Farmer Software in the Cloud

The Times has a piece by a business professor describing some software applications, a couple of which reside in the cloud: FarmLogs and Farmeron,.

I suppose the next step will be communication between MIDAS and the data in such applications.

Correcting Errors: Does the Internet Help?

Somewhere on the Net this week there was a discussion of whether the Internet helps or hurts in correcting myths and errors.  It may have been Prof. Bernstein (or maybe someone else) who opined that some errors were checked and caught very quickly, while others persisted on and on and on.

In the latter category is this from Gail Collins in today's Times, in the course of beating up on Congress for not working on the postal system or the farm bill:

The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. [emphasis added]

The truth is that we haven't had the authority to pay farmers not to grow crops  for at least 16 years (unless one includes the Conservation Reserve Program, which normally people don't and Ms. Collins is not).   But this error will probably never die, it's like the ejecta from a volcano eruption which has escaped into the atmosphere and persists, dimming the sun of truth.  

Marketing Quotas

FSA goes through the motions of determining whether to declare marketing quotas for upland cotton.  It's a nullity, because there's no way to determine the acreage allotments for cotton if quotas were declared.  If quotas are declared, the next step is to provide notices of farm acreage allotments to farmers, who then vote in a referendum whether to agree to the imposition of quotas.  The last referendum on wheat or cotton was back in the mid 1960's, and it was defeated. 

If Congress had any sense they'd kill the 1938 Act, the permanent legislation which comes back into effect whenever there's no farm bill passed before a crop year begins.

The Importance of Drudgery: Maintenance

As it happens, the Post has an article on Afghanistan, describing a post and equipment the Americans handed over to the Afghans which they lack the ability to maintain. And the Times has an article on the problems Assad's military is having maintaining its high-tech equipment, particularly helicopters, during the current hostilities.

The conjunction of the two is an occasion to once again observe the importance of drudgery.  Yes, it's ego-building to do things the first time, to buy fancy weapons, to give high-tech stuff to our allies.  It's good for us, it's good for our arms manufacturers, but it's bad.  Over the years I think I was pretty tolerant of my bosses, but what I couldn't stand was the people who had no regard for nitty-gritty, for the details, for all the steps needed to implement something and then, as I learned by painful experience, the need to spend time and money maintaining what we'd done.  It was all too easy for the big shots, for the guys in the ivory tower of the USDA Administration Building, to talk big.

Though I'm generally an Obama supporter, his administration started off wrong by talking of "shovel-ready" projects, as the President later admitted.  There shouldn't be many such projects in any agency, because you should be working on the stuff for which you have money, and not the stuff for which you may not get money.  And doing the work to take projects off the shelf and into the contracting process isn't likely to create many jobs.

Maintenance on the other hand could create jobs, but its got no sex appeal, no glamor. 

Me and Chipmunks

Via Ann Althouse, here's a piece with which I sympathize.  I have to admit, though, I reverted to my basic conservative side when I had to deal with an infestation of chipmunks in my garden.  Chipmunks are cute, but property is property and my vegetables are my vegetables.  I'm not sure what the food movement, all those urban gardeners, etc., do with the forces of nature against which we must fight.  Maybe you only get lots of pests when you've been gardening for lots of years.

Ink on the Finger

Josh Marshall says (Talking Points Memo) applying ink to a finger of a voter could eliminate multiple voting, which seems to be the worst problem voter ID might solve.  Works for me, as I've said before, though maybe only in comments elsewhere.

Conservatives Don't Like Crop Insurance: Texas and Cruz

Ted Cruz just won the Republican primary in Texas, meaning he's the next US Senator from there.  His reputation is: very smart, very conservative.  But I wonder--Texas agriculture is often beset by disaster, as witness the drought last year.  Not sure what its status is this year, but I'd be willing to bet during his 6 year term in office Texas will have some agricultural disasters.  And of course Texas ranching/farming is part of the self-image of Texas (all hat, no cattle, etc. etc.)

