Urban Farming--in Washington

The food movement places a lot of emphasis on urban farming, usually meaning the conversion of empty lots to community gardens, though sometimes it's rooftop gardens and occasionally vertical farming. That sequence, lots, roofs, vertical, represents my degree of sympathy with it: a good deal of sympathy for lots and very little for vertical. 

Even the conversion of empty lots is a limited expedient; such lots are mostly doomed by market forces and cultural factors. Cultural factors in that a society like the English, for example, can emphasize and preserve allotment gardening. I doubt we can create such an emphasis.  Market factors in that the same forces which eliminated the 261 farmers (owners and tenants) the 1920 census found in the District of Columbia will continue to operate.  Urban land is too valuable, so I don't expect any self-sufficient farm to be created and to last in DC.  Any farming/gardening will have to be an adjunct to some bigger institution. 

I Bet You Didn't Know This

The first use of the word "refrigerator" was in 1611.

And the technology has its roots in the 11th century with Avicemma, with Oliver Evans inventing the first one in 1805.

All this was triggered by an Ann Althouse post ,
a long quotation by Mark Twain listing the foods he wanted to eat when he returned to the U.S.  The last sentence: "Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator."

The listing of foods is interesting--lots of game, lots of your basic American cuisine.

MIDAS Schedule

The MIDAS schedule from the MIDAS newsletter:

"We will deploy MIDAS in two phases nationwide. Each deployment is currently scheduled to include the following components:

Release 1.0	Release 1.1
Acreage Reporting with GIS	Marketing Assistance Loans
Farm Records	SCIMS within SAP
Common Processes	Supporting Master Data
Supporting Master Data

As we developed the deployment strategy for MIDAS, we accounted for the business cycles of farmers and our FSA county offices. We also considered the peak in Acreage Reporting during June and July, as well as final program payments in November. Milestones on the way to these releases are Realization-Build, Testing and Final Preparation with a target go-live of early 2013 for Release 1.0 followed by Release 1.1 in spring 2013.

Training will take place this fall, close to MIDAS go-live so people can absorb and apply their learning right away. Training sessions will honor different learning styles and be delivered in new ways; this may include online Web-based sessions via a “train the trainers” approach. Both training and testing will be based on business scenarios provided by end users."

Not sure what everything means("common processes", "SCIMS within SAP") but that's fine.  The big problem I have is one I've mentioned before: the possibility that deployment of MIDAS and implementation of the next farm bill will overlap and compete. We'll see--IF, and it's a big "if", the project can meet their schedule they'll do better than we did in 1985.  If they don't meet their schedule....

Skid Steers

Was following links on robots in ag, and ran across a term I'd never heard of: "skid steer". Turns out it's the generic name for a type of front end loader, often called a "Bobcat", which is a particular make.  Invented to help handle turkey manure, which I can well understand, having shoveled chicken manure in my youth.

Apparently they're working to robotic skidsteers, save on labor cost.

The End of the IBM Card?

Back before I retired Treasury was starting to move us all off printed paychecks to direct deposit.  This process is finally ending, with moving everyone off printed checks.  Back in the day, one's paycheck (and savings bonds, which are also all electronic now) were actually printed on IBM punch cards, so the data punched into the card matched the printed data (payee and amount, etc.) on the check.

I wonder whether Treasury's remaining paper checks are still printed on IBM cards?  Probably not, they probably used bar-coded checks these days.

[Updated:  no more IBM cards, here's the image--looks like the data is all encoded]

Author of "Bureaucracy" Dies

Tyler Cowen reports James Q Wilson, the author of "Bureaucracy", though other works were more famous, has died.

Food Compass??

USDA hyped their "food compass" yesterday.  I may be the only one, but the term "compass" led me to expect a visual metaphor, like the old food pyramid, but the metaphor is strictly verbal. The closest thing they have to graphics is an interactive map, which also has a pdf file to explain it.

I'd think they ought to be able to do better, more visual, more intuitive.  (Of course, this is Monday morning quarterbacking by someone who has no suggestions to offer.)

The Market and Humane Treatment of Hens

Dirk Beauregarde reports on the effects of the new EU regulations banning battery cages: egg prices have soared, and prices for pastry and French bread have increased.  The story is marred, however, by the horrible puns.

Spinning Crop Insurance

I've probably written this before, but crop insurance advocates spin their story just as well as any politician.  Take this statement included in the press release noting crop insurance indemnities crossed the $10 billion mark and touting the fact that Congress didn't have to pass an ad hoc disaster program this year:

"Since 2008, a total of more than $28 billion has been sent to farmers for policies they
purchased. Federal investment in crop insurance, during that same period, was reduced
by more than $12 billion."

The same tactic is used by all supporters of federal expenditures on a totally nonpartisan basis.  Conservatives who support a "strong defense" do it, liberals who support food stamps do it, President Obama does it, President Bush did it, Rep. Ryan does it, even fiscal hawks do it when it comes to their pet program, they all "do it", but Billie Holliday isn't singing about it.

What's "it"?  Extrapolate from the past policy to establish the baseline for determining what the "cut" or "reduction" is, and fail to acknowledge automatic sources of growth.  In other words, the second sentence in the quote should, if the author was intellectually honest, read something like this:

"Although changes in policy have reduced Federal investment in crop insurance, during that same period, by x billion dollars, because of increased crop prices and acreages the total Federal investment has grown by y billion dollars." 

See this link for another example of spinning.

NASCOE Versus Crop Insurance III

For background, see prior posts here and  here

What I would really like to see, though it will never happen, is a controlled test of FSA servicing crop insurance versus the companies servicing crop insurance.  Choose 10 counties and have half the current insureds serviced by FSA and half by the companies. Run the test for 3 years and compare results.

Why won't it happen?  Disregarding the political realities, the practical consideration is: to service crop insurance you need to develop software. To do the job right, you need the software to be integrated with FSA's existing or to-be systems.  That takes time and money, which you can't justify for a limited test.  (Though it's what we did with CAT insurance over a couple years.  Unfortunately FSA management in DC spun its wheels for some months so the first year was pretty grim.  The second year was significantly better.  And then the big shots proclaimed that CAT was available through insurance agents through the whole country.)

Of course, if the result of the test were to show a big advantage for FSA (which most people who worked for FSA would like to believe) and you extrapolate that over the country and over 40 years, then it's worthwhile to do the test.  But that's not how we do things in this country.