Chris Clayton takes a sardonic approach to the pols, and NASCOE, resisting Vilsack's proposed closure of USDA offices.
See this for NASCOE's position,including a thrust at NRCS (all agencies in a county should be evaluated when talking office closures).
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Conflict in the New Farm Bill
One problem the food movement will face in the new farm bill is the choice between trying to expand the supply of good food (i.e., local and organic) and the present. The more you do that, the lower the prices will be and the harder it will be for existing producers to continue with their current size and business model. In other words, expand the supply and you encourage the growth of "corporate" and "industrial" organic/local agriculture.
Just a thought.
Just a thought.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Mobile Offices for USDA?
Back in the mid-90's, when the Service Center project was under Greg Carnill, one of the proposals coming from RD was to have mobile offices. That was seen as a way to reach out to underserved areas (I think especially heavily Latino areas and reservations where language might be a problem). I thought of that when I saw this piece on VA's mobile Vetcenters.
John W. Boyd's Loan Specialist
John Boyd is prominently associated with the Pigford lawsuit. I just happened to notice there's a vacancy in Mecklenburg county for a supervisory farm loan specialist. I also found it interesting that the town is Boydton.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Lexis-Nexis Is a Government Innovation
Who would have thought it? That was my reaction when I read this obit in the Post. Three paragraphs:
Mr. Rubin was a corporate lawyer in New York during the late 1960s when he was asked to give his advice on a new computerized legal research system.
The digital database had begun as a project to catalogue Ohio state laws using Air Force technology [emphasis added] that tracked intelligence reports. Mr. Rubin quickly saw the system’s commercial potential because of its ability to make millions of legal documents easily and quickly available to law firms.
The key was to ensure that the database was simple to use, Mr. Rubin said, because “lawyers can’t type, and only 15 percent can spell.”Of course, I enjoyed the last paragraph as well.
The Era of Good Feelings on the Hill
In a previously unreported interview, there was evidence of an era of good feelings on Capitol Hill, or maybe not. Maybe it's like the glimpse of that rare woodpecker in the LA/AR swamps, but at least it's something: a Republican legislator was complimentary of a Democrat:
Debbie [Sen. Stabenow] was an absolute pleasure to work with in attempting to put the hurry-up proposal together for the super committee that never came about, but Senator Stabenow, Chairwoman Stabenow was a pleasure to work with and she demonstrated an intense amount ofintensity over on the senate side to try and move things there, so that’s a positive force.That's from an interview with Rep. Lucas, chair of House Ag.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Obama, Vilsack, and Kahneman
"Loss aversion" is part of Daniel Kahneman's thought. As he writes in Thinking: Fast and Slow, the theory is that people mostly prefer choices which minimize the risk of loss as opposed to maximizing the chance of gain. And, more interestingly, we prefer a choice which offers the chance of avoiding a loss, even though it's not rational.
On page 305 he ties that into proposed reorganizations, arguing that any reorganization will cause someone to lose something and, given human preferences for loss aversion, they'll fight a lot harder to avoid the loss than people who may stand to gain by the reorganization will fight to implement it.
We can already see this with Obama's proposal on reorganizing commerce; there's lots of resistance to including the office of the US Trade Representative in the overall reorganization.
The same sort of logic applies to the closing of USDA offices; those adversely affected by the loss will fight hard.
But that leads to a mystery: why was Congress able to reorganize USDA in 1994 by combining part of FmHA with ASCS to make FSA? Maybe part of it was in the splitting of FmHA--those parts which became Rural Development could see themselves as gaining by the reorganization. The old Rural Electrification Administration had long been a target for reformers, but by merging it into RD the old name and the old reputation was lost, at least among those who had only a superficial acquaintance with USDA and the lobbyists behind it could see a gain.
Meanwhile the farm loan part of FmHA might not have had the greatest reputation in the government: GAO had had the loan programs on its list to give close scrutiny to. And I remember my boss showing me a letter someone in Congress had sent to the old FmHA, criticizing their failure to implement some legislative provision in comparison with the speed with which ASCS had implemented other provisions. That was, of course, unfair. FmHA was bound by different constraints than ASCS, and had a different culture. But still the contrast might have undermined support on the Hill for maintaining it as a separate agency.
