I posted here on the delay in signup for dairy disaster assistance. This article explains a bit more.
Forms getting information from the public need OMB approval, which means they need to be accompanied by regulations. What I get from the explanation is that FSA was ready to go until the OMB forms approval people said they wanted final regulations.
But now they've got to worry about 2007 losses and prorating payments. Brings back memories of the 1986 disaster payment program, which was the first time we had to worry about prorating. [Ugh].
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
The Long-lasting Legacy of Earl Butz
As predicted, the Times obit of Earl Butz led with this:
His legacy (the 1970 bill had implemented optional set-aside programs), he'd pushed for full production, admitting that world conditions had lifted exports. But he claimed a "firm opposition to high price supports had kept United States farm commodities competitive in world markets".
On Oct 13, 1976 President Ford raised price supports by 50 percent on wheat and 20 percent on corn.
"Earl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture during the 1970s but came to be remembered more for a vulgar racial comment that brought about his resignation during the 1976 presidential election race, died Saturday in Washington."But on October 6, 1976 Butz is interviewed by the Times on his legacy (he'd resigned the week before). It's headlined: "Butz is Confident That His Policies Will Be Continued."
His legacy (the 1970 bill had implemented optional set-aside programs), he'd pushed for full production, admitting that world conditions had lifted exports. But he claimed a "firm opposition to high price supports had kept United States farm commodities competitive in world markets".
On Oct 13, 1976 President Ford raised price supports by 50 percent on wheat and 20 percent on corn.
Michael Pollan Returns II--Recipe for a Best Seller
I posted before on this book. Now I've read it, so I can take up the challenge of the commenter:
Recipe for a Best Seller
I note that Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food made number 1 on both the NYTimes and WashPost's list of nonfiction bestsellers. When I checked on Jan 27, it was no. 5 on Amazon's bestsellers. And he's getting glowing reviews, both in the Times and Post. (See his website: MichaelPollan) What's his recipe for this success?
1 First, you need a subject--food is always good. (The books that beat Pollan's on Amazon were the recent John Grisham and Stephen King novels, and two books at least partially on food.)
2 Second, you need a narrative, preferrably one with conflict. So you need some good guys and some bad guys. Pollan's good guys are old reliables: common sense, tradition, and mother; the bad guys are also familiar types: nutrition scientists with their reductionist science, the food industry which shoves empty calories down the throats of good Americans, and journalists who push food fads and get things wrong.
3 Third, you need some evil deeds, like the beef industry defeating Senator McGovern in 1980 after he had chaired a committee which challenged the beef industry.
4 Fourth, you need the good to be threatened, a declension, a decline and fall, an ejection from the Garden of Evil. Pollan's declension runs like this. In the good old days people and their food systems had evolved together so Eskimos and Mediterraneans lived comfortably within their ecosystems. But we in the U.S. eat the dreaded Western diet, which threatens a "global pandemic" (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.). Sauron must be gaining power. The clouds from Mordor are spreading.
5 You need some interesting quirky characters. Pollan has a whacky dentist who studied diets in remote areas before WWII. Pollan doesn't mention the guy's claim, reported in the NY Times in 1934, that vitamin D could slow the progress of cancer, heart disease, etc. The bottom line is whether you're an Eskimo, eating an all-meat diet, or whatever, your food culture has evolved so you're healthy. But the Western diet is not evolved so it causes disease.
6 Above all, you need a sauce of great writing to pour over your other ingredients. Pollan as usual rises to that challenge.
And, as the strawberry on the creme, the finishing touch, you need the magic seven words to summarize your teaching: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He supports those words with specific advice, most of which are pretty good. Indeed, although he doesn't recognize it, I think he comes out at about the same place as that temple of nutritionism, the USDA. I don't see much in teir suggested 21 day menu that's contrary to Pollan's advice. So, in the end, one could call him a lamb in wolf's clothing.
