Subsidized Agriculture Is Inefficient?

Kevin Drum has a post on healthcare costs and productivity, citing some studies.  As usual, he's good.  But what interested me was a chart comparing the annual increases in productivity for different industries in the  10 years. 1995-2005  There were surprises: I would have thought IT would have been the best. It's good, increasing productivity roughly 6 percent a year, but it's only second to durable goods, which is roughly 7 percent.  That may be one reason for the rust belt--we're just getting more productive.

What was the third ranking industry: agriculture, at a bit over 5 percent increase per year. Presumably a lot of that is attributable to the use of GMO seeds and increased yields.  If I remember correctly, I read a history of US agriculture in the 20th century which cited the argument that government programs essentially provided the capital to invest in improved productivity.  Don't remember if the history confirmed the idea, but it would work in recently--farmers who have to cut corners would choose less expensive seed, those with the cash from subsidy payments could pay the more higher seed bill.

Good Article on the Media

Via Ezra Klein, a good article on the media, which ends thus:

"This is complicated! You’ve got the Church of the Savvy, The Quest for Innocence, the View from Nowhere, Regression to a Phony Mean, He Said, She Said, the Sphere of Deviance. These form the real ideology of our political press. But we have to study them to understand them well."

We Needed a Program for the Topographically Disadvantaged

I just realized my parents were in the category of the topographically disadvantaged--much of our farm was side hill, very steep, too steep to be farmed by horses or tractors, and the soil was too thin to be good pasture.  While justice will come too late for my parents, it surely is not too late to pass some legislation to give equal justice to the topographically disadvantaged as we already have for the geographically disadvantaged.

A New Politically Correct Category?

Looking at USDA regs, I find "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in the title of one regulation.  No doubt something passed by mentally challenged legislators.

Indispensable Bureaucrats

Kenneth Feinberg will run the BP claims account and Michael Bromwich will oversee the reorganized Minerals Management Service.

In the old days we had political elders who'd step in in emergencies.  In Britain they called on the "great and the good".  These days we seem to have experienced bureaucrats who act as troubleshooters. No longer faceless, but known and trusted.

Not Mice, But Bees Are What Elephants Fear

According to this Post article, elephants fear bees.

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.)