Are farmers committing suicide more often?...

This is exactly the kind of sloppy statistical writing that drives me nuts.  The topic (farmer suicide) looked (and is) serious, but as I read it became apparent the writers weren't interested in framing the numbers in a way that would be helpful to readers.

Since that crisis, the suicide rate for male farmers has remained high: just under two times that of the general population. And this isn't just a problem in the U.S.; it's an international crisis. India has had more than 270,000 farmer suicides since 1995. In France, a farmer dies by suicide every two days. In China, farmers are killing themselves to protest the government's seizing of their land for urbanization. In Ireland, the number of suicides jumped following an unusually wet winter in 2012 that resulted in trouble growing hay for animal feed. In the U.K., the farmer suicide rate went up by 10 times during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, when the government required farmers to slaughter their animals. And in Australia, the rate is at an all-time high following two years of drought.Robert Fetsch, a retired professor of human development and family studies at Colorado State University, says there are profound social reasons farmers are reluctant to seek help. "Farmers are extremely self-sufficient and independent," he says, "and tend to work around whatever they have, because they are so determined to keep moving."One factor disputed among agricultural and mental health professionals is the connection between pesticides and depression. A group of researchers published studies on the neurological effects of pesticide exposure in 2002 and 2008. Lorrann Stallones, one of those researchers and a psychology professor at Colorado State University, says she and her colleagues found that farmers who had significant contact with pesticides developed physical symptoms like fatigue, numbness, headaches and blurred vision, as well as psychological symptoms like anxiety, irritability, difficulty concentrating and depression. Those maladies are known to be caused by pesticides interfering with an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter that affects mood and stress responses."A lot of farmers are very familiar with the pesticides, so they sort of take it for granted," Stallones says. "It's an invisible kind of thing, so if you can't actually feel it, taste it, touch it, you might not believe it's an issue."Not everyone is sold on the link between pesticides and depression. "I don't think there's firm data on that yet," says Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior director of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. A greater contributor to suicide in rural areas, she says, is the easy access to guns. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most suicides in America involve firearms, and more than half of all firearm deaths every year involve suicide. Harkavy-Friedman points to a 1998 study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry that showed the most common means of farmer suicide in England and Wales from 1981 to 1988 was guns. Following firearm legislation in 1989 that reduced access to guns, the total number of farmer suicides went down. [More]

I should have seen it coming from the extravagantly photoshopped cover, but it really begs to be given context.  Which is why God gave us Google.

First off, the article tells a few stories about tragic suicides.  Fair enough, but those anecdotes prime us for interpreting any numbers as pessimistically as possible. The note the comparisons without any total. 

• "the rate for suicide for male farmers has remained high: just under two times that of the general population"  Let's unpack that.  To begin with, the male rate is always higher than the general population - men kill themselves more often.

[Source]

• So if they were talking about the true general rate, male farmers could be expected to have about twice the rate just because they are male - 20:12

• But if they meant twice the rate for other males, let's see what that looks like. Looking at white males in the US, it turns out the rate for farmers is not so out of line. In fact, it's lower than the rate for physicians, dentists, veterinarians, finance workers, chiropractors, heavy contruction operators, urban planners (?), handmolders (??), real estate sellers, electrical assemblers, lawyers, and lathe operators.
• Look at the above numbers from NIOSH on occupational deaths. They cover a period from 1984 to 1998. For farmers that added up to 94 suicides out of 4984 deaths. That's a little over 6 per year. When the numbers get this small annually even one or two deaths can bump the rate up dramatically.

What are the most recent numbers for farmer suicide?  Amazingly enough, it's hard to find out.  I use "The Straight Dope" as a kind of "Snopes" for these questions. Here's what they found out.

