Urban Density Versus Urban Farming

Many people, Matt Yglesias  for one, believe in urban density, arguing that it's efficient, supports interesting lifestyles, helps the environment, etc. etc.  Many of the same sort of people (i.e., highly educated types) believe in the food movement, some of whom believe in urban farming.   There's tension between the two principles.  This piece in Modern Farmer on the battle over converting an urban garden to an urban hospital shows the tension.

The Granary of the Roman Empire

In my memory that's what Egypt was--why Cleopatra had wealth--Egypt grew wheat and exported to Rome.

This from a Keith Good Farmpolicy post on export issues:

Meanwhile, Emiko Terazono and Heba Saleh reported yesterday at The Financial Times Online that, “For the world’s wheat farmers already reeling from decade-low prices due to bumper crops around the world, it is the last thing they wanted.
“Confusion surrounding quarantine rules in Egypt has effectively taken the world’s largest wheat importer out of the international market, depressing prices, which are already weak from plentiful harvests.

Volatility in Farm Incomes

One thing non-farmers never (almost never) understand is volatility in farm income.

Illinois extension's website has a post on their sample of farms in the state:  in 2012 the average net labor and management* income per operator was almost $258,000, in 2015 it was -$1,700.

Of course, on average these farms had over 1,100 tillable acres.  Without looking up the average value per acre that means probably $10,000,000 in (owned and rented) land and equipment.  (On average the farmer owns about 25 percent of the land she farms.)

These are field crop farms, returns on livestock, fruit, and vegetable farms not farmed under contract would have different rates of volatility and in different years.

* One thing I learned from my high school ag class was you need to count both the return on labor and the return on management when looking at income.

Beware of Innocent Seeming Names

Someone, I suspect on Powerline but I'm not sure, included a link to this site, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.   It seems be an okay organization, but a skeptical eye might note this mission statement:

"Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine."

 The "private" is a give-away, to me at least.  Back in the day the American Medical Association was a pillar of the fight against socialized medicine.  But my suspicion is that they didn't fight strongly enough, so a splinter group founded the AAPS to be more stalwart.

(I swear until I started writing this 10 minutes ago I hadn't checked the wikipedia entry.)

The Art of Persuasion

I don't expect to see Government Executive run an article like this, 
discussing the philosopher Pascal.  He wrote this, as quoted in the article:

"When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

Pascal added:

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."

Editing Common Land Unit

A QandA from the notes of the NASCOE convention:

": Are there discussions regarding allowing NRCS to edit our CLU layer?
A: Brad Pfaff: Yes those discussions are happening to have NRCS edit the CLU and SCIMS. Darren Ash: They are looking at the impact it could have allowing other agencies to have that type of access.  The goal is to have agencies be able to share information since we have common customers, but they are looking for an appropriate way to administer this."

I'll suppress some emotions here by making a couple points:

1. the "Common" in the CLU refers to the idea it would be shared between FSA and NRCS. I've a vague memory that we made some compromises or changes in the business rules for it in order to support NRCS data.  Essentially it's the lowest common denominator between ASCS acreage data and NRCS. 
2. the dream of enabling one change to update both ASCS and SCS databases for name and address and land data dates back to the late 1980's, as a result of the impact of the sodbuster/swampbuster rules in  the 1986 farm bill.  So thirty years later we're still struggling with the issue.
3. as a liberal, I usually support government programs, but sometimes I wonder how capable we bureaucrats really are.  (Of course, I quickly turn to blaming Congress for many of the failures. :=))

Scholarships for Black Ag

Apparently the National Black Farmers Association linked up with Chrysler to sponsor scholarships for students in agriculture.

Geezer Meets the Smart Phone

I've been easing myself into the world of smartphones.  Started cheap, with a Lumia 435, relying mostly on my WiFi network but no carrier so no real GPS.  When that phone failed, I jumped on an offer for Google FI, using a Nexus 5X (an offer I wouldn't have taken had I fully understood the terms--did I mention I tend to be cheap). That means I can use its GPS capabilities.  That's become handy in the last few days.

My sister's death meant I inherited a number of paintings and photographs passed on from my aunt and uncle, who worked for the YMCA in China in the 1920's, and who also had inherited tintypes from my grandparents.  Recently I've been contacting people to work on these objects, conservators to restore the paintings and digitally restore the tintypes.  That's led me into the maze of streets in suburban Washington.  Rather than the nice gridwork of DC the inner suburbs inside the Beltway are very confusing, a bunch of cul-de-sacs, really unfamiliar to me, just the sort of situation in which a GPS becomes very valuable.

Naturally at first I didn't try it, it was new, and I had spent years being able to read maps, so who needed it. Being old has impaired my judgment though.  The other day was telling. I thought I knew to take the first turn from I-66 after getting on in Fairfax City.  I did, and found I was totally confused, because the intersections I saw didn't match what was on Google.  (I should have waited and taken the second turn.) In desperation I turned to the GPS function.  Over the next few minutes I learned to accept the GPS voice enough to accept her directions to get back on I-66, and then to get off at the right exit.  Live and learn.

Politicians Pander

Fallows has a long piece on the candidates and the upcoming debates.

Politicians pander. That's what you do.

I've done just enough public speaking (definitely not my forte--I drone) to occasionally experience the thrill of reading your audience and responding to their response.  It's like making love.  And that's what politicians, the ones who have thrived enough to have a national presence, do.  Throughout Fallow's piece you can see the techniques analyzed.

In this episode the Kentucky governor gets carried away by pander. 

Should I Leave Wells Fargo?

Consider the title of this post : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2016/09/13/wells-fargo-fired-5300-workers-for-illegal-sales-push-executive-in-charge-retiring-with-125-million/

Remember this when people complain about waste and fraud in government.