The VA's Problems: a Failure of Imagination?

Much in the press about the problems with the VA.  I wonder though whether the problem wasn't at bottom a failure of imagination.  What do I mean?

Create a simplistic model of the VA--call it a bathtub.

Flowing into the VA are two flows: one is the flow of old veterans turning to the VA for support.  Now we know, I assume, pretty well the demographics of this group: how many WWII vets, how many Cold War vets, how many Iraq I vets, etc.  and the rates at which each group contacts the VA and the rate at which they are approved for care.  Once approved, I assume we also know averages of how often a vet in a specific age group needs treatment/to see a doctor.  Overall, as this group ages they're probably contacting the VA more and needing treatment more, so the potential workload is increasing.  They're also dying more, so that decreases the workload.

The second flow is of course the post 9/11 vets who need care immediately as they transition from service to civilian status.  I assume that's a bit more unpredictable, and the burden on the VA for treatment is greater, because the treatment of a 22-year old with PTSD is more difficult than a 72-year old suffering from aging.


So you have two flows of demands.  How big is the bathtub receiving the flows and how big the drain?  I assume we know how many medical professionals are employed and how many vets they can give various types of treatment to. 

Now if the flows in are bigger than the flows out, the bathtub is going to fill up and at some point it's going to overflow.  If they're exactly equal then the delay in appointments is going to represent the lag time in getting the resources to respond to the flows.  If the drain is bigger than the inflow, the appointment delay is going to represent just local conditions.  (Change the bathtub to a supermarket check out line system--sometimes lines will backup briefly just because.)

Now if you have metrics covering these items you should be able to validate your appointment time statistics by looking at the rates at which people are contacting the VA (i.e., if the rate of 72-year old vets contacting the VA drops from 2000 to 2010).  If the rates drop, that means people are giving up on the VA and going private or not getting care at all.  If the rates are pretty constant, then your stats on waiting for appointments should be goo.

  I suspect what happened with the VA is they were measuring people coming in the door, without the imagination to consider the whole universe of potential VA patients. That's my take, anyway, probably wrong.

[Updated--a Vox primer on VA care.]

Moving Pigs, from a Practical Man and Powerline

Walt Jeffries has a post on animal psychology, though that's not its title.  The url for the post differs significantly from the title of the post, which might mean Walt is succumbing to political correctness.


Meanwhile, over at Powerline, a blog I usually read and rarely agree with, Mr. Hayward discusses flying pigs. (I'm ambivalent about the subject.)

This Time Is Different

That's the theme of this post from U. of Illinois economists in response to concerns about a bubble in farmland prices leading to a bust, as we went through in the 1980's.  Their graphs are convincing, the ups and downs are of different magnitude, and the "safety net" of crop insurance is stronger (i.e., bigger) today than in the 70's.

Extension and Obamacare

Here's a Rural Blog post about new laws in Georgia, which doesn't want its citizens enrolling in Medicaid.  Extension seems to be facing some political flak there.

"Power is just really icky."

From a sarcastic post at University Diaries.

"Data never has a virgin birth"

A good sentence from Mr. Silvers (re Piketty).

Intermediaries to the Government

One of the growth industries over my life time has been in this area, organizations which mediate in some way between the citizen and the government.

The example I remember most vividly was the CED in Sherman county, KS telling me he wanted to put a consulting firm out of business; the firm was advising farmers on payment limitation issues.  Then there was our visit to Fresno county, CA (BTW the biggest ag county in the country) where one operation had a full-time employee just working as a liaison to the ASCS, FmHA, and SCS offices, plus Bureau of Reclamation.  (Irrigation was a big issue, because the federal rules limited the acreage to 960 acres, so navigating between payment limitation and irrigation was complex.)

I thought of those experiences when I saw this,a Vox piece on a firm mediating between students or their parents and the Education Department (charging $80 to fill out an application which is online).

As for lobbyists, whom we more normally think of when discussing intermediaries, today's Times has a piece on the lobbyist firm Patton, Boggs, which is merging with an international law firm.  Someone quoted in the article said that when the firm was founded in the 1960's, there were about 15 decision makers in government to influence, now there's 15,000.   And yesterday Elon Musk, who has a rocket firm, accused his competitor of hiring a former Air Force official as part of a deal to get a sole-source contract for rockets for the military. 

A conservative like George Will would say this is a reflection of the bad trend to more government; government has its hands in too much and citizens can't deal.  As a liberal I resist that idea.  I'm more comfortable with the idea that big mouths and scam artists fool the naive citizen and con them out of their money.  However, it's an issue--I really should give it more thought, but maybe in my next reincarnation.

