Bureaucratic Silos

I think it's telling that 15 years after Congress merged part of Farmer's Home Administration with Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service to form FSA, we still have separate employee organizations--NASCOE and the National Association of Credit Specialists and the National Association of Support Employees of the Farm Service Agency.

It's perhaps more telling that a person who prides himself on looking across agencies (that would be moi) hadn't visited the latter two sites until today.

Capping Marketing Assistance--Corrected

From Obama's budget:

This proposal would limit farm commodity payments to $250,000 per person to direct payments to those farmers who most need them. This would be accomplished by maintaining the 2008 Farm Bill payment limits for Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payments ($40,000 and $65,000 respectively), but capping marketing assistance loan gains (price support payments) at $145,000 per person. The 2008 Farm Bill eliminated all caps on marketing loan gains, which were previously capped at $75,000 per person ($150,000 if you had multiple farms). According to the Department of Agriculture's 2007 Agricultural Resource ManagementSurvey, roughly 16 percent of farms had sales of greater than $250,000, yet they collected about 57 percent of all commodity payments.1

I may be missing something elsewhere in the fine print, but I think this is different than Obama's proposal earlier (limiting payments to farmers who have gross income over $500K). [Updated--removed last sentence--I don't think the newspapers were the ones who said Obama was holding to his original proposal--sometimes it's hard to remember what you read where.]

[5-8-09 Correction--I've found the basis for reports that Obama's budget persists in the elimination of payments to farmers getting over $500K--page 86 of the terminations and reductions. So I was wrong, stopping too fast in my research. Apologies for misleading anyone.]

Farmgate Not Uptodate

From Farmgate:

If you sign up for ACRE, FSA offices will require historical farm yield information. At this time, USDA has not released the rules on what documents are required, and what happens if you don’t have them, says IL Extension economist Nick Paulson. Those rules may come soon, since the announced sign-up period for ACRE begins on June 1.

I think this notice covers pulse crop evidence and handbook 1-DCP covers ACRE generally. (I'm interested in the idea that at least some extension people don't follow the FSA website--it takes a long while to convert everyone's habits.) It also looks as if some county offices have put out a newsletter containing a summary of the rules--do a search for "ACRE production evidence" on the website and you get a list of county letters with titles indicating relevance.

Cows Trade Privacy for Contentment

Oregon State brings news--a new device to track how much downtime a cow has. (The more downtime, the more milk. Maybe some bureaucrats are really cows?)

Wanting to help dairy farmers learn more about this to maximize their milk production, Oregon State University has launched research to study the factors that influence dairy cows' comfort level. To do this, the OSU dairy center is using an Israeli-made ankle bracelet that senses when a cow is lying down by determining the angle of her leg to the ground. When a cow lies down, the blood flow to her udder increases, which produces more milk.

And You Can Fool a Few of the People All the Time

Mostly architects, apparently. Here's another vertical farm/garden building and it won an award. Apparently in the parallel universe these people exist in the sun shines on everyone, whether they're on the north, south, east, or west side of the building. (I don't want to taint every foodie with this nonsense, so I've set up a new tab.)

Farmers and the Estate Tax

John Phipps has an interesting post. Bottom line, the adverse effect of estate taxes on farmers is the lawyers' fees you pay while living, not the tax your heirs pay Uncle.

Ants Freeload? Who Knew?

A very good science section in the NYTimes last week (I lost track of this in draft form), highlighted by a story which disrupts all one's preconceptions about ants. Turns out if you have the patience of Job, or Anna Dornhaus, and track individual ants over their lifetime, some ants freeload just as some humans do. And some "specialists" aren't very good at their jobs.

USDA Has a Ways to Go

The official federal government website, usa.gov, has tabs for "audiences". On that page, there's a link for "Rural Communities and Citizens". Click on that, and you get to the National Agricultural Library. Once there, there's a "Browse by Subject" heading, with a link for "USDA Rural Programs." Once there, there are four items under "Spotlights", two of which are the 2008 Bush administration proposals for the 2008 farm bill, and a side by side comparison of the 2008 and 2002 farm bills. Rather out of date IMHO.

In addition, the "In the News" section, which displays news items seems to have some problems--when I checked it displayed 3 items from Brownfield, including one which seemed likely to be on the Pigford issue, but when I clicked on it there was a long list of news items, but not the one I clicked on.

Grassley and Hagan on Pigford

The two Senators have introduced legislation re: Pigford claims. From Grassley's statement:

This bill will make 3 changes to the farm bill. First it will allow the claimants to access the $100 million already appropriated in the farm bill, but once that is expended gain access to the Department of Treasury permanent appropriated judgment fund. Second, it will allow reasonable attorney fees, administrative costs, and expenses to be paid from the judgment fund in accordance with the 1999 consent decree. Finally, it includes a section making fraud related to claims a criminal offense with punishment of a fine or up to 5 years in prison or both.

RSS Feeds--FSA Over NRCS

To track the competition (which is a figment of my imagination because all NRCS employees love all FSA employees and vice versa), score one for FSA. The FSA website displays the RSS feed subscription icon prominently. (I think it's new, although a user has been able to get news releases by email for several years.) I don't see the equivalent on the NRCS site.

Of course, the Assistant Secretary for Administration is a former head of NRCS, which means NRCS alumni have an edge at the upper echelons of the department.