Bravo, Rep. Camp...  

This wayward Republican was heartened to see a very reasonable proposal from Rep. Camp for tax reform. While there is much I would quibble with, it looks to me like just everybody's special interest ox gets gored.

It turns out that Camp's plan specifies the tax breaks he wants to close in considerable detail. And according to the analysis of the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is usually fairly reliable, it would be both revenue neutral and distributionally pretty neutral too. Over ten years it would raise about $3 billion more than present law, and the chart on the right shows how tax rates would be affected. Generally speaking, effective tax rates would go down for the poor and the middle class, and would go up slightly for the affluent. (These are estimates for 2015. They change slightly in subsequent years.) [More] 

But what's in it for me, I can hear you say. Well, I've got good news and some less good news.

Some of the farm-specific details I could find:

• Cash accounting for all farms (although your accountant thinks it is a really bad idea)
• Sec. 179 made permanent at $250,000; phased out at $800,000 total purchased.
• Repeal of soils and water conservation expenses deduction
•  Fertilizer would not be a deductible expense (if I'm reading this right)

Sec. 3115. Repeal of deduction for expenditures by farmers for fertilizer, etc.

Current law:

Under current law, a taxpayer engaged in the business of farming may elect to

deduct immediately expenditures for fertilizer, lime, ground limestone, marl, or other materials to enrich, neutralize, or condition land used in farming.

Provision:

Under the provision, the special rule for deducting expenditures for fertilizer and

other farming-related materials would be repealed. The provision would be effective for

expenses paid or incurred in tax years beginning after 2014.

•  Repeal of 1031 exchanges
• Repeal of biodiesel  and cellulosic ethanol tax credits
• Repeal of farm income averaging
• Generally slower and straight-line only depreciation after 179 deductions
• C ans S Corp stuff I couldn't understand

Of course, farmers will enjoy (?) all the benefits available to all filers that will make the headlines - lower rates, bigger standard deduction, etc.

More later.

Bottom line, we'll mostly hate it in farm country, but I think it's a remarkable start from the Republican side.
 

Years ago...

I gave a wistful commentary on what RR beans might mean to monarch butterflies.  The link is the virtual eradication of milkweeds from our fields.

Never mind I thought I hated them as they slipped aside from my hoe walking beans or the sticky sap gummed up my fingers.  Still there were the amazingly beautiful surprises when the combine reel would whack a ripe pod and the seeds would explode like graceful slow-motion snowflakes.

But like my ancestors talking about passenger pigeons, it may soon be a lost piece of nature.

While other factors cannot be dismissed, lack of milkweeds is the main cause of the monarch's slide toward extinction.

“The migration is definitely proving to be an endangered biological phenomenon,” Lincoln Brower, a leading entomologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, told the Associated Press. “The main culprit is now GMO herbicide-resistant corn and soybean crops and herbicides in the USA, [which] leads to the wholesale killing of the monarch’s principal food plant, common milkweed.”Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants. When the eggs hatch, the larvae feed off the plant. Researchers say that without milkweed, there are no butterflies."They can't lay eggs on anything else,” Christopher Singer, founder of the nonprofit Live Monarch Foundation, said in a statement, according to theChristian Science Monitor. “Can't lay it on a watermelon, can't lay it on a parsley plant. It has to be a milkweed plant."[More]

This is not an "Alas Babylon!" post. Species go extinct and arise constantly. This one strikes me as regrettable, but only because of so many milkweed-monarch memories. My grandchildren will never miss the monarch butterflies they never saw. 

It does seem a little unnecessary, however. And more than a little sad.

Peak of the Week...

Is there a limit to how many cars we can crowd into cities?

The world that Henry Ford put on wheels is poised for a stall.In the globe’s growing megacities, pollution and gridlock are putting a damper on driving. In India, some commuters are leaving their cars at home to avoid traffic snarls and long prowls for parking. More young Americans are forgoing the dream of auto ownership for public transport, bikes and vehicle-sharing. Cars on the road are lasting longer than ever.
All of that may herald a new era for an auto industry weaned on a century of global growth. The world will reach “Peak Car” -- a point at which annual global sales growth will top out -- in the next decade, several auto-industry analysts predict. Researcher IHS Automotive, for one, sees annual sales cresting at 100 million within that time.Peak Car is at odds with the ambitious expansion plans of global automakers, which IHS says are gearing up to produce more than 120 million vehicles by 2016 -- almost 50 percent more than last year’s worldwide sales mark of 82 million. The dynamic also threatens the business plans of parts producers, suppliers of raw material and oil companies.Driving this upheaval is a rapidly emerging reality: The vehicle that ushered in an unparalleled era of personal mobility in the last century is, in many cases, no longer the most convenient conveyance, particularly as more of the world’s population migrates to big cities. [More, with a great infographic]

I find this concern a plausible problem in the medium-term future, but it could be worse in cities I have not first-hand knowledge of like Mumbai. But the inability or reluctance to spend on roads, parking, and other auto infrastructure seems like a transportation "wall" we are hurtling toward. 

Basically, you can only get X cars on Y roads, no matter how wealthy a population is. Something will give: decentralization to shorten commutes; public transport; telecommuting; bicycles, etc.; even denser urban living to allow walking to work; whatever.

This doesn't even take into account China-like smog and the externalities of cars. But it also seems to me to cap one one the most cherished "good" job sources: the auto-industry. Between a ceiling on demand, increased use of robots, and other factors affecting labor needs, this key middle-class life-lifter industry could be less of a contributor to economic mobility in the future.

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ⨩...

I have no idea what those ending characters are for. They are cute, though. Bonus points if you can identify them. Without googling.

• Dave Barry on manning up
• China looks to be concentrating on animal agriculture
• What's next - Ag Mech 101?
• The best guess on Ukraine I've found
• Where children go hungry
• The Federal Reserve Comedy Club
• The Iran "martyr-state" illogic
• Rural America still losing jobs
• It just looks like there's a choice

NASS is sponsoring the taping of USFR Roundtables at Commodity Classic. I am not making this up.

