Successful Illinois Grain Farms

Illinois extension has studied factors leading to success in Illinois grain farms.  Here's the bottomline:

In summary, this series on farm performance has shown that grain farms which achieve higher yields and receive higher prices earn greater returns consistently over time and within any given crop year when examining the 2005 to 2009 period. On the cost side, farms earning higher returns also have lower costs of production, and there is a wider gap in power costs between the top and bottom performance groups compared to direct input costs. In terms of farm size and tenure position, larger operations with more total acres and fewer acres rented under fixed cash rent agreements are characteristics of the higher return groups.[my emphasis]

 It goes on to say that most of the success is the ability to achieve higher yields; good marketing doesn't account for much of the differences among farms. Once again, IMHO farmers are price takers, not price makers.

George Will's Baseball Quiz

George has a quiz on baseball history here.  I got a couple right: Whitey Ford and Stan Musial.  I guess that shows my age. 

Haunted by Vietnam? Try Algeria

When I Google "haunted by Vietnam" I get 87,000 hits. Currently it seems that Obama and the military are the ones haunted. I think though that we're mostly over the Vietnam war, except perhaps as it gets wrapped up with the cultural war and what we call the "Sixties". If I'm right maybe the U.S. is a bit more mature than the French, or maybe the Algerian war was much more traumatic for the French than Vietnam was for us.

That's the conclusion I draw from reading Dirk Beauregarde's post, keyed to the 50th anniversary of the end of the Algerian war, including interviews with relatives of Algerian soldiers serving with the French army.  Lots of trauma there, perhaps somewhat parallel to the Loyalists after the American Revolution.

A sidenote: JFK first made his national mark as a liberal and policy  thinker (as opposed to a politico who tried to be the VP candidate in 1956) by a speech on Algeria attacking French colonialism.

Another sidenote: The Battle of Algiers is highly regarded.

Firing People

Via Tyler Cowen, a Bryan Caplan post about why they haven't been fired, the "they" being employees of dubious worth (I clicked there expecting something about firing executives of financial companies but it's just employees who aren't pulling their weight). 

The bottom line to me: bosses in the private world have the same sort of problems in firing as those in the public world.

The Masters and IBM

Both the Post and Times have pieces on women and the Masters Golf Tournament.  The Masters, of course, along with Bohemian Grove, is one of the last redoubts of male-only membership.  They've hung tough over the years, even after they finally admitted a black member.  They've always, of course, made the CEO's of their advertising sponsors members--that's only right and proper seeing as how the ads and TV have made the tournament. 

Everything was fine until...IBM, which is one of the three sponsors, named a woman as CEO.

Kickstarter and Walt Jeffries

Walt Jeffries will be able to receive money via Kickstarter for completion of his Vermont butcher shop.  I probably will wait a bit to see what Kickstarter is all about, and I'm not clear on why he qualified on the second try but not the first.

I've the vague idea that the JOBS bill which just passed with bipartisan support is somehow related to Kickstarter, at least at the minimum encouraging small enterprises to get investment dollars.  It's all about reducing "friction", as some blogger I just read said (he was able to use an Apple app to buy something from an Apple store in 2 minutes without going to the salesclerk).

It's an amazing world.

Something for the Garlic Eaters

Obamafoodorama posts before and after shots of the White House garden.  What stands out when you click on the before photo and enlarge it is the garlic they have growing.  Back in my youth, garlic was something used in cooking by southern European immigrants.   Times have changed.  (I tried garlic once but it was a tricky crop to grow.)

Looks to me as if each helper had about half a flat of starts to put out.  Not exactly a hard day's work, but the symbolism is important.

Obama's Garden

Obamafoodorama has posts on the actual planting of the White House Garden.  Apparently they're planting cool weather vegetables, mostly starts instead of seeds.  If they were sowing seeds I'd call them a tad late, since they're in a warmer area than we are. But starts makes sense: that way you can see where your untrained helpers are planting; wouldn't want to have any irregular rows, or rows which drift to the right in the garden.  Planted potatoes for the first time which makes sense in terms of productivity.

I observe Mrs. Obama favored girls, particularly Girl Scouts, in selecting her volunteers.  I also observe the idea that the Obama kids will garden has faded away.  It was a nice idea but this is a show piece with lots of different people with their fingers in the soil, which doesn't make for a good learning experience for the kids.

Modern Architecture

As you might expect from a geezer I'm not a real fan of modern architecture, particularly the modern architecture of the 1960's and 70's.  I do love Saarinen's Dulles Airport and St. Louis Arch. 

And this building in Reston, now vacant, works pretty well for me.  Not great, but okay.

White House Garden

Today's the day Mrs. Obama is getting her garden planted.  I'm almost reminded of Tom Sawyer and whitewashing the fence, given the number of kids who will be working for her. It's really a two-fer, since as Obamafoodorama observes, some of the invitees are from key battleground states for the fall election.  (In DC, it's politics, always politics.)  But planting is really the easy part, once the ground has been prepared, which we can assume was done by adults over the weekend. 

She's got good weather for it, a little windy as the cold front moves in, but I don't know whether she's planting tender vegetables or not.  March 26 is late for the cool-weather ones (our peas, lettuce, onions are doing well, thank you) and a tad early for warm weather, though given the availability of hoop beds, they can probably manage okay.