"Ms. DeGette points out that the technology exists to trace food and produce from the farm to the dinner table. It's time that Congress put that technology to work to protect the food supply."In that context, it's hard for those who oppose the NAIS to gain traction.
"Then there are cultural factors. Some Pacific countries, like Kiribati, are populated by what ethnologists call nonconsumers: people who need just a little cash to get by and once that need is met, prefer to spend time with their family, go fishing or sleep.[instead of gathering algae]The conflict between market and non-market thinking/culture exists not only in Amish communities in the U.S. but in Kiribati.There is also “pubusi,” (pronounced poo-boo-SEE) the local tradition in which one person can ask another for pretty much anything, using the magic word, and the other person has to hand it over or face public opprobrium.
“What’s the point of making money if you have to pubusi it all away?” says Kevin Rouatu, a stocky, cheerful former banker who runs the Atoll Seaweed Company in Kiribati."
For someone with no children, it's probably easy for me to overestimate the fragmentation (that may not be the right word) of the US education system. I know we have the SAT's and I assume the National Merit exams and the application process to college is being standardized and No Child Left Behind has forced some uniformity. But I'm still amazed at the difference between our system and the Europeans."For better or worse, the Baccalauréat works, and is still a reasonable indicator of educational excellence, furthermore the Baccalauréat is national and nationalised. Candidates sit the same papers in the same subject at the same time all over France. There are no private exam boards. State education mobilises thousands of teachers to get everything marked within ten days, and all candidates get their results in the first week of July. There is no single Baccalauréat that is easier than another. There is no exam board reputed to be more difficult or better than another. It is true educational equality, and it works. Why reform it, other than the fact it is 200 years old and therefore has to be modernised in the name of fashionable progress.
So, all the candidates, for better or worse, have their results, and this week they are signing on at university. Come Friday, everything will be sorted for the start of the new university year, and France can go on holiday. Kids in Britain will get their results in late August and spend the rest of their summer trying to get a place at university. Seems a bit late to me."
"But subsistence-level farmers who are not reliant on expensive fertilizer or oil-fueled machinery can sell their excess produce at higher prices, which are still less than prices for food that might be trucked or flown in. The resulting boomlet benefits sub-Saharan Africa's small farmers, who cultivate, on average, less than 2 1/2 acres and who can, with appropriate assistance, expand their production to meet increasing demand....And this is, in my opinion, how it starts. Someone doubles their income and invests wisely, maybe more land, more fertilizer, better seeds, better equipment. Doesn't go deeply into debt so when prices slump, as they always do, he or she can ride out the storm, pick up some land and be ready to profit by the next rise in prices. Slowly the operation gets bigger, until the farmer makes a mistake, has bad luck, or grows older and less ambitious. As it gets bigger, it tends to specialize. Gradually the farmers get on the "treadmill", as Professor Cochrane called it, the feedback loop of more productivity leading to lower commodity prices and higher land prices, leading to more specialization and more investment, meaning more productivity.
A colleague from Nigeria wrote to me this spring saying that while the cost of fertilizer had increased by 50 percent, the selling price of corn was up by 100 percent. In other words, those productive small farmers who had had access to the increased capital required to obtain fertilizer had doubled their income in a year. "
European Union agriculture has long stopped producing homogenous commodities. Rather it has become “boutique agriculture”. Farmers produce a wide range of goods which are characterised by differing production cost and sold for differing prices in the market place. Domestic consumers and those from abroad choose those qualities that best meet their individual preferences and income. It is likely that sustained higher market prices for agricultural products will act to slow down the growth in the demand for organic food. Moreover, the price of organic food relative to that of other food has declined in recent years, making organic food less profitable to produce.And from the conclusion:
In this study the driving forces of changes in agricultural world market prices and their implications for European Union agriculture have been analysed for the time period 2003/05 -2013/15. The mega-trend of declining world market prices, which is sometimes referred to as the Agricultural Treadmill, has ended. Since the turn of the millennium, world market prices for agricultural goods have been increasing. This trend can be expected to continue for at least the time period analysed here. Not only will prices have a tendency to increase, but also fluctuations of agricultural world market prices are likely to be higher in the future than they have been in the past.
