Timeless Advice from the Government

I know some people who would say this advice on food is as good today as in 1918 (a WWI poster).

MIDAS Update and Implications

The "Midas Press blog" was posted about 3 weeks ago--just catching up to it.  Posts on several different subjects.  I note with some regret SCIMS is being replaced.  The march of progress kills old attachments.  This has been true since the beginning of time.

Interesting discussion of how GIS will finally drive farm records and reconstitutions here, including a comment on implications:

For a typical county FSA office, this integration means that there will no longer be separate individuals handling GIS, Farm Records, and reconstitutions. To move forward with the new system, there will need to be a greater understanding of these processes and how each one affects the other.

 One of the things which bothered me back in the Infoshare days: selling the Infoshare plans meant claiming big savings in order to justify the procurement of hardware and software.  But the reality was that big savings could only come by reduced employment, which should have raised all sorts of issues, none of which were being addressed at that time.  I guess over the 20 years since Infoshare employment has been reduced.

The second sentence of the quote also raises issues: what sort of training and implementation sequence will be possible?

I like the idea of a MIDAS blog--I wonder if it's been publicized, certainly not to the public.

An Evolution in County Committees

The original AAA county committees in the 1930's were specialized by crop and function.  They were a means to tap local knowledge of yields and production histories.  They fit into the general left perspective of pushing local democracy.  They also had the advantage of involved local community leaders in the program, securing their support for it, and in many cases for the Democrats who created the AAA. (Roughly speaking, the committees are elected by farmers in the county.)

Over the years the role of the committees has changed, their functions have diminished, the supervision from Washington has increased. People, both auditors and others, pay more and more attention to how the bureaucracy operates and whether there's consistency from place to place. And local option as represented in the committees makes consistency very hard to achieve. Technology makes it much easier for Washington to provide detailed direction, reducing the autonomy of the committees. Perhaps the biggest force in these changes has been the civil rights revolution.  That seems to start in the 50's and 60's, but in fact a couple years after the AAA of 1933 was passed there were protests over the (mis)treatment of sharecroppers by some of the committees.

 The latest step in this evolution is Sec. Vilsack's announcement that he'll appoint voting members to committees who are representatives of "disadvantaged communities".  He was given this authority in the 2002 farm legislation, or rather Sec. Venneman was, and there's no explanation for the 10-year delay in using it.  (There had long been provision for non-voting members on the committees.)

It's sort of ironic in the broad view: to the extent the civil rights movement worked to reduce the power of the committees, they have reduced the potential gains from having voting representatives
on the committees.

The Terrorists in the Revolution

Who knew the Massachusetts militia at the battle of Bunker Hill poisoned their bullets?

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."