Technology on the Farm

Slate has a discussion of the future of robots on the farm.  The theory is that young farmers come from outside agriculture so don't mind hand work and don't have the money to invest in expensive robots.  On the other hand they're more likely to be techies than the production farmers who are in their 50's, 60's, and 70's, so might be early adopters.    So it's a good, decisive on-the-one-hand, but on-the-other article.

I remember the farmers in Sherman County, KS in 1992 were almost all over 40, which the CED saw as an obstacle to adoption of Infoshare then. That's 20 years ago so a lot of them are now retired, and the number of farmers has probably dropped a good bit.

Why Did It Need a Cloture Vote

The farm bill in the Senate passed its cloture vote with ease, so they can now go on to debate and propose amendments and ultimately vote.  I'm curious though whether such a vote has always been needed or whether in the good old days they could just proceed, perhaps by unanimous consent. 

Innovation in Crop Reporting

No, this isn't an instance where FSA has innovated.  It's innovation on the crop insurance side, driven by smartphones and private enterprise.

Lake Woebegon and GSA

According to Federal Times:

Last year, 87 percent of General Services Administration employees got bonuses averaging nearly $1,200 per recipient, according to Federal Times' analysis of government data.

Some things are just ridiculous.

Farm Bill Is in the News

In both the Post and the Times.

From the Post:

 It may the be most tangible symbol yet that the age of austerity has dawned in Washington. The bill, which sets the nation’s agricultural and food policy for the next five years, enjoys rare bipartisan support and could be the only significant piece of deficit-reduction legislation to gain congressional approval this year.

The lede from the Times:

At the same time that high crop prices are prompting farmers to expand into millions of acres of land once considered unsuitable for farming, Congress is considering expanding a federal insurance program that reimburses farmers for most losses or drops in prices. 

Yes, they're writing about the same piece of legislation.
[Updated: The White House is now supporting it.]

FNS and Lost SNAP Cards

A smattering of stories reporting on the Food and Nutrition Service's proposed regulation (out for public comment) permitting states to request justification for issuing a replacement SNAP (food stamp) EBT card when it's the fourth one within a year.  Here's the FNS post.

This bothers me, but probably not enough to do the research I'd need to.  I'm bothered in part by this language:

The proposed minimum threshold is based on an analysis by FNS of electronic transaction data that demonstrates a statistically significant difference when a client reaches his or her fourth replacement card, indicating that transaction activity is three times more likely to be flagged as potential trafficking, which is the exchange of benefits for cash or other consideration, compared to clients with three or fewer replacement cards.

Now I'd assume the EBT cards operate like a debit card; lose one, you notify the issuer and they put a hold on the account and you get a new card.   I can understand that some of the SNAP recipients are prone to lose their cards; while not a recipient I've trouble losing things as my senility comes on faster.  So what I would imagine happens: recipient goes to the store on Monday and uses the card.  Recipient absent-mindedly puts the card in the trash on the way out.  Recipient needs the card on Wednesday and finds it's missing.  Recipient notifies issuer.  If someone found the card and used it, then there'd be a couple days of transactions.  So I could handle issuing a replacement with no more justification than "I lost it and can't find it" and having the government cover the transaction costs..  And it'd probably be hard to differentiate between the misuse of a found card and the use of a card sold by the SNAP recipient, just by looking at the transactions.

But, from the language I quoted I'm not sure that's what's going on.

And my bottom line would be, the default position for the government should be no more forgiving than a commercial bank is.  

Obama's Personal Economic Stimulus: Eating Out

See this post at Ezra Klein showing the impact of a POTUS visit on a sandwich shop.

Failure To Rescue

That's the theme of Atul Gawande's commencement address (hat tip Ezra Klein).  Worth reading, since failure is inevitable, and recognizing and responding to failure is valuable. Unfortunately in government sometimes the people (political appointees) who fail are out the door before they have the chance to learn from their mistakes.

