Revised Republican Cuts of USDA

It looks as if the Republicans, in their effort to cut $100 billion, have added to the previously announced cuts of FSA and NRCS other items, and deepened their cuts of WIC.  (Figures are in millions, with the first one the cut from FY2010 as enacted, the second one from FY2011 as Obama requested.) (Here's my previous post.)

Departmental Administration and Offices (137.7) (105.9)
Inspector General (8.7) (4.5)
Research Education and Extension
Agricultural Research Service (185.1) (84.3)
National Institute for Food & Agriculture (217.1) (150.7)
Other Research (13.2) (20.8)
Marketing and Regulatory Programs
Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (75.0) (32.3)
Agricultural Marketing Service (9.4) (11.8)
Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (1.6) (3.9)
Food Safety and Inspection Service (88.4) (52.7)
Farm Assistance Programs
Farm Services Agency (190.4) (205.3)
Risk Management Agency (3.1) (5.9)
Natural Resources Conservation Service (172.5) (46.2)
Rural Development
Rural Housing Service Loans & Grants (208.8) (35.1)
Rural Business Loans & Grants (33.2) (51.4)
Rural Utilities Loans & Grants (204.5) (6.3)
Rural Development Administrative Expenses (35.8) (40.4)
Domestic Food Programs
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants &
Children (WIC) (747.2) (1008.2)
Commodity Assistance Programs (26.0) (7.6)
Other Nutrition Programs & Administration (9.0) (32.3)
Foreign Agriculture Service
Food for Peace (PL 480) (687.0) (544.0)
McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition
Grants (109.5) (20.0)
Foreign Agriculture Service (14.9) (83.4)
Food and Drug Administration (241.0) (220.2)

Budget Cuts Help IT?

This Federal Computer Weekly  piece argues that Republican budget cuts will, in the long run, help IT, because the only way to accomplish program goals will be by using technology. I'd beg to differ. If budget cutting were logical, we'd see more money added to IRS to do a better job of collecting taxes. We'd see upfront investments in IT.  We'd see reorganizations.  My experience is budgeting isn't logical, so we'll see the IRS hacked, we'll see IT money cut back to mere maintenance, and we'll see organizations fiercely defending their turf against the world.

The Bad Teacher and the Bad Boss

Some blogging on teacher evaluations. A quote from one:

The only observation I'll make is that I suspect many reformers see teacher evaluations as a second-best approach. In an ideal, less litigious world, managers would be empowered to make hiring and firing decisions based on a number of factors, e.g., does this teacher play well with others, does he have the "soft skills" he needs to do his job well, does he use a variety of strategies to keep easy-to-teach students in his class while fobbing off harder-to-teach students on others, etc., that are hard to quantify.

 I think the comment shows the blind assumptions common to us bureaucrat types.  Specifically, the assumption is that you have the ideal principal doing the evaluations. Stating the assumption does, I think, show its falsity.  We all know no one is perfect, so we're going to have imperfect principals evaluating imperfect teachers.  That reality is one strong reason to have teachers' unions, or unions of public service employees.

Yes, we could all imagine scenarios in which the principal does her evaluation using sound information on many factors.  The reality is different, particularly because evaluation is something few people enjoy doing, or receiving, so it's likely to be done poorly. 

The Use of New Technology

I wonder how well and fast some innovations penetrate society.  For example, I guess you can assume everyone who uses a PC these days knows how to use a mouse. Remembering Windows 2.0, that was not something you could assume. (The first PC's FSA provided had Windows 2.0 on them.)  So maybe it took 10 years or so for us to convert to a Windows WYSIWYG environment?  But how about sneakier stuff, the bells and whistles software types add on.  Does anyone use everything in Word?  How about Google Maps?

The reason I ask is I just realized this week that the Street View in Google Maps could be used to see where in Ireland my great grandfather lived before he emigrated to the US in the 1820s. Apparently Google hasn't done Germany yet.

Crop Insurance and the LA Times

Via Farm Policy, the LA Times had a long article on crop insurance, using the hook of fraud in the program to include some more serious discussion.

The program ballooned, thanks to insurance industry lobbying and federal rules that make it tough for farmers to go without coverage. Although the amount of acreage covered remained relatively stable, the value of insured crops climbed to $78 billion in 2010 from $36.7 billion in 2001. Premiums, tied to the volatility of the commodity futures market, jumped in price. Agents' commissions, which are tied to crop prices and premiums, have tripled over the last decade.

The trouble, critics say, is that private insurers and their agents reap most of the benefits while the public still picks up the losses.

