Israel and Dairy

Via Marginal Revolution, an interesting post on cottage cheese in Israel.  It says the early settlers saw dairy as challenging, since cows weren't expected to thrive there.  It reminded of two other articles: one on the revival of farming in Gaza--although the Israeli settlers' greenhouses were looted after Israel withdrew from Gaza, some of the land is now growing vegetables; the other on growing tomatoes in Florida in the winter.  The common thread is that the soil and maybe climate aren't well-adapted for the agriculture, but it's possible to do well financially because of their location.  In the Israel/Gaza cases you've got the advantage of serving a local populace and being much closer than rival sources of the products.  In the case of Florida tomatoes, you've got the advantage of winter in the North.

A Field Is a Field Is a Pothole?

This from FarmPolicy was a blast from the past for me:

In other developments, a program announcement yesterday from USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) stated that, “[RMA] Administrator William Murphy today announced a change in qualification requirements for farmers in ‘prairie pothole states’ who want to obtain prevented planting insurance. The change is intended to assist farmers who have experienced difficulties due to excessive moisture in their fields over recent years. Beginning with the 2012 crop year, a crop must be grown on the acreage at least one of the previous four years if a farmer wishes to qualify. The states of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota are covered by the change. All other policy provisions must also be met.
“‘The requirement to be able to bring an insured crop to harvest in one of four years improves program integrity,’ said Administrator Murphy. ‘It also helps to meet the needs of farmers in the Prairie Pothole region, where some acreage has not been available to plant since the 2008 crop year due to flooding and excessive moisture conditions.’”

 Way back when (1981 I think) the North Dakota state specialist called in to be sure we meant a change in our procedures pertaining to potholes.  (Potholes result when a retreating glacier leaves a block of ice behind with glacial till around it.  The result is a low area which will fill with more or less water depending on the water table. ) In the early 80's the weather had been dry, the potholes shrank, the farmers farmed the dry margins, and they wanted it eligible to be designated as out of production for our production adjustment program (i.e., set-aside/ACR). Now the weather's been wet, the potholes expand, the farmers can't farm the wet margins, and they want it to be eligible for prevented planting payments.

From the viewpoint of people like Ducks Unlimited, this is all crap.  Farmers should not be encouraged to plant around potholes--the land should be in permanent conservation cover because the potholes are indispensable habitat for wildlife.  It's the modern version of the sheepmen versus the cattlemen wars of the 19th century.

Clinton Rossiter and the Roles of the American President

Clinton Rossiter was an interesting man, a professor of mine.  He wrote a book called "The American Presidency" and taught a course on it.  One of the themes was that the President had many different roles.  I think that's being ignored in the liberal angst over Obama's deficiencies as what I think Rossiter called: "Chief Legislator".  The meme is that Obama is not a good negotiator; he doesn't play hard ball well enough; he gives away the farm too early in the negotiations. People cite LBJ as the polar opposite; someone who played the game very well, always searching for an edge and a master of persuasion.

The meme may well be true, but one thing worth remembering is the many (16 maybe?) roles of the President.  Not every person will do every role well.  Nor is a person's performance under his own control, much is dependent on circumstances.  Beating up Obama may feel good to liberals, but they ought to stick pins in their Sarah Palin doll instead.

Cultural Transformation in FSA II

I wonder why I thought of FSA when I read this post from Chris Blattman?

Astounding Blog Post

I'm astounded, not by the idea women wearing red are most apt to be picked up when they hitchhike, but by the idea people are still hitchhiking.  I haven't seen a hitchhiker in many many years.

How To Avoid Cheating on Exams--the French Way

The always interesting Dirk Beauregarde discusses the handling of the big French exams, although his discussion is just a bit opaque.  He includes this factoid:

"Once the exam is over, the various appointed correctors (teachers) will head to their appointed exam centre and retrive their exam scripts. Teachers never correct in the same town where they live or teach, therefore on the day that they have to retrive the scripts, the drive, or take the train to a different town. In the case of my better half, she took a 200 kilometre round train journey to get her scripts from Orleans. The teachers from Orleans will either have gone to Tours or Bourges."

 Imagine if that happened in the US.  I can't.
[Updated to add the link]

Budget Savings from Cutting Direct Payments

Chris Clayton reports on a study by FAPRI:

"If direct payments are eliminated and there isn't a rush to ACRE, there would be a 10-year budget savings of about $41.7 billion from FY 2012 to 2012.

Yet, if everyone jumped into the ACRE program, assuming it stayed as is, then the budget savings over 10 years would likely fall to about $18.9 billion, FAPRI stated.

Cultural Transformation in FSA

Secretary Vilsack's "Cultural Transformation" has now become a mandatory training module, as outlined in this notice. 

I noted in a recent newspaper article on lessons of Secretary Gates, based on what he's learned working for 8 Presidents, he said: My experience has been over the years that if you try to impose change on an organization, you will fail,” he said.  The context was the need for the Army to become better at and focus more on training foreign militaries (like the Iraqi and Afghan armies), but he figured forcing it on the Army would become Gates' idea which would evaporate when he left DOD.

So, does Vilsack's cultural transformation have a chance?  I don't know.  It would be nice to see the training and the supporting documents, but they're only on the FSA intranet. Based on my experience with past mandatory civil rights, disability, and sexual harassment training I've some doubts.  The training sessions I remember best were on dealing with unions and disability.  That's because of the instructors: one was a retired government manager, the other a lawyer in a wheelchair. (Actually most memorable session was in the Jefferson Auditorium with the infamous "penis" flap, but I won't go into that.) I've my doubts that on-line training can be effective, given the resistance old white males (like me) will have to the subject.

I think there's a bigger chance of doing cultural transformation by redoing the business processes, to pick up jargon from the 1990's.  If your database tracks things like all contacts with customers and their outcomes, and your employee evaluation system rewards outcomes, you can change the agency. (Think of how Amazon or Netflix has tweaked its systems over the years.  Amazon can look at your aborted purchases, shopping carts abandoned in mid process, and react to them.  I keep getting emails from them offering me deals in areas where I went halfway and stopped.  That's very impressive organizationally.)

The other way to change the culture is to change the way you recruit your employees.  When I first went to the program division in 1978, there were 2 professionals who were women, both in the analysis side.  The operations types were almost totally male former county executive directors.  I think the culture at the county level was for the mostly male directors to do the PR and handle relations with the farmers, while the mostly female clerks/program assistants handled the detail work, the paper-pushing.  That often meant, when the males came to DC and had to design processes they weren't as good as the women would have been.  These days it seems the pendulum has swung so women are in the majority. I wonder how that's changed the culture in DC.

Can You Sneak Beets?

Obamafoodorama has a post of an interview with Sam Kass, the chef/gardener czar at the White House.  Despite the Obamas disdain for beets, he still plans to sneak them into a meal.

That's what he says, meaning he's either incredibly stupid or incredibly skillful. 

I like beets well enough, though beyond buttered, pickled, and souped I don't know what you do with them.  But beets are to me the vegetable least likely to be snuck anywhere. What other vegetable is there which will stain a deep red everything it comes in contact with?  You just can't do it without the diner's knowledge.  It's like saying in 1960 you're going to sneak Marilyn Monroe into a meeting of Catholic clergy. 

Rotate NRCS and FSA Employees?

In order to get the national security types, the FBI's and ATF's and so forth, to talk to each over, some Senators are saying, let's do what we did in DOD with the "purple" reforms of Goldwater: require employees of the different agencies to rotate among them.  Maybe Congress should require the same sort of rotation among employees of USDA in the field offices?