Aw, c'mon, Mr. Secretary...

I'm certainly no stranger to cheap demagoguery, but this lump is a sad example of obfuscation and pandering at the same time.

If the Obama Administration had a jazzy slogan like that it might read: Every Farm Boy a Doughboy.That, at least, appears to be the policy of Obama’s Secretary of Agribusiness Tom Vilsack. For months Vilsack has been delivering the same speech at chicken and peas dinners across the country, the gist of which is that America’s farm mothers are brood sows, birthing sons to be recruited into the army and made into fertilizer. Said Vilsack:

The U.S. population is now categorized as 16 percent rural. Despite that low percentage, more than 40 percent of the men and women who serve in our armed forces are from rural America. Young men and women from America’s farms continue to lead the way in protecting our country and making us the top military power in the world.

Farm boys grow up with a sense of wanting to give something back, Vilsack says. If we lose that value system, we’ll lose our military might.Mind you, that’s the USDA chief talking, not the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. Welcome to America’s new agriculture policy: Grow large crops of farm boys for use as cannon fodder. [More]

Jeez - where to start!

A. The author of this article is totally clueless here as well, and apparently unable to google "rural". He conflates "rural" with "farm". Let's try some of that fancy arithmetic stuff: 16 percent of the US population (~320M) would be over 50 million people. WTF! WE constantly remind people only 2% are farmers and we know that's a wild overestimate of the number of actual producers. So where are all these folks?

B. To begin with, there are NINE (!) different USDA definitions of "rural". This excerpt leads me to believe Vilsack's speech inventor is using Definition 7. Wade through it yourself, but it's pretty clear it includes lots of what are clearly "city folk". It definitely doesn't mean "lives on a farm".

[Click to enlarge to barely readable]

Put simply, the current makeup of the all-vol­untary military looks like America. Where they are different, the data show that the average sol­dier is slightly better educated and comes from a slightly wealthier, more rural area. We found that the military (and Army specifically) included a higher proportion of blacks and lower propor­tions of other minorities but a proportionate num­ber of whites. More important, we found that recruiting was not drawing disproportionately from racially concentrated areas. [More]

[Note the above study also uses Definition #7 of rural]

C. I can't find a definitive source but anecdotal information suggests young people are not necessarily driven by fervent ideals so much as a lack of employment opportunity near home, the GI Bill educational benefits, and more chances of equal treatment for minorities.  I'm not discounting patriotic motivation but it is not the only factor and there is no evidence to suggest it is stronger in rural youth. A better link is the much higher unemployment in the rural South especially.

D. It is a tortured chain of logic to link national security to a farm bill and subsidies so farmers will keep supplying sons and daughters to fill soldier slots. Also a little nauseating, IMHO.

Vilsack is scraping the bottom of the barrel here. While I am glad I served, I joined because I was going to be drafted and frankly for a little adventure at 21. It was one of the best decisions of my life, but I did not then nor now imagine myself doing anything heroic. It was my job for 5 years. They paid me to do it.

The Secretary's cheap exploitation of military myths is undignified and uninformed by actual fact.

Rural schools...  

Won't fit in any of the answers for America's education system. Consider this otherwise good idea for our economy and school system from Kim Manzi:

1. Deregulate schools. A publicly-funded private school is a contradiction in terms; with predominantly public funding comes the inevitable and appropriate demand for public accountability. But we need public schools to have greater flexibility in how they do their work—both in order to discover improved methods and also to tailor approaches to different kinds of students—while simultaneously exposing them to the kind of unsentimental feedback loop for school performance that markets can provide. Education is an industry representing about 4 percent of GDP that is badly in need of deregulation. 
School deregulation is much broader than “school choice,” and should have two key components. First, the federal government should establish a comprehensive national exam by grade level to be administered by all schools that are materially publicly funded. We should require each school to publish all results, along with detailed data about school budgets, performance, and so on, each year. Second, continued federal funding should be contingent on states’ passing model-schools legislation that creates simple, uniform rules for establishing new charter schools, and establishes the absolute requirement that funding follows students. 
The primary role of the federal government would be to ensure consistent, high-quality information, provide normal market regulation to allow education providers to achieve efficient scale, and sponsor rigorous basic research on educational practices. The role of education providers would be to compete entrepreneurially within this framework.
This is not a panacea. In a nation in which about 40 percent of all births occur out of wedlock, many children will be left behind. But better schools will create material improvement. And this method is not theoretical: Versions have already been implemented successfully in Sweden and the Netherlands, and a similar program is being implemented in Britain now. [More]

As always, vouchers and choice mean little when the only school for miles is the one you already have. But the teeny number of students and lack of political clout hint at even further degradation for small schools.

Nor is the idea of spending massive amounts to keep them up to the pace of city schools a good one either. Like much of our rural culture (churches, recreation, retail, etc.) demographics is the obstacle you can't finesse. As long as we continue to lose people, I see no alternative to losing local services, and Australian-like outback lifestyles.

Next up might be rural mail delivery.

I'm not opposed to small towns having a post office. I am not opposed to small, low-population counties continuing to exist as they were drawn at statehood. I am opposed to government spending money to maintain something that is inefficient and obsolete only because it is politically too painful to change it. The reality of rural America is that we've had a great deal for a long time and it's become an entitlement in our minds.
Rural Free Delivery started in 1902 across most of the United States. It cut the number of post offices by two thirds but added a lot of jobs for rural letter carriers, and a valuable service for farm families. The system worked so well that it endeared the "mail carrier" to those who saw the car or truck stop at their mail box each day. What most people don't see is the massive infrastructure behind the letter carrier and the incredible cost of transferring mail across the country so that each of us gets ours in our box, six days a week. [More]

I think Ken is right. From roads to RFD to schools, many of the elements of our wonderful way of life were heavily subsidized by urban taxpayers. That's going to stop, IMHO, regardless of who is president or Speaker.

We're just better, that's why...

Man, I knew this little tempest would trip triggers in farm country given our long years of selfish-steam reinforcement that farmers are the best people on the planet.

Last Friday, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein made a point in touting a book, "The Triumph of the City," to take a shot across the bow at rural America.

"The overarching theme of (Ed) Glaeser's book is that cities make us smarter, more productive and more innovative. To put it plainly, they make us richer. And the evidence in favor of this point is very, very strong. But it would of course be political suicide for President Obama to say that part of winning the future is ending the raft of subsidies we devote to sustaining rural living. And the U.S. Senate is literally set up to ensure that such a policy never becomes politically plausible." [More]

It began with this post by Ezra Klein who (unlike Clayton) followed up with a chance for Sec. Vilsack to respond. (well worth reading, BTW)

EK: Let me go back to this question of character. You said again that this is a value system that’s important to support, that this conversation begins with the fact that these people are good and hardworking. But I come from a suburb. The people I knew had good values. My mother and father are good and hardworking people. But they don’t get subsidized because they’re good and hardworking people.
TV: I think the military service piece of this is important. It’s a value system that instilled in them. But look: I grew up in a city. My parents would think there was something wrong with America if they knew I was secretary of agriculture. So I’ve seen both sides of this. And small-town folks in rural America don’t feel appreciated. They feel they do a great service for America. They send their children to the military not just because it’s an opportunity, but because they have a value system from the farm: They have to give something back to the land that sustains them.<

To being with, it was a comment about a book about cities, but if you document good aspects of cities, you automatically malign rural America, I guess.