I've some problems with the book. (Surprise!) The romanticism, the anti-scientific bias, the suspicion of the motives of his bad guys, all rub me the wrong way. (See Daniel Engber at Slate for a challenge to this line of thought. Also this piece on the Scientific American site.) While I've no expertise in nutrition and can't check his facts, where I know the subject he's often wrong, particularly attributing McGovern's defeat to the beef trust. (McGovern moved away from his South Dakota roots as he moved into national politics, he was saved from defeat in 1974 by Watergate, but lost in 1980. 1980 was not a good year for Democrats you may recall. Indeed, a brief search of the NYTimes archives doesn't support the breathless description of McGovern's nutrition commitee changing its recommendations.) I think I've commented previously on his lack of comprehension of agricultural policies and the roles of Nixon and Butz. He brings in the myth among the foodies that Nixon and Earl Butz made a dramatic and final change in agricultural policy that gave us cheap food. (Not so, agricultural policy is made by Congress, not the President or USDA, and it's wiggled back and forth over the years but no dramatic break occurred in Butz's reign. What was dramatic was selling grain to the USSR, but that was more Kissinger than Butz.)
When Mr. Pollan cites traditional food cultures, he praises human ability to adapt and adjust diets to circumstances. When he discusses American food culture, there's no adjustment, just a bunch of suckers for the reductionist science of nutritionism, the false panaceas of journalists, and the advertising dollars and machinations of the food industry. I think he inadvertently nails it when he reminisces about his mother cooking meals--to give herself a rest she served TV dinners. That was a rational choice, a part of Americans adjusting to their new environment. There's been lots of changes in society over the last 60 years, changes that impacted our choices of what to eat and how we eat. Pollan doesn't recognize them.
As a way of recognizing those changes, and mocking Pollan's lessons, here's my advice for good eating:
1 Sell your car. Surely the fact that we have 765 cars per thousand people (leading the world) relates to our obesity.
2 Get a job digging ditches. Manufacturing, moving metals, has declined while services, moving bytes, has increased. The food culture that supported steelworkers and auto workers isn't right for programmers and screen writers.
3 Don't live alone. The percentage of single-person households doubled between 1970 and 2002, It's harder to cook for one person--much easier to buy TV dinners.
4 Don't grow old. Many oldsters, particularly living alone, opt for the ease of TV dinners as opposed to cooking meals from scratch.
4 Move to the inner suburbs. Commuting is a prime time to eat on the go, i.e., unhealthily. Cities are bad because of the lack of supermarkets.
5 Cook. Of course, that means no two-job households, and no feminism.
Pollan admits he wants to make Americans pay more for their food, work harder at preparing it, and have fewer choices. It's not a prescription that sells broadly, certainly not one that any national candidate is going to run on. It's elitist. So USDA and Pollan both are preaching to the choir, IMHO.
Recipe for a Best Seller
I note that Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food made number 1 on both the NYTimes and WashPost's list of nonfiction bestsellers. When I checked on Jan 27, it was no. 5 on Amazon's bestsellers. And he's getting glowing reviews, both in the Times and Post. (See his website: MichaelPollan) What's his recipe for this success?
1 First, you need a subject--food is always good. (The books that beat Pollan's on Amazon were the recent John Grisham and Stephen King novels, and two books at least partially on food.)
2 Second, you need a narrative, preferrably one with conflict. So you need some good guys and some bad guys. Pollan's good guys are old reliables: common sense, tradition, and mother; the bad guys are also familiar types: nutrition scientists with their reductionist science, the food industry which shoves empty calories down the throats of good Americans, and journalists who push food fads and get things wrong.
3 Third, you need some evil deeds, like the beef industry defeating Senator McGovern in 1980 after he had chaired a committee which challenged the beef industry.
4 Fourth, you need the good to be threatened, a declension, a decline and fall, an ejection from the Garden of Evil. Pollan's declension runs like this. In the good old days people and their food systems had evolved together so Eskimos and Mediterraneans lived comfortably within their ecosystems. But we in the U.S. eat the dreaded Western diet, which threatens a "global pandemic" (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.). Sauron must be gaining power. The clouds from Mordor are spreading.
5 You need some interesting quirky characters. Pollan has a whacky dentist who studied diets in remote areas before WWII. Pollan doesn't mention the guy's claim, reported in the NY Times in 1934, that vitamin D could slow the progress of cancer, heart disease, etc. The bottom line is whether you're an Eskimo, eating an all-meat diet, or whatever, your food culture has evolved so you're healthy. But the Western diet is not evolved so it causes disease.
