A New Freedom to Farm? How To Do It

House Ag chair ( until Jan.) Collin Peterson raises the possibility of a new Freedom to Farm program in a quote from Farm Policy:

"He  [Speaker to be Boehner] may be pushed and not have any choice because of his caucus to weigh in to try to do something like Freedom to Farm where they are going to phase out subsidies again.’”

Okay, just suppose they truly want to phase out the direct payment subsidies, which in turn were supposed to compensate for the deficiency payments of the 1980's and early 90's.  How should they do it?

• Graduate the total amounts.  Freedom to Farm hardly graduated the amounts at all.  Although the theory was that farmers were being weaned from subsidies, the "weaning" metaphor wasn't taken seriously.  Anyone who's weaned a mammalian baby (calves in my case) knows you accustom the baby to the new food and cut down the old food. So, if you start at $5 billion, reduce it by $1 billion a year.
• Consider a ratchet.  In other words, tie the phase out to farm income.  If farm income goes up, payments go down.  If farm income goes down, payments don't change from the previous year.  That approach might soften the arguments it's no time to cut payments when farmers are in trouble because their income is down.  
• Consider prorating reductions to make the net payments progressive.  In year one, everyone gets 100 percent.  In year two, the top 10 percent in payments gets reduced by 20 percent, the next 20 percent gets reduced by 15 percent, etc. etc.

On Long Historical Memories

Having restored the RSS feed for Dirk Beauregarde, some tidbits from his post on Armistice Day:

"In small towns and villages all over France, officials, dignitaries, will have been laid wreathes at the foot of the local war memorial. All very official. There is however no popular and collective rememberance as we have in the UK and that is symbolised by the wearing of poppies.

I like the poppy spirit, similar to the old War spirit where, everyone is doing his or her « bit ». We can all « chip in » and remember. Out here in France, the act of rememberance is official and institutionalised...."

I asked the question of my trainees a few days ago – a group of young French army lieutenants – fresh out of military collège, and come down to Bourges for a year to learn their craft – logistics – thèse are the guys that have to get the supplies to the front line.

« Can you work with the Brits » I ask
« Are French army practices compatible with those opf the British army ? »
General silence.
One young lieutenant tells me that the British « betrayed » the French at Dunkirk. Another enters into an anti British discourse based on the évents at Mers el Kebir, and a third talks of Waterloo. De Gaule would be happy at the anti British sentiment, but in today’s world, we have a long way to go before we can hope to work together.

[Updated: Maybe the Tea Party types will remember the Brits burned our capital? ]

Japanese Agriculture

An article in today's Post on Obama's trip to Japan mentioned the problems the prime minister faces, including this:

But the sharpest acrimony came from the agricultural sector, the longtime granddaddy of Japanese politics, traditionally protected by high tariffs on imports such as rice and butter. With those tariffs obliterated, about 3.4 million farmers could lose their jobs, Japan's main agricultural group says.

The figure seemed high, so I did a little googling and found this link which not only confirms the figure is too high (3.4 million may be the total number of farmers) but includes lots of details on  farming: some are similar to the U.S., aging farmers, part time farmers reliant on outside jobs, heavily subsidized and political.; some are different, as in the average size of a farm is 4 acres, or the "plant factories" for lettuce.

[Updated: According to the NY Times story, the proposed changes might cost 3.4 million jobs.  The Post writer may have misinterpreted that as "farmers", not agriculture-related workers.]

Keepseagle Site

Here's the site for Keepseagle settlement. 

Open Government and Its Limits

Got a chuckle from this use of the USDA open government site (someone decided to tweak USDA over the NYTimes dairy/cheese article by posting a tongue-in-cheek suggestion there).  I commend USDA for showing the statistics on the site on the front page: they show it's not enough to "build it and they will come", particularly in as staid and settled an environment as USDA.  TSA got traction with their blog simply because security is sexier than agriculture. I don't know what USDA and its agencies need to get more usage of their Gov. 2.0 stuff, but something is needed.

