A Case for Intensive Farming: the Netherlands

National Geographic has a piece on Netherlands precision farming.

From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones—a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air—that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato. Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20.

I've viewed with skepticism reports about the Netherlands high value of exports, figuring it was mostly flowers of all kinds.  But it's the top exporter of potatoes and onions. I've been skeptical about proposals for vertical farming and urban farming, but this article is changing my mind. 

What I'm taking as the bottom line is intensive farming can work in the market place.  It's not clear what the additional equipment and the inputs cost, but the adoption of the techniques in the Netherlands means you likely have positive cash flow. 

I do retain a bit of skepticism--Netherlands is cited as being in the top exporters of potatoes and onions, both of which strike me as unlikely to be exported over long distances because both have high water content.  

Is a Democratic Victory in 2020 a Cinch?

Some twitter traffic suggesting that President Trump will be defeated in 2020 by almost anyone the Democrats put up.

I violently disagree.  Let me count the ways:

One: I remember the late 70's when it looked as if we liberals might be lucky enough to face Ronald Reagan in 1980.  We knew we could beat him with Carter or with Kennedy.  Look how that worked out.

Two:. Even if today's polls are reasonably accurate, and I don't doubt them, there's the issue of fundamentals:  right now Trump is riding the best overall economy in years, perhaps better than Clinton's late 90's boom.  He's also seeing "successes" in foreign policy--defeat of ISIS, withdrawal of troops from Syriana, and likely Afghanistan (by 2020), possible agreement with North Korea, renegotiated NAFTA, NATO countries responding to his harangues, etc. etc.  (I put quotation marks on successes because they mostly aren't, but as of now they can be sold as such.)  Those fundamentals would guarantee any normal person reelection.

Three: There's always the possibility of rally-round-the-flag episodes, a black swan event which rallies the US around its president.

Four: The reality is that some of the Democratic candidates and potentials can beat Trump, unless he has a real run of luck (somewhat like he had in 2015-16)and some can't.  Right now we don't know which is which.

Five: Because we don't know the future, we need to work, and contribute, and vote as if we're underdogs.

Six: My mantra is, even if we win the presidency it doesn't do much good unless we keep the House, gain the Senate, and take some more state legislatures.

Amy Is In But Who Would Run With Her?

Sen. Klobuchar has officially entered the Democratic primary race. 

I think I've said here, certainly on Twitter, that Il like her, mainly because I think she will appeal to independent voters along with Democrats and thus will be in a good position to beat an incumbent president and, I hope, have coattails to help candidates for the Senate and House.

That's the sort of reasoning I've used before, voting for Sen. Edwards in the 2004 primary over Keerry and Sen. Obama in 2008 over Clinton, and Clinton in 2016 over Sanders.  I've more enthusiasm fro Klobuchar than I had for Edwards or Clinton, but less than for Obama.  Klobuchar has a better record than Obama had but his candidacy was more historic than hers is, which made the difference in my enthusiasm.

As I see it, Klobuchar's main weakness is foreign affairs.  In the past that would have meant she'd pick as vice presidential candidate someone with better credentials in that area.  But, big as the Democratic field of candidates and potential candidates is, Dems don't seem to have a lot of such figures. Looking at the rosters of the Senate Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees I don't see people with a combination of the right age, the right background, and a national reputation.  The closest we can come, I think, are the two senators from VA: Kaine and Warner.. 

Interesting times.

Blast from the Past--Investigating President Carter

FiveThirtyEight has a piece on how presidents get investigated by Congress, including an interesting graph showing investigations of presidents from Nixon to Obama. 

Three points of particular interest:

• based only on eyeballing, ranking the presidents from least investigated to most (counting days of investigative hearings in the House) you get this list:
• GWBush
• Clinton!!
• Obama
• GHWBush
• then Carter, Nixon, and Reagan, much more investigated and hard to rank.
• the graph shows whether Congress was under the control of the president's party or not--which accounts for Bush's position, but what's most surprising to me is the high ranking of Carter.--if you discount Watergate, he likely was more investigated by his own party, than Nixon was by his opponents. 
• Reagan's high ranking is partly accounted for by Dem control of the House throughout his terms in office, but it's also a reminder of how rocky his administration was and the number of scandals.  

Northam and Boyd

John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association, met with Gov. Northam and offered support, according to this.

Why Blue America Is Blue--II

See this tweet on bankruptcies increasing from 2017 to 2018.

And see this report from Politico. 

I'd predict some "emergency" farm legislation will move before 2020.

A Leap Too Far for the Army

As a former draftee I retain a deep skepticism of the wisdom of the US Army.   So I would have said "I told you so" to the Army's plan for its "Iron Man suit", that is if I'd known about it, which I didn't.

As it turns out it was impracticable to integrate all the features desired into one outfit, so the Army appears to be separating the bits out to use individually.

The Marginal Utility of an Extra $50 Million

Jerry Brewer had an interesting column in the Washington Post about star basketball players seeking new teams.  This was the bit which stood out to me:

 In the doc [made by ESPN on Chris Paul's decision], he met with his friend, Jay-Z, the rap and entertainment mogul. Paul was telling him about various offers, ranging from $150 million to $200 million. Jay-Z listened and then spoke his mind. “Ain’t gonna change your life,” Jay-Z said about the offers. “You get 150, you get 200 — it’s the same thing. You’re gonna ride the same plane. You’re gonna wear the same sneakers. That [expletive] ain’t gonna change your life. One-fifty, 200 — same thing. . . . Your happiness, now that’s worth everything.”

Why Blue America Is Blue I

From the Rural Blog:

About 15 percent of Americans live in rural areas; the percentage has been declining for more than a century. The 35 percent of counties that have experienced long-term, significant population loss now have about 6.2 million residents, a third less than in 1950. Depopulation mostly started with young adults moving to cities or suburbs; the slide in population continued because fewer women of childbearing age were left in rural areas to boost the population"

That's part of the "Big Sort" which underlies our political divisions. 

"Seeing the Whole Picture"

T.J. Stiles had some tweets participating in a discussion on Winston Churchill (Newt Gingrich had triggered it by comparing Trump's work habits to Churchill's, to which some, including Stiles, took issue).

He had this tweet in which he said it was important "to see the whole, real picture".   I replied to the tweet, but have had some added thoughts.

"Seeing the whole picture" sounds good, but when you think about the meaning of the word, it's more complicated.  A picture, whether painted or photographic, is basically a two-dimensional  representation of reality; it's not a 360 degree holographic image.  And it's static, representing a moment in time, not a movie showing the lapse of time.

I'm being nitpicky, of course. It's best to look at every corner of a picture, to look up close and stand way back, while remembering the limits of a picture in representing reality.