Two Different Posts

Not how to interpret these:

At farmgate, the UofIll site, comes a paper on the pricing of seed corn--an excerpt:

"The WI trio examined seed corn pricing in Illinois in 2004 to illustrate how stacked traits were actually priced:
• Conventional seed corn averaged $88.33 per bag.
• The Bt corn borer trait added $20.49
• The Bt rootworm trait was alone worth $27.28.
• One herbicide tolerant trait was priced at $14.51, another at $6.83.
• Double stacking of corn borer and rootworm traits added $35.51.
• Triple stacking of corn borer, rootworm, and herbicide tolerance added $37.30.
• Quadruple stacking added $39.45 for corn borer, rootworm and both herbicide tolerant traits.
• The market power of the seed company added over 8% to the price."

At Grist, Tom Philpott pushes an interview with an author:

"...the relationship between organisms and individual genes is much more complex and mysterious than researchers originally thought. And that, Kimbrell says in this interview, helps explain why after 25 years of R&D, the GMO industry has only managed to create a couple of viable traits. The main one, of course, is "herbicide tolerance," e.g., Monsanto's Round Up Ready corn and soy, engineered to withstand copious lashings of its flagship herbicide, Round Up."

Technical Corrections and Farm Constitution

Congressman Etheridge is introducing legislation to fix the 10-acre "problem" in the 2008 farm bill. The legislation directs the USDA to allow aggregation of base acres and will allow producers to combine multiple farms into one farm through the reconstitution process. Since many years ago I was responsible for this area, I'll be interested to see how this is implemented.

It's not always easy to carry legislation into implementation, as can be inferred from a post at Whiskey Burn entitled "Amazingly Trivial Things" about "technical corrections" to the farm bill. Dan (formerly of Blog for Rural America) disdains the nit-picking objections of the good folks in the Office of General Counsel to language in the farm bill, a disdain commonly found in non-lawyers. (Rather like the disdain non-librarians have for the Dewey decimal system.) Dan thinks the intent is clear, so FSA ought to implement on that basis.

Constitution Day

See this link.

While the "Founding Fathers" had many faults, overall they did about as good as possible at the time, which is all any of us can do.

Cheney and the Bureaucrats

Post has a two-part series from a book on Cheney. Today's article is focused on a story previously reported--the uproar in the Justice Department over approvals for a secret program of intelligence eavesdropping. Short summary: Cheney and David Addington, his aide, pushed through approvals, partly by severely limiting knowledge of the program. When Bush had to renew his approval, Justice personnel rebelled, came within a day of submitting mass resignations, which led to Bush reversing his decision and modifying the program.

The "rebellion", as I'm calling it, was basically among the political appointees at Justice, deputy Attorney General and below, but fed by resistance from career lawyers in the military and finally affirmed by Attorney General Ashcroft.

To me, as a Democratic ex-bureaucrat, it's a story of the good guys (career people) winning a battle with the bad guys (Cheney--boo, hiss). Looked at another way it is an example the inevitable tension between bureaucracy and political chiefs. But I also suspect it's a failure at personal politics by Cheney and Addington--more tactful and personable types who were less obsessive about secrecy might well have won the tacit consent of the bureaucracy, simply by including them from the start, infecting them with a shared concern about the grave dangers of terrorism, etc. etc. (Concerns I don't have, BTW.) In my experience, knowledge is power in bureaucracy. And when you deprive usually powerful people of knowledge, they become resentful.

Having said all that, I still think the result was right. And it's a fine example of the wisdom of the Founders--as the Federalist talked about harnessing the passions of imperfect man to check and balance power.

Disinformation

Shankar Vedantam is back, reporting on interesting research on how misinformation may still have an effect after it's corrected. I'm dubious of the reported difference between conservatives and liberals in this regard--my beginning position is they're both human, and both would operate similarly: i.e, my enemy is a bad, misinformed, lying s.o.b. But it does make one think, particularly someone who is as into politics as I am. One reason I do try to somewhat balance the blogs I read, despite the dangers to my blood pressure.

John Sides at the Monkey Cage provides URL for the research.

Messages From Slow Food Nation

Selected quotes, not at random :-), from this post:

• recruiting millions of new farmers, ennobling farming so more people want to do it, and making it possible for them to make a decent living at it.
• end the free-market, capitalist system: All of those issues are the byproducts of a system built on competition rather than cooperation
• the foods available gave me a huge stomachache. Especially as a vegetarian who couldn’t have the meat, because it meant walking around for 4 hours gorging on beer, ice cream, and chocolate
• drink Red Bull to write theses: Red Bull is just a drink that works for capitalism because it gets you through the work day (and he confessed to drinking it night and day to get through his Ph.D)

The Message of Rural Obesity

A corollary of my post on skinny Amish would be the idea that the rural obese aren't doing a lot of heavy manual labor. Some may be caught in the routine of the big breakfast, etc., not remembering a tractor drives easier than a team, we don't shovel manure much anymore, etc. Even some of those who live in urban settings may still be carrying over their rural diets and menus, without the physical labor that went with them.

Legalize Marijuana, We Need It for MRSA

According to Technology Review, the bacteria that resist antibiotics can be handled with pot.

Trailing Clouds Behind 'Em

Eugene Volokh raises an interesting question at the Conspiracy:

"Say a blogger posts an accurate story -- perhaps based on a news report or a court decision -- that discusses some minor misconduct by some person. The post names that person.

Several years later, the person asks the blogger to remove the post, or to remove the person's name from the post. The person is not a government official or other important figure (at least at that point; one never knows what will happen in the future). The past misconduct was pretty minor, and doesn't suggest that the person will be a serious menace to his friends, neighbors, or others. But it's embarrassing, and the person doesn't like this story coming up whenever the person's name is Googled" [there's more]

He's gotten lots of comments, most of which lean towards being merciful and granting the request. It's nice to see the blogosphere is "Christian" in this sense. But as some point out, while you may be able to edit the past to make sins less visible, it's really impossible to change the past entirely, even on the Internet. That's always been true, I've a host of minor sins and faux pas wedged firmly in my memory which I can't drive out. Even though I may be the only one who remembers them, they're still part of the fabric of my life (changing metaphors there).

But the Internet changes things--Slate has a post noting the ways in which both campaigns have edited the past with respect to Gov. Palin. It's harder and harder for politicians to construct a consistent facade. I think we'll learn the best way is, don't hide, reveal, for the politician and for the public, as difficult as it may be, accept that politicians are human.

Tobacco After the Buyout

I've blogged a couple times (here and here) on the results of the buyout of the old tobacco programs. Here's another article, from Haywood County, NC (mountains) where they grew burley. In summary, North Carolina as a state is growing about as much tobacco as ever, the price is more volatile, the crop is riskier, "produce" (tomatoes and peppers) are competitive, the acreage in the mountains is down, the number of farms is down, the eastern part of the state has bigger, consolidated tobacco farms, some growing a new variety of heat-resistant burley. In the mountains, agriculture is down generally.

So, the program seems to have been effective in keeping smaller farmers in tobacco, presumably well past the time when it was the most economically efficient method of production. And it didn't, at least in the short run, mean lower prices for consumers, as the anti-smoking people claimed. (Full disclosure: I smoked over 2 packs day for the first 10 years or so of my bureaucratic career. Fortunately I was able to quit in 1978.)