North Dakota

One of the problems of farming in the "pothole" country of the Dakotas and MN is they expand and contract. I remember in the early 80's they were contracting and the issue was whether the exposed land could quality as cropland under the farm programs. Now the same land is 6 feet under. (Nice to see Dale Ihry has survived FSA for 17 years in the state office.)

North Dakota has been locked in a wet cycle since 1992, said Dale Ihry, program specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency. Devils Lake has risen more than 20 feet in that time, he said, taking tens of thousands of farm acres as it grows.

Big Plans Sometimes End in a Little Tinkle

From Obama Foodorama, on the visit of San Fran Mayor Newsom to the White House. Newsom had a "Victory Garden" planted last July(?) but:

The SF Victory Garden was de-installed in early December, because the cost of security guards to keep it from "becoming a toilet" for the local homeless population was about $14,000 a month.

The piece has a couple photos of the White House garden.

French Dairy--A Vote for Metrics

Also from Mr. Beauregard, a post on the crisis of French dairy farmers. Makes me wish we had followed the wisdom of the Founding Father, Mr. Jefferson, and adopted the metric system totally. (I'm too lazy to convert litres into gallons and euros into dollars.)

Bad News for USDA

USDA had the second largest drop (after SEC, which is understandable given the stock market) in the rating of "Best Places to Work." And OMB director Orszag says he's looking at the poorest agencies to improve.

Ironically, given the pasting USDA's taken over discrimination (Pigford), USDA scores considerably better among black employees than among all employees. And it's fourth! on "support for diversity". Bet that doesn't make many news articles.

A Depressing Sentence, Even for a Geezer

From Dirk Beauregard's invaluable blog on French culture and society:

"Nowadays, very few French girls seem to go topless"

I think the world has grown more conservative, at least in some ways, since my youth.

Quote of the Day

“I run every year,” said Morley, “whether I need to or not.”

From the Ipswich, MA election reporting. Shows public spirit hasn't vanished in MA. (And for the historians amongst us, who woulda thought we still had "Feoffees" in these United States.)

Torture Works, Ask the Nazis

I strongly recommend the Richard Evans trilogy on the Third Reich. First saw his "Third Reich at War" on the new shelf at the Reston library, picked it up, and read it. It's a big book, focused not on the course of the war, but what was happening in Hitler-controlled Europe from the start of WWII to the end. It's well written and interesting, appearing to a non-specialist as if it's balanced in judgment. Evans follows several individuals who wrote diaries/letters which were preserved, giving another perspective on the events.

After reading the book, I got the "The Coming of the Third Reich", which covers events from the end of WWI to the Nazis assumption of power. And now I'm in the middle of "Third Reich in Power".

One of the things which struck me in this book was Evans' casual mention of torture, which the Nazis used, particularly on the Communists and Social Democrats as they were destroying the two parties. Now the book was published in 2005, so it was well before the current controversies over torture. What I took away was the Nazis assumed that torture worked, and Evans assumed it worked sometimes. I think that' right, at least in terms of a definition of "worked" as bending the subject to one's will. That's not necessarily the same as getting valuable information. (Remember, the North Vietnamese tortured their prisoners and some, including McCain, bent but it didn't do them much good.) But maybe I'm still reacting to the aftereffects of WWII, but we're the good guys, not the Nazis, and we don't torture. If holding to our principles costs lives of some good guys, that's the way it is. As John Wayne would say in some movie, "do you want to live forever".

Indian Elections and Vandana Shiva

Ms Vandana Shiva is an Indian activist who attacks the green revolution and industrial agriculture. She's pushed the meme of suicides of Indian farmers, who are over their heads in debt.

But this week the Congress Party, which has led the government, won a surprise victory, which is interpreted as pro-industrial, pro-modernization. I was struck by sentences like this one, in the descriptions: "In his last term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh oversaw a costly initiative to guarantee employment to the poor in rural India and alleviate farmer debt."

I wonder whether the Congress victory means Indian farmers aren't in as rough shape as Ms Shiva claims, or at least they feel the system is responding to their concerns.

A Sentence

From a NYTimes piece on the development and approval of the CIA's use of interrogation methods:

"Without full staff support, few lawmakers are equipped to make difficult legal and policy judgments about secret programs, critics say."

Wonder what that says about lawmakers.

Cap and Trade

I read some discussion that cap and trade had the advantage of enabling the politicians to make more deals than would a carbon tax. I thought of that when I read Farm policy this morning, quoting Chris Clayton:

“People familiar with the situation who spoke to DTN said that [not mentioning agriculture much in the cap and trade bill] doesn’t necessarily mean Waxman sees no role for agriculture, but that Waxman may leave agriculture’s role in the bill to the House Agriculture Committee to add to the legislation. An amendment for agricultural offsets also could come up in Waxman’s full committee debate next week.”

Since Peterson is threatening to kill cap and trade unless ethanol is protected and promoted, that sounds as if there's a deal in the works.