Cantor and Ag

Ezra Klein has the slides Rep. Cantor used in his caucus to explain the different proposals.  He's showing $33 billion cut in ag subsidies as the status of the Biden negotiations. If the ag subsidies are $20 billion a year, that's about a 16 percent cut.

African-American Farmers

Via the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, there's a scholarly study here which is available without restriction until July 16.  Worth reading.

Apologies

My posting has been screwy a couple times recently (an empty post and a post with no title). I ought to be able to blame Google, at least in part. I'm using their "draft" version of Blogger and it's taking time for me to adjust to it, and there might be a glitch or two in their software. As I learn things will improve.

ACRSIP and USDA

Mr. Scuse sees FSA getting acreage reports directly from the farmer's precision agriculture equipment, according to this post. The lede:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative Project (ACRSIP) may well be the “most important thing that USDA has ever done,” according to Acting Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Michael Scuse.

 In the interview (at the link) he says the idea is first to allow producers to report acreage once from home with the data supplied to crop insurance (also NRCS and NASS as applicable I assume) and FSA.  The "ultimate" step is to get the data from the precision equipment.  Timing: a pilot this fall, partial implementation in 2012, fuller later.

My comments:

• the interviewer said he'd called it the most important initiative USDA had ever done.  Scuse didn't quite agree with that.  I'd comment again that the prerequisite for such reporting is GIS and the common land unit. (For those not affiliated with USDA, the common land unit is an attempt to identify the lowest common denominator of land/land usage recognized by everyone in USDA.  It's necessary so you can provide different totals for different purposes.)  And I'd again recognize Kevin Wickey and Carol Ernst for that.
• as usual, management plans are over-optimistic.As far as I know there's little or no existing infrastructure for developing and testing software which spans the agencies. That was being developed in the late 1990's, when I retired, but I think it became a NIH item when the Bushies came in.  Once again, the Harshaw rule: you don't do things right the first time. While the agencies have a little experience in developing software for farmer usage, I've not seen anything impressive nor have I seen evidence of an active feedback system where farmers are suggesting improvements.
• a fall pilot presumably would cover the fall-seeded small grains.  That's a good starting point, representing  the easiest and simplest set of situations to handle, no double cropping, little land tenure complexities.  But I'd question whether the experience with such reports is an adequate basis for expanding in crops and scope by spring of 2012.  Maybe it can be done, but I'm a bit leery.  (Then, when the System/36's were rolled out, I was leery then too.)
• because the acronym is new, at least to Google, I wonder how well management has laid the basis for the changes in FSA and the other agencies which will likely follow.  

It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Why I'm an Optimist

From an article coauthored by Charles Kenny:

The World Bank did its annual assessment of poor countries last week. Low-income countries are those with average gross national incomes (GNIs) of less than $1,005 per person per year.

And there are only 35 of them remaining out of the countries and economies that the World Bank tracks. That's down from 63 in 2000.

It's hard to remember how concerned we were about the Third World, as it used to be called. (see here for the Google ngram, usage peaked around 1980 and has been falling ever since). There's still much to be concerned, but the picture is much better than it was around 1975 or so.

The "No Pledge" Pledge

I'm going to ask all the candidates running for national office to sign the following pledge (thanks to Ned Hodgman at Understanding Government for triggering the idea):

Because I believe the people's representatives are elected to use their good judgment in response to changing conditions and to serve the people, I pledge never to sign a pledge constraining my freedom to vote.

(I just finished reading Eric Foner's new book, The Fiery Trial, Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.
Had the Republicans, as they might have, taken a pledge not to disturb slavery in the existing slave states in 1860, they would have all violated it by 1864.

Moving Online--SSA and FSA

The FCW has a post on the problems SSA is having in moving its individual statements of accounts online. Two paragraphs:

Although the SSA is developing a new Web portal for accessing the online statement, the portal development is in the initial development phase and has not been fully tested, she said.
In addition, the SSA does not have plans in place for informing the public about the new online statements, or for ensuring access for individuals without Internet access or English proficiency.

If I remember correctly (too lazy to check), FSA has individual statements online, though I suspect there's very little access to them.  FSA has/had a different problem than SSA; FSA didn't mail individual statements on a regular basis while SSA does.  But FSA doesn't have experience with delivering services over the Internet, as witness he poor job they're doing with it.I infer from my personal reaction to the website, which I keep putting off expressing here.

Seems to me, if I were SSA, I'd include the instructions to get online with my last mailed statement.  In others, if my statement gets mailed in March 2013, it includes a notice my data is now on line, along with whatever security measures they've adopted.  Interesting question: do people opt in or opt out of the online statement?  I'd say opt out, but that's me. 

Me, the Professor, and Facebook

Chris Blattman is a professor with an interesting blog on international development, mostly Africa. It's reassuring to find that he's as puzzled by Facebook as I am.

Is USDA Listening? Twitter and Disaster

 I've previously suggested using pictures, either from digital cameras and/or cellphones, to enrich/replace the process of reporting crops and crop damage.  Based on this I suggest using Twitter as well: From a FCW post on use of social media by DHS:

DHS should look to the National Weather Service for an effective model. NWS has programmed its computers to automatically read any tweets with the hashtag #wxreport. Amateur weather watchers use that tag to report tornadoes and other extreme weather. Because Global Positioning System chips automatically report a smart phone’s location, NWS can pinpoint an event on a real-time basis and get critical situational awareness.

Crop insurance needs to know hail damage, in particular.

Coming Innovation: Robotic Transport for Apartment Complexes?

Reston is a planned community, started in the 1960's.  Among the compromises from the original plan was a downgrading of density; the developers discovered that single-family houses sold better than townhouses, which sold better than condos.  Now as the town has aged, and as Metro approaches (arriving next year on the east side of town), there's more and more planning for redevelopment, tearing down old buildings and building new ones.  In the process density is going up, which should make Matt Yglesias happy, if he ever travels from his DC apartment out to the wilds of Virginia.

Here's a post discussing planning for one of the redevelopment projects.  What strikes me is the bit about "Transit-Oriented Development".  It ties in with an observation about the Hunter Woods Fellowship House (an apartment building for seniors) which is served by a Fairfax Connector bus, although it probably adds 5 minutes to the bus route.

Seems to me in the near future it would be easy enough to have a vehicle, electric powered, controlled robotically, callable on demand, which runs only a route connecting an apartment complex like Fellowship House or the proposed Fairway Apartments to an express bus route or metro station.  Because the route would be set, it should be a relatively easy challenge to do the robotics.  By having a short route, the waiting time at either end would be minimal. By linking it in with a smartphone app, it could be response.