Lucky us...

While we're whining about this bitter, and unending winter, the rest of the world is sweating it out.

We seem to be a smidgen self-centered, no?

Why we can't have nice things...  

Count me alongside Kevin Drum on the issue of better credit cards here in the US.

In any case, we're finally getting EMV technology in the United States starting in 2015. But in possibly the stupidest decision in the history of payment networks, we're actually getting chip-and-signature cards. Why? I've been unable to find a straight answer to this. The banks vaguely talk about merchant resistance to getting new terminals that accept PINs, but that makes no sense. PIN terminals aren't very expensive, and the cost would be effectively zero if you have a five or ten-year phase-in.
Alternatively, they make noises about American consumers not being used to PINs, but that doesn't make sense either. We all use PINs for our debit cards already. We'd learn to use PINs for credit cards in about five minutes.
And then, to add insult to injury, the cards we're getting will mostly be signature-only. That's not a requirement of the technology, though. They could be "signature preferred," which requires a signature if possible but accepts a PIN if not (at automated kiosks, for example). Why not do that? I truly have no idea.
Honestly, the whole thing is just a mystery. EMV technology is old and well-tested. Everyone knows how to make the transition because dozens of countries have already done it. It's not wildly expensive. It wouldn't spark a consumer revolt. So why are we getting idiotic signature-only PIN cards, which are probably the worst possible compromise imaginable? They require more expensive cards and upgrades to infrastructure, but they don't provide much additional security and they don't work universally outside the US. [More of a quality rant]

I got a new Citicard with chip before going to Africa last year. Just called them up and asked. But I didn't realize it wasn't a real EMV card like my European friends have.

Cripes, if we admit they can build better cornheads why can't we accept they have better credit cards? And adopt them?

Aussies are realists...  

It's hard not to admire the attitude of pragmatism of our southern cousins.

DO Australians need to rethink which areas of our country are actually viable for farming?
Droughts and floods are an inevitable part of agriculture in any country but it seems rational to ask how often these calamities can afflict a region before prudence demands it is marked as unsustainable for food production.

“In most Australian farmlands, the rainfall is sufficient to raise crops to maturity in only a fraction of all years”

If a private company wishes to run at a loss, it is no-one's business but the proprietor's, however, when that business is subsidised by taxpayer dollars, it's commonsense we ask questions about where the money is going.
The 2009 Australian Productivity Commission report on government drought support found some Aussie farms had been on "income support continuously since 2002". [More]

There is more at at stake here than just political or economic policy. Extended life support for farm that make no sense strips the farmers and the profession of any dignity. This is the same argument I have heard in our ag press about food stamps, oddly enough, but we can't seem to realize it applies similarly to our farms.

What worries me most is subsidies outlined in the new farm bill will encourage unneeded production too far into the future by enabling marginal land to stay in production. When economic response times are expanded like this by artificial means, the whole system suffers from an inability to adjust supply and demand in a timely way.

On a different note, climate change - which has become a political rugby ball there - may rule out Australia as a major competitor for Asian demand.

The Walmart of space...  

'Splain to me again how we are going to compete technologically with India.

While India’s recent launch of a spacecraft to Mars was a remarkable feat in its own right, it is the $75 million mission’s thrifty approach to time, money and materials that is getting attention.

Just days after the launch of India’s Mangalyaan satellite, NASA sent off its own Mars mission, five years in the making, named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of India’s Mars mission, by contrast, was just three-quarters of the $100 million that Hollywood spent on last year’s space-based hit, “Gravity.” [More]

As the world splits into a tiny number of extremely rich and a gargantuan population of poor, the middle class will be built by societies like this, I think.

We may have fallen into a logical trap of assuming they will have to upgrade their vast agricultural system before becoming a true competitor. Maybe the Indian leadership believes it is better to keep most down on the farm progressing slowly through an agrarian phase until labor demand pulls them to the cities.

Another hint... 

The GMO labeling battle is only beginning.

Consider this reference from an article about using CGI (computer-generated imagery) in the porn industry to "remove" condoms from video while still following health regulations.

The adult industry has an even more symbiotic relationship with technology, so you can bet top-billing actors will be asking for reductions, edits, and enhancements during their porn post-production. It will be up to the fans to ask for better labeling: “This porn contains no digitized parts”—the equivalent of GMO foods where most pornography will be modified in some form. There will be a Whole Foods of porn, and it will do great. [More]

When casual references like above begin to pop up, it's usually a sign somebody has lost control of the narrative, as they say these days.

Literally lost...

This year has been a year of transition unlike all the rest of them, I suppose. But as some readers have noticed, my views have changed or become less rigid as a result of cumulative experience and some additional learning. Much of that evolution has been part and parcel of my faith experience, and how I try to make sense of belief and its purpose.

Perhaps, the ending of my work as a choir director suddenly put in stark comparison how crucial that ministry was for my Christian identity. Choral music was deeply important to my life pattern and a powerful shaping force for my belief system. Its ending left a  much larger hole than I ever anticipated, and a grief that abides today.

Simultaneously, the more history I listened to on my commute the USFR - from history of the early Church, to the Crusades, to the "alternative Christianity's", to the ongoing story of how religion and secular government have evolved, to any number of carefully substantiated historical dismantling of my rather naive lay convictions of who we Christians are and how we got here - the more my understanding was pressured to either give up on reason or bend to the facts.

Additionally, in the past two decades at least, the conflict between politics and religion has been brought into sharper focus and stronger engagement, as the wall between church and state has been questioned by the right. I see this widely evident in disagreement about global warming, diplomacy with other cultures, support of Israel, welfare policy, and perversely, economic theory justification.

For the last few months I have been slogging through the exhaustive (and exhausting) Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

It is a monsterpiece of academic precision and detail, as well as an ongoing challenge to my commitments to rationality and faith. While I highly recommend it, pack a lunch - this is no quick read.

