Hemp and Tobacco (and Taxis) II

I never did get to the "taxis" part of my post yesterday.

The NYTimes yesterday had a piece on how New Yorkers had made inroads on the Chicago taxi industry.

To recapitulate the Times' previous articles on taxis in NYC:

• to operate a cab you need a medallion, issued by the city.  IMO medallions are a way to limit entry, by restricting entry you're able to manage the prices/rates charged and limit turmoil.  That's very similar to supply management for tobacco in the US and dairy and eggs in Canada; also it's similar to the marketing co-ops for things like cranberries
• NYC had a bidding war for the medallions,  which savvy investors used to manipulate prices and make exploitative loans to individual drivers hoping to gain an asset for their retirement..  With Uber and Lyft hitting, medallion prices have plunged, and drivers are unable to repay the loans, forcing them into bankruptcy.
• in yesterday's article the same pattern was followed in Chicago by wised-up guys from NYC.

I've noted the parallel with agricultural supply management already.  While the medallion program likely worked reasonably well for many years, as did the tobacco program, with time smart people with money found a way to exploit the rules and make money, gaining their returns at the expense of those with fewer smarts and/or less money.

Hemp and Tobacco (and Taxis)

The Atlantic has an article using a history of the tobacco program to talk about hemp.

The history is accurate enough.  The professor points out that tobacco quotas were initially based on past tobacco production, so they tended to provide existing tobacco farmers with a guaranteed annual income (disregarding weather and similar hazards) for years.  That stabilized the regional economies.  When the program was ended there was immediate upheaval and consolidation of farms. By locking out new farmers (she doesn't note the limited provision for new farmers in the program, though the amount of quota available each year was small) it meant black and white sharecroppers lost a chance for upward mobility.

Her argument thus becomes:

"Instead of charging would-be cannabis growers for the privilege of growing, states should award licenses to a larger number of applicants from communities that have been hit hard by the War on Drugs. Much as small-scale tobacco farms anchored entire communities across the Southeast, cannabis cultivation on a human scale, rather than a corporate one, can build wealth within communities of color where opportunities to amass property have been denied—frequently at the hands of the government.

 The argument seems good, but as I've argued in other posts, the growing of hemp in the new world of legal pot (and industrial hemp) is subject to many hazards, even for experienced farmers trying to add a new crop to their operation.  If the argument was that people who had been growing illegal pot should be given licenses to grow it legally, I'd have fewer concerns.  But asking people from the inner city to grow hemp would be stupid. You'd have to have a new hemp producer program to offer financing, help gain access to land, and provide mentoring. ( I don't know the failure rate for new farmers of conventional crops, but I suspect itt's high.) That's not happening.

In the absence of such a program what would likely happen?  As in programs reserving government contracts for minority and female owned companies--you use a figurehead with the right attributes, while the real money goes to the men behind the curtain.

Hemp Problems Again and FSA/NASS?

The Rural Blog has this post.

I wonder if NASS and FSA are now taking acreage reports for hemp. A claim of more than a half million acres licensed for hemp means it's one of the mid-major crops.

And has it been added to the NAP list of crops?

Interesting Questions on Foreign Investigations

When should an American official at any level suggest/request a foreign government investigate an American citizen?

I think the first question you have to answer is, what is the purpose of the investigation?  Is it because the official believes the citizen violated the laws of the foreign country?  Do we assume the country's judicial system is fair?  What is the US interest in seeing the citizen investigated and possibly convicted of a crime (or suffer civil penalties)?

Another set of questions around "investigate".  Is it okay for an American official to give incriminating information to a foreign government if the government is unaware of any offense?  What is the US interest is seeing the crime investigated?

How about trades of information--an intelligence operative trades info on citizen A for info on foreign citizen B?

How about cases where a crime/offense perhaps has crossed jurisdictional lines, so the start of an investigation in the foreign country might start dominoes toppling and permit an investigation in the US?

Without delving further into the issues, it seems to me possible circumstances in some cases could justify a request or a passing of information.  But, none of those would apply as I understand it in the case of Ukraine and the Bidens.

[update--addendum: I think the propoer course is to refer any suspicions to DOJ for an FBI investigation and possible grand jury.  If there's no offense under US laws but might be under foreign law, passing information from the FBI to the foreign country is possible.]

Supply Management in Our Future?

