The Case for Crop Insurance vs. Ad Hoc Disaster

Via Farm Policy, here's 3 paragraphs from a case for crop insurance, a John Mages op-ed:

Crop insurance is a public-private partnership, designed to ensure that when disaster strikes, the private sector – crop insurance companies – are there to help shoulder the risk and the financial burden of rebuilding.  Crop insurance policies are purchased by the farmer and suited to the farmer’s needs, comfort with risk and financial situation.

In the past, before purchasing crop insurance was the widespread and widely available option, disasters like last year’s would have triggered large, stand-alone disaster bills in Congress, aimed at trying to save as many farms as possible.  Those bills would have cost taxpayers dearly, and unfortunately, would have taken months, or even several years to finally get into the hands of the farmers who need the help.  Not a good situation for either party involved.

In 2011, with 80 percent of eligible lands protected by crop insurance, private sector companies paid out in excess of$10.7 billion in payments to farmers who had purchased plans and suffered losses.  Those checks were often in the hands of the farmers in 30 days or less after they completed the necessary paper work.  It’s because of the effectiveness and efficiency of crop insurance that many of us are in our fields planting today instead of being forced to auction off our farms.

 Since I've been implicitly and explicitly critical of crop insurance, it's only fair to recognize the counter-arguments.  I'm proud of the work my shop did on disaster programs and payments over the years, but it's true enough that an ad hoc program doesn't work as well as having something in place from year to year.

Be Negative to Your Children?

Should you be more negative to your children than anyone else? Should you treat your employees better than your children?  That's what's implied in this table from a post at Barking Up the Wrong Tree reporting research from this book.  The question is: if you want the best relationship, what's the ideal ratio of positive interactions to negative.  For example, parents should praise their children 3 times for each time they reprove them, etc.  If the research is right, I was a lousy boss.  

Of course the point is to be mostly positive to everyone.

Pot, Locavores, and the Farm Bill

Since the beginning, the farm bill has sought to protect farmers from price risk and weather risk, the risk of low prices through overproduction and the risk of low production from.bad weather.  The methods provided in the laws have varied, including cartels, supply management, crop insurance and disaster payments, all of which are conditioned on the basic fact that in a free market, farmers are price takers, mostly at the mercy of those who buy from them.

Because marijuana is illegal, you don't see a lot of discussion about its economics, so I've only vague impressions to go on. (See this PBS piece which looks at costs and volume.)Because pot is illegal, its dealers are insulated from market pressures: once they've established themselves in an area, they tend to have a relatively stable monopoly.  So the tendency is for basically stable networks of growers-dealers-buyers, meaning prices are pretty stable. (Can I find a parallel with contract growers of poultry, pork, etc., which also have stable networks?)  And because pot is illegal, there's a high entry cost for growers. That's what "illegal" means. But it also means that "weather risk" can extend to "law risk"--the chances of a bust.

My impression is that the importation of marijuana is down, and domestic growing is up.  In that sense, the pot industry has been moving in the direction of  locavore. As "grow houses" have proliferated, it's become more localized and more production oriented, more industrial, less organic.

Comes now the legalization of "medical marijuana" (I use quotes because I think it's really a backdoor way to semi-legalize marijuana) which seems to have disrupted the pot economy, according to an article in today's NYTimes Post, for which I can't find the url. (I'll try to add it later.)

On the one hand you have competition among the vendors, both on quality and price.  On the other you have growers having problems. Bottom line is the bottom has dropped out of the price, with big repercussions on the economy of such counties as Humboldt, CA.

One wonders when pot will make it into the farm bill?

Online Service at Social Security

Social Security Administration has added the ability to establish an account and access your personal data online.  Seems to be a good site, permitting very strong passwords (upper/lower case, multiple symbols--I used LastPass capabilities), and some questions which really are personal and can't be determined from online data, at least not until the Facebook generation reaches SS eligibility.)  Even offers the tie-in with one's cellphone, which is becoming popular these days.  One problem, though: apparently it's only available through business hours, not 24/7. ??

Tradeoffs in India

"Open wifi networks are banned in India, because they make life difficult for policemen. This is a bad tradeoff : we have sacrificed the immense gains from ubiquitous open wifi networks, in return for reducing the work of policemen."

from Ajay Shah's blog.

Pigford Deadline Today

The final date for submitting papers for Pigford II is today, applicable only to those who filed late for Pigford I.

