects:

1. The size of the change, from $2.5 mill to $200 K. The bigger the change, the stronger the opposition from groups that are opposed.
2. The all or nothing aspect.

My suggestion, to USDA, to Congress, would be to consider a progressive payment structure. Assume that FSA has the payee's AGI recorded in its payment system. (The bureaucratic problem is getting the data attached to the payee; once you do that, getting the data into the computer system should not be a big deal.) It then would be easy to program the payment calculation to factor payments according to a progressive rule. For example:

AGI Payment

• < $100,000 100 percent of calculated amount
• <$200,000 80 percent of calculated
• <$500,000 50 percent of calculated
• <$1 mill 25 percent
• >$1 mill 0

Vary the amounts and percentages however you want, put in as many levels as you want.

The advantages of the proposal are:

1. Makes the implementation more gradual
2. Counters the widespread criticism that the bigger the farmer the bigger the payment--makes payments "progressive" in some sense
3. Might make payees less likely to try to evade the limitation. (The incentive to evade is variable, like boiling a frog slowly.)

Based on my experience with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings factoring of payments in 1986, it would be imperative to think through the relationship of factored payment dollars to the payment limitation.

Why Bureaucracies (Plural)?

One reason is good old human nature, as in schadenfreude.
Although I'm almost perfect, I'm not above feeling a bit of satisfaction when I read a GAO Report on the problems NRCS has had implementing payment programs. [Background: The predecessor agencies of NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) and FSA (Farm Service Agency) fought for many years over which one would handle payments for conservation programs. FSA won for about 30 years, but lost them around the time I was retiring. ]

GAO says:

"Despite legislative and regulatory provisions, it is still possible for producers to receive duplicate payments through CSP and other USDA conservation programs because of similarities in the conservation actions financed through these programs. However, NRCS did not have a comprehensive process to preclude or identify such duplicate payments. In reviewing NRCS's payments data, GAO found a number of examples of duplicate payments.

NRCS state officials agreed that the payments made in these four cases were duplicates. They stated that they were unaware that such duplication was occurring and that they would inform their district offices of it. NRCS headquarters officials stated that the agency lacks a comprehensive process to either preclude duplicate payments or identify them after a contract has been awarded. Instead, these officials said, as a guard against potential duplication, NRCS relies on the institutional knowledge of its field staff and the records they keep."

That's laughable, but what one should expect when a bureaucracy has to do something (i.e., make payments) it hasn't done before. It reinforces the position of NASCOE (the FSA employee lobbying organization) that there should only be one administrative organization for offices serving farmers. That's what I worked on in the early 90's, then lost enthusiasm, partly because the Department didn't understand itself, partly because NRCS had too much lobbying clout to allow it to pass, and finally because the end result was going to be reducing the number of jobs in rural areas. I've still not squared that circle.

The End of Tradition--No Spit Shines

The NYTimes today reports on a new Army uniform. The focus mostly is on the use of Velcro to attach name tags and insignia and the end of dry cleaning. (Seamstresses and dry cleaners did good business around Army bases.) But buried in the piece is the move from spit-shined leather boots to "tan 'desert boots' made of suede and synthetic materials."

So no more spit shines in the Army. Even 40 years ago, the leather boots were challenged. Once you got to Vietnam, you very quickly learned that the "in" thing were the jungle combat boots, which had leather toes and heels, but canvas uppers--the idea being if you were in the boonies and wading through water you wanted the water to drain from the boots, not stay inside and help you get jungle rot. They were also significantly lighter. The boots were scarce, first being issued to the advisers and Special Forces, then to combat troops. But naturally they popped up on the black market and REMF's like me got their hands on them.

But no more spit shines? If I remember, the initial hurdles for this recruit were making the bed and shining the shoes. The bed I mastered after a few tries. (I hadn't formulated Harshaw's law then--I'm a slow learner.) The shoes were more of a challenge. Never did get a great shine.

Virginia Postrel has an article on beauty in the Atlantic I skimmed--quotes researchers saying that female beauty ties to fertility and vigor (i.e., hormonal levels, etc.). So too spit shined shoes were a signal to the training sergeants of one's capacity and/or willingness to adapt to the Army's ways. It's a loss.

Michael Pollan from Others

John Phipps comments on Pollan's new piece here . Nice to know there's another partial skeptic in the world.

Marjorie Harshaw Robie

I welcome my cousin Marjorie to the world of blogging. (See the link I've added, though you'd best wait a couple weeks to give her time to post something.) Remember Harshaw's Rule.

The "Surge" and New Orleans

New Orleans was damaged by the storm surge, but its post-Katrina fate says something about the possible fate of Baghdad after the Bush/Petraeus surge. Today's NYTimes has an article on murder in the city. One aspect is the distrust shown the police by the residents of the areas most affected by the violence. The police can't effectively solve murders and gang violence because they can't get information from the citizens, the justice system can't convict and jail offenders because the police don't build good cases for them, and the citizens can't trust the police or justice system because the violent are amongst them, laughing at "90-day murders" (i.e, a killing that you spent 90 days in jail for).

