The cost of "winning"...

There is a real possibility that farm-state lawmakers will be successful in their efforts to exclude farmers from any participation other than getting checks from the government in efforts to combat global climate change.

The two powerful House Democrats said Thursday that they had made "good progress" in their talks on the climate bill, H.R. 2454 (pdf), following an hourlong meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But Waxman said yesterday that he has not spoken to Peterson since that session as the congressmen handed the negotiations over to their staffs.
Waxman declined to comment on the details of the climate talks, though the farm state lawmakers have not been shy in stating their problems with provisions in the bill that give U.S. EPA the principal oversight role for the carbon offset market. Peterson also is against a draft EPA regulation that would hold the ethanol industry accountable for "indirect land use," such as crop conversion in other countries.
House Democratic leaders are working behind the scenes to shore up support among the farm state lawmakers through language that could be added to the bill in a manager's amendment package. It is unclear, though, if those changes will be enough. [More]

Rep. Collin Peterson has been remarkably capable in this effort, and here's how:

Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that in recent years plenty of incumbent Republicans have been brought down by primary challenges from the right and as best I know zero Democrats have been brought down by primary challenges from the left. This has been a huge advantage for the Democrats in terms of winning elections—it’s an important part of the reason Democrats have these majorities. But it also means that when it comes to policymaking, Republicans have a lot of solidarity but Democratic leaders have little leverage over individual members. In other words, nobody thinks that Collin Peterson (D-MN) is going to lose his seat over badly watering down Waxman-Markey and that matters a lot more than airy considerations of capital. [More]

In fact,  Peterson bluntly points out global warming might be good for his constituents, regardless of who else it harms.  In fairness, I think this accurately reflects most farmer opinions of climate change (if they buy the idea at all).  But he could be securing a place in history as the poster child of parochial interest over national (and international) well-being.  In short, this legislative "win" may prove to be more costly that anyone currently imagines.

On Tuesday, the White House released a report based on the work of government scientists that said climate change will cause more frequent and intense heat waves in the U.S. and more severe and frequent flooding that will increasingly swallow up coastal lands.

For agriculture, the report found that higher temperatures will mean a longer growing season for crops that do well in heat such as melons, okra and sweet potatoes, but a shorter growing season for crops such as lettuce and broccoli that are more suited to cooler conditions. The report said higher temperatures also will cause plants to use more water to keep cool.

In an effort to highlight what they see as the stake that U.S. farmers have in combating climate change, members of the Obama administration -- including the administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco -- were expected to participate in a conference call on Wednesday to discuss the report's findings on agriculture.

But Mr. Peterson, when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report's findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing.

"We've just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we've ever had," he said. "They're saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it's going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that's a good thing since they'll be able to grow more corn."

He added that the measure proposed by Messrs. Waxman and Markey would penalize farmers in the Midwest who rely on coal-burning electric cooperatives. [More]

But Peterson might want to read that latest government report on climate change more closely before blithely touting "benefits" for corn growers. Making long range predictions based on the weather last year also strikes me as singularly non-scientific.

The report is here.  It is a whopping PDF download and to tempt you to wade through it (it is very readable), I excerpt these charming graphs. [Click each to enlarge]

And the one that definitely caught my eye:

To be sure, MN does seem to be a "winner" as annual precip and temps improve.  But MN agriculture will also cope with new pests, diseases, and even larger rain events as well.  But don't listen to me, the report has separate sections for parts of the country.

The immediate cries of unprovable nonsense will greet this report, I am sure, including many voices from farm country. Reading the report, noting the quantity and quality of the research and researchers, and the care with which the results are communicated certainly goes a long way to addressing the challenges of scoffers.

This is one issue I would prefer to have been seen by future generations as too easily alarmed than callously self-interested.  However, I am not all that optimistic meaningful mitigation will be begun until the effects are more clear to more people.  So I'm working on the adaptation strategy, while hoping for emissions reduction sooner than later.

It's also why we are investing more in drainage tile than machinery.

Deficits: another view...

Megan articulately outlines reasons why "deficit-blame" is a futile exercise.

I am a long-time believer in the notion that nobody cares about the budget deficit.  People say they care about the budget deficit, but people say they care about a lot of things.  Almost everything, in fact.  What people flogging the budget deficit actually care about is the programs it goes to pay for.  Every time the presidential party turns over, I get the pleasure of watching deficit-hawk Democrats suddenly discover that borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars actually has no moral or economic implications, especially when compared to national health care.  Meanwhile, Republican scientists who presumably spent the last eight years locked in a vault in the basement of Heritage run out into the metaphorical street screaming that they have just made a shocking, horrible, and totally unexpected new discovery:  budget deficits will make the economy melt down into a pool of manufacturing-depleted sludge, and also, cause rabies.

Economically, much of the talk about deficits is hysteria.  A budget deficit of less than 4% of GDP is not a good thing, but it rarely results in catastrophe either, because inflation and GDP growth steadily erode the value of past debt.  As long as the deficit is less than inflation + GDP growth, the government is unlikely to get into much trouble.  It's possible that this borrowing may crowd out private borrowing, but at least over the last decade, this has obviously not been the case.  [More]

Her point is taken, but she slides gently over cumulative effects, methinks. She also somehow misses the clear political tactic now embraced fully across the right of harsh criticism of the Bush fiscal performance. For example, the Bush tax cuts expire on Obama's watch, and does anyone doubt that those deficit contributions will be framed as tax increases by the GOP when (and if) he lets them expire?  A deficit of manageable proportions is no big worry, I agree, but arranging for so much to fall outside your own term has now become standard practice. 

This is how we get the CBO to score legislative spending much cheaper than it actually will be, since the length of the analysis and back-loading of costs doesn't show the true effect on the budget.

Regardless, she does clearly point out that the deficits we are facing exceed the "not-to-worry" category, regardless of the author.  So setting aside paternity testing every deficit dollar, the growing uneasiness is how will we (and the rest of the developed world) staunch the beleeding of red ink?

Not since the second world war have so many governments borrowed so much so quickly or, collectively, been so heavily in hock. And today’s debt surge, unlike the wartime one, will not be temporary. Even after the recession ends few rich countries will be running budgets tight enough to stop their debt from rising further. Worse, today’s borrowing binge is taking place just before a slow-motion budget-bust caused by the pension and health-care costs of a greying population. By 2050 a third of the rich world’s population will be over 60. The demographic bill is likely to be ten times bigger than the fiscal cost of the financial crisis.
Will they default, inflate or manage their way out?

