Blast from the Past: ACP

The old Agricultural Conservation program was in operation when I joined ASCS.  I can remember a trip by a county executive director (Pitt county, NC maybe?) to a sawmill where people were making woven wood garden baskets.  This was fall, I think tobacco harvest was well over, so it was work for after harvest time.  Anyhow, the CED was signing up a couple landowners/part-time farmers to ACP practices.

ACP was a cost-sharing program, the farmer paying part of the cost of "approved conservation practices", ASCS paying the other part.  It was early in the Nixon administration, which didn't believe in the program (thinking it basically enhanced production so should be entirely paid for by the farmer).  They ended up in a battle with Congress over the program, resulting in a number of changes.  Over the years it was reformed again and finally moved to SCS (which had always fought with ASCS over it).

Why do I babble on about it?  This bit from Farm Policy:

"In other policy related news, Mark Peters reported in today’s Wall Street Journal that, “Kevin Hollinger planted radishes and oats last fall in his corn and soybean fields, but he isn’t planning to harvest them. Instead, he is letting the crops die over the winter to improve the soil and keep fertilizer and other nutrients from running into nearby waterways.
“‘I could hardly go to town without someone asking: ‘What’s that in your field?’’ said Mr. Hollinger, a fourth-generation farmer.
“Helping to foot the bill for his experiment is a pilot program set to launch fully next month. Farmers in the Ohio River basin are being paid to make changes—from what they plant to how they handle manure—in an effort to minimize runoff that can cause hypoxia, or low oxygen levels, in waterways.”

 Winter cover  were one set of the conservation practices covered by ACP.  I find my memory is foggy here.  I don't know whether they were dropped, like lime was, and later reinstated into EQIP and CSP or whether they have always survived.

Words of Wisdom From a Teenager

“You can create your own miracle,” Shiffrin said when the gold medal was on a sash draped around her neck. “But you do it by never looking past all the little steps along the way.”

From NYTimes

Understatement of 2008

"The failure of a major investment bank, the forced merger of another, the largest thrift and insurer teetering, and the failure of Freddie and Fannie are likely to have a significant impact on the real economy,"

From 2008 transcript of FED meeting.

The Persistence of Error

Mark Twain had lots of things to say about lies, including a line about a lie getting being half-way round the world while truth was still getting its boots on.

A corollary to that is that error lasts and lasts, while corrections don't.  Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum note an instance:  Netflix House of Cards believes the retirement age for social security is 65.

Bad Mistake: Gates and SOFAs

Reading Mr. Gates' memoir, Duty.  He talks about negotiating a status of forces agreement with Iraq and making a very bad mistake:  tell the Iraqis to go talk to the other nations with which the US has status of force agreements. 

What could go wrong with that?  Surely everyone is happy to have US soldiers on their land, aren't they?

No--everyone the Iraqis talked with complained about the behavior of US troops and the aggravations of their sofas  SOFAs.

Just a reminder of how a smart man, surrounded by smart people, who spent his career trying to understand other nations, could lapse into self-satisfied smugness about American virtue.

Pigford Is Over?

That's the message, without the question mark, of this FSA notice.  

I await a scholarly study of the episode.

Paperless Government

The Post has an article describing the efforts of the paper industry to lobby against "paperless government", like the requirement that every recipient of government money go to direct deposit.  Apparently paper companies are feeling the impact of IT on their bottom line and so argue that every citizen should have the right to get paper instead of electrons.

I've written before I think that part of the sales pitch for the IBM System/36 was the "paperless office".  That didn't happen.  But a lesson for us:  change can come slower than its enthusiasts promise, but it can come. 

LBJ and Vietnam

The NYTimes had an article on LBJ's legacy.  The premise of the article is the legacy has been overwhelmed by Vietnam and his other achievements diminished.  No doubt that is true.  At the risk of being a contrarian, I'd like to argue that his legacy is secure, at least in the long term after I'm dead.

Why?  Because I think Vietnam, while destructive of millions of lives and causing much agony, will ultimately appear to be a dead end, while civil rights will never appear so.  Already I think I see a general downgrading of the Cold War.   I think it's true that most of the US population wasn't born when the Cold War ended, and the number of people for whom it was a live issue (say those born before 1970) is diminishing. 

So if the Cold War is fading, so too must Vietnam, which was seen as a battle in the Cold War.  As it turned out, I think the current conventional wisdom is there was no convincing rationale for LBJ to expand our involvement.  So it's a mistake for LBJ, but we don't mostly remember our presidents for their mistakes, but their accomplishments. And there I think LBJ's will only grow.

Incredible Cows

From Wonkblog something I find incredible:

"There doesn't appear to be a cap yet on the projections," says Nigel Cook, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin's School of Veterinary Medicine. Even though cows are producing 23,000 pounds per year on average, some herds produce more than 30,000 per head -- and he's found exceptional animals that can produce between 45,000 and 50,000. If more cows can be brought up to that level, the line could keep moving upward for a good while yet. Unlike poultry, for example, the state of dairy science isn't anywhere near maturity.

 We were doing well to produce more than 10,000 lbs per year.  

Cooper Retires

I mentioned Willie Cooper, FSA state executive director for Louisiana, previously.

The USDA blog reports his retirement dinner was yesterday.  What it doesn't say is, assuming he stayed in the old Civil Service retirement system, for the last 16 or so years he's been working without increasing his retirement annuity (since an employee maxed out retirement benefits at about 40 years of service).