[Update: Orin Kerr at Volokh provides excerpts of two good commencement speeches, particularly the one on the role of luck in life.]

White House Garden Book: No Politics, No Gardening

A couple reviews of Mrs. Obama's book are in.  Grist says there's no politics in it (in the sense of urging political action to change food or garden policies); Obamafoodorama says there's no real how-to gardening in it.  Here's an earlier post on it: there's also no Obama daughters in it.

The Good Old Days of Steel and Coal

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money posts 1940 pictures of Pittsburgh.  A reminder that government works.

Racism Among the Establishment

Conservatives often point out quite fairly that eugenics was often a strong thread of Progressive thought:  it fit the Progressive optimism that everything can be understood and once understood can be improved.

However, I just finished the Jean Smith bio of Eisenhower.  It was interesting, moves along very well, sides with Montgomery in a couple instances and accuses Ike of spin (heaven forbid) in places, thinks well of Ike generally, but has a few howlers of errors which one may perhaps forgive on account of the author's advancing age (1.6 million sq ft in the White House?).

Back to racism: the pre-WWII military officer class was part of the WASP establishment (Patton loaned Stimson his horses to ride) and racism was common throughout, though not necessarily in the bedroom (witness McArthur and his mistress).  This isn't a theme of Smith's, but it comes through in several places.

32-Ounce Drinks

The mayor of NYC is proposing to ban drinks over 16 ounces.  Much ado about it.

However the good mayor and I both remember the good old days, though I'm a tad older and a lot poorer.

The Coke bottle we grew up with was 6.5 oz.

EWG and Crop Insurance

Politico is just one of several articles on EWG's attack on crop insurance, using data on crop policies and policyholders. (Here's the link.)

In 26 cases, policyholders received an annual discount — carried on the government’s books — of $1 million or more in 2011. In 10,152 cases, it was $100,000 or more, while the vast majority of farmers received far smaller discounts averaging closer to $5,000.
“The eye-opening analysis shows crop insurance is not only very expensive,” said Craig Cox, EWG’s senior vice president of agriculture and natural resources, “but also very, very generous to large and highly profitable farm businesses.”
Corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton are among the leading beneficiaries, just as they dominate American agriculture. At the same time, fruit and vegetable growers, which account for about one-fifth of farm receipts, are disproportionately represented since their crops tend to be high priced and therefore more likely subject to higher premiums.
Potatoes, tomatoes, apples, onions and grapes accounted for 36 percent of the high-end subsidies over $1 million, which carried some irony since environmentalists have long favored such specialty crops.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76913.html#ixzz1wf2BLmap

Politico points out differences between crop insurance and FSA's farm programs but ignores one.  Because of payment limitation, I suspect EWG will would not find as many city dwellers benefiting from subsidized crop insurance.  One of the things EWG seemed to delight in with their database on FSA's payments was the revelation of where recipients lived, particularly in big cities and wealthy ZIP codes.  I don't know if FSA and FCIC ever tried to cross-match their producers, but my suspicion is that crop insurance's "producers", those people and entities who are the policyholders, come much closer to matching John Doe's idea of who is a farmer is than do FSA's producers.  

Note: I changed "will" to "would" in the previous paragraph because it turns out EWG couldn't get identities of producers; Congress barred it.

USDA Techies Represented by Sheep

That seems to be the message here (via Govloop).  (At least they didn't use bulls.)

Water Fountain: Bottled Water::Home Phone:Cellphone

In the old days we had public water fountains and landline phones in the home, also pay phone booths in public spaces.  These were shared utilities, whether provided by government or family, NGO's or private business.

In the new days everyone carries her own bottled water and her own cellphone; nothing is shared, all is private and individual.