On page 305 he ties that into proposed reorganizations, arguing that any reorganization will cause someone to lose something and, given human preferences for loss aversion, they'll fight a lot harder to avoid the loss than people who may stand to gain by the reorganization will fight to implement it.
We can already see this with Obama's proposal on reorganizing commerce; there's lots of resistance to including the office of the US Trade Representative in the overall reorganization.
The same sort of logic applies to the closing of USDA offices; those adversely affected by the loss will fight hard.
But that leads to a mystery: why was Congress able to reorganize USDA in 1994 by combining part of FmHA with ASCS to make FSA? Maybe part of it was in the splitting of FmHA--those parts which became Rural Development could see themselves as gaining by the reorganization. The old Rural Electrification Administration had long been a target for reformers, but by merging it into RD the old name and the old reputation was lost, at least among those who had only a superficial acquaintance with USDA and the lobbyists behind it could see a gain.
Meanwhile the farm loan part of FmHA might not have had the greatest reputation in the government: GAO had had the loan programs on its list to give close scrutiny to. And I remember my boss showing me a letter someone in Congress had sent to the old FmHA, criticizing their failure to implement some legislative provision in comparison with the speed with which ASCS had implemented other provisions. That was, of course, unfair. FmHA was bound by different constraints than ASCS, and had a different culture. But still the contrast might have undermined support on the Hill for maintaining it as a separate agency.
NY Times Undermines Security
That's what I took away from their article today on teenagers. Apparently the true token of love today is information, specifically one's password. All very touching, but surely the Times should point out the truth: you shouldn't have just one password, but multiple passwords.
[Update: see this Consumer Reports piece after Zappos.]
[Update: see this Consumer Reports piece after Zappos.]
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
War Horse and Agriculture
Just saw the movie War Horse, a very pretty film. But Steven Spielberg is no farm boy. The first third of the movie is pre-war, when the thoroughbred Joey, the War Horse to-be, is trained both as a riding horse and a plow horse. In order to pay the rent, the father has promised the landlord to plant a field to turnips. Supposedly the field is both virgin and stony, impossible to plow. Sure enough, it's on the side of a hill and the ground is strewn with stones (though it's not clear whether they're weathered from the bed rock, which in Devon would be sedimentary, or glacial, rounded by water).
For dramatic purposes I can understand the decision to plow uphill, it makes the task for Joey more imposing, though it makes no sense from an erosion standpoint. When you see the first furrow plowed, and all subsequent furrows, somehow there's no stones in the soil, just good black soil.
Once the field is plowed, the father, limping from a war wound, starts sowing seed by hand. broadcasting across the furrows (no harrowing recorded). I could almost swear it was oats in the container, but I can't swear to it. Now, through the miracle of Hollywood, all that broadcast seed turned several weeks later into neat rows! of turnips. Unfortunately there's a big storm which somehow seems to uproot all the turnips, ruining the crop and creating another crisis for the family to face. I suppose the torrents could have eroded the dirt between the rows, but that didn't seem to be what happened.
I could go on to criticize the placement of the machine guns, but I won't.
It's a must see, if only for Emily Watson, who's always great.
For dramatic purposes I can understand the decision to plow uphill, it makes the task for Joey more imposing, though it makes no sense from an erosion standpoint. When you see the first furrow plowed, and all subsequent furrows, somehow there's no stones in the soil, just good black soil.
Once the field is plowed, the father, limping from a war wound, starts sowing seed by hand. broadcasting across the furrows (no harrowing recorded). I could almost swear it was oats in the container, but I can't swear to it. Now, through the miracle of Hollywood, all that broadcast seed turned several weeks later into neat rows! of turnips. Unfortunately there's a big storm which somehow seems to uproot all the turnips, ruining the crop and creating another crisis for the family to face. I suppose the torrents could have eroded the dirt between the rows, but that didn't seem to be what happened.
I could go on to criticize the placement of the machine guns, but I won't.
It's a must see, if only for Emily Watson, who's always great.
Learning Self-Reliance in Scotland
The Stonehead and wife believe in self-reliance, so their sons learn cooking early.
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