Limits of Gov. 2.0

GovLoop.com is billed as a Social network for Government. (Still don't understand it, but I've added its RSS feed.) There's an interesting post here pointing out the limits of the sort of suggestion system the Obama administration has used, first before inauguration, and now in connection with recovery.gov. The main point is, by exposing ideas for user evaluation as they are posted, you get a big first mover advantage. Once you have 3 digits worth of suggestions, only the oddball like me will scroll through and evaluate. The writer prefers this:

Imagine if the National Dialogue first enabled submission of ideas with examples on an equal basis. Then it enabled a simultaneous consideration with an ability of public comment. Then the ideas were vetted based on the public comment received. And finally, the final ideas were then submitted with an alternative analysis based on meritocracy. The final ideas could credibly be considered by the broader audience, based on merit.

Division in the Ranks

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives has an April 23 press release attacking the Black Farmer demo of April 28. Devotes some words to the idea that it's the lawyers who are gaining from the effort on Pigford.

National Black Farmers

Had their demonstration on April 28. It didn't get much coverage, and the accuracy of the coverage it got was a bit lacking. The conference scheduled for yesterday seems to have evaporated, or at least disappeared from the website.

White House Harvest

Obamafoororama says the White House had their first harvest yesterday--lettuce. The accompanying picture looks more as if the kids are planting than harvesting. (The girls predominate--is that a reflection of the feminine nurturing principle.) They might have gotten some lettuce, because the pictures back when showed they were using transplants, not seeds. So a couple weeks growth made them harvestable, and purely by accident it's 100 days into the administration.

My wife's lettuce is up and coming, but it will be a while yet before we have salad--probably May 15 or so.

H1N1 Flu and Locavores

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain sees things differently than I did here--he believes locavore pig farmers won't be hurt, indeed will be helped, by the flu headlines. Perhaps he and his wife have more faith in the ability of people to resist scares. Or perhaps he's right, his niche is better bounded and more secure than I think. Time will tell (and hopefully I'll remember to check back on the issue. If not, blame senility.)

Expanding Animal Rights: Privacy?

NYTimes has an article on drugs and Kentucky Derby horses--one trainer cited the horse's privacy in refusing to talk to the reporter.

Stimulus Helping Curious George?

USDA has a new site for the stimulus act, a map showing the locations of work being funded by the act. Hat tip: FarmPolicy.com.

It's progress as far as transparency goes, but the underlying data is sparse. For example, Forest Service has $18K for Curious George. Actually, that's a cheap shot--the creators of "Curious George" founded a center for good crunchy type activities, about which you can read more at their site. I'm sure they'll make good use of the money. But when FS gives the dollar figure and the recipient, without providing any explanation, it's short-sighted and not very helpful. As I've suggested to USDA in their comments, they should either provide a paragraph of explanation or require the recipient to put up a page of explanation of what they're doing with the money, and include the URL of the page in the USDA site.

Obama and Old-Time Farming

From an Obama speech on education:

We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. [emphasis added]

Our President may know many things, but not farms. (Or, more likely, his speechwriter(s) don' know farms.) Farm kids do plow, did plow. My grandfather remembered breaking a field in southern Illinois probably at the end of the Civil War. But getting out of school early in the afternoon in order to plow isn't and wasn't standard practice. They could have said "...at home to do the chores, milk the cows and feed the chickens." That would fit if they're concerned about the short school day. (Some charter schools, particularly KIPP, make a point of lengthening the school day.

Or, if they're concerned about the short school year, they could have talked about tending the crops, doing the haying, harvesting. That would vary depending on the area and the type of farming.

(On something different, if I read it right Iowa went from 5 percent to 45 percent of corn planted in about a week. I know modern equipment can cover lots of ground very fast, but that seems incredible. Must have been a lot of 16-hour days.)

Acre Handbook

FSA has posted the handbook which includes instructions for the ACRE program on their website. I hope Chris Clayton at DTN is satisfied with it. (But a warning--a handbook covering a new program is just the same as version 1.0 of software used to be (remember back in the 1980's when we actually had versions 1.0?)--subject to bugs and needing improvement.)

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.