No Fun Being Secretary of Agriculture

Which son do you love more: production (i.e., "industrialized") agriculture or sustainable, local, organic agriculture? See Farm Policy for reports on a talk Vilsack gave in Iowa

No Politicians in Vermont

That's the word from Sugar Mountain, which has had its first snow, following a hard freeze, which kills off all pests like politicians.

And let me toss in this link from The Cotton Wife--the pictures are worth the wait.

Identity and Passwords

Interesting piece on passwords in this week's Newsweek.  The latest and greatest is not biometrics, but a one-time password you receive on your cell phone.  If that gets going, I'll really have to get into the modern world (I make very limited use of a cell). But our true security lies in the herd instinct--the predators get the weak and the unlucky while the rest of us run off thinking ourselves immortal just because we escaped.

Irish Scottish Dairy Farming

For those interested in dairy, here's a report of a visit by Ulster dairymen to Scottish dairy farms.

BTW, I would be curious whether the hired hands were Brit natives or immigrants (as seems to be the case in the US).  I'm also struck by the emphasis on butterfat levels--I haven't noticed that in the US although back in the day it was important (got paid a bonus for levels above 3.5 if I remember.)  There's a reference to the higher milk prices in Scotland than Ulster--wonder how they manage that.

The Bucolic Life

Is not danger-free. See this accident in York County, PA, an ancestral home.

The Glorious Food of Yore

Wasn't, at least in my house.  Mark Bittman (see earlier post) writes:

In the 20th century, the rise of packaged foods brought drastic changes to the way many of us eat, and not for the better. A huge percentage of our food is now awful-tasting, nutritionally bankrupt and environmentally damaging.

I can't agree.  I think most of our food is appealing (in another article in the Times magazine, a Brit cook acknowledges a 15-pound hamburger from a WV restaurant is good).  That's a complaint of some--the sneaky nutritionists at the big companies trick us by using lots of salt, sugar, fat, and other tasty things.  If a fast place really  sold "awful-tasting" food, it wouldn't survive.

More seriously, I remember tasting frozen peas for the first time.  There's no comparison between the mush from canned peas and frozen peas.  (In upstate NY, fresh peas were as fleeting as a hummingbird.) And the canned soups of today are much tastier than the Campbell soups of my youth. And even though my mother cooked, she wasn't good at it--didn't have the time or money or interest to do it well.  (Her baking, on the other hand, as one might expect of the child of  German parents was often great.)

Hispanic Farmers and FSA

An NPR story today on alleged discrimination in providing farm loans.

A note--I don't know anything about it.  However, I do remember visiting with farmers in the early 90's who complained that their loan applications weren't approved timely--this was in the context of proposals USDA should streamline its processes.[Updated: I should also note while Reagan killed the EEO office, it was later revived, although GAO has consistently pointed out its ills.]

Locavores Versus Consumers

The NY Times Magazine had a food theme yesterday, including an article by Mark Bittman in which he argues for a quantum leap forward in grocery shoppiing:

"This is my fantasy about virtual grocery shopping: that you could ask and be told the provenance and ingredients of any product you look at in your Web browser. You could specify, for example, “wild, never-frozen seafood” or “organic, local broccoli.”

He also wants his preferences recorded with the ability to be notified of the arrival of his favorites. He interviews a software vendor about the possibilities and concludes existing retailers aren't really focused on filling his individual wants. 

I think a big hurdle to this is the almost reflexive opposition by small and local growers to tracking and animal identification systems.  That's going to be needed to get the data needed to keep Bittman happy into the IT system.

The Image and the Reality

The image is, Chicago is a violent place.  The reality is, Chicago's homicide rate continues to decline.

The image is, guns are magic, pull the trigger and your target goes down.  The reality, as shown in a video from Toledo, is that most bullets don't hit anything alive (I heard 17 bullets found in the bar, no casualties).  The same is true in war--in Iraq II our troops were using thousands of rounds to kill one person.

Is Michael Moore a Tea Partier?

We saw Michael Moore's Capitalism this week.  I didn't like it much, although he had some good laughs, particularly when accosting the Wall Street firms over their receipt of TARP funds.  But the whole thing seemed rather disjointed and without a theory to link together his attacks.  The gist seemed to be the unionized General Motors of the 1950's and 60's of Moore's youth was the good life, and everything since has gone to hell.  But the best he can do to explain how the capitalism of the 60's, changed to the capitalism of 2000 is to blame deregulation.  Moore also gets himself caught in illogic--Obama's campaign is represented as the people rebelling against Wall Stteet but Obama's Treasury Secretary is depicted as a complete and utter failure (for his part in the bailouts).

Given the prominence of the bailouts in his movie, I was struck by the emphasis in this article on the role TARP played in angering the tea partiers. It's not unusual in American history to find both right and left wing radicals feeding off the same populist temper.