NYTimes and Pollan Disagree with Me

It shouldn't be a surprise that the NYTimes has an article suggesting that higher food prices will turn people away from bad food and onto good food (i.e., locally grown fruits and vegetables). An excerpt:

"Along with some other critics of the American way of eating, he [Michael Pollan] likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.

And if American staples like soda, fast-food hamburgers and frozen dinners don’t seem like such a bargain anymore, the American eating public might turn its attention to ingredients like local fruits and vegetables, and milk and meat from animals that eat grass. It turns out that those foods, already favorites of the critics of industrial food, have also dodged recent price increases."

They may be right, but I doubt it. (The same issue contains a story on how a big tomato grower in PA isn't growing this year for lack of immigrants to pick the crop.)

I suspect the biggest question is how people think (always a good cliche). Do they have a food budget, so that if Coke becomes more costly they will switch to apples? Do they have a standard of living budget, so if meals at restaurants become more costly they switch from Ruby Tuesday to Wendy's? Or maybe eat one big meal at Mcdonalds instead of two meals at home?

The cheapest calories are still going to be the ones the foodies don't like, so if a consumer feels a squeeze on the overall budget, the logic should drive them to the cheaper stuff.

Semper En Obscurus

The Times has an interesting article on a guy who's collected badges from various super-secret agencies/projects. One I particularly like has this motto and the image of a mushroom on the badge (means: "always in the dark"). We used to joke that the big shots treated us career bureaucrats as mushrooms.

(It wasn't merely that we wanted to know what was going on, and resented our second-rate status as embodied by the lack of information; we had the excuse that good implementation of programs required being in on the ground floor of a program.)

New Deal Was More Than Emergency Programs

The Washington Post runs an article today, by Cindy Skrzycki, on grapes and grocers. While many think the New Deal is long gone and long dead, it actually lives on in unexpected places, such as the marketing of grapes. And others think that our food has gone to hell in a market basket, as the influence of big industrial ag takes over the food stores. And others, particularly conservatives, used to like to compare the federal regulations for [a commodity, like cabbage, or whatever] to something like the Gettysburg Address, as in: "It takes USDA 20,000 words to define a cabbage and Lincoln only took....

This quote from the story is for all those people:

"For the past three years, California growers and produce wholesalers have been feuding over whether the standard for U.S. Grade No. 1 should be changed. Buyers say permitting more loose grapes will lower the quality and make the fresh produce harder to sell.

Now Department of Agriculture officials, who set quality standards for 240 food products, are proposing to increase the number of loose grapes without considering them defective. The debate is over image and the bottom line in the $2 billion fresh table-grape market, which has grown as Americans each eat 7 to 8 pounds of grapes a year, up from 2 pounds a person in 1970."

The legislation for marketing orders, which stabilize and standardize and regulate and render less competitive the markets for fruit and vegetables dates back to the New Deal (and before, actually). The increase in volume has resulted, presumably, from the use of plastic bags to pre-package grapes and the creation of standards for the contents. It certainly makes grocery shopping easier--you can grab a bag of grapes with minimal attention to the contents, being sure that the contents are, in our phrase, "good enough for government work".

Consider the Date...

When you read this post on Greg Mankiw's blog and maybe this post on Government Executive? (The latter is entitled: "IBM suspended from new federal contracts".)

A Locavore I Can Trust

Found this neat blog of a ranch/farm wife in Montana. She seems to be a "locavore", if only by necessity. (Taking 4 kids to the grocery store is not fun, and when it's an hour away you only go a couple times a month.) It's neat (a term from my childhood) because she writes with humor and style. Bill McKibben and Barbara Kingsolver have style, and occasionally humor, but they don't have Erin's wit. And they're trying to sell me something--the virtues of local food--while Erin is simply telling it as it is.

Lest I Forget

Stumbled across this following links (I'm not sure from where, perhaps starting with hnn.net). It's a reminder to an old geezer about being somewhat cautious about his memories. (Always liked Monty Python--this is the routine called "Four Yorkshiremen".)

Disaster Program

Here's an interesting article on the subject of disaster payments and the push for a permanent disaster fund. Author cites the EWG study on frequency of payments. I think I've commented before--one of my early assignments on the program side of ASCS was to follow up an OIG or GAO study on the disaster payments under the law in effect in the late 70's. They'd found recurring payments in some sample counties, so management agreed to do a review of the whole country.

Anyhow, the unanticipated consequences thing may be operating now.

At some point in the past (Freedom to Farm, maybe?) farm legislation started "freezing" the yields. There were two rationales: (1) allowing farmers to prove their actual yields (as they do under crop insurance) was encouragement to increase production and (2) freezing the yields saved money. (Apparently there was opportunity for a one-time change of yield under the 2002 farm bill.)

In the 1970's we could instruct counties to adjust the yields on farms that got recurrent disaster payments as part of the regular yearly process of adjusting yields. (Without getting into much detail, in theory the farm yields would weight back to the county yield, so a farm that got payments every year had its yield set too high.) But because of the freezing of payment yields for PFC and counter-cyclical payments, that process seems not to be available these days, which leaves FSA out on a limb in justifying/rationalizing the disaster payments.

Organic Wheat Farm in SD

Via Tom Philpott at Gristmill, Gourmet has an article describing a 4,000 acre family farm in Walworth County, SD. It's been in the family for generations, since 1880's. Not clear whether the family owns the 4,000 acres free and clear, but if they do it's a key to their survival. I think it's generally true that farm owner/operators, with luck and good management, can survive the bad times and prosper in the good times even if, as here, they occupy a niche market (organic wheat). As long as cash flow is positive (meaning no rent payments or mortgage payments) you can survive. (That's how my parents farmed on an uneconomic dairy/poultry farm.) Of course, if you're young you need to expand your acreage (to support the bigger and better equipment), so being able to buy wisely and timely is key. (Or else, you spend your winters rebuilding used stuff.) If you're old, you just carry on living off the depreciation of your old equipment and hope it lasts as long as you.

Without knowing more about the area and the economics, I wouldn't commit to the idea that the Stiegelmeiers are a viable example of how the Great Plains might be farmed. (A concept both Philpott and Prof. Dobbs, ag economist, float.)

Transparency in Congress

This Government Executive article describes the tribulations of those who want Congressional Research Service reports to be routinely available to the public. "Free the CRS data".

Sauce for the Goose

Listening to the discussion on PBS of Rev. Wright last night, I'm tempted to betray my liberal faith--while I understand all the points made in defense and extenuation of his sermons, and while I've listened to/read transcripts of at least a couple, and while I'm reading Sen. Obama's first book, I don't think we (i.e., liberals) are being even-handed. When Revs. Robertson and Falwell uttered some of their more notorious comments, they were also operating in the prophetic tradition, assailing the corruption of the society and the spiritual evils thereof and calling on the populace to repent and return to God.

Bottom line--if we cut Wright some slack, and we should, we also need to cut Falwell/Robertson some slack, which is a grievous penalty for my sins.