EWG Subsidy Database and the Farm Bill

The Environmental Working Group is knocking USDA for failing to provide farm program payment data tied to individuals when the checks were written to entities.  Seems USDA is estimating it would cost a bunch of money ($6.7 million) and Congress changed the law so they don't have to.  I'm not a real fan of EWG, I didn't like it back in the last century when they won their court case to get the payment data, but seems to me they're in the right here. Given Obama's emphasis on transparency, it's going to be difficult for the ag committees to hold the line on this one.

Us and the Brits--Transition and Budgets

There's been a little comment in the blogosphere on the transition in Britain. Took a day or two to come up with a coalition government, but now the Brits have all their cabinet in place and beavering away--no long drawn out confirmation hearings and the occasional embarrassing disclosures for the British. That's just a piece with the other ways in which their government differs from ours. I found this in a writeup on the British budget approval process:

The British Parliament has no ways and means committees, no budget committees, no appropriations committees. The committees that do scrutinize government departments lack the power to authorize new government programs and spending. Britain has one dominant figure who controls most of these functions: the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Roughly speaking, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Treasury/Finance Minister for the British Government, yet he has unparalleled power compared to the US Treasury Secretary.

The Chancellor has sole responsibility for setting tax rates. He does not preside over a tax committee. Rather he makes all of his tax decisions in an annual statement to Parliament, which is referred to as the annual Budget Statement. In essence, the Chancellor is a one-man Ways & Means Committee. The Budget Statement he presents (discussed below in greater detail) outlines not only tax rates, but also the total amount of money that will be spent on all government activities (both mandatory and discretionary).

Thus, the Chancellor is also a one-man Budget Committee.

If I understand, the finances and spending bills get considered and there's the possibility for change, except if the government doesn't agree to the change, they can make it a vote of confidence and win that way. 

Rebound in Prince William County

Post had an article on Wednesday describing a rebound in Prince William county, VA. Schools are full and housing is moving.  That fits what I've noted on visits to my mother-in-law in Manassas Park--fewer "for sale" signs up for shorter times.

In my mind this is the way the real estate market revives: the new households formed, whether of immigrants who band together to finance a house, young people finally able to buy instead of rent, low-income households rising up the ladder, all find places where houses are affordable, as in Prince William.  They buy new houses and existing houses.  The owners of the existing houses then may have the money to finance a more expensive house, and so on up the ladder.  Instead of the "trickle-down" theory of wealth, this is the "build from the bottom" theory of housing prices.  (And it's one reason why I've still got the bee in my bonnet that the anti-immigrant fervor of 2005-7, as in Tom Tancredo, helped to pop the housing bubble.)

Anyhow, the future is looking a little brighter.

USDA Bureaucrat: Lyster Dewey and Hemp

The Post has an article on Lyster Dewey and his diaries, which record his work growing hemp, as well as other things, in the USDA gardens occupying the site where the Pentagon was built. USDA bureaucrats do many things.

Incidentally, during WWII the USDA also had a War Hemp program.  Find other links by googling "War Hemp".  I remember in the early 70's someone contacted the ASCS records people looking for the old records (I think the program was probably funded out of Commodity Credit Corporation funds.)

Equal Time for Cows--Predicting Their Behavior

Grew up on a dairy/poultry farm.  I've already posted on hens today, so I thought I'd throw in this piece from MIT on a model to predict cows' behavior: specifically whether to stand or lie down.

I'm a little skeptical of Bostonians talking about cows, they're probably more familiar with shoes.  But I can't controvert anything said in the post.

Hens and Cages

From Farm Policy

Rod Smith reported yesterday at Feedstuffs Online that, “American consumers buy eggs from cage housing systems by a margin of more than 40 to one over eggs from cage-free systems, according to data from Information Resources Inc. (IRI), which tracks checkout scanner transactions from 34,000 grocery and other retail stores in the U.S.
“Furthermore, based on other research, Americans pay three times less for eggs than Europeans do. Also, more than half of Americans prefer that egg producers continue to use current cage housing or migrate to alternative systems such as aviary or colony cages, and 44% prefer cage-free housing.

I wonder how it came to be that Americans pay three times less for eggs? Is the European poultry industry less concentrated?  Is it not vertically integrated as ours is? Do we just profit by the bigger market?  Do Europeans prefer more what in wine they call "terroir", which are the mostly imaginary qualities which are supposedly associated with production in a specific area.

