Amish, Mennonites, and Tom Philpott

From the Brownfield Network, this report:

Amish and Mennonite farmers currently produce about 10 percent of Missouri’s fresh commercial vegetables, but 15 years ago that market didn’t exist. That’s according to the University of Missouri Extension, which has hosted workshops to teach growers about new farming techniques.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided a grant to help develop the workshops with MU. Extension Horticulture Specialist James Quinn says the EPA was interested in helping emphasize reduced pesticide applications with the Amish and Mennonite growers.

It's not clear from the broadcast whether the growers have been moving into the area or whether the market is new. The Amish have been expanding, courtesy of their high birth rate. And I know they've moved into new areas for them, like upstate New York, where they can find cheaper land to support their life style.

Meanwhile, from the organic ag movement, comes the news (a bit late) Tom Philpott has moved on from the NC farm he ran. No doubt he has good reasons for the change of occupation--he's now full time at Grist. But it fuels my cynicism, nurtured over the years of community gardening watching people come and go, that for many in the movement it's a phase, rather than a livelihood. That's not the case for the Amish--it's a way of life. One might view the organic /locavore niche as the scene of a contest between Amish and "crunchies". Given the rate of natural increase and the community share, the Amish will win. In another 50 years farming in the U.S. will be divided between the Amish and the Mennonites, and a few surviving megafarms.

Predictions Via Blogger

Blogger has a new feature, relatively new that is. The software will now honor a post-dated post. If I want to go on vacation, I could post date posts for the period of time I was away from the Internet and my dear readers would never know the difference.

That feature makes it possible for me to do some honest predictions--i.e., I put them out in a post now, and copy the post and date it for whatever date in the future.

So, what do I feel safe in predicting?

• concern about "peak oil" will fade as oil prices drop. They're now about $130 a barrel, I predict them to fall to $80 by January 1. (Of course, I would have made a similar prediction last year--a big drop in prices.)
  
• Obama will win the Presidency in a squeaker.
  

Doctor Krauthammer Misses on Science

Charles Krauthammer writes his version of an agnostic column on global warming, but misses here:

Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.

Newton's laws weren't overthrown, they were subsumed within Einstein's. See Wikipedia.

Making Government Work--Credit to Bush

I stumbled across this site yesterday. I think I've criticized the Bush administration before for their efforts at e-government and improving management, but this is a creditable effort as applied to a program I know. The problem is persuading everyone along the line to agree on these evaluations. For example, the evaluation of the direct payment program questions the design of the program. But it was just reauthorized in the farm bill. I very much doubt that the American Corn Growers Association or the House or Senate Ag committees took much note of the evaluation. If the people with the money don't pay attention, then it's not likely the big shot bureaucrats are going to pay attention.

I'm not sure the extent to which the Secretary's office or OMB paid attention to the evaluations. If they did, it's good. If not, the only gains are in forcing bureaucrats to look at themselves--perhaps useful.

As a side note, one item that did hit the media was the issue of erroneous payments. It's good to see the latest erroneous payment figure is .37 percent (that's 37 hundredths of one percent). Of course, no one's going to put that on TV.

Morality and Politics

I've "shared" a post by Jim Manzi at the American Scene, extensively criticizing Obama's graduation address at Wesleyan. I don't necessarily share his criticism, but I am ambivalent. But it seems to me that JFK's "ask not" line was criticized at the time by some on much the same grounds.

Note: I comment on Manzi's post, challenging the $14,000 figure for college graduates. Briefly, Obama had 2 years work experience and could easily have qualified as a GS-7 at about $17,800 if he had wanted to work for the government.

The Myths We Live By

Ethicurean has a piece on a new chain, Cereality, serving breakfast, as in combining cold cereal, milk, and toppings for a big markup. But the writer's succumbed to the myths:

Of course, the reason why the cereal grains purchased by General Mills or Kellogg’s cost mere pennies is the tremendous subsidies that go to corporate agribusiness growing corn and wheat, thus creating an excess of extremely cheap and nutritionally deficient grain products that are making our nation fat and diabetic and destroying arable farmland because they are grown in huge, chemical dependent monocultures. On top of all that, subsidies force small-scale farmers both here and abroad off their land because they can’t compete with our artificially cheap grain prices.

