Number of Tractors: 1920 US Versus 2000 Africa

The World Bank has a post on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.  Now I'm going by memory, which is that Prof. Pollan in Omnivore's Dilemma wrote that the US had 254 tractors on farms in 1920.  I doubted that, and found the Census report 254,000 tractors (Pollan had missed the unit of measure in the table).  So that figure sticks in my mind, although given my advancing age it should be taken with a grain of salt. 

But that's the context in which I read this:

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the trend has been rather different. In 1961, the number of tractors in use was more than in both Asia and the Near East (at 172 000).  After that the number increased slowly to peak at 275 000 by 1990 before declining to 221 000 by 2000.

 In other words, sub-Africa had fewer tractors in 2000 than the US had in 1920.  Further, the population of Africa was about 600 million, while the population of the US was about 100 million.

National Black Farmers Assocation 25th Conference Agenda

Here's the agenda for the 2-day conference (today and tomorrow) of the NBFA.

When read with a political eye, it's interesting--lots of USDA speakers plus a rep from Clinton's campaign.

Vote on Appropriations or Head for the Hills

Apparently despite their brave talk about returning to "regular order", the thing the House Republicans don't want is to vote on appropriations bills. I'm sure Speaker Ryan is very surprised.

God's Plan for Interest Rates

Mea culpa.  When I skimmed the first mention of this, I thought: there's one of those crazy Republican congressmen again.

Wrong.  It's one of those crazy Democratic congressmen, earnestly telling Janet Yellen that God's plan is for interest rates to rise in the spring.

Erroneous Payments: Two Views

"If I were to tell you that the Social Security disability program was 99.88 percent accurate in issuing benefit amounts to recipients, you might think they were doing an outstanding job. But if I told you the program overpaid by $11 billion – while neglecting to mention how they clawed most of it back – you might dust off your pitchfork and join your local mob’s march to the nearest SSA satellite office."

From the Post 
(The news accounts didn't explain that the overpayments were over a number of years and didn't cite the total payments made.)

Paperwork Reduction Act Takes Deserved Hit

From Github on the revision of OMB Circular A130:

Pretty much everyone who's responsible for designing digital information collections in Government knows the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) is one of the greatest barriers for making government simple, because of the obstacles (real or imaginary) it throws up between government researchers and the public. The idea that any structured information collection from 10 or more people, even if it is voluntary, even if the very purpose of the data collection is to reduce the burden of paperwork on the American public (whether digital or physical) has to go through a laborious, expensive, time-consuming, and rarely useful centralized process doesn't make any sense. The current implementation of the PRA defeats the very purpose of the law, and certainly defeats the objectives of the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA).

I wish someone like my representatives in Congress would revise the Act.

Bush Replies, Who Was the Ohio Governor?

A blast from the past--there was an Ohio governor long ago who won some fame by his replies to constituent mail, often curt and funny, especially when the incoming letter was irate.  Somewhat like Chris Christie's responses in some of his meetings with constituents.

Today Jeb Bush put out a book of email, one of the early messages quoted in the Politico piece reminded me of that governor, the rest not so much.

Reston From Nothing to Something

This post uses the example of Reston to show how USGeological Survey (home office in Reston) updates its maps, including the process of officially naming geographic features.

Guinness Record Set? Reversals in Congress

I doubt the Guinness people keep track of how quickly politicians reverse course.  If they did they'd have to distinguish between individual politicians, who can reverse on a dime, if a dime lasts 12 hours or one news cycle, and governing bodies, like Congress, who naturally take a big longer.

I suspect Congress just set a new record: on Monday the big budget deal included a cut on crop insurance administrative costs; by the time the deal had passed early this morning (in the Senate), the cut was dead as a doornail.

Shows the clout of the insurance agents, and the usual hypocrisy of those who rail against government subsidies.

Second Hand Clothing

ThinkProgress has a piece on second-hand clothing in Kenya. 

Two points:

• the import of such clothing and the fact it's not taxed undermines the Kenyan clothing/textile industry (that's in the piece)
•  the use and reuse of resources contributes to world efficiency, and thus is environmentally good (I'm assuming the costs of transportation from US to Kenya are more than offset by the reuse) (this is my point)

Given my background, I'm usually impressed by thrift, one of my parents' favorite favorable adjectives.