Still No Farm Bill

Apparently there's some movement but slow. A thought: this is one of the unforeseen consequences of delinking farm program payments from production--while farmers would like to know what the program is going to be before they do spring planting, it's not nearly as urgent as in the days when payments were more directly tied to production. (It's also true, with today's prices, the programs are less relevant.)

Poultry in France Is Regulated

I may have mentioned we had hens when I was growing up. I hated the brutes--their nips when you tried to take their eggs could hurt. That's probably why I've not written about poultry on this blog. But this bit in the Beauregard blog caught my eye (he's a Brit living in France teaching English) (he didn't bake something for his daughter to take to the convent for her pre-communion day of mediation):

Now, I have already written at length on the French and their skills as homebakers. This country might be the global gastronomic powerhouse, but French mums just can’t bake. Your bog standard cake stall at an British garden fete, beats the French effort hands down. This is also the country of strict hygiene controls. At a French school fete, you are allowed to bring along a cake bought in a supermarket, but woebetide you if you take along a home made effort, even if it is out of a packet. It’s all to do with the eggs. Powdered egg only. Anything made with real eggs is banned from the spheres of the school cake stall. This also explains why it is so difficult to get a plate of egg and chips in France. In all food outlets, only powdered egg is allowed. Which is why you can’t get an Egg MacMuffin in France.

I assume they've had problems with salmonella?

Farmers Got a Raise

According to this Illinois study:

Farm wages, formally known as return to operator labor and management, averaged $171,507. Find yours by taking your net farm income, then subtracting a fair return to your equity in machinery and land. The statewide average was nearly $100,000 higher than 2006 and about $88,000 above the five year average. The labor and management return statistic has fluctuated as low as $38,707 in 2005, up to the $171,507 of 2007.

I'm not clear on what they consider a "fair return". When I took the ag course in high school some 50 odd years ago, the instructor used 6 percent. Mom always said farmers were foolish--they could sell out and invest their money and live nicely. (Figure 1,000 acres at $4K per, and 6 percent = $240,000 return on investment.) It's one of the things that makes talking about farming tricky. And what would you pay the manager of $4 million in capital. Mutual funds charge something around 1 percent, so that would leave $70,000 for labor. Now I have to admit, crop farmers don't work hard, like dairy/poultry farmers (my parents) did, at least not year round. If they work 50 days worth of 16 hour days in the spring, and another 50 days in the fall (which is an overestimate, I think, but it gives a nice easy figure to multiply by--that's 1600 hours. Add another 200 days of 4 hour days (and 4 hours in the coffee shop), that's 800 hours. So the hourly rate isn't bad, isn't great but it's comparable to teachers.

You Can Fool Some of the (City) People...

A spike in readership led me to the Ethicurean site. Meanwhile Tom Philpott rails about the possibility high food prices will lead the EU to accept genetically modified crops:

Thus, the allegedly free market -- shamelessly rigged by U.S. and European biofuel mandates, which are jacking up the price of corn and soy -- overwhelms consumer desire.

But looking at some stories on the Ethicurean site, it's apparent the free market also helps the cause of organic farming and local food. For example, the farmer whom Michael Pollan devoted a chapter to in Omnivore's Dilemma is charging $1k (that's $1,000) for a personal tour of his farm. (There are cheaper alternatives.) That's easy for someone like me, who is somewhat skeptical, to mock, but city folks have the annoying habit of visiting just at milking time and having no appreciation for the rhythms of a farm, so I can't poke too much fun at it. Besides, as in the case of the "Carbon Farmers of America", if rural rubes can convince city folk to subsidize what they'd do anyway, it barely begins to counterbalance the con games originated in the city.

Secretary Gates and Bureaucracy

From his speech at Maxwell-Gunther AFB:

This new set of realities and requirements have meant a wrenching set of changes for our military establishment that until recently was almost completely oriented toward winning the big battles and the big wars. Based on my experience at CIA, at Texas A&M and now the Department of Defense, it is clear to me that the culture of any large organization takes a long time to change, and the really tough part is preserving those elements of the culture that strengthen the institution and motivate the people in it, while shedding those elements of the culture that are barriers to progress and achieving the mission.

All of the services must examine their cultures critically if we are to have the capabilities relevant and necessary to overcome the most likely threats America will face in the years to come.

For example, the Army that went over the berm about five years ago was, in its basic organization and assumptions, essentially a smaller version of the Fulda Gap force that expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait a decade prior. As I've told Army gatherings, the lessons learned and capabilities built from Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns need to be institutionalized into the service's core doctrine, funding priorities and personnel policies. And that is taking place, although we must always guard against falling into past historical patterns where, if bureaucratic nature takes its course, these kinds of irregular capabilities tend to slide to the margins. ...

[After discussing counter-insurgency and unmanned aerial vehicles...]But in my view, we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt. My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield. I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater. Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth.

In a way it's ironic that Gates is carrying this message. He won a certain amount of infamy among the left during the late 80's when he was at the CIA for being very skeptical of the reality of the changes in the USSR.