The Data Act

Vox has a long very good post on how the Data Act got passed. Should be enlightening for people with textbook images of government.  I'm still uncertain of its impact on FSA.

Worms Are Weevils

So says the House appropriations committee: ",,,deem the pink bollworm to be a boll weevil for the purpose of boll weevil eradication program loans."  (page 22)

(A lawyer would probably respond that it's easier to do a "deem" than to amend the law on boll weevil eradication to include pink bollworms.  There's also the nagging little fact that the House appropriations committee isn't supposed to (according to all the Poli Sci 101 manuals) actually legislate--that's the role of House Ag. But if no one notices or no one complains, it's all good, innit.)

The Burden of College Loans (Circa 18th Century)

College loans change the course of one's life.  For proof, just read this post at Boston 1775 about the course of true love in the midst of college debts in the 1720's.  This is the first of a series of posts Mr. Bell is putting up on the love life of Priscilla Thomas.

Geithner and Bureacracy and Puritanism

Haven't read Timothy Geithner's new book yet.  Some of the reviews bring up the criticism that Geithner and the administration should have done more for homeowners who were under water.

Not being an economist I don't know what I'm talking about (:-) but I've two reactions:

• as a bureaucrat I suspect part of the problem was/would have been bureaucratic.  Treasury had never, to my knowledge, dealt with homeowners before, or probably not even with the owners of home mortgages.  So any program to help homeowners would have been plowing new ground, meaning you'd have to setup your program infrastructure as well as implement the program.  By comparison, Congress can come up with new agricultural programs in the farm bill, knowing bureaucracies exist which are capable of reaching farmers and implementing them. Even back in 1933 the AAA was built on the infrastructure of the extension service.  Lacking the infrastructure also means there's no network in place to provide information and lobby the bigshots for action.
• as a liberal I should support helping homeowners, but in the case of the underwater people my inherited puritanism shows its teeth.  You really mean that somebody who signed a liar's loan, and/or tapped his home equity for other expenses should be helped?? No way, no how.  (Don't ask me how I reconcile that reaction with acceding to the bailout of Wall Street bankers.  OK, Wall Street seemed a necessary evil, particularly when the money market funds started to break the buck.)

Sustainability and Markets: Pet Peeve Again

One of my biggest problems with the studies from Rodale et. al. comparing the productivity of organic farming versus production ag relates to markets.  Typically the studies compare a corn-only  cropping series, a corn-soybeans rotation cropping series, and something like corn-alfalfa-wheat-soybeans cropping series, and finds that the corn productivity is roughly equal.   My peeve is the studies ignore the question of marketing; they assume that everything grown can be marketed.  Back in the old days of horse-drawn ag, you could rotate oats and hay crops with your corn and find a market for any fodder not consumed on the farm.  These days, not so.  California can grown alfalfa to be exported to China, but Iowa not so much.

A little bit of market recognition is the theme of this piece in the NYT, though I suspect the author (Mr. Barber, the chef and foodie) is drastically oversimplifying. (Yes. mustard makes a good rotation crop for the soil, and can be cooked/prepared for human consumption. But being able to provide mustard greens to chefs and CSA's over an extended period is probably not realistic.  If you're planting greens in the garden, you know you want succession planting to extend the season, which is doable in small plots but possibly not on the scale of a farm.)  Despite my doubts, it is a good step towards greater realism on the food movement, at least that part of the movement which reads the Times.

The MCP on Abramson's Pay

It occurs to me that a bureaucrat, even a female bureaucrat, might look askance at the controversy over Ms. Abramson's pay at the NYTimes.  (I'm referring to allegations that she was paid less than her male predecessor, though the Times claims her total package was more.)

In the bureaucracy, when someone moves up to replace the boss, you don't normally start equal with the departing boss.  For example, an instance where a co-worker was promoted to be my boss: her salary was totally independent of the departing boss.  The slot was classified as GS-14, so her pay would have been the lowest step in the GS-14 scale that gave her a raise.  For example, if the old boss was a GS-14, step 8, making $70,000, and the co-worker was a GS-13, step 3, making $55,000, she would become a GS-14 step 2, making $56,000 (all figures are b.s.), allowing her to get step increases over the years that would take her up to GS-14, step 10 making $75,000 (more allowing for inflation adjustments).

I guess maybe that's the difference with pay in the private sector--when you hire a boss it's a new negotiation and a new market; with bureaucrats the pay is the intersection of the personal history and the job's classification. 