Inflation in Machinery

Via today's Farm Policy, an illustration of the economics of farming at the farmdoc blog  (“Machinery Cost Estimates for 2012 and 2013”) that farmers are price takers: ”

": Prices of new machinery have increased for most machines between 2010 and 2012. For example, the list price of a 215 horsepower tractor in 2012 is $215,000. A comparable sized tractor in 2010 has a list price of $181,500. Between 2010 and 2012, the price of this tractor has increased by 18 percent."

 Now I don't remember any big price increases on cars or trucks in recent years, so what's happening is the implement manufacturers are raising their prices to what the market will bear, and there's not enough competition to keep the prices down.   Any guess as to implement prices if and when corn drops to $3?

I Smell

Research proves that old people smell [different than younger people].

Rooting for Clothes

Dave Berri at Freakonomics uses a Seinfeld phrase on politics: "rooting for clothes".  The idea is that Cleveland sports fans loved LeBron until he moved, Redskins fans haded Deon Sanders until he switched from Dallas to the Skins, etc. etc.

We can also apply the idea to politics, since in many cases the parties switch positions depending on whether they're in power or not.

Mrs. Obama's Garden Book

She's on the move promoting her book.

I'll give her credit; I was originally afraid the garden was just a fad thing.  It's still a vehicle for spin, but that comes with the territory.

[Updated: here's a pretty full description of the contents at Obamafoodorama.]

Guinness Puzzle Solved

The world has waited with bated breath to find the answer to the puzzle: why do bubbles in Guinness fall, instead of rise.  We now know, thanks to some Irish mathematicians.  (The tongue is firmly in the cheek in this piece at Technology Review.)

"Heroes": The Devaluation of Standards

There's a kerfuffle over some guy on MSNBC voicing reservations over calling people "heroes", thinks it encourages war..  And Mitt Romney  has a video in which he says: " “But every woman and every man who has or now defends American liberty share in their heritage of greatness. Every veteran is the greatest of his generation.”

To all of which, I say b.s.  We're now living in Lake Woebegon, where all the women are good-looking, all the children above average, and all the veterans/military are heroes and the greatest.  It's also the country where the "gentleman's C" has become everyone's B.

In fact, some served, some did not. Some did their jobs, some did not.  Some were very brave on some days, some were not.  Some received medals, some did not.  Some were Americans, some were not. Some were Germans, Japanese, Russians, Vietnamese, some were not.  Draw a Venn diagram and the sets will overlap.  All were human. Read "The Red Badge of Courage", then read Audie Murphy's memoir.

[Update: Tom Ricks provides some backup to my position here. Conor Friedersdorf has a long post on the original MSNBC program and the reaction thereto.]

Props to Jimmy Carter

Obituaries this week for Wesley Brown, who graduated from Annapolis in 1949 as the first black to make it through.  From the obits his time was not easy, being hazed continuously for four years.  Both the Times and Post obits observe a handful of whites were friendly, including a young Jimmy Carter who was a teammate on the track team.

Congress: No Negative Earmarks

One of the things Congress likes to do is the "negative earmark", by which I mean sticking a provision in an appropriation act stating that no money shall be spent for such and such purpose as authorized in an existing statute.  It's like an earmark, because it scratches some specific itch, and it's done through the appropriation process which means, usually, there's no up and down vote, but because it bans spending of money it's negative, not positive.

Well, the gun nuts have used the negative earmark to make it impossible for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to review any application for relief from provisions of the law, including the complete ban on ex-felons possessing firearms.  This provision has now bitten former Representative Randy Cunningham, who is nearing release from  prison (for bribery) and would like to be able to hunt. The link is from a TPM post, containing the letter written by the federal judge back to Cunningham.

It's so funny, I could cry. 

[Updated: changed title and added clause to last sentence of first paragraph.]

I Lost My Wallet: USDA

This post on Govloop describes an approach the Portugese government had set up:

Essentially, it was a place you went when... you lost your wallet. What the government had done was bring together all the agencies that controlled a document or card that was likely to have been in your wallet. As a result, rather than running around from agency to agency filling out your name and address over and over again on dozens of different forms, you went to a single desk, filled out one set of forms to get new copies of say, your social insurance card, your drivers license, healthcare card and library card.

