Corn in Africa [re-post from 1/7/06]...

While corn growers have always been aware that South Africa grows corn, and competes in the export market, there is a lot of corn (maize) grown on subsistence farms all across the continent. We also forget how honkin' huge Africa is (this is a Gall-Peters Projection Map which is area accurate, unlike the Mercator projections we are used to, where Greenland/Canada/Alaska are swollen disproportionately):

My guess is that the struggle to develop stable governments in sub-Saharan Africa could yet yield the largest payoff in terms of lifting the poorest of the poor, simply by letting their farmers get on with their work.

Know the players...

Greg Mankiw, whose Harvard economics classes (and public blog) are very popular, re-packages his economic resolutions for 2007:

• #2: This year I will be unequivocal in my support of free trade. I am going to stop bashing the Chinese for offering bargains to American consumers. I am going to ask the Bush administration to revoke the textile quotas so Americans will find it easier to clothe their families. I am going to vote to repeal the antidumping laws, which only protect powerful domestic industries from foreign competition. I am going to admit that unilateral disarmament in the trade wars would make the U.S. a richer nation.

• #3: This year I will ask farmers to accept the free market. While I believe the government should provide a safety net for the truly needy, taxpayers shouldn't have to finance handouts to farmers, many of whom are wealthy. Farmers should meet the market test as much as anyone else. I will vote to repeal all federal subsidies to growers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. I will vote to allow unrestricted import of sugar. (See resolution no. 2.) I will tell Americans that eliminating our farm subsidies should not be a "concession" made in trade negotiations but a policy change that we affirmatively embrace.

Big deal - another egghead economist comes out against farm subsidies. This is news?

One reason to make note of it: Mankiw is advising the all-but-announced, darling-of-the-right presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney.

Somewhere someone is making their professional reputation...

Maybe. There were some obscure warning signs that a few perceptive minds detected before the Enron meltdown:

In the spring of 1998, Macey notes, a group of six students at Cornell University’s business school decided to do their term project on Enron. “It was for an advanced financial-statement-analysis class taught by a guy at Cornell called Charles Lee, who is pretty famous in financial circles,” one member of the group, Jay Krueger, recalls. In the first part of the semester, Lee had led his students through a series of intensive case studies, teaching them techniques and sophisticated tools to make sense of the vast amounts of information that companies disclose in their annual reports and S.E.C. filings. Then the students picked a company and went off on their own. “One of the second-years had a summer-internship interview with Enron, and he was very interested in the energy sector,” Krueger went on. “So he said, ‘Let’s do them.’ It was about a six-week project, half a semester. Lots of group meetings. It was a ratio analysis, which is pretty standard business-school fare. You know, take fifty different financial ratios, then lay that on top of every piece of information you could find out about the company, the businesses, how their performance compared to other competitors.”

The people in the group reviewed Enron’s accounting practices as best they could. They analyzed each of Enron’s businesses, in succession. They used statistical tools, designed to find telltale patterns in the company’s fi-nancial performance—the Beneish model, the Lev and Thiagarajan indicators, the Edwards-Bell-Ohlsen analysis—and made their way through pages and pages of footnotes. “We really had a lot of questions about what was going on with their business model,” Krueger said. The students’ conclusions were straightforward. Enron was pursuing a far riskier strategy than its competitors. There were clear signs that “Enron may be manipulating its earnings.” The stock was then at forty-eight dollars—at its peak, two years later, it was almost double that—but the students found it over-valued. The report was posted on the Web site of the Cornell University business school, where it has been, ever since, for anyone who cared to read twenty-three pages of analysis. The students’ recommendation was on the first page, in boldfaced type: “Sell.” [More]

It is easy, of course to look back and see prophesy in wild guesses, but ya gotta wonder if the ethanol boom is provoking doomsayers to get out there in print just on the off-chance of being right.

Then again, maybe it's not an ethanol bubble, but an oil bubble?

Relentless technology...

This is why I think the best bet is on technology, not apocalyptic cataclysm. Britain was the epicenter of the BSE (mad cow) threat. The problem was real and people of science took it seriously and guess what? They a) discovered the cause and worked to minimize the risks and 2) they found a great solution: GM cattle.

As new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of the condition, can be contracted by consuming beef or beef products infected with rogue prions, the work could pave the way for breeding cattle that cannot infect people with prion disease.

This could be exploited by the meat industry, which could raise guaranteed BSE-free beef cattle, though the disease has become a much less significant problem since the practice of feeding cows on meat and bone meal from dead animals was banned. Such beef would also have to overcome public resistance to the idea of eating meat from GM livestock. [More]

The human ability to adapt to challenges is undiminished. From global warming to bird-flu, smart money will follow dogged disciples of truth, who sift tirelessly through data to tease out solutions. This is how genetic-modification will win wide acceptance - the absence of harmful outcomes (despite hysterical predictions) and the methodical elimination of problems.

It may take more time than the Internet generation can tolerate easily, but in the end, what works, works.

We may be a problem-creating species, but we are also a problem-solving species.

What enormous wealth means...