[Update--corrected spelling of name]

Priorities for a Self-Driving Car

Sounds like Google has its priorities right--they demoed their self-driving cars again.

"Acknowledging that freeway driving is a positive step toward safer driving, Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist who now heads the project, was clear in saying it would not have impact equivalent to a robot car that could safely move the elderly from one location to another."

No accidents in 700,000 miles of driving sounds good to me.  I used to think of myself as a good, slightly above average and somewhat more cautious driver than the average but I've had three accidents in my life. Haven't driven near 700,000 miles, maybe 250,000?

Reinventing Government--How Soon We Forget

Remember Al Gore?  And his reinventing government?  Apparently neither GAO nor USDA do.

A quote from a new GAO report:

In fiscal year 2012, USDA policy on supervisory ratios did not align with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance that states that an analytical approach can help agencies achieve the right balance of supervisory and nonsupervisory positions to support their missions. Instead, USDA's policy stated that all its agencies, regardless of their missions, should aim for a target ratio of one supervisor for at least nine employees (1:9). USDA officials were not able to provide a documented basis for this target ratio. In addition, USDA did not ensure that the service center agencies calculated their supervisory ratios the same way. As a result, USDA did not receive comparable information on supervisory ratios.

 Now I firmly believe that Al's National Performance Review  included an initiative to reduce the number of supervisors (though I don't see it highlighted in the linked document).  I remember because in ASCS what happened was that work units were renamed without much real change in function.  I also remember because my branch ended up growing to 14 or so people, more than I could effectively manage, particularly given my weakness for taking on additional projects.  (Though I can't really blame Al for that growth.)

I haven't read the report, just the summary, but IMHO a fixed supervisor/employee ratio makes no sense.

Maps Today and Yesteryear

I remember my college history 101 course.  Part of the exercises was taking mimeographed maps and drawing the outlines of the various historical entities (like the boundaries of the Roman empire).

Compare that with today--take for example this Vox set of 40 maps which explain the Middle East.  The Internet and the computer make graphics so much better, and more available than we had 50 years ago.  And that's totally ignoring GIS.

Economists say our productivity is no longer increasing as fast as it once did.  I suspect the problem may be their statistics aren't up to the task of measuring the modern economy. 

Can You Truly Buy Organic at Walmart?

A Slate article argues that Whole Foods is losing its edge in organics, due to the competition from Walmart.  Maybe it's time to sell my Whole Foods stock?  If the difference(s) between organic and non-organic apparent to our senses are most evident in the label, maybe Walmart can win this fight.  Meanwhile there's a fight over organic certification.

Can you have industrial organic agriculture?    Or how about this startup aiming for a substitute for eggs? Is this the point where the food movement and the environmental movement follow different paths? (I see they're selling through Whole Foods!)

How Government Works: Reports to Congress

The Post had a good piece on reports to Congress Saturday, though I don't think it was quite cynical enough. The first paragraph, but you should really read the whole thing:

Every year, as required by law, the U.S. government prepares an official report to Congress on Dog and Cat Fur Protection. The task requires at least 15 employees in at least six different federal offices.

Points I'd emphasize:

Some Congressperson gets a bee in their bonnet, maybe it's a result of a flap in the media, maybe it's a valid concern, maybe it's not their bee, but a bee in the bonnets of one or more constituents.  Maybe they can get legislation passed, something to proclaim to the homefolks the next time they run for reelection.  Maybe not.  But they can always ask for a report.

A report to Congress can be rationalized as a measure which forces the bureaucracy (which no one trusts, neither a Congressperson nor a constituent) to pay attention to the issue.  But mostly it's a paragraph in a piece of legislation which looks impressive and can be proclaimed far and wide. or simply whispered in the ear of those with the bees.  Often, as the article mentions, a provision for a report can be a method to fudge an issue, to argue that we don't have enough information to legislate wisely so let's start accumulating data, reports, so we can act down the road.  "Down the road" often equates to "kicking the can down the road".

The reality is that nothing in legislation is self-executing. President Obama does not sit down with his Cabinet member going over new laws to talk about how they're going to be executed.  Whether or not a legislative provision gets implemented is a question:  are there groups interested in the issue who are going to push the bureaucracy? are the bureaucracy's managers (from President down the line) interested in getting the issue implemented?  is there someone in Congress who is pushing the provision?  what are the other priorities for the bureaucracy? does the provision fit within the wheelhouse of an existing bureaucracy or does it fall outside the boundaries of existing agencies and offices? how conscientious a bureaucrat is involved?

