Why I'm Skeptical of Some Ag Activists-II

To carry on from my previous post:

In and after the 1920's people could choose between locally grown produce and that grown further away. Over time people chose the salad vegetables grown in California (mostly) over their local produce.  Why?  Presumably because the CA produce was available through more of the year and perhaps because it was cheaper and more consistent in quality. 

In the 1920's "organic" wasn't a category, wasn't a characteristic that would have played into anyone's buying decision. I don't know when people actually ended up with salad vegetables that weren't organic.  I suspect chemical fertilizers came more slowly to local farmers than to the larger concentrated farmers in California.

Down With Binary Choices: Confederate Flag and State Capacity

Ran across a couple things which trigger me:

• a survey asking whether the Confederate flag was racist or heritage (symbol).  Why isn't it a racist heritage symbol?
• this post states one side of a dispute with Tyler Cowen: whether building "state capacity" (meaning having bureaucracies that provide public goods) leads to greater development or vice versa.  Why isn't this modeled as an iterative feed back process, where for example educating the population a bit more increases productivity which provides the money to increase state capacity?  

I've noted before, I've a personal aversion to conflict and binary choices; these are just another instance.

Why I'm Skeptical of Some Ag Activists--I

One reason I'm skeptical of some positions taken by ag activists against "factory farming".

What we currently have in the country is the result of millions of decisions in the past.  Within the memory of people still living most farms were small family operations, "small" at least by current standards.  And they were organic, mostly. (I'm thinking of the 1920's.) So a very stark contrast to today's agriculture.

I think many activists would say 1920's agriculture was overall more desirable than 2020's agriculture. Accepting that position just for the sake of argument then raises the question: how do you put the toothpaste back in the tube? 

Organic Fraud

Grain being sold as organic wasn't. Big fraud case in Missouri

Once Again the Loudmouth Gets All the Attention

In an age-old pattern (think of the prodigal son in the Bible) the loudest mouth gets the attention.

In this case, he gets an article in the NYTimes announcing his retirement (plus I've seen tweets on the same subject).

Who is he?  Diego, a turtle.  Not just any turtle. but one of three males in an endangered species who were assigned the duty/given the opportunity to mate often with females in order to drive the numbers of the species above two digits. 

He did, he performed admirably, siring about 40 percent of the 2,000 turtles in the species.  He's described as having a big personality, charismatic.

It just so happens one of the two other males was firing blanks, leaving the third, the silent stalwart type, the one not seeking headlines, to sire the other 60 percent.

Problems with "Model" Farms

This is a good analysis of efforts to model different and better ways of doing farming.  I'm a lot older than the author, so we both may be stuck in the past.  Underlying a lot of the analysis is a more general law which applies in education and medicine: replication will kill you.  That is, a "model" farm that actually works for a number of years, and many such ventures don't, may fail when replicated to other environments.

Gene Drives Reversible?

NYTimes magazine has an article on gene drives, discussing the positives and negatives.  Lots of concerns about negatives, particularly outside the scientific community.

In reading it I wondered:  if I understand correctly, the gene drive consists of a genetic package which says: "if you find gene A, replace it with gene B and Crispr package X."  So a gene drive spreads a gene throughout the population while also spreading the Crispr package needed to replace A by B.

So what did I wonder?  Whether a gene drive isn't reversible, just do: "if you find gene B, replace it with gene A and Crispr package X"

Of course, it turns out any layman speculation I might have is out-of-date, witness this 2015 piece.

The Growth of "Vertical Farming"

I think the term "vertical farming" has come to mean indoor agriculture under LED lights with lots of technology and automation.  I'm still skeptical about current economics, but, if I'm to be consistent with supporting technology in the case of climate change and self-driving cars, I have to agree that vertical farming will become economical for at least some crops.

But...

As is the case with most innovation and technology, there are trade-offs.  One trade-off which comes to mind is vulnerability.  Transitioning from field agriculture to vertical farming for greens, for example, would increase the demand for electricity. More significantly, if a solar flare of sufficient intensity fried many transformers which would take years to replace, reactivating field agriculture for greens would also take years.

Photo IDs for Voters

I've blogged on this issue before. Today the new KY secretary of state is reviving it.

He and I think that requiring photo ids would be good for public confidence, even though there's no evidence of impersonation voter fraud.  For me at least the key is to ease into the requirement--make photo ids easy-peasy.  I suspect these days most young people get photo ids for driving or traveling.  That leaves one problem area--those on the margins of society--the old, the native Americans, the less fully assimilated (think Amish, Hasidic Jews, or whoever).  I think providing photo ids in these cases is worthwhile simply better to integrate people into society.

Great Advances in Medicine

Saw the doctor today at Kaiser.  (It'd been a couple years so I was overdue.)  Many changes since my last visit

• checking in by entering data at a kiosk, rather than a reception clerk at the waiting area.
• changing the format of the printout summarizing the visit.
• eliminating the weigh-in station--they upgraded the examining table/recliner with one which can register your weight.  It also raises and lowers, so your feet can be on the floor instead of dangling in the air.

I'm sort of mocking the healthcare industry here, but it's worth noting that there's a record decrease in the death rate from cancer.