What Happens When A Farm Program Ends

The report is that Virginia tobacco acreage has increased a bit, after falling after the end of the program. Of course, this means nothing. But just a few Sunday afternoon guesses at what would happen if farm programs were ended:

• land values would fall very drastically
• retired farmers and widows would have to reduce their standard of living
• farms would consolidate, as those farmers with the capital take advantage of the lower land values to rent/buy more land
• there would be some shifts in who produced what. But I'd guess that the pursuit of flexibility since 1996 has lessened the amount of shifting. Some land would go out of cotton and rice to other crops (perhaps marijuana?--I'm only following in the footsteps of those economists who focus on economic rationality)
• if ag land values fall, then there might be more suburban sprawl, or maybe just lower housing prices
• there'd be more volatility in farming, and perhaps more interest in mechanisms to reduce volatility (i.e., vertical integration, contract farming)

Notably, I'm skeptical of Oxfam and others who argue that ending the programs would cause prices to rise, at least, not in the sense of rising and staying on a new plateau. I'd guess the increased volatility would mean temporary price increases, and then decreases.

All of this is wasted electrons, because the farm program isn't going to end any time soon.

House Passes Farm Bill

What does passage mean? (It was interesting, watching Sec. Johanns at the National Press Club on one C-SPan channel while the final votes on the farm bill were happening on the other.)

What does it mean? For a bureaucrat, not too much. Theoretically, when both House and Senate had passed bills, you knew the boundaries of the world you had to plan for. That's because the conferees are supposed to compromise the differences between the two bills and are not supposed to create new provisions. But the reality was a bit different. The new could always happen in conference.

I can't even write that a change in payment limitation provisions is now certain. Likely, I'd say but the cotton and rice states have some powerful voices in the Senate.

Why Most Terrorists Are Incompetent

That's the title of a piece in Slate by Tim Harford. The focus is really on the background of terrorists, which turns out, according to one study, to be well educated, particularly in comparison to the milieu from which they come. The British doctors involved in the last attempts are an example. All of which accentuates the question--why is someone who is smart enough to get an MD incompetent as a terrorist?

My answer is --first, you never get it right the first time ("Harshaw's law"). Second, the brits seem to have been operating without close guidance from more experienced terrorists. (The Palestinian suicide bombers had a whole infrastructure in place. Even though the bomber was a first (and last) timer, the organization was not. Third, terrorism is probably harder than it seems from the outside.

Watching NPR's Honor Roll

The Lehrer News Hour regularly runs its "honor roll" of military members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's hard not to watch, even though I keep remembering the bad weeks of the Vietnam war, when over a hundred would be killed. I can't help but compare the treatment in the two different times.

But...

You look at the screen. I'm struck by the variety in ages. At least in memory Vietnam was a young man's war, the riflemen were young draftees and young recruits. This war affects a broader range of ages. Which is harder to take--the young kid who signed up just out of high school with his or her whole life ahead, or the 35 year old sergeant who probably leaves a widow and children behind?

You look at the places. It's all too easy to romanticize, but the names of the towns and small cities could roll off the tongue. Several years ago CBS News used to run a regular feature, called "Everyone has a story". The reporter/writer would turn his back on a map of the US and toss a dart over his shoulder. Then go to the place closest to where the dart landed. The method meant that he was always visiting rural and small town America, the same areas where many of today's military seem to come from.

And you look at the names. I get the stereotypical liberal satisfaction when I see the diversity of the names--everyone should die for their country. But, perhaps because of my background, I grow sad when I see the Jr's and the III's following the names. Those simple letters speak of a pride in family, which I can understand, and the possibility of an end to a line.

More Bad Publicity on Payment Limitation

John Phipps at Agweb refers to two articles, here and here in the Springfield Journal-Register on cases where big payments were made to people who seem not to be actively engaged in farming. I was tickled by this quote:

"The book, the Bible that has all the rules, is 3 1/2 inches thick," Wold [an attorney] said. "We had a team of lawyers who couldn't understand it and had to hire an expert. There are very few people who understand it. The farmers are supposed to implicitly know all these details."