Wired magazine has a cute story about a "meteor farmer".

Three days later, Arnold and his partner and investor – an oil and gas attorney from San Antonio named Philip Mani – were attacking the site with a backhoe. After digging down about 5 feet, Arnold scrabbled into the hole with a shovel and started clearing. Finally, the blade clanged against something metallic. The more dirt he moved, the more meteorite he exposed. They lowered the backhoe scoop and strapped the rock to it. Grinding and whining, the machine pulled free the biggest meteorite Arnold had ever seen.

While we could all appreciate his tenacity and ingenuity, the real nugget of this account is how the economics of meteors play out.

METEORITE HUNTING wouldn't be so lucrative if it weren't for a music executive named Darryl Pitt. He collected meteorites for years, buying them at rock-bottom rates when the only other buyers were scientists. But in 1995, sitting on a collection numbering in the hundreds, he guessed that people would pay big money for space flotsam. "I needed a mechanism to elevate the profile of my extraterrestrial friends," Pitt says. But he knew he wouldn't get any traction unless he could make people see his "friends'" inherent beauty. A former professional photographer, Pitt started shooting pictures of each of his rocks, lighting them as if they were magazine cover subjects and writing rapturous descriptions in the vein of wine connoisseurship. Then he put them on the block at Phillips International Auctioneers and Valuers, alongside dinosaur eggs and a 3,749-carat opal. The plan worked; the first auction netted close to $200,000.

Pitt is still at it. His online catalog describes meteorites as "objets d'art" with sensuous, zoomorphic shapes – an expert sales job. "Sleek tabletop specimen … evocative of the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth," goes one entry. "With a bright platinum patina and compelling from all perspectives."

Only in a culture where some have enormous amounts of money with little or no demands on it can essentially worthless objects, or even subjectively valued things such as art, command significant exchange rates.

And what's with the doctored picture? Meteorites don't glow.

[via Neatorama]

Update: How many meteorites hit the Earth every day? About 20-50.

Keep looking up!

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

Dubai, which seems to have more money than architectural taste is rapidly becoming the place to build strange edifices. Behold the Underwater Hotel.

One critic dubbed it a "cartoonish phallic symbol".


I don't know about that, but I'd hate to tell you what it reminds me of...

Plus we'll need a bigger fuel tank...

Cellulosic ethanol may be gaining on us. Researchers at Iowa State have adulterated a perfectly good combine to harvest stover.

Presumably, the product would be sold to an ethanol production facility. However, a few questions spring to mind:

1. How much horsepower will this baby suck up chopping husks and stalks?
2. How far will a silage wagon get you through the field?
3. Why didn't this guy choose his hybrid for stalk strength (note the reel)?
4. How are you going to store this stuff? And keep it from spontaneously combusting?
   
5. Why not bale it?
6. I suppose we can sell our grain carts, since we'll be stopping every through or round anyway.

These inventions remind me of the all-in-one tillage/spray/plant contraptions of the 70's. I think experience has shown us that dedicated machines making multiple passes are a superior idea.

Besides, once you have harvested at 7 mph. you are not going back to 3.

I'm glad to be here...

So, neighbors - here we are at the start of a new year and we're asking ourselves, "What is there to look forward to?"

Thank goodness I got here in time with more reasons to be optimistic than you can shake a martini at:

From Edge, The Third Culture :

The Edge Annual Question — 2007

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.

What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!

My favorites:

Stewart Brand

Geoffrey Carr

Malthus was wrong to observe that population increases geometrically while the resources available to support it increase arithmetically. It was an understandable mistake. It flies in the face of common sense that population growth will actually slow down in the face of better resources. But that is what happens, and it might yet save humanity from the fate predicted for it by the Club of Rome.

Chris Anderson

So for example, the publication last year of a carefully researched Human Security Report received little attention. Despite the fact that it had concluded that the numbers of armed conflicts in the world had fallen 40% in little over a decade. And that the number of fatalities per conflict had also fallen. Think about that. The entire news agenda for a decade, received as endless tales of wars, massacres and bombings, actually missed the key point. Things are getting better. If you believe Robert Wright and his NonZero hypothesis, this is part of a very long-term and admittedly volatile trend in which cooperation eventually trumps conflict. Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%. Trends for violent deaths so far in the 21st century? Falling. Sharply.

David G. Myers

It's a challenge to persuade a nation to exchange its current hearing assistive technology (which requires locating, checking out, and wearing conspicuous headsets) for a technology that many more people would actually use. But the results of our west Michigan experiment, and another in 1000 California homes, supports my optimism. Doubling hearing aid functionality will greatly increase hearing aid acceptance and use.

With on-the-horizon technology, we can also foresee music buffs with wireless ear bud loudspeakers. When that day comes, having something in one's ear will become as mundane as glasses for the eyes, and millions of people with hearing loss will be enjoying fuller and more connected lives.

John Gottman

John Horgan

Susan Blackmore

That is the stage we have reached now on earth. The artificial systems we have built still depend on us, and would perish with us if we all died, but they are evolving far faster than we are, and are taking up the planet's resources in the process.

