Rep. Ryan and USDA

From Politico, reporting on the budget offered by the House Republicans:

"And with a new farm bill in the offing, Ryan envisions a major restructuring of food stamps together with cuts in commodity and crop insurance subsidies....

"
For the Agriculture Committee, which hopes to write a new farm bill before September, the expedited budget schedule poses both a severe challenge — and potential opportunity.
The draft numbers demand $8.2 billion over the first year, $19.7 billion over five years, and $33.2 billion over a decade. Indeed, the relatively high first-year number suggests that the budget will assume an early rollback of more generous food stamp benefits first allowed under the 2009 economic stimulus bill.

In terms of core commodity and crop insurance programs, the longer-term savings are considerably more than the draft farm bill negotiated by the House and Senate Agriculture leadership last fall. That measured saved just $23 billion over 10, compared with $33.2 billion.

But if a compromise can be found, the Agriculture Committee could find it in its interest to hitch a ride with the budget package so as to get a farm bill across the House floor with a minimum number of amendments.

Leaving himself a little room to bargain, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) gave a gentle reminder that farm policy is still his domain.
“I would caution people about reading too much into the numbers or policy proposals in either the President’s budget or the Ryan budget,” Lucas said in a statement.”They are only suggestions.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74224_Page3.html#ixzz1pgE2t9Es

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74224_Page2.html#ixzz1pgDimg00

The "E-Plus" World?

At John Fea's blog, meditation on whether we'll have a "print-plus" world or an "e-plus" world?  Will students expect to have all textbooks and assigned reading available in e-books or will the default be to presume as we have in the past, that such material is printed?   You can expand that to apply to government interactions, etc.--we already, I think, assume phone numbers are on websites, not in the whitepages.

US Bureaucrats: Score One for FDA

NYTimes has an interesting article on the problems a Greek entrepreneur had in setting up an olive oil export business.  Even had to provide stool samples.  But, towards the end of the article:

At one point, the company got a huge order from Denmark, he said. But the paperwork for what amounted to a wholesale transaction was so onerous that they decided not to even try to fill the order.

In contrast, he said, getting approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration to export his products to the United States took about 24 hours. “It was all online,” he said. “Nothing could be done online in Greece.”

 Way to go FDA.

(Though on second thought, I hope they're devoting a bit more attention to Chinese exporters.)

When Is a War Not a War

When it is the "events".  A paragraph from Dirk Beauregarde's post on the 50th anniversary of the Algerian War:

We never hear much about the Algerian war in Britan. We never seem to talk much about it in France. Even 50 years on, the war is still very much a taboo subject. Until 1999, the conflict in Algeria wasn’t even called a « war » - politicians would officially refer to the eight years of bloody conflict as « The évents ». It took a parliamentary commission and a new law for the « military opérations in Algeria » (as they were referred to at the time) to be officially qualified as a « War ». The change in terminology was not born from an act of conscience – it was all because there was no money for Algerian war vétérans and war widows – you can’t be a war vétéran or a war widow if the war wasn’t called a war. For years there was a national outcry as widow and vétérans went without pensions or compensation. So i twas on 18th October 1999 in the new Service Pensions Law that the « évents » in Algeria became officially became the « Algerian War ». Wrapping it all up in an obscure pensions act – that illustrâtes the French attitude to the War in Algeria. [Spelling corrected]

"Actively Engaged" in Farming

From EWG's blog:

The highlight of the Senate Agriculture committee’s hearing on farm subsidies and crop insurance was when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked  Michael Scuse, the Acting Undersecretary For Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whether he considered people who participate in only two farming-related conference calls per year to be actively-engaged farmers. EWG research has uncovered millions of federal agricultural subsidies going to well- off landlords and investors living in every major American city.

 

"Customer-Facing" Jobs

Jargon sometimes catches my fancy.  This one is from an FSA notice on telework.

I assume employees in offices other than county offices show their rears to customers.

Variations in Risk: the Case of Irrigation

Referring back to the map from yesterday, one factor which makes a difference is the use of irrigation.  I take that from this quote in Farm Policy, referring a dissent within the Farm Bureau, 3 state bureaus of which disagree with the national proposal:

“‘The problem that the three states have in common is we’re heavy in rice and cotton,’ says [Jeffrey Hall, who deals with national affairs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau]. ‘Also, we all have a lot of irrigated acreage. We have different issues with irrigated corn than the Midwest, which doesn’t irrigate (like the Mid-South does).
“‘The common thread for the three states was the ‘catastrophic deep loss’ proposal that AFBF has been talking about, the two policies passed at the convention (concerning that proposed) safety net program. We’ve run the numbers with University of Arkansas economists and it won’t provide the kind of safety net that our farmers feel they need to stay in business.’”
“‘The problem that the three states have in common is we’re heavy in rice and cotton,’ says [Jeffrey Hall, who deals with national affairs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau]. ‘Also, we all have a lot of irrigated acreage. We have different issues with irrigated corn than the Midwest, which doesn’t irrigate (like the Mid-South does).
“‘The common thread for the three states was the ‘catastrophic deep loss’ proposal that AFBF has been talking about, the two policies passed at the convention (concerning that proposed) safety net program. We’ve run the numbers with University of Arkansas economists and it won’t provide the kind of safety net that our farmers feel they need to stay in business.’”

It's a reminder of how varied our agriculture is, and how limited my imagination, because I didn't even consider it yesterday.

Faux British Hipness

The USDA blog has a post on how a new market for cotton is being created with "Under Armour".  The company was founded by a UofMD man so has gotten some attention in the Post.  But I was struck for the first time today by the British spelling of "armor". I guess he was trying to be posh and hip and all that good stuff.  Maybe the athletes he clothes "glow" or "perspire" instead of "sweat".  Farmers sweat.

Catching Up With the White House Garden

Obamafoodorama has a photo of detailees gathering greens from the White House garden (they call in people from elsewhere in the bureaucracy when there's a state dinner in the works.. I think what's in the picture is mostly over-wintered greens.  I had some collards today for lunch which overwintered.

Like any innovation, 3 years on some of the interest has waned, but I'm certainly envious of their beds and the neatness with which they plant.

Crop Insurance and Direct Payments on a Map

Via Farm Policy I found the link to this map from Amber Waves (Mar 12) which shows the ratio between direct payments and crop insurance subsidies by county (part of a discussion of "conservation compliance", except they call it "environmental compliance", tying government benefits to the swampbuster/sodbuster provisions of the 1985 Act.

The map shows why many are pushing crop insurance, given the subsidy is higher than for direct payments, but there's some interesting variations.  Oklahoma for example sticks out between Texas and Kansas.  I'm not sure why, but it does.

If I understand, crop insurance could be a higher percentage of direct payments for a number of reasons. The FSA yields or acreage bases could be low or the crop insurance actuarials could be high.  Or the number of crop insurance policies sold could be high.   I wonder if there's existing maps of such data.