Robots, Assembly LInes, and Dairies

I know robots have been operating on assembly lines for a long time, but I wasn't aware that robots fit the smaller (sic) dairies. According to this article, from Better FArming, they do. A note of reassurance--you have to love your cows for it to work, just getting a robot because you hate the work is a route to failure.

Organic and Labor--Economics of Farming

From a Tom Philpott piece on an organic conference and a presentation by Eric Schlosser (reference tomato pickers and Burger King):

While he treated his audience with great respect -- and won enthusiastic applause in response --Schlosser didn't let the assembled growers off the hook. He noted that organic standards make no stipulations about how growers treat workers. For him, he added, organic means nothing if workers are systematically mistreated. His remark must have caused some unease (though the cheering audience didn't show it). As my friend Bonnie Powell of Ethicurean writes in her account of Schlosser's speech, "labor is an Achilles-heel issue for many organic farmers." Bonnie reminds us that:

A 2005 report published by researchers at UC Davis found that of 188 California organic farms surveyed, a majority failed to pay a living wage or provide medical or retirement plans.

There's nothing easy about that issue. As I wrote when the UC Davis study came out, organic farming is so labor-intensive, and its profit margins remain so low, that most small- and mid-sized growers would probably go out of business if they paid a decent wage.

That's the economics of farming--the farmer cannot price his or her output, so the premium is on reducing costs. How? By mechanizing and rationalizing (aka "industrializing") and paying labor poorly. The return in farming is on capital, i.e., land, not labor.

Unintended Consequences

One of the standard ways to criticize government is to point out the unintended consequences of laws or regulations. Freakonomics has a good piece here. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has commentary here .The commenters have gone to town.

However, the same truth applies for all human actions, including those by corporate bodies. I think the law is a subset of the generalization: "people aren't as smart as they think they are".

When Is a Bubble Not a Bubble?

I've taken the position that farm prices will dive as they have done in the past. The counter position is that the new market for corn for ethanol, which has the side effect of driving up soybean prices, changes economic fundamentals.

Bruce Babcock, as summarized here, seems to agree with me.

I'd add, in view of the last few days, a widespread economic slowdown means a softer market for feed grains (remember the Asian recession of the late 90's). It also means lower oil prices, which means less of a bonus for ethanol. Finally, I noticed somewhere the idea that Russians found US-made farm machinery very good. That's a turnaround from the 90's, when Russian tractors were being sold in the U.S. But more importantly, it means that Russian farmers have the money to invest in modern machinery, which means more production there.

National Animal ID System

I've great faith in the ability of people to be paranoid. So I can't wait for the opposition to the National Animal ID System (NAIS) to merge with the opposition to gun registration laws and to Real ID.

It's all the Mark of the Beast, isn't it?

Of course, logically they should all merge with the pro-choice forces in supporting a right of privacy in the Constitution for guns, animals, and people.

Lincoln's Doctor's Dog

Is supposedly the title of a hypothetical bestseller (people like books on Lincoln, on medicine, and on pets). We like pets, period. This Science Daily article is interesting, but I'm not sure I understand it.

Lonely people are more apt to see human traits in pets than non-lonely people? Okay, I can buy that.

Lonely people are more apt to believe in the supernatural? (Not sure whether that's God or UFO's or what). Maybe.

People who aren't lonely are less likely to see human traits in people who are outside their sphere?
??

Genealogy and Bureaucracy

What's the common thread--both have to deal with names, particularly in their IT systems. And when you deal with names from different countries you run into all sorts of variations, sequence, multi-part names, patronym versus matronym. Here's a post in the ancestry.com blog on handling different names.

And EU Considers Progressive Reductions in Payments

From a long post at farm policy:

Mr. Matthews noted that, “Agriculture Ministers had their first discussion of the Commission’s Health Check proposals at the first Council meeting under the Slovenian Presidency yesterday. It appears that the two issues causing the most fuss are the Commission’s suggestions to introduce a progressive reduction in single farm payments to larger farms (inaccurately referred to as capping) and to increase the rate of compulsory modulation (which again would only affect larger farms), in both cases with the additional funds going to Pillar 2 rural development measures. At the same time, Ministers were clearly taken by the emphasis on risk management and safety nets in the Commission Communication and called for more specific proposals in this area.

"Progressive reductions" is a good name for my hobby-horse.

The Age-Old Dream

Any hierarchal organization has a tension--the bottom has needs, wants, and information; the top has needs, wants, and information, and the two don't match. 20 years ago when ASCS got its IBM system 36's, the IBM software included a "data file utility". It permitted people to do reports or create their own files. I well remember a program specialist from New Mexico ("SR") mentioning his usage of it in an alcohol-fueled happy hour after a training meeting. It took quite a bit of effort to get the agency to make use of such work, and initiative. (IBM released a new set of software that was more user-friendly maybe a year later.) There was always suspicion from the professional programmers and the Washington hierarchy of such efforts. With some reason, I might add.

But the same tension is still evident today, as IBM announces some "mash-up" software. Reading between the lines of this article I can still hear the echoes of long-ago battles.

Collocation Survives

My memory is "collocation" was the term applied to putting USDA field agencies in the same building. This piece from Minnesota shows it's still alive. And an entrepreneur has found a niche, building offices for the agencies.