The reason for the positive trend in agricultural world market prices is that global demand growth outstrips the growth in global supply, and this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Global demand for food will continue to grow at a fairly rapid pace mainly for two reasons. One is the continued growth in world population; the other is the sustained growth in per capita incomes in developing and newly industrialising countries, with a corresponding increase of per capita food consumption.
Farm Bill Implementation News: Two letters have been sent this week from Capitol Hill to USDA to clarify beginning farmer provisions in the new farm bill. On Thursday, House Chairman Peterson (D-MN) and Senate Chairman Harkin (D-IA) wrote to Secretary Schafer to provide a clear direction that the farm bill designates the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program to be administered by the Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (soon to be renamed the National Institute for Food and Agriculture). The letter came in response to surprising news from the Department that the program might be assigned to either Rural Development or to the new Office of Outreach and Advocacy. The clear intent of Congress, supported by SAC, was for this program to go to CSREES.
On Friday, a letter from Senator Feingold (D-WI) and Chairman Harkin was sent to the Secretary to outline their intent, as the Senate champions for the new Office of Outreach and Advocacy and its Small Farms and Beginning Farmers and Ranchers sub-unit, regarding the placement and mission of the new office. SAC has been working closely with the Rural Coalition on the implementation of this new office, which also includes a sub-unit for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers. The newly-positioned and enhanced office will be at the executive level of the Department, reporting directly to the Secretary, not through any department mission area and Under Secretary.
The program sponsors want it placed as high in the bureaucracy as possible and in as sympathetic bureaucracy as possible. If the sponsors succeed, the bureaucrats naturally feel gratitude to the sponsors. It's a very different process than a public adminisration-type analysis of the logic and appropriateness of the bureaucratic setup.
REPORTER: Thank you. Just quickly, I wanted to ask about the Lacy Act Amendments. Is USDA implementing the expansion of the Lacy Act for illegally taken plants? Or is that strictly a CBP function?
SEC. SCHAFER: Can you translate that into real language?
REPORTER: Sure. The expansion of the Lacy Act that essentially requires documentation to avoid any illegally logged tropical lumber, among other plants.
SEC. SCHAFER: And what was the other? You used an acronym.
REPORTER: Oh, the Customs and Border Protection. I wasn't sure given that APHIS inspectors had gone over there whether it's USDA that has to implement that part of the farm bill.
SEC. SCHAFER: I don't even know. Can't tell you. And you're drawing blanks from our expert team here, so you've stumped the panel.
"The idea is to bring the concept of an identity card, like a driver’s license, to the online world. Rather than logging on to sites with user IDs and passwords, people will gain access to sites using a secure digital identity that is overseen by a third party. The user controls the information in a secure place and transmits only the data that is necessary to access a Web site."Having recently scorned Medicare's refusal to take the SSN off their ID card, I think the government should join this effort.
"The data that is necessary to implement ACRE simply cannot be put upon the current computer system that is housed in the Farm Service Agency and there will need to be changes in that system before we can implement ACRE fully," Conner said.I'm in no position to comment on either issue, though I did previously write about FSA/USDA computer problems. But I would note that the farm programs were operated without computers for decades, so what we're seeing is the symbiosis between bureaucratic technique and legislation--the more capable the bureaucrats become (using computers, etc.) the more complex the law.
Conner also emphasized the Bush administration is "working closely" with Congress to get "additional implementation resources" for the FSA. But Senate Ag Committee Chairman Tom Harkin disputed that statement Thursday. And Harkin told Brownfield he has little sympathy for USDA’s computer problems. According to Harkin, the Bush administration has known about the FSA computer problems for years, has never bothered to ask Congress for funding to fix the problem and still hasn’t done so.
"If they want money they should come up here and ask us for an emergency appropriation," Harkin said. "If they do that, we'll honor that. But where are they?"
