Family Farm

I like this piece in the Atlantic, written by a person who grew up on the family farm in Alberta, but who is no longer allowed to operate the equipment:

"My dad farms 3,200 acres of his own, and rents another 2,400—all told, a territory seven times the size of Central Park. Last year, he produced 3,900 tonnes (or metric tons) of wheat, 2,500 tonnes of canola, and 1,400 tonnes of barley. (That’s enough to produce 13 million loaves of bread, 1.2 million liters of vegetable oil, and 40,000 barrels of beer.) His revenue last year was more than $2 million, and he admits to having made “a good profit,” but won’t reveal more than that. The farm has just three workers, my dad and his two hired men, who farm with him nine months of the year. For the two or three weeks of seeding and harvest, my dad usually hires a few friends to help out, too.

Harvard Disappoints

Harvard recognizing for 2012  100+ innovations in government.  It's disappointing because probably half of the listings have no url.  Come on, get real.

Technology and Dairy: the Use of Cellphones

Almost forgot to link to this post on the benefits of cellphones for the dairy farmer: when the cows get out and get lost you can coordinate your search and driving efforts using cellphones. :-)

Of course these days the number of dairies putting cows out to pasture is dwindling, but every bit helps.  ("Threecollie", who runs the site, also uses a birder app on her iPHone.)

The Making of a Myth: Apple Maps

Some ideas get transformed into myths, which seems to be happening in the case of Apple Maps.  Consumer Reports did a comparison of the Apple application with Google Maps and GPS and said Apple's version wasn't bad and had some nice features.  But such a lukewarm review can't stand up against the incessantly repeated statement that Apple screwed up.

By contrast, Apple's Siri was hailed on its release as great.  My impression is that continued use of it revealed it wasn't all that good, perhaps much like Maps.

Technology and Dairy Flourish in Small Countries?

The NYTimes has a piece on a technology test in Switzerland: managers of dairy herds can be notified by text if their cows are in heat (based on temperature of vulva and cow activity). (For those benighted souls reading this who never grew up on a dairy farm: you have to inseminate the cow within x hours of when she comes in heat.  If you don't catch her heat, or she fails to become pregnant, you're facing a month of payments for feed that's pure waste, except of course for the cow.) The story says it's harder to tell when a cow is in heat with modern dairy cows. Without challenging that assertion, I'd suggest the high ratio of cows to people in modern dairies also makes it more difficult.

I do wonder if down the line PETA will protest this mistreatment of cows. 

Another development on the technology front is the modification of bovine genetics so their milk is less likely to trigger allergies. Interesting that the development comes from New Zealand.  I wonder about the level of anti-science feeling there.

Competing With Crop Insurance

According to Farm Policy, the crop insurance industry is already bragging on the $2 billion in indemnity payments they have out the door.   It goes on to link to a video NCIS has put out.

This sort of response, and advertising, is a reason why FSA doesn't have a disaster payment program for field crops, as they used to. 

The Culture Which Was Victorian

This post from Treehugger on "tin pack tabernacles" captures a key aspect of Victorian Britain: a combination of  their engineering ingenuity, their religion, and their determination to civilize the world.  Oh, and their penny-pinching. They created a temporary church, made of corrugated iron sheeting, which could be shipped as a package and assembled on the spot.

No Enthusiasm, No Road Signs, in This Election

There was a post on Powerline a while back elevating the comments of people from Virginia.  The basic message was that the enthusiasm for Obama was way down, because they didn't see the number of signs they remembered from 2008. 

That's quite possible, but there's two points: a comparison of the number of signs between Sept 15, 2012 and Nov. 1, 2008 is automatically going to favor 2008, and, at least for Fairfax county, there's been a change in the lwa, as explained in this Reston Patch post.

MIDAS Training/Information

FSA put out a notice on MIDAS training.  I followed the instructions to this on the Foundational Learning System

The narrative for slide 5 (it's important to note slide numbers, otherwise you have to skip forward or back0 said: "in the future, the goal is for 24/7 access by the producer and employee to the data/forms...  (This comes after slide 4 which outlines benefits for producers and field offices in the immediate future.)

I think that vision warrants a lot of discussion.  I see elsewhere that the MIDAS team has presented to (staff on, I assume) the House and Senate Ag and Appropriations Committees. Given Congressional resistance to closing offices, I wonder how the Gordian Knot is going to be cut (online availability = reduced employees?).

I'd compliment the team on the slide show.  The narration seemed not simply to consist of reading the slides, which is good.  In future I hope they get more graphically minded.

As an old directives man, I'd also suggest they need a system for identification of their shows; using names rapidly gets awkward and I'm assuming there will be a process for getting feedback and making changes/corrections  which can gain by such identification.

While the plans for training discussed by the Administrator are good, how will producers learn the system, will they be trained? And shouldn't the software be user-friendly enough not to need training?  Or will the FSA training mostly consist of an interpretation: in MIDAS this is the  equivalent of this process on the current system/System/36?  

Don't Eat Your Spinach?

Myth: spinach is especially rich in iron.  See this post at Wiredscience.

What was the Mark Twain bit about Error being halfway round the world while Truth is still putting its boots on?