Greenhouse Tomatoes

I've become a bit obsessive about the myths of vertical farming, emphasizing that plants need sunlight. And I noted the White House garden was much less productive in the winter than the other seasons. So as I read today's NYTimes piece on greenhouse tomatoes I was becoming worried.  Backyard Farms, in Madison, Maine has 42 acres of greenhouse, in which they grow tomatoes all year round!

An excerpt:

 But with shoppers willing to pay a premium — even $4 to $5 a pound — for red vine-ripened ones with more flavor, greenhouse tomatoes now represent more than half of every dollar spent on fresh tomatoes in American supermarkets, according to figures from the Perishables Group, a market research firm in Chicago.

The article goes on and on describing the varieties, the culture, etc.--all of it very interesting. The tomato vines, which must be indeterminate varieties, grow to tremendous lengths.  It's only in the last third that the writer addresses the problem of light. As a side note, Leamington, Canada has 1,600 acres of greenhouses and it is further south than Madison. But the Canadians can't grow tomatoes in the winter.

I was relieved to read this:

it employs some 20,000 high-pressure sodium lights, fueled by cheap power from Madison’s town-owned hydroelectric plant. Switched on, the lights use as much electricity in 32 minutes as the average American household does in a year. 

And the writer closes by noting a British study that compared UK greenhouse tomatoes to ones grown in Spain, and found the greenhouse ones accounted for four times the carbon emissions as those shipped from a distance.

The Impact of Digital Photography

The NYTimes has a piece on the impact of digital photography on professional photographers: bottom line, good and/or lucky amateur photographers using digital cameras are cutting into their livelihood, as is the decline of magazines (the fewer ads, the fewer pages, the fewer slots into which to sell one's photos.).

An economist wrote a book on "the winner take-all economy" a while back.  His argument was that modern technology meant the very best talents got the lion's share of the compensation and crowded out other slots.  For example, in the old days every medium-sized town and city had its own opera house, which provided opportunities for many singers.  Then came the phonograph, and radio, and CD's and those niches were killed off--stars like Callas came to dominate their field.

That thesis has always interested me, though there are counter-arguments.  Reading the Times photography piece suggested another pattern of the impact of technology on arts, the wholesale destruction of economic niches, leaving only a handful of experts plying the trade.  Maybe it's something like buggy whip makers or sword smiths--there must be a few such people still out there, who perhaps produce a better product than anyone in the past.

A Bird Singing Contest

In Thailand, see the 5th slide here.  Somehow the idea of staging a bird singing contest is fascinating.  I suppose it's no more odd than a horse race.  You don't (or at least the younger I didn't) think of Asians being competitive.  Competing in which bird sings best fits my old preconceptions; competing in races--horse, dog, pigeon seems more Western somehow.  (Of course Chinese athletes at the Olympics show my preconceptions are best forgotten.)

Locavore and Farmers Markets

Over 200 years ago my ancestors left the York, PA area for upstate NY, a fact which leaves me with a casual interest in York, an interest sparked by a couple interesting web sites.  Here's an article, with links to more articles, on  the old York farmers markets, and the new ones.

Republicans Should Have a Little Sympathy for Government Managers

I'm just saying, the next time you see a media report about how government employees have abused their government credit card, the Republicans might take a deep breath before attacking them.

Arne Duncan as Lucy

The Secretary of Education announced the two states who won his "Race to the Top" competition for reforming education.  It strikes me that he's like Charles Schulz's Lucy, tantalizing Charlie with the football.  On the other hand, anyone who has tried to lure an animal into a place they don't really want to go by using food, knows his strategy.  Just enough to tempt, not enough to satiate.  (Come to think of it, that's what strippers do.)

What's Up with Turkmenistan?

Via Matt Yglesias, Gallup has a global survey of nations which are thriving, struggling, or suffering.  It's color-coded.  Briefly US, Canada, UK, and Scandinavia are thriving, the rest of the world not so much.  But Turkmenistan sticks out like a sore thumb in having a higher score than any country within thousands of miles of it.  What's that about?

Farm Policy Today

Farm Policy has two interesting pieces: one on the possibility of rejiggering SURE to speed up payments (either making advances or changing the data used so payments could be made earlier); the second reporting an informal survey that wheat farmers would prefer to keep crop insurance and drop direct payments if they faced a binary choice.

FSA Awards Contract for MIDAS

FSA awarded its MIDAS contract to SRA  (It's what I would consider a "Beltway Bandit"--a consulting house with no particular background in USDA.  Made about $1.5 billion in revenue last year and has about 7,000 employees.  

I hope they do better work for FSA than they do for themselves: when I searched for "USDA" on their website I got a page which was unreadable because of the dark blue background to black letters. When I copied the text, this is what I saw:

• Search
• Sitemap
• Contact Us

Warning: mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Too many connections in /prod/webprojects/sra-prod/includes/db.php on line 7
Connection Failed

One Personalized Government Website?

Via Govloop, here's an article on Prime Minister Brown's plan to provide a personalised web page for every UK citizen to access all public services online in a single location.

Two points on this:

• Does it make sense? There's definite advantages--you presumably can set up some high-quality identity checking for such a site, the user has only one ID and password process to go through, you probably get a higher usage rate because it's more convenient for the user.  On the other hand, as with any centralized process the consequences of hacking, etc. are greater.
• What does it tell us about the differences in government and society? It's pretty clear, I think, that Brown's not just thinking of one access point to Her Majesty's websites, but to all levels of government including doctors appointments.  Presumably Brown knows what's feasible, but compare that with the U.S.  Fairfax County and Virginia both are recognized as being progressive in their implementation of IT, but there's no way you could have one access point for both county and state.  As a matter of fact, Fairfax county doesn't have a common access point for the public library and the property tax.  Now consider adding in things like passports from State, Pell grants from Ed, veteran's benefits from the VA, Social security, bonds from Treasury, employee benefits from OPM, etc. These won't have a consolidated access point for decades.  As I've said before, in the US our government is decentralized and weak, and we like it that way.