Privacy or Public's Right To Know?

USDA faced that question back in the 1990's. A public interest group, Environmental Working Group, had requested records from ASCS (now FSA) on the people getting payment. We initially denied the request based on the Privacy Act of 1974. (I well remember when that was enacted, the Act required that before someone could be required to give information, you had to describe the legal basis for the requirement, the uses to be made of the info, and estimate the amount of time required. In brief, all the fine print you can see on IRS 1040's. It was a major pain to figure out how to get that stuff in all the forms the agency used.)

But, we eventually lost the case in the Appeals Court. Turned out our assumptions back in 1974 were wrong--data wasn't covered by the Privacy Act (except Social Security numbers and a bit of other data) so our IT shop had to figure out how to give the data to EWG in a usable form while leaving out the SSN's--they succeeded, and the rest is history, as you can see in the EWG farm database.

Now USDA has lost another appeal on other data. I'm not clear on the files covered, but might be the basic acreage data--the location and acreage of farms and fields and the yearly report of planted acreages.

It's nice to know how realistically the courts view agriculture:

"The appeals court noted that disclosure of crop information may compromise an individual's privacy interest since not all farms are owned by large corporations. However, in this instance, the court found that this was not a valid concern.

"We conclude that the public interest in disclosure of the Compliance file and GIS database outweighs the personal privacy interest...

It's not EWG asking this time, but Multi Ag Media LLC, which seems to own some magazines for dairymen. The decision is here.

Say It Ain't So--FSA Declines Since My Leaving

The county executive director in Logan County, CO describes the process of implementing a farm bill and says:

Producers may be interested to know that, on average, 64 days go by from the time the initial Farm Bill is passed by both the House and the Senate and receives presidential signature. Why is this important? Because from the date of presidential signature, it typically takes about six to eight months for FSA to be positioned to start making payments to producers.

I'm not sure of the source for the 64 days--some historian with nothing better to do looked at all the farm bills? I do know sometimes legislation could be passed and FSA would act faster than 6-8 months (although I might have to get in the weeds of terminology and definitions).

Becoming Obsolete--Fruits and Vegetables

Dan Owens at Blog for Rural America has a discussion of the prohibition of planting fruits and vegetables on base acres. Marginal Revolution also has a post on the subject.

When I read the MR post I reacted--"this isn't right". Fortunately I did some checking before posting and found that the things I was challenging were indeed correct, or at least correct enough for purposes of discussing farm programs. (I don't think the bar's too high there.) I find I do that more these days; what knowledge I accumulated during my career is becoming obsolete.

I do remember when fruits and vegetables first came in, at least I think I do. It was the 1985 farm bill, which introduced the concept of "flex" acres, or 50/92--the idea that a farmer's payment acreage for a program crop could be planted to other than the program crop. We were working away on the implementation when the fruit and vegetable people started calling to ask what could be planted "other than the program crop"? We said, according to the way we read the law, anything. The next thing you knew there was a small little bill flying through Congress amending the 1985 act to exclude fruits and vegetables. From that little seed a mighty issue has grown.

Judging by the rhetoric around this issue, the only reason President George H.W. Bush didn't eat his broccoli is it was too high-priced--if we just had a few million more acres of carrots and broccoli prices would fall to the point that everyone would eat their 6 or 8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Pardon my skepticism, but while removing the prohibition might lower the price and expand the acreage a bit, I don't think it would mean a major change in the nation's diet.

Seek Your Fortune in Town

From ERS, via this article in the dailyyonder:

a high school graduate living in a rural county earns 13 percent less than a city dweller with a high school diploma.

A rural college graduate, however, earns 23 percent less than a college grad living in the city. And someone living in a rural county who has an advanced degree (law, medicine, doctorate) earns 25 percent less than a person with the same qualifications who lives in an urban county.

I suspect, with no basis at all, that this discrepancy also relates to the forces that have driven up the income of the top 20, 5 and 1 percentiles.

Bob and Dwight, Hillary and Barack

A sure sign I'm getting old(er)--reminiscing about the past:

There once was a feisty, stubborn President who had decided to engage in an unpopular war against a menace. The war lasted long, longer than it should and it had come to seem that the U.S. couldn't win it. The battle to replace the President featured a stalwart of the opposition party, a Senator who had been tried and tested in national politics for many years, who had proudly carried the party's banner through many political battles. The Senator was the favorite of the party machine, which had watched in disbelief as the party lost the prior election with a disappointing candidate. And the Senator represented a proud political heritage. Two years before the election the Senator was the odds-on favorite to win the nomination and the election.