But the evidence for the former is considerable, and the proof we are the repository of American values a little less verifiable.

The trouble is we've been in Stuart-Smalley-mode for so long we actually swallow our propaganda: country folk are better than city folk.  Which leads to an interesting problem.  When our children leave the farm to become lawyers and accountants and ice cream salesmen, do they fall away from the moral high ground? And what happens to old farmers who move to Naples? Is my son in Elmhurst less admirable than the one up the road? 

Please.

The geographic determination of virtue and values is laughable. We know we divorce, abuse, addict and sin at rates very similar to urban denizens, but those facts stand in the way of a public-relations image which justifies entitlements.

And yes, the money does pour from urban to rural in a big way. There would be no rural utilities (phones, power, roads, etc.), for one example if city folks didn't pay more so we could pay less than the real cost. Rural school are screaming for more state aid to relieve local taxpayers.  And then there are those farm subsidies...

All said, the best summary came from Joyner:

Essentially, Vilsack justifies subsiding farmers on the basis that rural America is the storehouse of our values, for which he has no evidence. And he’s befuddled when confronted with someone who doesn’t take his homilies as obvious facts.
Nobody argues that America’s farmers aren’t a vital part of our economy or denies that rural areas provide a disproportionate number of our soldiers. But the notion that country folks are somehow better people or even better Americans has no basis in reality. [More]

Ryan Avent adds that the real problem is policy debates are reduced to personal affronts, just as Clayton took it.

ONE of the most frustrating things about policy debate is the way in which arguments about efficiency are often interpreted and responded to as arguments about values. A defence of congestion pricing, for instance, will often get one labeled as anti-car. The value-oriented arguments become very intense when one makes arguments about the relative economic benefits of different kinds of places. And so it's not really suprising that an Ezra Klein post praising Ed Glaeser's work on the economic strengths of urban agglomerations hit a nerve with Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Get to talking about how cities are associated with high productivity levels and incomes, and about how urban tax revenues subsidise inefficient policies like massive agriculture subsidies, and people from rural areas may begin to feel that they're being personally slighted. What is interesting is just how hollow these complaints ring when properly addressed.
...
First, it may be that the economists who understand the economic virtues of city life aren't doing a sufficiently good job explaining that it's not the people in cities that contribute the extra economic punch; it's the cities or, more exactly, the interactions between the people cities facilitate. It's fine to love the peace of rural life. Just understand that the price of peace is isolation, which reduces productivity.
Second, the idea that economically virtuous actors deserve to be rewarded not simply with economic success but with subsidies is remarkably common in America (and elsewhere) and is not by any means a characteristic limited to rural people. I also find it strange how upset Mr Vilsack is by the fact that he "ha[s] a hard time finding journalists who will speak for them". Agricultural interests are represented by some of the most effective lobbyists in the country, but their feelings are hurt by the fact that journalists aren't saying how great they are? This reminds me of the argument that business leaders aren't investing because they're put off by the president's populist rhetoric. When did people become so sensitive? When did hurt feelings become a sufficient justification for untold government subsidies? [More]

The truth be told, this farmer suspects there are many, many people in the world better than himself. In fact, the older I get, the more the number grows. And the vast majority of them live exemplary lives in cities.

Why can't we be OK with being just as good as other people? Why is any criticism of our lifestyle forbidden?

[One final note. The disproportionate number of military from rural areas Vilsack reiterates doesn't seem to be reflected in farmer ranks. I cannot think of only a single younger farmer I know who is a veteran. The last significant batch seems to have been "semi-volunteers" like me during Viet Nam.]

Beats PIK certificates...

(For those of your who don't know what I'm talking about, ask Grandpa - although he probably can't explain them).

Anyhoo, Chinese farmers are getting some novel subsidies.

Yang Shibo, a 50-year-old farmer in China’s Shandong Province, bought a refrigerator to keep vermin away from his family’s meat and vegetables. The government eased his purchase by knocking 13 percent off the price.



“We see a lot of rats running around, they run around on the ceilings, they eat our food,” Yang, who grows peanuts, said as he swatted flies in his kitchen. “We didn’t have a fridge before. It’s much more convenient now.”


Farmers are benefitting from more than 15 billion yuan ($2.23 billion) in subsidies this year for appliance purchases by rural residents as the government tries to boost domestic consumption and ease a reliance on infrastructure spending and exports. That more than doubled first-quarter profit at Qingdao Haier Co., part of China’s biggest appliance maker. TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd., part of China’s biggest consumer-electronics maker, said net profit rose 69 percent.


Farmers using subsidies bought 41.7 billion yuan in household appliances during the first four months of this year, a 510 percent increase from a year ago, the government said. [More]

Every time I think things are tough on my farm, I get a little perspective from my colleagues around the world, who are tickled pink for ratproof refrigerators.

I am such a whiner!

Maybe I will join the Tea Party...

If farm program proponents keep coming out with statements like this:

"The ag committee has always cared about that. Haven't they heard of the Rural Electric Administration back in the 30s? We've always cared, but don't make us pick between conservation and commodity titles and so-called rural development and infrastructure programs. We have a right to have both." [More] [My emphasis]

And that right would be where exactly in the Constitution? This is a textbook example of "entitlement mentality".

The argument over the loss of farmers refuses to deal with the root cause, which is not just hollowing out our profession, but much of the middle class of the US.

Technology is the main culprit. Automation and outsourcing have claimed whole classes of jobs. Among them are routine but vital tasks that were labour-intensive before the computing revolution: manufacturing and number-crunching jobs that used to pay handsomely. The economy now needs workers to do what can’t be done by machines or call-centres in Bangalore, which leaves iPad design and caretaker work but not enough in between. The supply of skilled workers has failed to keep pace with demand, so the college wage premium (see chart) has increased. 

 [More]

Short version: we don't need as many farmers as farming lends itself to powerful technology.

More biorefineries won't mean more farmers.  We're obsessing over a symptom and ignoring the cause. The only valid hope for raining the number of farmers is what we saw happen in the last farm census - increase the number of very small farms.  This is done by encouraging agrarian agriculture which is much more labor intensive.

But the larger mistake is in equating the number of farmers with rural prosperity.  Farm income is not and has not been for a very long time the key component in rural economies.  Look at the BEA numbers and try to reach any other conclusion.

Finally when new or higher taxes are enacted to pay for intransigent, entrenched special interests like agriculture, we'll throw the bums out who voted for them and then whine about the deficit.

Maybe the Borg got started this way...