This alarming trajectory puts policymakers in an increasingly tricky bind. In the short term government borrowing is an essential antidote to the slump. Without bank bail-outs the financial crash would have been even more of a catastrophe. Without stimulus the global recession would be deeper and longer—and it is a prolonged downturn that does the greatest damage to public finances. But in the long run today’s fiscal laxity is unsustainable. Governments’ thirst for funds will eventually crowd out private investment and reduce economic growth. More alarming, the scale of the coming indebtedness might ultimately induce governments to default or to cut the real cost of their debt through high inflation. [More]

One approach by the author above is binding budget enforcement measures that limit future debt when the economy is recovering. Pay-as-you-go is one such idea.  Also recall the choking effects of Graham-Rudman some years ago.  It should be noted that any law Congress passes, Congress can wriggle around.

Most heartening to me, is that we are having this discussion at all. Considering that  only a few months ago, deficits were way down the list as the idea of global depression seemed nearly inevitable. To the extent that general confidence is important to the working of our economic system (and it appears to be crucial), this is surprisingly good news.

Deficit-carping beats depression-mongering in my book.

You don't always get what you want...

We just have to decide how that line will be drawn.   Despite the intense rhetoric this week surrounding health care reform, the central issue is still barely mentioned.  The Republicans, for example, have keenly honed in on a list of things they think Americans don't want, and of course, one of them is any hint of restraint in health care for any reason (for people who have insurance already, of course).

As President Barack Obama tried to sell the American Medical Association today on his health care overhaul, the top Senate Republicans launched a familiar line of attack.
They warned of rationed medical care, lack of patient control and government bureaucracy.
"The American people will not stand for rationed health care," Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl said Monday. "We believe that a one size fits all approach is the wrong approach." [More of a news story that mentions "ration" several times]

I think this will be the Great Wall for defenders of our current system: curtailing any amount of health care is anathema.  Oddly voices on the right have been pointing out that's exactly what is needed, although we can't bring ourselves to use the word "ration".

 There are only three ways to pay for this expansion of health insurance coverage: increased taxes, reduced benefits, or shiny gold ingots falling out of the sky. Voters emphatically prefer the latter option, so that is the one most likely to be embraced by Congress and the administration.

...

One way to bring down the cost of health insurance is to limit access to certain doctors, treatments, and medicines. But the Kaiser/Harvard poll found most people are averse not only to paying more but also to anything that would "involve government limiting or dictating their choices."

Or anyone else, by the way. Most people have forgotten that in the 1980s, the private sector devised an ingenious way to reduce medical outlays. Known as managed care, it put modest restrictions on the freedom of patients to get care from specialists, limited hospital stays and gave doctors incentives to choose less costly therapies. It saved money, and it didn't appear to reduce the quality of care.

It was a perfect remedy, except for one thing: Patients and doctors hated it. Why? Because it kept them from behaving as though cost is no object.

So managed care is history. But the dilemmas it addressed are not.

One of these days, we'll have to address them, but not now. The administration would rather pretend we can get generous government-sponsored coverage for everyone without higher taxes, higher insurance premiums or rationing of health care. In short, it refuses to treat us like grownups. I wonder why. [More]

The tricky political problem for the GOP is the number of people with coverage they like is dropping. Uncontrolled expenditures are pushing premiums up, even as employers offload the burden to workers. And if you lose your job...

The status quo is rapidly deteriorating.  Something has to give on health care, according to economist Tyler Cowen - hardly a left-winger.

Scholars have been applying comparative-effectiveness research to Medicare for years, and the verdict is not altogether pretty. It turns out that some regions spend more on Medicare than others — sometimes two or three times as much, as documented by the Dartmouth Atlas Project. Yet the higher-spending regions often fail to produce superior health care results.
Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University, surveys evidence demonstrating the ineffectiveness of many medical expenditures in his 2007 paper, “Showing That You Care.”
If we are willing to take comparative-effectiveness studies seriously, we could make significant cuts in Medicare costs right now. We could cut some reimbursement rates, limit coverage for some of the more speculative treatments, like some forms of knee and back surgery, and place more limits on end-of-life-care.

Those cuts alone will not solve the fiscal problem, but if we aren’t willing to take even limited steps to conserve resources, we shouldn’t be spending any more money elsewhere. [More]

If you didn't pick up on it "comparative-effectiveness" is how you actually go about the unspeakable practice of spending health care dollars to the greatest benefit.  It will be one key aspect to any useful reform effort.

More seriously, there is something about the arguments against CER that I have never understood. The opponents of CER claim that it will inevitably be used to make decisions about care. Insurers will not want to pay for care that is not effective, and so people will be deprived of the care they need. But notice what "deprived of care" means here. No one is seriously proposing to make it illegal to purchase whatever medical care you want on your own. 

This means that even if your insurance company decides that it will not pay for some treatment that has been shown to be ineffective, you will, under any proposal being seriously considered, still be able to get that care; you just won't be able to get someone else to pay for it. If not having someone else pay for your medical care counts as being "deprived of care", then 46 million people are being deprived of care even as we speak -- and that's just the uninsured; it doesn't include people who have insurance that doesn't cover the treatments they need. And yet, strange to say, the opponents of CER generally do not see this as a problem.

Moreover, once you notice that what the opponents of CER describe as "being deprived of care" just consists in someone's deciding not to pay for some treatment, the idea that decisions about who gets what treatment are currently made by your physician is true only if you pay for your care out of your own pocket. If, like most of us, you rely on medical insurance, then someone other than your doctor is already making decisions about your care. All CER would do is allow this person to do so on the basis of actual knowledge about what works and what doesn't. [More]

Doubtless we will "ration" in a convoluted and obscure method, but the point is made that at some time even the most lavish insurance programs will have to draw some lines on the expanding array of medical treatments and drugs that provide minscule benefits while burdening countless others with the costs.  

 

That point approaches, I think.

Amaze your friends...

With this little conversation starter:

The Internet uses 1-2% of the world's electricity.  [From this great presentation]

How much is that?

