WaPost on Small and Large Farms

Compared to her peers, Ms Haspel does pretty well in considering the pros and cons of small and large farms in this piece in the Post today.

Another Washington Deadlock: 6 Years of Policy Riders

From Farm Policy, quoting Chris Clayton at DTN:

"The House funding bill for USDA blocks the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration from finalizing livestock and poultry marketing rules stemming from the 2008 farm bill. As the senators wrote, ‘The legislative rider is attempting to thwart rules that, in part, allow farmers to request documents showing them how their pay is calculated, ensures that they are given adequate notice of a halt in animal deliveries, and ensure they can exercise their right to speak with their congressional representatives without fear of retaliation.’
“These provisions have been the subject of policy riders ever since GIPSA began trying to implement them. The 2014 farm bill did not change the provisions in the law. Yet, the policy riders continue to get slapped onto the appropriation bills for USDA, blocking GIPSA from implementing those rules.”

13 senators wrote a letter asking that the riders be dropped. Of course they won't be. It's not a partisan deadlock, it's a deadlock between senators representing different interests: farmers versus meat processors (assuming I understand the issues correctly).

(Interesting that Sens. Gillibrand, Harkins, and Grassley don't have the letter posted on their home pages yet.)

And What's Your Definition of Catastrophic?

This isn't, according to scientists studying the possible effects of an eruption from Yellowstone:

"While a supereruption hasn't occurred at Yellowstone since 640,000 years ago, in the event that one happens again in the next few centuries, sleep soundly knowing that the effects would not be catastrophic. The worst you can expect is reduced traction on roads, shorted-out electrical transformers and respiratory problems, as well as damage to buildings, blocked sewer and water lines, and disruption of livestock and crop production.

3 feet of ash within 300 miles of Yellowstone, only an inch in NYC.

How Agriculture Has Changed

Once upon a time, back when AAA was young, I understand the pattern was for the Administrator to come from one section of the country and the Associate Administrator from another: usually the pattern was for one section to be the midwest (corn) and the other the south (cotton/tobacco).

That pattern has now changed: the new FSA administrator is from  California.  Don't know the numbers but there have been several from that state recently.  That suggests the rise of Californian agriculture and the diminishing importance of the farm programs for the major field crops in FSA's portfolio.

What's Up--ACRSI

I've seen a recent jump in page views on the blog.  A popular page is the one I did in 2011 on the Federal Register request for comments on the Acreage Crop Reporting and Streamlining Initiative (being able to share data between RMA and FSA). I hadn't noticed much activity since, at least not enough to get me motivated to blog about it again, but my curiosity is aroused so I googled.

Two points--the 2014 farm bill requires ACRSI be implemented and this FarmForum article of a month ago.  I quote from Farmforum:

For example [of private enterprise coming up with advanced systems faster than FSA], MyAgData is already being used by Authorized Insurance Providers (AIPs) this crop year for acreage and production reporting in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Minnesota. But test programs in Illinois and Indiana at local Farm Service Agency offices this year didn’t quite work as efficiently as one might hope. The data was collected and matched to the common land units required for USDA acreage and production reports, but then was printed and had to be hand-entered at the local FSA office.

My heart bleeds (very easily--I'm a bleeding heart liberal) for those bureaucrats who've had to work on this effort--it's amazing how long it's taken to get action, though I see Congress has gotten USDA's attention by attaching money--FSA gets $10 million additional if they can show progress by Sept. 30.

New Yorker on GMO and the State of Agriculture

Here's last week's New Yorker article on GMO's and Dr. Vendana Shiva.  While it's a good takedown of some of her positions I do have a couple quibbles with the writer's understanding of modern agriculture:

• "For most of the past ten thousand years, feeding more people simply meant farming more land. That option no longer exists; nearly every arable patch of ground has been cultivated, and irrigation for agriculture already consumes seventy per cent of the Earth’s freshwater."

I won't quarrel with the water point, but there's a lot of land which once was farmed and no longer is. (About 20 acres of the former Harshaw farm, for one.)  Much of the land once farmed in the Northeast has now reverted to forest or brush.  I can't find the set of maps demonstrating this fact so you'll have to take my word for it.  After the USSR broke up, a lot of farmland was abandoned.  Here's a quote from the abstract of a scholarly article:

'"The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to widespread abandonment of agricultural lands, but the extent and spatial patterns of abandonment are unclear. We quantified the extent of abandoned farmland, both croplands and pastures, across the region using MODIS NDVI satellite image time series from 2004 to 2006 and support vector machine classifications. Abandoned farmland was widespread, totaling 52.5 Mha, particularly in temperate European Russia (32 Mha), northern and western Ukraine, and Belarus. Differences in abandonment rates among countries were striking, suggesting that institutional and socio-economic factors were more important in determining the amount of abandonment than biophysical conditions. Indeed, much abandoned farmland occurred in areas without major constraints for agriculture"

Granted the fact that land was abandoned probably means it's less productive than that which is still cultivated, but the right prices will bring it back into production.

