Agricultural Robots: Progress Report

The Economist has an interesting piece on the development of agricultural robots: machines intelligent enough and adept enough to handle growing and harvesting fruit (mostly), sometimes in greenhouses, sometimes not. (I owe a hat tip to someone, but I had a senior moment.)   Machines can take over some functions, replacing (immigrant) labor and saving money.  The problem is they represent an added capital cost, so they imply bigger operations, more "industrial" farms. One truth the foodies often don't recognize is that fruits and vegetables already represent the most concentrated, most industrial branch of agriculture.  Of course, the promise of cheaper fruits and vegetables is something the food movement can't oppose, is it?

Fortune-seeking? Marry a Farmer's Widow

Way back in the day, a quarter section of land (160 acres) in the Midwest was a good farm.  So the farmers grew old and then died, leaving their widows to rent out the land and move to town.   Speculation is that cash rents for good farmland in 2012 might be in the range of $350 to $400 an acre (lost the link--might be farmgate).  I may be old but I can still multiply $400 x 150 (cheating a bit) to get $60,000  annual cash income for my hypothetical widow.

Via John Phipps, Agweb reports the sale of a quarter section in IA for $14,350. I can't multiply that in my head but I guesstimate that's about $20 million. (The same land went in 1956 for about $538 an acre.)

Bottom line: there's some rich widow ladies out there.  And the estate tax is going to become a hot issue.

Roberts on Rules and Regulations

As a followup to a previous post, I note Chris Clayton quotes a Pat Roberts letter to the President reciting all the rules and regulations which might be applied to agriculture.  Strikes me that most of his instances are in the nature of a "preemptive strike"--that they refer to proposed or potential regulations which might adversely impact some farmers depending on how they're written.

This isn't worth posting on, except I couldn't resist the post title.  I suspect he gets tired of plays on "Roberts Rules".

IBM and India

I grew up outside the "Triple Cities" of New York: Binghamton, Endicott, Johnson City.  The late '40's and 50's were a boom time for the International Business Machine Corporation, as IBM was then known. IBM was based in the area; the IBM country club was the place to go; because Thomas Watson had a profit-sharing plan "IBM millionaires" weren't that uncommon; people who had started back in the 30's and worked for 20 years or so had accumulated a tidy nest egg.  (This was a time when a million dollars was real money.)

Much has changed since then, but I was not prepared for this factoid in a Post article on how many of our international corporations keep secret the number of employees they have in other countries:

"Dave Finegold, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, estimates that 2009, when the company stopped sharing its U.S. employment figure, also marked the first time the company had more employees in India than the United States"

Every Movement Needs Its Bureaucrat: Bayard Rustin

Steve Hendrix has a nice piece on Bayard Rustin in today's Post. He was the organizer of the 1963 March, the unsung bureaucrat who put the pieces together so Martin Luther King had an audience to preach his dream to.  Just goes to show that behind every successful venture there's a good bureaucrat who worries about nuts and bolts.

A bit of personal recollection: the March occurred after I'd graduated from college, but I was home at my summer job.  As a liberal, though not personally committed to action, I shared the concerns of many white liberals, including the Administration, that the March would be a flop.  Either there wouldn't be the attendance to make an impression, or there would be but things would "get out of hand" with violence.  So my personal reaction to the March was not appreciation for King's oratory; it was just another speech on the day, although as time went it got more and more attention.  My personal reaction was relief that the day went so well; in other words that Mr. Rustin had done a good job.

Rustin was one of, perhaps the person, which J. Edgar Hoover pointed to in trying to taint the civil rights movement with both radicalism and perversion.  Which shows when the cause is right, the personal qualities are less important.

Will 2012 Farm Bill Do Away With Payment Limits?

Chris Clayton is finding support for keeping/improving crop insurance, even if that means losing some programs like direct payments and SURE.  And the support is not simply northern Plains and Midwest, but in OK and TX. 

One effect of this is to end the limitation on payments for much of the money the taxpayer spends on farm programs.  As commodity prices rise, the cost of insurance coverage goes up and the government exposure and subsidy grows.  I suspect most of the non-rural supporters of payment limitations, and even people like Sen. Grassley who've supported limitations in the past, will not question this.  My prediction is it will take the food movement a couple years after the 2012 farm bill is passed to begin to make this an issue.

Healthcare: The Importance of Bureaucracy

Suzy Kliff has a post talking about participation in ACA/healthcare reform, noting the very low participation in the pre-existing condition plan.  She focuses on CHIP--Children's Health Insurance Program for its lessons:

What does CHIP do to get kids enrolled? It all revolves around reducing red tape. Eliminating face-to-face enrollment interviews, for example, significantly increases enrollment numbers. Allowing for renewal of benefits by mail, rather than in person, helps too. Pre-populated enrollment forms, where a lot of a beneficiary’s information is already filled out, are currently being tested. In total, anything that makes it easier to sign up tends to increase enrollment. And that’s going to be key to moving 32 million people into an insurance system pretty soon.
One other thing we can learn from CHIP: enrollment levels could end up varying widely by states, and how many of these streamlining strategies they use. In Vermont, 92.4 percent of eligible kids are enrolled in CHIP; in Nevada, only 62.9 percent are. The disparities show just how much can hinge on how states decide to structure their enrollment processes

In other words, it's all about bureaucracy: how well do the bureaucrats at HHS and the state departments design their processes, their forms and websites.  I hope Dr. Berwick is a skilled bureaucrat.

An Economist's Dilemma

Brad DeLong muses over the pros and cons of buying a house in this market.  Even an economist hesitates.

The Monarch and the President

My wife and I watched a DVD on Windsor Castle last night--very good for Britophiles among us.  But I'm struck this morning by the contrast between an image last night and one this morning. 

Last night the DVD showed the Windsor flag raiser: the man whose job it is to raise Her Majesty's personal flag over the castle whenever she arrives.  So the movie maker shot from the flagraiser's perch atop the tower down to the drive approaching the castle showing the Queen arriving: arriving in two black cars. 

This morning Obamafoodorama has a post on a party the President attended last night, traveling in seven black SUV's. 

So the ratio is 2 to 7, which must tell us something, either about pomp and circumstance, past history of assassinations and attempts, relative power, paranoia, or culture.

Fixing Social Security--Kelman

Mr. Kelman has a post at Federal Computer Week suggesting options for a trade: delay the date at which you get social security in order to get higher benefits, such as long term healthcare insurance later.  Like, don't take SS until age 80, in order to have an assisted living home covered.

I don't have a dog in this fight since I'm not on SS and I'm paying for long term healthcare insurance from OPM  The initial logic is attractive, but it works only for the small subset of people who continue working and/or have enough investment income to retire on, as Mr. Kelman does but most people don't.  But just because it doesn't work for many isn't a bit argument for not providing the option.  I keep believing computers permit us to be more flexible without much administrative cost.