It reminds me of an episode back in my career, perhaps in connection with USDA's InfoShare project.  Someone's parent had died, leaving her some farmland, I think in the Shenandoah valley.  She had tried going to the USDA offices to get help with what to do, but found the whole process confusing and very frustrating. 

There should be a simple process for such cases, although it's much more important (and equally as unlikely) for there to be an "I lost my wallet" office sponsored by any government at any level in the US.

Everything Is Owned, Except Feral Hogs

If you had asked me, I say everything in the US has an owner but not so.  Feral hogs in Texas are unowned, and you need no license to hunt them.

Extension has been having a lot of posts on feral hogs--just another thing to worry about.

Eat Your Lettuce

This Ann Althouse post seems to say that. 

Of course, the photo catches the lettuce at just the right moment; another week and the rows will be invading each other and starting to look scraggly.

End the USDA: So Say IA Republicans (150 Years Is Too Much?)

The first point in their party platform is:

Agriculture

1. We call for the abolition of the Federal Department of Agriculture, returning control to the state and local governments. 
   
   
    

To be fair, this is only the draft platform, not the final one, and it reflects the Paulites vision of government.  The Post blog is more interested in "birther" nonsense.

[Updated title]

Raising the Debt Limit: What Happens to Plain Folks?

When the Dems and Reps get into a fight over raising the debt limit, as they did last year and look to be heading for this year, what happens to the plain folks?

According to this extension post, at least one soldier got confused by the games.

Those Great Third Grade Teachers

Freakonomics has a post thanking a third grade teacher, and the Post reports on a Wall Street type memorializing his third grade teacher.  My third grade teacher was Charlotte Kenyon, who had, in today's language, had gravitas, both literally and figuratively.  Back in the day the obese were a rarity in the land, but Mrs. Kenyon was fat.  But she was also determined and dedicated.  The student grapevine told stories about her, usually exaggerated.  But having stories told about one means the teacher was significant, and she was.  She was the teacher alumni would use as a reference point, a shared experience, a force of nature: "you went to the Forks, did you have Mrs. Kenyon?"

Unlike the two posts I link to, I can't recall any particular anecdotes or inspiration she gave me, except for the time she  called me to the blackboard for a spelling quiz.  My memory is likely wrong, but I'm thinking I thought I was hot stuff then, smart, reading ahead of classmates.  But the blackboard exercise somehow revealed my shortcomings in spelling, something I needed.

Anyhow, she ended up with a school named after her.

A Totally Partisan Congress? No

One aspect of the progress of the new farm bill is the existence of bi-partisanship.  Here's a Politico story on the problems in the Senate with rice and peanuts.  While there's tension in both Houses, the tension now is among the "Aggies", as Sen. Chambliss calls them.  The Senators and Representatives with allegiances to different commodity groups are sparring, but I expect them to come together in the end.

There are the outliers who are moved by policy ideas, which can correlate to partisanship.  A few Republican members oppose federal expenditures on agriculture, reflecting their general positions (and the lack, I suspect being cynical, of significant agriculture in their district.

We Love Our Schadenfreude

A link to John Phipps who links to a Youtube video.  If you drive a Lamborghini you're fair game to the rest of the world.  We can laugh because no one was injured.

218 Frogs, Not a Prince Among Them

Speaker Boehner is quoted in a Politico article bemoaning the difficulty of assembling 218 frogs from his Republican caucus in order to pass a bill.

How a Stonehead Handles Phone Solicitors

His post.  One surprise is the casual mention of receiving solicitations from outside the UK.

The State of Morality

By many measures the state of morality in the US is strong, and getting stronger.  That's not the way the people see it though, according to this Politico report.