Assume the surge in Baghdad has an effect. It's possible. Malcolm Gladwell has familiarized us with the concept of "tipping point". Presumably there's some level of force that is sufficient to restore order in the city. (I remember the military--National Guardsmen? or regulars?-- on the streets of DC after the 1968 riots.) Gen. Casey thinks 2 brigades of US troops plus the Iraqi forces could do the job, Sen. McCain were thinking 50,000 more US plus Iraqis were needed, someone else might say 100,000. No one knows.

But assume Petraeus and Bush are right and 5 brigades shut down the bombings and the sectarian killings. Suppose for the sake of argument that no one dies in Baghdad from any sort of violence for a month. (I know, that's ridiculous, but so?) Then what? Do you slowly reduce the number of troops until you reach a point of low, but acceptable, violence? What is that point? How much violence have the Israelis been willing to live with? How about the residents of the United Kingdom? Or Spain?

I know the Bush/Petraeus strategy is for economic development to happen, but that doesn't cure things fast.

Can we really do better in Baghdad than in New Orleans?

Art Monk, Bureaucrat

Art Monk, the great receiver for Joe Gibbs and his Washington Redskins (first incarnation), missed out again on being voted to the Football Hall of Fame. His contemporary and rival, Michael Irwin, of the Dallas Cowboys, made it.

Irwin was the more flamboyant figure, making more dramatic catches, being more vocal in the media, having a more colorful (to use a euphemism) private life, than Monk. It's just a little unfair to Irwin to call him a predecessor of T.O., unfair in that he was able to stay on one team for his career. Monk lasted longer, made more catches (had the record at one point), kept out of the media, and did the little things. Irwin fit the image of the Cowboys, swaggering as "America's team", while Monk fit the earnest sobersided Joe Gibbs style of football.

So, naturally, the squeaky wheel got the grease. Such is the fate of bureaucrats*.

* yes, a football player is a bureaucrat. He follows the rules of the game and the playbook of the team to deal with others, i.e., the opposing players and the officials.

Wash Your Hands

My momma said: "wash your hands". This article from the LA Times repeats the fact that health care professionals don't listen to their mommas.

By the way, it's likely everyone on earth is here because someone failed to wash their hands in the past.

Pollan's Back, and I Disagree As Usual

For some reason I climb the wall reading Michael Pollan. In his most recent piece,,
entitled "Unhappy Meals", he attacks "nutritionism" and preaches: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I don't have a problem with the bottom line content, but I do with the argument. It seems to me to combine unhealthy amounts of vaguely left-wing paranoia over exploitation of consumers and romantic nonsense that carries over from the 1960's granola days. (I say this as someone who claims to be a populist and whose mother was fervently interested in organic food in 1950, probably before Mr. Pollan was born.)

Quotes from the article in italics, my comments follow:

"Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket." Nice snide innuendo there, making a distinction between "food" (good, wholesome) and "edible foodlike substances" foisted on us poor consumers by the evil nutritionists and the food industry, abetted by journalists.

"you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat." Again, the distinction. Of course, Mr. Pollan is a fellow-traveler of the organic interests (I can use innuendo and smears too, :-) ) which is notable for its health claims.

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. For some reason, consumers and their needs play no role in the history of the last 30 years or so. I'd suggest that reading Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid"
would be a fine corrective. For one thing, he uses a Life picture from 1951 as front and endpapers. It shows a family of four and all the food they would eat in a year. What's striking is that it's "food", not "meals" (which is really what Pollan is dealing with). The mother spent hours in the kitchen converting the food into meals. Bryson cites a figure of 5+ hours a day, which seems a bit excessive. (On the other hand, my wife spends significant time cooking our evening meal.

The big changes in American cuisine over the last 55 years have been the change from eating at home to eating out (that's now almost half of every food dollar), from cooking raw food to eating prepared meals and processed foods (i.e., microwavable foods) and in the variety of the cuisine.
The first two are correlated with women's lib and the higher proportion of women in the workplace. All three are correlated with our greater wealth. And, despite the obesity and diabetics increases, they are also correlated with our better health and longer life. None of them were foisted on us by nutritionists, the food industry, or even journalists.

I could go on--Pollan romanticizes the past: one of my great great grandmothers would have recognized potatoes, oatmeal, and milk as foods, and not much else while another would have focused on cabbage and turnips; we eat 4 times the amount of green leaves now as we did in 1950 (iceberg lettuce, anyone?). But, I'll save my energy for the next Pollan text in the Times. Leftist thinkers can and should do better.

Guesses on Farm Bill

The conventional wisdom seems to be coalescing around the idea that the next farm bill will see costs decreased because ethanol will push corn (and therefore soybean and cotton) prices higher and keep them high and there will be some sort of linkage between conservation programs and production of cellulosic ethanol (i.e., using switchgrass or whatever instead of grain). See this discussion from South Dakota and this post from John Phipps.

I'm a little skeptical about the reality behind the premise, that is, that we could have 5 straight years of great crop prices. I remember the push on synfuels under Carter in the 1970's, which was dismantled in the 1980's under Reagan as oil prices went south. I also remember enthusiasms for alternate crops that got legislated into law in past years (jojoba was one I remember and I'm too lazy to check the others). The free market does work, at least in the world of commodities such as oil and grain, resulting in volatility and ups and downs. Thus it has ever been since the first farmer sold his first surplus.

On the other hand, the weather's been reasonably good the past few years. Get a drought or a flood and that will put some adrenaline in the market.