The likelihood is that any provision in a legislation is going to meet some of the above criteria, but a few may not.  Assume that a requirement for a Congressional report is implemented, then the question becomes how long the implementation will last?  That depends on Congress, the public, and the bureaucracy.  Assume there was never much real public interest in a report--that it was really was put in the law to appease the Congressperson, to give them a meaningless victory.  Then the issue is how long the Congressperson will hand around and how long the bureaucracy will go through the motions.  Sometimes it happens that Father Time solves the problem by killing off or retiring the Congressperson and retiring the only bureaucrat who has the knowledge and the background of dealing with the report.  When that happens, the words in the law become dead letters; no one reading them, no one following them, no one caring.

Although the above, and the the Post article, may seem like mockery of Congress and the bureaucracy, I can argue there's a certain logic at work here.  (This will be like an argument from mid-20th century sociology: "latent functions".  Part of what's going on is a process of distinguishing big issues which can and should be handled by government from the epiphenomena (head cold makes me pompous) which our modern media throw up: the issues of the moment which seem important one day and totally frivolous the next year).  Because we as a society can't easily figure out what's important, kicking the can down the road can make sense.  If the issue is still important in a couple years, time may have clarified what approach legislation should take.  If the issue has dwindled in importance, it can be left by the side of the road, with only a report to Congress marking its demise.

Dwindling Rural Infrastructure

Reducing the number of post offices, reducing the number of FSA offices, reducing the number of rural hospitals, reducing the number of Vermont school districts.

Revealing Payments

The Post reports on this new law.

I wonder whether it will require FSA to list farm program payments?  I tried to read the law, but couldn't interpret the language well enough (damn head cold) so gave up.  We'll see.

The Joys of Old Age: Earwigging

One of the joys of old age is finding pleasure in small moments.  One of the pleasures of recovering from a cold is being able to enjoy a book without guilt.  I enjoy Mr. Grisham, and got a kick out of a legal reference in his latest, Sycamore Row, which is a return to Jake, the attorney played  by Mr. McConaughey, many years ago, back before he won the Oscar.   What was the reference?  Earwigging the chancellor is a violation of legal ethics.

Mississippi has courts of chancery, over which a chancellor presides, to try issues of estates, divorce, etc.  Earwigging means talking to the chancellor outside of court to influence his or her actions.  It's unique to MS.  Only after I enjoyed a long hearty laugh at the phrase did I research and find that I should have previously seen it mentioned last fall on Volokh.com, where it came up in reference to the trial of Richard Scruggs, the MS lawyer who sued over tobacco and later pled guilty of corrupting a judge.

Flash: " the reality is pigs are not particularly nice people. "

Turns out they're pushy.

Small Truckers, Small Dairy Farmers

A good piece here on the plight of the small trucker--the owner/operator. It reminds me of Northview Dairy, the owners of which just sold off their cows. 

I suppose conservative economists would point to "creative destruction", the process by which the free market makes everything better and better for everyone, over the long run.  As an ambivalent liberal, I resist that.  Economic change has real costs and hurts real people. When I ask myself would the world be a better place if we froze  things as they were in 1950, or 1900, or 1491, I have to answer "no",  but as the great Heinlein wrote: there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The White House Garden: The Truth Revealed

My title is false advertising.  I've not posted about the White House garden recently, though it had its spring planting a couple weeks ago or more.

Government Executive runs a piece from the daughter of the farmer who supplied the dirt and the initial plan for the garden.  It's nice, not sensationalistic as my title would suggest.  What does come through for me, as I may have commented on in past posts, is the tension between the public play-acting and the real reality (as opposed to the unreal reality, not to be confused with the fake reality).   As an Obama supporter I take the First Lady at her word--when she started the garden she probably did have the idea that the girls would participate and it would be a real garden.  Because we, the great unwashed American public, demand perfection of our temporary royalty, that was never possible.  In the real world we sow our seeds too thickly and don't get the crop we should.  In the world of the White House, the gardeners can't admit to such failings, must always be on display, meaning the plants must always live in Lake Woebegone. 

I'm Curious--Post Pigford

Some factoids and a question:

•  Secretary Vilsack made a commitment to changing the culture of USDA's county level agencies. 
• The Pigford II payments have been issued.
• There have been changes in the farm loan legislation/programs, earmarking some dollars for socially-disadvantaged, etc. etc.
• ERS has recently reported growth in the number of farms operated by various categories--minorities and women, etc. 

I wonder if there's a data collection and analysis effort which compares FSA/RD/NRCS efforts in the last couple years, with the new culture and the new programs, with the efforts 20 years ago?  How much has changed, and why?

