Agricultural History--Michael J Roberts

Prof. Roberts has an invaluable post at Greed, Green and Grains with some historical graphs of field crop yields and prices, entitled Six Stylized Facts about U.S. Agricultural Subsidies. A shorthand list, but read the whole thing:

1. Agricultural subsidies started in the mid-30's at the same time crop yields started increasing.
2. (In economese--my dubious interpretation). Farmers change their use of cropland based on federal policy, not prices.
3. About half the ag land is rented.
4. Over last 20 years, farmers get biggest fastest in areas with the highest per-acre subsidy.
   
5. Farmers are wealthy, particularly compared to other rural residents.
6. Nature of subsidies has changed over time and don't depress world prices.

Unfortunately, some of his references are available only to academics.

Babcock on FCIC

From Farmgate:

The question of governmental support for farmers’ risk management will receive either strong support or opposition, and a lesser number of folks who ride the fence. One of those with strong opinions is Iowa State University ag economist Bruce Babcock, whose thoughts are published in the Spring edition of the Iowa Ag Review. Babcock describes the programs as complex in their administration, and adds that crop insurance agents are paid commissions fully funded by taxpayers, most of the RMA (crop insurance) program risk is borne by taxpayers, and all of the FSA program risk is paid for by taxpayers....

Babcock says Congress continues to support the status quo, which is not surprising if it maintains the industry of agriculture. But he says it is not easy to understand the support of the crop insurance industry, since it duplicates FSA programs. He suggests more public awareness will result in change or the need to save money to finance the rest of the federal budget.

Almost 30 years ago we supposedly made the decision to end the duplication. :-) I'm hardly an objective observer, but I think the course of history since then is a tribute to the lobbying power of the crop insurance industry.

(For a more objective view, from CRS via Farm Policy.)

North American Flu and Locavores

It's not "swine-flu", it's "North American flu" because it is a mixture of strains of flu (human, bird, swine) so WHO says to call it by its location.

I assume foodies like Obamafoodorama will jump on it, as in this:

"There are all kinds of environmental and "nutritional" arguments for smaller, regional and local food production, and an event like the current pork pushback is yet another reason why unchaining American Ag from the vagaries of global trade makes sense in the 21st century. Local and regional food sourcing is also a better model in terms of general food safety (we currently are capable of inspecting less than one percent of our own imported foods). Our recent domestic foodborne disease outbreaks have been national in scope because of our trans-continental distribution system, in which a single peanut or pistachio plant can poison the entire country. Smaller and more local also makes much sense in terms of economic security for American farmers, because they're not put at risk for economic destruction by the decisions---perhaps panic based--of distant foreign governments."

It seems to make sense, but I doubt it. The problem is the market is not truly local. For example, if CAFO's can't export pork, they won't plow under the pigs, they'll sell the pork in the U.S. Now a locavore pasture-raised pig grower probably depends on being able to charge a significant premium for her higher-quality pork. But if a pork chop at the Safeway goes to half price, that's likely to draw away customers for the locavore pork. And the lesson learned over and over in agriculture is that the big boys have the reserves to ride out the hard times.

Do We Have 60?

My latent party feeling is stirred by the prospect Sen. Specter may switch to the Dems, which, with Sen. Franken (as oxymoronic as that phrase is), would give the Dems 60 votes in the Senate. It would be very interesting to see what would happen to the idea of lowering the political temperature in DC in that case.

Get Out Those Gardening Tools

From a Government executive post on the USDA garden:

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan "... also repeated Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's challenge to USDA facilities worldwide to create similar gardens and create healthier landscapes. When asked if the gardens at USDA facilities around the world have to be organic, Merrigan replied she understands that organic is not possible everywhere because she comes from New England, where it is hard to raise some crops organically. Gardening methods "are not going to be dictated decisions from headquarters," she said. That should come as a relief to USDA's workers in Farm Service Agency, Rural Development and Natural Resources and Conservation Service offices in nearly every county in the country, as well as Foreign Agricultural Service offices overseas. The workers will undoubtedly want their gardens to be blooming by whatever method when Vilsack and Merrigan visit and ask to see them."

Of course, USDA owns few, if any, of its buildings. (I'm not even sure they own the lawn to the Administration Building and there is no lawn to the South Building.) So the question becomes whether the landlords will agree to gardens and if they will charge for such agreement.

A Good Sentence

"We had slime mold growing upstairs.”

There are certain people who belong on a different planet than the rest of us, and the person who uttered that sentence is one of them. It's from a short Freakonomics post on the Sereno family of Chicago, whose accomplishments seem to outweigh those of the Emanuel family of Chicago (who definitely beong on a different planet).

And no, the Serenos weren't poor housekeepers, they were nurturing intellectual curiosity.

Unsung Hero of Copyright

Barbara A. Ringer died at 83. Why should you care? Well- she was a great bureaucrat who pushed through our modern copyright law, as well as being a pathbreaking feminist in the Federal service.

No, I hadn't heard of her before I read her obit in today's Post. A sentence from it:

Foreseeing the rise of the Internet, she inserted provisions into the law to protect authors from the unauthorized reproduction of their work, even by means not yet devised.

Is There a Nitpickers'Anonymous?

I need a 12-step program. I was casually surfing the Growing Power site (the Chicago/Milwaukee urban farming operation that's gotten ink and a MacArthur Genius Award) and ran across this:

"At Growing Power it becomes worm food. We collect

over 20,000 lbs. of brewery waste from Lakefront Brewery every week

for compost or 1.4 million tons of waste annually."

20,000 lbs a week is 10 tons, or 520 tons a year according to old math. To be fair, I suspect some enthusiastic humanities student was writing the blurb (look at all those "o" sounds), and had a mind lapse when setting down the units of measure).

Sometimes You Can't Win

The CourierPress (KY) has a piece on a long conflict between FSA and a black farmer over farm loans. The latest episode has the man arrested for his words on a phone call, which were interpreted as a threat. As he's 82, it seems to have been overreaction. On the other hand, how much strength does it take to pull a trigger?

One doesn't know the rights and wrongs of the case, though there's lots of comments on the article, most of which assume some misaction on the part of the government. Of course, the infamous $60 million lawsuit in DC over the missing pants from the drycleaners is a reminder that not all suits are well-founded.

Poor Walt Whitman

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries quotes a piece on a protest of Walt, at the school named in his honor. The protestors were from Topeka, KS. They think he doesn't deserve a school.