[Updated--decided to do a little Googling and found this about the French industry.:]

National egg consumption over the last three to four years is estimated at 248 eggs per person on average, compared with 251 a decade ago.
Of these 248 eggs, 172 (69%) are believed to be table eggs, while the remaining 76 (31%) are thought to be processed eggs. Household purchases represent 40% of total consumption, followed by yolk and albumen (31%) for the food industry, table eggs for the catering sector (20%), and poultry farmers’ personal consumption (9%). Supermarket sales amount to nearly 4 billion eggs, or around one third of total consumption. Organic, Label Rouge and free-range eggs account for 28% of eggs sold and 42% of supermarkets’ turnover from egg sales. [I suspect here's a big difference.] France remains one of the EU’s biggest egg consumers.
The French egg market is at a crossroads in a fast-changing regulatory, economic and sanitary environment. While production and consumption perspectives remain favourable at international level, growth is slower in France and the rest of Europe, with a slight decline in production over the last few years.
The sector’s outlook depends on the development of EU-wide regulations concerning animal welfare, human health and the environment. The forthcoming ban on conventional cages, which is due to come into force on 1st January 2012, is expected to result in the further diversification of rearing systems and the development of alternative rearing methods, the ITAVI forecasts. In addition, growing awareness among consumers of animal welfare, as well as health and environmental issues, is likely to shape the market and benefit the organic sector.
The French poultry industry faces the tough challenge of adapting its production structures and making strategic investment choices over the next 20 years. However, the heavy costs involved may result in the disappearance of a number of small poultry farms, says ITAVI deputy manager Jean Champagne. Future production methods will have to guarantee human health and animal welfare as well as offer competitive prices, all the more so as the EU market is likely to be opened to imports from third countries that are not subject to the same requirements.

The March of Progress--Phipps Declares Non-GM Corn Over

John Phipps says genetically modified corn has now swept the field, at least in the U.S., because there's no longer a premium to corn growers for growing non-GMO corn.  He's got a pdf essay which he links to from a blog post. 

Frailty, Thy Name Is Beginning Gardener

From a NY Times article on the fad for company gardens:

Still, what seems like a good idea in the conference room doesn’t always translate to the field. People don’t always follow through. It’s the same dynamic that fills the office refrigerator with old yogurt containers and moldy lunches.
At PepsiCo, most of the plots are still weedy and empty. The weather has been cool and so, gardeners say, has enthusiasm. Last year when the company first turned over a plot the size of two tennis courts to peppers and tomatoes, 200 of the 1,450 employees here signed up, mailroom workers and midlevel administrators alike. This year, the volunteers dwindled to about 75, and many of them have yet to ready their plots.

A Blast from the Past--PIK Certificates and a Wrong Prediction

John Phipps must have been having a nostalgic moment because he threw in a mention of PIK in a recent post
with a link to an explanation  of "PIK and roll" from the 1987 Washington Monthly.

I remember the start of the PIK program, or at least the 1983 incarnation. I suspect there are many FSA employees who were hired back then and remember it with some mixed feelings.

At the end of the article, two long retired Senators, Boschwitz and Boren, discuss their proposal for "decoupling", for removing the link between the crop produced and what the program pays.  We moved towards that in the next two farm bills, with the 1996 Freedom to Farm incorporating it.  Here's what was said:

"A system of direct income support would make government dependency less easy for farmers to swallow. They could no longer kid themselves that the farm program merely provided them with a "fair price.' Many farm groups oppose the plan on the grounds that it would turn the farm program into welfare, to which Boschwitz replies: "Farmers are getting benefits now and they would get benefits under my plan. What's the difference? If they call my plan "welfare,' what do they call the current programs?'"

The prediction was wrong--farmers have had no problem at all of arguing to keep the DCP payments long after they were supposed to be phased out. The "fair price" argument may have faded into the pages of history but the argument for preserving farms remains.

The Final Word on Vertical Farms

One of my hobbyhorses is vertical farms, or rather the unfeasibility of vertical farms.  This post should put the final nail in this idea:

Although the concept has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food. Even if vertical farming were feasible on a large scale, it would not solve the most pressing agricultural problems; rather, it would push the dependence of food production on industrial inputs to even greater heights. It would ensure that dependence by depriving crops not only of soil but also of the most plentiful and ecologically benign energy source of all: sunlight.