MIDAS Meeting

 FSA announced a meeting in the Jefferson Auditorium to discuss the MIDAS project:

The meeting is designed to provide an understanding of the MIDAS project goals, strategy and approach to USDA senior level management, agency management, contract partners and FSA employees. The kick-off meeting, which is open to the public on the first day, will be in the Jefferson Auditorium in the USDA South Building, 1400 Independence Ave. SW, starting on June 29 at 8:30 a.m., continuing through July 1.

Some off-the-cuff reactions: 

• if I were a committed blogger, I'd rouse myself and get my rear down to USDA and try to blog the meeting, at least the first day which is the only one open to the public.  (Why is that, I wonder?  Isn't the public, in the form of farmers the ones who will benefit by this project and in the form of taxpayers the ones who will fund the project?  Are we saying the second and third days will have proprietary secrets?  Does President Obama know his stimulus package is spending $40 million on stuff and his executive branch is closing 2/3 of the meeting? [ed--you've got your tongue in your cheek, right? ]
• I'm interested there's no mention of sister agencies.  So much for the service center concept, I guess. 
• Back again to farmers--maybe they have plans to take their plans to the field to get farmer input. 
• I'm hoping they have an audio feed, at least, because I'm too lazy to attend in person.  And, to be honest, I've made a point of staying away from the South Building since I retired: nothing more strange in my opinion than some old-timer wandering the halls saying "when I was young..."

Most Patronizing Words Today

Ann Althouse, in commenting on an article about college students switching to skilled vocations (plumbing, etc.) asked:

Why not prefer to work primarily with your hands (and your body) and keep your mind free so you can do what you want with it?

My memory of manual labor jibes with several of her commenters--you must use your mind even when doing manual labor. 

Ethical Questions for Farm Programs

A retiring agricultural economist raises some questions (my headings):

Poor Farmers?

In agricultural economics, at Purdue and elsewhere, it seems to me that our central challenge is how to be both mission-driven, responsive to our clientele in agriculture – and also true to our first principles as and as individuals. When the Purdue ag econ department was founded in the 1920s and as the department grew in the 1930s, farmers were much poorer than the average American. relative poverty persisted through the 1950s and 1960s, and at that time there was the added of huge disruptions due to rapid outflow of labor and consolidation of farmland. But for a of reasons, since the 1990s American farmers have been much richer than the average American, and there has been no further net outflow of labor or consolidation of farmland in America as a whole. So, from its hardscrabble roots, the agricultural economics discipline now finds itself serving a relativelywealthy and stable sector. Agriculture is a high-risk enterprise, but it’s not going away or even shrinking. This puts our discipline in an enviable if sometimes awkward position....

Nature of Farm Programs?

Now after decades of study, it turns out that government interventions such as crop
insurance, renewable fuel mandates, the conservation reserve program, land conversion restrictions and many others are not necessarily what they seem. Modern economics can explain them pretty well, but only as rent-seeking devices. These interventions are ways for farmers and landowners to obtain income transfers from the public in a way that is obscured from public view, hidden partly by their sheer complexity and partly by the claim that they exist to solve market failures such as credit constraints or environmental problems.

Organic Farming

People say they want to organic methods and traditional genetics to avoid health risks and environmental threats posed by industrial agriculture. People say they want to buy local and artisanal food so as to promote the local economy, or to avoid environmental damage from long-distance transport. But when scholars investigate these claims, they may turn out to be very fragile. What if organic, local, traditional and artisanal products don’t actually deliver a healthier, more secure and sustainable food system? This is not a hypothetical question. Right now, the preponderance of evidence is pointing in that direction.

Why the Increase in Number of Administrators

That's a question answered in passing here:

Why are a larger and larger fraction of university staff full-time administrators? My
favorite theory is a ratchet model, which is a kind of evolution in which new administrative positions
arise to solve problems, but then the position remains even after the problem is resolved. In that view,
the answer to why we have so many administrators is that they solve problems we used to have.

 I think that works for me.  In my time at USDA I saw a fair number of activities and posts which didn't make much sense, except when you knew the history of them.  (i.e., if the deputy administrator is a politico and an idiot, give him an assistant to cover for him).   A similar logic was at work for rules/regulations: if an issue is raised for which the rulebook provides no answer, we don't feel comfortable considering the problem solved until we amend the rulebook to include our answer.  (Witness the oil blowout in the Gulf--we'll modify the rulebook to provide that drillers must have "top caps" on hand, plus other measures.  That's fine, but there's nothing in place to turn off the ratchet.)

"Data Cubes" and FSA Employees

Turns out by working through Data.gov I got to the "data cube" showing federal employment (at OPM)--Iowa has 158 Federal employees out of roughly 5000 FSA federal employees.  Don't know how many county employees FSA has. A search of FSA notices doesn't produce the answer nor does a Google search. So I stooped to Ask FSA.

Now if data.gov only had the payments by state I might be able to compare the productivity of "private" crop insurance and the "Federal" government.  Dream on, I guess.

BTW, I think "data cubes" is a poor term to inflict on the public--it may be good for data warehousing or data mining, but it doesn't mean much to the layperson.

Matt Delivers Truth

"And yet when you go to the hospital, you don’t want to become a character in an interesting drama[like House], you want to be a character in a boring story about people not screwing anything up and you going home safe. You need a lot of nurses to make that work."

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.