But the bit about UAV's reminds me of an article in Washington Monthly--if I remember correctly it pointed out that Israel had done well with them, some individuals in the US were interested and developing versions, but the armed forces were resisting. Perhaps it even took a Congressional earmark to push their development.

More Management Improvement

Government Executive has an article on the Bush Administration's plans and hopes for the future, performance management-wise. Pardon a jaded bureaucrat, but I've lived through PPB (LBJ's adaptation of McNamara's methods), Zero Based Budgeting (Carter), sunset Act, the Grace commission, MBO (management by objective), BPR (business process reengineering), GPRA (government performance results act), Reinventing government, and observed Bush from the sidelines with PART (performance assessment rating tool).

There are three weaknesses with these efforts:

1. NIH (not invented here)--each administration has to have its own effort, so there's a lack of continuity
2. Congress has never bought into the efforts. Yes, individual senators and representatives can push through something like paperwork reduction, but you don't get agreement. Even if the authorizing committee can agree on something, there's always the appropriations subcommittee with its own ideas.
   
3. Government by its nature is not outcome oriented, and when it is, there are conflicts. There are limited cases--you can measure whether checks get out on time. But one effort of Gore/Clinton was to speed visa processing--that's measurable, certainly, but maybe you don't want to quickly process visas for potential terrorists. Do you want to build an impenetrable wall along the border, or do you want to allow wildlife to follow their historic migration patterns?
   

Most Ridiculous Line I Read Today

From the NYTimes magazine, on carbon farming and mob stocking ("Better Living With Livestock"):

Meanwhile, the soil on his fields continues to deepen by a few inches annually, Collins claims, and his pastures have become so thick in energy-laden plants that he’s been able to eliminate grain inputs, saving tens of thousands of dollars a year.

According to the piece, by practicing "mob stocking" on his Vermont dairy farm, Collins is able to eliminate grain feeding. In effect, according to the article, he's invented a perpetual motion machine, producing topsoil and milk without importing grain onto his farm. That formula can't work. My geology 101 class and my years of gardening say soil develops from the breakdown of the bedrock (which takes geologic ages) and/or addition of organic materials. But if the only organic material is the hay and grass produced on the farm, you've got a closed system.

When I do a Google I get this blog (I hope he takes better care of his cows than he does his blog--the last post is 2006.) It turns out the NYTimes doesn't completely or accurately summarize the idea--so the line is less ridiculous when the missing context is supplied. The "mob stocking" is a method, not to increase fertilizer but better to handle an all-grass diet. The "deepening" of the top soil is supposedly done by subsoiling and converting subsoil to topsoil. And it wasn't, as of 2006, a completely independent operation--he admits that they haven't done much "winter grazing", meaning probably they're importing feed for Dec through April, or 5 months of the year (Vermont, remember).

I do wonder about the whole scheme--he's pushing the "Carbon Farmers of America", his new company, and suggesting that society pay farmers for sequestrating carbon, at the rate of $25 a ton. To quote:

"We are marketing Carbon Sinks to businesses and to the public, priced at $25 per ton. For every ton of carbon dioxide that a farmer transforms into just over half a ton of organic matter, which can be measured accurately in their fields, the farmer will be paid $19. One dollar is going to go for administration for the company. The other $5 will go toward equipping and training new carbon farmers. A priority for us is to create what in effect will be both a training program and a bank for new young grass farmers to get started. We want to build an army of young graziers who are going to create this topsoil we need so desperately. This will give an enormous opportunity for young people to get into a really meaningful livelihood and do a lot of good, and be able to make money doing it."

My reaction is that it sounds very dubious. Perhaps a one-time reward for converting subsoil to topsoil, but not on a continuing basis. No way. But if you want to donate to Mr. Collins, here's where you can buy.

A Bad Day for First Amendment Rights in DC

A neo-Nazi march on the Mall (maybe some of Obama's bitter people from Michigan?) against immigration was subject of a protest that resulted in arrests. From the Post article, one of the protesters:

"People marching in brown shirts and swastikas is a tool of intimidation and terrorism. We came out here to oppose them so they won't feel they can do it safely," said Dan Peterson, 23, a D.C. resident who was arrested.

I enrolled in the ACLU back in the 70's when Skokie was an issue. Mr. Peterson needs an education in civics.

Funniest Line of the Day

From Walter Shieb's (former White House chef) discussion of First Family recipes (re: the Cindy McCain deal) in the NY Times:

And while we’re on the subject [of White House cooking], isn’t the whole thing a tad sexist? I don’t believe that anyone has asked Bill Clinton what he’ll be looking for in a chef should his wife become president or what he’ll serve at his first state dinner. (As his family’s former chef, I can’t resist affectionately suggesting that this is probably for the best, given his predilection for comfort food.)

Local Food or Global Eater?

The local food advocates say we should eat locally, save on food-miles that create carbon dioxide to add to global warming. I wonder, which is better, to import winter fruits and vegetables from Chile, for example, or to export oneself to Chile in order to eat there?