I have been sequentially intrigued , disconcerted, alarmed, and antagonistic toward evangelical Christianity as practiced in the new business model developed over the last three decades.

Apparently, I'm not the only pilgrim wandering on roads less traveled. New research, as well as a spate of commentary from thinkers I respect has flooded media from religious periodicals to popular blogs.

One current subject of contention is what is happening in the evangelical wing. Even I have been startled by the findings.

The common thread in these books is the contention that Christianity, especially conservative Christianity, is rapidly losing strength and cultural authority in a changing America. Charting Americans’ religious beliefs is notoriously tricky, as comparison between any two religion-related polls will attest. Nevertheless, these authors’ argument that conservative Christianity — both evangelical Protestantism and conservative Catholicism — is losing sway in America has become the consensus view of most experts who study American religiosity. In 2012, the Pew Research Center made headlines with a study showing that for the first time, the percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation (19.6 percent) surpassed the number of white evangelical Protestants (19 percent). Other surveys conducted in recent years (by Gallup, the General Social Survey, Baylor University, and other research organizations) show declines in the number of people who identify as Christian, believe in God, and attend church regularly. American Catholicism has undergone its own similar involution, with nearly half of all Catholics under age 40 now Hispanic and a majority of Catholics favoring same-sex marriage, according to Pew. Meanwhile, the number of Muslims in America has risen rapidly, more than doubling since 1990. In the most recent (2008) American Religious Identification Survey, Islam surpassed Mormonism as America’s fastest growing faith.For conservative Christians, the turnabout has been disorienting. Just 10 years ago, conservative Christianity appeared ascendant, with a coalition of evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics twice electing a born-again Christian to the presidency and, in 2004, outlawing gay marriage in 11 states. Today, laws against same-sex marriage are being rolled back and conservatives have failed to budge debate over access to contraception in the new health law. The Tea Party, which pairs evangelicals in an uneasy alliance with an increasingly assertive libertarian movement, is now a dominant force in Republican politics, shouldering aside once-feared evangelical organizations such as the Christian Coalition. Key evangelicals, stung by polls showing younger Americans are turned off by strident conservatism, have begun pivoting politically, as have Catholic bishops in response to Pope Francis’s attempt to reorient his church toward evangelism and social justice. Last year, prominent evangelical leaders, including the political director of the Southern Baptist Convention, spurned the Tea Party and emerged as prominent backers of comprehensive immigration reform. Evangelical leaders told me they were responding to demographic change in America: both the rise of immigrants in their churches and the emergence of a younger, more politically progressive generation of Christians. Yet in a sign of Christians’ diminished political clout, so far evangelicals’ fervent activism on this issue has failed to garner congressional Republican support. [More highly recommended]

Disclaimer: I have grown increasingly intolerant of the fundamentalist branch of the the church, probably because its increasingly anti-intellectualism. This mindset is nothing new, of course. Aaron offered this helpful quote from Isaac Asimov: 

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Amen. But my intolerance is of the same cloth as those I condemn, and singularly unhelpful as well.

So I find myself simply withdrawing, less willing to dispute of even acknowledge what I consider bad religion and life-damaging practices. This is a path of least resistance, and certainly lest reward as well. At the same time, I find myself more likely to try to help rather than persuade. I am beginning to think I waited far to long for this step.

I am also growing less discouraged with my sense of disconnection with modern religious practice - slightly more comfortable in the wilderness I wander. I still find meaning in belief and communal worship, but am actively looking for a more cohesive view of my life and purpose. 

This all sounds like I've postponed my hippy phase until marijuana was legal. But it is also immensely absorbing and frankly time-consuming. I find some evidence to support the theory this is typical for my age, but precious little literature to compare my thinking with others. Maybe, as suggested above, these journeys are just beginning to be chronicled.

I'll keep you updated as I think appropriate, but if you are finding your life is taking you places you never really imagined before, be assured it's not just you. 

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ⋇...

Rain, believe it or not.

• Once a week I force myself to read Fox
• Even as cable news is slip-sliding into irrelevance
• Is America resilient?
• This post may be recorded
• The new hot spot for snowbirds: Somalia
• What was the ROI on farm bill lobbying?
• Own nothing, lease everything

Good crowd at TP seminar. Good to see old long-time friends.

In case you missed it...

Paul Neiffer has a small bombshell regarding the ARC program on his blog at AgWeb.  We talked about this Wednesday night at the TP seminar and he ran some numbers to try to verify our back of the envelope thinking.

I ran some numbers for Buchanan County, Iowa based upon the county yields for the last five years and arrived at the following conclusion:

• The Olympic average yield for the last five years for the county is about 169 bpa.

• The Olympic average corn price over the last five years is $5.15 (this is for the whole US, not just the county).

• A claim would be paid if the actual revenue was less than $748.

• The maximum claim is about $75 and if the yield was 160 bpa and the average corn price was less than $4.25, then the full claim of $75 would be paid.  The average price would have to rise to almost $4.75 to have no claim.

• If the yield was 170 bpa, then a full claim would happen at about $4.10.  At about $4.40, no claim would be owed.

• If the yield rises to 180 bpa, then a full claim is allowed if the average price falls below $3.70 and no claim is allowed if the price goes over $4.15.

Let’s assume we have a Buchanan farmer with 1,000 corn base acres in 2014 and the county yield ends up at 170 bushels per acre and the final corn price for the year is $4.  In this case, he would receive the maximum $75 per acre on 850 acres (1,000 times 85%) or $63,750.  Since the payment limit is now $125,000 per person ($250,000 for married couples), the farmer will get the full amount.  In fact, the farmer, if married he could farm 4,000 acres and collect full ARC payments.  Under the old law, this most likely would be limited.  If these numbers were based on his actual yields, then the payment would be reduced to 650 acres times $75 or $48,750.  Using this coverage, the farmer could farm 6,000 acres and collect full ARC payments. [More]

It looks like this math will be roughly the same for 2015 too because of the Olympic averaging. So while I had been wondering why Heritage, AEI, etc. had been complaining about the bill cost estimates being way too low, this would seem to confirm it.

