Farm Program Costs Under the New FArm Bill

David Rogers at Politico has a longish piece on projections of costs under the new farm bill.  The Congressional Budget Office has revised their estimates upward.  Rogers suggests maybe their estimating process has problems, that as prices fall and  the new direct payment programs increase their payouts, crop insurance costs will also fall.

Food Waste--Michael Roberts

Prof. Roberts doesn't blog often but he's good. His latest is a long spiel on the subject of food, especially food waste. Naturally his opinion and mine are reasonably in agreement, though his is longer and with added points: food waste is correlated to the cheapness of food; reducing food waste would increase the supply of food, making it cheaper.

Changing Norms

I follow the Powerline blog, even though it's conservative and I'm liberal. Sometimes they, particularly Paul Mirengoff, surprise me but mostly not.

Today Steven Hayward writes on manners and norms in the classroom.  His takeoff point is a university banning the use of titles in favor of using the students' full names when a professor calls on a student--i.e., "Mr. Harshaw", etc.  He pats himself on the back for using "Mr and Ms" when calling on his students.

Call me old, call my memory defective, but I believe I remember back in the late 60's when all good true conservatives would never let "Ms" cross their lips. So things change.

The Farmer's Risks: Death

Farmers are about twice as likely to die as police, according to this graph of deadliest occupations. 

Farmland Transfers

Chris Clayton at DTN has a piece on farmland transfers,given the high proportion of farmland owned by the old, who will be dying shortly, creating problems both for inheritance and especially for leasing.  The Iowa poet laureate wrote a play on the topic.

Here's the link to the website of the playwright

On User Interfaces

Via Technology Review (I think) comes this post discussing the design of the user interface of subway ticket machines for San Francisco and New York City.  It's got a twist in the middle, and having been a tourist in NYC myself, and being older getting more easily confused and less resilient in dealing with confusion, I end up valuing the design I dismissed when I started reading it.

Free Trade, Promotion Orders, and the Case of the Hass Avocado

Avocados

A while back foodies attacked NAFTA for permitting US farmers to export cheap corn into Mexico, thereby undermining small farmers in Mexico.

There's controversy over the constitutionality of "research and promotion orders", the Hass Avocado Board operates as the result of one.

Now the avocado is surging in popularity as described here.  One might assume that the importing of avocados from Mexico has ruined the market for California growers.  But looking closely at the charts there, that doesn't seem to be the case.  Imports have grown tremendously, but US production has also grown, if not so fast (it appears US avocados went from 600 million in 2007 to 1 billion in 2013.)  It seems at least for the moment that the combination of free trade (NAFTA) and government interference (the Avocado Board) have produced prosperity for everyone, at least as long as California doesn't dry up.

I Shoulda Stayed with History--It's Expanding

I tried and failed to become a historian, dropping out of grad school after a year and a half. 

Prof. Fea passes on a report which shows I missed out on an opportunity--the past is expanding.

The Big Advantage Government Has in Hiring

The big advantage government has over private industry in hiring is the possibility of work being important, in serving the society.  Sure, Google engineers can aim to do no evil, programmers could aim to make information free, but there's always the suspicion that what you're doing is enriching Larry Ellison. 

What's the trigger for this bit of euphoria: the sun peeking through the clouds and this post on the US Digital Service.  Get the salt shaker.

Boar Taint, Walt Jeffries, and GMO's

Modern Farmer has an article on "boar taint*" for which they interviewed Walt Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm.  Walt has bred "boar taint"out of his herd.  The issue raised in the article is whether it's okay to use genetic modification methods to remove the cause of boar taint from the genome of pigs.  Unlike the usual objections to GMO's, which involve transferring DNA from another species into a genome, this is an edit, an edit which as Walt has shown can be done using conventional breeding techniques.  (I raised a similar question in connection with wheat in this post.)

I suspect as we improve our understanding of genetics similar questions will come up.








* it's something which makes pork from boars unmarketable--see the link if you really want to know.