Some people still maintain the fantasy that we humans are in charge and can still control the memes we have let loose. Yet it must be increasingly obvious that we can't; that they are in the driving seat, not us. They are sucking up the planet's resources increasingly fast and, being selfish replicators, they have no foresight and don't care in the least what happens to us or the planet; they can't, they are just replicating information. So we are hovering at this second danger point right now.

Perhaps this critical point has been reached on countless planets and none pulled through—perhaps acquiring new replicators is so dangerous that memes (or their equivalents) always wipe out the original replicator that spawned them, explaining why we have not yet heard from any other intelligent beings out there. Or perhaps it is possible to for an intelligent species to work out what has happened, repair the damage and live in harmony with the creatures it unwittingly gave rise to.

I think it is, and I am optimistic that we will.

Jonathan Haidt

Diane Halpern

Allegiances now extend beyond national borders. I feel as distressed about the loss of the innocent lives of Iraqi citizens as I do about the loss of the innocent lives of the women and men in the U.S. military. I can view the suffering of each any time, night or day, by logging onto the "local" news in any part of the world. I can read the uncensored thoughts of anyone who wishes to share them on their personal blogs and watch the home videos they upload to YouTube and other public video sites. Government censorship is virtually impossible and the ability to hear directly from ordinary people around the world has caused me to see our connectedness. We have only just begun to realize the profound ways that technology is altering our view of the "other people" who share our planet. The use of technology to make the strange familiar will have an overall positive effect on how we think about others in our shrinking world. We are becoming more similar and connected in our basic "humanness." And, that is a good thing.

May be enough for now, but find some words to inspire yourself among these thoughtful comments.

More anon.

Parallel universes of John's World... If you google "John's World" you will get your loyal correspondent's blog, but also a wild assortment of blogs and websites such as:

• John's World Nursery - not very funny, but it is in Australia - always good for a funny accent attempt.
• John's World of XV - some of you might not know what XV is: xv is an interactive image manipulation program for the X Window System. That should clear things up. I have no idea what this site is about.
• Sir John's World - art for some.
• 

• John's World of Freethrows - pretty self-explanatory
• John's World of Zodiac Art - I think I'm a Feces
• John's World of Camo - Hard to tell what's going on there.
• John's World (NYC edition) - self-absorbed drivel from some guy I don't care about. Not like this blog at all.
• John's World - an early website by a budding Internet geek for whom many of us will soon be working, no doubt

Whoa - guests arriving for brunch! 

  Happy New Year - Sturdy Citizens!

About time to read the instructions...

Now that I have been blogging for over a year, and have settled on fairly standard format, I thought I would share some tips about my blog and what the heck I'm trying to accomplish.

First, how stuff works.

1. If you haven't already figured it out, I try to document my sources with hyperlinks or links This is the true power of Internet writing - you can read the same stuff I read and reach your own conclusions, rather than accept my arguably half-baked conclusions. When you mouse over a link, your cursor turns into a hand and a red dotted line appears under the link. If you left-click your mouse the link opens.
2. You can choose to open the link in a new window (or tab for IE7 and FF2) by selecting that choice under "Tools/Options" on your browser command bar.
3. Quotes from outside sources are shown indented and italicized. The full context is either found in an accompanying link or at the [More] link.
   
4. Sometimes when I import quotes they screw up the fonts for a few paragraphs. I have no idea why, and it's fallen in that too-much-hassle-to-fix category.
5. For the last two months or so, all posts have "labels". The trick here is if you click on a label you will see all the posts with that label. This makes it really hard for me to be inconsistent with my arguments, but it can help you "read more about it".

Now some editorial philosophy.

• I do not pretend to be a journalist. I am instead more of an human aggregator. I would have used the term "presurfer", but somebody got there first. It pretty well describes my approach however.
• The material I add is eclectic, but almost all but the purely fun stuff has some implication for those of us on farms. It may be slight, it may be in the distant future, or may be short-lived, but I think knowing about it might be helpful.
  
• One of my goals is to scan sites not normally mined by ag journalism for news from the infamous "outside world" (which I like to call the "world"). It may be foreign agriculture, energy, economics, psychology, sociology, futurism, medicine, etc., but the goal is to add to, not duplicate other ag sites.
• I post almost every day. When on vacation I leave some preloaded posts to fill in. Like my personal hygiene, I have no firm posting schedule.
• While I welcome comments, and will try to answer questions, my guess it many of you will take some time to feel comfortable with this. That's cool, too. Always keep in mind you can post anonymously.
• I love surfing and finding this stuff. The blog is a way I can save some you some time by highlighting what I have come up with.
• Unlike my writing in Top Producer and Farm Journal, no real editing occurs between my writing and your reading. Now couple in the importance of speed. Unlike traditional media, bloggers can respond within minutes to new news. Mix all those factors together and you have the ingredients for misjudgments and flat out errors. Be sure to call me on them - you are my new editors. Gimme a break on the typos and grammar though, please.

I am not sure where this vehicle is headed. It has already exceeded my expectations.