We're talking ~2.5 X DCP payments. I'm calling it a 7.3 (out of 10) boondoggle.

The catch: the payment won't be made until Oct 2015, and of course everything depends on actual prices and yields during the 2014 year. My thinking is if yields are higher, prices will be (much) lower, so this is a reasonable first guess.

Meanwhile, an alternative...

The Danes are getting great mileage out of this article on a Danish Crown slaughterhouse and it strikes me as well deserved. The photos are outstanding and this one was the most impressive to me - hogs waiting to be slaughtered.

The slaughterhouse at Horsens was truly one of the most fascinating places I have visited on my travels. It is an experience that will leave a mark on my daily life, and help me to understand, just a little, about another important aspect of my food. As you can probably tell, this post is not an in-depth exposé of an industry, and my experience is not enough to knowledgeably critique the process of delivering Danish Crown bacon to your breakfast table; nor can I account for the processes of Danish Crown outside what I saw in Horsens. But I was pleasantly surprised by the openness of the plant about its operations and methods, and it is clear that when they designed the slaughterhouse they were thinking ahead in terms of what consumers will want to see from food producers: more transparency. And while I can’t comment on the conditions of the lives of the pigs before they get to the slaughterhouse (the vast majority of which come from Denmark), I can only make an educated guess that, through my experience as a resident of Denmark, the laws that govern the treatment of pigs would be about as strict or stricter as they would be anywhere else in the world. Anyone with any knowledge on that would be welcome to chip in. [More]

It is hard for competing meat companies to say things can be done better when faced with examples like this.  Bottom line, this could be the best answer to the slide in meat consumption, not confrontation or security.

The Farm Bill...

Isn't the NCBA's biggest headache, after all, IMHO.




Chipotle is slick and the effect is cumulative.

Heck, I'm going to watch it.

Outliving Twitter...

There has been modest pressure from a few readers, etc. for me to be more active on Facebook and Twitter. Very modest.  But aside from the the time I don't want to spend checking my phone more, it could be these peculiar media have their own built-in obsolescence.

Take Justin Bieber, for example.As reports of the once-angelic and deeply troubled Canadian pop star’s arrestbegan to make its way around the web, reactions streamed onto Twitter, ranging from jokes to tongue clucks.But by far, the most common refrain was something like this: “Why is this news??”The simplest answer is that it wasn’t — at least not the most important news happening on that particular day. But Twitter isn’t really about the most important thing anymore — it stopped being about relevancy a long time ago. Twitter seems to have reached a turning point, a phase in which its contributors have stopped trying to make the service as useful as possible for the crowd, and are instead trying to distinguish themselves from one another. It’s less about drifting down the stream, absorbing what you can while you float, and more about trying to make the flashiest raft to float on, gathering fans and accolades as you go.How did this happen?A theory: The psychology of crowd dynamics may work differently on Twitter than it does on other social networks and systems. As a longtime user of the service with a sizable audience, I think the number of followers you have is often irrelevant. What does matter, however, is how many people notice you, either through retweets, favorites or the holy grail, a retweet by someone extremely well known, like a celebrity. That validation that your contribution is important, interesting or worthy is enough social proof to encourage repetition. Many times, that results in one-upmanship, straining to be the loudest or the most retweeted and referred to as the person who captured the splashiest event of the day in the pithiest way. [More] 

Meanwhile, the predicted imminent demise of Facebook was proven to be just bad math, but there are some indications that some type of saturation has been reached.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, as many as 61 percent of Facebook members have tuned out the website for weeks and sometimes months at a time. The reasons listed for these extended breaks are as banal as they are predictable: 21 percent of those surveyed “are too busy/don’t have time for it”; 10 percent “just aren’t interested/just don’t like it”; and another 10 percent simply think it’s a “waste of time.” [More]

Jan uses FB and finds it helpful, but even she is noticing how it can get out of hand. There is usefulness, but you attract a lot of barnacles as the ship steams on. And it is a major time suck.

Meanwhile, as oldsters dip their wrinkled toes in the social media waters, horrified hipsters are screaming out of the water. This is not good news for advertisers looking for that highly desirable young adult cohort.

It seems to me we wear out new toys faster and faster. I've always suspected that Twitter could have a short-half life since it is built around snark as communication. The short zinger is the winner tweet. It also fails to give context for complex issues.

That said, for breaking news or unexpected events (like Bob Costas during Congressional action) it may continue to be a go-to source, languishing is a swamp of trivial self-serving celebrity chasing in between.

The diminished hammer...

Of all the dire predictions about the farm land market, I think we can deduce one thing: the action is going to change.  First, compare farmland with the red-hot fine art market.

And now, Bowley is naming names (and numbers) when it comes to the shadowy practice known as “enhanced hammer“. 

Officially, if you consign an artwork to Christie’s, and it is hammered down for millions of dollars, then you owe the auction house a piece of the action — known as “seller’s commission”. In practice, however, the art world’s biggest rollers never pay seller’s commission. For big-ticket items, the auction house is entirely reliant, for its revenues, on the buyer’s premium — the difference between the hammer price and the actual price paid. 

Increasingly, however, the hammer price has become completely meaningless. It used to give a pretty good indication of how much money the seller took home; no longer. Top clients, it turns out, aren’t just paying zero seller’s commission: they’re now paying a negative seller’s commission, and earning much if not all of buyer’s premium on top of the hammer price. [More]

"Enhanced hammer" would make a good pesticide name, BTW. 

Anyhoo, I think the buyer fee that had been introduced in some parts of the country may be about to die a deserved death.  And real estate agents may have to settle for more modest fees from all but clueless heirs who think they have to pay list price.

If the 80's are any foreshadowing, power is about to wander back to the land buyer, mostly becuase a lot of us will be scared to take on extra debt or part with cash. You'll be surprised I think how fast this transition will take effect, as it feeds on itself.