1. About as much as Mexico. [Same source]
   
2. About as much as all the wind energy produced.

I dunno...it just seemed like a lotta watts to me.

[via drum]

This is scary...

Obama and Newt agree on something?

A growing number of politicians from both sides of the aisle are waking up to the problem. Barack Obama has urged school administrators to “rethink the school day”, arguing that “we can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home ploughing the land at the end of each day.” Newt Gingrich has trumpeted a documentary arguing that Chinese and Indian children are much more academic than American ones.

These politicians have no shortage of evidence that America’s poor educational performance is weakening its economy. A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the lagging performance of the country’s school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, has wreaked more devastation on the economy than the current recession. [More]

About now many households are considering longer school days and calendars much more favorably.  It was interesting to note how our current schedule - with a long summer vacation - essentially arose from the need for labor in the summer on farms.

Jan and I have harrumphed about the amount of time actually spent in class for our children and now grandchildren. But more appalling to me is how little time college students spend actually, you know, going to college.

Where deficits come from...

Surprisingly, it's not all about the stimulus package.  In fact, it's barely about the stimulus package.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it. [More]

To help visualize this accounting:

 [Click to enlarge][More]

A chart I found even more helpful:

 [More]

Once we get past the finger-pointing, and actually look at which holes the money is draining down, I wonder how our appetite for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will hold up.  To date I have seen no resolve from any quarter (other than a few voices like Rep. Jeff Flake) to even strike a glancing blow at spending reduction, and agriculture is a poster child.  Any hint of  cutting any ag check rouses the ag lobby to full alert.

Ditto the legions of lobbyists for other constituencies.  Hence, we may back into the non-choice of allowing our credit to debase and witness very serious inflation.  It's how investors show their displeasure with fiscal imprudence.

In other words, unless we can contain defense and health spending, we will see some appalling interest rates. I always think these things will happen sooner than they do, so my best guess is to brace for at rates in the 'teens by 2011.

Somebody else noticed dairy exports...

The last few years.  It seems investors are looking at the Chinese milk market and seeing the next Big Thing.

Reuters reported last December that KKR planned to invest $100 million in the Chinese dairy, taking a stake in a fragmented and troubled industry.

Other investors may pour $150 million more into the company alongside KKR, said the source at the time. Monday's announcement did not include financial terms.

The investment is among the few China deals for New York-based KKR, one of the world's biggest and oldest private equity firms that arrived in Asia only a few years ago.

KKR is investing in an industry that, while tainted by last year's milk scandal, reaches into the world's largest consumer market.

KKR is known for participating in some of the biggest leveraged buyouts across the United States, Europe and Asia. So, while this relatively small deal in a Chinese dairy farm is unique to KKR, other Western firms have put money into the industry. [More]

It doesn't take an MBA to figure out where the global dairy trade is headed. (Very helpful stats here).  Still, this type of investment is singular for KKR and could presage a new challenge for our domestic industry as it becomes advantageous to raise production in the biggest markets rather than load up ships and export to them.

While I have anticipated outside investment in all kinds of agriculture, the easy flow of capital around the globe, has reduced the advantage US producers have enjoyed simply because we were close to the money.

The subject I will be investigating is whether these investors have maintained their positions over the last year as other sectors declined sharply. Certainly there was considerable interest.

The New York Times describes how some big-money players are skipping the commodities market and going directly to being hard asset players by buying farmland and grain elevators. This is hardly new (I know of one global macro fund that was making ag related investments two years ago) but the Times piece gives the impression that quite a lot of money is suddenly chasing this theme.

While in theory having more capital deployed in food production would be a Good Thing, the equation isn't necessarily that straightforward. Yes, 70% of the world's farms are not at the highest level of productivity that modern techniques can produce, so more gains are possible. But this isn't a linear equation where farmland + more dough = more output at a higher profit. Modern agricultural techniques are both energy intensive and fertilizer intensive, and both are increasingly costly. A land grab may produce an input squeeze that erodes much of the hoped-for return. [More]

Anecdotal evidence suggest interest in farmland has perked up lately, undoubtedly sparked by a strong commodity run over the last two months.

After spending months on the sidelines, investors are starting to return to the nation's agriculture land as a home for their investment dollars. Investors have long played a role in the land-buying market, but toward the end of 2008 those once active investors retreated, according to Lee Vermeer, AFM, vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company.

"Investors stepped aside around November, but they have gotten back in the game," said Vermeer. "Everyone was trying to figure out the stock market and whether the economy had bottomed out. Some believe it has. Now that the uncertainty has subsided, buyers are looking for investments they can feel good about."

During the past six months, owner/operators around the country took advantage of the decline in investor attention and purchased available land to expand their operations. It was that activity that kept land values steady despite the turbulent economy.

"A good indication of the strength of the land market was that even with all the uncertainty and the stress on the market the past six months – land values held," said Vermeer. "I think that speaks to the quality of the land, but also shows the confidence today's buyers have in the land market as an investment opportunity."

Vermeer said the land market did slow somewhat last fall and there were some weak spots around the country the first part of 2009. He attributed the slow down to the drop in commodity prices. In the past 30-45 days, however, Vermeer said the market is gaining ground. [More]

My axiom is the farmland market is a better judge of ag sector health than commodity prices, and even with a hiccup over the last few months, it appears to be a place money wants to be, regardless of the location.

I'll believe it when I don't hear it...

Something else will have to occupy much of senior citizen conversations if this report is true:

And the second piece of TV news?  Something that's close to my heart: broadcasters have promised Congress that by September they will have standards in place that prevent commercials from being wildly louder than the TV programs they're embedded in.  Hooray!  It's only taken them 40 years to finally address this.  "We get it," an industry flack told Congress about loud ad complaints. "As a matter of pure economics, we do not want to lose viewers."

The bad news, however, is that the industry's sweet talk has convinced Congress to halt work on legislation to force broadcasters to address this.  Too bad.  Like the Do Not Call list, this is one of those things where ideology plays no role for me.  I don't care if this is liberal, conservative, libertarian, or anything else.  I just want it to stop, and I don't care a whit whether or not it's a justified interference in the free market.  JUST MAKE IT STOP! [More]

This made me wonder why this occurs. Or is it our imaginations?