Thanks for reading.

Happy New Year!

(BTW, In 2000 our son was in London for the Millennium. We watched on TV at 6 pm. our time and celebrated "with him". As a result, we got to bed on time and felt great the next morning. Consequently we celebrate New Year's on Greenwich time every year now. I recommend it.)

Quite possibly the greatest...

Cartoon ever filmed. More here.

[via Mentalfloss]

Seeing is deceiving...

I ran across this photo on Neatorama, captioned "Pollution - what pollution?"



Exactly correct. These are cooling towers, perhaps for the Ferrybridge Power Station in West Yorkshire, England. Cooling towers have water running through them and by evaporation and conduction provide the heat sink necessary to run the steam cycle for steam turbines. There are no combustion products, stack gases, or smoke emitted from cooling towers. (The actual "smokestacks" can be seen just to the right, I think.)

In fairness, heat could be seen as a type of pollution, but even the most stringent definition would hardly place water vapor in that category.

Cooling towers have become iconic for nuclear power and the mythical risks associated with them. Ironically, they could be the least hazardous part.

No wonder I've never met one...

This will come as a shock to you guys out there, but those women we ogle in magazines may not actually exist.



This commercial (caution - slow loader) from Dove proves we've been hoodwinked. Not unlike our industry's depictions of "family farmers", we work pretty hard here in the US to create the perfect image of a product, and less effort on the actual product.

Fool me again, please.

[via B2blog]

Why money is pouring into index funds and land...

Consider this prediction from Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg News:

Investors should strap themselves in for a rocky ride in the next 12 months. Equities will collapse, property will be demolished, and you won't be able to give away gold on the streets. The only haven will be fixed income. That's right, '07 will be the year of the bond.

OK, now that we've got the worst joke of the year out of the way, here are six things that might happen in 2007:

- Farming will become a great way to get rich.

High oil prices are causing a surge of interest in alternative energy, with ethanol leading the way. Making fuel from corn or other grains, however, means digging up a lot of fields. It has been more than a century since farmland was the basis for a financial aristocracy, but every asset comes back into its own if you just wait long enough. JPMorgan Chase & Co. rates corn among the best investments for 2007. [More]

[My emphasis]

As we see dollars flow into commodities, one result will be a reluctance by farmers to sell. Especially those of us who are "oversold" on 2006 crops. Perhaps we will revert to historic patterns, but I think our markets are now fringe players in the flow of global dollars [euros, yen, yuan, etc] that are looking for a return.

OK, now for a prediction of my own: 2008 will see the largest gain in farmland prices since 1987.

Also, in Chicago Tribune today, an interesting look at the new ADM CEO, Patricia Woertz. The article is not fluff, and if you couple it with Marcia Taylor's interview in Top Producer, you can see a leader under extreme pressure.

Hired from the senior ranks of California-based Chevron Corp., Woertz is charged with no less than ushering in a new age of renewable energy, reviving the economy of the rural heartland and advancing one of Illinois' biggest companies. And though she de-emphasizes her status as a "woman" CEO, she inevitably carries the flag for her gender, too.

If ADM's financial results swoon, Woertz could be gone in a hurry. Lingering allegiance to the legendary Andreas family, which ran ADM for the past 35 years, could put her in "a vulnerable position," says Ric Marshall, chief analyst at the Corporate Library research group. "The risk is very high her tenure is not going to work out." [More]

There are now sharp differences in the approach to ethanol by very big players. Compare Cargill to ADM. Each is betting heavily on a contrary outlook for the future of corn.

Many think the loss of the "blender credit" for ethanol and lowering or elimination of tariffs on imported ethanol could be fatal to ethanol producers. I'm not so sure. My guess is ADM could weather and even prosper should either or both occur. Smaller competitors would not.

Regardless, the extreme size of the demand increase seems to me to argue producers will enjoy significant market pricing power for a minimum of 2-3 years.

Of course, by that time we'll bid cash rents up to absorb the margin.

I'm thinking about my abs right now...

Another great list from the Times [London]: 100 Things we didn't know until last year

• 7. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
  More details

• 14. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up.
  More details

• 23. More than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet, says a study.
  More details

• 45. Cows can have regional accents, says a professor of phonetics, after studying cattle in Somerset
  More details

• 68. The egg came first.
  More details

• 84. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.
  More details

• 100. In the 1960s, the CIA used to watch Mission Impossible to get ideas about spying.
  More details

Other voices in the 2007 Farm Bill Debate...

I am skeptical of the actual horsepower at work here, but a few of the more interesting opinions on the Farm Bill:

• The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center:
  

It is a joy to begin to work with the Divine Universal Sisterhood and continue on my journey to become one of the few good men who will support our Queen Sister’s in the 2007 Farm Bill Debate, together we can eliminate forever low, low, low, low food insecurity in our nation. [More]

My comment: While doubtless well-meaning here, the um, "Sisterhood" probably means low food security, not insecurity. (Low insecurity is a good thing).