Farmers Didn't Like Big Cities: Corruption in the Capitals

John Sides at The Monkey Cage posts on a study which shows the level of governmental corruption is higher when the state capital is more isolated. One factor is there's more news media coverage when the big media are closer to the capital, therefore less corruption.

Thinking about our capitals, most of them are not in the principal cities of the states.  I presume it's because there was a tug of war between the rural districts and the urban areas.  The farmers didn't want to add to the power of New York City or Philadelphia or Boston by making it the capital, so the compromise, given the power of the rural areas, was to make a smaller city the capital.  Today we just think that Albany, Harrisburg, and Springfield are naturally the capitals, without realizing the path by which they got there.

Saverin: Why Singapore?

Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield in the movie, is receiving lots of attention because he's renounced his U.S. citizenship, presumably to avoid paying some taxes on his money from Facebook.

One thing's not been explained in the news articles I've seen: why Singapore?   Well, as usual Wikipedia has the answer: Singapore's tax rules encourage tax evasion.

France Is Safer Than US and the French Are Tougher

That's my takeaway from Dirk Beauregarde: " Even on Tuesday (May 15th), as the newly-inaugurated président’s motorcade drove down the Champs Elysées, François Hollande stood up in his open top limo waving and smiling at the crowds, as torrential rain poured down."

There are some of us who remember Presidents in open limousines as they were before Nov. 23, 1963.  None remember when Presidents were rained upon in their inaugural parades.

Google's Driverless Car Comes to Washington

Here's a Politico report on the car's success in navigating Capitol Hill streets, not the halls yet. It includes this question:

But there are questions about its viability — will consumers buy into losing control behind the wheel?

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76459.html#ixzz1vEYR7joD

Speaking only for myself, I could see buying it--I'm nearing the point where my self-confidence is my driving ability is starting to fade, so an old geezer I've love the ability to delegate 99 percent of the driving to a computer.  I suspect that's how the innovation will come; something like Segway which was promoted as revolutionary but has turned out to be a niche filler.  Between geezers and drunks there's a big niche to fill.

A Glimmer of Hope for Target Prices?

Apparently House Ag Committee is leaning to preserving target prices, but perhaps on planted acres.  That's according to today's Farm Policy.

There's fear of a collapse of prices.

And there's infighting between regions and crops.


And so it goes.

Good Looking Redheads and Drone Aircraft and Tractors

Not that I'm a chauvinist I have a weakness for good looking redheads.  Mary Cummings is such a person, also former F4A and F-18 Navy pilot, also farm girl, also MIT professor, also working with John Deere and Office of Naval Research.  This is a Wired Conference interview with her, talking about the current status and future prospects of drones on aircraft carriers, in warfare, and in agriculture.  Brief video of 2 John Deere robotic tractors spraying an orchard.

The last piece of the interview (total about 18 minutes) is the most surprising one, albeit military and not agricultural.

Poor Software Design: British Style

A couple blogs I follow have noted a report over in the UK that there are 17,000 pregnant men in the National Health System.  At least one of the blogs commented it's a reminder of how easy it is to get garbage into an automated system and thus we should be careful in our reliance on reports. 

That's all true, but the problem really is a design problem: apparently there's no validations on the entries for this particular field, or at least there's insufficient validations.  One could presumably also find in the report some women with prostate problems and men with gynecological problems.  Absence of thought is a universal.

Organic = Smug Self-Righteousness?

That's my impression from the research reported on at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.   It's not eating the organic food which makes one a jerk; it's being exposed to the concept.  Apparently the logic is the exposure makes one more conscious of morality, hence more judgmental and less willing to help others.

Small Dairy Help

Cornell U. extension has some things to help "small dairies", which have been going out of business in New York forever.

They use a 100-cow dairy as an example of "small", which still strikes odd because 30 or so was the average when I grew up (we had 12).  Though in surfing the web the other day I ran across claims of being able to handle milking of 200-300 cows with one person (maybe on the Wikipedia talk page, not sure).   That's not Moore's law of transistors, but it's a better improvement in productivity than higher education.