Spencer Critchley, writing in Digital Audio last month, explained it this way: “The peak levels of commercials are no higher than the peak levels of program content. But the average level is way, way higher, and that’s the level your ears care about. If someone sets off a camera flash every now and then it’s one thing; if they aim a steady spot light into your eyes it’s another, even if the peak brightness is no higher.”

There’s also what Brian Dooley of CNET.com calls “perceived loudness.” If you’re watching a drama with soft music and quiet dialogue and the station slams into a commercial for the July 4^th Blow Out Sale, it’s going to be jarring. If you happen to go from the program into a commercial for a sleeping pill, one with a subtle soundtrack, it probably won’t bother you. 

Help is on the way! Last month Dolby Laboratories announced it has developed technology to level out the sound differences that take place during shows and between TV programs and commercials. You pick the volume you like and the Dolby software will make the adjustments in real time automatically.

Dolby Volume could show up in some TV sets by the end of this year or early next year. [More]

Oh sure, right after most of us just plunked down for a new flat screen HDTV...

Canadian dairy operators...

Take on soda pop.



HFCS is obviously not the flavor of the month anymore.

[via presurfer]

One decent crop, maybe...

Hokey Smokes!  The DOE has revived the FutureGen Project and will dump $1B+ dollars about 50 miles southwest of me.

The Obama administration gave conditional support today for a federal-industry partnership that would build an advanced coal-burning power plant in Illinois to trap and store carbon dioxide emissions, reversing a Bush-era decision to abandon the FutureGen project. [More]

Given the growing season those guys are having, this could be the best news they'll get this year.

I feel so big and significant...


via videosift.com

Not.

Wrong victim line...

The following e-mail tripped my trigger.  (It was sent to AgDay, but I get copied.)

When you quit calling it Swine flu and start saying N1H1 [sic*] flu everytime you open your mouth,most of the farmers and ranchers might take you serious.

I have seen several other outraged comments from pork producers aimed at media types who dare to use the ubiquitous nomenclature of "swine flu".  Allow me to make a few clarifying points here.

First, while I do not profess to "feel your pain", I am aware that the pork industry in under incredible economic strain, and that even large operations will fail because of cost and demand issues. That this stress can bleed over to other issues is understandable.

Second, the post above illustrates the problem with the H1N1 term.  It is not easily remembered.

Third, the term "H1N1 virus" is six syllables and can be garbled several ways.  "Swine flu" is two syllables and rolls off the tongue.  This means nothing to hog farmers, but a great deal to those who speak the news. If you can't grasp our working problems, don't be surprised when we don't empathize with yours.

Fourth, as I just pointed out, "H1N1" is probably already dated.

Fifth, if the term "swine flu" is such an outrage to pork producers, why have they waited until the thunderstorm to fix the roof?  The label "swine flu" has been around for decades. 

On February 5, 1976, in the United States an army recruit at Fort Dix said he felt tired and weak. He died the next day and four of his fellow soldiers were later hospitalized. Two weeks after his death, health officials announced that the cause of death was a new strain of swine flu. The strain, a variant of H1N1, is known as A/New Jersey/1976 (H1N1). It was detected only from January 19 to February 9 and did not spread beyond Fort Dix.^[29]

This new strain appeared to be closely related to the strain involved in the 1918 flu pandemic. Moreover, the ensuing increased surveillance uncovered another strain in circulation in the U.S.: A/Victoria/75 (H3N2) spread simultaneously, also caused illness, and persisted until March.^[29]pandemic, and urged President Gerald Ford that every person in the U.S. be vaccinated for the disease.^[30] Alarmed public-health officials decided action must be taken to head off another major
The vaccination program was plagued by delays and public relations problems.^[31] On October 1, 1976, the immunization program began and by October 11, approximately 40 million people, or about 24% of the population, had received swine flu immunizations. That same day, three senior citizens died soon after receiving their swine flu shots and there was a media outcry linking the deaths to the immunizations, despite the lack of positive proof. According to science writer Patrick Di Justo, however, by the time the truth was known — that the deaths were not proven to be related to the vaccine — it was too late. "The government had long feared mass panic about swine flu — now they feared mass panic about the swine flu vaccinations." This became a strong setback to the program.^[32]

Has the NPPC been working with the scientific community before this present debacle to adopt a more accurate name?

Finally, while I have earned the criticism of ethanol fanatics for my contention we have literally legislated our best customers out of business, on this issue I cannot side with pork producers.  You are not victims here, you are short-sighted business managers.

It's too late - it's swine flu.

Deal with it.



*Not to be condescending, because I learned what it means only a few years ago: [sic] means as in the original

The  moving target...

It seems clear to me the battle by the pork industry to rename swine flu H1N1 was about five years too late, and has now been lost.  We're now on to another label, "A(H1N1)S-OIV" as the virus evolves.

While that’s all very exciting, the paper itself is an anxiety-triggering read. The new swine flu (which the authors now call S-IOV S-OIV) is only distantly related to other known swine flus, which means that there are a lot of flu viruses circulating around about which we know very little. And, as I mentioned in my article, it had already entered the human population several months before it came to light earlier this spring. Be sure to check out figure 1 (I’m inserting it below from the wiki–thanks, Creative Commons!), which shows how lots of bird, swine, and human season flu viruses mixed together to produce the new beast. The authors warn that the pattern of evolution they see is the sort of pattern the big flu pandemics followed when they emerged in the past.

[More] [Click to enlarge]

This organism is a true hybrid, and trying to follow the diagram should explain why it will be called swine flu here on out. The situation is serious enough people are talking, and people like memorable, short names for stuff they fear.

Also, in fairness, pigs are a big part of the story.

We show that it was derived from several viruses circulating in swine, and that the initial transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the outbreak. A phylogenetic estimate of the gaps in genetic surveillance indicates a long period of unsampled ancestry before the S-OIV outbreak, suggesting that the reassortment of swine lineages may have occurred years before human emergence, and that the multiple genetic ancestry of S-OIV is not indicative of an artificial origin. Furthermore, the unsampled history of the epidemic means that the nature and location of the genetically closest swine viruses reveal little about the immediate origin of the epidemic, despite the fact that we included a panel of closely related and previously unpublished swine influenza isolates. Our results highlight the need for systematic surveillance of influenza in swine, and provide evidence that the mixing of new genetic elements in swine can result in the emergence of viruses with pandemic potential in humans². [More]

As the declaration of a pandemic is now official, maybe fussing over the media name should take a back seat to educating about the connection being from origins, not contagion.