Corn Prices and the New Farm Bill

Just a note based on items in Farm Policy--apparently the warm spring has meant early corn planting on large acreages which means prospects for the crop are good, which means prospects for prices are poor (maybe as low as $4--which would have seemed great when I worked).  And the evaluation of the Senate Ag farm bill is that if there are multiple years with lower prices the program payments will decline, an idea the evaluators don't like, preferring instead the guarantee provided by target prices set in the law.

"Progressives" and "The Progressive Farmer"

Minds are funny.  I just Google+1ed a post at Casaubon's Book, something I rarely do.  (The writer Sharon Astyk is deep into the foodie movement: peak oil, locavore, sustainable, etc. but very articulate.) The post was about gay marriage, and noted the legal and property considerations involved in marriage--recommend it.  She would qualify as a political "progressive" in most people's books.

Anyway, the next post on my RSS feed was Chris Clayton's column at "The Progressive Farmer".  The conjunction of someone who's really progressive and the magazine, which isn't progressive at all, at least in the sense that some of the conservatives I follow would use it (i.e., as an epithet, a tad better than "socialist" but much worse than "liberal") struck me. 

"Progessive" as used in connection with farming used to mean the wide-awake, up-to-date farmer, someone who was on his way to being an "industrial" farmer, as the foodies would have it.  It's rather ironic to me to see the evolution of the term.

Soybeans: It Wasn't Franklin After All

Earlier I linked to a blog post at Boston 1775 describing how Ben Franklin, the great bureaucrat, was the first with soybeans in the colonies, specifically tofu. 

Turns out that was wrong.  The soybean types have got to Boston 1775 and he has corrected the account.  It was really Samuel Bowen of Georgia, who was first actually to grow soybeans here and describe their uses.  But Bowen didn't get to tofu, so Franklin can still be the patron of the foodies.

Aside: it surprises me to find the China trade existing back in 1758, but apparently it was well established.  Although my rapidly fading memory of the book 1493 says countries other than England were trading with the Chinese maybe by the end of the 16th century.

Not Another Cheerleader

Sorry, but my political prejudices are showing.  This sentence from a Post profile of the young Romney jumped out: "He was not a natural athlete, but found his place among the jocks by managing the hockey team and leading megaphone cheers for the football team."

Clay Christenson--Mormon and Incredible Person

One of my favorite books (listed way down the blog and not updated for years) is Clay Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma..  Now the New Yorker this week has a very nice profile of the guy, a professor at Harvard Business. Unfortunately only the abstract and beginning paragraphs are available online, but I recommend reading it somewhere somehow.  He sounds too good to be true, but judge for yourself.

Bowling Alone and Kids

Awhile ago Robert Putnam got lots of attention for his book "Bowling Alone", in which he argued there'd been a decrease in associations in American life over the years, with a concomitant decrease in social capital.

I wonder, whether there's not been an increase in associations centered around kids: the notorious soccer moms who spend their time chauffeuring kids from one activity to another, meaning they coordinate with other parents.  So there might be a decrease in associations like the Elks or bowling leagues which are with peers, and increase in associations with parents.  That would mean a division in society.

Bureaucrat Started as GS-5?

The article "Master of Bureaucracy" doesn't say, but it's likely Bob Gates started as either as GS-5 or 7.  Government Executive runs a long interview with him:

• when he became Sec. of Defense, he didn't bring any assistants with him.  (That's amazing for anyone who's seen a transition at the top of a cabinet department.)
• kept quiet in meetings
• gave others credit
• fired people
• says DOD plans for war, isn't good at waging war, so had to go to task forces to accomplish things.

Recommended

Liberals Are Cheap

Kevin Drum admits he's an idiot and his commenters chime in noting how they drive cheap old cars.

Mankiw and I: CEO/Worker Compensation Ratios

Greg Mankiw, Harvard economics professor and adviser to Mitt Romney, posts a chart on his blog showing the ratio between the pay of a worker and the pay/compensation of the CEO's at top 350 firms.  (I assume the workers are the workers at the same firms, but whether it's mean or median or what, it's not clear--Prof Mankiw gets a "C" for copying the graph and failing to specify in his post.)

The professor seems must struck by the recent drop in CEO compensation--the ratio in 2000 was twice that in 2011.  I'm more struck though by the increase, the ratio has increased 10 times between 1965 and 2011. In the good old days just after George Romney had left his CEO job at American Motors CEO's got roughly 20 times the compensation of their employees, say $100,000 to $5,000; in the bad new days when his son is running for President CEO's in big companies make 209 times the compensation of employees. 