• The American Farmland Trust:

But for the first time, federal farm policy, and at the heart of it, the 2007 Farm Bill, have an opportunity to bring about major reversals of that trend. As a result of growing pressure from developing nations and from other sectors of the U.S. economy, the agricultural industry is beginning to face the reality that it's once-holy commodity subsidies are going to have to be dismantled, or at least substantially reduced, in order to open up free trade opportunities elsewhere.

At the same time, conservationists, environmentalists, hunters, fisherman, and a host of other interest groups have pulled up seats at the table and are demanding that inroads be made towards righting past wrongs, and that small but critical successes of the past two decades be matured into more meaningful long-term solutions. Where farm policy was once the problem, now many of them see it, hopefully, as a solution. [More]

My comment: I don't find the concept of lots of minor lobbying forces constituting a challenge to the ag lobby convincing. These groups have not demonstrated either cooperation or commitment to changing ag policy if it even mildly threatened core issues (like emissions control or in this case, urban planning), hence they are easily co-opted. If farm policy is going to be changed it will occur because fiscal hawks dig in their heels and the President follows through on a veto threat, IMHO.

• California Coalition for Food and Farming

CALL TO ACTION
Each of us must use our own expertise in a particular subject matter area that you’ve heard mentioned today.
§ Do you know your Congressman? Her or his staff? See me afterwards.
§ Do you understand the positive effect that payment limitations would have on Farm Bill debate, on our
relations with our trading partners, on our own farmers? Can you talk about it in a factual, passionate way?
See me afterwards.
§ Are you a member of Western Growers Association (WGA)? California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF)?
Agricultural Council of California? A marketing order or commission? Can you work with your
colleagues on areas of common concern? See me afterwards.
§ Have you used any of the programs in the Conservation title, like EQIP or WHIP? Do you have good
relationships with NRCS? See me afterwards.

My comment: California has such a huge Congressional delegation this might amount to something in the House. In the Senate, cotton has a firm grip on both Sen. Feinstein and Boxer. [Sen. Boxer's site even refers obliquely (I think) to the payment limitation issue as "discrimination against California commodities such as cotton, rice, wheat, corn, and dairy".]

Speaker (presumed) Pelosi will be a different fellow altogether than her predecessor. She might even whip the House into near equality with the Senate on farm legislation. I'd call it a long shot, however.

• And of course, the view from Paris

Q. – Is the political situation in the United States conducive to them making major concessions at the WTO?

THE MINISTER – Given the budgetary situation in the United States, the American Executive is very keen for – and needs – a reform of the Farm Bill. It is finding this agricultural policy too expensive. To have outside pressure, in this instance the WTO negotiations, to compel Congress to accept such a reform is invaluable to the American administration./.

My comment: The French are masters at making any outcome look like they planned and delivered it all along. The issue for France is complicated by the public disdain for the Bush administration and their own elections. My guess is if the French want a given Farm Bill outcome, they would be wise to come out against it.

Will these non-traditional players have any impact? I dunno, but if any do - all could.

One giant leap for mankind...

The stunning beauty and efficiency of this invention moved me to near tears.

The Keg-Fast multiple keg tap.

Is it me, or is it thirsty in here?

Dog and cats living together!...

We seem to be in a competition to find the most hysterical global warming prediction. The latest entry:

[Click on picture to enlarge]

London in 2100.

If it's almost New Year's...

Then it's time for lists

of predictions

1. about big business
2. about baseball
3. from tarot cards
4. about presidential hopefuls
5. about media trends
6. about business
7. about gold

and lists

1. worst book covers
2. best gadgets
3. 2006 in ideas
4. best photos
   
5. buzzwords
6. most unforgettable TV moments
7. best places to live
   

The world just seems more organized when everything has a number.

Where our food comes from - The Answers...

Where does most of this food come from? The answers I found.

1. Bananas - Guatemala
   
2. Lemons - California
   
3. Lamb chops - Texas
   
4. Hamburger - Tricky to figure out, my guess Texas, [info on lean beef imports].
   
5. Canola oil - Canada
   
6. Onions - California
   
7. Flour - Kansas
   
8. Brussel sprouts - who cares? OK, California
9. Sweet potatoes - North Carolina
   
10. Olive oil - Italy
    
11. Pickles - Michigan
    
12. Apples - Washington
    
13. Milk - California
    
14. Wine - California
    
15. Garlic - China (BTW - for a peek at the gangsta, trash-talkin' side of garlic economics, check out the comments here.)
    
16. Baby back ribs - Denmark
    
17. Peaches - California
    
18. Tomatoes - Florida
    
19. Broccoli - California
    
20. Beer - California (I think)

I also discovered that imports of fresh fruits and vegetables is growing rapidly, but remains mostly seasonal.

Mozart, Robin Schlotz and and what music is...

Even if you wouldn't know Mozart from Moody Blues, you gotta recognize astonishing talent like this.

This is what is coming to agriculture - the ability to share extraordinary events with our whole community.

And it's going to happen here on AgWeb first and best.

I couldn't make this up if you paid me...

(Wait - make me an offer.)