My guess is the travel/hospitality industry has now moved to the front-lines of the damage from this health threat.

Blogger note:

Thanks for all the great comments lately.  We are finally done planting, and after I catch up my accounting, I will be posting some strange and wonderful stuff.

Still a lot of guys around me with many acres to go.

I need to get a sponsor to justify the time I spend here, I think.



Nah - where's the fun in that?

Where bushels come from...

There was interesting debate in the GMO arena lately that has triggered some thoughts of my own (always a surprising result).  While the argument was almost pro forma - "GMO's are bad!", "No, they're not!" - the research in question has some implications for the corn yield curve.

It all began when a researcher for the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed available research on GMO's and yields. Now I know the UCS is not wildly popular with farmers, but actually wading through the report did produce a new question in my mind.

The basic point the author was asserting was GMO's have failed to live up to the hype about raising yields since a strong argument can be made any contribution to how the plant actually makes grain, for example is small compared to the effect of protecting the plant from pests.

The biotechnology industry has been promising better yields since the mid-1990s, but Failure to Yield documents that the industry has been carrying out gene field trials to increase yields for 20 years without significant results. 
Failure to Yield makes a critical distinction between potential—or intrinsic—yield and operational yield, concepts that are often conflated by the industry and misunderstood by others. Intrinsic yield refers to a crop’s ultimate production potential under the best possible conditions. Operational yield refers to production levels after losses due to pests, drought and other environmental factors.
The study reviewed the intrinsic and operational yield achievements of the three most common genetically altered food and feed crops in the United States: herbicide-tolerant soybeans, herbicide-tolerant corn, and insect-resistant corn (known as Bt corn, after the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, whose genes enable the corn to resist several kinds of insects).
Herbicide-tolerant soybeans, herbicide-tolerant corn, and Bt corn have failed to increase intrinsic yields, the report found. Herbicide-tolerant soybeans and herbicide-tolerant corn also have failed to increase operational yields, compared with conventional methods.
Meanwhile, the report found that Bt corn likely provides a marginal operational yield advantage of 3 to 4 percent over typical conventional practices. Since Bt corn became commercially available in 1996, its yield advantage averages out to a 0.2 to 0.3 percent yield increase per year. To put that figure in context, overall U.S. corn yields over the last several decades have annually averaged an increase of approximately one percent, which is considerably more than what Bt traits have provided. [More]

Much of this rang true with my on-farm experience.  While most farmers have been excited about corn yields, when you pin them down, part of the thrill was comparing to flat bean yields.

Furthermore, for much of the Corn Belt, it is possible that better rootworm/corn borer protections and less setback from herbicides could account for the recent jump in yield, just as UCS alleges.

What this does not suggest to me is GM crops have "failed".  But it does raise some interesting questions about how much more bang we can expect from new traits.  After all, you only get the herbicide/insect protection boost once.

The UCS report, was sharply criticized by a writer who work I admire, Ron Bailey, and Dr. Wayne Parrot.  Both raise logical points against the conclusion GM crops have not delivered the goods. (Great summary of the debate here). But neither answers the buried question that holds my interest: are GM yield increases largely a one-time shot, with subsequent progress more likely to emerge from conventional breeding techniques?

This lack of refutation of this key point is suggestive at least of informal conversations I have had with corn breeders.  Germplasm is still where it's at IMHO, and simply cramming traits into any old line may be a short-term answer.

I grow a lot of non-GMO corn for a premium, and my yield curve, while not as impressive as my neighbors, is going the right direction at least. It remains to be seen if intrinsic yields can be proven to be lifted like operational yields at this point.

To be sure, yield is yield.  Most of us don't really care where those bushels come from. Swallowing predictions of even larger increases (and paying super-premium seed prices) is another thing altogether. As Illinois researchers have pointed out, changing the trendline slope for corn yields is not proven yet.

How can we reconcile the lack of evidence for an increase in corn trend yields with the widespread perception that trend yields accelerated over the last decade? One possibility is that observers failed to recognize the impact of relatively favorable weather since the mid-1990s, and thereby, mistakenly attributed corn yield increases to technology. Figures 3, 4, and 5 show key weather variables for the three states over 1960-2007. The top panel in each figure shows total June-July precipitation and the bottom panel shows average July-August temperatures. The regression model results indicated that these were the most important precipitation and temperature variables for corn production in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. [More]

My personal hunch is GM advances in are still largely limited to protection effects, not intrinsic yield boosts. Furthermore, drought-tolerance is a trait that doesn't payoff unless you have dry weather for msot of the current Corn Belt. Especially here in the eastern section!

None of this necessarily decreases the value delivered by GM crops to producers, and we will all make market decisions what the payback for these very expensive traits are.  But I'm buying germplasm first.

Reducing any criticism of GM potential to a battle over official acceptance or not misses the point. There is no safety issue - there is a pricing issue: what is the true value of traits?  And until there is more verifiable evidence, those benefits cannot be unilaterally valued by the seed company.

Besides, the real advances in GM acceptance will come from say, removing a headache from consumers. Or in this case, over-consumers.

If you're a wine lover who's prone to headaches and opposed to genetically modified crops, you have a nemesis. His name is Dr. Hennie van Vuuren, he's at the University of British Columbia's Wine Research Center, and, after sixteen years of research, he figured out how to genetically alter yeast to remove the headache-inducing properties of red wine and many white wines.

The choice between drinking conventional wine and getting walloped and drinking wine made with GM yeast and feeling vibrant poses a gastronomic conundrum for many consumers. Wine production is deeply rooted in artisanal traditions. There's nothing artisanal or traditional about GM technology. And a genuine headache, as any serious wine drinker knows, is something fierce. [More]

I research GM corn yields, so why not this GM trait as well?

Chrisman when the grade school lets out...



Maybe it just seems that way...

[via arbroath]

This is going to get really ugly, I'm afraid...

For grain farmers like me, as we watch the train wreck that is the dairy crisis, we should be at least uneasy with our consciences.  To be sure, the dairy industry is caught between two government schemes: their perverse pricing system and government ethanol mandates which have raised the price of feed.

Has agricultural success for some of us been reduced to the product our lobbying prowess?