The Washington Times is a conservative newspaper, so I was struck this morning by a piece from a Heritage thinker, who picks up EWG's  populist viewpoint on crop insurance.  Big corporations profit at taxpayer expense.

So my prediction: at some point down the line Sen. Cruz will have to decide between his principles, as represented in the Heritage piece, and his constituents, who will need either crop insurance or a livestock disaster program.

Eagle Scouts

Ann Althouse quotes from a Wall Street Journal piece on Eagle Scouts.

"there are other, perhaps less obvious, Eagles as well: sexologist Alfred Kinsley, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Washington's disgraced ex-mayor Marion Barry...."

[Updated:  the Barry reference is surprising to me, because he would have been an Eagle Scout in the 1950's in the segregated South and I wouldn't have expected a thriving black Eagle Scout troop.]

Farm Bill Status and MIDAS

As of now, I don't have a clear picture of what will happen on the farm bill, mainly because the House Republicans don't seem to have a clear picture of what they want. Will we have a disaster bill only, or an extension, or a process leading to a 5 year bill?  Who knows.

I want to point out the problem I suspect MIDAS planners are having.  At some point they had to decide whether to support the livestock programs contained in the 2008 bill, which carried through 2011.  I've no idea which way they went: one alternative would be to say we need software to implement everything in the law as of right now, which presumably was sometime last year; another alternative would be to plan for what was in the law for 2012;  a third would be to plan to be flexible, to support whatever cockamanie ideas innovative policy designs Congress came up with.

Now the last alternative is the most difficult and most expensive; sticking to the 2008 language at some point is likely to mean wasting some money assuming Congress changes provisions for 2013.  Either way the managers are likely to be screwed, at least in being vulnerable to criticism.

[Updated: added link to the extension now pending in the House--Hat tip Farm Policy]

Our Weak Government

Via Ezra Klein, an article on the refusal by the overseer of Fanny and Freddy to okay a plan to offer forgiveness of housing debts.  I know very little about the pros and cons of the policy which Mr. DeMarco is rejecting, other than a number of liberal economists think it's a good idea.  DeMarco seems to argue it would be bad in the long run, which as a bureaucrat he doesn't like.

Instead of worrying about the policy, I just want to point out another instance of our weak government.  Whereas in a parliamentary system there'd be no problem in the prime minister getting such a policy executed, in our system there's a hurdle.  DeMarco has an independent source of power, making it difficult for the President to make a policy change.  This isn't a case of federalism, which is what I usually point to when I write about weak government, but structure at the national level.  But  both federalism and structure reflect our suspicion of governmental power, typical of the American society.

Permaculture as a Solution?

There's an outfit in the Midwest which is pushing "permaculture"--the idea if we could convert from annual crops to perennials we'd save on expenses for fuel, etc. and be more friendly to the environment.   I mention this because this Extension post on cotton includes this:

"A defining characteristic of cotton growth and development is that it is a perennial plant. Being a perennial plant means that it flowers and sets fruit over a long period of time. In its native habitat, or with adequate warmth, cotton would not die in the fall. Perennial plants also flower and produce seed as a secondary mechanism, as opposed to vegetative growth. Because cotton lint is produced from the seed coat, it is the essential challenge of cotton production to overcome the perennial nature of the plant. Nearly everything we do to manage a cotton crop is in response to its perennial nature in an attempt to produce seed and lint in an annual row crop environment."

 I've expressed my doubts about permaculture before, but with global warming the frost line will move north and we won't have to plant cotton every year. (In the Rio Grande valley they speak of "stub cotton", cotton which is growing from previous year plantings.)

I Was Wrong About Pearlie Reed

I posted about Mr. Reed's retirement, speculating that the Republicans "would be all over this".  Maybe the Republicans got lazy, or maybe they did due diligence and found there was nothing there, but Google doesn't show any new news pieces on him.   Good news for him. 