But I will also venture to forecast some of the greatest opportunities of our careers (or those younger than me, anyway) will not just knock, but hammer on the door. Those who have the courage and admittedly, inexperience could position themselves for the next ag boom.

And yes, there will be one.

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ⅋...

A day to find a good book.

• Millennials looking for liturgy
•  Where will your grandchildren work?
• Or the Chinese, for that matter?
• Tribal reality and your marketing plan
• Why farmers pee in the field
• The closing of the industrialization window

Stay warm!

SNAP reform...

I'm open to suggestions. But first consider the worst (I hope) of the problem.

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices. [More of a must read for farmers who depend on SNAP for subsidy politics]

We have created a bizarrely volatile mix of economic disparity, educational left-behinds, ingenious welfare work-arounds, astonishingly effective and easily manufactured opioid narcotics, and declining social immobility that sustains such appalling lifestyles. Clearly, the best-intentioned and even administered efforts, private and public don't seem capable of eradicating these outcomes.

For some, that would justify ending such efforts. I think a better choice - or at least one somewhat easier to live with - is to continue the struggle to minimize the number of people who choose or are forced into these situations. I'm not advocating more public dollars, but relentless efforts to find ladders and and reasons for people to use them to lift themselves to better lives. In short, make The White Ghetto smaller inch by inch.

Connecting the dots...

The Cheerios announcement is the subject of intense debate right now as farmers try to figure out what it means. Frankly, I think it may signal game over for at least labeling, but I don't think our hysterical predictions of what that will mean are likely.

But more interesting to me is the juxtaposition of two public trends. First, GMO's.

With this move, General Mills is "testing" the market on a brand that is relatively easy to rid of GMOs, says Harry Balzer, chief food industry analyst for the NPD Group, a global market research firm. After all, Cheerios' main ingredient, oats, cannot be genetically modified. Heightened consumer awareness of GMOs, which has been building during the past decade, is what is driving the decision, he says. Ten years ago, 43 percent of US consumers were aware of genetically modified food; today, 55 percent are, according to an NPD Group study released in December. NPD also reports that 20 percent of US consumers are “very” or “extremely” concerned about genetically modified food; in 2002, that concern was shared among just 10 percent of consumers.The General Mills decision stems from a “movement driven by consumers, rather than driven by companies," Mr. Balzer says. "Marketers will surely follow wherever consumers go.” As more food manufacturers and grocery chains push for GMO-free products, the potential exists for higher costs for the consumer, he says.Moreover, GMO technology requires “fewer pesticides, less water, and keep(s) production costs down,” the Grocery Manufacturers Association says. Thus, it “helps reduce the price of crops used for food, such as corn, soybeans and sugar beats,” by 15 percent to 30 percent.Eliminating GMO ingredients from the American diet is largely impossible, most experts say, because processed foods are such a dominant part of it. As General Mills and other food suppliers unveil GMO-free versions of popular brands, they will likely create a niche market for those consumers who want a choice. This will be especially true of products ingested by children, such as cereal and baby food.“The way to sell any food product is to have several different versions. That’s probably where we’re going to be in a few years,” Mr. Albala says. “This is a specialty market.” [More]

Note the way consumer polls are moving on this issue even as farmers and Monsanto, et al. apply a full-court press.

Now consider this nugget of what the popular mind is thinking.

One possibility is that respondents who identified as Republican and believed in evolution in 2009 are no longer identifying as Republicans. Fewer scientists, for example, are reportedly identifying with the GOP, and the overall trend is for fewer Americans to call themselves Republicans. But both Gallup and separate polling from Pew found approximately the same party ID in 2009 and 2013.Another is that the rise of "intelligent design" education has helped to swing younger Americans against evolution. Yet the age breakdown remains similar in 2009 and 2013, with respondents ages 18 to 29 most likely to believe in evolution.What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.Of course, motivated reasoning might help explain why many Democrats also believe in evolution. [More]

Some pundits argue there is an indication of tribalism going on here.

So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? The answer is obvious, of course: the election of a Democratic presidentWait — is the theory of evolution somehow related to Obama administration policy? Not that I’m aware of, but that’s not the point. The point, instead, is that Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists. For some time now it has been impossible to be a good Republicans while believing in the reality of climate change; now it’s impossible to be a good Republican while believing in evolution....And look, this has to be about tribalism. All the evidence, from the failure of inflation and interest rates to rise despite huge increases in the monetary base and large deficits, to the clear correlation between austerity and economic downturns, has pointed in a Keynesian direction; but Keynes-hatred (and hatred of other economists whose names begin with K) has become a tribal marker, part of what you have to say to be a good Republican. [More]

Such ideas are worth pondering, but I would add two more points.

1. Americans have decided science (or even rational thought) is not necessarily the last word for any policy debate. As such farmers are free to argue against global warming if it looks like it may interfere with current practices. Likewise, other special interests use the same selectivity in respecting science. Sound science is science that agrees with my ideology, so to speak.
2. Ag and agribusiness has framed this debate as digital: either 1 or 0, no shades of compromise. This is proving to be a much riskier gamble than any of us imagined. In fact, I think the odds are now we could lose.  And losing means losing big, because we won't offer anything halfway to meet critics. Meanwhile, I have heard or seen nothing about any Plan B.

I still believe we could have negotiated some kind of labeling and eliminated much of the possible damage. But even if we see this type of Big Food action snowball, my guess is we'll dig in and rally around the same seed companies we are outraged at for trapping us into no-choice high prices by cartel action and decreasing non-GMO seed production.

In other words, we may not only lose this battle for consumer acceptance, we may actually make its consequences worse.  The sun will come up no matter which way this battle is decided, but it could be a testing time for corn/soy producers and our value chain. We may have also exhausted considerable political capital that won't be there for crop insurance, TMDL regs, animal welfare public relations, etc. Bungling this controversy will have collateral damage.

I would watch the stock price of Monsanto for a hint of a disruptive event coming down the road.

Local boy makes big city news...

