Farm Bill Progresses?

House Agriculture has passed its version of the 2012 farm bill, but speculation provided by Keith Good at Farm Policy suggests it may not get to the floor.  Instead there'd be a temporary extension of current legislation and action later, after the election.  Sounds likely to me--Good quotes an expert on how seldom the new farm bill is passed on time. 

The problem for FSA is they don't know what to prepare to implement, the House version, the Senate version or something new which the conference committee comes up with.  As the time gets tighter, the less we know.

Gee, I'm glad I'm retired.

From Favor to Process: USDA Disaster Designation

Here's yesterday's USDA press release about changes in the process for designating disaster process. One change is automatic designation for counties which are drought-affected for 8 weeks according to U.S. Drought Monitor, and the governors do not have to initiate the request.

That's one small step on the way to taking the life out of politics.  In the good old days governors could make a big show of standing up for the home folks by bragging about his request for designation and blasting the Washington bureaucrats for delays in approving it.  It's also a small step towards de-bureaucratization.  In the bad old days the paper request from the state went to bureaucrats in the northwest corner of the South Building, the offices with the great view of the Mall, the Washington Monument, and the White House. There could be back and forth between the bureaucrats and the states, particularly when the governor's aides weren't familiar with the process.  Then the paperwork would go up the line, some stopping at the Secretary's office, some going to the White House.  Of course those offices could also grandstand about how they were acting to help needy, hardworking folks.

So, if I'm feeling cynical, the Obama administration cashed in a long term asset for politicians for maximal gain in this presidential election year.  If I'm feeling idealistic, the administration rationalized the process and made the government more efficient and less bureaucratic.  Take your pick.

Child Labor on the Farm

Here's a piece on the hazards of having children work on the family farm.  As I often am, I'm of two minds.   One thing not emphasized in the article is a recognition of the hazards of farm work. Last I knew farming was one of the more hazardous occupations in the U.S.  Of course, there aren't many occupations other than farming where a child can reasonably make a contribution.  I suppose a family-owned grocery or restaurant would be another, but the point remains.

And what's the value to the child of having made a contribution?  I think it's great, though perhaps it's easy to romanticize.  The fact that I could drive tractor, carry feed bags, or clean hen houses didn't really build my confidence in dealing with strangers.  Still, it's better to know you're capable at something than not know whether you can do anything.

How good are parents at bringing children into farm work, as claimed by one person quoted?  It's easy to romanticize parents, but everyone has blind spots, and it's hard to resist the wishes of a child.  I might ask how good are parents at bringing children into driving cars?  I think everyone would agree there's a lot of variation. 

The article notes a big reduction in injuries in this century.  I wonder how much is the better job farmers are doing, and how much relates to the prosperity on the farms during the 2000's, meaning old equipment has been replaced by newer, safer equipment.  Look at the picture of the kid driving a 40-year old tractor.  There's no roll bar to protect the driver if the tractor flips backward--it's very scary when the front wheels start lifting off the ground, though I never flipped ours.

How protective do we want society to be?  I'm a firm believer in helmet laws for motorcyclists, and seat belt laws for drivers. I want off-road vehicles to be safe and regulated. And I support the child-labor laws of the last century. So I understand why people want to extend the laws, but at least today I think it's a bridge too far.  At least in some contexts I believe in tradeoffs, and in this case incurring a  few preventable accidents are the price I'm willing to pay for retaining child labor on the farm.

On Violence and Wealth

Got involved in a comment thread at Ta-Nehesi Coates' blog yesterday, particularly with a commenter who argued wealth was the key factor in whether a neighborhood was violent or not.  Since the thread has dwindled to an end, I thought I'd post a thought experiment here:

Consider all the professional athletes in the US, many are in the top 1 percent of income, most of the rest would be in the top 5 percent.  The athletes come from varied backgrounds, but few come from parents who themselves were in the top 5 percent.  I'd love to see a sociologist determine the violent crime rate among such athletes with the crime rate in enclaves of the 5 percent, and the average background of the athletes (say 30th percentile?).  I suspect, but don't know, that the rate of the athletes would be closer to the 5 percent rate than to  the rate of the 30th percentile, which would be the influence of wealth, but there would still be a significant difference, which would be the influence of culture/society and other factors.

Drought Speculations

A couple weeks ago I started but did not finish apost on the possibility of a drought in the Midwest--then it was a topic restricted to the ag media.  Today the drought has reached the top of the news pages and news broadcasts.  Two things will be happening in parallel: the drought will progress and Congress will be working, or not working, on the new farm bill.  Presumably there will a temptation to patch holes in the 2012 safety net with provisions of the bill, perhaps the adverse impact on pork, beef, and chicken producers. The extent to which crop insurance can handle the impacts on crop producers will also be interesting.  My impression is they did well with the drought last year which occurred in Texas.  We shall see. (I guess that's a last sentence I can use on most of my posts.)

Contrasting Views of Each Other

Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy does a poll asking readers of one persuasion (conservative, liberal) how honest people of the other persuasion are. The results surprised me a bit: almost equal pluralities of each persuasion thought the other side was roughly as honest as they were.  The remainder was split between thinking their opponents were "somewhat less honest"  or "generally much less honest". 

Big Organic and Dairy

NYTimes has two pieces today:  an article on how big food has taken over many organic food operations, along with a claim they've used their influence on USDA's organic standards board to approve ingredients which shouldn't be included in "organic food"; and a Mark Bittman diatribe against milk.  Yes, I realize my bias is showing in calling it a "diatribe", but Mr. Bittman's bias is also showing: he blames milk for years of his own health problems, which makes a strong case that nobody should drink milk.

They're currently 2nd and 3rd most popular NYTimes articles today.

A 2012 Disaster Program?

Chris Clayton notes the SURE program expired with the 2011 crop year, so those corn and soybean farmers in the Midwest who are watching their crops shrivel in the drought and heat must only rely on crop insurance, right?  (Clayton notes the current Senate farm bill wouldn't cover such disasters, even if it did apply to 2012 crops, which it doesn't.)

I'd say: possibly not. Clayton mentions the ad hoc disaster program in 2010 the Obama administration delivered for Sen. Lincoln when they were trying to win her vote and help her in the fall election.  That's a precedent.  There's also the precedent of retroactive disaster programs, which I remember but can't recall the years of, which can possibly be tied to emergency appropriations acts, which evade the current emphasis on paying for legislation under "pay-go".

Weather Forecasts for the Sun

Seemingly we've progressed to the point where we're doing weather forecasts for the sun, at least that's how I read this MSNBC report.

Payment LImitation and OIG: a Puzzle

OIG tried to do an audit of FSA's administration of the payment limitation  rules in the 2008 farm bill, notably the "attribution" of payments made to legal entities to the natural-born persons who comprise the entity.  Ferd Hoefner at Sustainable Agriculture notes the report, and comments.  The gist is summed up in his title: "Commodity Payment Limitations, Weak System, Weak Report."

I may comment more later, or I may lose interest, but I am puzzled by one aspect of the report.

OIG says they couldn't audit because of problems with the system, specifically including this point:

"Specifically, we learned that joint ventures without permanent identification numbers were not recorded in FSA’s entity database,..."

As they recognize in a footnote, FSA doesn't make payments to such joint ventures, payments are made to the members. That should mean the payments are automatically attributed to members. To me that says it doesn't constitute a weakness in the system and shouldn't be considered a problem in auditing.

FSA's response doesn't point this out.

If I follow correctly, Environmental Working Group has been "attributing" payments for some time now, using the same data as OIG refused to tackle.