6 Above all, you need a sauce of great writing to pour over your other ingredients. Pollan as usual rises to that challenge.
And, as the strawberry on the creme, the finishing touch, you need the magic seven words to summarize your teaching: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He supports those words with specific advice, most of which are pretty good. Indeed, although he doesn't recognize it, I think he comes out at about the same place as that temple of nutritionism, the USDA. I don't see much in teir suggested 21 day menu that's contrary to Pollan's advice. So, in the end, one could call him a lamb in wolf's clothing.
I've some problems with the book. (Surprise!) The romanticism, the anti-scientific bias, the suspicion of the motives of his bad guys, all rub me the wrong way. (See Daniel Engber at Slate for a challenge to this line of thought. Also this piece on the Scientific American site.) While I've no expertise in nutrition and can't check his facts, where I know the subject he's often wrong, particularly attributing McGovern's defeat to the beef trust. (McGovern moved away from his South Dakota roots as he moved into national politics, he was saved from defeat in 1974 by Watergate, but lost in 1980. 1980 was not a good year for Democrats you may recall. Indeed, a brief search of the NYTimes archives doesn't support the breathless description of McGovern's nutrition commitee changing its recommendations.) I think I've commented previously on his lack of comprehension of agricultural policies and the roles of Nixon and Butz. He brings in the myth among the foodies that Nixon and Earl Butz made a dramatic and final change in agricultural policy that gave us cheap food. (Not so, agricultural policy is made by Congress, not the President or USDA, and it's wiggled back and forth over the years but no dramatic break occurred in Butz's reign. What was dramatic was selling grain to the USSR, but that was more Kissinger than Butz.)
When Mr. Pollan cites traditional food cultures, he praises human ability to adapt and adjust diets to circumstances. When he discusses American food culture, there's no adjustment, just a bunch of suckers for the reductionist science of nutritionism, the false panaceas of journalists, and the advertising dollars and machinations of the food industry. I think he inadvertently nails it when he reminisces about his mother cooking meals--to give herself a rest she served TV dinners. That was a rational choice, a part of Americans adjusting to their new environment. There's been lots of changes in society over the last 60 years, changes that impacted our choices of what to eat and how we eat. Pollan doesn't recognize them.
As a way of recognizing those changes, and mocking Pollan's lessons, here's my advice for good eating:
1 Sell your car. Surely the fact that we have 765 cars per thousand people (leading the world) relates to our obesity.
2 Get a job digging ditches. Manufacturing, moving metals, has declined while services, moving bytes, has increased. The food culture that supported steelworkers and auto workers isn't right for programmers and screen writers.
3 Don't live alone. The percentage of single-person households doubled between 1970 and 2002, It's harder to cook for one person--much easier to buy TV dinners.
4 Don't grow old. Many oldsters, particularly living alone, opt for the ease of TV dinners as opposed to cooking meals from scratch.
4 Move to the inner suburbs. Commuting is a prime time to eat on the go, i.e., unhealthily. Cities are bad because of the lack of supermarkets.
5 Cook. Of course, that means no two-job households, and no feminism.
Pollan admits he wants to make Americans pay more for their food, work harder at preparing it, and have fewer choices. It's not a prescription that sells broadly, certainly not one that any national candidate is going to run on. It's elitist. So USDA and Pollan both are preaching to the choir, IMHO.
Significant Change in Service Center Budgeting
If I understand the USDA's budget proposal, where in the past years the Office of Chief Information Officer had the funding for the "Common Computing Environment", now they've moved it back to the agencies:
"Funding of $64.2 million for certain IT operational expenses and related Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) initiatives which had previously been requested and provided for in the Common Computing Environment account managed by the Office of the Chief Information Officer, are requested in FSA’s salaries and expenses account for FY 2008. The maintenance of modern digitized databases with common land unit information, integrated with soils and crop data and other farm records and related initiatives, is vital to the development of more efficient and effective customer services at the Service Centers. In addition, FSA continues to review its county office structure consistent with Congressional guidance to obtain local input and thorough analysis to determine appropriate restructuring of its county offices."Not sure of the significance, but interesting (inside baseball).
