A Reason To Be Politically Incorrect

Dirk Beauregarde passes on an article about burqa-wearing robbers. (They held up a post office, not a bank.)

The Hidden Costs of the Storms

We subscribe to both the Washington Post and the NY Times, home delivery.  This week's storms have interrupted the delivery service, though the Post man is doing very good. Sometimes I have hit the local Starbucks to get caffeine and Times, but other days I'm forced back on reading online. The Post has a regular web site, while the Times has both its website and a new, standalone, Times Reader app. 

There's no comparison between the two for ease of reading.  The Times Reader is legible, fast, and easy to use. The best thing about the Reader is the ease of scanning through it. In the old days I used to read almost every word of the Times, but as I age I skim more and more, and the Reader is great for that. The Times might end up the loser from the storms, because I've found it so easy to use I'd almost be willing to sacrifice the paper copy and rely only on the Reader (which I think would be $4 a month, compared to like $90 for the paper version). If that's true of others, and if their profit margin is still bigger on home delivery, that would be their hidden cost.

I say "almost" because my wife wouldn't agree--she likes to take the paper paper and the cats off and read in bed.

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.