Cocoa Pops Is the Answer

What is the question: how did Baratunde Thurston climb his way up?

India Sets a Record

This article reports India has set a new record for production of wheat, rice, and cotton.

India will have a all-time high foodgrain production of over 252 million tonne in FY12 with a record output of wheat, rice and cotton, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said today.
Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he said the record foodgrain production of 252.56 million tonne would be higher than the 235.88 million tonne output in FY11.

Political Advertising in the Colonies

Boston 1775 has a guest blogger discussing "milestones"; no, not as in project planning but as in physical stones which mark the miles from a given point, in this case in Boston. An excerpt to explain the title:

Rather, most of the stones in the immediate Boston area were erected by prominent political figures, such as Samuel Sewall, Jonathan Belcher, and Paul Dudley. I’m guessing that those men saw the milestones partly as a public service, and partly as a billboard advertising their beneficence—just as we see signs near highway construction projects that give the names of government officials today.

 

The Life of Chinese Workers

Via Ann Althouse, a series of photos of the walled city of Kowloon,

Where Are All the Prairie Potholes?

I've blogged before on the prairie potholes, most recently here.  EWG has a set of maps which outline the pothole region, as well as where grassland and wetland have been converted to active cropland recently.

Note my use of "active"--that's because by definition every acre in the Conservation Reserve Program once was cropped/considered by FSA/ASCS to be cropland.

We're a Rich Country

I don't know why, but the idea of retirement homes for urban chickens past their egg-laying days strikes me as ridiculous, while the idea of retirement homes for former thoroughbred race horses doesn't, particularly.

Maybe because I liked our horses but disliked our chickens.

Conservation Compliance Overview from CRS

Via STu Ellis at farmgate, here's the latest CRS summary of conservation compliance. A good overview for Congress, but doesn't break new ground for me except:

• seeing the reduction in soil erosion since 1985.
• noting that OIG was doing a 2-phase review of it, the first phase was in 2008, no report has been issued on the second phase yet.  (Who polices the policeman?)

Budget Baselines

Via EWG, here's the Congressional Research Service's discussion of the budget baseline for the next farm bill.  It shows a baseline of $90 billion over the next 10 years for crop insurance, including roughly $1.3/4 billion in delivery expenses.  Interestingly, the administrative expenses for NRCS and FSA aren't included in the discussion.

Conservation Compliance and NRCS

Via Farm Policy, the Grand Forks Herald reports on a backlog of wetland determinations at NRCS, a big enough issue to get the agency head out there.

From the article:

Wetlands determinations that are held up, waiting for NRCS approval, have become frustrating for the region’s farmers, particularly those in the central and southern Red River Valley. They want to use tile drainage or water management to contend with a string of wet years, and to capitalize on higher commodity prices and land values.

Apparently NRCS is looking at using a 30-year average, dropping extreme years and coming up with an average.

This sentence struck me: "White [head of NRCS] said he thinks USDA can approve some of the procedures in a month." I wonder. If there's no one to challenge the changes, he's probably right. But if Ducks Unlimited or others think it's unwise/unfair, I'd assume they'd have to go through rule-making, though on the third hand I'm not sure how much rule-making NRCS does.  In the old days that wasn't part of the agency's culture, simply because they were always helping farmers, never hurting them.

Once again this is in the pothole area, and is a caution to us bureaucrats who assume once you identify a thing, it's that thing forever.

A Great Parenthetical Statement

"(Liston operated so fast that he once accidentally amputated an assistant's fingers along with a patient's leg, according to Hollingham. The patient and the assistant both died of sepsis, and a spectator reportedly died of shock, resulting in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality.)"

Atul Gawande, on 200 years of surgery, here.

India and the Caste System

Via Tyler Cowen, a post on the Indian caste system.  What's interesting to me is the way the whole structure of society enforces the system--i.e., no thought of the household doing its own waste and cleaning, even though the dalit who owns the franchise doesn't do a good job.  To be fair to the writer, I suspect that's partly the lack of supplies and support (no Home Depots in India?) and the difficulty of the job, probably being more difficult than here, but also prestige--cleaning one's own toilet would lose face.

Given the location of the post, some may see it as a conservative take on the system, but even so it's informative.

