Diversity at USDA--Not

I should have noted in my post on the diversity of Vilsack's staff appointments the lack of diversity in another respect: these are young whippersnappers most of whom served in staff positions on Capitol Hill or in political campaigns. In other words, the same backgrounds as staffers have had for many years. So the gender/ethnic diversity they represent shows the diversity of the political areas they come from, but there's no diversity in terms of occupational background: no organic farmer, no industrial farmer, no foodie, etc. etc.

Diversity at USDA

I missed this Post piece on Vilsack's staff appointments. I'm struck by the number (ever compare the USDA phone directory from 1963 to now) and their diversity. In 1963 it was all white males; today much more diverse.

Vilsack and Management

Government Executive says Vilsack wants performance-oriented management, IT, and new workers. On the second:

Vilsack also said that he and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., both understand that achieving good performance at USDA requires modern technology. "It is frustrating to farmers and ranchers who want to be able to access information that we are still in a more paper orientation than a technology orientation. It is also frustrating that it seems to people it takes forever to implement the farm bill and the recovery and investment act, because we have to rewrite old, old software so that it is available to calculate the new programs."

Vilsack wants to measure results. The problem I have is definitions. Federal programs float in a penumbra of rhetoric, emanating from the over-promising of politicians. If a bureaucrat is realistic about what could be achieved, it automatically undermines her bosses.

It's a Big, Multi-lingual Country--LA's Trahan

CED from Louisiana retires after 41 years--his language ability helped with the French/Cajun farmers and he's honored in the Acadian Hall of Fame.

The Tobacco Story, Continued

House Ag held a hearing on the tobacco industry. Skimming the prepared testimony, it seems the numbers of farmers are down (from 8,000 to 3,000 in NC, a 72 percent drop in KY to 8,000), but flue-cured is more competitive with Brazil. It fits with the impressionistic evidence from newspapers--the old tobacco programs did their job of slowing the process of change, keeping more people in tobacco growing. Ending the program looks to have speeded change, made the industry more competitive but more volatile. And the program wasn't keeping prices down and encouraging smoking.

Taiwan Does Things Differently

Via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution, here's an fascinating description of life in Taiwan (a 7-11 on every block?)

More Bombs for Wall Street

Simon Johnson writes in the Atlantic on the growth of financial institutions in the U.S. economy. (HT Kevin Drum). He's the former chief economist for the IMF and parallels the U.S. case with the sort of crises the IMF deals with in Russia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc.

Stains in the Oval Office?

What stains did GW leave--inquiring minds want to know?

From the Post this morning, on Obama's meeting with bankers:

""Excess is out of fashion," Obama said, according to participants in the gathering.

The president held himself up as an example, saying that he had not yet renovated the Oval Office and was still using George W. Bush's furniture, even noting the stains on the carpet. He urged the banks to show comparable "constraint and responsibility," adding that the nation had undergone a cultural shift.

Meals To Come, Same Old, Same Old

Warren Belasco has a book, Meals to Come, which reviews debates over food during the last two centuries. It has lots of facts, but I'll try a brief summary. (Looking at Amazon, I'm guessing maybe he reuses his researches in several books, but that's a guess.)

Since 1800 or so, the poles of a debate have been symbolized by Malthus, arguing current food production and patterns are doomed, the dystophia, and Condorcet, celebrating the power of reason to come up with solutions, the cornucopia of engineered and designed food systems. Different viewpoints get caught up in the systems--racism, eugenics, the cold war, futurism, science fiction, egalitarianism,

Belasco believes different events and trends tend to trigger and reinvigorate the debate over the future of food: famines and spikes in the price of food, particularly in the 19th century, demography, etc.

When debate over food flares, it's characterized by urgency (war, gloom, and doom), lots of statistics, assumptions, all leading to missed predictions.

All in all, it's a sobering reminder of how fallible we can be when we talk about something as important to us as food.

Decreasing Consumption of Corn

Dr. Pollan and other foodies decry our dependence on corn. Pollan would like us to return to more traditional foodways. In that context, here's a factoid from ERS:

From 1890 until 1920, the greatest increase in food consumption occurred with sugar, and the greatest decrease was in cornmeal. Rising prosperity led to a pronounced shift from cornmeal to wheat flour, especially in the South, and an equally important substitution of sugar for wheat flour. Sugar prices had been dropping sharply since the 1850s with the development of improved refining technology.

And again:

These trends helped increase per capita wheat product consumption in the United States for the last quarter of the 20th century.

I've said before and I'll say again, when it comes to agriculture and food, things are more complicated than any party to current debates admits.