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Faceless Bureaucrats--British Style
A Brit has a new book out, according to this.
I strongly recommend this document translating British bureaucratic jargon, showing that bureaucrats are brothers and sisters under the skin, even though British "civil servants" are more prestigious than their American cousins.
"Elephant trap" for them equates to "swamp" for us.
I strongly recommend this document translating British bureaucratic jargon, showing that bureaucrats are brothers and sisters under the skin, even though British "civil servants" are more prestigious than their American cousins.
"Elephant trap" for them equates to "swamp" for us.
Earl Butz Dead
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Are Farmers Psychotic?
Megan McArdle posts an analysis of drug prices and drug R&D and why limited drug company profits would decrease R&D.
She points out that Merck could earn 5 percent on its money by investing in government bonds, and doing no drugs at all. So it needs a chance of profits over that rate. It would be "psychotic," in her estimation, for Merck to continue making drugs if they have only a 1 in 1000 chance of making big profits.
But the same logic could apply to farmers, at least those who own their land free and clear. They could earn more by selling out and investing their capital. But, unlike drug companies, they keep farming (mostly, at least until they get too old). (Of course, this is a point my mother used to make some 60 years ago.)
She points out that Merck could earn 5 percent on its money by investing in government bonds, and doing no drugs at all. So it needs a chance of profits over that rate. It would be "psychotic," in her estimation, for Merck to continue making drugs if they have only a 1 in 1000 chance of making big profits.
But the same logic could apply to farmers, at least those who own their land free and clear. They could earn more by selling out and investing their capital. But, unlike drug companies, they keep farming (mostly, at least until they get too old). (Of course, this is a point my mother used to make some 60 years ago.)
A Slip of the Congressional Pen
Agweb notes a delay in the dairy disaster signup, because FSA had to do regulations.
Normally in farm legislation Congress exempts USDA from complying with the usual requirements for getting public input--i.e., issuing a notice in the Federal register asking for comments, or at least doing an interim rule with provision for amending it in the final rule. Why is that important?
For speed. Requiring comment slows down the implementation process several ways:
Normally in farm legislation Congress exempts USDA from complying with the usual requirements for getting public input--i.e., issuing a notice in the Federal register asking for comments, or at least doing an interim rule with provision for amending it in the final rule. Why is that important?
For speed. Requiring comment slows down the implementation process several ways:
- First, if the regulations have to be done before the implementation, rather than concurrently with it, it's like the difference between serving concurrent sentences of 10 years versus consecutive.
- Second, if you get comments and really consider them (two big "ifs"), then you likely end up making changes. While the change may improve the program, it's likely to slow the development of forms and software.
- Third, distractions. Usually in FSA the same people who are working on the forms and instructions for the field are also the ones who do the regulations. That's good for coordination but poor for single-minded concentration on implementation.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Dan Morgan on the Farm Bill
Keith Good at Farmpolicy picks up a Dan Morgan piece on the current status of the farm bill. I was particularly struck by these paragraphs on the budgetary games and impact of high prices:
One irony of the congressional budget system is that the current record high commodity prices serve to protect the existing web of price supports and price guarantees. Even if Congress slashes those rainy day subsidies, CBO won’t credit savings, since CBO sees prices staying well above the existing subsidy floor most of the time. This leaves Congress with little budgetary incentive to make reforms.
(CBO projects that of the $66 billion in commodity costs between fiscal 2008 and 2017, only about $16 billion will go to traditional price supports and guarantees related to what farmers grow. The other $50 billion is accounted for by income support, known as direct payments, that goes to farmers automatically, regardless of prices.)
CBO’s new projections see federal crop insurance subsidies rising sharply, by as much as $14 billion over 10 years. (As farm prices rise, so do insurance premiums that are subsidized by USDA.) Congress could cut the subsidies and capture funds with which to pay for other priorities. But crop insurance subsidies have already been cut in the House and Senate-passed farm bills, and it isn’t clear how much more pain Congress is willing to inflict on the industry.
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