Then there burst onto the scene a savior, someone with no great experience in party politics, no heritage except as a son of Kansas, someone who was favored by the media because he was so likable, so representative of the best of America, someone who could make us all proud of the opportunities provided by the country.

The two candidates battled tooth and nail through primaries. The Senator was acknowledged to be capable and smart, but no one could really warm up to the person. Not so with the savior, whom no one could dislike. The savior was attacked for insufficient detail in his proposals, for campaigning on likability rather than content. But the attacks availed not, the two went into the convention virtually tied. A battle over which delegates to seat settled the matter, and Dwight David Eisenhower defeated Robert Taft and went on to win the Presidency.

We're Becoming Invisible

When young, I enjoyed science writing (Asimov) and science fiction (Asimov and Heinlein). The Drake equation computes the probability that there are other civilizations in the universe. An article in yesterday's Times revisits the equation and concludes that it stands up well. But the kicker at the end is that we, i.e., Earth, as a civilization are becoming invisible.

But the trend might be in the opposite direction, if humans are any indication, he noted. Earth first became detectable in the 1950s, he said, when the planet was full of powerful television and radar transmitters beaming and leaking gigawatts of power into space.

“We assumed that was the way it was always going to be,” both for us and, by extension, for extraterrestrials, he said. But now the big transmitters are being phased out in favor of cable and satellites that leak hardly anything at all out to space. It’s very economical and it’s the wave of the future. Earth is gradually going radio quiet.

“That’s big change nobody anticipated,” he said. Once the big powerful transmitters go off the air, he said, “We will still exist but we will be hard to detect.”

Reverting to the Permanent Law

Prior posts have been skeptical of the practicality of reverting to the 1949 and 1938 farm legislation. USDA has released an analysis of the overall situation, including these words:

for the 2008 crop of wheat, the 1938 Act still requires the Secretary to establish acreage allotments since these allotments are part of the price support program established for wheat under the 1949 Act. One of the critical factors which the 1938 Act requires the Secretary to take into account when establishing a farm's 2008 wheat allotment is whether or not the farm had an allotment in 1958. Acreage allotments for wheat have not been declared since 1971 and USDA does not possess acreage reports dating back to 1971. Accordingly, it is unclear how USDA could meaningfully translate these historical allotments, while taking into account other required provisions in the 1938 Act, into 2008-crop price support benefits.

FSA In NYTimes

The Farm Service Agency made the op-ed pages of the Times today. Jack Hedin, a MN farmer, grew fruits and vegetables on land rented from a farmer. Only problem was, the provisions of the farm program prevent growing fruits and vegetables on cropland used to establish the acres for payment.

Mr. Hedin is reasonably clear and reasonably correct--voicing his outrage about the penalties for such growing and the idea that organized fruit and vegetable growers in CA, etc. could restrict his opportunities.

He fails to note the irony that supporters of community-supported agriculture (i.e., locavores) regularly criticize the farm program for not helping fruit and vegetable growers. This provision, which has been around for 20 odd years, does help them--but like most of the rest of the farm program provisions, it helps established farmers, slowing down changes.

It's an open issue whether Mr. Hedin's landowners shouldn't have known the problem--they did, after all, sign contracts that stated that provision. But likely they're old "widow-women", as we used to chauvinistically say, who left the legal stuff to their now deceased husbands and were just trying to help out an up and coming organic farmer.

The "Royal Assent" to Our North

I've sort of envied the Canadian system of government--tracking their agricultural programs it seems as if the ruling party can move faster and make decisions with less parliamentary input than in the U.S. (Of course, that's a bureaucrat's dream--no need to suck up to those @#$%'s in Congress.)

But, as this piece observes in passing, they do at times need to get Queen Elizabeth's assent (at least by proxy).

USDA and Civil Rights

USDA won't talk to GAO?

Some kerfuffle, apparently about:

The auditors were seeking information for an ongoing audit on Agriculture's office of civil rights and its handling of discrimination complaints. Specifically, they were investigating allegations that the department had previously provided false information for the audit.