"Bob - you and Larry take the bull and wolf. I'll handle the lobster."

I've been following this bizarre story on BoingBoing (need to read to understand) fully expecting it to be a hoax. Seems like the NRA has produced a comic-book-like call to action for all good 'Mericans.

But even loyalists go soft, as the GOP learned last month, and you need some Grade A propaganda to get people riled up again. Let no one accuse the NRA of shirking its duty. Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, is a spectacularly beautiful graphic novel. Here, for example, is one of the biggest threats to the white suburban hunter: dirty hippies and their evil sidekicks: the dynamite-carrying owl, sinister pig, angry Wall Street bull, dire wolf, terror chicken and Land Lobster

Still, I didn't realize not shaving your legs was un-American. Must be Amendment 34 or so to the Constitution, maybe.

Have we gotten to this? As we live the safest, healthiest, and wealthiest lives ever imagined on this planet, is this what we have to do to sell memberships?

There has got to a be a superior species somewhere...

Why it's not about us (Reason #28)...

It is important to many farmers that the world revolve around them. It's how we buttress our special status as recipients of government payments. Since a bunch of pesky facts contradict this world view, we choose to not hear them. As a result, most farmers I have talked to have trouble putting our industry in context with the rest of the economy.

One overriding reason is the "food" link. "Without us you'd starve", we point out to anyone who will listen. Probably not. This is the wealthiest nation on earth. We spend very little on actual foodstuffs (significantly more to have it prepared and delivered to us). Without us, someone else would feed our fellow citizens, and if anybody starved it would be the poor of the world, simply because they cannot compete for food with rich people in any shortage.

It is hard for us to get a picture of our actual position in the world because our entire self-image (and the one used to sell us seed, tractors and ideas) is a Ptolemaic cosmology with farmers at the center. There is a genuine fear of discovering otherwise, and becoming no more important than plumbers or accountants or teachers.

The world for the most part humors us. But many see clearly the scope of agriculture and its economic horsepower. One of these people was Leo Melamed, pioneering innovator at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Long ago he saw the wealth in agriculture would not match the growth of other sectors.

And then, finally, I came to the thought that Bretton Woods, the fixed-exchange-rate system, was coming apart. And when it finally comes apart, wouldn't there be a need for foreign-exchange futures? Our board thought I was crazy, and very frankly I thought it was a little crazy too, because why hadn't anybody else done this? I went to Milton Friedman, though, and he absolutely embraced the idea.

So the board had to go along with me. And the minute we went to foreign exchange, I said to the membership that if it works in foreign exchange, the sky is the limit! I was like a kid in a candy store, honest to God. Because in agriculture, where could you go with it? But in finance - ah, look at this! I mean, whoa, anything you want! [More of interview]

His foresight is a good clue for producers who are struggling to understand the influence of commodity funds. On USFR this weekend, Greg Hunt, one of our more erudite commentators brought up the startling fact that CalPERS - the giant retirement fund whose whims terrify boardrooms around the world - has decided to get into commodities.

CalPERS plans to decide as early as next summer whether to create a new natural resources/commodities asset class within the pension fund. “Global demand for natural resources and proved systems to extract and deliver them will only increase,” said Valdes. “We will look into commodities future contracts and related investments to naturally complement, diversify and add value to our expanding securities investments in the energy and raw materials sector. [More]

Investors like CalPERS talk money on a scale we can barely imagine. Consequently, market participants of their heft can easily skew trade in directions that will confound fundamentalists who assume supply and demand will override all (true in the LONG run) or those who extrapolate from the past.

But does it hurt anything for farmers to entertain this fantasy of unwarranted importance? I think so. Just as Rick Warren stated in the first line of the first chapter of "A Purpose-Driven Life", getting over yourself is the crucial first step in finding fulfillment and abiding happiness.

Seeing our work in real context is also a great defense to prevent being steamrollered by forces whose size we have not fully come to appreciate.

[See the later rerun post on farmland ETF's]

A little Christmas fun...

Try out your new computer on these websites.

My favorite is "pimp my nutcracker".

Where our food comes from...

One persistent complain from farmers has been "people don't know where their food comes from". I think the implication is once people find out it comes from a farm they will be OK with paying subsidies in addition to actually paying for the product. (Strikes me as unlikely, but ...)

OK, fair enough, but my contention is farmers don't know where their food comes from, either.

So try this little quiz. Where does most of this food come from? Try to name the largest single source, by state or country.

1. Bananas
2. Oranges
3. Lamb chops
4. Hamburger
5. Canola oil
   
6. Onions
7. Flour
8. Brussel sprouts
9. Potatoes
10. Olive oil
11. Pickles
12. Apples
    
13. Milk
14. Wine
15. Garlic
16. Baby back ribs
17. Peaches
18. Tomatoes
19. Rye flour
20. Beer

Answers in a few days.

Hey- I'm on holiday here!

There is a reason humans are the dominant species...

I am uncomfortable with emotional manipulation by means of photographs and pictures, whether it is Thomas Kinkade or cuddly baby animals . I was surprised then at my response to this series of photographs showing a man with no use of his hands and malformed feet repairing bicycle tires in Viet Nam.