Cornell also has a map showing "Small Plants for Pasteurized Milk, Yogurt, etc.).  and a set of benchmarks (size of farm, milk per cow, acres per cow, etc.).  I'd think breed would be important: one farm has 25,000 lbs per cow, which has to be Holstein, another has 13,000 lbs, which has to be Jersey or Guernsey or whatever.

Move to Massachusetts, It's Best

Here's a reasonably convincing article at Slate which boosts that far-left bastion of liberalism, Massachusetts. There's some surprising and counter-intuitive statistics included.

Who Invented Plywood?

Sometime ago there was a listing of the most important inventions of the 20th century.  I thought of that while viewing this video on plywood (it's rather arty and for all the warning about table saws, they don't use a guard)--I owe a hat tip to someone, not sure who.

Anyhow, I went to Wikipedia and found the answer(s):

1. the ancient Egyptians
2. Imannuel Nobel, father of the Alfred of dynamite fame.  Although his Wikipedia entry just credits him with inventing the lathe used in plywood manufacture, but that may have been the key innovation needed to make plywood on a mass scale.

The father invents something which is a prerequisite to modern society and the son something to destroy prerequisites to modern society.  And so it goes.

Misinformation from the Times: Food

The Times has an interview with an NIH mathematician today who says, in part:

Did you ever solve the question posed to you when you were first hired — what caused the obesity epidemic?

We think so. And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.

Sounds to me as if he's been reading Mr. Pollan.  The truth of course is there was no such long lasting change in policy. Yes, Earl Butz said "fence row to fence row", but his impact on farm policy was mostly gone by the time Jimmy Carter was elected .  We had annual production adjustment programs into the 1990's and beginning in 1986 removed millions of acres of cropland from production through CRP.

Can Obama Win Alaska?

On this chart showing the support within different states for same-sex civil marriage, Alaska sticks out as a McCain supporting state which also supports SSCM. Makes me wonder: since Palin won't be on the Republican ticket in 2012 is there a chance for Obama to win Alaska?  Nah, probably not.  Just a day-dream.

More Moslems Than Methodists in IL?

That's what John Phipps reports.

USDA Birthday: Obama Ignores the Good Stuff

The President issues a proclamation noting the 150th birthday of USDA.  He touches on conservation, food safety, electrification, food stamps, research, market expansion (domestic and foreign), but entirely ignores anything which could be construed as endorsing AAA/ASCS/FSA.  :-( Leaves out crop insurance as well.  :-)

Summary of ARC

From Gary Schnitkey at IL extension, a summary of the Agricultural Risk Coverage program in the Senate Ag's bill:

Summary

ARC will make payments if revenues reach lower levels. In years in which revenue declines, ARC payments will be useful to farmers.

ARC payments will offset some of the losses in gross revenue. The entire loss will not be covered because 1) the .89 factor used to calculate the guarantee effectively puts an 11% deductible on revenue losses, 2) payments are a factor of the shortfall (.80 for the county program and .65 for the farm program), and 3) ARC payments are capped at 10% of benchmark revenue.

If prices are persistently low for several years, ARC payments will decline over time as lower prices enter into the calculation of benchmark revenue. Hence, ARC will provide payments in early years of a multi-year price decline, eventually though farmers will need to fully adjust to price declines as ARC payment decline.

A couple of thoughts:

• there's a cap on the acres (average of plantings 2004-8) which presumably could replace the acreage base, but may involve such things as: the initial establishment and the right to appeal, and the problems of handling prevented planting, CRP acreage, rotations, and changes from one crop to another.  Reminds me of the days of establishing NCA's and acreage bases.
• interesting issue on collecting data--do you collect production data for every participant every year, or only if there's a possibility/probability of qualifying for ARC payment?