This unsettling report about a project in a college for students to give up media (phones, computers, etc.) for a whole 24 HOURS.  While you might expect some sense of mild isolation, it was far more profound.

This new study conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) asked 200 students at the University of Maryland, College Park to abstain from using all media for 24 hours.  After their 24 hours of abstinence, the students were then asked to blog on private class websites about their experiences: to report their successes and admit to any failures.  The 200 students wrote over 110,000 words: in aggregate, about the same number of words as a 400-page novel.
WHAT WERE THE STUDY’S TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS?

1. Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media.
   “Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer,” wrote one student.  “By 2:00 pm. I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island…. I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.” (for more, click HERE)
2. Students hate going without media.  In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family.
   “Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.” (for more, click HERE)
3. Students show no significant loyalty to a news program, news personality or even news platform.  Students have only a casual relationship to the originators of news, and in fact don’t make fine distinctions between news and more personal information. They get news in a disaggregated way, often via friends.
   “Although I will admit I do not actively keep up with breaking news every day I do get a lot of information on a daily basis through social networking, text messaging, and websites such as Gmail, where it does have headlines on the homepage. It is very important to me to have some sense of what is going on in the world on a daily basis, but I also focus in on issues that I do care about, and I keep up with that particular issues progress. For example, the Equal Rights campaign, or local and global environmental organizations, whose progress I follow via Twitter, Facebook or their websites.” (for more, click HERE)
4. 18-21 year old college students are constantly texting and on Facebook—with calling and email distant seconds as ways of staying in touch, especially with friends.
   Said one student,”Texting and Facebook allow me to make plans to meet up and act socially, whereas without these two devices I had no easy way of making plans unless I happened to run into the person I wanted to do something with.” (for more, click HERE)
5. Students could live without their TVs and the newspaper, but they can’t survive without their iPods.
   “It was really hard for me to go without listening to my iPod during the day because it’s kind of my way to zone out of everything and everyone when I walk to class. It gets my mind right. Listening to music before I go to class or take an exam is my way of getting amped up like a football player before a game. It sounds weird but music really helps to set my mood or fix my mood and without it I had to rely on other people to keep me in a good mood,” said one student. (for more, click HERE)

[Apologies for a near-complete excerpting of this post, but please follow the links to the real material]

First, I think it is important to allow for the rhetoric of that particular age.  "Worst experience of my life" means something different at 19 than 79, for example. But even so, I think the introduction of constant contact and internal group referencing could pose some stark challenges for institutions of our culture.

If friendships are bounded not so much by geography, but Facebook hits, then what does "local" mean in the sense of community? If we can eliminate the need to for satisfying personal interaction at work because we get it all via technology, how do business leaders foster a sense of teamwork? For that matter, what does "alone" mean now?

I can testify to the addiction to online information, less to the power of personal connectivity such as constant texting. But it is a similar experience to closed religious communities such as the Amish, who create a bubble that excludes much while intensifying interpersonal links internally?

I'm not sure of any of these questions, but I now realize I have seen this phenomenon at work.  For once, such cultural developments have ample opportunity to replicate in rural life, since cell phones are ubiquitous and finally coverage is at least adequate for this type of connectivity.

While technology may contribute to the decline of physical community, it may also allow a remarkable new replacement, with its own powers and faults.

[Thanks, Vicki]

Cremation is also a big factor...

Escorted funeral processions are fading away, and local government budget cuts won't help.

The funeral cortege, a staple of mourning in the USA for generations, is rolling up against modern realities. Concerns about staffing, cost and officer safety forced the change in Gulfport, Smith says. Police were overwhelmed, sometimes working six funerals a day, and some funerals required as many as eight of the city's 190 sworn officers — 4% of the force.

"In some cases, we would have an entire section without protection," he says. A five-vehicle procession can be handled by a single officer.

There are also liability concerns. Courts in Tennessee and Florida have found that police and funeral homes that provide escorts for funeral processions can be held liable for crashes that occur during the processions.

In most states, the lead vehicle in a funeral procession must obey traffic signals and stop signs, but other vehicles are not required to do so. Still, funeralgoers all over the USA are getting cited by red-light cameras for running red lights while a part of a funeral procession. The Georgia House of Representatives is considering a law that would require camera companies to include on citations a box saying the vehicle owner was part of a funeral procession when the violation occurred.

"There are cases where you legally run a red light. The most prominent is a funeral procession," says Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Cassville Republican.

In some places, the practice of motorists respectfully pulling over to the side of the road as a funeral procession passed, has passed on, too. In several instances in recent months — including in Memphis and Houston — funeral escorts on motorcycles have been hurt by drivers attempting to cut through processions. And each year, motorists around country are hurt or killed in wrecks involving funeral processions.

Still, some smaller communities have managed to hang on to the practice of police escorts for funerals. "We do it on a case-by-case basis," says police Sgt. Curtis Bristol of Charlotte, Mich., which has a population of about 9,000. [More]

We live a mile from a lovely cemetery, and now that I think about it, we are seeing fewer corteges as well. I know our own family experience with funerals has been widespread families are planning delayed memorial services instead of funerals after an immediate and intimate cremation. Plus many final dispositions are scatterings rather than burial.

I think one indicator of how the funeral procession is disappearing is the confusion and failure to recognize one by many motorists who pass into the midst, or honk at intersections.

Exactly how fast...

Are you surfing?  The FCC wants to help with a simple Internet speed test.

Try it here.

So I did, and this is my score: Download 2835 kbps   Upload 634 kbps

The funny part is I immediately repeated the test at my favorite speed site: pcpitstop.com

The answer there:  Download 4835 kbps  Upload 631 kbps

So I checked back at the FCC site: Download 4780 kbps  Upload 592 kbps

The operative phrase is "your results may vary", I guess.

Anyhoo, the FCC will unveil soon an ambitious plan with some astronomical numbers. Even so the plan for "100-Squared" (100 Mbps in 100 million households) is not extraordinary in international comparison.

Are other countries doing this?

Yes, many countries are already way ahead of the United States in terms of broadband speeds and availability. South Korea, for example, boasts an average broadband speed of 43.3 Mbps, according to a 2008 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But, dissatisfied with those speeds, the South Koreans in February 2009 announced an ambitious goal to introduce 1 Gigabit-per-second broadband by 2013.

Other countries also boast impressive broadband speeds, according to the OECD. France, for example, averages speed of 43.3 Mbps and the Japanese enjoy speeds of 93.7 Mbps. The United States broadband speeds hover around 9 Mbps; however, keep in mind that broadband speeds in urban areas tend to be much higher. [More]

I'll try to read the plan when published and see what it might mean for rural citizens. Right now, I'm embarrassed by how giddy I am over 5 Mbps. 

The weather report...

For everywhere.

(I think I can see my house!)
 
Happy Birthday, Terra.