Something in this matter-of-fact series of photos that captures for me the indomitable spirit of humankind. The guy was doing what he could do - and that turns out to be more than any of us would have imagined.

There may be thoughtful lessons to be gathered from his example, but my take-away is to err on the side of the possible when it comes to dealing with people.

Merry Christmas, all.

[via Metafilter]

Work, happiness, and wealth...

I have been studying the economics of happiness for a few years. Thanks to the proliferation of fMRI machines in hospitals in the US, brain researchers can now verify what economists and psychologists deduced from behavior.

Or dispute them.

As America pushes back the frontiers of national wealth, more than a few people are asking "Is That All There Is?" in the face of unparalleled prosperity. This phenomenon has omens for agriculture in the US.

We are, I believe embarking on a few years of infrequent prosperity for many in farming. (For those who invested in an ethanol plant 2+ years ago this time has arrived) Anyone who has been "spreadsheeting" a budget for 2007 and has fooled around with numbers like $3.50 for corn has had a hallelujah moment. The question is begged, however, "Will this make me happier?"

Farmers love the work of farming. That is problem #1. As a rule, nobody has to pay you to do things you love to do.

If people are determined to pursue their calling rather than simply taking a job, some professions (surgery, cookery, genetics) may become overcrowded, others undersubscribed. But when a job cannot find enough takers, the market finds ways to ennoble it: first pay, and then status, begin to rise. It becomes economical to automate some aspects of the work, employing machines to do the deadening humdrum toil that men and women are no longer willing to put up with. What remains of the job will be the bits only people can do: tasks that require insight, ingenuity and the human touch. Ms McCloskey recalls the Cincinnati sewerman, interviewed a few years ago on National Public Radio, who earned $60,000 a year and liked to tell girls he was an “environmental” worker. [More]

Happiness is not so easily captured, nor is self-interest the sole undergirding principle of economic activity it seems. And wealth alone does not provide all the answers to being happy. Even Adam Smith - that old capitalist dog - puzzled over this.

"In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, [the poor] are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings fight for."

Many farmers will experience a true upsurge in happiness as money worries lessen. But unless we have evolved significantly in the past decade or so, it will not last.

First, we have individual setpoints for happiness that are hard to alter.

Recent research conducted by Daniel Gilbert (a professor of psychology at Harvard) and others has unearthed several new elements about the business of happiness as concerns humans. The first element being that the major events of our lives have a minimal effect on our overall long-term happiness. Did you get married this year, or not? Have you been involved in a war lately or a victim of a crime? Regardless as to your answer, it is a fair bet that your happiness will be more or less the same in the long term. The latter could be understood if you accept that the brain has a mechanism of sorts to reset people back to their baseline happiness over time. The second element of happiness is the terrible truth that we are awful at predicting what will give us happiness. Do you expect that a new car or home will give you happiness? Certainly it will, just not as much as you expect. The same is true in the opposite. Do you think that getting rejected by your crush or losing a game will make you unhappy? It will, just not as much as you expect. [More]

Second, much of our happiness derives from status - our position relative to our peers and neighbors. This shows up as reference anxiety or pursuing positional goods. Our brains were wired to care about status, and despite protests to the contrary most of us do. As our neighbors experience similar good results, our success will likely pall.

Finally, we are competitors, and as such have a history of bidding up inputs (especially land) when our income goes up. We are agents of our own undoing.

Federal payments put money in farmers' pockets, which they used to bid up land prices to as much as three times its production value, Lines said. Prime Ohio farmland is valued at $2,500-3,000 per acre, compared to its productive worth of about $1,000 per acre, Lines said. [More drivel from 2001 here]

[Side note - I take a perverse pleasure in pointing out all those who called farmers fools for buying land at "inflated prices". No investment is more profitable for producers than to own the land. It has always been thus and those of you who took the challenge are being rewarded. One more point: never take risk advice from someone on tenure]

So if we view this as a window for changes that could make us happier, how can we maximize our outcome? Funny you should ask, because that is just what my presentation will address at the Top Producer Seminar in Chicago.

I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say!

The 12 Days of Christmas

If you don't "get" YouTube, maybe this will help you see how people are finding ingenious ways to deploy this technology.

Plus it's just fun!

(Is that one guy standing in front of a grain bin or just horizontal corrugated siding?)

Oh, yeah - Merry Christmas!

I'm working out the math right now...

Many of us amateur economists (and some real ones) have puzzled over the inefficiencies wrapped up in Christmas presents. When we give stuff we don't particularly like to people it may not fit, hasn't value been lost? Isn't the economy worse off?