The truth, or rather the fantasy, is that the farmer isn't supposed to need to know any of the details. The theory is that the farmer does his or her thing, making the business decisions that make sense, and then accurately reports how he or she is operating for the year. The bureaucrat then decides what that translates to under the rules. It's like the tax code--you're not supposed to set up a home office so you can deduct part of your housing costs as building expenses.

Of course this theory is a fantasy--once you attach monetary rewards and penalties to action, people change the way they act. And now those poor souls in the USDA South Building may have to write a new bible, and a few may retire to become consultants on understanding the rules in the bible.

Sen. Roberts on Farm Bill

As chair of the House Ag committee, then-Rep. Pat Roberts (R-KS) pushed the "Freedom to Farm" component of the 1996 farm bill. It was sold as a transition to a free-market agriculture, with transitional fixed payments replacing the "deficiency payments" that were tied to market price levels. (You can tell from my tone, I wasn't impressed back then.)

The 2002 farm bill kept the "fixed" payments and reinstated "counter-cyclical" payments (albeit changing the basis for payment entirely to historical production).

This is what Sen. Roberts says now:

As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I look forward to the upcoming debate over the future of American farm policy. Next year [sic--the good Senator seems to be a bit late in updating his web site], the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (P.L. 107-171) will expire. I voted against the current farm bill when it was approved by Congress in 2002. At the time, I registered my concern that the bill was full of empty promises, would lower assistance to Kansas producers and would not work during times of crop loses and slightly higher prices. Unfortunately, many of my strongest reservations with this legislation have occurred.

Apollo 11 and Graphics

The National Archives puts up a daily document from the files. This one from last week brought back nostalgia, showing the primitive state of graphic equipment (actually probably a mixture of type and cut and paste, that's real "cut and paste", as in using scissors to piece together a flight plan for Apollo 11.

Farm Bill Commentary

Most commentary on the farm bill passing the House divides into two categories: inside baseball and the uninformed. That may be a bit harsh, but it reflects the reality--those who are affected by the provisions, as farmers, bureaucrats, and some commentators, have an incentive to spend the time to understand the subject; those without the incentive have to learn just enough to fake it.

An assemblage:

Iowa professor on payment limitation.

LA Times editorial

Wash Post editorial

Ag web summary
(note the spouse change on pay limit--perhaps what the Iowa prof is hot about--for laymen, the issue is whether a spouse has a separate limitation, i.e., is a separate "person" for payment limitation purposes--an issue of perpetual controversy.)

Paying the Dead

This article in the Post notes that USDA paid farmers' estates, often without checking for compliance with rules, or paid entities like partnerships that included estates as members. Compliance was checked in 60 percent of the cases, but not in 40 percent, meaning some gross mistakes.


Here's the GAO report highlights (why the Post didn't provide it, I'm not clear).

When you dig into the details, and I start remembering, I think I share some blame. In the old days, before computers in county offices, after all payments were issued for a year, we'd run a series of mainframe matches on the deficiency payment files and give county offices data on possible problems. I'm pretty sure at that time that we matched social security numbers against the Social Security Admin's death file (at least, a bell tinkles in the growing obscurity of my memory).

As we automated, we started building more and more checks into the county software and relying less and less on the after-the-fact checks. And, frankly, the after-the-fact checks became less of a priority, meaning the best people weren't given the job of designing and programing them. So I tend to think the match with SSA fell through the cracks. We didn't add it for the county software. We may have discussed it for the new database being designed for NRCS/FSA usage, but that took so long to develop that personnel changed and the idea was probably lost.

This illustrates one problem of massive databases, whether they're proposed for national security, immigration, or whatever--they need maintenance because time is an everflowing river. And if you don't imagine what may happen, like people dying, you can't design for it.

The French as Bureaucrats

Dirk Beauregard (a Brit who's lived 20 years in France) has a great post, not only for an insight into French culture, and history, but into the vices and virtues of bureaucrats.