Grow Teff

That's what Idaho is doing, according to this Post article.  It's a grain used for Ethiopian fermented bread.  See this wikipedia article.

[Updated: A quote from the Post:

A combination of factors has spurred the growth of the U.S. teff market. One is scarcity: The Ethiopian government routinely bans its export to protect prices from rising inside the country during lean seasons. Another is a shift in American dietary habits. The rise in Ethio­pian immigrants and the concomitant rise in the popularity of Ethio­pian food have increased demand, as has the surge in vegetarianism (a two-ounce serving of teff has as much protein as an extra-large egg). Yet another is the increased awareness of gluten allergies; gluten-free teff is a welcome alternative to wheat.]

Drought and Land Prices

We were going through a boom in prices for farmland recently, but this farmgate post on how to pay the cash rent causes me to think the boom must be over.  Of course the EWG posts on how some farmers will make out because of revenue protection and the higher prices for the corn they do produce suggest the end of the boom doesn't mean the beginning of a bust.   It does, I suspect, mean more churn in production agriculture as some people get caught out and some people come through.

Condolences: Kevin and Inkblot

Kevin Drum is my favorite political blogger, because he mostly agrees with me. 

He suffered a loss, and I express my condolences.

How Political Parties Change

Back in the day, when Abe Lincoln was a Whig, the Republican Party believed in building things to support business. It used to be called "internal improvements", now it's called "infrastructure". One of Teddy Roosevelt's proudest boasts was that he built the Panama Canal.  And then Ike built the interstate highways and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Back in the day, when Andy Jackson was a Democrat, his party was racist.  Woodrow Wilson pushed segregation, southern Democrats used racism to solidify their one-party dominance of the region.

Sustainable Ag on Guide to Farm Loan Program

Sustainable Ag comments on the plain language guide FSA just issued.

Women in Ag School

Generally speaking, in my experience the county executive directors of ASCS/FSA county offices were graduates of the state land grant college.  I perceived, rightly or wrongly, a submerged conflict over advancement between the women who were mostly the program assistants (clerks) and the men who were the CED's.

This post caught my eye: women now outnumber men in undergraduate ag courses.

What Is a Dairy Animal?

Slate has a nice piece on why we mostly use cows milk for dairy products, and not goats or other mammals.

The Problem With Government Is...

We humans deal with assumptions and universals, but reality is a lot more messy.  Example 1 is the Pennsylvania voter ID law, which assumes that everyone either has a photo ID or can easily get one, because everyone has their birth certificate stashed away in their safe deposit box along with all other vital papers.

Example 2 is the reliance on crop insurance, because every farmer is rational and is going to buy it.  Chris Clayton at DTN reports getting calls from farmers like this:

"Is the government going to do anything? I don't have crop insurance.

How could you not have crop insurance? We've been saying since before the 2008 farm bill that you have to have crop insurance.

One farmer only has 160 acres. Crop insurance every year just didn't pencil out.

You didn't look into catastrophic coverage, or CAT?

I don't know what that is.

I wasn't sure what to think of this conversation, but I have to believe there are more people like this farmer out there. He's a small farmer in the scheme of things. He's never needed to rely on government payments and didn't want to. But now he doesn't have a corn crop and concerned the beans won't make anything either.

Is there some type of help available for him at the Farm Service Agency office. He said they couldn't think of anything that would specifically help him out."

 The advantage of disaster programs, perhaps their only advantage, is they apply across-the-board.  If that farmer and others like him make enough of a stink, Congress will do something ad hoc, which partially undermines the whole idea of crop insurance.  The situation is rather like that of a 30-year old who passes on health insurance because it didn't pencil out, then gets into a car crash which leaves her paralyzed.

[Updated to add the link.]