Jonathan Chait considers this problem in too much depth in the New Republic (registration required, but it's free and they don't bug me):

Now some in the pro-gift faction actually argue on economic grounds, too. The economy, they say, depends on frenzied holiday-induced sales. Actually, it doesn't. Economists incessantly lecture us to save more--our national savings rate is notoriously low, after all--and consume less. And discontinuing gifts would give consumers more satisfaction with less stuff, by letting them choose what goods they end up with when the tinsel or the Menorah have all been packed away. Those previously employed in the field of fruitcake manufacturing would find work making things people actually want. [More]

The boy has a point. But is it worth making? Obviously somebody thought so (they don't call it the dismal science for no reason):

It's the sort of question only an economist would ask. Economist Joel Waldfogel, from Yale University, asked it first 13 years ago in a seminal paper entitled The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.

He asked university students to estimate both the amounts paid for the gifts they had received and the amounts that those gifts were actually worth to them. He found that at least 10 per cent of the value of the gifts was destroyed in the giving.

In a later, more sophisticated study, he put the figure at between 10 and 18 per cent of value lost as much as $9billion throughout the United States each Christmas. If you doubt Professor Waldfogel about the inefficiency of present giving, consider present recycling.

A survey conducted by American Express found that 28 per cent of us rebirth some of the presents we receive as gifts for other people. And then there are returns. The US Journal of Consumer Research has concluded that 16 per cent of all gifts bought by men are returned to shops by the recipients; 10 per cent of all gifts bought by women. (Women are better at choosing the right gifts than men). [Too much more]

Sure, it's tough finding a new facet of the economy to write a paper on, but "deadweight"? Dude - that's harsh.

Besides, the problem isn't Christmas - it's the insidious efforts to invent "new" card-required-mandatory-gifting holidays like "Sweetest Day".

No wonder we're heading for a recession.

Probably not the best time to bring this up...

Already, four shopping malls in China are larger than the Mall of America. Two, including the South China Mall, are bigger than the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, which just surrendered its status as the world's largest to an enormous retail center in Beijing. And by 2010, China is expected to be home to at least 7 of the world's 10 largest malls.

It seems we are losing the mall race to China. One thing to keep in mind is while the disparity in come is enormous there, if just 20% are living a "middle class" life that's 260 million shoppers.

Also, suppose China becomes the destination of prestige for American serious leisure shoppers?

[via Neatorama]

The Chinese man imbalance...

[Retread from March]

I have linked before about the growing male/female unbalance in Asia - particularly China. Here is more on the possible implications of the female shortage:

The long-term implications of the gender imbalance are largely guesswork because there is no real precedent for imbalances on such a scale. Some Chinese experts speculate, off the record, that there might be a connection between the shortage of women and the spread of open gay life since 2001, when homosexuality was deleted from the official Classification of Mental Disorders. It is possible to dream up all kinds of scenarios: Mumbai and Shanghai may soon rival San Francisco as gay capitals. A Beijing power struggle between cautious old technocrats and aggressive young nationalists may be decided by mobs of rootless young men, demanding uniforms, rifles, and a chance to liberate Taiwan. More likely, the organized crime networks that traffic in women will shift their deliveries toward Asia and build a brothel culture large enough to satisfy millions of sexually frustrated young men.

[Whole great article here]

Women - can't live without 'em and can't live without 'em.

No fair - I was quoted accurately...

By now a few of you may have read the article in The Washington Post where I was interviewed on my farm about farm subsidies. The piece is part of a long series about farm policy. My opposition to subsidies is pretty well known here, I won't belabor it, but if you are interested in what it is like to be interviewed by a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist/author for a world-class newspaper, here is my impression.

First, while we in agriculture complain about our media image, the image of people in the media may be even more distorted. The movie/television depictions of journalists does not prepare you for the reality. Gil Gaul visited my farm after several e-mail exchanges. He was somewhat younger than me and upon arrival obviously unfamiliar with the farm scene.

Despite my firm conviction that he had his own agenda and without doubt I would be excerpted and misquoted, I have learned that what I think I said and what I said can be two different things. And from feedback from my columns and speeches, I also know that what I say may not be what people hear. My expectations of the outcome of this interview were not high, but I honestly viewed it as a chance to have a small impact on the farm bill debate.

About halfway through the morning Gil spent riding on the combine with me, I realized I really liked the guy. In turn, he told me what is was like to working in the print media today as the world shifts to on-line. (Not the most optimistic career vision, BTW). And for a guy who had won 2 - as in 1 + 1 - Pulitzers he was pathetically unassuming.
I remember thinking his friendly demeanor was probably a professional act designed to lull innocent farm boys into lapses of judgment.

Later that afternoon I discarded that notion. After all, what the heck could they write that I hadn't said or written publicly, anyway? Besides, burning even one-time sources like me is a poor long term strategy for professionals.

Look and judge the article for yourself. And you can read what others are saying, both here on AgWeb and at the bottom of the article. My only slight misgiving is that the article seems pretty hopeless - that things could never be better. My personal conviction is if they stopped sending me money and didn't send you any either, we'd figure it out. We're not stupid or lazy.

All told, I've got no complaints. This experience has made me a little less cynical about the MSM (mainstream media) and a little more skeptical of those who dogmatically accuse them of bias. So if you ever have a similar chance, I would say go for it.

Besides, this episode will be forgotten with the next news cycle, I'm sure.