It's always fascinating to see how humans can contort themselves into knots.

Cross Compliance

In the old days "cross-compliance" simply meant if you participated in the program for crop A on your farm you couldn't expand your acreage of crop B. ("Offsetting compliance"  meant you could n't expand your acreage on other farms if you participated in one farm.

These days "cross compliance" refers to sod/swamp, and it's controversial.  A set of organizations sent a letter asking for no cross compliance.  Former NRCS chiefs sent a letter supporting it.

The requirement was in effect from 1986 to 1995.  I suspect, but don't know, that it wasn't very effective.  SCS and ASCS had big problems working out how to enforce it and I suspect FCIC/RMA was never much involved, at least until well into the 90's.

In thinking about the possible problems with such a provision, a good part of the problem is timing. Ideally the first contact a farmer has with a USDA agency, including crop insurance agency, should involve a checking of the conservation compliance status for the farmer's operation.  If she has highly erodible land is there a conservation plan of operation in place and up-to-date?  If there's wetland, what's the status? If there's a problem, the farmer needs to fix it or bypass crop insurance.  In the 90's sharing access to that information would be difficult because it wasn't all in one place.  These days it should be technically feasible, if probably still bureaucratically difficult.

I wonder if crop insurance is subject to the administration's Do Not Pay rules?

The Size of a One-Person Farm: 2,000 Acres?

From FarmDocDaily's discussion of possible payment limitations on crop insurance:

A significant number of family farms with one full-time operator would exceed acre limits between 1,800 and 2,700 acres.

That's bigger than the average Illinois grain farm.  I continue to be amazed by how productive our farms are.

Conservatives Against Farm Bill

The good folks at Washington Times find conservatives who see dangers in the new farm bill as reported out by Senate Ag--if prices drop the government's exposure increases.

Wish I Was the Lovable Fool

From Barking Up the Wrong Tree:

"The best predictor of team success in the workplace is how the members feel about one another. In a choice between working with a lovable fool and a competent jerk, people almost always choose the lovable fool no matter what they say they want."

Sodsaver Provision

The Sustainable Ag coalition blogs about sodsaver/cross compliance here.  They say:

While the Sodsaver provision in the Senate bill does not, as we had proposed, deny all crop insurance subsidies on newly broken out land, it does provide for a 50 percent reduction in the subsidy.  It also includes two important provisions that prevent people from gaming the system to increase their revenue insurance coverage at the expense of taxpayers and the environment.  One keeps the newly broken out land isolated from other crop acres the producer may have when calculating insurable yields.  The other requires the operator to take a percentage of the county average yield until being able to show a multi-year yield history.

They go on to note a similar provision in the 2008 act was neutered. I assume enforcing this would require the insurance agents to access FSA data.

I wonder how the GIS system handles history--can you go back through historical land use layers?  This sort of issue, breaking out "noncropland" for annual crops has been a perennial issue in ag programs.  One question I'm not sure ever got answered is: does cropland ever become noncropland, when "noncropland" the land hasn't yet been devoted to "nonagricultural uses".

I remember one of the Great Plains state specialists assuring me that the county office would know the different between land which had once been cropped and land which had never been cropped.  I was dubious then and am more dubious today.

On the Lack of French Snacks and French Slim

Via Tyler Cowen, a post arguing that the French, particularly French kids, don't snack.  I wonder, no vending machines? (Tried to do some research--this article says Japan has 10 times the number of vending machines as France, but it's twice the population.  In 2008 France banned all vending machines from schools).

And this, from Chris Blattman is a video showing how the French stay slim. Of course it involves sex, what else?

Ben Franklin and Tofu

Don't really know how I feel about this: Ben Franklin is one of my heroes, and a great bureaucrat.  Vegetarians and foodies I've reservations about.  But Boston 1775 reveals Ben Franklin discovered tofu for America!

A Good Paragraph

"The question for the rest of this election is how to judge what matters and what doesn't. I'd argue that we -- that is to say, you and I -- can't: If you're reading Wonkbook right now, you're really, really weird. You start your day with a policy e-mail. That's not how most Americans do it. And if you're weird, think about how weird I am: I start my day by writing a policy e-mail. There is no reason on earth for you to believe that I have some special insight into the mind of the average swing voter. Quite the opposite, actually."

From Ezra Klein at Wonkbook.