No, not Terra the Earth, Terra the satellite. NASA’s Earth-observing bird first opened its eyes on February 24, 2000, and for the past decade has been dutifully watching our planet. It has looked upon us at different wavelengths, different resolutions, at different times of day, and different times of year. It has tracked changes, and reported back what it has seen. [More]

Sad note: due to funding cuts my local PBS station is dropping its weather department.

The elimination of the weather department signals an end to independent weather forecasting for WILL Radio and WILL-TV. Staff will share weather information with listeners from reports from the National Weather Service.

Providing the weather to the public costs about $140,000 a year, $40,000 of which is underwritten by businesses, according to Illinois Public Media.

“We are proud of our long tradition of weather coverage. Ed Kieser, Mike Sola, and their staff have for years dedicated themselves to making sure our listeners knew when severe weather threatened as well as bringing them day-to-day forecasts. But now that in-depth weather information is available on the Web and elsewhere, we believe that our limited resources must be applied to other areas,” said Illinois Public Media General Manager Mark Leonard in a statement Thursday. [More]

I wonder if media "weatherpersons" (?) are finally going to join the recession for the reason mentioned above. If the product is essentially free on the Internet...

THESE HAVE BEEN hard times for news organizations, and TV news is no exception. Fewer people are watching: viewership of local TV news fell by an average of 4.5 percent last year. Revenue is down, and with the precipitous drop in auto ads, once the staple of local TV news, it’s unlikely things will get better soon. Experienced and expensive anchors are being dropped for younger, cheaper ones. Reporters and producers are on the chopping block. But in the midst of all the cost-cutting, it seems the television weatherman isn’t going anywhere.

Weather is key to developing a strong brand for local newscasts, and it’s relatively cheap to produce. Beyond salaries, the only real expenses are any private weather forecasting or graphics services used in addition to National Weather Service data, which is free. Top meteorologists may find their salaries getting cut just like the anchors who stick around, but due to their low cost and high value, they’re unlikely to be sent packing. Karpowicz says that in a news department of 60 people, the total weather budget including salaries and expenses accounts for less than one-fifth of the total news budget. “We are in difficult times,” says Karpowicz, “but we are not considering cutting back on weather.”[More]

Maybe I'm seeing ponies that are only clouds, but it feels like the recession is starting to impact more people in my personal world recently.  It's like they've held on so far, but have exhausted their resources or luck.

It could also be that this is a reflection of tightening government budgets across the board. We often forget how important government is to rural economies.

The real deficit problem for farmers...

While producers are wringing their hands about trillion-dollar federal deficits with vague, but ominous sounding consequences for the future, I think some other deficits will really whack rural America up side the head: state budgets.

Eleven weeks after Congress settled on a stimulus package that provided $135 billion to limit layoffs in state governments, many states are finding that the funds are not enough and are moving to lay off thousands of public employees.

The state of Washington settled on a budget two weeks ago that will mean 1,000 layoffs at public colleges and several times that many in elementary and high schools.

The governor of Massachusetts, who cut 1,000 positions late last year, just announced 250 layoffs, with more likely to come soon.

Arizona has already laid off 800 social service workers this year and is facing the likelihood of deeper cuts over the next two. The state no longer investigates all complaints of child or elder abuse. [More]

Unable to fund deficits by creating money, states have postponed the inevitable for so long the effort to struggle back to balance will involve truly draconian cuts. More importantly, my guess is these cuts will be the cruelest of all in farm country.

First, schools will be hit very hard. many of my friends are married to teachers, and teaching jobs are some of the more desirable and stable in rural areas. Even more pronounced is the effect university jobs have on surrounding rural areas.  Not only are the salaries and security of that employment perhaps the best, the benefits make self-employment possible for otherwise uninsurable families.

As smaller schools struggle and even fail, consolidation will become the only option with all the costs and benefits for farm families that accompany it. I could see rural population decreasing as well, as manufacturing jobs, and social support systems shrivel for rural populations.  Even if rural schools strive to stay open, less state money will mean more local taxes, which means real estate taxes.

State budget crises presages miserable rural roads even as we ramp up our road-damaging farm machinery and grain volumes to be transported increase.

Governor Mark Parkinson has cut millions in state funding to bring the current budget into balance. Kansas’ schools, roads and many of the state’s most vulnerable citizens are again impacted by a historic drop in state revenue.

“Unfortunately, we are now to the point of potentially making crippling cuts to state services. This latest round of budget reductions will mean that class sizes will again increase in Kansas schools. Some districts will be forced to lay off teachers and close schools. These cuts mean that our universities will have fewer professors, offer fewer classes and critical investments in our future are in jeopardy. These budget cuts will force us to reduce supervision of released prisoners, increase the number of disabled citizens waiting for services and reduce road maintenance across the state,” Parkinson said. [More]

Linked to university budgets, I suspect Extension will be decimated, especially in states like mine - IL. Many of those jobs are part of a farm family economy, as well.

Rep. Richard Stevenson, R-PA 8th, asked what stresses the agricultural community was under because of the funding situation. Spanier indicated that Penn State cannot continue to meet expectations with no increase in state support for agriculture, as is proposed by Gov. Rendell.

"If there is no increase in funding there is no way to support Cooperative Extension or agricultural research at the current level," Spanier said. "We will have to have a reduction of another 54 positions in extension service. We cannot continue all of these services." [More]

Even courthouses could close.

The point is not so much the awful changes being forced upon us, but I hope a realization of why federal governments should run deficits during recessions.  (I strongly objected to the deficits during the expansion years) State budgets are procyclical and add fuel to the downward spiral because as revenues fall, they must reduce spending which then causes a drop in state economic activity which lowers tax revenue.

I can appreciate the outrage over projected federal deficits.  However, as reality hits Route 2, suddenly stimulus efforts during recessions may look less objectionable.

Suppose it passes...

At the risk of re-igniting controversy during the holidays, the actual possibility of HCR passing largely in the form of the Senate Bill does suggest examining what it would mean. Especially for farmers.

First of all, critics would point to the taxes and other negative consequences.

2010: Physician Medicare payments decrease 21% effective March 1, 2010
2011: “Annual Fee” tax on health insurance, allocated according to share of total premiums. Begins at $2 billion in 2011, then increases to $4 billion in 2012, $7 billion in 2013, $9 billion in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016, and eventually $10 billion for 2017 and every year thereafter. Two insurers in Nebraska and one in Michigan are exempt from this tax.
2012: Medicare payment penalties for hospitals with the highest readmission rates for selected conditions.
2013: Medicare tax increased from 2.9% to 3.8% for incomes over $250,000 (joint filers) or $200,000 (all others). (This is stated as an increase of 0.9 percentage points, to only the employee’s share of the FICA tax.)
2014: Individual mandate begins: Tax penalties for not having insurance begin at $95 or 0.5% of income, whichever is higher, rising to $495 or 1% of income in 2015 and $750 or 2% of income thereafter (indexed for inflation after 2016). These penalties are per adult, half that amount per child, to a maximum of three times the per-adult amount per family. The penalty is capped at the national average premium for the “bronze” plan.
2015: Establishment of Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to recommend cuts in Medicare benefits; these cuts will go into effect automatically unless Congress passes, and the President signs, an override bill.
2016: Individual mandate penalty rises to $750 per adult ($375 per child), maximum $2,250 per family, or 2% of family income, whichever is higher (capped at the national average premium for the “bronze” plan). After 2016, the penalty will be increased each year to adjust for inflation.
2017: Itemized deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses is limited to expenses over 10% of AGI for those over age 65. [More detail]

Oddly, the Heritage Foundation leaves a few things out - namely, most all the benefits.

