USDA/FSA Prizes for Innovation

A number of economists like the idea of prizes and competitions for innovation.  They have a long history: if memory serves, Charles Lindbergh's flight was to win a competition for the first solo crossing of the Atlantic.  They've been used more recently, as in Netflix's competition to improve their algorithm for suggesting DVD's one might like.  I believe the Obama administration has used them, though at the moment I can't remember a specific instance.  All of which leads to this question:

Is there a prize/competition USDA/FSA could sponsor that would be worthwhile? (It's brought to mind by a factoid I believe I ran across: crop insurance agents get $900 or $1000 for each policy they administer.)

Pearlie Reed Resigns

Government Executive piece on his resignation for "personal reasons", though the piece notes an audit of the grant management process in the Office of Advocacy and Outreach. (Washington bureaucrats are often cynical about such coincidences.)  Supposedly there's no connection and Vilsack was supportive. However, the audit found procedures weren't followed and stated:

In summary, we are recommending that OAO not award grants to the 57 applicants at this time. We maintain that an independent review panel should reevaluate the applications to ensure that the most deserving applicants will be awarded grants. Due to the sensitivity of this issue and the timing of the proposed awards, we are providing our preliminary results to you for immediate corrective action. This issue, along with any others identified during our fieldwork, will be consolidated into a final report at the conclusion of our audit.

OIG was requested to do the audit in April, so there must have been some backstory to this.   Reed signed the response to OIG, essentially agreeing with it. In defense of the head of OAO he notes she was new and is identifying weaknesses in the office.  Of course there's a long history of GAO/OIG reports critical of the Departmental administration in this area.  Since Reed has been the big boss for 3 years, it's perhaps fair to ask what previous corrective actions he had taken.

The audit is critical of the "approving official"in OAO, but I'm not clear who it was.   It mentions: "The official also solicited input from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and the Office of Tribal Relations."

Mr. Reed is still listed on the USDA biographies page as Assistant Secretary for Administration, but the link to his bio is dead.  An out-of-date bio is still available by searching: link  There's no press release noted on the USDA site.

I'm sure our Republican friends will be all over this.

Catnip Topics: PC Hardware

There are some topics on popular blogs which the readers will react to as cats react to catnip.  It's not a pretty sight.  One such topic is advice on PC hardware--Kevin Drum asked for comment on a report that some Mac user replaced the computer hard drive 3 times in 2.5 years.

His commentators rose to the topic, notably competing for the title of whose first computer was the oldest and smallest.  Not sure why, though it's probably the same logic why us geezers talk about how hard our life was compared to today.

Sauce for the Johanns Goose, But Not the Dems Gander?

"What I worry about is we’re going to get to a point, Mike, where senators are going to say, ‘Look, I can’t support moving a bill forward that I can’t get a vote on my amendment.’”

That's Sen. Johanns of Nebraska commenting on the prospects for the farm bill in Farm Policy 

My point: Johanns is worrying about people taking a "my way or the highway" approach on the farm bill, but it seems to me the Reps have fairly often taken that approach.

South Pacific and a Cock-Eyed Optimist

Wife and I saw a revival of South Pacific the other week.  One of the early songs is "Cockeyed Optimist".  That's all I could think of when I read about this dewy-faced dairy farmer proposing, in the barn.

Good luck to them.

Gardens, Slaves, and Pigford

The NY Times has a long article about slaves, African-Americans, gardens, and vegetables.

I read it with interest, because I've toyed with the idea of writing on a similar subject, tied to the Pigford case.  A couple of points:

• some African-Americans run away from the land because farming means toil and drudgery (a sentiment which I share)
• heir property, as in the following:

"Perhaps Malva will feel inspired to water the garden next week, when Diana goes to Philadelphia for the annual slavery reparations conference. Along the way, she’ll also stop in Baltimore to ask her uncle to sign legal papers that would give her power of attorney to manage the land.

The farm, she explained, is heir property: it belongs to 19 relatives, across the nation. And almost nothing can get done without their written consent. This is a common dilemma on African-American farms, explained Dr. Bandele, who started his career with the Emergency Land Fund, a black farm and property preservation group.

One cousin neglects to pay his share of the property tax; in protest, another cousin refuses to pay. Ultimately, Dr. Bandele said, the property ends up in a forfeiture auction. Another black farm is lost."

Google Employs Bureaucrats

That's the theme of this Times piece. Of course it's true, in any organization you do what you can and you don't do what others are hopefully doing.  It's called "division of labor", as Adam Smith dubbed it. The bigger the organization, the more likely that leads to things falling through the cracks.

What We Used to Look Like

Here's a post by James Fallows with a photo from the 1940's showing what US children used to look like, or at least what we wanted to think they looked like (i.e., WASPs).  We watched Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July" Monday and the parade in Massapequa, NY and the scenes of the high school prom reminded me of this.  (What did I think of the movie: I think it stood up pretty well over the years, though Stone has something about him, maybe a bit of romanticism, with which I'm uncomfortable.)

The U.S. has changed.

Popcorn, Seed Corn, and Fading Memory

Politico today carries a long piece about Senator McCain's opposition to a provision in the farm bill relative to popcorn.  (Haven't checked but it sounds as if it makes popcorn producers eligible for corn crop insurance.) The article treats the provision as an example of an organization getting the legislation written to favor them.

Back in the day, if I remember, which I don't really, seed corn and popcorn were controversial in the context of the target price programs of the early 80's.  Both were produced under contract, which meant the growers didn't really face price risk, which was what the program was supposed to be about.  They also had their own niche market, pretty much independent of the field corn market, so efforts to adjust the production of field corn were irrelevant to popcorn and seed corn.  They did, however, have an argument that the stalks could be used for silage.

Over the years I believe both the seed corn people and the popcorn people got language inserted into the law forcing ASCS/FSA to treat them on the same basis as field corn.  If my memory is right, that means the only thing new is that today the lobbyists are forcing RMA/FCIC to treat them on the same basis.

The logic of the efforts is clear: a group of people who feel relatively strongly about an issue, no organized opposition because groups representing the taxpayers don't understand the issue, no leadership from the Executive because it's such a small issue, a bureaucracy which understands the issue but which works for Congress and is professionally inhibited from voicing opposition, and a legislator who can insert the relevant provision and mouth the words the lobbyist puts in their mouth.

Where's the tea party?

Farm Labor: Half Illegal?

A paragraph from today's Farm Policy:
"And an update yesterday at the Economic Research Service Charts of Note webpage (USDA) stated that, “Over the past 15 years, roughly half of the hired laborers employed in U.S. crop agriculture have lacked the immigration status needed to work legally in the United States. Large shifts in the supply of foreign-born farm labor, such as those that might result from substantial changes to U.S. immigration laws or policies, could have significant effects on production costs in U.S. agriculture. Hired labor (including contract labor) accounted for about 17 percent of the sector’s variable production expenses and even higher proportions in more labor-intensive sectors, such as vegetables (35 percent), nursery products (46 percent), and fruits (48 percent), according to 2006-10 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) data. This chart is found in The Potential Impact of Changes in Immigration Policy on U.S. Agriculture and the Market for Hired Farm Labor: A Simulation Analysis, ERR-135, May 2012.”