There's a discussion of "supply management" in this twitter thread:

I agree with much of this and am still preparing for SM policies for grains by next year. Would have been this year if not for planting fiasco. https://t.co/cJLXWd2lwO

— John Phipps (@jwphipps) October 1, 2019

1 - SM, by fixing parity prices for commodities, won't help specialty producers. Palouse lentils, hoop-house raised heritage hogs, organic arugula won't get meaningful price parity (using differentials from marker prices? See how well it worked for OPEC in the 70s) 2/n

— Silvia Secchi (@ProfSecchi) October 1, 2019

Canada has had supply management.  

The Farm Bureau didn't like the idea of a government program in the spring.

Here's a more recent article on it.

My own thoughts are:

• I think supply management would slow the exit of farmers (perhaps fewer bankruptcies and more sell-offs when retiring) but aren't a magic bullet. There's value in slowing the exits, both in impact on the farmers and their communities and perhaps in allowing more time to find niche alerantives to the commodity milk market.
• I'm not sure why alternative "milks" have gained so much market share--price or perceived health benefits or animal welfare concerns  If it's price, supply management would shift demand out of milk.. At least it improve the outlook for those alternatives.

Perdue on Small Farms

This Post article reports that Secretary Perdue said" Tuesday during a stop in Wisconsin that he doesn’t know if the family dairy farm can survive as the industry moves toward a factory farm model."

I don't disagree with his point, at least as far as dairy farms producing for the commodity market, as opposed to niche raw milk/cheese production, but it strikes me as similar to Hillary Clinton's  comments about putting coal miners out of work.  Both true, both reflecting the work of free market capitalism, both politically inept.

Hemp Problems

The "Harshaw rule"--you never do it right the first time--seems to be borne out by the experiences of hemp growers.

Latest instance--this big suit against a seed supplier.  Turns out hemp has both male and female seeds, and only the female seeds produce plants with CBD.. So it's a big deal if your supplier only gives you male seeds when you're trying to produce CBD.

I've also seen references to overproduction, harvesting problems., etc.

It's Morning in America?

That was the theme for Reagan's re-election campaign.

I thought of that when I read Kevin Drum's post on social trends in America.  An excerpt:

Just about every social indicator you can think of has been moving in a good direction for the past couple of decades. Kids are better behaved. Crime is down. More people have access to health care. Divorce is down. Most indicators of racism are down. Income has risen considerably since the end of the Great Recession and is now significantly higher than it was when Bill Clinton took office. Etc.

Kevin had started with a chart on the decline in divorces in the last 10 years, then segued into  a discussion of why we don't realize all the improvements in the last 20 years.  I agree with almost everything.

What Did Zelensky Know and When Did He Know It

It has seemed to me to be important to understand the timing of events. This post has some of it, but I've some unanswered questions:

• before Trump made the decision to withhold the aid to the Ukraine, were there any discussions in the US government about the possibility of doing so?  If so, did word of that possibility make its way to Zelensky?
• when Trump made the decision, it appears it wasn't particularly quickly circulated within the US government?  True?  And there was no official rationale for the decision, or at least Trump offered two conflicting post hoc rationales?
• when did Zelensky receive word of Trump's decision, and what explanation was given?
• what did Trump understand to be happening after he made the decision?  Did he regard the decision as something for him to follow up, as in the phone conversation, or was he at all relying on the Pentagon and State Department to follow up (unlikely in my mind)?
• when Trump was talking with Zelensky, did Zelensky know of the decision?  Did he understand any rationale for it (better investigation of corruption, versus specifically investigating 2016 issues and/or the Bidens?
• when Trump was talking with Zelensky, did he think Zelensky knew of the decision and understand the rationale. or did Trump think it was his role to inform Zelensky of either or both.

Each for Himself--Watergate Redux?

A couple thought on the Ukraine mess, as compared with Watergate.

In Watergate we ended with people using leaks to take down their rivals and get revenge on their enemies.  (See Martha Mitchell for the most outrageous and most entertaining instance.)  It looks as if we're starting to see that dynamic here, with Guiliani and Pompeo pointing fingers.

One advantage Trump has over Nixon is his hisotry.  Nixon was the original uptight person.  Granted he was a skilled infighter in bureaucrat melees, but he was the President who usually followed the staid norms for the office.  So when the tapes were released, everyone was shocked at the profanity and the general tone of discussion.  I doubt there's much difference between Trump's discourse in public and in private/

This Post article is interesting in this context.