Voter Fraud on Fox and Those Liberals

Fox ran a piece on voter fraud in Kentucky, home of Sen. McConnell today.  Seems to be well-authenticated and widespread.  So much for those liberals who oppose voter Id laws by claiming there's no such thing as voter fraud, right?

One small problem: it seems that Kentuckians are people of honor, which means if you buy their vote they stay bought, so the "voter fraud" Fox is flogging is really "vote buying" ($25 a vote apparently).  As far as I can see requiring a photo id to vote would not have changed anything.

[I'm really going to have to stop blogging until after the election, or my partisan sympathies are going to run away with me.]

Budgetary Games and Livestock Programs

An innocent little question, based on the fact the House Republicans considering something like this (from Farm Policy):

"The bill extends a number of programs through 2012: the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program (SURE); Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP); Livestock Disaster Forage Program (LFP); Tree Assistance Program (TAP); and Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP)."

The question?   Why weren't those programs authorized through 2012 in the original 2008 farm bill?

My suspicion is that it was a budgetary game--by cutting them off with 2011 the total cost of the bill was lowered.  And the Congress people would know that they'd have the chance to do an "emergency" bill in 2012 if needed.  What may also be true is that they don't need to pay for it.

Chicken Republicans, or the Wisdom of Discretion

It seems to be the case the House Republicans are going to duck a vote on the 2012 farm bill until after the election, presumably because part of the party would like to cut the bill further (perhaps particularly the food stamps) and another part of the party fears running on such a vote.

I could call them "chicken" or I could admire their wisdom in following the lead of the Senate Democats in refusing to vote on a budget which would raise the similar problems and a similar split.  See Ivy Brashear at the Rural Blog. I tend to lean in the direction of "wisdom", but such wisdom won't help the bureaucrats at FSA who have eventually to implement the damn thing.

"Fun To Be Around"--A Founding Father

I think Henry Knox rates as a founder, certainly a leader in the Revolution and Washington's Secretary of War.  Boston 1775 post on the relationship of Knox and Washington uses the phrase "fun to be around" in describing Knox and his wife. 

While I know it's true, people in the past were fun to be around, somehow I never think of them that way.

Gun Control: A Modest Proposal

Three things strike me about mass slayings using guns in the U.S.:

• the shooters are young males
• the shooters aren't NRA members that I know of.
• most of them have multiple weapons.

That leads me to this modest proposal:

• permit men to buy 1 gun every other year on their birthday, or
• permit men to buy a gun if they provide proof of being an active member of an NRA club for at least 1 year.

 In theory that should slow down the accumulation of weapons and mean that they're successfully handled social relations with others for a year.

Not that I expect anyone to take this seriously, but I get tired of the fights liberals have with the NRA.

Surprise of the Day: Fewer Gun Owners

While the US has gotten much more permissive on issuing permits to carry guns, what's surprising is that gun ownership has declined very significantly in the last 40 years.  That's from John Sides at the Monkey Cage.  Once you stop to think, we've become a more suburban nation over the years, and suburbia doesn't hunt and often doesn't have guns.

Climate Change Bad News for Dairy

The "standup economist" has gotten links from Prof. Mankiw and Paul Solman at the Newshour.  He's funny, but he does serious research, including this paper projecting the decreased production of dairy cows resulting from higher temperatures of climate change.

The research has been so strong that it inspired progressive students to rally in support of Holsteins, as described here.

The GRH Zombie Rises from the Dead?

Reading the Congressional Research Service report on sequestration it seems to me that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings is starting to stir.  (GRH for the whippersnappers in the audience was the attempt in 1985 to fix federal budget deficits, by applying a flat percentage reduction to federal expenditures if certain conditions weren't met.  In 1986 we reduced deficiency payments by a factor (I think 4.6 percent) under GRH.  The result, when combined with the System 36 automation and the new farm bill, was total disaster administratively.  That was partially my fault because of the way we ended up applying payment limitation, and partially fiscals because we didn't have the coding and entries for refunds in place.) 

