Fruits, Vegetables, Blue Corn and True History

The May 8 Post has independent pieces with much the same point. Jeffrey Birnbaum outlines how the fruit and vegetable growers are hoping to get a bigger piece of money in the new farm bill. He says that they were long disdained as "specialty crops" but now are better organized and hope to have influence because they're strong in states often dubious of the farm programs (like CA and WA).

Meanwhile, over in Business a columnist for Bloomberg, Cindy Skrzycki takes up the cause of "blue corn" (usually used for tortillas), which hasn't met the definition of "corn" for the purpose of the farm programs. The lobbyist for the growers is testifying before Congress to get that changed:

He recounted the story of a Nebraska blue-corn farmer who went to his local USDA Commodity Credit Corp. office to apply for a low-interest, nine-month loan against his harvest. Clarkson said he was told he didn't qualify because he wasn't growing corn.

To oversimplify, the original farm programs were intended for field crops and dairy, commodities that could be stored (in the form of cheese and butter for dairy). They were intended to aid marketing by offering nonrecourse loans on stored commodities to keep them off the market until prices improved. They also had various measures to reduce production, to try to bring supply into line with balance.

Fruits, vegetables, and blue corn didn't fit into this picture. But by the 1990's things started to change. The supply management/production adjustment side of the programs was phased out (ending with the buyout of tobacco quotas this century). The phase out both complied with World Trade Organization rules on delinking subsidies and production and responded to the views of economists that allowing the market to give signals on what to produce, signals unclouded by subsidies, was the efficient way to go.

Meanwhile the provisions for loans on stored commodities were also changed. Loan deficiency payments and marketing assistance loans became ways of circumventing payment limitation and WTO rules [perhaps a biased view of mine]. Loans on actual stored commodities diminished in overall importance.

So by 2000 the picture is: crop farmers are getting money that's not closely tied to commodities. So blue corn, fruit and vegetable farmers say--if Uncle Sam is handing out money, why isn't he handing any my way?

In my view, while these farmers may have better lobbyists now, and connect with the zeitgeist better (natural foods, eating well, anti-obesity), their probable gains in the next farm bill also reflect the change in farm programs.

Fat Is Genetic

Yesterday I blogged on a possible relationship between welfare reform and obesity. Today the Times has an article by Gina Kolata reporting on research that shows a very high correlation between heredity and obesity. Two big studies, one on identical twins reared in different families, the other line of research is fat people who lost weight (and then regained it) and thin people who gained weight to become fat (and then lost it).

I can, reluctantly, accept the research. There's a long history of things about which people have theorized, often finding moral lessons in the theory. Unfortunately science normally blows the theories up, or at least severely complicates them, so I can't claim be good because my weight is about what it was when I graduated from college and therefore can't look down on people who differ from me by 100 pounds or so. Life often disappoints that way.

Welfare Reform and Fat Kids

One of the continuing marvels of life is the epidemic of obesity. It strikes me that welfare reform may have played a part in recent developments. The logic is, as more "welfare mothers" find jobs, the time and energy available to cook decreases and the temptation to buy ready-made and fast food rises.. See this Economic Research service pub for some background information.

David Brooks and 90 Percent

David Brooks had a poor column in the NY Times on Thursday. It's couched as advice to Wolfowitz and other Republicans, saying that 90 percent of any bureaucracy they come into are Dems, 90 percent of the media are Dems, etc. Lesson: although some will be partisan, most can be worked with, so work with them.

I quarrel with his figures, as well as the message. The percentage of Dems depends on the bureaucracy (DOD and VA are different than HHS and Education, also much larger). I'd guess that the military is mostly Reps (are they bureaucrats--yes, according to conservative scholar James Q. Wilson in "Bureaucracy".) DOD civilians are likely to be marginally Reps. So was Rumsfeld undermined by the Democratic military and DOD establishment? Obviously not.

For most bureaucracies and most bureaucrats in government, politics are much less important than daily living. The better comparison is to changing managers/coaches on an athletic team. Bush naming Wolfowitz to the World Bank is like Steinbrenner naming a good college baseball man to replace Joe Torre. The new guy has to step carefully.

Shakespeare in Odd Places

Just finished reading Ishmael Beah's book, "Long Way Gone", about his life in Sierra Leone, including as a child soldier. I recommend it. The material is grim but the narrative flows without self-pity or dramatics.

Last night my wife and I watched "Bollywood/Hollywood", a movie by Deepak Mehta featuring Lisa Ray. Mehta did "Water" with Ray, which got an Oscar nominee as best foreign film. Ray is stunningly beautiful, and not a bad actress. The movie is fun if you don't take it seriously. It would help if I knew more about Bollywood films because it has some in-jokes, but it's still a pleasant evening. Plot: rich son needs someone to pose as his intended wife to get mother and grandmother off his back until his pregnant sister gets safely married.

How do these relate to Shakespeare? Well, Beah as a child recites Shakespearean speeches for family and friends. He also gets into rap, hip-hop, and reggae and treasures his cassettes of rappers whose names I barely recognize. After becoming a soldier, his lieutenant spends his down time reading Julius Caesar. In the movie, grandmother uses Shakespearean snippets in egging on her grandson.

So a barefoot boy from Avon writes language that 400 years later is part of the culture of both Sierra Leone and India. And rap evolves in the Caribbean and US and travels back to Africa. The world is strange and wonderful

J...S.. and Federal Employee Fraud

I was going to put her name in the post, but then decided I didn't want to link her, even inadvertently, with employee fraud. J... was a longtime employee of USDA who retired before I did (although she was younger than I, her husband was older and was retiring) to play golf in Florida with her husband. She was very good. I suspect, though, she got "senioritis" on her last days, in other words she really didn't give a f... about personnel's rules and regulations. They had a long checkout list of various things that had to be done before leaving, some of which amounted to updating various databases.

To make a long story short, I don't think J...S... hit all the bases on her way out. Anyway, if you go to the USDA's website to find her, you can, because she's still in the employee telephone directory.

How does that link to fraud? Last week when I was out of action, there was some publicity given to the federal employees who were getting Metro farecards from the government (to divert them from the roads to public transit) and selling them. In at least one case, a former employee kept receiving the cards for 5-6 years after leaving--i.e., the database wasn't updated.

Getting Databases to Talk

Just talking to Dell, which has the same problems in getting systems coordinated as the Federal government. Their sales department and the outlet departments have separate databases. And this is the company that led us into the 21st century!

Slow Blogging--PC Problem

Yes, again. :-(

Purdue and Farm Bill

See this website, established by Purdue to provide background for the farm bill debate.

Politics Works--Kansas Offices Aren't Closed

Apparently USDA does respond to pressure from the field and Congress--this article
describes the changes made in the office closure plan for Kansas.