Jim Dickrell is doing high caliber work, and bravely offering pointed opinions on causes and effects.

What’s happening is every producer is waiting for his neighbors to blink first. And prices aren’t improving. The June Class I price came in at $10.08/cwt. The May Class III price was announced last week at $9.84; the May Class IV at $10.14.

At the Elanco meetings, Elam couldn’t predict when milk prices will rebound to profitability. The best he could do: “We could see fourth quarter all-milk prices at $14/cwt,” he says. “But 300,000 cows (including the 100,000 CWT leaving this month) will have to go away by the end of the year.”

So the question is two-fold: Who will blink? And when will they blink? One producer I sat with at lunch last Thursday made this prediction: “Things won’t turn around until everyone is convinced things won’t ever get any better.”

My advice: If you can’t survive the next six months at your current mailbox price, don’t let what equity you have left erode further. The sooner you make that decision, the better off you and the rest of the industry will be. [More]

This will be a sad summer for too many dairy farms.

Forty (wet) acres to go...

Back when I was just a lad (34) Toto released "Africa".  I like this version even better.



Note the power of one really good bass.

And I was reminded too often rain is a much wished-for blessing.

The anchor responsibility...

Though we have trouble seeing it, the recession in the US appears more manageable or at least, less severe than in many other countries.

And the primary reason suggested by Stratfor Global Intelligence verifies an intuition I struggled to find logic to prove.  We are at the heart a national economy based on the land we occupy.

The most important aspect of the United States is not simply its sheer size, but the size of its usable land. Russia and China may both be similar-sized in absolute terms, but the vast majority of Russian and Chinese land is useless for agriculture, habitation or development. In contrast, courtesy of the Midwest, the United States boasts the world’s largest contiguous mass of arable land — and that mass does not include the hardly inconsequential chunks of usable territory on both the West and East coasts.

Second is the American maritime transport system. The Mississippi River, linked as it is to the Red, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers, comprises the largest interconnected network of navigable rivers in the world. In the San Francisco Bay, Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound/New York Bay, the United States has three of the world’s largest and best natural harbors. The series of barrier islands a few miles off the shores of Texas and the East Coast form a water-based highway — an Intracoastal Waterway — that shields American coastal shipping from all but the worst that the elements can throw at ships and ports.

(click image to enlarge)

The real beauty is that the two overlap with near perfect symmetry. The Intracoastal Waterway and most of the bays link up with agricultural regions and their own local river systems (such as the series of rivers that descend from the Appalachians to the East Coast), while the Greater Mississippi river network is the circulatory system of the Midwest. Even without the addition of canals, it is possible for ships to reach nearly any part of the Midwest from nearly any part of the Gulf or East coasts. The result is not just a massive ability to grow a massive amount of crops — and not just the ability to easily and cheaply move the crops to local, regional and global markets — but also the ability to use that same transport network for any other economic purpose without having to worry about food supplies.

The implications of such a confluence are deep and sustained. Where most countries need to scrape together capital to build roads and rail to establish the very foundation of an economy — transport capability — geography granted the United States a near-perfect system at no cost. That frees up U.S. capital for other pursuits and almost condemns the United States to be capital-rich. Any additional infrastructure the United States constructs is icing on the cake. (The cake itself is free — and, incidentally, the United States had so much free capital that it was able to go on to build one of the best road-and-rail networks anyway, resulting in even greater economic advantages over competitors.) [More]

This idea should give farmers pause. We are one of the major anchors tying our nation to the physical space we inhabit.  Ergo, we are the link that makes this national asset productive, along with others like transportation and extraction workers, of course.

Moreover, many farmers (as opposed to livestock producers) have been sheltered from the worst effects of the recession by government actions. I find it hard to swallow, therefore, that we continue to seek "victimhood" status and qualifiy for yet more public aid.

Instead, we could be a voice of reassurance "speaking comfortably" to fellow Americans about the solid state of the bedrock of our economy.  We could be acting the role of a reliable, responsible industry that can carry the nation on our shoulders through a difficult time.

While this sounds grandiose, it lifts our own spirits and gives more purpose to our lives than counting our relatively minor problems, I think.

Are we socialist yet?...

Much as I have found when discussing the best role for government during this recession, cries of "socialist" immediately clog the communications channels.  I was relieved to find I was not alone in puzzling what this charge meant.

The hot-pink portion of this pie chart is the percentage of listed American business assets that have recently been nationalized by the American government (ie, General Motors). Obama's version of socialism is so sneaky you can hardly see it!

(And there is some reason to think this actually overstates the portion of the corporate landscape that's been nationalized, but more on that at the end of the post.*)  

There is a serious discussion to be had here, and I think Jon Henke is having it: Socialism, like farenheit, comes in degrees. Sure, a government that nationalizes GM is "more socialist" than one that does not, even if it doesn't mean we're living "under socialism." But differences of degree shouldn't obscure differences of kind, and as Tim Fernholz says, "it's clear that putting the government in charge of private production is not the Obama administration's guiding philosophy."

If it were, 99.79% of the American corporate assets that existed at the start of the Obama administration would not remain in private hands. The differences of degree are so small that they aren't worth mentioning. And yet, somehow, they keep getting mentioned. [More]

Anyhoo, as I have become convinced, critics who automatically blurt "socialist" to answer any policy question seem to be remarkably deficit when asked for an alternative.  Not always, but often.

With apologies to JFK, we're all socialists now.  At least in some eyes.

And certainly fans of current farm policy.

Some of you have asked...

How I manage to get all these posts done and still farm.

OK, incessant rain helps.  But it isn't because of my typing skills.

My score: Net WPM = 15

(Insert your snicker here)

Never discount brute force.

Friday Bach...

For the fleet of foot.



[via greg laden]

My sons have been shopping...

The old joke about who picks out your nursing home just took a global twist.

[via free exchange]

Grain, hold the ice...

Even if you think global warming is hogwash, this might be a good time to clean the pig.  Big $$ are being bet on the possibility of drilling for oil under the former ice-cap as it simply melts away.

In fact, lines in the sea are already being drawn to see who can create the most outlandish undersea geological argument for territorial claims.  Note some the of the big players are the descendants of the Vikings.

[More]

More surprisingly the estimate of reserves is climbing.