Robot Day: Cows and Grapes

The NY Times has an article on milking robots. 
I'd read about robotic milkers before, perhaps even posted on them, but this is the first report describing units with no human intervention, meaning the cows can determine when they want to be milked!  So the march of technology has the effect of increasing the "agency" of cows, making for more contented cows, I suppose.  (Was it Elsie, the Carnation cow, which keyed their ad campaigns in the 1950's?   NO, my memory is faulty--Elsie was the Borden's cow.  And, coincidentally, one of the dairymen in the article is named Borden, a seventh-generation farmer.)  Will the crunchy food movement celebrate this advance in animal liberation? 

Seriously, this and similar advances elsewhere in farming pose the problem for the farmer: give up, get out, grow up.  You need a bigger operation to make the best use of machines (although apparently California operations are too big) or cope with new regulations, etc.   The other problem is the infrastructure.  If you're depending on a machine to milk your cows, you can't afford power outages (hand-milking even 12 cows when the power goes off is not fun).  And you can't afford malfunctions--I assume the vendors have some support system to provide loaner units with a very short response time, like 1-3 hours.

Elsewhere, Technology Review has a post on agricultural drones. I wonder when FSA will start using them?

ACA and FSA

From the NASCOE President's message: "

"Here we are in 2014 and we still don’t have a good online tool for producers to communicate and file applications on the simplest of programs (okay there are no simple programs)."

Now I don't know how complex the ACA health insurance program is, as compared to the FSA programs.  Obviously there were problems with the software last October, and I gather it's still incomplete as far as payments goes.  But HHS only had a few years to get the software done and tested, while FSA has had over 20 years since the idea was floated.  I'm really p****d at the botched rollout of healthcare.gov; it's almost enough to make me regret my political allegiance.  But I guess if I'm going to be fair, I should admit that compared to USDA/FSA HHS looks pretty good.  (That's probably the first and last compliment HHS will ever receive on their IT implementation.)

It's easy to argue I'm comparing apples and oranges, because I think administering the insurance program will be handled by the insurance company, not by the healthcare.gov website. And the philosophical question is simple: do you want to maximize efficiency or employment in rural areas.  If the former, then go the way some of the loan programs did--centralize administration in St. Louis.  If the latter, become friends with the senators and representative and fight to keep all offices open. 

I suspect we'll continue to muddle our way down the road, closing some offices, doing some modernization, trying to reach both goals: efficiency and rural life.

The Price of Eggs (Volatility, Integration, and Tuition)

Yglesias at Vox posts on the recent price of eggs.

What's interesting is the volatility; over the course of a year (2008) it looks as if the price increased about a dollar, or maybe by 80 percent.  Now I can remember the price of eggs bouncing around in my youth.  IIRC they maybe went from 30 cents to 70 cents and back down (and up and down and up and down).  This was at the end of the era of small flocks, right as the industry started to be vertically integrated, with companies contracting with farmers.  I had always thought the purpose was to gain market power, by reducing the egg suppliers to a handful of companies they could collaborate to adjust supply and thereby keep prices relatively steady.  Now the graph only covers the last 10 years and shows a steady rise in prices but not much volatility except for the one year, so I'm not sure whether my understanding of the economics is wrong, or whether 2008 was an outlier. 

A side note: if the change in the price of eggs from 1954 to 2014 had tracked the price of tuition and fees at the college I attended, the price would be close to $100 now.

"Responsible drinkers don't build breweries. "

That's my sentence of the day, from an interview at Vox with someone who studied legalization of pot.

We humans always overdo on something, or rather there's always some humans who will overdo on any good thing.

Taxpayer Receipt

At the Whitehouse website you can put in the income tax and FICA taxes you pay and see where the money went.  I tried to embed it here, but the code didn't work for me.  I wrote the White House--will be interested to see what the result, if any, is. 

Anyhow, it's a useful idea--people when polled have little idea of how much money goes for each function in government.

FSA Faces the Future, Sort of

Some states have legalized industrial hemp growing, so FSA has to determine how to report it.  I guess the response is rational; it's adding a new "product" to the table.

Boxers or Briefs?

That was the question President Clinton was asked on some show which some people thought he shouldn't have been on and definitely shouldn't have answered.  We value our privacy, maybe.