Here are some of the benefits that Democrats say would be available soon after the legislation is adopted:
No annual or lifetime limits Both the Senate and House versions of the legislation ultimately seek to prevent insurers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on coverage in new health policies. In the final package of amendments to the Senate bill, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, added new language giving the secretary of health and human services the authority to regulate annual limits from six months after the bill is enacted until the broader insurance provisions take effect in 2014. Such limits are a serious concern to people with chronic illnesses like cancer that can require expensive treatments within a relatively short period of time, and the change proposed by Mr. Reid was prompted by inquiries from the American Cancer Society.
Limits on insurance company profits Beginning in 2011, the Senate bill would set tight restrictions to force insurance companies to spend the bulk of their revenues on providing medical care to beneficiaries. The legislation would require insurance companies in the large group market to spend at least 85 percent of their revenues on care and insurers in the individual market to spend at least 80 percent of revenues on care. Critics of the private health insurance, including Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said setting such requirements on what insurers call “medical loss ratios” was needed to tamp down on profiteering.
Short-term expansion of state high risk pools To help people who cannot obtain insurance because of pre-existing conditions, both the Senate and House bills would provide $5 billion to increase the availability of coverage through state high-risk insurance pools. This provision would take effect 90 days after enactment of the legislation, but many details remain to be worked out.
New financing for community health centers The House bill provides $12 billion in additional financing for community health centers, which serve needy populations, particularly in rural areas. Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, won the inclusion of $10 billion in financing for community health centers in the Senate bill. The final dollar amount will be decided in negotiations between House and Senate leaders, but the money would be available for five years beginning in the current fiscal year.
Closing the Medicare drug “doughnut hole” The legislation would increase the amount of drug costs covered by Medicare by $500 in 2010. And beginning on July 1, 2010, the bill would provide 50 percent discounts on brand-name drugs and biologics that low- and middle-income beneficiaries have to pay for themselves once the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole begins.
Prohibition on rescinding existing coverage Both the House and Senate bills would bar insurance companies from rescinding existing coverage other than “in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact.”
Small business tax credits The Senate bill would offer tax credits to small businesses beginning in 2010 for up to 35 percent of premium costs. The full credit would be available to firms with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages of $25,000. Reduced credits would be available to firms with up to 25 employees and with average annual wages of up to $50,000.
Patient protections For new health plans, beginning six months after enactment of the legislation, the Senate bill would prohibit insurers from requiring prior authorization before a woman sees an obstetrician or gynecologist. The bill would also require coverage for emergency care.
Discrimination protections for lower-income workers The Senate bill would bar group health plans from setting any eligibility rules for coverage that favor higher-wage employees. This provision would take effect six months after enactment of the legislation.
Cobra extension through 2013 Anyone currently paying for an extension of health benefits as permitted under federal law — for instance, after a loss of employment — would be permitted under the House legislation to continue Cobra coverage until the major insurance coverage provisions of the legislation take effect in 2013.

Reinsurance program for early retirees Both the House and Senate bills would provide federal financing for a new reinsurance program to encourage employers to maintain health benefits for employees and early retirees age 55 to 64.

Consumer assistance provisions Both the House and Senate bills would begin to impose new requirements aimed at making it easier for consumers to interact with insurers, including a requirement that health plans adopt uniform descriptions of plan benefits and appeals procedures and that they begin using identical forms. [More]

Those are the more immediate changes.  When the exchanges get fully implemented this is what the health insurance situation for various families would look like.

So what happens if reform does pass? For starters--and this is no small thing--the insurance company will have to sell you a policy, no matter what pre-existing conditions your family brings to the table. And you’ll know from the start that the policy will cover basic services because the government will be defining a basic benefits package. That package is going to include a broader range of services than the typical non-group policy would without reform. So when your doctor recommends a standard test or procedure, you won't have to panic it falls into some hidden policy loophole.

But what will that coverage cost? The basic premium is roughly the same, according to Gruber’s calculations that he extrapolated from official Congressional Budget Office estimates. But that $50,000 income means you’re also eligible for federal subsidies. Large federal subsidies. In fact, the government will cover about two-thirds of the price, so that you’re left owing just $3,600.

Now, you could end up spending a lot more on medical care if you or someone in your family gets sick. But here, too, the federal government would step in to help. Under the reforms, the government would limit out-of-pocket spending to around $6,000 per year. Combined with the premium, you’re on the hook for around $10,000 total, or about a fifth of your income.

That’s not pocket change, for sure. A family making $50,000 will have to make serious sacrifices to find $10,000. But it’s better--light years better--than finding $25,000 or more. It’s potentially the difference between having to give up your home, get an extra job or declare bankruptcy. Just knowing the bills that could come will be the difference between getting care you need--and skipping it, at grave risk to your health.

It’s a difference you’d feel at other income levels, too. If your family of four makes more money--say, around $75,000--your premiums and out-of-pocket expenses will be higher, but still a few thousand less than it’d be without reform. If you make less money-- $35,000--the savings would be much larger. (If you make less than that, you'll probably be on Medicaid, which offers even more protection.)

[Source]

[Another helpful summary chart from WSJ.]

Perhaps none of this information will sway many farmers in their opposition or support of health care reform. My guess is those who have acceptable insurance they can currently afford oppose, all other would at least consider supporting reform.

The point for our industry is health care reform looks to me much like ag subsidies - a transfer from many to few. Since many of us get coverage from individual market, reform would be a big plus, both from cost and access angles.

As I digest the details and talk to more farm families, I sense health insurance reform could have unexpectedly disproportionate effects on our industry. Some possibilities:

• Larger farms would enjoy less health insurance pricing advantages via their group rates versus single family coverage.
• The efficiency of husband-wife farms would be restored as optimal labor utilization as women would not be working/commuting/struggling simply to keep insurance coverage.  Our industry is ripe for a much larger female operator contingent with the relative decline in the importance of muscle-powered ag.
• Young couples could more easily return with the health insurance - and specifically, pregnancy coverage - question dissipating as a major hurdle.
• Uniform policies would eliminate rural disadvantages.
• Aid to rural health centers might keep care a little closer, and small towns more attractive to live in.
  

There undoubtedly will be more unpredictable cultural and economic consequences for farms, but clearly not all results will be unfortunate. In fact, I can't find many issues until you get to those with incomes over $200K who will pay another 0.9% in Medicare taxes.