In new findings, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic may be home to 30 percent of the planet's undiscovered natural gas reserves and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil.

A team of scientists at the USGS collaborated with international researchers to conduct the first-ever comprehensive assessment of undiscovered oil and gas reserves within the Arctic Circle.

"We tried to put some boundaries on the range of possibilities and resources available in the Arctic," said geologist Donald Gautier, lead author of the survey, which is published this week in the journal Science.

Using geological analysis and probability modeling, researchers mapped out sedimentary rock deposits to estimate the amount of undiscovered oil and gas beneath undersea continental shelves. This survey, the first of its kind, could help oil and gas companies locate new troves of fossil fuels. [More]

But it is the map showing a real honest-to-goodness Northwest Passage that intrigues me.  What will this route mean to global shipping?  What will to mean to Canada?  Above all, could we realign grain shipping patterns in unexpected ways?

As environmentalists and scientists debate the effects of global warming and sea ice melting in the Arctic, shipping experts are quietly weighing how quickly — and how dramatically — international commerce might see a silver lining.

The Arctic has become a lighting rod of debate as Arctic nations, including Russia, Denmark, Canada and the Untied States, jockey to take advantage of highly lucrative natural resources beneath the fast-melting ice. About 90 billion gallons of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried underneath ice north of the Arctic Circle, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But melting sea ice would open new, previously treacherous and non-navigable passageways over Asia and North America, shortening some routes by thousands of miles. For example, access to the currently blocked Northwest Passage over North America would reduce a trip from Yokohama, Japan, to Rotterdam in the Netherlands to just 5,618 miles, according to Scott Borgerson, an ocean governance expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

That's a far cry from the popular 11,209-mile trip that requires ships to pass through the Panama Canal.

"It's not a matter of if but when," Borgerson said last week. "It's going to be sooner than later." [More]

Since the ice disappearance has overtaken all estimates to date, "sooner" may be much sooner. Throw in oil money to spur the development of special ships and equipment for navigating the Arctic, million of acres with more degree-days from climate change, and suddenly Canada is building a railroad north to load wheat, corn, oats, canola, bananas*, etc.

*Checking to see if you're paying attention.

Ow, ow, ow...

Buried in the (possibly) good news about unemployment was this unfortunate comment about productivity gains.

Another report from Labor showed worker productivity rose more in the first quarter than previously estimated as the worst recession in at least half a century prompted companies to cut costs by extracting more output from remaining employees. [More]

I think the phrase "extracting more output" says it all.

Another alarm sounding...

This time for phosphorus supplies.  Is it me or do these warnings seem to have become a regular section of the news?

As complex as the chemistry of life may be, the conditions for the vigorous growth of plants often boil down to three numbers, say, 19-12-5. Those are the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, prominently displayed on every package of fertilizer. In the 20th century the three nutrients enabled agriculture to increase its productivity and the world’s population to grow more than sixfold. But what is their source? We obtain nitrogen from the air, but we must mine phosphorus and potassium. The world has enough potassium to last several centuries. But phosphorus is a different story. Readily available global supplies may start running out by the end of this century. By then our population may have reached a peak that some say is beyond what the planet can sustainably feed.

Moreover, trouble may surface much sooner. As last year’s oil price swings have shown, markets can tighten long before a given resource is anywhere near its end. And reserves of phosphorus are even less evenly distributed than oil’s, raising additional supply concerns. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest producer of phosphorus (after China), at 19 percent of the total, but 65 percent of that amount comes from a single source: pit mines near Tampa, Fla., which may not last more than a few decades. Meanwhile nearly 40 percent of global reserves are controlled by a single country, Morocco, sometimes referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of phosphorus.” Although Morocco is a stable, friendly nation, the imbalance makes phosphorus a geostrategic ticking time bomb. [More]

Believe it or not, I actually visited one the largest phosphate complexes in the world in Morocco in 1988 as part of the IL Ag Leadership Program (a life-changing experience, I might add).  It was a brand new facility then and needed an astronomical price to break even - something like $250/T at the time.

(Pause for sardonic laughter)

I've also seen the Florida mines which have been curtailing production due to drops in demand and foreign competition. Like the mundane potash business, suddenly the idea of shortages in the face of biofuel driven demand has added glamor to these extraction industries.

But how valid are the cries about depletion?  Credible arguments can be made for "peak phosphorus" and whether it has already occurred.

Morocco's importance to the global economy is due to its control of at least 2/3 of the world's reserves of rock phosphate. The USGS has stated that there are no substitutes (.pdf) for rock phosphate in agriculture. With biofuel demand increasing steadily, and world food shortages hitting the headlines, rock phosphate is arguably as important to the world situation as oil supply. Importantly, Patrick Dery has performed a Hubbert Lineraization on world phosphorus production and estimates that we have already passed peak phosphorus (see graph below). While the importance of rock phosphate has been discussed here before, its impact on the situation between Morocco and Algeria has not. Additionally, fertilizer supplies are a critical component of many biofuel projects, creating an interrelationship between phosphate and energy supplies. Like Algeria, Morocco faces an internal Islamist insurgency (though currently less troublesome than in Algeria) and has significant demographic challenges with a population growth rate of 1.6% (graph) and sharp ethnic divides (map).

[More]

This would pique my interest had I not read too many peak-oil arguments in the last few years. They all sound plausible, but they sure as heck don't help predict oil price action or even production figures.

What these forecasts do, I think, is prime market participants toward an attitude of expectation for wild price swings.  Perhaps they even become self-fulfilling prophecies as players over-react to every price swing.

Regardless, if global economies do climb out of the recession in the next few months, and consumption resumes (albeit in significantly different patterns), I'm planning on coping with wearisome MAP and DAP prices.  It may be a heap-it-on strategy when prices seem less ridiculous, or serious investigation into how little my crops need, or both.  But forecasting crop input costs will never be simple again, I fear.

An engineer and his sons...

To avoid doing actual productive work at the computer this afternoon, I took an old yellowing list of numbers I had created from our "measuring door jamb" in our kitchen to make the graph below for my sons.  Much to their annoyance, I would pester them to stand up straight against the white-painted woodwork and mark their height with the date.  When we redecorated the kitchen a few years ago, I had the uncharacteristic foresight to record the marks before painting over them.

This is how engineers communicate with engineer offspring.

