Vertical Farming

This post described a proposal to stack farm acreage vertically. Sounds weird, particularly when they talk about "staple" crops. There's a book on economic geography I read once, where the author described a "natural" sequence of farms: closest to urban areas were the truck gardens and nurseries, then dairy, then livestock, then grain (that's rough and may be wrong in detail). The logic is fairly simple: transportation costs--what can be transported easiest and cheapest will be grown furthest from the megalopolis, then a continuum. It tracks with U.S. history, where Pennsylvania started growing wheat, but the wheat belt kept moving west and now it's vegetables and dairy.

If we ever come to vertical farming, the logical crops economically speaking should be "organic"--the highest cost, highest margin, locavore crops. Somehow there's a discrepancy there.

Women Are Monkeys, Sez NYTimes (?)

According to the NYTimes article:

“Monkey society is governed by the same two general rules that governed the behavior of women in so many 19th-century novels,” Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth [two scientists whose studies of baboon behavior are fascinating] write. “Stay loyal to your relatives (though perhaps at a distance, if they are an impediment), but also try to ingratiate yourself with the members of high-ranking families.”

Realism and Idealism

I forget who tipped me to this post, but it's a very interesting discussion of the suppression of the international slave trade in the 1800's. From the conclusion:

"The suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, and the role of law and the courts in its undoing, is a remarkable story about the complex relationship between political power and moral ideas. Most people who study international relations are realists of one sort or another, and in conventional realist wisdom states act to support intangible and idealistic goals like human rights only when those actions are relatively costless: whatever their rhetoric, nations choose money and power over their ideals.

Suppressing the slave trade was, however, extremely costly. By one modern estimate, Britain’s effort cost an average of nearly two percent of its national annual income for each year between 1807 and 1867, and the direct costs of its yearly efforts between 1816 and 1862 were roughly equal to the annual profits it had received from the trade between 1761 and 1807. Not only was it costly, but it required a very long national attention span. The resources expended on suppression required the continued commitment of successive governments over a period of decades.

...the weight of the evidence suggests that Britain pursued the abolition of the slave trade because most people in Britain thought it was the right thing to do."

Any student of government has to weigh the relative value of a legal mandate versus winning the hearts and minds. This piece comes down on the side of legal mandates.

When Is a Farmer a Farmer--II

Dan Owens of the Center for Rural Affairs commented on the previous post with this title. He pointed out the Dorgan-Grassley bill which changes payment limitation provisions to require 1000 hours of labor. The comment triggered a sad chain of events:

1. First I remembered the tobacco legislation in the 1980's. The papers had found Sen. Helms (or his wife) had tobacco allotments which they were leasing out (something like that). And of course there was controversy over the government supporting tobacco, particularly when the Surgeon General was so against it. So the law was changed--first to the "no net cost" provision (allowing the tobacco people to claim the program didn't cost the government; second to require Sen. Helms to sell his allotments by requiring him to be actively engaged in tobacco farming. So I thought: all I have to do is go back and find the rules. Well, it took a while but it seems about all they did was to require the farmer to share in the risk of production of the tobacco. That's a let-down, because, at least in theory, that's always been part of the definition of a "farmer" for the wheat, feed grain, cotton, and rice programs. (Perhaps less so since 1996, because you no longer have to grow the crop to get direct payments.)
2. Second I looked up the bill Owens [update--corrected] had mentioned. In the good old days, when I was on top of my game, I could assimilate such a bill quickly, find the problematic areas where decisions were needed, and identify the software to support implementation. But those days are gone. I've no idea whether, as the good Senators claim in this piece, lawyers would be put out of business or not. I tend to doubt it, but who knows. And do I care? Not as much as I used to. That's probably a measure of how much closer to the grave I am now than 20 years ago. (As I say, a sad chain.)
   

I do wish they had thrown in a "circuit breaker". What happened in the 1986 farm bill was that everyone was required to file a farm plan. That overwhelmed the county offices with paper, generally p***ed off the farmers, and did no good for anyone. Implementing Dorgan/Grassley would at a minimum require new language in the existing (CCC-502?) forms for farmers to certify. Giving the Secretary discretion to phase in the new forms would greatly help the county offices. I.e., require them for any changes of operation, plus the producers on the largest farms in the county (top 10 percent) or something similar.

On Not Closing FSA Offices (How Congress Works)

FSA decided not to close 5 county offices in NY (including my birth county). Strange--while I've noted that other States have modified their plans, I think this is the biggest reversal I've seen.

(Of course, the article has this note: [Congressman] "Hinchey, who is a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, has been fighting the FSA's proposal to close offices in New York, as well as across the country, since the agency provides critical services to local farmers and offers personalized attention and advice on an array of federal agricultural programs.") "

How The Melting Pot Works

The Post had an interesting article on the cultural problems between Korean-American business owners and managers and Hispanic employees. What struck me though was the idea that often the "melting pot" is not native-born citizens and immigrants, it's among immigrants of different origins. And even though each may learn a bit of the other's language, the practicalities say that they'll both end up with English as common language.

Remember Saipan?

One of the WWII battles, but now the site of an FSA meeting, according to this piece.

The legacies of history.

Organic Farming, Some Realities

Via John Phipps, a Cornell professor's observations on some practicalities of going purely organic in Bangladesh. (A quick summary--organic nitrogen isn't available in big enough quantities and in a form that can be moved without animal/machine transport. Green manure crops compete with existing food crops.) He doesn't describe the existing mechanisms for producing and distributing nonorganic nitrogen (apparently the main nutrient needed).

When Is a Farmer a Farmer?

When he's a Fairfax trial lawyer earning $500 an hour and a candidate for county supervisor?

The Post reported yesterday Gary Baise collected $300,000 in program payments 1995-2005:

"Baise's farm, where he grew up, is operated by John Werries, whose brother Larry was a high school friend of Baise's and former Illinois director of agriculture. Baise said he makes all decisions on planting, marketing and sales, and visits five to 10 times a year. The acreage is evenly divided between corn and soybeans."

I wonder what it would do if payments were restricted to those living on the farm? (Baise says he doesn't like the program. He can't be fairly criticized for taking advantage of it. )

Immigration Linkage?

This Post article describes a linkage between immigration and housing--actually two linkages: immigration swelled as more jobs working in construction became available. As immigration swelled, more immigrants entered the market to buy houses, sometimes financing the high costs by renting rooms to construction workers. Now the housing bubble has popped, anti-immigration seems the predominant mood, and local housing prices are going to pot.

From what I see around, I can't disagree. (The Post also had an article yesterday describing a shortage of cooks for new restaurants--$20K doesn't cut it for a line cook. And Wednesday my local Safeway Starbucks was closed--no workers. That is going too far.)