North Korean Agriculture

The Post has an interesting article on North Korea, much of it on food. North Korea makes an interesting test case for theories on food and famine and economics. It turns out the international food aid has greased the way for free enterprise--North Korean bigshots grab the aid and sell it on the open market, encouraging the powerful and connected to support markets. But that doesn't do much for encouraging private agriculture (which isn't much discussed in the article).

North Korean is reverting back to organic fertilizer, i.e., night soil, since they've lost their access to chemical fertilizers which they were very dependent on, but is struggling to feed its population. (That surprised me--I would have assumed their agriculture was not that modernized, but I guess collective farms must have adopted chemical fertilizers.) So, my prejudices are reinforced, private "industrial" ag is the way to go to feed people, at least in today's world.

Thundra and Kundra

Vivek Kundra is the new Chief Information Officer of the Federal government--here
and here. He'd been rumored for a while, so I guess the new, tighter vetting didn't turn up any dirt. Should be interesting as he runs into the entrenched Federal IT bureaucracy. See this for an example of transparency in DC.

Going Gray

Both Post and Times have articles on Obama's graying hair. See MSNBC .

They say stress leads to gray. By that measure my life must not have been stressful, as I'm not much grayer than Obama. Course, he has more hair left than I do.

On Snow Shoveling, Virture and Competition

Joel Achenbach is one of the Post's better writers, specializing in science and humor. In this post though he excerpts from another of the Post's writers, David Von Drehle, on snow shoveling (after tweaking Obama about snow and schools). It begins:

"I suppose a case could be made that snow shoveling is not a sign of virtue. That a man is not morally worthy simply because he cleans the entire sidewalk, edge to edge, as opposed to scooping a single shovel-width lane."

By this standard I admit to a lack of virtue. Given my advancing age, when I totter outside to clear the 5.4" of snow from my sidewalk, and the cluster's sidewalks out to the mail boxes, I count it a clear victory if I've beaten any of my neighbors. I used to have a neighbor, whom we called "Juan the Manic", who was stiff competition. He lived up to von Drehle's standards, clearing all 48" of the sidewalk, leaving not a snowflake behind. Me, I was satisfied just to clear the width of my shovel. "Clear", that is, meaning getting close enough to concrete that the sun and rising temperatures could take over the job of removing the rest of the snow. (That's known as "good enough for government work".) What I lacked in perfection I made up for in length of path cleared. I don't know where Juan is now, but he sold close to the peak of the housing boom. I hope he didn't over-extend. I miss him, miss the competition.

Grassley on Payment Limits [Updated]

Sen. Grassley disagrees with gross income, wants LDP's included in caps (hat tip, Brownfields)--from a conference call:

"Do you support his budget proposal to eliminate direct payments to any farm with more than $500,000 in gross revenue?
GRASSLEY: The answer is no. But for those of you that have followed me for the last several years, you know I am for great and restrictive limits on how much one operation can get. That's best expressed through the $250,000 hard cap that I've put in place. And, of course, he does have that in his program.

So from that standpoint, he and I are on the same page. We're not off the page. I'm not off the page with him on the $500,000, but it can't be on gross income. It's got to be on net income for farmers or let's say adjusted grow income for farmers because sales do not make a determination of whether or not you're making a profit or not.

So it's got to be related to capability of paying. So that would be one change I would make. Now, here's another consideration that goes beyond just a cap. And that is direct payment or include all payments. I would be one to include all payments. That's why my way of $250,000 is a better way of doing it because it -- a direct payment dollar, an LTP dollar, a countercyclical dollar, they all look the same. So you should have all of them included. And then you want to remember that some of this eventually has to be taken into consideration with our WTO and our negotiations. We want market opening. We get market opening. We're willing to change our subsidies that are trade distorting.

Direct payments and conservation and maybe some others are not trade distorting. LDPs and countercyclicals are a trade distorting. Maybe countercyclicals a little less trade distorting than LDPs. "

A Common Error

"Instead of solving the world's food crisis, [since WWII] the USDA's policies have only made it worse."

Jim Goodman in Grist

Goodman's obviously a whippersnapper with no memories before 1990.

NYTimes on Muslims

The Times does a piece on a Gallup poll of American Muslims.

“We discovered how diverse Muslim Americans are,” said Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, which financed the poll. “Ethnically, politically and economically, they are in every way a cross-section of the nation. They are the only religious community without a majority race.”

I was struck by the fact the plurality of Muslim Americans are Africans. Otherwise, the results are about what one might expect--Muslim Americans are more satisfied than their counterparts in most other countries, but less so than other religious groups.

Politics and the Obama Budget

I was thinking about the immediate opposition Obama's 2010 budget has run into--various farm state Reps and Senators stating their disagreement. I'd been going on the assumption the opponents would be able to prevail, particularly because of the 60-vote "rule", but maybe not.

My vague memory is Pres. Reagan got his way in 1981 basically by putting everything into one package, so it was an up-or-down vote. Vote for the package and you took credit for his tax cuts. Vote against, and you were protecting special interests, opposing tax cuts, and going against a balanced budget. (Not that Reagan's package really was balanced, but they had Stockman's magic asterisk and the Laffer curve so their supporters could make the claim.)

The method was something called budget reconciliation. Also see this.

And that could change the terms of the debate--now the farm state Dems can wrap themselves in support of a popular President, saying they've done their best to preserve the farm bill, etc. etc. And Obama can get some Republicans in support as well.

It should be an interesting spring for those with an irrationally robust interest in politics.

Land Sales and GIS

Here's an article from the Imperial Republican I found of interest (the hook was an academic moving from ND to NE):

" The biggest factor was Nebraska’s full disclosure of ag land sales data. Shultz told participants at the Holdrege Water Conference in early February that in North Dakota, only county assessors have access to sale details.
Nebraska assessors must send detailed reports, including land prices and equipment sales, to a database for all sales that aren’t family to family. That data is used by UNO researchers to create Geographic Information Systems computer models that can sort and compare many variables.
One project involves mapping Republican Basin ag land sales and analyzing the value of water. Shultz said a goal is to identify the premium payments required to get landowners to retire parcels from irrigation."

My bureaucratic mind says there ought to be convergence of GIS layers and owners--why is everyone reinventing the wheel. But one obstacle is always the concept of private data. Until we get some community standards for what is acceptable use, the convergence can't happen.

Locavores in a New Field--Pot

Kevin Drum discusses a proposal to permit "grow your own" pot.