 

[Click to embiggen]

Tip your waiter...

Henny Youngman lives on...



[via sullivan]

Join the club...

For the last few years, I have been reminded too frequently I'm not very good at making business decisions.  To be sure, we've muddled through, but my strategies have been snowplowed by totally unforeseen developments almost routinely.

I don't think I'm alone.  Although shrouded in semi-obscurity, the decision-making at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) apparently hasn't been all that different.  I must admit I find some perverse comfort in this idea.

The gap between Woertz’s actions and her after-the-fact explanations leaves her in a pickle. The bioenergy strategy was either oversold, or it’s underperforming. Much of ADM’s profit growth during the past year has come from one area: merchandising and handling, the obscure business line within a unit called agricultural services, which uses ADM’s unmatched proprietary market intelligence to hedge bets in futures markets and ships and trades grains from countries with surpluses to areas desperate for food. This unit has earned hundreds of millions in several quarters— orders of magnitude more than before Woertz took over.
Yet it’s an unpredictable source of income: Analysts don’t quite understand the surge of this black-box business, but they do know the company is taking more market risk than ever before. This spring, its luck ran out, with agricultural services profits dropping 67 percent, to $121 million. The company’s overall income plummeted 54 percent, even excluding one-time losses.

While a single down quarter might not be significant, ADM executives’ word choices have shifted toward the negative. During the November earnings call, they talked about external problems in the economy but boasted of being “well-positioned and confident.” In early February, they admitted the downturn is affecting ADM to the point at which the executives are “adjusting our business model.” Woertz continues to be vague about what exactly that means. ADM’s expansion and growth aren’t targeted toward any one geographic region or business line but everywhere along ADM’s long, complex value chain. It’s a convenient position for a CEO who talked up one slice of her vast corporation a little too much and then watched it blow up in her face. But it may be the way she should’ve been running ADM from the beginning. [More]

I suspect the real problems for ethanol are just beginning, and not simply for the reasons I have mentioned before: too little energy gain, specious national security claims, and on-going distribution headaches, for starters.

The bigger issue is its dependence on the government to continue to push the marketing, instead of actual demand.  As the worst of the recession fears slowly subside, the sobering reality of how much we have (for good reason) spent to prevent a much worse economy is sliding into center stage. Of course, mandates have the magic of not appearing as a budget figure, but the tariff and credit certainly do.

In short, ethanol will be competing for some very scarce federal dollars sooner than anticipated. It will be affected, perhaps profoundly, by the consequences of GHG regulation/legislation. And it will always be subject to the truly unpredictable outlook for oil prices.

Which makes me think if ADM is easing back on the emphasis on biofuels, maybe they are doing it for reasons that I should pay attention to as well.

I'll bet 1031 swap ratios peaked last year...

Looking back at all those 10-for-1 (or better) land swaps to build houses and Walmarts on, it may be as severe a distortion of value as "desert-state" house prices.

Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, reported a narrower second-quarter loss after writedowns for land, developments and options fell by almost $170 million. [More]

 Having chewed through those losses, I can't imagine CEO's and directors would be particularly gung-ho about bidding up adjacent farmland to build unwanted shopping centers.

“Although population growth is not an absolute prerequisite for successful investment and development, it certainly helps to work with rather than against trends…Meeting the demands of explosive, evolutionary growth requires sensitivity to urban form and sustainable designs - new communities that offer mixed uses, walkable environments, and access to jobs. The real estate implications of demographic changes around the world are enormous.” [more]

In fact, the hot new trend could be reclaiming space leapfrogged by developers in the ever-widening expansion of urban areas.  For one thing, sprawl may now be a health issue.

"As cities have expanded into rural areas, large tracts of land have been frequently transformed into low-density developments in a 'leapfrog' manner.... The physical environment of a community can support opportunities for play, an essential component of child development, and for physical activity, a health behavior that not only reduces risk of excess weight gain but also has many other benefits for overall well-being."
Our newer neighborhoods, the study concludes, don't do that.
The conclusion is clear, The health of our children is harmed by the environment in which we raise them. Hampton Roads - with the exception of parts of Norfolk, Portsmouth and a few villages - more often than not seems like one giant, sprawling suburb. Parts of Suffolk, where growth has been particularly rapid in the past decade, can seem like a collection of unconnected neighborhoods leading out onto overused thoroughfares.
Sprawl is the natural result of cheap gas and cheap rural land. Builders move their operations into the exurbs, where they can erect bigger and cheaper houses because neither the cost of land nor the cost of transportation exacts an obvious or immediate penalty. The true cost becomes clear only later.
Planners have long known that sprawl kills community, makes municipal services expensive to provide, and forces residents to drive farther and pollute more. Now, doctors are saying that it's also making our kids sick and dangerously heavy.
The reasoning on weight goes something like this: Because we build neighborhoods that are hard for children to navigate - and because schools have been mostly centralized - kids don't walk or bike for exercise or to get someplace. [More]

Try to wrap your mind around children walking to school or families walking to get an ice cream cone.  Pretty radical!  If energy prices return to nosebleed levels via market forces or emissions limits, the economics of denser populations will be overwhelming, and maybe some very enjoyable communities created.

Assuming I'm close to correct on urban development, who will be the heavyweights in the farmland market now? 

Try looking in a mirror would be my first instinct.
 

As...fast...as...I...can...

Once again (almost to the day!) I have tripped my limit for bandwidth on HughesNet by downloading too many updates from Apple.  (About 500 MB).  So I am in the bandwidth penalty box until tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, we have made it to 100% done corn, 60% done beans.  And we all know what "done" means.

More posts tomorrow (we are at 1.22" so far this evening)

The best news I've read this year...

Even counting the grain markets.

If there was such a thing as a sure bet in the bill, this would be it: the creation of an insurance marketplace, or “exchange,” where individuals and small employers could compare plans side by side, find options with a minimum benefits package and buy coverage. Insurers would be required to take all comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions. Proponents say it would give individuals a place to find affordable insurance that could go with them from job to job.

Why it looks likely: It is the cornerstone of Democratic and Republican health care proposals. Experts from the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal Center for American Progress endorse it. Federal lawmakers already participate in an exchange called the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program — and they have been promising for years to provide the same choices to voters. [more]

It's going to happen, folks.