The Myth of Texas Football

Texas football is supposedly all-encompassing  I recently noted that a high school in Texas had a bigger weight room than the Redskins (was that RGIII'?). 

But maybe that's a myth--note the second graphic in this post, which shows the home states of NFL players in proportion to their population.  Texas is not first, nor is Florida.  Instead  Louisiana and Mississippi top the list with a number of other states (like Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania)in the next category.  Texas is in the third category (no higher than 11th), along with such states as Connecticutt.

How Congresspeople Keep Groups Happy

The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition posts about the bill coming out of Senate Ag.  They include this:

The latter [the matching grant initiative, part of SARE] was authorized by Congress, along with the rest of SARE, back in 1990, but to date it has never received an appropriation.

Pardon my cynicism, but what that tells me is for 22 years someone in Congress is doing a song and dance keeping the (few) people behind SARE and the grant idea happy, or if not happy at least supportive in terms of dollars and votes, by reauthorizing the provision each farm bill but never appropriating the money.  To quote someone in the movies: "show me the money".

McDonalds Is Special, in France

Dirk Beauregarde discusses the role of McDonalds in France:

Twenty or so years ago, McDonald’s were at best tolerated and at worst unwelcome in many French towns. They were the symbols of lousy nutrition and American colonisation. Nowadays, McDonalds are part and parcel of the French cullinary landscape . In my corner of small town France we have four McDonald’s outlets, two of which offer a 24/24 7 day a week drive in service. However,, in consumption terms, McDonalds is still at « treat status ». Most families will have a McDonald’s once or even twice a month. We are not at daily consumption. Most popular mealtime of the week a tour local McDonald’s – Sunday lunchtime- all the local outlets are packed. 

[Emphasis added]

Distinguished Lawyer/Bureaucrat: Ralph Linden

According to this Government Executive post, Ralph Linden is one of the USDA winners and one of 54 Presidential  Distinguished Rank Award winners. (If I remember, the "Rank" honors a former bureaucrat Ralph's in OGC--used to be the main attorney for FSA matters. The detail in the story doesn't include a description of his special accomplishments, though I'd suspect it's for his cumulative career. 

A good man.

OIG's Thoughts

Via Chris Clayton at DTN, USDA's OIG has a report out reviewing the results of their and GAO's audits as in the light of lessons for the new farm bill:

• they ding RMA and NRCS for deficient controls over operations and they're going to look at FSA controls on the biomass program.
• SNAP--going to compare SNAP database with SSA's Death file.
• staffing and workforce planning issues for FSA, FS, and FSIS.
• concerns for FSA on peanut prices (NASS inaccurate), controls on farm-stored collateral, and problems with MILC "dairy operation" definitions.
• concerns for NRCS on controls of conservation easements and management controls for CSP
• concerns for FNS on SNAP: checking background of participating retailers, security of the EBT system and control of SNAP retailer fraud
• FSA controls over emergency loans, over loan collateral, over interest rates on guaranteed loans

It's All in the Spin: Farm Bill

."Farmers will no longer be paid for crops they are not growing, will not be paid for acres that are not actually planted, and will not receive support absent a drop in price or yields."

From the press release from Chairwoman Stabenow.  That's all very well and good, but years ago the spin was something to the effect of:  "Farms will no longer be locked into growing a specific crop to earn benefits and will have flexibility to plant any crop they wish."  I'm still wondering about the WTO classification on the draft.

[Updated to add "Years ago", as when Pat Roberts, the ranking Republican on the Senate committee, was pushing Freedom to Farm as chair of House Ag.]

Meta Study of Organic Farms

The LA times reports on a study in Nature which looked at studies of organic agriculture, finding an average 20 percent difference in productivity.  The impact varies by crop, with annuals more affected than perennials and fruits.  

One commenter spins:

In fact, in cases in which growers used techniques that are considered to be the best practices for organic farming, the gap between organic and conventional yields narrowed to 13%.
"If you do things as well as you can, then the yield difference is very small," Cavigelli said.

There's no indication of whether the non-organic farms were using their "best practices", but my cynical self suspects they weren't.  There's also no indication of whether the comparison was crop to crop, or acre to acre (the latter meaning the total productivity of an acre over several years).