Well, it hasn't been easy to track this one, and I'm not sure I've got a definitive answer. Let's start by noting that suicide statistics are questionable at best. Many suicides are classified as "accident" to spare the family from publicity. So the statistics are only a rough indication.I easily found statistics on the Internet about suicides by age, region, gender, and race, but very little about occupation. Actually, since suicide is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. among those age 15 to 24, probably the answer is "student", but I don' t think that's what you're looking for.I called the library of the Society of Actuaries, thinking they'd know. The librarian said she used to work at a large psychiatric library, and that about 8 years ago, the answer was psychiatrists/psychologists/related. However, she couldnt quote me a source or cite a statistic, except what she says she knew. [More]

In fact, I spent an amazing amount of time trying to nail this statistical jello to the wall. And largely failed.  All the articles I found were slanted to assess blame, attack GMO's or Big Ag or pesticides, raise sympathy for (usually) smaller farmers, or persuade readers to support some cause.

Every now and then you would find a real number (I think) like this:

Still, Colorado state health officials recorded 4,012 suicides in the past five years; 53 were farmers, mostly men, who shot themselves. Bankrupt farmers have sought government help as bankers press for payments, often triggering the suicides. [More]

So that would mean about 10 farmers per year in CO alone. But without historical or comparative numbers it doesn't tell us much. And it sure doesn't jibe with the national numbers from NIOSH above.

I'm not going to waste any more time on this since it looks somewhat futile, despite the tragedy it represents. My conclusions:

1. All suicide stories evoke strong empathy, which primes our interpretation of data.
2. Assume any farmer suicide story to be slanted for persuasive purposes unless proven otherwise.
3. Suicide rates are distorted by low numbers, so disregard any claims of drastic rate changes. 
4. If guns are mentioned, remember while guns are a factor, their biggest influence is effectiveness - suicide attempts by firearm have a much higher success rate than other methods. I don't want to be dragged into an NRA rebuttal rant about guns and suicides, so I'm leaving it at that despite my own aversion.
5. What is happening in other countries, especially India, but also France and China, are largely cultural phenomena, and hard to apply to the US.

So when you read, as I did in Kevin Van Trump's daily newsletter, an account like this, note your reaction and don't leap to conclusions.

West Central Iowa - Two weeks ago my best friend and neighbor committed suicide. The whole community is in shock because this was one of the calmest, nicest guys I knew. He was a good farmer who had cattle and row crops. He worked harder than anybody I know. I talked to him almost every day. This past winter with all the snow and bitter cold for so long while having a lot of cattle, I think it just got to be too much. He knew it was going to be a late spring, had a ton of manure to get hauled because he didn't get much done during the winter, plus all the crops - just took a toll on him. So we all need to learn from this. If you feel stressed out, you either need to get more help or let some livestock or rented land go back. Also we need to watch out for each other. As I look back I could tell he was depressed but not in a million years I thought he would do something like this. There has been many times where I have thought instead of me owning the farm, that the Farm owns ME. Money isn't an issue, just too much work to get done, especially if you farm alone. Farming has changed so much since I started. Seems like the seasons were longer or something. People were more laid back. A lot more rush rush now. Anxiety can sure set in this time of year with looking ahead and so much to do.

Each event is a tragedy of its own, and thankfully, suicide is still rare enough to shock us each time. I don't think the link between suicide and farming is precisely enumerated nor well explained, just frequently spun. 

[A good (albeit troubling) thread on the aftermath of suicide is here.]

Persuasion and other myths...

I have struggled with disappointment for years over my inability to find arguments to persuade farmers and others with logic to share my views on topics from subsidies to inflation to climate change. But new research suggests I was born too late (or early) for this strategy to have much of a chance. In our era, a different belief dynamic is at work.

As I have pointed out before, empirical (observed) evidence - facts, if you will - just don't seem to pack the persuasive power I believe they should.

