The Fine Points of History

A comment on my earlier post about biodynamic agriculture challenged my statement that it was an offshoot of organic farming. Indeed, the commenter is reasonably correct. Consulting Wikipedia again and more carefully, and accepting everything said there as gospel (of course), Rudolf Steiner apparently antedated Sir Albert Howard . It's not clear whether they influenced each other or not. I'm more familiar with Louis Bromfield. My mother was converted to organic farming by his books.

Why Doesn't the US Have Bureaucrats Like This?

From an upcoming conference on social media and government, in Canada:

This is not an event put on by the Government of Canada. You can argue with your boss that this will be a highly effective low-cost training opportunity, and if you really need it we can make up a convincing yet completely untruthful conference pamphlet to help make the argument.

This guerrilla action brings a whiff of the old days of bulletin boards (back when 2400 baud was a good speed, not that many people these days know what a "baud" is).

Amish Growth

Organic farming has a future, and its name is "Amish". See this MSNBC piece on their growth, doubling in just a few years.

The Definition of Rich?

When you don't know how many houses you own. From Politico.


To try to give McCain a break, the only thing I could imagine is that he's thinking like a lawyer--how many are in my name, how many in Cindy's name, how many in a trust, how many are some sort of fancy-shmancy rental/purchase arrangement.

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."