University of Illinois ag econ professor Scott Irwin, who I think has always struggled to escape the shadow of colleague Darrel Good, has emerged into the sunlight of a bizarre NYT "expose".  David Kocieniewski's amateurish hack-job purporting to show proof of academics for hire, is oddly devoid of, you know, facts pertinent to his conclusion.

Over the Felix Salmon at Reuters for the brutal takedown:

Ostensibly Respectable Academic Is In Fact A Hack: it’s a hardy perennial, and an enjoyable one at that. The best example is Inside Job, where big names like Ric Mishkin and Glenn Hubbard got their well-deserved comeuppance. And it’s a genre I’ve indulged in myself: last year, for instance, I spent 4,500 words on a paper by Bob Litan, showing how he lies with numbers to arrive at his paymasters’ predetermined conclusion.But here’s the thing: for this kind of article to carry any weight, it has to demonstrate the mendacity or venality of the academics in question — and, ideally, those academics should have a high-profile reputation which deserves to be tarnished.Which is why David Kocieniewski’s article about Craig Pirrong and Scott Irwin this weekend is such a disappointment. It’s currently doing very well on the NYT’s most-emailed list, but it’s easy to guess who’s doing the emailing: people who love to hate Wall Street, and who will use just about any possible excuse for doing so. Because in this case Kocieniewski has missed the mark. Neither Pirrong or Irwin is mendacious or venal, and indeed it’s the NYT which seems to be stretching the facts well past their natural breaking point.Let’s start, for instance, with the one part of the article almost everybody will read: the big picture at the top of the article, showing the gleaming and extremely expensive University of Illinois business school. “The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has given more than $1.4 million to the University of Illinois since 2008,” says the caption, “with most of the money going to the business school.”That number — a very big sum, which is more than enough to buy research from for-sale economists — gets repeated further down the article:
Mr. Irwin, the University of Illinois and the Chicago exchange all say that his research is not related to the financial support.
This is carefully written to be as damning as possible. Yes, it makes perfect sense that the CME would fund a major business school right in its own backyard — and that it would fund activities related to its own business of commodities trading. But surely Kocieniewski is about to show us how the grants are linked in some way to Irwin’s research: no NYT reporter would write such a thing unless he had reason to believe that there was some kind of quid pro quo, or that the grants to the business school were written in gratitude to Irwin.
Except, if you keep on reading to the point at which you’re 2,500 words into the piece — and pretty much nobody reads that far — you’ll find this:

One of the most widely quoted defenders of speculation in agricultural markets, Mr. Irwin of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, consults for a business that serves hedge funds, investment banks and other commodities speculators, according to information received by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act. The business school at the University of Illinois has received more than a million dollars in donations from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and several major commodities traders, to pay for scholarships and classes and to build a laboratory that resembles a trading floor at the commodities market.

While the C.M.E. has given more than $1.4 million to the University of Illinois since 2008, most has gone to the business school and none to the School of Agriculture and Consumer Economics, where Mr. Irwin teaches. And when Mr. Irwin asked the exchange’s foundation for $25,000 several years ago to sponsor a website he runs to inform farmers about agricultural conditions and regulations, his request was denied.

This is real jaw-on-the-floor stuff. The NYT has published an article about how academics who write nice things about Wall Street “reap rewards”, in the words of the headline — and its main illustration is donations to a business school where the academic in question doesn’t even work! Anybody trying to hold academics to standards of intellectual honesty has to be intellectually honest themselves. And the fact is that there’s zero reason to believe that there’s any connection between the business-school donations and Irwin’s research.

[More - no, I didn't excerpt all of it]

Felix has little heavy lifting to do to show this article is not supportive of its innuendo or tone. In fact, it's an embarrassment to the NYT editorial staff, IMHO.

The basis for this exercise is many want to believe speculators are ruining things for investors (or farmers), but as unlikable as those guys are, there isn't much proof to support this claim.  Besides, as I see it, any farmer who climbs in the ring with these guys at the urging of a market consultant shouldn't whine when he loses his shirt.

I'll stick with cash markets and forward contracts, thanks all the same. The kitchen looks too hot from where I stand.

First off, it's not a game...

I'll be writing a column about the hyper-fashionable droning on about drones for FJ, but the hype surrounding this technology is spiraling out of sight.

The Associated Press reports that some farmers have already begun flying their own drones ahead of Federal Aviation Administration approval for commercial use of drones. There are roughly 2.2 million farms in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Not every farmer is going to buy a drone, of course. But many will. And when it comes to agriculture, drones are a complete game changer. [More breathless hyperbole]

Where to begin?

1. In the above article the author doesn't seem to grasp the difference between a 2 HA. rice paddy and a section of wheat. Drones don't scale up well, at least on the budgets we're looking at in 2014 and beyond. 
2.  Look at a typical farmer-affordable drone. Even if we forked over thousands we'd still end up with a payload of (drum roll, please) about 2 pounds for a popular model. But wait, on the plus side, it will fly for a whole ten minutes! I suppose we could be talking about spraying on weed or a small patch, but if it's beans or corn below 6' that's what tall sprayers are for. It looks to me that any problem that a drone could handle is not likely to be visible on your bottom line or yield map.
3. The one task we know drones can handle are surveillance. OK, you can send a drone to criss-cross your cornfield in a perfect pattern videoing your crop. You end up with hundreds of gigs of video someone must review or watch in real time.  And then you.....?  What crop problems are you going to be able to identify from 10 feet at 20 mph or? Let alone mitigate? 

• Bugs? I'll be generous and allow you have super vision to see the damage under leaves or in a whorl AND identify the bug in question (which is preposterous, of course) but then you run into issue (2).
• Population? Too late.
• Fungus? Too late, usually. Besides we really don't have a great selection of curative fungicides.
• Drainage. Cripes, you should know those problems before you plant. I will give points for finding new tile holes.
• Fertility? Yard-by-yard measurement of greenness is much less useful than infrared satellite images, IMHO. I can see applicators with greenness sensors - at least they are closer to the plant. And I'm not sure the science is there to tell us what to do with whatever data product we get back.