I wish FSA well if they have to apply sequestration in the new year.

No One Ever Washed a Rental Car

That's my best memory of something some economist once said.  Turns out the Zipcar is just another rental, according to this from Treehugger.  The advantage Zipcar presumably has is their continuing relationship with their customers and computers to track when their customers fudge on the agreement.  It's just another way in which modern Americans trade privacy for advantage in the age of the Internet.

The Promise of Satellites for Agriculture

Back in the day ASCS had an Aerial Photography Branch in the Farmer Programs Division (and two labs, one in Asheville and one in Salt Lake).  With Comsat Congress started the process of privatizing the exploitation of space (in 1962).  We were young then, and full of hope that science fiction dreams would come true.  So ASCS dipped its toe into the world of satellite sensing and satellite photography, thinking someday we'd be able to assess crop conditions and acreages from space. We had for a while someone stationed in Houston just to work with NASA on this area.

I'm not sure of the history between then and now, but this earthobservatory image from NASA shows what's possible now, in the way of assessing drought.

Question for Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney

What's your position on taking legislative action to help drought-stricken farmers in 2012?

Secretary Vilsack raised the question yesterday, suggesting Congress needed to act.

[Updated: via Obama Foodorama here's the briefing today at the White House--Vilsack is focusing on livestock producers. Back in the day we used to have the Livestock Feed Program for these sorts of situations but I guess it got cut.]

[Update II: Got around to doing what I should have done--check the FSA webpage.  Apparently the old LFP got reauthorized under different titles and in different forms, but the authorities in the 2008 farm legislation expired Oct 2011. ] 

Question of the Day?

"I wonder how the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone down if Kennedy and Khrushchev had relied on Twitter instead of diplomatic cables?"

From a KevinDrum post noting Russia responded to the latest explosion in Syria via Twitter.

After This, the Deluge (of 2012 Disaster Ideas)

Chris Clayton quotes Sen. Stabenow pushing for House action on the farm bill, goes on to say:

"This [is] another reason to pass a farm bill now so that we can not only pass what we have in the farm bill now in terms of disaster assistance, but I think we need to be strengthening that for 2012," she said.

See my post on the 20 percent of uninsured farmers. When you live a long time, you can be prescient.

Abundance: the Book

Reading Abundance, the Future is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. It's an easy read, bringing into one place descriptions of a lot of the recent innovations which the authors believe will make the future better than the present.

Unfortunately, from my view, because they cover so much ground, everything from 3-D printing to DIY bioengineering to agriculture, they fall victim to some fads, including Despommiers and his vertical farming.  In the appendices they include references for some of the ideas found in the text: for vertical farming it's a url from www.the-edison-lightbulb.com, a website containing ideas mostly from the young.  The vertical farming bit is a Chicago fifth graders pitch for vertical farming.  Pretty sad.

Having dissed that portion of the book, the bulk of it is a fast overview of all the reasons to be optimistic about everything.  I strongly recommend it if you're depressed about the future, though I wouldn't bet on the accuracy of any specific ino.  (Diamandis offered the "X Prize" for private spaceships.)

Price Loss Coverage III

Okay, finally read the farm bill as of July 9 (link) re: price loss coverage.(See previous post here.)

The provision:

(A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in
13 subparagraphs (B) through (D), the term ‘‘pay-
14 ment acres’’, with respect to the provision of
15 price loss coverage payments and revenue loss
16 coverage payments, means—
17 (i) 85 percent of total acres planted
18 for the year to each covered commodity on
19 a farm; and
20 (ii) 30 percent of approved total acres
21 prevented from being planted for the year to each covered commodity on a farm.
23 (B) MAXIMUM.—The total quantity of pay24
ment acres determined under subparagraph (A)
25 shall not exceed the farm base acres.
(C) REDUCTION.—If the sum of all pay
2 ment acres for a farm exceeds the limits estab
3 lished under subparagraph (B), the Secretary
4 shall reduce the payment acres applicable to
5 each crop proportionately.
6 (D) EXCLUSION.—The term ‘‘payment
7 acres’’ does not include any crop subsequently
8 planted during the same crop year on the same
9 land for which the first crop is eligible for pay10
ments under this subtitle, unless the crop was
crop was
11 approved for double cropping in the county, as
12 determined by the Secretary.