In 2009, taxpayers shelled out nearly $4 billion to the 16 insurers involved in the program, according to the USDA's Risk Management Agency, which administers the program. Of that, $1.5 billion was paid in commissions to an estimated 15,000 insurance agents. Because there were more gains than losses, the USDA said it retained $1.4 billion, some of which came from farmers' premiums.

 Must be nice to have one's income triple in a decade.  Although it's probably true that many crop farmers have done equally as well in the new century.

A Coming Glut of Almonds and Pistachios

That's my prediction, based on these figures from Chris Clayton:

Speaking of which, all you rolling in the money corn and soybean farmers, figure this math out. Last year, some of these guys in the valley got about 4,000 pounds an acre off their pistachios, and sold them at $2.50 a pound. Production costs for a pistachio crop is about $2,000 an acre. And it's a wonder why private investors are willing to pour money into pistachio or almond orchards that won't make a crop until three to five years.

USDA Farm Cuts

House Appropriations Committee is proposing the following cuts in 2011 FY (the next continuing resolution):

"Food Safety and Inspection Services -$53M
· Farm Service Agency -$201M
· Agriculture Research -$246M
· Natural Resource Conservation Service -$46M
· Rural Development Programs -$237M"

 No detail on what's involved. No cut to SNAP (food stamps) but WIC takes a $738 million hit.  Not sure why it's better to fund the poor instead of women and infants.

NY Dairies Can't Win

Not only have corn prices gone through the roof, but the roof is falling, at least in Saratoga and Washington counties, NY on several farms.

A couple comments, which sound hard-hearted:

• I suspect many of the roofs which succumbed to the snow load were on buildings erected during the last half of the last century.  I doubt either the old-old-fashioned barn on my childhood farm, or the old-fashioned hip-roofed barn which was the standard when I was born would have suffered so.  Their roofs were steeper in pitch than the more modern barns I've seen.
• I'm not sure why FSA should be involved.  Surely the farmers were carrying insurance on buildings and herd.  If they had insurance and the insurance covered barn collapses because of snow, FSA should not be involved.

Sic Transit Gloria: Ken Olsen

Back in the day (whoops, did I use that already) Once the Digital Equipment Corporation was high in the sky.  I remember using the DEC All-in-one system to communicate with Kansas City, writing requirements and discussing schedules.  This was the mid-80's. In DC we had started our word processing with the IBM Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter, changed to the CRT-based Lexitrons, briefly to Wang, and then to the DEC terminals with their email, wordprocessing and rudimentary spreadsheet package.  (The spreadsheet was an attempt to compete with Lotus 123--I remember using it for some computations, maybe on wheat allotment in the runup to the 1986 farm bill.) 

Anyhow, it was on the DEC that I first learned the golden rule of email: black and white type does not convey your meaning, particularly when you're joking, sarcastic or whatever.  (Early days of smileys.)   All this reminiscing is triggered by the death of Ken Olsen, one of the cofounders of DEC.

It's a cautionary tale, matched in later days by the AOL/TimeWarner saga, Alta Vista, and maybe Yahoo, and Ebay.  Who knows the future?

Cotton Price Supports

Back in the day, Oxfam was waging war against US cotton farm programs on behalf of the African cotton growers (in Burkina Faso, etc.). The argument was the program encouraged US farmers to produce at lower prices, making it impossible for African growers to make a profit.  This was when the cotton price was $.55 or so a pound.

Today, according to this piece by Philip Brasher (hat tip Farm Policy) Oxfam's man in Africa is seeing possibilities for African growers:

Cotton isn't a food crop, but farmers in places such as Mali or Senegal in west Africa could do quite well if cotton prices hold up, Hazard [Oxfam representative] said in a phone interview from Dakar, Senegal. A jump in world cotton prices last year came too late to really benefit farmers as much as it could have, because they have their crop under contract by the time they plant, he said. The world price of cotton shot from 90 cents in August to $1.68 in December, according to the National Cotton Council.
Some west African farmers may switch some of their land from food production to cotton to take advantage of the prices, Hazard said.

 Elsewhere in the piece Hazard notes high food prices may force the poor to cut back on their consumption.

Two observations, after I admit I'm no economist:

• Last I knew the US cotton program wasn't significantly changed.  Matter of fact Brazil won compensation from us via the WTO. So this big turnaround for cotton means there's other forces at work, stronger forces at work, than simply bad, no-good, unwise, even evil US farm programs.
• If the high cotton prices will elicit more cotton production from African growers, so eventually might the high rice, etc. prices elicit more rice production.