I was reminded today of the good old days, before clothes dryers, when washed clothes were hung on the line, even in winter, because somehow they'd dry even though they froze.  But I digress.  What I really was reminded of was how the neighbors could and would eye your lines, knowing whether the woman of the house was adhering to the proper schedule for washing clothes, etc.  And seeing what you wore.  At least in principle, although apparently some housewives would hang the underwear of the family on the interior lines, more hidden from prying eyes, except on the days the wind blew.   (I say apparently because we lived far enough off the main road that we were safe from such eyes, except for the people who came in to buy eggs and milk.

Was Everything Better in the Old Days?

No.  For proof, compare this photograph of the cherry blossoms post-WWI with this one from this year.  A reminder: trees grow and fill out.  And inventive people come up with things like color photography and the Internet, permitting millions to share in the beauty.

Tidbits from John Phipps

John has a post on global warming, noting the expansion of Canada's growing season, meaning their acreage of corn is expanding. (He suggests looking at such evidence on the ground is more likely to be convincing than the IPCC studies, and I agree. A sidenote: apparently Canada and the US are on the same path of expanding the use of crop insurance.

Who Wins and Loses With Crop Insurance

Farmdocdaily (IL extension) has a post on the state-level distribution of direct payments versus crop insurance.  Most states (32 of them) are pretty close in their share but these states differ significantly:

Eleven states had a difference of 1.5 or more percentage points (a "+" sign means insurance share exceeded direct payment share):  Texas (+8.8%), North Dakota (+4.1%), South Dakota (+3.3%), Kansas (+1.9%), California (-1.8%), Louisiana (-1.9%), Iowa (-2.0%), Ohio (-2.1%), Minnesota (-2.9%), Nebraska (-3.0%), and Arkansas (-3.8%).

Bottomline: Great Plains states with higher risk and more variable production get more crop insurance, non Great Plains states less.  As the study observes, it raises the possibility that crop insurance will encourage the shift of production to more risky areas.  As a second thought, though, "shift" is perhaps the wrong term; "expansion" might be better.   Maybe we should view crop insurance as one measure by which agriculture is adjusting to global warming?

Transparency and Doctors

HHS has released data on Medicare payments to doctors, which are discussed here.  The Post had a good article this morning, discussing some of the reasons for variations in payments among specialties, etc.  Putting that story and the Wonkblog post together gives the usual conclusion: it's complicated.  Maybe I'm biased, but when I read articles about farm policy and the food movement that's my usual reaction: you're oversimplifying, it's more complicated than that.  I'd venture to state a general rule: the knowledge an insider has is more complicated than the knowledge an outsider can discover. 

Having said that, I have to go back 20 years when EWG was suing USDA for payments to farmers.  My reaction then, in discussions with an IT person, was reserved--it seemed to me that we treated farmers as persons under the Privacy Act, which meant their data should be private as well.  The Court of Appeals for the district disagreed with my opinion.  Over the years I've come to believe that government payments should be public.  Even though I've little faith in the ability of the media to get a good understanding of the issues, either with farm payments or doctors payments, more data is better than less.

50th Anniversaries: IBM 360

Here's a long piece on the IBM 360, which celebrates its 50th anniversary, at least of its announcement, this year.  This wikipedia article says there's no working 360 in existence. 

The trip down memory lane naturally led me to this wikipedia article on COBOL, which I see is still around and kicking.

Common Ag Policy

The EU used to have a CAP blog, but these days it only gets posted in German.  I may be half-German, but I don't read it so I haven't kept up with EU developments.  Today I got to this BBC article on the EU: 

According to my mental math, the EU is spending about $80 billion on its ag policy.  A couple paragraphs from the article shows some differences, and some commonalties with ours:

...greening targets have been watered down, environmentalists say: the requirement for arable farmers to grow at least three different crops, to promote biodiversity; for farmers to leave 7% of their land fallow, to encourage wildlife; and for farmers to maintain pasture land permanently, rather than ploughing it up.

The definition of an "active farmer" has also been contentious. The current payments system is largely based on land area and past subsidy levels, meaning that landowners like airports and sports clubs, which do not farm, have been getting subsidies based on their grasslands or other eligible land areas.

Mark Bittman and IPCC on Yield Changes

Mark Bittman writes in April 2 NYTImes about the IPCC report with the theme the effects of climate warming

"So yields of corn and wheat are down and falling while prices are going up."

From an NPR interview with an IPCC scientist, who didn't concur with the final report:

"Take crop yields, for example. The report says climate change will cause them to fall by a few percent per decade. But Tol says technological innovation will likely raise crop yields by 10 percent or more each decade.
"So it's not that crop yields are going to fall, but they're going to rise more slowly because of climate change," he says. "And then of course it doesn't sound as alarming."

