From Farm Policy in the context of reporting on proposals to cut the subsidy for administrative expenses for crop insurance:

Philip Brasher reported yesterday at the Green Fields Blog (Des Moines Register) that, “Although crop insurance companies and agents have strongly criticized some of the proposals, USDA officials said they expect to make only small changes to the plan being submitted to the companies Thursday. Industry officials and congressional staffs were getting their first look at the plan this afternoon. Key farm-state lawmakers, including Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Ia., have expressed opposition to earlier drafts, citing its impact on agents and impact on spending levels for the next farm bill.”
Mr. Brasher explained that, “Iowa has more at stake than any other state. Iowa farmers took out nearly 159,000 policies in 2009 worth $9.2 billion in total liabilities, the most of any state. There are more than 7,000 agents in the state licensed to sell the policies, and another 700 people are employed by the companies in underwriting, billing and other jobs. Four of the 16 companies that handle the insurance nationwide are based in Iowa: John Deere Risk Protection Inc. and Rain and Hail LLC in Johnston, Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Co. in West Des Moines, and Agro National LLC of Council Bluffs.”

This means the average liability per policy is $58000 and the average agent has 22 policies.  When I first saw those figures, I said to myself I'd find out the relevant stats for Iowa for the FSA side and compare the two operations.  Turns out federal employment numbers are hard to find, very hard to find.  So I'll merely suggest it would be good for concerned politicians and/or interest groups to request either CRS and/or GAO to look at such a comparison.  I vaguely remember back in 1996 someone, maybe GAO, looked at the costs for administering the CAT policies between FSA and the private companies.  Seems to me FSA came out okay, particularly as we were still in the learning curve.  Didn't make any difference though; the powers that be still decided to sell all CAT through the agents.

White House Garden and Rhubarb

Here's a short post from Obamafoodorama on rhubarb at the White House.  They used their rhubarb for rhubarb-strawberry crisp, which is okay, but I'd prefer a pie.  Being a contrarian, I'd also note the amount of sugar and butter used in the light of the chef's comments on healthy desserts. (Of course, a rhubarb pie should only be served to someone who's spent the day in the fields, or at least a couple hours weeding the garden.)

GWB and the Environment

Treehugger has a post on our greenest President, GWBush. (Greenest at least in private life and in Texas.)

ZBB

Only old-time bureaucrats will get a kick out of this: Zero-Based-Budgeting is back.  Back at least in the news on Kevin Drum's blog, if not back in actuality.

ZBB was Jimmy Carter's entry in a long line of efficiency nostrums for government operation.  The idea was to force the bureaucrats to rejustify the program each year.

The Truth From an Old Guy

No, not me, but I guess Ta-Nahesi Coates qualifies as an old guy to his son, and perhaps some other people.

 From a post on a supposed epidemic of "hooking up":

"There was plenty of uncommitted sex when I was college.Uncommitted sex was one of the reasons many of us went to college. "

Improving School Lunches

I've been a bit skeptical of efforts by the food movement to reform school lunches.  However, the sort of incremental improvements and changes in the food and the presentation described in this Post article make sense. Remembering the past I suspect school lunch programs never got much respect, so getting smart people involved can only improve things, even if it doesn't make major changes in our obesity problem. I have to admit I'm skeptical of how long chefs will remain involved, but I'd hope people will learn.

I wonder what are school lunches like in other countries?  I typed that, then said to myself I should do something to satisfy my curiosity.  This BBC piece from 2005 has interesting data, but what's even more interesting is the range of comments from viewers all over, not all over the UK, all over the world.  It's an incidental reminder of the scope of the British Empire and the legacy it left behind.

The Field Versus the National Appeals Division

GAO released a report on FSA's 2001-8 disaster programs, page 20. This paragraph seems to say the FSA field offices don't respect the NAD, perhaps unjustifiably, given the statistics.  This sort of culture gap isn't unexpected in an organization like FSA.