 The line numbers carry over in the copy process.  There's two considerations in determining acreage accuracy: (1) potentially exceeding a limit, which is what my previous posts discussed; (2) the accuracy of payment acreage. Based on the above, I was wrong on (1)--there's no program limit to be violated.  The only thing which looks like a limit is the farm base acreage, but if it's exceeded you just prorate out, so no big deal.

(2) however looks a bit different.  If I under report my planted acreage, I get less payment, so no harm to the program. But if I over report, because my payments are calculated on planted acreage, there's overpayment, so FSA would need to handle that and deter such over reporting.

The provision would mean that reports of planted acreage are needed, which was a big battle back in Freedom to Farm days (bureaucrats always worry about workload).

20 Percent of Farmers Have Their Rear Hanging Out

That's the message I take from this Illinois extension piece on crop insurance coverage in IL.  It will be a big test: can politicians resist the pleas of the 20 percent uninsured for some federal help.

Billions and Billions and...

That's not Carl Sagan and stars (though he didn't really say that), it's Stu Ellis and crop insurance indemnities in this Farmgate piece.

Price Loss Coverage II

Still too lazy to read the text of the bill, but I got to thinking on my way to the garden.  When I moved to the production adjustment side of ASCS, we had programs which limited the planted acreage to some figure.  I'm not sure when that changed and how drastically it did.

Assume with me that since 1997 FSA hasn't been enforcing any acreage limitations--that may be true, may not be.  Back in the day we had "measurement variance", which recognized the ways we determined acreages were not 100 percent accurate.  If you ran the planimeter on your aerial photography, you might be off a tad.  And we also had a "tolerance" figure, which recognized the farmer might be trying to limit her planted acreage to the exact figure, but wouldn't have the tools to be exact.  Roughly speaking, if the farmer were supposed to plant only 100 acres of corn and he planted 103 acres, he was probably "within tolerance" and in full compliance with the program.

Finally we had "failure to fully comply". If you the farmer planted more than you were supposed to by more than the tolerance (say 106 acres), then the county committee had to determine whether you were acting in "good faith".  If you were, the payment would be reduced.  If you weren't, you were ineligible.

I recite these provisions first because they fascinated me as I tried to figure them out. My co-workers had all come from county offices so they had absorbed the provisions; I had to figure out their logic and how they related.

The provisions are interesting because, if there is no limit, as there hasn't been for a while (think I'm safe in saying that), they all go away.  But if the Price Loss Coverage program, which seems to reinstate a limit, the situation may change.

Damn, I really need to read the bill's language.
[Updated: this may be interesting as history, but probably inapplicable to the proposed program.  More to follow]

Price Loss Coverage

Been lazy so haven't looked up the actual provisions of this program as included in the House farm bill.  Looks like a target price/counter cyclical type program, but based on planted (and prevented planted) acreage and with updated yields.  If I get ambitious I'll do some research.  It strikes me though that such a program will have problems with WTO rules--farm programs aren't supposed to encourage plantings.

Flashback Time

Ann Althouse links to a 1984 post-election piece by the Times.  I was struck by these paragraphs:

As Mr. Reagan watched tallies of the vote on television, reporters asked him about the possibility of a summit meeting with the Soviet Union.
''Yes,'' he said, ''it's time for us to get together and talk about a great many things and try to clear the air and suspicions between us so we can get down to the business of reducing, particularly, nuclear weapons.''