From the IPCC report.

Current economic studies of climate change that include farm- and/or market-level adjustments suggest that the negative effects of climate change on agriculture probably have been overestimated by studies that do not account for adjustments that will be made. This may be caused by the ability of the agricultural production community to respond with great flexibility to a gradually changing climate. Typically, extreme weather poses a significant challenge to individual farming operations that may lack the spatial diversity and financial resources of large, integrated, corporate enterprises with production capabilities in one or more areas.

Simulation modeling using four GCM-based scenarios showed that U.S. cereal production decreases by 21-38% when farmers continue to do what they are now doing (i.e., no adaptation) (see Table 15-4). When scenarios that involve adaptation by farmers are used, decreases in cereal production are not as large and the adaptations are shown to offset the initial climate-induced reduction by 35-60% (Schimmelpfennig et al., 1996; Segerson and Dixon, 1999).

And

When autonomous agronomic adaptation is included, crop modeling assessments indicate, with medium to low confidence⁶, that climate change will lead to generally positive responses at less than a few °C warming and generally negative responses for more than a few °C in mid-latitude crop yields. 

Vilsack on FSA Offices

From Agweb, on Vilsack's Hill testimony:

Vilsack said he would like to see three types of FSA offices in the future: central offices with a supervisor and three or more employees, branch offices with at least three employees, but no supervisor, and satellite offices where people could obtain information by appointment.

Vilsack said he would like to see three types of FSA offices in the future: central offices with a supervisor and three or more employees, branch offices with at least three employees, but no supervisor, and satellite offices where people could obtain information by appointment. He emphasized the restructuring effort is not about saving money, but modernizing the system, and that he would like to see the FSA offices “provide additional information above and beyond what they traditionally do.

 “Part of this modernization effort is really designed to make them a one-stop shop for farmers who are looking for information on rural development programs, how they might enter into the local regional food system opportunities, how they might take advantage of conservation programs, and have the FSA offices act as a bridge or connector with those other opportunities,” Vilsack said.


 Vilsack said he would like to see three types of FSA offices in the future: central offices with a supervisor and three or more employees, branch offices with at least three employees, but no supervisor, and satellite offices where people could obtain information by appointment.
He emphasized the restructuring effort is not about saving money, but modernizing the system, and that he would like to see the FSA offices “provide additional information above and beyond what they traditionally do.” “Part of this modernization effort is really designed to make them a one-stop shop for farmers who are looking for information on rural development programs, how they might enter into the local regional food system opportunities, how they might take advantage of conservation programs, and have the FSA offices act as a bridge or connector with those other opportunities,” Vilsack said.

See more at: http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/23006/#sthash.WO6wSuZD.dpuf

College and Smoking

Some recent research found that growing up in college towns was strongly correlated with becoming famous (as in rating a Wikipedia entry).  (Urban areas and immigrants were also correlated.)

That was on my mind when I saw this map. 
Why?  Because I know where Tompkins county, NY is, which is where Ithaca, NY is.  It stands out on the map of smoking rates by county--the dark blue dot in upstate NY, meaning it has one of the lowest smoking rates in the country. (I suspect the other dark blue areas are also college towns or rich urban areas (Charlottesville, VA is one guess.)

Now I don't know there's a correlation between becoming famous and not smoking, but inquiring minds want to know. (Particularly as I started to smoke in Ithaca, NY and am not famous.)

Inequality: on the Misuse of Statistics

Prof. Mankiw of Harvard linked to this Brookings study on inequality.  It's interesting, and makes the valid, I think, point that our tax/safety net system means lower income people are protected against volatility.  But it fails, at least in my quick reading, to note that figures based on the 2000-2010 period, as its are, will give misleading results.

Why?  Because 2000 was the peak of the dot com bubble in the stock market, while 2010 was early in the recovery from the Great Recession.  The net effect is to understate the income gains of the top 1 percent, and .1 percent and .01 percent.  

Thailand Has Satellites?

The most surprising factoid from all the coverage of the MH370 plane disaster is that Thailand has satellites.  Turns out they've had at least one for over 20 years!!

The world is moving much too fast for this geezer.

What's Wrong with "Industrial"?

I've been doing some reading in 19th century documents--at that time "industrial education" seems to mean something like teaching students to work (in various trades and crafts, even in agriculture). Even earlier, "industry" was one of Ben Franklin's favorite words.

When I was growing up "industrial"  was often attached to "production", meaning stuff factories made, the more they made the better things were.