The basis for all this hype seems to be split-second monitoring of crops can make a crucial difference. Maybe. But if you're standing there flying your drone, I'll bet it might occur to you to, well, walk into the field and look around.

I just don't think this is The Next Big Thing. I think it's the Next Ephemeral Fad and I've started the clock on its fifteen minutes. 

Besides, anybody want to bet what these agri-toys will cost 5 years from now? All those who think they'll be the cost/utility ratio won't plummet raise your hands.

I think we've learned this lesson. It won't change my game. 

Breaking the seed corn cartel would. This looks like a bright shiny object to draw our gaze away from real issues like that.

Children and their toys...

Amazingly poignant.  My favs.

(Also note where they are from.)

This year for sure...

2013 predictions: the score so far.

• Politico
• Astrological
• Social media
• Freakonomics on predictions

Junkbox, Episode MMXIII ✩...

Wishing you all a great day tomorrow!

• The grammar police examine Christmas carols. Not good.
• The problem of the Christmas list
• I hope you're home for Christmas
• What up with gingerbread men?
• Predictions for post-Christmas sales - which have already started.
• Above all, don't stay calm.
• All you need to know about my favorite carol.

Fear not - good news!

My Ad of the Year...

Vote in Andrew Sullivan's awards here.


Boy - I'm becoming a sentimental softy in my old age...

Maybe it's the granddaughter-effect.

I've been spending too much time...

In the northern Corn Belt.  I'm starting to talk like them.

Take the test yourself.

They've come a long way, baby...

Those enterprising Chinese!  They are striving to match the transparency and integrity of the American financial sector, and have great leaps of progress.  Even in ag industries!

A finance manager in China reached out to her bosses, concerned that auditors would discoverAgFeed Industries Inc. (FEEDQ) was reporting bogus revenue.“Sometimes I really want to work well on the real stuff, but the need to balance the falsified data often takes up my time,” Wu Jiangqi wrote to supervisors at the Nanchang, China-based animal-feed company in 2009, according to a copy of an e-mail she sent.Wu’s e-mail focused on top management’s “most serious headache, which can only be resolved by money,” then-Chief Executive Officer Xiong Junhong responded. Officials were “thinking of ways to get 30 to 40 million to resolve this!” he wrote.The e-mails, which were translated from Chinese, and other documents obtained by Bloomberg News provide the first detailed glimpses behind what a U.S. Trustee in bankruptcy court called “massive fraud” in AgFeed’s Chinese operations. Managers in China openly discussed their methods for doctoring results, according to the e-mails. As evidence of irregularities began accumulating, executives and directors waited at least four months before disclosing any of it to investors, corporate documents show. [More]

I think they are ready for Lesson #2: What not to put in e-mails.

No wonder...

Sen. Baucus is headed for Japan.  He's going to take some heat from Big Ethanol for his energy tax reform plan.

Baucus's proposal would be to get rid of those 42 energy tax incentives and, in their place, create two broad credits:1) First, any facility producing electricity that is at least 25 percent cleaner than the average for all electricity production facilities would receive a tax credit. The cleaner the facility, the larger the tax credit. (By "clean," Baucus is referring to greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of electricity produced.)This credit starts at 2.3 cents per kilowatt of generation and rises to a maximum of 20 percent of the total cost of the investment. Companies couldn't get the credit until they started producing power, and then they'd get the break for 10 years.All of these credits, meanwhile, would phase out in four years once the greenhouse-gas intensity of the entire U.S. electricity sector is 25 percent below current levels. So there's an overall limit.2) Likewise, any transportation fuel that is at least 25 percent cleaner than conventional gasoline will generally receive a credit. Again, the cleaner and more energy-efficient the fuel, the larger the credit — and the bill would take the entire life-cycle into account when judging the fuel. So if, say, corn-based ethanol wasn't cleaner than gasoline, no tax credit.(Note that the credit for transportation fuels would likely need to be paired with a repeal of the Renewable Fuel Standard that requires refineries to blend a certain amount of ethanol into gasoline. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. But Baucus's committee doesn't have jurisdiction over that fuel standard, so this part isn't in the proposal.)  [More]

Ya live by the mandate, ya perish by the mandate.

My only comment...

On the A & E Duck Dynasty flap. I'm absolutely unqualified to opine since I have seen all of about 3 minutes of the show and only recently paid any attention to the GQ interview fiasco.

But this commenter on The Dish probably nails it, I think:

So I had seen the headlines, a bit on the story in various places, and then your post - I completely agree with you. (I also assure you that as I bear, I was not unduly swayed by his massive beardage.) But as the day progressed, I heard Chris Mathews, Jon Stewart, Colbert and various other people right/left in the cableverse and realized we’ve been duped. This is a PR move to get more hard-right viewers. Phil Robertson is not fired, as some have said. He’s suspended, “after the season has wrapped,” yet before the season premieres. I will bet you anything that he will be unsuspended before the next season. They are simply drumming up ratings. They will have the biggest season premiere ever. In the end, it’s TV – that’s what matters.

Not trying to add more cynicism to the season, but what little I get exposed to the business side of TV informs me this is a very plausible prediction. 

Right-winders are being played.  And boy-howdy, does it raise the stakes for the next outrageous outburst, since I think Robertson has already covered (in graphic detail) most sensitive topics - gays, Orientals, blacks, etc.  What's left?

It is also perhaps an insight into the troubled future of cable channels. I notice my Dish subscription just got bumped up $5/mo. and that $95 is starting to look like a bad deal as we watch more and more stuff via Apple TV and NetFlix ($8/mo.)

Christmas cheer...

Test Answers of the Year

My favs:

It was really hard to pick the winners - check them all out.

Junkbox, Episode MMXIII ₪...

No kidding - when they said "flu season" I didn't think they meant a whole season of flu!