I guess he did foreshadow the summit meeting at which he proposed doing away with such weapons entirely.  Not something most conservatives like to remember.

Farm Bill Progresses?

House Agriculture has passed its version of the 2012 farm bill, but speculation provided by Keith Good at Farm Policy suggests it may not get to the floor.  Instead there'd be a temporary extension of current legislation and action later, after the election.  Sounds likely to me--Good quotes an expert on how seldom the new farm bill is passed on time. 

The problem for FSA is they don't know what to prepare to implement, the House version, the Senate version or something new which the conference committee comes up with.  As the time gets tighter, the less we know.

Gee, I'm glad I'm retired.

From Favor to Process: USDA Disaster Designation

Here's yesterday's USDA press release about changes in the process for designating disaster process. One change is automatic designation for counties which are drought-affected for 8 weeks according to U.S. Drought Monitor, and the governors do not have to initiate the request.

That's one small step on the way to taking the life out of politics.  In the good old days governors could make a big show of standing up for the home folks by bragging about his request for designation and blasting the Washington bureaucrats for delays in approving it.  It's also a small step towards de-bureaucratization.  In the bad old days the paper request from the state went to bureaucrats in the northwest corner of the South Building, the offices with the great view of the Mall, the Washington Monument, and the White House. There could be back and forth between the bureaucrats and the states, particularly when the governor's aides weren't familiar with the process.  Then the paperwork would go up the line, some stopping at the Secretary's office, some going to the White House.  Of course those offices could also grandstand about how they were acting to help needy, hardworking folks.

So, if I'm feeling cynical, the Obama administration cashed in a long term asset for politicians for maximal gain in this presidential election year.  If I'm feeling idealistic, the administration rationalized the process and made the government more efficient and less bureaucratic.  Take your pick.

Child Labor on the Farm

Here's a piece on the hazards of having children work on the family farm.  As I often am, I'm of two minds.   One thing not emphasized in the article is a recognition of the hazards of farm work. Last I knew farming was one of the more hazardous occupations in the U.S.  Of course, there aren't many occupations other than farming where a child can reasonably make a contribution.  I suppose a family-owned grocery or restaurant would be another, but the point remains.

And what's the value to the child of having made a contribution?  I think it's great, though perhaps it's easy to romanticize.  The fact that I could drive tractor, carry feed bags, or clean hen houses didn't really build my confidence in dealing with strangers.  Still, it's better to know you're capable at something than not know whether you can do anything.

How good are parents at bringing children into farm work, as claimed by one person quoted?  It's easy to romanticize parents, but everyone has blind spots, and it's hard to resist the wishes of a child.  I might ask how good are parents at bringing children into driving cars?  I think everyone would agree there's a lot of variation. 

The article notes a big reduction in injuries in this century.  I wonder how much is the better job farmers are doing, and how much relates to the prosperity on the farms during the 2000's, meaning old equipment has been replaced by newer, safer equipment.  Look at the picture of the kid driving a 40-year old tractor.  There's no roll bar to protect the driver if the tractor flips backward--it's very scary when the front wheels start lifting off the ground, though I never flipped ours.

How protective do we want society to be?  I'm a firm believer in helmet laws for motorcyclists, and seat belt laws for drivers. I want off-road vehicles to be safe and regulated. And I support the child-labor laws of the last century. So I understand why people want to extend the laws, but at least today I think it's a bridge too far.  At least in some contexts I believe in tradeoffs, and in this case incurring a  few preventable accidents are the price I'm willing to pay for retaining child labor on the farm.