The truth, of course, is many more family farmers (like John Phipps) grow wheat and corn than do any corporate agribusinesses.

Wired and Down to Earth

Down to Earth links to an article in Wired on green "heresies" (offenses against a supposed "green" ideology), specifically organics and genetic engineering.

C.P.Snow had his famous lecture on the Two Cultures many years ago. I think I sniff a whiff of that in some of the "green"/environmental controversies. There's the reasonably hard science of the climatologists. Most greens accept and believe that. But there's also some romanticism, often with an anti-scientific edge. I'd see that in Prof. Pollan's most recent book with its attacks on "nutritionism." Sometimes the greens/locavores seem to be the modern Luddites, distrusting the modern works of the mind.

While many years ago I decided I wanted to be a historian (and failed, but that's another story), I also then, and now, was very interested in science. Whether it was the science fiction of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov, or the science writing of Asimov and Gamow, I got off on the ability of smart men (few women mentioned back then) to understand the natural world. (Perhaps it was genetic; my father had a BA in chemistry and BS in chemical engineering before his health forced him into farming.)

I've never lost my interest in science (though string theory is way beyond me, I still have problems with subatomic particles). And I've never lost my faith in the mind. While I acknowledge the problems often raised (usually eugenics is the first one) the mind is the only instrument we've got and we've come a long, long way since I was a boy.

So, while not a scientist, you can reasonably accuse me of great faith in science. And I don't see the great divide between the "natural" and the "engineered". All of which is a long-winded way of saying I agree that "organic farming" shouldn't be "privileged", to use current terminology over conventional farming. And the only way to progress from where we are is to use all our tools, including genetic engineering. It's easy for humans to be over-confident in their smarts, but the only alternative is faith in dumbness.

Corn Price Volatility

APAC has an interesting analysis of past run-ups in corn prices, and their subsequent declines. Having predicted current prices will fall, I'm glad to see someone with better credentials than old age agree with me.

What Will They Do Next?

There's a french film that got good reviews, maybe even an Oscar nomination, about a man locked inside his body by a stroke, except that he could blink his eye and so he wrote a book.

MIT's Technology Review has an update on work implanting chips in the brain so primates like us can communicate with external gadgets, like a mechanical arm, and feed themselves. Both fascinating and a little disturbing, until I read this paragraph:

After just two days of training, the monkeys learned to control the arm in three dimensions and to control the gripper placed at the end that functions as a hand. The animals even learned to use the arm in ways in which they hadn't been trained: an accompanying video shows an animal using the arm to push a piece of food into his mouth. In a second video, the monkey brings the gripper back to his mouth and licks it, ignoring another piece of food. "He gets so good at using the tool that he may think about it as part of his own body," says Schwartz. He likens the training process to learning to use a mouse to control a computer cursor. After a certain learning period, "you're not thinking about how you have to activate a muscle in an index finger to push the left mouse button," he says. "In that way, you've embodied the cursor on the screen."

And of course, I was moving my mouse as I read. But the dividing lines blur and blur.

Students as Farm Laborers

Many of the comments on the NY Times article I linked to below said that farmers should hire students. My guess is that's more difficult than one might imagine. Any given farmer for any given crop needs harvesting labor only for the period the fruit is ripe. In the wheat belt, I understand that harvesting crews follow the custom harvesters north, from Texas into Canada. That setup is probably better able to attract students than fruit and vegetable. I remember in my youth buses of migrant labor (black or "Negro" as we said then) would arrive to pick beans for canning (just a handful of fields in my area, on the river floodplain). They'd go north for other crops. And the film, "The Ciderhouse Rules", shows a similar setup for apples at a later date. But somehow I can't imagine today's parents of college-bound children encouraging them to follow the crops north as harvesters.

As for dairy, the other type of farming in the piece, not many teenagers are willing to get up at 4 am for first milking.