One Problem for Black Landowners

One problem for blacks in maintaining farms is indicated by this Federal Register notice (Hat Tip--Sustainable Ag Coalition):

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBS) announces the availability of approximately $230,000 in funds for fiscal year (FY) 2009 for cooperative agreements to develop and implement pilot programs aimed at: (1) Preventing and alleviating the problems facing African Americans in rural areas that are involved with real estate with clouded title due to unresolved interests of generations of heirs (otherwise known as ‘‘heir properties’’); (2) establishing an outreach/educational program that will assist farmers and homeowners with heir property issues in expanding ownership; and (3) enabling farming heir property owners to develop economically viable agricultural operations and accrue homeownership.

Having clear title is prerequisite to getting financing. I assume the problems behind the clouded title were landowners dying intestate, with the descendants never resolving the title. That's something not likely to show up in history books, or in lawsuits like Pigford. See this piece from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. (Or Google "heir property").

Contrarian: Farm Programs and Small Farms

One piece of conventional wisdom, among the greens and rapidly spreading among the chattering classes, is that farm programs aid big farms. This is wisdom that isn't true. The following are true, at least mostly so:

• "farm programs" aid field crop farmers, not fruit, vegetable, or livestock farms
• "payment limitations" are often evaded, so are not very effective in limiting farm program payments to large farmer
• "farm program payments" often go to landowners who do no physical "farming"
• "farm program payments" are often issued in the names of legal entities, not living persons
• small farmers need help more than large farmers.
  

What you can't say is that "farm programs" distort or change the pecking order of farms for any given commodity. The big corn farms today would be the big corn farms without any programs.

Tobacco Program Aided Small Farmers

The different farm programs are just that: different. So you can't take results from one and apply them to another. But a post mortem on the now defunct tobacco quota program suggests it, at least, helped small farmers. We didn't run parallel tests, but looking at what happened after the program ended is suggestive.

Washington Times has a story on tobacco growing in the U.S as of now. When the program ended, many small farms went out of business, at least out of tobacco, to be replaced by fewer bigger growers. There also may have been an impact on smoking--the price has gone up so smoking has gone down. The program also operated as a price umbrella for developing countries, which could undercut US on price. Now we're exporting more.

No "Cow Tax"

Per EPA via Brownfield.

Clones

Clones aren't in the headlines much anymore. Sara at Down to Earth linked to this institutional video from an ag cloning company to give a glimpse of the people in the business. My reaction: I hadn't realized it had become so routine (at least for horses and cows).

Thoughts on CAFO's

Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) are a big topic these days, and will no doubt continue to be. I offer my thoughts:

• the vegetarians point to CAFOs and say they're inherently cruel to animals, so people should eat vegetables. That's an extreme position, but it benefits from being logical and consistent.
  
• animal rights people point to CAFOs and say, as currently operated, they're cruel, so we need legislation/constitutional provisions to provide more room for chickens, etc. Vegetarians can support such measures because it seems a step on the slippery slope to total banning. Possibly some changes, like the Florida and California initiatives, will relieve the public pressure and concern over mistreatment of animals.
  
• good food people say CAFO's create the need to use antibiotics to fight disease and are otherwise dangerous (i.e., a breeding ground for MIRSA in some eyes).
• locavores say CAFO's are not local.
• neighbors say CAFO's pollute the air and water. Most notably, once a farming operation becomes so concentrated the resulting manure can't readily be used as fertilizer on the land, you get into waste lagoons and stream pollution.
  

I assume I wouldn't like a CAFO, having grown on a small dairy/poultry farm. But they result from the logic of economies of scale, which seem to work as well in agriculture as elsewhere. Despite all the efforts of the green community, I'd expect CAFO's to have a history similar to that of other growing industries. Where are the "dark, satanic mills" of yesteryear? Exxon, US Steel, GM, ATT, all had checkered histories in youth, but became more house-broken and acceptable to polite society as they aged, and as activists got government to impose regulations. So too with CAFO's. This domestication process will be aided by the greens:

• CAFO's are a lot more susceptible to environmental regulation. It's a whole lot easier to regulate one 40,000 cow dairy farm than 400 100 cow farms (for one thing, 400 dairies have a lot more votes, as well as being more familiar and more attractive).
  
• CAFO's can probably make more use of new technology. See this link on a $1 mill methane digester at an Oregon dairy. And this Brownfield piece on putting feed lots indoors. Banks will make loans more easily and the government will (until Obama's Secretary takes charge) make EQIP grants.

So, should I live another 20 years, I'd expect to see lots of CAFO's, but I'd also expect to see each one having a full-time job dealing with government regulation.

The Rational Market

Via Marginal Revolution, Virginia Postrel's very interesting discussion of academic experiments with markets. Bubbles are almost inevitable.

Graphs Are Not Facts

I stumbled across a graph of mile driven in a green site. Here Then there was one here.

And here from the gov. And this one. All the same subject, but not the same statistic, and giving different impressions of reality. Reminds me of a classic book on How to Lie With Statistics, which everyone should read around freshman year in high school.

Finally I'm Right

Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, I've been figuring ag prices would be pressured as Russian farmers became more efficient. Fortunately, I've never put that prediction in writing because I would have been wrong more often than not. But here's an indication the basic thought wasn't bad (via farmpolicy):

(In a related article regarding wheat, Reuters news reported yesterday that, “Russia faces a grain glut in 2009 as it prepares to harvest another bumper crop, putting domestic prices under pressure and overwhelming storage capacity already stretched by this year’s crop, the biggest in about 15 years…[F]armers in Russia, the world’s fifth-largest grain grower and exporter last year, have invested in new technology and land to increase their harvests and take advantage of booming world commodity prices that have since plummeted sharply.”)

There's also a discussion of transition discussions on ag there.

Sign of the Times

Someone admits to a Ponzi scheme, not $50 million dollar Ponzi scheme, but a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, you'd think it'd be front page news on the Times and Post?

No, didn't even make the front business page of the Post. Unreal. (Did make the Times business page.)

Almost as unreal, the guy delayed confessing so he could spread a few hundred mill among friends and relatives.