The Productivity of Organic Grain Farmers

North Dakota State is pushing its budgets for organic field crops.  An excerpt:

“A primary assumption for all the crop budgets is that the marketable yield of organic production will average about 70 to 75 percent of conventional crop yields,” Swenson says. However, experienced organic growers have achieved higher yields. New organic growers and those with less success in managing pests and fertility under an organic system may find it difficult to achieve 70 percent of conventional yields. Also, to meet stringent standards, the cleanout for organic grain typically is greater than for conventional markets. This also is a factor in estimating marketable yields.”

Harshaw's Law No 1, which I haven't repeated in a while: you never do it right the first time you try.

Biotech Crops

Farmgate has a post on the effects of the adoption of biotech crops in the US.  Here's the summary:

The increase in production efficiency with the use of seed with biotech traits to provide insect resistance or herbicide tolerance has resulted in more bushels being available to the market. More production means a lower price in most markets. The result of growing use of biotech crops has lead to a $25 billion dollar loss to farmers over the past 10 years, but a gain for consumers. Even without the use of biotech seeds, production would have increased, but not enough to replace the loss.

I'd observe you could set up some boilerplate like so:

"The increase in production efficiency with [insert relevant innovation] has resulted in more bushels being available to the market.  More production means a lower price in most markets.  The result of [innovation] has led to a $[insert amount] dollar loss to farmers over the past 10 years, but a gain for consumers."

I blogged recently about farmers cooperating and competing, particularly in the context of carbon cap and trade/environmental legislation.  I'd repeat the observation here--in the case of innovations which work out (and not all innovations do--I remember when birdsfoot trefoil was the next great thing) the early adapters will gain an advantage, but an advantage which rapidly fades.

Good Work by Kennedy Center

My wife and I had tickets to the Kennedy Center tonight.  About an hour ago I got a (recorded) phone call saying the performance had been canceled and to check the website for further instructions. It took them maybe half an hour to update their instructions there, but they have them now (exchange, donate, refund).  It's good work by them.

The Productivity Explosion

We have a jobless recovery because productivity is up so much.  John Phipps meditates on the subject, and sees these three items for farming:

"The oncoming work force in agriculture takes far less time to learn new computing skills and applications, is more willing to experiment, and faces simpler ways to resolve the decreasing number of hangups. (We outlived Vista, for example). While we are only scratching the surface of what computers can do, we are far more likely to tap that potential with farmers who learned keyboarding early, as opposed to hunt-and-peck dinosaurs such as yours truly.

The second wave of productivity boost arises from connectivity.  Let's face it - we are the Borg. Our farms never have to pause to share information between brains.  (In fact, many of us are looking for ways to control the "sharing") From locating tools to sourcing parts to explaining how to unplug the header, farmers don't have to travel "there" first to solve the problem. The result is more experiential knowledge is available all the time and with ease.

The other big change for the better is technology is overcoming our aversion to writing. From e-mails to stored text messages, more of our communication is searchable, readable, and permanent. The gains for information leakage and loss are likely immense. "

French Drugs

From Dirk Beauregarde:  "Talking of drugs, last France exported 7.1 billion Euros of the legal kind. The French pharmaceutical industry is very healthy"  That triggered my curiosity.  According to Nationmaster, the US is the leader in drug exports ($8 billion) just ahead of Germany, Switzerland (both about $7 billion), Belgium and France (although France's total is much less than Dirk's figure, but there likely are differences in definitions.

NY Times and Pigford

The Times weighs in on the second go-round of the Pigford case.  Some day I'll muster some energy to write more about it, but today I'm exhausted from shoveling snow.

Joke from Monkey Cage

John Sides writes about the late Lee Siegelman and I particularly liked this last bit:

Lee often said that he loved three things. He loved Carol. He loved his cats. And he loved political science. He was fond of a quip about the South Dakota farmer, emblematic of the reserved and modest Midwesterner, who loved his wife so much he almost told her.

Corporate Money and Lobbying

Kevin Drum has a couple posts tied to an LA Times article.  They looked at the political contributions and lobbying of the soft drink industry, which rose dramatically when there was talk of taxing soft drinks in the interest of fighting obesity.  It's an important issue, particularly in light of the "Citizens United" decision of the Supreme Court.  But I comment on Drum's post there are other sources of leverage, particularly for what Ike called the "military-industrial" complex.  And Eugene Volokh, at Volokh Conspiracy, has an interesting post on California's experience with rules at the state level similar to the new Citizen's United regime.Apparently in CA the biggest contributors are not corporations, but unions and Indian tribes. 

Dairy Program Faces Revision

The Dairy Talk on Agweb Blogs includes a post covering possible changes in the dairy program, ideas of the head of the National Milk Producers Federation. Some points:

• going to an insurance program covering--return over feed cost.
• current price supports effectively put a floor under world-wide dairy prices. 
• the voluntary reduction program under Cooperatives Working Together needs help--too many free riders.

There's a bunch of comments.  Mine is similar problems were faced in the programs for grains and cotton. People thought other countries were free riding on our efforts to adjust production.  And long ago, in the days of the Hoover administration, efforts to talk farmers into reducing production without government payments or coercion fell flat on their face.

Snow and Ethics

We live in a townhouse cul-de-sac that's Y-shaped, about 30 or so houses on each arm of the "Y".  The Reston area has just gotten about 20 inches of snow, which offers an object lesson in the ethics of libertarian rugged independence.

Generally I'd say we're rugged independents here.  Each of us operates on his or her own time schedule and concepts.  Some get out before the snow has stopped, others will appear in a couple days. Some people shovel their way to the common sidewalk (on cluster property), and stop.  Some don't shovel.  Others shovel some part of the common sidewalk.

Once we get to the parking area, we're still independent.  The cluster pays for the area to be plowed (heavy 4-wheel drive pickup with front blade).  Usually that works okay.  But today, one person got his 4-wheel drive SUV backed out of his space (ignoring the advice to stay home and off the roads), and then got stuck.  Fortunately it wasn't at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, but it was at the base of one branch of the "Y", meaning that side didn't get plowed.  The late word is that the 4 wheel drive has gone out on two of the trucks of the contractor, so that side may never get plowed.

Even where the plow went, it couldn't do all that much.  For most cars, there's 5 feet between the back of the car and the plowed area, at least on the side that got plowed.  (Unfortunately because of the configuration I've got about 15 feet behind my car.)  So each of us is faced with the job of shoveling snow off the top of the car, from the sides of the car, and from the back of the car to have a chance to get to the plowed lane and then stuck. Now comes the test.  The best tactic which serves everyone's interest is to carry each shovelful of snow to the front of the car and dump it the other side of the sidewalk from the car.  The best tactic for each person is to get out early and dump the shovels of snow on his neighbor's car, or behind his neighbor's car in the plowed lane.  You may be hindering the people who live on the part of the cul-de-sac further from the street from getting out, but it saves you work.