Globalizing Education

The Post Magazine section does their education issue, including a very good article on how the DC area is importing elementary teachers from the Philippines. The teachers have to learn to say: "shut up" and be more assertive to control their classrooms. They also have to get used to our society. As I say, very interesting.

I'd known that we were importing nurses from the Philippines and elsewhere, but this was the first I'd heard about teachers.

Changes in Eating Patterns

The NY Times does a graphic article on changes in food consumption patterns between 1970 and now, based on ERS figures. Click on the multimedia link to get the graphics.

We've increased food consumption by about 10 percent, with a big drop in dairy and big increases in fats, grains, and fruit. (Pardon my pointing out that's not quite the picture painted by people like Professor Pollan--at least not the areas of increase. To be fair, I expect the oils and grains are consumed mostly as baked or deep fat fried foods, but the article doesn't specify our menu.)

The Power of Neighborhood

The NY Times has an article on the impact of high fuel costs on globalization. Manufacturing and not agriculture is the focus, there's only a couple paragraphs on food) but the same economics are at play. (There is a reference to the end of avocado salad in Minnesota in the winter--apparently a doomed species.)

I think I'd take it with a pinch of salt--transportation costs probably aren't the most important cost factor in most productive activities--but as we're reminded, evolution works using marginal differences. There may be more prestige and class differences. After all, the spice trade from the East Indies encountered high transportation costs but still found markets in Europe.

Beware the Deadly Vog, My Son

Not so deadly, to humans at least, but to Hawaiian vegetation, volcanic smog is. But your faithful FSA springs to the rescue.






[Sorry to all those growers affected by the disaster, I really shouldn't make fun of misfortunes.]

Yale and Public Information-Sshhh

Colin McKay at SoSaidThe Organization secretly tells us of a document we are commanded not to cite from Yale Law. It's well worth reading. It proposes [emphasis removed]:

In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties’ use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

Some comments:

• the authors could productively cite the GPO's "reengineering" initiative--as GPO is officially responsible for all government documents (repository libraries) it particularly aggravates me that their effort seems to be a solo silo, (see this link) particularly as their aim is to please their library stakeholders, not the public.
  
• the authors do not deal with the problem of private data, that is, data that can't be made public. Their examples include FCC dockets, regulations, Congressional actions (bills, votes, etc.), SEC filings--all things that are supposed to be public. In other words, they're viewing government as lawyers, and the data they want is lawyers' data. They might profitably look at the EWG's database of federal payments to farmers--a long-existing example of the problems (and gains) in providing government data on-line.
  
• I doubt the practicality of the suggestion (that is, considered as a government-wide, top down initiative). They note the number of constraints agencies have to deal with in handling data. Each of the constraints was the result of some interest group and/or Congressional members putting their oar in. That's the way our government works. Perhaps in a parliamentary system the proposal is feasible, but not here. Appropriations committees will not give dollars to such good government suggestions. And a President Obama or McCain is unlikely to use political capital to take real action.
• I think the most likely outcome is a gradual, evolutionary, scattershot approach which, after 20-30 years or so, ends up maybe close to what the authors want.

(I'm struck by this language: "The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large." 10 years ago I was proposing the same thing to FSA, NRCS, and RD--an Internet-based front end to access documents and data with a gradual back end migration from the legacy databases and indexed files to modern web-servers. Even had a working mockup website to this effect. Alas, I'm no salesman. As far as I can see, the key technical constraint was the need to provide security at the data element level--i.e., maybe you want to show to everyone that John Doe owns a section of land in Mills County, Iowa, but you don't want to show his SSN to anyone except him and one or two people who serve him. That's tough to get the "business rules" decided on. The political constraint was the necessary impact on the organizations involved. Agencies whose raison d'etre was to serve local farmers would have to consider whether and how to change. And the politicians whose livelihood depends on customer service, meaning being able to see that the local office works for their farmers, would have to cede influence.)

Salmonella Deaths

One thing I discovered in an attempt to follow up on this Down to Earth post is, the government doesn't seem to do a good job of tracking deaths due to food poisoning. This site has some interesting figures. I'm not quite sure what the difference between roughly 40 deaths per year reported and the 1000 deaths per year estimated tells us about the safety of the system.

I'd throw out this logic, which may be wrong. The stuff that gets reported to CDC is the widespread pattern of illness, which might result from salmonella somewhere in a big mover in the food chain; the stuff that doesn't get reported is salmonella from the smaller movers.

Looked at another way, if there's one thousand deaths in the food system and 40,000 deaths in the transportation system each year, and we eat more often than we drive, food is very, very safe.

Mayor Marion Barry Revisited

Marion Barry hasn't made national headlines in a long while, but he's still in politics as a member of the DC City Council for Ward 8, the hills of Anacostia. He makes the Post regularly, and each time he does I look eagerly to see if they're reporting that he's paid his back taxes yet. (No word so far.)

But, give the guy credit for something other than brass--he does change, according to this post on Marc Fisher's blog. He now welcomes development, marvels at the $450,000 homes, and supports charter schools. That's a far cry from the young organizer with schemes to make money and advance progress by having Pride (his group) put out garbage cans on street corners and then sell ads on them. I voted for that man for mayor, reluctantly and following the lead of the Post. Regretted it ever since. But he's not total con-man, I guess none of us is "total" anything.

Hiding the Lede? Food Advertising for Kids

Both the NY Times and Washington Post carried stories about an FTC study on the amount of money spent on food advertising directed towards children and teens. (Also see the Ethicurean article.) Both reported the figure: $1.6 billion in 2006. Both buried deeply in the story the fact that critics of the food industry had been using the figure of $10 billion (or higher) in their attacks on the industry.

Classifying such advertising has got to be difficult--mostly in the eye of the beholder, I would think. And what costs to include or exclude is also judgmental. (One expert suggested that excluding travel and promotion expenses accounted for some of the difference; that's a lot of first class airline seats.) So there is no true figure.

But still, estimates that vary not by 50 percent but by 500 percent? Give me a break. Perhaps the lede (I love the word and I think it's the first time I've ever used it) should have been more focused on the discrepancy in figures, and what it might imply for consumers of stories--take all estimates with more than your recommended daily allowance of salt.

Crop Volatility

From Farmgate's summary of a study of crop volatility:

Grain market volatility has increased over the past 20 years, no matter how you measure it. Such volatility also seems to be increasing at a greater rate, and that means the structure of agriculture will be impacted, specifically, the management of risk and the cost of commodity trading. Farmers bearing those burdens will eventually see processors and the consumer sharing in that additional cost.

Hot News on Eating from NYTimes

Actually, it's an AP story the Times carried:

"Food Makers Report Profits as Eating in Gains Favor

Kraft Foods, the nation’s largest food and beverage maker, reported growth in the second quarter Monday, as consumers abandoned restaurants for less costly meals at home."

I guess you don't "eat" at restaurants, you "dine".