But I would suggest most farmers would escape many of the costs as well, in effect creating another transfer of wealth from non-farmers to us. We have already established our staunch belief in the righteousness of such schemes, so there should not much moral twitching about exploiting a new entitlement.

In fact, the smart angle for producers might be to talk against socialized Obamacare (although insurance reform is a long way from nationalized health care) in order to get along, while hoping secretly it passes.

If it fails, we'd better hope the fervor against such programs doesn't gather steam and look for other expensive wealth transfer programs to cut.  In fact, given the much-decried cost/size of HCR, how much easier would it be for ag subsidies to pale in comparison?

What the hay?...

OK, some cool barn photos.

But can anyone tell me what's up with this one?

Brains with feet...

A mobile society means people can move, if they want, to better their living.  It would appear at the top we are certainly becoming more restless.  After years of importing brainpower from Asia especially, the flow has reversed, turning our brain gains into a brain drain.

"What was a trickle has become a flood," says Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa, who studies reverse immigration.

Wadhwa projects that in the next five years, 100,000 immigrants will go back to India and 100,000 to China, countries that have had rapid economic growth.

"For the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced," he says.

Suren Dutia, CEO of TiE Global, a worldwide network of professionals who promote entrepreneurship, says the U.S. economy will suffer without these skilled workers. "If the country is going to maintain the kind of economic well-being that we've enjoyed for many years, that requires having these incredibly gifted individuals who have been educated and trained by us," he says.

Wadhwa surveyed 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or been educated here before returning to their homelands and found the exodus has less to do with the faltering U.S. economy than with other factors:

•Career opportunities. At NIIT, an information technology company based in New Delhi, about 10% of managers in India are returnees, mostly from the U.S., says CEO Vijay Thadani.

Most go into mid- to senior management and make "excellent employees," he says. "They're Indian, so they understand India, and they have lived outside the country."

China's government entices some skilled workers to return with incentives such as financial assistance and housing, says Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington. "China needs a lot of well-trained personnel" in fields such as finance and information technology, he says.

•Quality of life and family ties. People return to India to reconnect with their families and culture, Dutia says. "They have a support system there, family and friends."

Purchasing power is greater, he says, which allows returnees to afford more luxuries than they did in the U.S. Dutia describes a complex of "magnificent homes" in Bangalore. In the club room, there were "all these Americans and Europeans and expats on the treadmills with iPhones, watching CNN and BBC," he says. "Things have changed."

•Immigration delays. Multinational companies that belong to the American Council on International Personnel tell Executive Director Lynn Shotwell that skilled immigrants are discouraged by the immigration process, she says. Some can wait up to a decade for permanent residency, she says. "They're frustrated with having an uncertain immigration status," she says. "They're giving up." [More]

One possible consequence of this change is pressure on salaries for folks with the needed skills. This will only skew the education-based income inequality further, I would guess. It will also add fuel to rural America's own brain drain.

The most dramatic evidence of the rural meltdown has been the hollowing out—that is, losing the most talented young people at precisely the same time that changes in farming and industry have transformed the landscape for those who stay. This so-called rural "brain drain" isn't a new phenomenon, but by the 21st century the shortage of young people has reached a tipping point, and its consequences are more severe now than ever before. Simply put, many small towns are mere years away from extinction, while others limp along in a weakened and disabled state.

In just over two decades, more than 700 rural counties, from the Plains to the Texas Panhandle through to Appalachia, lost 10 percent or more of their population. Nationally, there are more deaths than births in one of two rural counties. Though the hollowing-out process feeds off the recession, the problem predates, and indeed, presaged many of the nation's current economic woes. But despite the seriousness of the hollowing-out process, we believe that, with a plan and a vision, many small towns can play a key role in the nation's recovery.

Civic and business leaders in the places most affected by hollowing out will tell anyone willing to listen how it is their young people, not hogs, steel, beef, corn, or soybeans, that have become their most valuable export commodity. Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning observer of small town life, believes that any story of small-town America is, at its core, the story of the people who stay and the ones who go. Yet, what is different at this moment is how, in a postindustrial economy that places such a high premium on education and credentials, the flight of so many young people is transforming rural communities throughout the nation into impoverished ghost towns. A new birth simply cannot replace the loss that results every time a college-educated twentysomething on the verge of becoming a worker, taxpayer, homeowner, or parent leaves. And as more manufacturing jobs disappear every day, the rural crisis that was a slow-acting wasting disease over the past two decades has evolved into a metastasized cancer. [More]

I could have written about this same phenomenon forty years ago, and the trend has been unfazed by good times and bad, well-intentioned and well-funded measures, and relentless hand-wringing.  Somehow we can't get the image of idyllic small town America from our minds, and have decided it somehow represents the optimal choice of demographic dispersal.  But I'm no longer sure that is even close to the truth, much less real expectations.

The depopulation of my county (Edgar) is typical.

1969 - 21,752
2000 - 19,657
2007 - 18,831

I have wandered though various reactions to this very obvious trend in my life.  But after this long, it begins to dawn on you this is occurring for powerful reasons and strongly presages the future.

Maybe it's just mental adaptation, but I'm not quite as alarmed by it as I was. To begin with depopulation makes this area a great place to farm.  Let's face it, industrial ag works best all by itself without sharing roads or odors, to name two examples.

There is virtually no urban expansion pressure on farmland prices, other than secondhand 1031/investor bargain hunting. The tiny number of farmers exert oversized political influence, and the elderly population so typical of our very-low-cost towns make a pool of savings available for local banks to lend to agriculture.

So just speaking in terms of a good place to farm, this ain't the worst.  But what about the social aspects of withering communities?

I am worried about the schools. There are simply no resources to improve them and size alone rules out many advantages such as AP classes. In fact, the day may come when those who can affor better will consider boarding schools for promising students.  But that problem I lay squarely at the feet of the absolute refusal to consolidate even the high school level.  In short, our schools are failing because we prefer bad local schools to better schools 10 miles away, not because we don't have a manufacturing base.

The other problems of thin populations may be exaggerated.  Between phones and e-mail active friendship groups are possible. We drive 60 miles for dinner with friends without complaining.  Shopping has been largely replaced with Amazon, et al.

Even my church, which I had frankly given up on two decades ago, is showing remarkable grace is its quiet decline. Besides, given upcoming demographics, I'm not sure more population would be the answer there either.

In 1990, 8 percent of Americans reported that they had no religious beliefs. Twenty years later, that's 15 percent. But when you look at younger Americans, you see that the proportion of "nones" is reaching 22 percent. The 1990s were the boom years for the Nones; and a huge 35 percent of the new Nones are ex-Catholics. No doubt, some of this is a reflection of the sex abuse crisis. But the intellectual collapse of Christianity under the leadership of Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic theocons is surely relevant. The well-deserved inability of literalists to win many converts among educated people is also surely salient. The emergence of the politicized Christianist right - and its assault on Christianity as a freely chosen spiritual process - will surely lead to a continued and accelerating flight from organized religion.


