Turkey Weights--I Was Wrong

I posted yesterday on turkey weights. I blew it, by being too quick to be critical and jumping to assumptions. The issue was "turkey weight"; what I failed to imagine was the difference between liveweight and dressed weight. Apparently the chart and article I criticized was relying on liveweight figures, not dressed. See this link, which I reached from Freakonomics. I should have thought of NASS stats, here.

My apologies to Mr. Madrigal.

I still wonder about the figures, but he reported them correctly. One thing he didn't note: the increase in price per pound for turkey over the last 30 years?

Zero.

The (Un)Importance of Being USDA Secretary

Oscar Wilde's play culminates in the hero's realization of the importance of being earnest/Earnest; the greens need to learn the unimportance of being Secretary of Agriculture.

(I write after a few weeks of concern and agitation over who Obama's Secretary will be. The latest is this post at DTN: will animal rights be a top concern or will the Secretary roll over for GM crops? The first, of course, was the omnipresent Michael Pollan in the Times Magazine, on whose piece I've drafted many more comments than I've posted.)

But the reality is, in my experience, the Secretary:

1. can't create a new program, only Congress can do that.
   
2. can't move money from one program to another, only the appropriations committees can do that.
3. can't reorganize the department, only Congress can do that (just ask Secretary Glickman, who spent much time and effort to prepare a combination of the administrative support personnel for NRCS, FSA, and RD, only to have Congress veto it).
4. can't close offices (without time consuming negotiation and consultation with the affected member of Congress)
5. can't talk to the public, without telling Congress first (okay, that's an exaggeration--the prohibition is not across the board).
6. can try to sway Congress when the farm bill is being prepared (ask Venneman and Schafer how well that worked), unfortunately there's no farm bill due during Obama's term of office.
7. is limited in what he or she can direct USDA employees to do (like proposing user fees).

See Sec. 712 of the Agricultural Appropriations Act for an example:'"a) None of the funds provided by this Act, or provided by previous Appropriations Acts to the agencies funded by this Act that remain available for obligation or expenditure in the current fiscal year, or provided from any accounts in the Treasury of the United States derived by the collection of fees available to the agencies funded by this Act, shall be available for obligation or expenditure through a reprogramming of funds which--

(1) creates new programs;

(2) eliminates a program, project, or activity;

(3) increases funds or personnel by any means for any project or activity for which funds have been denied or restricted;

(4) relocates an office or employees;

(5) reorganizes offices, programs, or activities; or

(6) contracts out or privatizes any functions or activities presently performed by Federal employees; unless the Committees on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress are notified 15 days in advance of such reprogramming of funds."

(I admit, I exaggerate a bit--John Block in 1983 created a big expensive program, using CCC inventories, without Congressional authority and by strong arming the attorneys. But we don't have big CCC inventories now and Bush gave strong use of executive power a bad name.)

A Concentration of Wealth in Hogs

I was struck by 1 and 2.

Try out these on your friends. MO livestock economist Ron Plain’s market facts:
1) The smallest 75% of U.S. hog farms produced 1% of the hogs.
2) The largest 1% of U.S. hog farms produced 75% of the hogs.
3) Since 1930 the sow inventory has declined 42%, but pork production rose 221%
4) Jan-Sept pork production was 17.25 bil. lbs, up 9.3% over Jan-Sept of 2007.
5) Jan-Sept pork exports were 3.62 bil. lbs, up 65.8% over Jan-Sept of 2007.
6) Jan-Sept pork imports were 614 mil. lbs, down 16.6% from Jan-Sept of 2007.
7) Pork, beef, and poultry production will all drop in 2009, the first time since 1973.
8) In 2007, swine herds with 1-99 head averaged 7.53 pigs per litter.
9) In 2007, swine herds with 5,000+ head averaged 9.28 pigs per litter.

Turkey Weights and Misleading Science

[This post was wrong. See here.]

Here's a link to an article by one Alexis Madrigal that disses the modern turkey, modern corn, and modern potatoes as oversized, oversweet, and genetically "hacked". It has a chart, supposedly illustrating the growth of the average turkey. According to the chart, in the 1920's the average turkey weighed about 13 pounds, today's turkey weighs about 29 pounds. There's no source cited for the chart (though mousing over shows the chart title to be "new_sweet_chart"??

A brief session of Googling doesn't turn up any facts, so I'm not sure what they are, except Mr. Madrigal's chart and statements are misleading, at the least, and most likely wrong. Let's start with the concept: "average turkey". My wife and I have been having turkey since 1980 or so, each time we buy the same size bird: 10-12 pounds. Given the American household has shrunk in size over the years, I think it's safe to guess that "average turkey weight" does not mean: the average weight of turkeys sold at retail in the U.S.

