Pay Limit on Insurance/Conservation Compliance

From Chris Clayton:

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday evening to reduce the taxpayer share of crop insurance premium subsidies for the largest farmers.

Along with that, farmers would not be able to ignore conservation compliance requirements if they forego commodity programs and rely strictly on crop insurance for their safety net.

[Updated: Carl Zulauf of Ohio State has a discussion of the history of payment limits and the crop insurance proposals here.]

House Appropriations Bill

Here's the text, if anyone is interested.

This seems to be the headline item for FSA:

Rep. Flake – The amendment prohibits funding to provide farm program benefits to individuals or entities with adjusted gross incomes of more than $250,000. The amendment was adopted on voice vote.

I searched the test for "adjusted gross" and didn't find it, too lazy to do more.

Pearlie Reed in Government Executive

Here's their report on his retirement, a bit fuller than others but not much new.

WaPo on Reed

Al Kamen in the Washington Post noted the Pearlie Reed retirement today (it comes at the end of his column). Two excerpts:

The announcement’s timing was a bit curious, since it came five days after Reed actually retired, and two weeks after an inspector general’s report dinged an office under Reed’s jurisdiction for improperly handing out grants — though a department spokesman denied any connection between the IG report and Reed’s departure.
....
This marks the second retirement for Reed, a well-respected old hand who first came to the Agriculture Department as a college student. Reed retired in 2002 as chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service but rejoined the USDA in 2009 to focus on civil rights issues inside and outside the agency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/incoming-winners-of-the-missile-contest/2012/06/18/gJQAzGERmV_story.html

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.