Potholes Again in ND?

I remember Gary Cruff (the production adjustment specialist in the ND state office) calling in in the early 80's to be sure management knew what they were doing in changing cropland definitions around pothole areas.  We had revised the handbook and in the process had  changed the language and the regulations.

 The answer to Gary was that the change was intended, though in my memory the assistant deputy administrator who made the call was from Texas which has no potholes and probably did not understand the issues.  The potholes represent areas where blocks of ice from the retreating glacier sat, so the glacial debris settled around the ice, which when it melted then created a low area or pothole. Depending on seasonal precipitation, the pothole might fill with water, or might dry around the margins. There are also long-term wet and dry trends--over the course of several  dry years the farmer might be able to crop the margins, if not the entire pothole.   The question then became: were the marginal areas "cropland" or not; was the land regularly cropped with only occasional and intermittent flooding or was it not possible to crop it in "normal" years?  Under the program, land that was cropland could be designated as set-aside/ACR, land that wasn't cropland couldn't, so the farmers wanted as much of the pothole margin to be considered cropland as possible so they could call it set-aside.  The assistant deputy administrator took the approach that the program needed to reduce production when it compensated farmers for set-aside, and if the margins were not regularly cropped the farmers were getting a freebie. He was concerned about program integrity and, as a Republican, taxpayer money.

The issue is very sensitive to what management in the 1980's used to call "the duckies", the conservationists.  The pothole areas are important for wildlife, particularly for waterfowl and migratory birds.  The conservationists could care less back then about "program integrity"; they wanted the potholes protected--call them "cropland" and designate them as set-aside.  So, as I recall it, both the conservationists and the farmers were on the same side of that issue at the time.  That seems unlikely, so maybe my memory is totally wrong.

Anyway,  Sen. Hoeven is giving NRCS flak about its enforcement of conservation compliance.  The press release doesn't say so, but IMHO it's potholes again. (Hat tip: Farm Policy)  BTW, Sen. Hoeven could use some help on his website--there seems to be some disconnect there.  Maybe as much disconnect as my memory and potholes.

Interface Problems in Farming

A reminder of how far farming has come since my dad's problem was hooking up the new tractor to the old horse-drawn mower:  From John Phipps, excusing his slow blogging, emphasis added:

Multiple issues here on the farm, inclding working to get a rural water district started, speeches. field work, and the now-incredible complexity of hooking a green planter with a red tractor and third-party electronics. No excuse, but posting came in last.

Unbelievable Weather

Went to Lowes for landscaping blocks today.  They've got their tomatoes and peppers for sale.  I want to yell: it's too damn early.  Yes, the high today was 80+ (85 according to my car) and the leaves on the trees are opening.  But we've had frosts in early May, a good 6 weeks from now.  So there's a good probability of a frost.

Kevin Drum Is All Heart

It takes a big man to admit he's wrong, and being owned by two cats Kevin Drum is big.  Today he admits to his misjudgment of Rep. Ryan's budget.

Saving on Healthcare Costs, the Stonehead Way

What we need in order to save healthcare dollars is some good old-fashioned gumption, like that of the Stonehead, who's been having a rough few weeks as he tries to raise pigs and do spring work with one good hand.  But that doesn't keep a self-respecting Scot down, as you'll see in this blog post.

James Q. Wilson and Alliance Bureaucracy

One of the good things about the late James Q. Wilson's book, Bureaucracy, was its inclusion of the military as a bureaucracy.  Sometimes it gets very complicated, as in this diagram of the command and control structure for Afghanistan at Tom Ricks blog. I suspect a similar diagram for the Allies in WWII would be even worse.

Smoking and Sex

I owe a hattip to Suzy Khimm at Ezra Klein's blog; here's a post on the economist with maps showing worldwide cigarette consumption, by sex.

About 800m men smoke cigarettes, compared with fewer than 200m women. More than 80% of these male smokers are in low- and middle-income countries. The problem is particularly acute in China, where 50% of men smoke (compared with just 2% of women), consuming one-third of the world's cigarettes in the process.

 I can remember when the local radical (she was a Democrat and she wore slacks) was also a smoker, a scandal for a woman in that small community. She was one of my mother's best friends, and suffered from emphysema in her latter years.

I wonder if the dynamics leading to male smoking in China are the same as in the U.S.

Payment Limitation

One might think that with the likely demise of direct payments, the idea of payment limitations would recede into the background.  But Chris Clayton at DTN  reports Sen. Grassley and others are pushing revisions:

The legislation would have a $250,000 cap for married couples and maintains a hard cap on marketing-loan gains. Under a shallow-loss program, it would set a $100,000 cap for a couple under that program. It would also tighten language defining "actively engaged" to collect payments. Grassley said there are too many people claiming they are actively engaged because they participate in a phone call or two each year about the farm.

Crop insurance would not be covered.

Path Dependency and the Butterfly in Politics

Chaos theory famously says that the flap of a butterfly's wing off Brazil could change the weather in the US.  Path dependency says where you end up depends on where you start, that your choices are constrained by the initial conditions.

Freakonomics reports on a study which says, back when the Tea Parties first demonstrated, if the weather was good in the area the tea party grew larger and more powerful compared to the parties in areas where it rained. 

Can I go from that and say if the night of the Boston Tea Party had seen a blizzard come in, we'd be celebrating our Queen's 60th year of rule?

The Importance of Data Modeling

And thinking outside the box.  The NYTimes has a piece on how American retailers are trying to open up their websites to foreign customers.  Turns out it's not simply a matter of trusting shipments to UPS or FedEx.  For one thing, some foreign countries have postal codes which aren't 5 digits.  Imagine that!

I mock, yet the longer I live the more I see that my own data modeling efforts in the 90's were horribly limited by assumptions and chauvinism.