But since 1980 the use of "industrial" has declined while a bit more recently the use of "industrial agriculture" has exploded.  In this usage, "industrial" is pejorative.  Apparently it's interchangeable with "factory farms".  (Again, when I was young factories were good things; they provided jobs, made stuff, were a symbol of modernity.)

I understand, I think, the thinking behind the pejorative use of "industrial agriculture" and "factory farms", but I'm a bit amazed at the transformation of good to bad over the last 30 years.

The Push and Pull of the Bureaucracy

From NASCOE:

"Items discussed with DAFO include the need for more Key PT’s. One state was able to hire more than the national notice allowed. I encourage each state to get with your SED and figure out a plan to request more."

The budget proposal to cut positions and close county offices is the big issue.  I've already noticed Sen. Gillibrand voicing opposition to closing offices in NY, and I assume that's happening elsewhere.  Since I'm retired, I shouldn't really comment, but the two sentences I quote struck me.  It's an example of how the field can out-maneuver the DC bureaucrats.  For a political scientist, it might be an instance of "rational choice", the idea that people in the bureaucracies look out for the interests of the bureaucracy, not the public.  But applying the idea of the free market to such issues, you could say the "interests of the public" are the result of the interplay of the struggle of various interests.  I think Madison's Federalist #10 might be an example of that.

There's been a long but sporadic effort in USDA to rationalize the county office structure, going back to 1976, an effort having two thrusts: establishing service centers, with multiple agencies in one location, and closing offices which no longer serve a lot of farmers.   There's been a lot of resistance to the effort, so the result has been less consolidation and fewer offices closed than the DC planners hoped to achieve but more than county employees and farmers wanted.

In the broader view, a similar process has been going on for over a century.  The rural population has dwindled in parts of the country ever since 1900 or so.  Reformers, possibly including my grandfather, thought the rural church needed to consolidate--rather than Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. small churches in small towns, why not get together into one which could afford better ministers, support more Sunday schools and other amenities.  Don't think it worked out.

Just recently I saw a blog post on the closing of rural hospitals in Georgia--similar idea I'd think. (Greene, NY, which was our market town, used to have a hospital but it closed in the early 60's, I believe.) 

A Tale of Two Gardens

The White House garden is under snow for the second time since they removed their hoop houses.

 Having worked last fall I've two beds ready for peas, if and when we get a couple dry warm days. We've kale too, although we failed to harvest enough last fall so it's straggly now, and hasn't greened up.  Should bolt in 3-4 weeks at most.

Dairy and China and the Food Movement

Farm Policy refers to a WSJ article on a project in Brittany, France doing a dairy plant for China.  This follows an LA Times article on exporting dairy to China.

It's an intriguing subject because I keep thinking lactose -intolerance, but turns out it's mostly adults and Chinese parents, who dote on their children, don't trust Chinese baby formula.  They do trust US and apparently French dairy standards.

It's an occasion for me to give a compliment to the food movement, at least the historical food movement.  I tend to mock and denigrate the current one, but I recognize that some of the same motives of the current movement also caused the establishing of  high standards for dairy products in past decades, the same high standards which now enable us to export to China.

(Of course, I have yet to see China importing product made from raw milk. :-)

[Updated--Agweb post on the subject.]

Most Interesting Sentence of Today

Actually, I'd say this sentence is very surprising.  Nate Silver is launching his new website today and he writes:

"The books in my office — I have about 500 — are arranged by color."

 What?  Is that the way a nerd does things?  

Closing FSA County Offices

Chris Clayton reports NAFEC is lobbying against the planned closures.  He quotes Mike Espy and  Mike Johanns as citing the problems they had in closing offices.  I remember when the Reagan administration tried to reorganize the state offices, combining some in the Northeast.  That was a bloodbath.

The Worth of a Life, the Worth of Closure

Back in the 80's, I think it was, there was a movement to analyze the cost and benefits of government programs, particularly those programs which tried to save lives.  Liberals tended to view the effort as a back-handed way to cut environmental and work safety programs, but I think over time it's been accepted as an exercise which is worthwhile.

For some reason that came to mind when I read the first paragraph of a Propublica post:

The Pentagon spends roughly $100 million a year to identify service members “missing in action” from World War II, Korea and Vietnam – a noble effort to try and bring closure to families and loved ones. But the process has proven incredibly slow and inefficient, ProPublica’s Megan McCloskey reports, with only 60 identifications made in all of 2013.

$100 million divided by 60 works out to a pretty high price tag for providing closure to families, particularly as the people who knew the service members are dying every day.  (The people who didn't know the service members are also dying every day.)