But the Nones are not Ditchkins atheists. They express their position primarily as a form of skepticism and Deism. They are agnostics who do not dismiss the religious life but remain at a cool distance from it. This is, of course, one of the deepest American religious inheritances:

"American nones are kind of agnostic and deistic, so it's a very American kind of skepticism," says Barry Kosmin, director of Trinity's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. "It's a kind of religious indifference that's not hostile to religion the way they are in France. Franklin and Jefferson would have recognized these people."

The study estimates that in twenty years, the Nones will make up 25 percent of Americans. [More]

So looking back over 60 years of concern over the "decline" of rural communities, I have mixed emotions. The futility of bucking this trend is now apparent, even for those towns that enjoyed a period of success.

The presence of a college, hospitals, and a significant government employer seems to be the key to those towns that are growing by cannibalizing places like Chrisman.  Meanwhile, my home area will be a place for the poor, elderly and agriculture - all of which have to be somewhere.  The idea we will reverse the loss of young bright minds is far-fetched, I think.

I like living here, and am willing to cope with the circumstances and manage the disadvantages.  And I have wearied of grieving over something that was lost fifty years ago.

[Thanks, Mark]

Hold the phone...

Or sell it.  It seems Verizon is tired of not fixing all those pedestals I have run over mowing roadsides during my farming career.  They have sold my phone business.

Verizon continued their move to exit the rural local exchange business with the announcement today of the sale of 4.8 million access lines to Frontier Communications of Stamford, Connecticut. It’s a bold move by Frontier, almost tripling them in size and catapulting them to one of, if not the largest, service provider focused on rural markets in the U.S. Frontier will have over 7 million combined access lines after the acquisition. The new Frontier and the combined CenturyTel-Embarq will be extremely close in size and either could qualify as the largest U.S. rural service provider, depending on the choice of measurement. The operations Frontier will acquire include all of Verizon's local wireline operating territories in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In addition, the transaction will include a small number of Verizon's exchanges in California, including those bordering Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. [More]

Now, of course, my heart leapt with anticipation of true high-speed broadband (>3 Meg for me), but who am I kidding?  Anyhoo, one of my neighbors has 5 Meg!! at his farm (wireless), and I'm going to duplicate his setup if I can.

This seems extreme...

A curious note about car maintenance.  My commuting car is a Pontiac Vibe, with which I am very happy.  About 18 months ago, some mice found their way into the heating/air conditioning system and proceeded to abide there happily for some time.

It wasn't too bad until you turned the heat on and the redolence of mouse aroma filled the small car. I could not for the life of me find out where the nest was.  I lived with the odor.

In a fortunate coincidence I had to consult the owner's manual about resetting the low tire inflation warning light (another story altogether) and while thumbing through the manual (real men don't use the index) I discovered there is a passenger compartment air filter located behind the glove compartment.  Removal of the glove compartment is not quite as straightforward as described, and some small plastic clips were misplaced, but I got to the filter and, sure enough - a large mouse nest.

Happily I removed and discarded the filter and vacuumed thoroughly as far as I could to clean out the ducts. Then I went to replace the 10" x 10" x 1/2" pleated paper filter.

A new one cost $37.  I asked twice to make sure I heard correctly.

Am I missing something here?  Are these things handwoven by Old World craftsmen or constructed of rare materials hard to find in our part of the galaxy?

No wonder we're so smart...

City life hurts your brain. 

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."
One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities. For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift. Instead of inhabiting wide-open spaces, we're crowded into concrete jungles, surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers. In recent years, it's become clear that such unnatural surroundings have important implications for our mental and physical health, and can powerfully alter how we think. [More]

All kidding aside, I think many of us in agriculture have experienced this effect instinctively, without fully appreciating its benefits.  It's why we look forward to days spent on tractor or combine (or at least until we got our cell phones).

Our brains did not evolve dealing with large groups or constant stimuli.

Other evidence suggests that 150 may be a functional limit on interacting groups even in contemporary western industrial societies. Much of the sociometric research on industrial and other comparable organisations, for example, has demonstrated that there is a marked negative effect of group size on both group cohesion and job satisfaction (as indicated by absenteeism and turnover in posts) within the size range under consideration (i.e. 50-500 individuals: see, for example, Indik 1965, Porter & Lawler 1965, Silverman 1970). Indeed, an informal rule in business organisation identifies 150 as the critical limit for the effective coordination of tasks and information-flow through direct person-to-person links: companies larger than this cannot function effectively without sub-structuring to define channels of communication and responsibility (J.-M. Delwart, pers. commun.). Terrien & Mills (1955), for example, found that the larger the organisation, the greater the number of control officials that is needed to ensure its smooth functioning.

Other studies have suggested that there is an upper limit on the number of social contacts that can be regularly maintained within a group. Coleman (1964) presented data on friendships among print shop workers which suggest that the likelihood of having friends within the workplace reaches an asymptote at a shop size of 90-150 individuals. (The small size of the sample for large groups makes it difficult to identify the precise point at which "saturation" is reached.) Coleman explicitly argued that this was a consequence of the fact that there is a limit to the number of individuals within a shop that any one person can come into contact with. Moreover, his results also seemed to suggest that the large number of regular interactants that an individual can expect to have within a large work group limits the number of additional friendships that can be made outside the workplace. [More]

The resurgent desire for agrarian living may not simply be a fad then, but a primordial urge. Given this intensity, taking it seriously would be of cardinal importance when dealing with urban dwellers.

Or in other words, listen carefully when non-farmers rhapsodize over our lifestyle. 

The automaker's dilemma...

One thing that often goes unmentioned in the lively debate over whether to bailout the Big Three, is the peculiar institution of auto dealerships - about which I knew very little until recently.  Thanks to state laws dating back to - well, the Great Depression, some of the most important and helpful steps automakers could take to get their finances in order are all but impossible.

Car dealers, with their low-production-value TV commercials and glad-handing tactics, seem like the archetypal small businessmen, and it’s hard to believe that they could sway the decisions of global corporations like G.M. and Ford. But, collectively, they have enormous leverage. Dealers are not employees of the car companies—they own local franchises, which, in every state, are protected by so-called “franchise laws.” These laws do things like restrict G.M.’s freedom to open a new Cadillac dealership a few miles away from an old one. More important, they also make it nearly impossible for an auto manufacturer to simply shut down a dealership. If G.M. decided to get rid of Pontiac and Buick, it couldn’t just go to those dealers and say, “Nice doing business with you.” It would have to get them to agree to close up shop, which in practice would mean buying them out. When, a few years ago, G.M. actually did eliminate one of its brands, Oldsmobile, it had to shell out around a billion dollars to pay dealers off—and it still ended up defending itself in court against myriad lawsuits. As a result, dropping a brand may very well cost more than it saves, since it’s the dealers who end up with a hefty chunk of the intended savings. [More]

I have been worried about our own small dealerships in Chrisman, and I have know the people involved all my life.  But while concern about the actual businesses being open is still pertinent, maybe my worries for the owners at least are overblown.