Washington Monthly and the Food Movement

The new Monthly has an article on ethanol and agriculture, incorporating many of the food movement's arguments: Here's a key paragraph:

Let us suppose, for example, that we paid growers like Picht to minimize deep plowing and to plant winter-cover crops so as to prevent erosion, filter pollutants, and build up the soil; to practice rotations of alfalfa, clover, vetch, peas, and other nitrogen-producing plants to minimize the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides; to grow not just monocultures of corn and wheat and soybeans, but more fresh fruits and vegetables, which currently receive almost no subsidies.

There's two problems with this proposal I'd like to point out:

• if you convert from a corn/soybeans rotation of some sort to include alfalfa...etc., over 10 years you're losing some percentage of your total production.  That means you have to find more land to grow corn and soybeans on.
• the conversion also gives you a large quantity of alfalfa, ...etc. for which there currently is no use.  Either you destroy the prices received by current alfalfa...etc. growers or you have to find a new use for the produce.

Secrecy Is Needed--If You're Rebelling, or Forming a Government:

That's the lesson of our founders. As rebels, they signed a secrecy pact. (yesterday's National Archives document of the day); as constitution writers they worked in secrecy in 1787.

Hay Bales and a Blast from the Past

During the 50's we mostly had our hay baled in "square" bales.  Square in quotes because they weren't really square--they were close to being square in cross section but  about twice as long as they were wide.  Think bricks, but larger, and scratchier.

Extension talks about stacking bales as an almost lost skill.  Actually, it's the skill of arranging loose hay on a jay wagon so that it stays in place that's lost.  That's a skill I never mastered.

Dairy Management, Cheese, and a Lousy USDA Web Effort

The Times has an article pointing out the contradiction between USDA urging a low-fat diet and "Dairy Management's" promotion of cheese usage, particularly in the form of cheese pizzas, working with Dominos. Dairy Management turns out to be the umbrella organization for dairy research and promotion efforts, thus receiving the checkoff fees from dairy producers. Although the article notes the bulk of the money the organization spends ($140 million) comes from fees, it claims it also gets several million from USDA.  It calls it a "creation" of USDA. It doesn't go into the details of how research and promotion efforts are approved (via a referendum of producers) and funded. 

The article was, for a while, the most emailed article on the Times website. According to this Treehugger post Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle are outraged.  Given the article's tone and content, I'm not surprised.  Even knowing more of the background and growing up on a dairy farm I'm bothered by the conflict.  As an ex-bureaucrat, I'm more distressed by USDA's website for failing to provide good information. The Agricultural Marketing Service, which administers the research and promotion efforts for the various commodities, all of which are authorized by Congress, doesn't have a good, short explanation of such things in general, or dairy in particular.  Do a search for "Dairy Management" , using quotes, on the website and the first page gives you no hits for the promotion organization. 

The best response I could find on the site was a generic statement that  the programs are fully funded by the assessment fees, which might mean the federal money the article refers to must be that used for oversight. But trying to troll through the reports to Congress seemed to indicate USDA was reimbursed for its oversight expenses.  So the "several million dollars" the article refers to might be research money funneled through ARS, but who knows.  I'd hope after the people in the ivory tower (USDA Administration Building) get through scrambling around to respond there will be a big improvement in the USDA/AMS site.  I hope, but I'm skeptical.

On Evaluating Others

One of the problems of the federal bureaucracy, at least the part I knew, and I believe one of the problems of the teaching profession and, as outlined in Dilbert, the other bureaucracies of the world, is how to give honest evaluations.  Part of the problem is the lack of clear standards, usually because it's difficult in a bureaucracy to set such standards.  And part of the problem is our human tendency to avoid conflict.  Maybe I see that tendency so clearly because it's such a big part of my own psyche.

Anyway, all of the above is prologue to this blog post:  Historiann is a feminist professor in Colorado who's passing on an appeal for advice from another professor. Note the conflict between adherence to professional standards of excellence and avoidance of conflict with the student and her advisor.  (No, I won't go with "ze" and "hir", the feminist neutral pronouns.)  Easy for an outsider to judge this, not so easy if one's in the room.