Evaluating Government

Government Executive has a piece on Bush's PART (Program Assessment Rating Tool),with comments by academics. Bottomline for me: programs are hard to evaluate, particularly because many represent an imperfect blending of different ideas and goals held by different sponsors in Congress (and the Administration). Which was/is our goal in Iraq?

And the fact that neither Congress nor the public buy in to the evaluations is critical. Bureaucrats in an agency will respond to what the appropriate Congressman wants, not to what is written on PART.

Who, Me Biased?

Not at all. We must not have the full picture of Michael Pollan's garden here. It looks rather small, certainly nothing to match his grandfather's garden, described here, in a piece I like rather better than his more recent work.

Of course, Pollan must be busy flying around the country promoting his books, too busy to maintain the year-round garden that must be possible in California. I'd hate to have his travel schedule over the next weeks, or his carbon foot-print.

Interesting Posts

As I continue to try to catch up, let me note aspects of some posts that caught my eye:

• Jennifer M in Ethicurean on an Ohio meeting about preserving farmland quotes David Kline, an Amish farmer: "Though the Amish have long been seen as old-fashioned and too low-tech to be emulated widely, their methods work: from building soil fertility through the use of manure, to promoting advances in simple but efficient technologies (European-designed plows, horse power, small-scale operations). “There is no such thing as post-agricultural society,” he warned, and farming can provide job security if we remember that the goal is “honest living” and to leave the land a better place for our children. “We’re the last people to advocate you should do it our way,” he noted, but with a twinkling, self-deprecating smile, he added, “But it works.” He rounded out his comments with a call for diversity in farming — in ideas as well as in crops — and for an emphasis on community."
• a summary of a panel in Ethicurean on the future.
  
• a reference in Ethicurean to the blueprint. (Most interesting, as it was dated in 2003 and focused on the low prices for US farm products in 1996-2003 whereas other writers more recently have focused on the high food prices of recent years. It's one problem of agriculture, indeed of economics in general, you come up with a good theory and turn your head and it's been challenged by data.)
  

A Comment on NYTimes Magazine Issue

I found this post in the Daily Yonder to be right on. [ed--even though he likes a lot of Pollan's ideas--Yes].

Bill Bishop criticizes the issue for ignoring, mostly, farmers. I don't think farmers have any direct line to wisdom, even when it comes to agriculture, but I doubt an issue on movies, or novels, or even auto-making, would so minimize the role of farmers.

(Note: I should hat-tip someone, but I moved too fast and lost the reference.)

Bureaucrats Prepare for Transition

And get advice here on handling the initial meetings with the appointees. I hope, vainly, the new President's people don't come to office suspicious of both what's happened the last 8 years and the career bureaucrats who implemented it. They've got too much to do to worry about the past.

Amish Take Over Farming

The Post had an article on the surging Amish population a few days ago. Professor Kraybill estimates a gain of 84 percent in 16 years. Keep that up, and pretty soon the Amish will accomplish what the locavores and organic farming types want.

Short-Lived Small Farms

Pardon the cynicism of a codger, but this post at Musings of a Stonehead confirms me:

"It turns out that, in his [the local attorney] experience, most incomers buying crofts and smallholdings in the area last about three years before giving up and moving back to a “more manageable” house and garden.

Food Co-ops

Stephanie Pierce blogs at Ethicurean about food co-ops she and her husband saw driving across America. Some good generalizations there, but I think she misses the most important element to a good co-op: finding a structure and a niche which ensures survival over the medium term. There were lots of producer and consumer co-ops in the 1920's and 30's, and again in the 1960's, but history tells us most of them failed or were bought out. A single smart, persistent, hard working person can initiate a co-op, attracting enough others to make it work for a while, but it's very hard to institutionalize that into a continuing organization which can outlive the founder (or her enthusiasm).

Polish Agriculture

From Grist and Erik Hoffner:

That's what I'd read in the New York Times this spring, in a story which reported that interest in buying local is thin, and the market for organic is even thinner. And this is largely what I saw there -- people preferred to buy vegetables from Germany, and farms I visited were wondering what their market would be in the future. Ironically, most of these farms were already organic because of the prohibitive cost of chemical amendments, but hadn't bothered with the paperwork. Most small farmers don't sell at all, but consume what they grow -- pure subsistence.

In my high school biology class, many years ago, we were taught something that's now discredited: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"--meaning the development of the individual retraces the steps by which the phylum developed, hence the presence of gills at one stage of the fetal development. I wonder whether that's sort of true for economies--an agricultural economy which the Michael Pollan's of the world regard as ideal must necessarily transform into an industrialized agriculture before, perhaps, and this remains to be seen, developing post-industrial crunchy green characteristics.

How Legislation Is Implemented II

Government Executive has a long post about the problems of implementing the "bailout": problems of designing the problem, getting the expertise, handling ethical and conflict-of-interest problems, oversight, enforcement, and the looming transition.