Inflation Reduction Act and Agriculture

 As is usual to get big bills passed, there's everything in the IRA except the kitchen sink.  The logic is classic log-rolling, everyone gets a piece of the action to boast about. Manchin and Sinema may get the headlines for their actions, and they may take credit back in WV and AZ for bringing home the bacon, and receive credit from interest groups in the form of donations, but I guarantee there's something in the bill for every Democrat. 

Chris Clayton has the most detailed summary I've seen here.

Updated to add this excerpt: 

"LOAN AID FOR DISTRESSED FARMERS

The bill also included just over $1 billion to FSA to replace the loan reimbursement for socially disadvantaged farmers, which ended in several lawsuits by white farmers after the provisions in the American Rescue Plan was passed in 2021.

The new provisions help borrowers "who are at risk" -- as determined by USDA -- as a "limited resource farmer or rancher" to pay 100% of their loans, up to $150,000. The loan repayment would be offset by any funds those farmers received under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and reducing any payments under the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). For economically distressed borrowers are those who would be considered at least 90 days delinquent as of April 30, 2021, or 90 days delinquent as of the end of 2020. A farmer could also qualify if they farm in an area with at leas a 20% poverty rate, or in land held in trust by a Tribe or Native America.

Other farmers that would qualify for debt reduction include farmers in bankruptcy as of July 31, 2021, or receive a disaster set aside after Jan. 1, 2020, or has debt restructured after Jan. 1, 2020.

The bill also includes $750 million to provide farmers who experienced discrimination from USDA before Jan. 1, 2021. The bill would pay up to $500,000 to farmers who have proven to be discriminated against in USDA loan programs."

Chris corrects himself, because the language above was an old draft.  See this

Three Bucks

 I may have mentioned the growing presence of deer around our townhouse.  Over the years it's changed from a single deer occasionally, to a single deer more often, to the occasional pair or a doe with fawns, to once a group of five.

But the other day was the first day I can remember for sure of seeing a buck, actually three bucks.  All three had good sets of antlers.  Couldn't count the points but maybe 10+ on one and close to that on the other two. I guess it's not mating season yet, so they seemed content in each other's company. 

Cherry Shaking

 I learned this term, "cherry shaking", along with "pitters" in a news article today.  Michigan sour cherry growers are running into problems.  Their sour cherries are ripening unusually closerly together, meaning they need to be harvested by shaking the tree, and then processed by the pitters, but there's not enough slack in the pitting capacity to handle the surge. 

Data Sharing in USDA

 It's been almost 25 years since I retired. In my absence USDA has made progress in getting data sharing among agencies.  

Consider this release about Emergency Relieft Program payments. 

(I guess I'm losing my grasp on what's happening in USDA--I'm not at all clear on how these payments fit with crop insurance, NAP, or other programs.  My impression, which may well be wrong, is  that the Biden/Vilsack regime is following the precedents of the Trump administration's use of CCC funding.

Another Pigford Defendant Pleads

 According to this report.  Four other defendants in the conspiracy pleaded earlier in July.  There's still one left in the case.

Shirts in the Revolution Were Costly

 Reading Alan Taylor's "American Revolutions".  As usual he's quite readable, though there's not much new for me so far.  One trivia bit jumped out to me though:

In 1780 women in several of the states organized in support of the troops, soliciting donations*, and raised some $340,000, which they sent to Martha Washington to give to her husband to be distributed to the troops.  As Washington George figured, probably likely, the cash would be wasted on drink and frivolity he asked for shirts instead.  So they bought fabric with the money and made shirts, 2,200 of them.

So each shirt cost $154, and that's just for the fabric.

Note the date--1780.  By then Continental paper money wasn't worth a continental.

The Paperless Office

 I remember when Felix Foss came around to talk about the "paperless office" which implementing the System/36 would enable.

The other day I got on the Facebook group for current and retired FSA employees.  146 messages on the subject of what office equipment should be purchased for the coming year.  It seems that most of the messages concern equipment for handling paper and folders.https://www.facebook.com/groups/54686876198

Anglo-Saxon England and Slavery

 Just finished Marc Morris book on Anglo-Saxon England, an interest partially spurred by the TV series "The Last Kingdom".  I liked it, given the scarcity of sources with which he was dealing.

One thing I learned--10 percent of English residents were slaves at the time of the Norman conquest.

I vaguely knew that the word "slaves" comes from "Slav"--from the internet:

What's the etymology of slave?

Etymology. From Middle English sclave, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were a common source of slaves, during the Middle Ages, for Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and Arabs.

And I know "slaves" are described in the Bible, etc., but the dominant image in my mind is the rise of African slavery in the mid 15th century, through to the mid 19th century. 

It's so easy to make the accessible information seem like the exclusive and essential information.

False Colors

 Since the Webb telescope has started delivering pictures, I've seen references to their "false colors" or "fake colors".  NASA has used the term:

This false-color mosaic is made of 72 exposures over a 32-hour test. Note: 6-pointed diffraction spikes unique to Webb around the bright stars & a background full of galaxies. Webb will #UnfoldTheUniverse with its first full-color images in just 1 week! https://t.co/LaJjK8v3Bd

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 6, 2022

I don't like it.

As I understand it, the Webb captures a much wider portion of the spectrum than do our human eyes. So if the images reflected the spectrum we could see, i.e., were in "real colors", we wouldn't see a lot of the interesting phenomena. So NASA uses what I'd call a translator program to convert all the data the telescope has captured into colors humans can perceive.  The program is true to our perceptions--we see longer light waves as blue, with "ultraviolet" designating the waves which are too long for us to see; we see shorter light waves as red, with "infrared" designating the waves which are too short for us to see. So the results of the translation have the infrared waves showing as red, the ultraviolet as blue.

Whenever we convert phenomena into colors on the printed page, we're dealing in "false colors", not reality.  That's true whether we're dealing with red states and blue states, or starlight.

Just as translators of the Iliad try to be faithful to the original Greek in their presentation of the text in modern American English, so the NASA scientist try to be faithful to the data their telescope has captured in presenting it to us.  In neither case do we get the full richness of the reality, but the best effort of the translators.

Small Farms, Big Farms, Haiti and Dominican Republic

 Here's a long discussion of why Haiti and the Dominican Republic have diverged so drastically, GDP per capita is 5 times greater in the DR, although they share the same island.

Several topics are discussed, but he leads off with the small farm/large farm contrast. There are several reasons Haiti now has small farms, compared to other Caribbean/Spanish American countries. The revolution, the prohibition on foreigners owning land, etc.  

One thing struck me--in the context of the US, we've lost millions of small farms over the years not only because of the economic advantages of consolidation, which is the usual explanation, but because of the opportunities in the cities for better jobs in industry, commerce and finance.  The "Great Migration" of African Americans from the rural South to jobs in cities all over the country is the prime example, but the reality is that there was a bigger migration of whites from Southern farms and of whites from farms in the rest of the country.