Organic Agriculture Is Profitable

I've been skeptical of organic agriculture's promises, so it's only fair I should highlight this piece from the Agronomy people, reporting on a long term U of Minnesota (my dad's alma mater--go gophers) study. It finds that organic agriculture is more profitable than conventional over an 18-year period.  However:

What gave organic production the edge wasn’t higher crop yields, however; instead it was organic price premiums. In their absence, the net return from a 2-yr, conventional corn-soybean rotation averaged $342 per acre, compared to $267/ac for a 4-yr organic rotation (corn-soybean-oat/alfalfa-alfalfa), and $273/ac for its 4-yr conventional counterpart. When a full organic premium was applied, though, the average net return from organic production rose to $538/ac, significantly outperforming the conventional systems both in terms of profitability and risk. And organic production was still more profitable when the price premium was reduced by 50%.

Cost of production was also lower, because herbicides cost more than organic weed control methods.

Repeal the Law

This Federal Computer Week article says the Census Bureau is willing to talk about repealing the portion of the law which prevents them from making public their database of addresses.

And this subsequent article says Census is backing off.   They may save it for a second term, if there is one.

Elixir

Just finishing up on Elixir, A History of Water and Mankind, by Brian Kagan.  It's quite interesting, filled with facts.  See the Amazon reviews; it's getting about 4.5 stars.  What was most striking to me was the extent and sophistication of early efforts to control water, in many areas of the world long before I would have thought.  For example, the tunnels in ancient Crete and the qanats in the Middle East (Google wants to give you "Qantas" results when you search for "qanats").

It's also striking how often humans were succeeding in living in very marginal environments for many years, but then their efforts were overturned by a sharp change in the climate.

MIDAS Demo Comments Continued

User One thing which is not clear to me in the MIDAS demos is whether the "user" in the demos is conceived of as the tech in the county office or the producer online.  Conceptually I think it works to have the same basic software available to both, but to make it work I think you need an elaborate upfront security apparatus so that producer A can't change (or maybe even view) data pertaining to producer B but the technician for the office serving producers A and B can do everything.  That means an extensive validation process behind the scenes to check whether the current user has authority to manipulate the data to which she is requesting access.


Organizational Changes  The last demo module, on Reporting, includes a visual showing 12 systems currently in place which would be replaced by the software being demoed. I suspect there are several organizational units in DC, and perhaps in KC, which are currently responsible for the systems.  At least there were in my day and although USDA and FSA don't update their online organizational data as they used to (the USDA organizational directory is 4 years old), I've enough faith in the inertia of bureaucracy to believe it's true today.

One of my problems with the current FSA website, which I may or may not have mentioned, is the hodge-podge of services available online under the "Online Services" tab.  I suspect that's because different siloswithin FSA were responsible for creating the individual options, without having one outfit coordinating.  The result for any producer who tried to make use of online services would be an unfriendly and awkward user experience. 

So I wonder how FSA is going to set up organizationally to handle software development and delivery of services online?

Farmland Bubble Revisited

When people start talking about "phenomenal rises" in land prices, it's definitely a bubble.

Chicken Feed in 50 Lb Bags?

Do I feel like a male chauvinist pig this morning?  Via Yale Sustainable Food Project here's a piece on Female Farmers and people who complain about tools being designed for men and:

"Why, they asked, does chicken feed have to come in 50-pound bags?"

That's the first I've heard of that.  Back in the day, when we walked to school uphill both ways, both chicken and dairy feed came in 100 pound bags.  That was the test of a man.  We'd make a trip to the GLF (Grange League Federation--a co-op) store and load the pickup with bags of feed.  To make it up the hill from the Chenango River valley over to the Page Brook valley dad would have to use second gear, maybe first.  Then he'd back the truck to the henhouse and the barn to carry the bags in.

As a small boy I was impressed by the routine.  As I grew, I could help a little.  But it was a great day when I'd grown enough to be able to handle the bags. As I was born when dad was 52, the timing was right as well--he was losing the strength to handle the bags. To project onto all farm boys my feelings: farm boys have to compete with their fathers, something they can do because they're in the same

Of course, 100 lb bags of feed went the way of small farms--the efficient way to handle feed is in bulk. Bulk feed, bulk milk, bulk farms.

BTW--the women who asked the question quoted above are designing a line of tools:

Adams and Brensinger launched Green Heron Tools in 2008, the first company in the world to make farm equipment designed exclusively for the female body. Thanks to two grants from the USDA, they are releasing their Hergonomic Shovel-Spade (HERS) in the next couple weeks. Every feature is scientifically based on how a woman shovels. It's the first tool of its kind.

 I'm not sure I'm happy about USDA tax dollars going to help undermine patriarchy any more than it's already been undermined by bulk feed.

California Democrats Didn't Read Their Federalist Papers

That's my take-away from this piece on Sen. Feinstein's money problems with the suspect treasurer:

Feinstein said she and her campaign staff have been unable to access all their bank records at this point because Durkee alone controlled access to the account, which has made it difficult for them to assess how much money is gone.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63299.html#ixzz1XrWq6EpO

If they'd remembered their government 101 class, they would have thought: "checks and balances", particularly when money is involved.