ACRE isn't the only new farm bill program to face lengthy implementation delays. Schafer explained that permanent ag disaster aid program payments to producers devastated by flooding may not come for more than a year, mainly due to the fact Congress did not authorize USDA to speed-up the rulemaking process for the program.
Where do newspapers come in? I read a report a few days ago, I think from a newspaper conference in Europe, that's relevant. As I remember it, European newspapers look at US papers and see lots of weak, local papers as compared to their setup where you have fewer, more national papers. For example, in France the Paris newspapers dominate the country; similarly in Britain the London papers are dominant. The closest we come is having USAToday, the Wall Street Journal and NY Times, but even those papers don't have the influence of the Times (of London). So the Euro papers see the problems US papers are having with the Internet and currently don't have the same problems, but anticipate they may down the road.Many European and especially Latin American soccer teams are also closely associated with governments. This often allows repressive and corrupt regimes to obtain propaganda benefits from the teams' victories. For example, the repressive Brazilian and Argentinian military governments of the 1970s increased their public support as a result of their national teams' World Cup victories in 1970 and 1978. In Europe, Mussolini, Franco, and the communist government of the Soviet Union derived similar benefits from their teams' successes. On a lesser scale, incompetent or corrupt local governments in Europe sometimes benefit from the victories of local clubs.
In the United States, by contrast, pro sports rivalries are based on geographic divisions that have little or no connection to deeper social antagonisms over race, religion, or political ideology. As a result, even the most heated US sports rivalries, such as the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, rarely result in violence between fans of opposing teams - and never in the form of the large-scale soccer riots that we sometimes see in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Abstract of a paper from SSRN:The whole thing is interesting for those who remember farmers struggles to cooperate over the past 90 years or so.
High potato price volatility, decreasing demand for fresh potatoes and prices below the cost of production led to a decision of a number of Idaho potato growers to organize the United Fresh Potato Growers of Idaho, a marketing cooperative. The programs and strategies of the cooperative target both production and marketing of fresh potatoes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the programs implemented by the cooperative, we examine the level and volatility of fresh potato prices during two periods: before the cooperative was organized and when the cooperative is in the market. We find empirical evidence suggesting that fresh potato prices were higher and less volatile during the period when the cooperative was in the market.
I regard this with the disdain it deserves. The state of Virginia has phased out SSN's as the drivers license number. I recognize that Medicare is not used to issuing new cards every 5 years or so, but I assume they have procedures for replacing lost or stolen cards. And they have procedures for handling erroneous numbers (i.e., if they give out a card with the wrong number they're able to reissue a new card with the right number). Those two capabilities can be the basis for the changeover because they supply the business logic for the change. The third and missing element is a process to generate a unique 9-digit number for Medicare recipients. All they need is a cross-reference file matching their number to the SSN. Match all bills against the file so the provider can bill using either the SSN, if already in the provider's database, or the Medicare number.Ms. Frizzera, the Medicare official, said that issuing new Medicare cards would be “a huge undertaking.” The agency would need three years to plan such a move and eight more years to carry it out, she said.
Medicare officials estimate that it would cost $500 million to change their computer systems if they issued new ID numbers to beneficiaries. Doctors, hospitals and other health care providers use those numbers in filing claims with Medicare, which pays a billion claims a year.
But some aren't so easily discouraged:With just two weeks until their first performance, Jefferson [chorus leader] jumped into practicing the two songs the choir planned to sing at the concert. For the slow "Lord We Worship You," he told them, imagine a quiet candlelight dinner with God. For the upbeat "Blessed Be the Lord," use "your country voice," he said.
And learn to move, he told them. Clapping was not an option at this point, as past attempts had ended with the black members clapping on the second and fourth beats and white members clapping on the first and third.
"It's not in everybody's culture to do the moving, so be sensitive," Jefferson said. "We're a little, how do I say it, challenged in that area. It's going to take awhile. We're going to bridge it together. Bridge the cultures."
Start with baby steps, he instructed. Tap your foot. Or rock back and forth.