In fact, the end of some GM brands could represent a singular opportunity for small dealers to get some value for a business with a questionable financial future. In fact, under these rules, it appears to me that a GM bankruptcy would be the real nightmare, unless the dealership laws grants dealers a superior position in the credit line.

We are going to have fewer brands and fewer dealers, especially in rural America.  Which means to me the number one quality for my vehicles will be reliability.  But as we have become adapted to machinery dealers an hour or more away, perhaps this too is an adjustment we can make more easily than we think.

Alas, Iowa...

In my visits to Iowa to speak to farm groups, I have learned first-hand of the remarkable insularity of the Iowan culture. In fairness, if you live that close to heaven, why would you want to trouble yourself with goings-on outside the state borders?

Meanwhile, back in in central Il, the advancing edge of farm development hung over my head.  The relentless competition and pressure to perform made my frame of reference much harsher than my neighbors in IA wanted to contemplate.

Perhaps no longer.

But the tale of the disappearing barn, a building whose purpose shifted, then faded away, tells a bigger story too, of how farming itself, a staple in this state then and now, has changed markedly since those writers drove through.

What had in the 1930s been an ordinary farm here — 80 or 160 acres and a few cows and sheep and chickens — is today far bigger and more specialized to pay for air-conditioned, G.P.S.-equipped combines and tractors, so much fuel and the now-skyrocketing price of farmland.

Competition for land — to rent or buy — has grown cutthroat and overwhelming, a matter of networking and schmoozing (at church, at the local coffee shop, while selling seed) worthy of the corporate boardroom. (Some here tell of people who call the widows of farmers who have died days or hours earlier, hoping to secure land.)

All of that has left some of Iowa’s youngest, newest farmers doubtful that one could make a start in farming anymore without roots and connections and land dating back, say, to the W.P.A. era.  [More]

At the very least, Iowans can't say they didn't see it coming. They had only to visit with farmers in Nebraska or Illinois or Ohio.  But my impression of Iowans are overwhelming positive and overwhelmingly self-centered.  While they were pressuring their legislature and the leveraging the IA primary to build ethanol plants, it seemed it never occurred to them to ponder what prosperity would do to their cherished community values.

Those values were only checkbook-deep, it seems.  And the ethics of yeoman community-centered agriculture are a poor match for the entrepreneurial spirit now commanding the helms of farm management.

Typically, the NYT buys into the old agrarian ideal.  Preserving thousands of old barns strikes many non-farmers as a noble enterprise. But as a farmer the question is begged: Why?

Barns burn easily and often, as older farmers well know.  Abandoned barns are havens for varmints and trash dumping. I can see saving a handful of exemplary buildings but, even nostalgia must have some limits of practicality.

Besides, the owner gets to choose - not the passers-by.

New directions, same impact...

If you have not caught my several posts about the direction information technology is headed and why it matters a lot to farmers, consider these two counteracting developments.

The first is something all Internet users like to whine about - speed. While those of us in the country are simply glad to have something better than dialup, even the hyperspeed fiber-optic consumers are running out of bandwidth at times. They are not amused.

Everyone hates their Internet service provider. And with good cause: In the age of ubiquitous Internet access, Web service in America is still often frustratingly slow. Tired of being the villain, telecom companies have assigned blame for this problem to a new bad guy. He's called the "bandwidth hog," and it's his fault that streaming video on your computer looks more like a slide show than a movie. The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth—sometimes more during peak hours. While these "power users" are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load.


The ISPs are certainly correct that there's a problem: The current network in the United States struggles to accommodate everyone, and the barbarians at the gate—voice-over-IP telephony, live video streams, high-def movies—threaten to drown the grid. (This Deloitte report has a good treatment of that eventuality.) It's less clear that the telecom companies, fixated as they are on the bandwidth hogs, are doing a good job of managing the problem and planning for the future. The ISPs have put forward two big ideas, in recent months, about how to fix our bandwidth crisis. We can arrange these plans into two categories: horrible now and horrible later. [This is a superb article worth your time just to find out what the two proposed solutions could look like]

It is important to keep in mind it only takes a relative few bandwidth hogs to slow the system for all users, whether your system is a national behemoth or a very local ISP. I've noticed I can get more stuff done, for example early (5-7 AM) compared to after 4. Not only is this a mildly useful workaround (especially when you're my age and can't sleep in even if you want), it is a straightforward market response to signals.

But more ominous is the direction computing seems to be going. The operating model used to be a consumer buys a computer and buys some software (or more likely, has it thrust upon her i the form of bloatware - although this is changing) and does her little computing stuff all by herself.  Then we started including on-line aspects, such as having all the "Help" information accessed by the Internet instead of rapidly outdated virtual operating manuals contained in the code.

It didn't stop there. The value of connecting to individual computers for extracting information voluntarily and presenting advertising made it possible to give software away.  And not just lame little freebie programs - robust, Microsoft-butt-kicking applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.

Now we take it a step farther.  Enter cloud computing.

A week after Google released a Web browser of its own called Chrome, it's clear that despite the frailty of Chrome's beta code, there's a seismic shift occurring in the computer industry.

The desktop is dying. Long live the browser.

It's not that no one saw this coming. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) anticipated the threat the browser posed to its desktop monopoly when it killed Netscape. But it was too late. Netscape metastasized and Mozilla emerged with Firefox, stronger than its predecessor thanks to the open source movement and its corporate supporters like Google, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Yahoo.

At least as far back as 2005, there have been credible attempts to de-emphasize the desktop with Web-based media-sharing and application services like TransMedia's Glide. But such efforts have yet to reach critical mass.

Chrome marks the coming of age of cloud computing, or software as a service.  [More]

The upshot of this evolution in personal computing is the exponentially growing importance of high speed connections.  For us in the 5% the FCC doesn't really care about, this has huge implications.  Like Third World countries we will miss out on the enormous productivity gains that our physical isolation makes desperately more important.  Now throw in high gas prices and recalculate what living XX miles from town means to your ability to do business like competitors in EU, for example.

Nor is this merely BSP (blatant self-promotion) because more and more viewers who can watch USFR and AgDay on-line.  The advantages of computing power and data accessible anywhere without having to upload and download manually means partners working in fields miles apart can check the same planting spreadsheet or spraying map, add new info, and make sure the other knows without doing anything any differently than we now do in our overmachined offices.

More importantly, just like Google products such as blogger, the capabilities of the software will almost magically increase as the world's best coders do their thing in California and upgrade the tools for free. Once you have experienced this, you never go back to buying a box in a software store.

I have stopped apologizing for getting foamy at the mouth about the importance of broadband if you plan on farming ten years from now. But I gotta believe somewhere, somehow an ag vendor, grain merchandiser, or farm organization will finally grasp how powerful a marketing tool it would be to have their fingerprints and logo all over the solution to the rural broadband issue.