Cemeteries and Memorials

A couple random things from today's media--the Times has an article on the military leaving Camp Victory in Iraq.  Part of the process is dismantling the memorials erected to remember various deaths, one of which was going to be transported back to the states. Meanwhile Ann Althouse notes a Tampa Bay piece on memorials: apparently they already have 500 and are looking at more.

Also, when we come back from Herndon from our regular weekend visit to The Tortilla Factory, there's a wooden cross erected by the on-ramp to the Fairfax Parkway.  I assume it commemorates some teenager who lost control there and died in the accident.

Finally, there's the famous factoid about Reston: it has no cemeteries.

Discussion: in the old days when I was young, people would gather on Memorial Day at the cemetery to cleanup damage and remember the dead.  Commemorating death was a communal activity because the tombstones represented people were ancestors and relatives of the people living in the community.  As a little kid you'd go around and see the names on the big family stones: Thompson, Kittle, whatever, and be able to connect them to the farms and houses you saw along the roads.

Today we no longer have that community, that communal knowledge, and we likely no longer have that cemetery.  Hence the individualistic drive to commemorate a death, a tragedy, with something along the roadside.

My memories of course evoke a rural/small town atmosphere.  I'm sure in the big cities cemeteries were very different, particularly as regards class. But my memories were/are in stone; the inscriptions on the stones gradually fade and erode, but my great great grandmother's grave stone, who emigrated from Ireland and died in 1850, is still legible.  For better or worse, the more individualistic monuments of today don't have that enduring power.

Slashing Crop Insurance?

Here's  a quote from Farm Policy, which I could duplicate from other pieces of propaganda information put out by the friends of crop insurance.

The article noted that, “Federal lawmakers have slashed more than $12 billion from crop insurance programs since 2008, [Moran] said, noting that subsidized crop insurance is important in a state that this year was ravaged by everything from flooding to drought.

  In the interest of fairness I should point out that a "slash" is not always a "slash".  Suppose the direct payment program is cut by $1 billion, or conservation programs are cut by the same amount--those could be called "slashes".  But those slashes are not the same as the slashes of crop insurance.

Why? Because those programs are fixed amounts, and a cut to them is by a fixed amount.  But crop insurance is an entitlement, so the government's budgetary exposure is not constant.  The exposure goes up and down (mostly up recently) according to program participation and crop prices.  So those slashes are calculated, based on the current conditions and projections, but the real spending cuts can only be determined after the fact.

The second reason is more indirect: program proponents make sure everyone is aware of "slashes" to the entitlement, but the increases in the entitlement creep in on little cats paws.  I'm not really picking on crop insurance; the identical logic and political posturing occurs among proponents of food stamps.

Carter Returns: Zero Based Budgeting and Broccoli

Those of us who remember the distant past better than today will know that President Carter was elected on a promise to make the government more efficient and effective by moving to zero based budgeting.  That's why the federal government has been so great over the last 35 years.

Now the Senate Ag committee is directing USDA to do the same:

The Committee believes it is necessary to carefully examine each agency’s budget requirements from a zero base, rather than by reviewing only incremental changes as they occur year to year. Such a change in method would both assist the Committee’s appropriating and oversight responsibilities and it will also require agencies to systematically examine all of their budgetary requirements on an annual basis to ensure they relate properly to their mission within the Department. Therefore, the Committee directs the Secretary to develop and present USDA’s fiscal year 2013 budget requirements from a zero base and such presentation should include an examination and justification of each program, project, and activity and allocation of FTEs and related items. The Secretary is further instructed to provide a report to the Committee on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress by November 1, 2011, on the status of this directive.

Other nuggets from the report:

On reorganization, which must:

"follow a thoughtful analysis of implications for budgetary resources, services to customers and employees, and inherent dynamics within the Department that might result. Toward that objective, before moving forward with the implementation of any substantive reorganization, the Department is instructed to conduct a detailed analysis of the savings, efficiencies, and implications of these changes. In addition, an understanding of the methodology used for determining these factors and some form of demonstration of the results anticipated is required. Any timetable for implementation of the changes suggested obviously will be driven by the fiscal resources available and it may be prudent to give consideration to a tiered implementation as conditions dictate rather than a full scale Departmental shift that would be far more complex and potentially expensive. The Secretary is instructed to provide a report, consistent with the guidance outlined above, to the Committees on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress not less than 60 days prior to the implementation of any Departmental reorganization. The Secretary is further reminded of the reprogramming instructions set forth elsewhere in this bill for the purpose of any implementation stage of a proposed reorganization.

My interpretation: Vilsack--be very very careful about reorganizing.

Broccoli Production.—The Committee has been informed that the Department has dedicated funding toward spurring broccoli production in the eastern United States. The Committee is aware that that farmers have invested considerable amounts of time and private funding into research on soils, crop management practices, and new broccoli varieties to develop and maintain a successful broccoli production industry on the East Coast. The Committee directs the USDA to work to ensure that Departmental efforts do not compete with or detrimentally affect privately owned, family-farm business operations.

My interpretation: don't encourage new broccoli farmers because we want to protect the existing one.s