On Violence and Wealth

Got involved in a comment thread at Ta-Nehesi Coates' blog yesterday, particularly with a commenter who argued wealth was the key factor in whether a neighborhood was violent or not.  Since the thread has dwindled to an end, I thought I'd post a thought experiment here:

Consider all the professional athletes in the US, many are in the top 1 percent of income, most of the rest would be in the top 5 percent.  The athletes come from varied backgrounds, but few come from parents who themselves were in the top 5 percent.  I'd love to see a sociologist determine the violent crime rate among such athletes with the crime rate in enclaves of the 5 percent, and the average background of the athletes (say 30th percentile?).  I suspect, but don't know, that the rate of the athletes would be closer to the 5 percent rate than to  the rate of the 30th percentile, which would be the influence of wealth, but there would still be a significant difference, which would be the influence of culture/society and other factors.

Drought Speculations

A couple weeks ago I started but did not finish apost on the possibility of a drought in the Midwest--then it was a topic restricted to the ag media.  Today the drought has reached the top of the news pages and news broadcasts.  Two things will be happening in parallel: the drought will progress and Congress will be working, or not working, on the new farm bill.  Presumably there will a temptation to patch holes in the 2012 safety net with provisions of the bill, perhaps the adverse impact on pork, beef, and chicken producers. The extent to which crop insurance can handle the impacts on crop producers will also be interesting.  My impression is they did well with the drought last year which occurred in Texas.  We shall see. (I guess that's a last sentence I can use on most of my posts.)

Contrasting Views of Each Other

Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy does a poll asking readers of one persuasion (conservative, liberal) how honest people of the other persuasion are. The results surprised me a bit: almost equal pluralities of each persuasion thought the other side was roughly as honest as they were.  The remainder was split between thinking their opponents were "somewhat less honest"  or "generally much less honest". 

Big Organic and Dairy

NYTimes has two pieces today:  an article on how big food has taken over many organic food operations, along with a claim they've used their influence on USDA's organic standards board to approve ingredients which shouldn't be included in "organic food"; and a Mark Bittman diatribe against milk.  Yes, I realize my bias is showing in calling it a "diatribe", but Mr. Bittman's bias is also showing: he blames milk for years of his own health problems, which makes a strong case that nobody should drink milk.

They're currently 2nd and 3rd most popular NYTimes articles today.

A 2012 Disaster Program?

Chris Clayton notes the SURE program expired with the 2011 crop year, so those corn and soybean farmers in the Midwest who are watching their crops shrivel in the drought and heat must only rely on crop insurance, right?  (Clayton notes the current Senate farm bill wouldn't cover such disasters, even if it did apply to 2012 crops, which it doesn't.)

I'd say: possibly not. Clayton mentions the ad hoc disaster program in 2010 the Obama administration delivered for Sen. Lincoln when they were trying to win her vote and help her in the fall election.  That's a precedent.  There's also the precedent of retroactive disaster programs, which I remember but can't recall the years of, which can possibly be tied to emergency appropriations acts, which evade the current emphasis on paying for legislation under "pay-go".

Weather Forecasts for the Sun

Seemingly we've progressed to the point where we're doing weather forecasts for the sun, at least that's how I read this MSNBC report.

Payment LImitation and OIG: a Puzzle

OIG tried to do an audit of FSA's administration of the payment limitation  rules in the 2008 farm bill, notably the "attribution" of payments made to legal entities to the natural-born persons who comprise the entity.  Ferd Hoefner at Sustainable Agriculture notes the report, and comments.  The gist is summed up in his title: "Commodity Payment Limitations, Weak System, Weak Report."

I may comment more later, or I may lose interest, but I am puzzled by one aspect of the report.

OIG says they couldn't audit because of problems with the system, specifically including this point:

"Specifically, we learned that joint ventures without permanent identification numbers were not recorded in FSA’s entity database,..."

As they recognize in a footnote, FSA doesn't make payments to such joint ventures, payments are made to the members. That should mean the payments are automatically attributed to members. To me that says it doesn't constitute a weakness in the system and shouldn't be considered a problem in auditing.

FSA's response doesn't point this out.

If I follow correctly, Environmental Working Group has been "attributing" payments for some time now, using the same data as OIG refused to tackle.