End of an Era

This notice announces the replacement of FSA fax machines by an Internet based fax solution.

When I joined ASCS there were two methods of getting instructions to the field fast: the printed notice, which typically would take 2-3 days to get printed, put in the pouch mail for the state office, and be received by the state office.  The state office could modify the notice, print copies for the counties, and mail them out.  So we probably figured on 3-5 business days for material to hit the county office, and that was with everything working smoothly.

The other method was the "wire notice", ideally a page or two, because it would be taken to the Department's teletype office  and typed on the teletype for wiring to the state offices.  This cut the time to 2-4 hours, but the state office still had to retype the incoming copy, print, and mail to county offices. (The text was in all caps, which has left me with a confirmed prejudice against all caps in any form.)

So in the early 70's the Records and Communications Branch of the Administrative Services Division got into facsimile machines.  Rather quickly as I remember it they got the money to install fax machines in each state office and we moved the "wire notices" over to the fax machines. It took a long while for the Department's teletype center to be closed down: AMS did their market news through there, they put new releases "out on the wire" (and those were still the days when a news release could move commodity prices), and selected people with homeland security responsibilities (as we'd call them today, then they were "defense" responsibilities) got copies of State Department cables, both the FAS stuff and other traffic.

So the fax machine has had its run of about 30 years, being replaced by a software package.  RIP fax machines.

Most Rural STudents

It turns out that the state where I was born, New York, ranks 8th in the nation for number of rural students.  The link (hat tip I think the Rural Blog) is to an interactive map of the country which shows lots of data on rural education.  (Texas is first in number of rural students.)

How We Blind Ourselves: Twins Born in Different Years

Freakonomics has a post laying out the odds of twins being born in different years.  Mildly interesting, until you get to the end.  These are well-educated bright people, who would like to come up with a counter-intuitive result.  I could describe myself that way.:-(

Acreage Reporting for Organic Farming

Just a stray thought: has the acreage reporting system been changed to recognize organically grown crops and the GIS system to recognize organic ground? 

The Shocking News from DC

Senator McCain as quoted in Farm Policy commenting on the farm bill:

“This is all part of Farm Bill politics. In order to pass a Farm Bill, Congress must find a way to appease every special interest of every commodity association from asparagus farmers to wheat growers. If you cut somebody’s subsidy, you give them a grant. If you kill their grant, then you subsidize their crop insurance.”

 It's all part of Congress being able to point with pride at goodies provided and with alarm at goodies taken away.

B*S*: What Languages Have the Term

Ran across this, based on a link from John Phipps:

I've noticed an interesting thing about bullshit: There's no word for it in Japanese. Just as some Japanese words (like 適当) can't be translated without a long and complicated explanation, a proper understanding of "bullshit" typically occupies an entire dinner party in Japan. Observing this fact, I came up with my theory of what makes (or made) Western Civilization unique.

 As it happens, I know the French equivalent for s*** is "merde".  And Google Translate  says the French have two words for b*s* : conneries and foutaise.  gives a Japanese term for it.  But Translate uses the English term for a number of languages--not sure whether that's just a default or whether Armenian has, in  fact, imported b*s* as its own term. 

Payment Limitation--Paper Entities

A recent case:

The owners of a central Illinois farming business that will pay $5.3 million to settle allegations it faked partnerships to avoid limits on subsidies say they did nothing wrong.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday said Dowson Farms of Divernon agreed to the settlement. The department accused three of the owners of creating fake partnerships in the names of employees between 2002 and 2008 to bypass caps on subsidies. The three didn’t admit any wrongdoing.

Read more: http://www.sj-r.com/article/20140130/NEWS/140139902#ixzz2s5rq0FYo

Where Do Farmers Come From?

Seems to me that the conventional wisdom is that farmers inherit, that the son (almost always the son) inherits the farm and that's where farmers come from.  I say "conventional wisdom" although I really mean the presumption in history.  Once it was true, of course.  If 90-95 percent of the population is farmers, as in colonial America, then inheritance is the logical answer.

The economists had the concept of the "agricultural ladder", where a man worked his way up from day labor to sharecropper to renter to owner.  That may have worked in the 19th century, but I think maybe its prevalence is overestimated.  In the case of my family, my paternal great grandfather, my maternal grandfather, and my father all moved onto farms aided by money from other occupations or sources (preaching, carpentry, and family, respectively).  That's a small sample but it's easy for historians to overlook, because there's no statistics to prove or disprove this.

Today it seems that there's a reasonable flow of people from other occupations into agriculture, particularly the "food movement" end of agriculture: the organic farmers, the community-supported agriculture, the niche products of wine, goat cheese, semi-exotic crops.

This interview with an organic farmer in Grist is interesting, covering many aspects of modern food movement farming.  Implicitly it's directed towards people coming to farming, not inheriting farming.  There was also a recent article in the NYTimes on the graying of the organic movement, which made the point that children of some people who came to organic in the 60's and 70's had no interest in continuing on their parents path.

Blanket Receipt Requirement

Sec. 12204 of the farm bill (page 895) removes the requirement that the producer ask for a receipt, so now FSA, NRCS, and RD must issue a receipt for all requests for service..

Jon Meacham Doesn't Know History?

I might as well jump on the bandwagon along with Matt Yglesias and Josh Marshall.  Meacham, who writes nicely, was apparently on Morning Joe and said something to the effect that Lincoln and FDR didn't use executive orders.  Matt and Josh raise some of the obvious points, the Emancipation Proclamation and going off gold.

I've been doing a little reading in the organizational history of USDA, and in the 30's FDR created and moved SCS and Resettlement Administration (forerunner of FmHA) around via EO's.  I don't know why, but the pattern seemed to be that Roosevelt would act, then Congress would legislate.

(I suspect Meacham phrased his point poorly--that he meant that promising to lead by issuing EO's isn't very appealing.  But FDR did promise "action" in his inaugural.)