"Just try not to laugh at each other."
At the Beijing airport as the customs official questions you, you get to rate them - there is an electronic box, hidden from their view, that asks for your rating of service.The idea of the Chinese government getting feedback from their customers boggles the mind.
I often like "a curse on both your houses" thinking (was that Shakespeare?). I don't like NIMBYism, which accounts for much of the opposition to offshore drilling. But I've also a knee-jerk reaction, a sort of romantic feeling that progress is steamrolling everything and wondering why we can't keep some things forever. I guess, contra Pearlstein, Dems are more right because drilling means tapping an expendable resource. If we don't drill now, nothing happens to the oil and gas. Our descendants can someday drill if they think it advisable. While the Democratic proposals are permanent--once we do solar, we can keep doing solar forever.The frustrating thing about this standoff is that both sides have it half-right. Republicans are right that we need more oil and gas drilling, more refineries and a revival of nuclear power. And Democrats are right in demanding that we finally get serious about conservation, crack down on speculation and market manipulation, and recycle windfall profits into alternative energy sources.
Unfortunately, they're both so thoroughly captured by their interest groups, and so determined to defeat the other's policies, that they haven't noticed we're now so deep in the hole that we have no choice but to do it all: Gas drilling off the coast of Florida and wind farms off the coast of New England. Curbs on speculation and curbs on CO2 emissions. Tax hikes for oil companies and tax breaks for solar.
I’m from the Philippines and we do grow a lot of bananas. Most of the banana plantations are in Mindanao because of the stable climate conditions and fertile soil. The crops from from these plantations are only for export, and they only grow Cavendish there. The bananas they pick are still unripe when harvested to keep them firm durig transportation.
About the condition of the employees. Right now, employees of large companies like Dole and Del Monte experience fair labor practices. Most of the land of the plantations were under Agrarian reform, so the farmers own the land, which they rent to the companies to plant. The farmers are hired as employees, so aside from rent from land, they also get wages, and they have a stable job. These gives them incentives to be more productive, and hence higher manufacturing efficiency.
But this was not the case 30 years ago, before land reform. Farmers were tenants, and they were planting the land which were owned by really rich families. They had no security of tenure. They were overworked and underpaid, and yes, there were no healthcare benefits. there was also child labor: children of farmers would rather skip school and help in planting to increase family income. Also sometimes, there were unjust land owners. They have control over the farmers and their families because they feared being thrown away from from the farms, their only livelihood and their homes. [Is the land reform significant--wish I could find a study of the land tenure arrangements across the world. I'm speaking as a descendant of someone who was a renter in Ireland but owned a large estate (by Irish standards) in Illinois by the time he died.]
And in the Philippines, bananas are staple foods, specially in the really poor provinces where rice and corn are very expensive.
The UK runs a large trade deficit in food and agricultural products, at around 22 billion euros or 13 per cent of GDP (see table below). This makes global food price increases especially damaging for reasons that I’ll explain below. By contrast, France runs a trade surplus in food of almost 5 per cent of GDP.
So, ironically, even though the chefs love the flavor and the Azuluna story and that the flavor and texture is excellent regardless of the size, many of them will stop buying it or complain to the distributor that it lacks consistency in size. This is a problem for the high end cuts only - as the chefs are fearful of serving chops of differing sizes and charging the same price. The solution to this problem is to get more producers raising the veal and to expand the market into NYC. This would balance out the size problem, as cuts could be grouped by the distributors according to size. However, in order to recruit more producers, I need to promise them a market.So, we consumers want consistency--no surprises, please. But that implies production practices and a scale of operation that's difficult to develop. In a way, we want what we had years and years ago, but destroyed because our preferences valued consistency, uniformity, etc.
"The last time food prices shot up, in the 1970s, the U.S. response was to put more land into agricultural production. This was the infamous "fencerow-to-fencerow" policy of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz that Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, has linked to the glut of corn -- and corn syrup -- that has so profoundly affected global diets. "The whole piece discusses how North Korea was and is a canary warning the world of imminent catastrophe.