In commenting on crop disaster payments that they believed were based on suspicious crop insurance claims payments, some FSA county officials stated that they did not challenge or deny the applications for these crop disaster payments because they expected the applicants would appeal any challenge to USDA’s National Appeals Division.16 These officials added that in their past experience with appeals, USDA rarely upheld FSA couoffice decisions to deny payments. One official said that USDA generally approved appeals related to crop disaster applications unless the FSA county office produced evidence that the payment applicant did not meet program eligibility requirements. The official added that he did not collect such evidence because, at the time of the crop loss, he did not anticipate that a disaster program would provide assistance for those crop losses. However, according to our analysis of data from USDA’s National Appeals Division, FSA was more likely to be favored in an appeal related to the 2001 through 2007 crop disaster programs than were the farmers. We found the National Appeals Division upheld FSA’s denial of crop disaster payment applications for about 72 percent of the appeals, and the division overturned FSA’s denial, deciding that the farmer should have received a crop disaster payment, for the remaining 28 percent.

This also sounds like the gripes you hear from police (as relayed by conservative media and/or TV shows--I don't have any aquaintances in the police) about the lenient courts which let criminals go free.  But I wonder if FSA will respond to the audit by publicizing such statistics.

Indian-Americans

Are they going Republican?

The Problem of Definition: Agency

The question is: what is an "agency"?  To OMB, when they say "agencies" or to GAO, I think it mostly means cabinet-level departments and the individual agencies (SSA, FTC, etc.).  To someone who worked in USDA, it means FSA, NRCS, FSIS, FNS, etc.  Although there's been a long push to build up department level resources and oversight, it's still true, I think, that the individual agencies within USDA are where the rubber meets the road. 

This was triggered by GAO's suggestions for OMB oversight of agencies, as outlined in this Federal Computer Weekly article.

The Amish Have Pollution Problems?

I'm stunned by this NY Times article:  it seems EPA is trying to work with Amish dairy farmers in Lancaster County, PA, to alleviate problems from pollution of the Susquehanna River/Chesapeake Bay watershed by manure running into streams.

Why am I stunned?  Because I grew up on a dairy/poultry farm in the Susquehanna.  Our farming was close to Amish in methods (horses until the early 50's, then a small John Deere tractor).  From reading Prof. Kraybill on the Amish, it seems they limit their equipment to horse-drawn stuff, going just so far as to have hay balers powered by a gasoline engine on the baler.  Those limitations keep the farm size down to family size--maybe 60-70 milkers.  That was a big farm when I was growing up, but they handled manure as we did.

First, during the growing season (early May to maybe October) the cows would be on pasture 20 out of 24 hours, so little manure accumulated in the barn.  During the months they were being fed hay in the barn, maybe 22 out of 24 hours, the manure accumulated in the barn gutters, so cleaning them was a daily chore.  But the manure went into a manure spreader, which we used to spread the manure on the fields.  If the snow got too bad, we'd pile manure and have to spread it in the spring.    In all of this, I wasn't conscious of any manure getting into the Page Brook (which ran into the Chenango, which ran into the Susquehanna).  So we weren't aware of being polluters; our hearts were pure, at least in that regard.

So how are the Amish screwing up?  My guess is three-fold:  (1) we weren't aware of the possibility of manure being washed away when rain fell on frozen ground; (2) we weren't aware of the urine seeping into the water table and then into the brook (we were aware Mom's organic garden profited by being down slope from the spreader); (3) we weren't aware of  rain washing the pile manure.  In our case, the pollution was probably minimal.  But with the Amish having bigger operations, each cause could be significant.  That's why apparently EPA is pushing manure lagoons and pits.  But my impression is that the farmer empties a lagoon into a big tank spreader, too big to be pulled by horses.  Unfortunately the article doesn't describe the emptying, just the building.

Also of some interest is the fact that the article mentions, in addition to EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the NRCS (at least the Lancaster County Conservation District), and a consulting outfit.  That's lots of bureaucracy for the Amish to negotiate.

Finally, from the LCCD:

"Under Act 38, Concentrated Animal Operations (CAOs) are required to develop and implement a Nutrient Management Plan. CAOs are defined as agricultural operations where the animal density exceeds 2 animal equivalent units (AEUs) per acre of land suitable for manure application on an annualized basis." 

Seems to me that must indicate the Amish are importing feed, but maybe not.