Hollowing Out the Center

From Grist, an article on the "hollowing out" of American agriculture--more and more of the production is being done by bigger and bigger operations. Give the writer credit, she finds a big farmer (5,000 acres) who's an individual, not a corporation, to link her piece to.

I don't have that much problem with her piece, except her historical myopia. The trend she cites doesn't date to the 1970's, it goes much further back. My grandfather's hilltop farm in Broome County, NY (proud home of the Farm Bureau, the interest group representing big farmers, all 5 million of them) was the combination of two farms. Handy, when the farmhouse burned, he and his son tore down the deserted one for materials to rebuild the family home. She probably could argue the trend has accelerated this century, I mean last century, over what was happening in the 19th century. But that fact would simply indicate that the cause lies deeper than shortsighted government policies of Nixon and successors, not something that's particularly palatable to the locavore etc. movement.

Words To Bureaucratize By

From FarmPolicy.com, a DTN observation (triggered by the 10-acre rule flap):

"However, the application of extremely complex programs to farming operations that differ widely in their resources and scale and even in their economic objectives will always be a severe challenge. And, as program rules become increasingly complex, the challenge to do so equitably will become even greater, Washington Insider believes.”

The End Is Near--the 10-Acre Rule

Senator Grassley says USDA may be right in how they interpret the legislative language. Must be an omen of some sort.

[Updated--but Rep Peterson says he may have muscled USDA into seeing it his way.]

Republican Scientist Disses Organic

The title is unfair. Just because Nina Fedoroff works for Condi Rice is no reason to call her a Republican. (She's the science adviser to the Secretary of State.) She's interviewed in today's Times and says:

"If everybody switched to organic farming, we couldn’t support the earth’s current population — maybe half."

I agree, but I suspect many NYTimes readers will not.

Have to give credit to Rice for having such a post.

Corn

Sometimes I can follow science, sometimes I can't. This post is interesting, as it deals with the evolution of corn, though I had a bit of trouble following the logic of "cryptic variation", meaning genes change but the trait doesn't. (Hat tip to Brad DeLong.)

The big news for me was a throwaway for the writer--they've been able to mate modern corn and teosinte and produce viable offspring--meaning they're the same species.

One implication I think is Richard Dawkins was wrong in "The Selfish Gene", because the trait, not the gene, is what is selected for.

Grade Inflation, Students and Bureaucrats

Harry at Crooked Timber has an interesting discussion of "grade inflation", which supposedly occurs at institutions of higher education. He argues that grade inflation may not be occurring, students may just be better these days. (There's some proof, and even a name for the effect, which I have now forgotten--senior moment--that IQ's are rising each generation, although he doesn't mention this. He does observe that legacy students like George W wouldn't have gotten into Yale today.)

It's interesting to me because the people who believe in grade inflation ascribe it to the same factors which I saw in government work when it came time for me to evaluate employees, or others to evaluate me. Namely, fuzzy standards, the desire to avoid conflict, fear of honest discussions, desire to keep everyone happy. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

IT: Don't Ever Do This (100 MPH in Suburbs)

Robert Thomson has a great little story in the Post, on two gray-haired speeders in Silver Spring, caught on camera going 100 mph on a winding road. They paid their $40 fine, as good citizens and guilty people should.

If I knew how to hide the rest of this, I would, because you really ought to read it.

But, I don't--the bottom line was the IT types screwed up. The camera system was set to diagnose itself if it had problems, and communicate the fact to humans by displaying either 100 mph or 0 mph as the speed.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Some lazy IT specialist saved herself a little bit of code by doing that (or some person who specified the user requirements was ignorant of good design). You should never use a piece of data (as in recorded speed) for another purpose (to communicate a message). Once the system knows there's a problem, it should display or print an error message (ideally one that's meaningful). To do otherwise is bad design.

Bad Night for Foodies, Via Mr. Bolt

So the new "world's fastest human" ran his record time based on a breakfast and lunch of nuggets.

Or maybe it was yams

So Much for Original Intent--Small Farms and ACRE

Keith Good passes on a report of conflicts between USDA and Congress over interpretation of two provisions of the farm bill: how to implement the prohibition on payments for bases less than 10 acres and how to implement the ACRE program with respect to past years market prices.

This is the sort of discussion you get after most farm bills, particularly when there's been little informed discussion before they're passed. The big shots in Congress may not be talking to the big shots in USDA, because of political differences or just policy differences. The big shots of whatever position may not be talking to the faceless bureaucrats who understand what's needed to implement and, hopefully, are able to visualize the questions and problems down the road. (Yes, I was one of those faceless bureaucrats, whose wisdom was often ignored.)

The whole experience makes me doubt the validity of originalism as a theory of interpretation for the Constitution.

Herndon and Immigrants Again

The Post reported yesterday the same old story. Day laborers, presumably most or all illegal immigrants, are out on the streets of Herndon, Virginia, some residents don't like it, so the town is planning to crack down, again. Of course, the town once had a center, where the laborers were off the street and registered, and not bothering people. But they closed that down, hoping to discourage the laborers, which hasn't worked sufficiently to please the good citizens.

So, they plan to escalate their fight. Reminds me of the drug war--as long as the demand (for cheap day laborers) is there, people will meet the demand.