• I am so taking this article to my annual physical. Think how much this might reduce healthcare costs nationally.
• It's always the last place you look
• I want to be a moralizer when I grow up.
• Your bank in five years. Well, not in Chrisman, I doubt.
• Food aid just got even more inefficient
• Another reason gas consumption continues to drop.
• Still a hoax after all these years
• Maybe soon it will be old people serving old people

Bonus points: Anybody guess the currency?

Not necessarily the best...

Much of the battle over health care reform is the persistent belief that the current US system is hands-down the best in the world, despite considerable and growing evidence it's barely average for a developed nation and getting worse in comparison.

Aaron Carroll does yeoman work on educating laymen on medical statistics, and this is one of his best.


This is the overlooked consequence of not engaging in efforts to make our system better, but simply stop any change: we will be stuck with an expensive, and increasingly ineffective health care industry that will crowd out other economic activity.

He sang surprisingly...

As a man who can keenly remember waiting until age 15 for my voice to break - yeah, that was a loooong sophomore year - this report about the dwindling numbers of boy sopranos in Europe was interesting.

But maintaining Bach’s legacy has become more difficult. The problem is with the sopranos. At St. Thomas, as in all boys choirs, the oldest of those singers with unbroken voices are the most prized. Like flowers that are most beautiful just before they die, these boys have the most power, stamina and technique. There are scholars who say that in Bach’s day, some boys’ voices didn’t change until as late as 17. Now boys’ voices are changing earlier, a lot earlier. Medical records tracking puberty through history do not exist, but Joshua Goldstein, chairman of the demography department at the University of California, Berkeley, has analyzed mortality patterns among boys, which can show increased risk-taking and, by extension, the onset of puberty. His research suggests that the age of puberty for boys has dropped, on average, 2.5 months a decade since the mid-1700s. That would mean that boys are sopranos for a shorter time. To maintain a well-stocked soprano section, St. Thomas needs to start with and train more boys. To house growing numbers of recruits, the choir has built a new, larger glass-and-steel-frame alumnat. [More for choral music fans]

I was fortunate to have been in school when chorus was attractive as a way to get out of study hall, and I subsequently learned to love singing. Like golf, it's something you can do for almost all of your life.

Laugh if you want, but The Stone's Keith Richards was a boy soprano who sang for the Queen. 

That's satisfaction.

Trooping farmers to Washington, DC...

 Won't solve this problem.

Consumers, or at least food companies are replacing regulators as the deciders-in-chief about what America eats. And how it is grown.

There are, apparently, a number of ways to make breaded chicken sandwiches healthier. To this end, Chick-fil-A has been quietly switching out ingredients over the last decade. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, the chain eliminatedheart-disease-promoting trans fats in 2006, removed high-fructose corn syrup from its bagels and golden wheat bread, and gradually reduced sodium in some products. Now, the 1,700-store chain is working to remove preservatives from its breads and oil.What’s unusual about the efforts is that Chick-Fil-A has largely avoided publicizing them until now, hoping to avoid ire about any perceived change in flavor. Fast food companies have had to balance customer loyalty to well-known menu items with growing pressure to offer healthier options. “We didn’t necessarily want the customer to know we’ve tweaked their favorite product,” the chain’s senior nutrition consultant told NRN.Chick-fil-A is testing a new preservative-free white-bread bun in about 200 stores, and it’s trying out a peanut oil without TBHQ, a chemical that extends the shelf life of oils but can cause health problems if consumed in large volumes. It will remove high-fructose corn syrup from sauces and dressings. And due to concerns about thehealth-effects of food dyes, the chain is also looking into removing yellow food dye from its soup base and ice cream, reported NRN. [More]

And the animal welfare crusade seems to have a weekly victory as well.

Nestle's Northbrook-based pizza division, which makes DiGiorno and Jack's frozen pies, has cut ties with a Wisconsin farm after an animal rights group released a video of dairy cow abuse.Mercy for Animals revealed an undercover investigation on Tuesday that showed video footage of cows being beaten, stabbed and dragged by a tractor. [More]

Like generals in WWI, agriculture is fighting this war the wrong way. We shouldn't be at war with consumers to begin with. But so far, our plan seems to be:

• Deny, deny, deny
• More security (Farm fortresses)
• Federal regulation (even though we hate federal regulation)
• Refusal to consider alternatives
• Self-reassuring reporting in ag media that consumers are sadly misled imbeciles
• Lather, rinse, repeat

I grow more bearish on meat consumption and public support for ag every day.

Great Twitter feed...

Faces in thing. [@FacesPics]

Just some happy grass cells under the microscope. pic.twitter.com/XeACxGOxWE
— Faces in Things (@FacesPics) December 1, 2013

Time-suck Warning! 

You can't party all the time...

 It's hard to take the Tea Party seriously when their heroes take positions like this:

The story ends on the comical note of quoting Florida Representative Ted Yoho, tea party maven and avowed enemy of big government, defending his strong advocacy of sugar subsidies: “I ran on limited government, fiscal responsibility and free enterprise, but when you’ve got programs that have been in place and it’s the accepted norm, to just go in there and stop it would be detrimental to our sugar growers.”You hear that? Sugar subsidies are an accepted norm. If tea partiers believe anything, it’s that, once a government program has been in place, we can’t get rid of it. It would hurt sugar growers, Yoho proceeds to explain, by forcing them to sell their product in the free market on even terms. This is completely unlike programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, which Yoho wants to cut, because cutting them wouldn’t be detrimental to anybody. At least not anybody he cares about.We should be perfectly clear about the fact that Democrats do not have clean hands here — especially not on sugar subsidies, where Democrats representing rural constituents happily shovel billions into the farm subsidy maw. But the Republican enthusiasm for wasteful domestic spending here is what’s especially telling, because it’s the Republican Party that has declared rhetorical war on government, and which is its entire weight behind a broad-based assault on Obamacare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and the entire structure of government support for the disadvantaged. [More]

What is is about farm policy that can completely undermine absolute positions without causing heads to explode? This is hypocrisy of the highest level.

I am beginning to think Republicans are realizing with teammates like this, who needs opponents?

It also suggests there can be perverse consequences to severe gerrymandering.