When Old Men Frown on Young Men Carousing

Sen. McCain is to be honored for his service, but....  From what I've read of his life, he was a world-class carouser when a midshipman at Annapolis and well into middle age, excepting the years when he was in the Hanoi Hilton.  So I can only smile at his outrage over the recent Secret Service/military hooha.  The men involved showed bad judgment and poor morals, but it's a bit sanctimonious for Sen. McCain to cast a stone.  If consorting with a prostitute is cause to lose one's federal job, Sen. Vitter should be sent back to Louisiana.

Flash from the Committee: Pay Limit

Chris Clayton reports the Senate Ag committee plans to wrap up its version of the 2012 farm bill today.  He says:

The bill considered by the committee on Thursday also lowered the adjusted gross income eligibility to $750,000. Moreover, the bill makes major changes to language involving "actively engaged" to further restrict who is eligible for payments.

There will be a study to determine the feasibility of whether popcorn should be considered a commodity crop.

 Apparently they agreed to tweak the bill enough to satisfy the cotton/rice/peanut group.[Updated: according to Politico they did something for cotton, but not peanuts and rice, much to the disgust of  Chambliss and Cochran.]

Get Educated and Live Longer

Ran across a map of the country this morning, the URL for which I lost, but here's a close replacement, showing color-coded counties, representing their life expectancy.  The pattern is for the coasts to have the highest life expectancy, Appalachia, the Delta, and reservations to have the lowest.

The color coding meant that there was only one county in upstate New York which stood out as long-lived: Tompkins county.  Why?  That's where Ithaca is, the home of Ithaca College and Cornell University.  Education makes a difference.  Maybe the best way to cut healthcare expenditures is to improve our education system?

[Updated with the url from the Rural Blog which triggered this post. Interesting how color coding and different metrics affect one's perspective.]

Great Bureaucrats: Bob Mondloch

Bob Mondloch and I (and Les Fredrickson) worked together in the early 70's on the MAP (Management Analysis Project--think Business Process Reengineering 20 years before that buzzphrase came in existence). Bob was a good man, sharp, hardworking, good judgment, sense of humor.  He'd been detailed from whatever the conservation division was called in those days--must have been when Nixon and Earl Butz were trying to kill the Agricultural Conservation Program to MAP as its executive director. At that time he was either assistant to the director of the conservation division or deputy, but he may have become director right before he died. He died very young, or so it seems to me now, probably in his early 40's, I think of a heart attack, and probably before 1976. 

Bob was one of a group of youngish men who moved from the field to DC in the 60's to replace the generation which had run the agency since the New Deal days and WWII.  Some found other jobs as the Republicans downsized ASCS and the boom in commodity prices seemed to be making the agency obsolete.  Some stayed on and led the agency through the 70's and 80's.

Anyhow, I ran across a reference to Mondloch House and tracked down this page, which offers a side of Bob I never knew about, but which is no surprise at all.  A notice of the marriage of a son in 1991 says Bob's widow was chaplain at Mount Vernon Hospital.

Farm Bill Delayed

Trying to keep everyone happy is hard, and Sen. Stabenow didn't succeed with her draft farm bill.  Politico and others observe the peanut and rice people are upset, so consideration of the draft in committee was delayed. 

In Defense of Bricks and Mortar

I've often said giving farmers on-line access to FSA programs/operations is the wave of the future.  But now I need to recognize the other side.  Here's a post at Ezra Klein's Wonkblog on the virtues of opening storefronts to sell Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance. It will possibly take another generation before Americans are equal to the challenge of understanding online applications.  Maybe even longer.  (I'm sure it will come eventually.) Until then, there's a role for hand holding and in-person explanations.

Senate Farm Bill and Farm Policy

Keith Good has a discussion, partly from Chris Clayton, of the provisions of the farm bill to be considered by Senate ag on Wednesday and the reactions of different farm groups.

I think I've reached the point where there have been so many changes in legal provisions over the years that I can't follow the draft very well.  For example, one thing which did strike me was the provision that the producer's decision would apply to all the cropland he or she controlled in the county.  That seems to be a break from the past in which an operator could have multiple farms in a county.   I don't know if that's right, and if it is, how much it will complicate the process of maintaining farm records.

The fact that program coverage is on planted acreage--don't know how that fits with WTO but since they did provisions for upland cotton to handle the dispute with Brazil I assume the writers are happy with it.

Does Al Gore Have the Last Laugh?

Turns out he's a member of the inaugural class of members of the Internet Hall of Fame.  I expect all Republicans who laughed at him to humbly apologize to the winner of the 2000 election (popular vote division).