Does USDA Pay Farmers for Not Farming?

The Internet has made me more aware of the persistence of myths and inaccuracies, not to say "lies", in the world of public discourse.

To quote Mark Twain:


One of the persistent memes is the idea FSA (USDA) pays farmers for not farming, for not producing.  That came up in a recent Jonathan Chait piece here, in connection with a discussion that the right supported cutting food stamps but not cutting farm subsidies.   Chait linked to a Megan McArdle defense of the theory, though she would like to cut both food stamps and ag subsidies, based on "reciprocity".  The idea being that food stamps went to the idle poor, who did nothing for them, while subsidies went to farmers who at least were farming.   Chait used a GAO Report of last year 
which I missed, to counter McArdle's argument.

Seems to me there are several aspects to the meme:

• it can refer to the "supply management/production adjustment" programs of past farm bills, in which case it's wrong.  Those programs are dead.
• it can refer to the problem of payments issued to dead farmers.  That can be bad administration by FSA, though the casual discussion of it by people like Chait and EWG doesn't recognize some of the legitimate complexities. 
• it can refer to the problem of direct payments issued based on acreage which is converted to non-farm uses, as cited in the GAO report.  That again is bad administration.
• it can refer to the fact that the direct payment program is "decoupled", to comply with WTO rules--there's no requirement that farmers farm in order to earn the payments.  Again, the GAO report blasted the program for this, but it's what Congress passed.
• it can refer to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which has multi-year contracts for farmers to devote land, not to production of crops, but to conservation uses.  In my mind, the program's aim is to protect highly erodible land and provide conservation benefits, not to reduce production, but it's true that the program does reduce production.  (It's rather like saying the military draft in the 1960's gave men free health insurance--it did.) It's also true that some of the contracts can cover a whole farm, assuming all of the acreage is highly erodible.

So to me the bottom line is: USDA/FSA has no program which pays farmers for not producing.

[Updated to add the last sentence on the CRP paragraph.]

What Illegal Spying Is Not So Bad?

Seems that some of the cases where NSA employees definitely broke the law involved spying on significant others.  See this piece.  Somehow that makes NSA seem less fearsome to me, just a bunch of insecure men jealous of their lovers.   Should the motive really make a difference when we're talking violations of privacy?  No, but somehow.

Another Sentence

From a Slate piece on Ted Cruz

" Susman laughed. "I will say this: Being a stud with girls on the debate circuit does not mean you’re a stud with girls."

A Sentence to Enjoy, on Sows

"Being nursed by a dozen hungry mouths is an extreme weight watcher’s diet plan."  From Sugar Mountain Farm, in a post on the natural weaning process, and the human controlled process.

To Sea, Young Man, to Sea

Via Brad Delong's Grasping Reality with Both Hands, here's a study comparing the cost of college with the benefits of college.  What interests me on the graphic is the outlying institutions--some with names you'd expect, but some not.   For example, what's SUNY-Maritime doing so cheap and so rewarding?

I'm reminded of a high school math teacher, who returned to his alma mater after his predecessor died of diabetes (very much missed--Mr. Hayford), with a goatee!  Now this was 1958, when all men were clean-shaven.  But after leaving the Forks, Mr. Turna had gone off to the Merchant Marine academy and then spent some time at sea--I know he visited west African ports and as a mate had to bail out a crewman.  The ladies were attracted to him (may be faulty memory, though then it seemed as if every male my age or older had a greater attraction for women than I) though not to the extent they took his senior-level trig, spherical geometry, and advanced algebra classes. We were still back in the dark ages then; such math wasn't for women.

Returns on Cows and Buffalos

Brad DeLong notes a study on the returns to owning cows and buffaloes in India.  Bottom line is--it's not profitable in an economic sense.  The speculation is that the labor of women has no value, economically, so there's no cost for women or children to tend cattle.  Or, the return on formal savings instruments (i.e., savings accounts) is low and uncertain so there's a cultural preference to owning cattle. (I gather that while cows are sacred to Hindus, buffaloes aren't so the study treats them as almost interchangeable.)

Here's the NBER url.  Strikes me that the economists don't devote enough attention to the calves  The survey asked the people to estimate the value of a calf, which I assume meant guessing what the calf could be sold for on the open market.  Now in economic theory I guess the price should reflect the value of retaining the calf. But maybe it doesn't--if the family has sufficient grazing land then the marginal cost of rearing a calf to maturity is relatively small--the labor cost of tending multiple animals instead of a single is almost zero.

Can't Figure the Figures--Crop Insurance

Via Farm Policy, an article in Choices magazine on crop insurance, co-written by Keith Collins, formerly chief economist of USDA and now working for the crop insurance industry.

I have to assume the figures are accurate, but this figure from the article blows my mind:

It's deflated by crop prices somehow but seems to show some $60 billion in CCC payments in 2000.

[updated as follows]
Looking at the EWG database, there were about $23.5 billion in payments in 2000, excluding crop insurance, so it looks as if the deflator almost triples the payments in 2000.   While I can understand adjusting figures for inflation, i.e., using constant dollars, I don't the deflator.  I went to the CBO site, which I don't understand too well, and couldn't find the backup data for this, just their projections for the future.   

In the Old Days Legislators Were Good

Think so?  Then hie thyselves over to Boston 1775 and read the story of Champagne Charlie Townshend.

SOL Results for Fairfax County--Disturbing

Via the Reston Patch, here's the full release of results on the state Standards of Learning test for Fairfax county.  The test changed this year so the release notes one can't directly compare these results with those for prior years. 

That's fine, but.  And it's a big but.  What's noticeable to me is that the current year scores are down more for blacks, Hispanics, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, and limited English proficient than they are for whites and Asians.  That pattern is disturbing because just a simple change of standards, making the test harder, shouldn't show it.  Something else is going on.

English Reading Performance
Student  Group	Virginia			FCPS
	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13
All Students	88	89	75	93	94	82
Black	80	80	59	87	88	68
Hispanic	84	84	65	86	87	66
Asian	94	95	87	96	96	88
Economically Disadvantaged	80	81	59	85	86	63
Limited English Proficient	79	80	54	85	86	59
Students with Disabilities	67	66	43	85	84	56
White	92	93	82	97	97	90

The drop for whites is 7 points, for Asians 8, but 20 points for blacks, 21 for Hispanics and so on.

Why You Can't Do FSA Programs on the Internet

I'm sure few farmers would like to be compared the patrons of a check-cashing service, but when I read this piece from a professor who studies such services by working at one, that's what I thought.  Takes me back to the days of Sec. Glickman, and the effort led by someone whose name I forget, to follow through on reengineering business processes.  A small part of the effort was doing customer satisfaction surveys, which was a brand new concept to us FSA types.  After all, we were handing out money, so how could farmers not be satisfied with us?  </end sarcasm>

Actually the surveys as I remember did find that farmers were quite satisfied with their local offices (perhaps excluding the farm loan applicants, I'm not sure).  And the reason was simple--the <s>clerks</s>  <s>  program assistants</s> program technicians knew the farmers and could tailor their approach to the personality and needs of the individual.  That fact was then a big hurdle to the idea of moving FSA programs on-line to the extent that people could work from home.