• The only commercial farmers in the United States without crop insurance are those who have a philosophical objection to government support.  

The statement may be true for production agriculture of field crops, but I don't believe it's true for other crops, nor for organic farmers.

A Different Time: October 29, 1869 NY Times

Happened to run a query on the NYTimes archive (firewall) which resulted in the Oct. 29, 1869 issue being retrieved.  Some the stories, all from the first page:

• a steamer, the Stonewall, took fire and burned near Carbondate--222 lives lost.
• the Dublin Fenian Amnesty Association met and criticize PM Gladstone's decision not to release Fenian prisoners.
• short piece on President Grant and the gold speculation
• blurb on France--the Press not to be prosecuted for violations of Press law
• Austrian government censures Prince Metternich for being connected to a duel
• fires in Scranton (coal breaker), Bath, NY (flour mill) Marion IN (factory) burned.
• report on a schism in the Mormon church
• summary of crop report from USDA, "importance of draining and thorough culture"
• woman's suffrage convention in Hartford
• two ships sunk on the Great Lakes
• a report on the movements of President Grant
• WV elections
• report on affairs and movements of various bureaucrats and government affairs
• report on the salaries and expenses of our ministers (ambassadors) abroad, down to the penny.
• meeting of "colored citizens" sending delegates to the National Labor Convention
• telegrapher's strik
• letter to the Secretary of Treasury on taxes and tariffs

The last item covers close to two columns on the front page.  It includes this statement:  "A Cure for Extravagance-- Every member of Congress and SEanator looks upon the public offices of his district as his own especial patronage, and gets appointed thereto, not those who by mental and moral acquirements are fitted for the office, but those whose appointment would be most likely to advance his own interest."

Hard Work or Luck: the 17 Billon Dollar Question

We liberals have always suspected that the rich just luck into their wealth, but now we have proof due to the divorce proceedings of billionaire Harold Hamm, as reported here by NBCNews.  Seems that if he can prove his money is just the result of luck, his wife gets zilch; if it's the result of his skill and effort, she gets a share.  So he's instructed his lawyers to say he was a lucky SOB, just like all of the rich.  So Texans may "remember the Alamo" but liberals will say "remember the Hamm".

Three Mistakes You Make

Found this quote in an old NoahSmith post:

There are three common mistakes that many Westerners make when observing or analyzing Japanese culture. First, they essentialize it - they assume there are some core things that never change, and that you can understand these things by studying samurai culture, or stuff like that. Second, they exoticize it - they assume that Japanese culture is very different from Western culture, and that there are deep secrets that only Japanese people themselves understand. Third, they homogenize it - they assume that the difference between Japanese individuals or subcultures is much smaller than the group difference between Japan and other cultures.

Seems to me we often make the same sort of mistakes in analyzing many things we don't  have first hand knowledge of:

• bureaucracy: bureaucrats are essentially [something--lazy, overpaid, not interested in the job, stupid, disinterested specialists, etc.]; Washington bureaucrats are not people like you and me, but a strange breed; bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are entirely different breeds.
• [do it yourself--apply the three mistakes to: blacks, whites, gays, professional athletes, weathermen, farmers, ...--see if the formula doesn't work for them]

Farmers Don't Make Money and Blue Jeans

Ben Smith  had a piece in the NYTimes recently complaining that farmers, specifically small food movement type farmers, can't make money.  He points back to past farmer organizations and  writes:

But none of these demands will be met until we start our own organizations — as in generations past — and shape a vision of a new food economy that ensures that growing good food also means making a good living.

He never deals with the idea that the Grange, the Populists, the National Farmers Union, the American Agriculture Movement, the various cooperatives weren't able to mold the environment to make the country safe for the sort of small family farmer he wants to preserve. 

I may have made this comparison before, but I forget.  :-(  Anyway, in my youth you could buy blue jeans from Sears or Montgomery Ward or buy Levis or Lees from department stores.  That was about it.  Blue jeans were associated, in my mind at least, with sailors coming back from active duty.  (Farmers wore overalls.)  Today you can still buy Lees, Levis, and Sears blue jeans, but also Lands End and LLBean and Carhart and Kmart and so on for many more brands, and that's not getting into the absurdly priced "fashion" blue jeans which go in and out of popularity. And at least the cheaper jeans are cheaper than when I grew up.  That variety is the result of our wealth as a country: we spend on food maybe a third or fourth of what we did when I was a kid, and incomes are much higher; therefore we can afford to indulge our tastes.

I see the same thing happening with food: a mixture of  fast cheap food, better tasting and often better food (even McDonalds food is better tasting and cheaper than the overcooked pot roast my mother made) along with a much greater choice and a much bigger price range.  I don't know what the best restaurants in New York City charged for a meal in 1950, but I'm sure it's gone up many times more than a basic diner meal has.