So, could "average turkey weight" mean the genetic potential--what would a turkey weigh if it grew to its maximum weight? Well, probably not. From the heritage turkey page at Rodale comes this paragraph:

Heritage birds command a premium (consider a store-bought turkey at 39 cents per pound) because of their genetic value and added labor costs. They are, on average, much smaller birds (10 lbs for hens, 12 lbs for toms) that take twice as long to mature as the Large Whites. Still, Frank Reese, an experienced heritage turkey farmer (Good Shepherd Ranch in Linsborg, Kansas, www.reeseturkeys.com), estimates that if done properly, growers can make a nice profit of $60 to $80 per bird. Thanks to careful selection and breeding, his heritage birds average 18 - 33 pounds. (Reese and other heroes in conserving heritage turkeys are recognized by the ALBC at www.albc-usa.org/alerts/Oct13_03.htm)

So heritage birds can reach 33 pounds. (The Diestel Family Turkey Ranch advertises such birds.)

For a turkey grower I'd guess the two metrics most important are weight gained per pound of food and age to marketable size. Madrigal does give a sentence to this, crediting modern turkeys with being very efficient at converting grain to meat and being twice as fast to market. But it's a lot more sexy to say: "Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner" than to say: "Science Made Your Thanksgiving Dinner Both Energy-Efficient and Bland." (Less grain for the same meat is more energy efficient.) By focusing on size rather than efficiency, Mr. Madrigal skews his piece.

Visit DC

We've a new attraction, according to the Post's Marc Fisher, the visitor center at the U.S. Capitol. He says:

"After too many recent experiences with empty, ahistorical and timid attractions such as the World War II Memorial, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and this month's remake of the National Museum of American History, Washington needed a winner on the culture front. Now it has one."

Open for business on Dec. 2.

Problems in Enforcing the $2.5 Million AGI

A commenter suggests:"Why not, as with deceased people, pass a data file over to IRS and let them tell us any ID that got a FSA payment that is over the AGI limit. That way FSA does not have the data but IRS can tell us potential issues with ID's that have earned too much money to be AGI eligible. This should become easier as we move to direct attribution."

Seems to be a good question, but there's a catch. (Rule number X, there's always a catch.) Once you die, your Social security number is no longer private (just ask the genealogists who look at the Social Security death index). So SSA has no problem telling FSA who is dead. By contrast, periodically IRS gets beaten about the head and body about its abuses of taxpayers and releases of their information. (I believe Senator Grassley may even have been on the Senate committee that did the last set of hearings in 1998 or so.) Indeed, before I left USDA the Republicans (probably) passed a law putting big obstacles in sharing data among agencies. That act has probably been modified since 9/11.

So, IRS is very very reluctant to bend the laws restricting access to individual earnings data. I haven't located the description of their system of records required under the Privacy Act, but presumably they'd have to modify it to authorize this processing. That's assuming President-elect Obama calls in an attorney and says it's got to be done. (Of course, then you'd have all the Republicans calling him down for doing something the Democrats complained about when Bush/Cheney did the same thing.)

PETA, Animal Agriculture, and Cruelty

Spokesmen for animal agriculture fight back, here and here.

And Charley Stenholm, mentioned as a possible secretary of agriculture, is very concerned: "He makes the point that this anti-livestock and anti-technology crusade sweeping the country is far more detrimental than some people perceive."

The $2.5 Million Story, Followup

And here's what the AP made of the GAO report on payments made to people earning over $2.5 mill. And here's the Des Moines Register.

Brings back memories of the stories before Congress made foreign aliens ineligible (mostly) for program payments (was that in 1985 or before?).

Just as a bonus I'll throw in a URL to a Reuters story (at EWG) about the job faced by Obama's USDA appointee.

Bush and Records

Interesting interview at NextGov over e-mail records here. One excerpt:

Fuchs: What happened when the Bush administration came in is that they scrapped the e-mail archiving system [established under the Clinton administration].... and they didn't replace it. They actually did develop a replacement in consultation with National Archives, but they made the decision not to install it. So, for the eight years of the Bush administration, there is no archive of the e-mails that were sent or received within the White House. . . .

Obama Uses Farm Program Payments as Example

From Obama's press conference today:

"Let me give you one example of what I’m talking about. There’s a report today that from 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff for such subsidies. If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as President."

He's referring to a GAO report.

I'm rather impressed [I'm sure people are surprised] by the FSA response.

But that's a side issue, and I want to hit two points:

• Part of the problem is that FSA accepts certifications that a person's adjusted gross income is $2.5 million or less, without having routine access to the IRS data which would allow for checking the certifications. As FSA points out, in accepting the GAO recommendation, Congress needs to permit this if they want effective administration.
• Another part is that legal entities "farm" and get program payments. So if ABC corporation is half-owned by Joe Croesus and half by John Empty pockets, and Joe is over the $2.5 limit and John isn't, FSA is supposed to make payments to ABC corporation reduced by half (representing Joe's share). GAO claims (in their response to FSA's comments) that they accounted for this.

As a former FSA employee, I can only imagine the anger I would be feeling--GAO had access to IRS data, which was how they did the report, but refuse (i.e., is not legally permitted) to provide the data to FSA so FSA can efficiently correct the overpayments. Almost a Catch-22, and certainly dispiriting to someone who wants to enforce the law.

Finally, I suspect this is just the beginning of what's going to be a hot and hard time for USDA and FSA.