Presented with this problem a funny thing happened: how good subjects were at math stopped predicting how well they did on the test. Now it was ideology that drove the answers. Liberals were extremely good at solving the problem when doing so proved that gun-control legislation reduced crime. But when presented with the version of the problem that suggested gun control had failed, their math skills stopped mattering. They tended to get the problem wrong no matter how good they were at math. Conservatives exhibited the same pattern — just in reverse.Being better at math didn’t just fail to help partisans converge on the right answer. It actually drove them further apart. Partisans with weak math skills were 25 percentage points likelier to get the answer right when it fit their ideology. Partisans with strong math skills were 45 percentage points likelier to get the answer right when it fit their ideology. The smarter the person is, the dumber politics can make them.Consider how utterly insane that is: being better at math made partisans less likely to solve the problem correctly when solving the problem correctly meant betraying their political instincts. People weren’t reasoning to get the right answer; they were reasoning to get the answer that they wanted to be right.The skin-rash experiment wasn’t the first time Kahan had shown that partisanship has a way of short-circuiting intelligence. In another study, he tested people’s scientific literacy alongside their ideology and then asked about the risks posed by climate change. If the problem was truly that people needed to know more about science to fully appreciate the dangers of a warming climate, then their concern should’ve risen alongside their knowledge. But here, too, the opposite was true: among people who were already skeptical of climate change, scientific literacy made them more skeptical of climate change.This will make sense to anyone who’s ever read the work of a serious climate change denialist. It’s filled with facts and figures, graphs and charts, studies and citations. Much of the data is wrong or irrelevant. But it feels convincing. It’s a terrific performance of scientific inquiry. And climate-change skeptics who immerse themselves in it end up far more confident that global warming is a hoax than people who haven’t spent much time studying the issue. More information, in this context, doesn’t help skeptics discover the best evidence. Instead, it sends them searching for evidence that seems to prove them right. And in the age of the internet, such evidence is never very far away. [More of a must-read]

My problem is exacerbated by being pretty moderate and therefore wishy-washy on many ideological issues.  I don't have nearly as much problem changing my mind on issues, and since I have been shown to be wrong so many times, it's not new to me. But the larger factor is the blessing of friends who cut me some slack.  Not everybody has that these days.

Imagine what would happen to, say, Sean Hannity if he decided tomorrow that climate change was the central threat facing the planet. Initially, his viewers would think he was joking. But soon, they’d begin calling in furiously. Some would organize boycotts of his program. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professional climate skeptics would begin angrily refuting Hannity’s new crusade. Many of Hannity’s friends in the conservative media world would back away from him, and some would seek advantage by denouncing him. Some of the politicians he respects would be furious at his betrayal of the cause. He would lose friendships, viewers, and money. He could ultimately lose his job. And along the way he would cause himself immense personal pain as he systematically alienated his closest political and professional allies. The world would have to update its understanding of who Sean Hannity is and what he believes, and so too would Sean Hannity. And changing your identity is a psychologically brutal process.Kahan doesn’t find it strange that we react to threatening information by mobilizing our intellectual artillery to destroy it. He thinks it’s strange that we would expect rational people to do anything else. "Nothing any ordinary member of the public personally believes about the existence, causes, or likely consequences of global warming will affect the risk that climate changes poses to her, or to anyone or anything she cares about," Kahan writes. "However, if she forms the wrong position on climate change relative to the one that people with whom she has a close affinity — and on whose high regard and support she depends on in myriad ways in her daily life — she could suffer extremely unpleasant consequences, from shunning to the loss of employment."Kahan calls this theory Identity-Protective Cognition: "As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values." Elsewhere, he puts it even more pithily: "What we believe about the facts," he writes, "tells us who we are." And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are, and our relationships with the people we trust and love.Anyone who has ever found themselves in an angry argument with their political or social circle will know how threatening it feels. For a lot of people, being "right" just isn’t worth picking a bitter fight with the people they care about. That’s particularly true in a place like Washington, where social circles and professional lives are often organized around people’s politics, and the boundaries of what those tribes believe are getting sharper. [Same]

Outside a few close friends, I really don't have much of a tribe. In fact, you guys reading this are a big part of my community. Being a Methodist helps, as that group is certainly less concerned with orthodoxy. Working by myself on a farm is another stroke of luck since I don't have those links to damage.

I'm not blaming the rest of the world - those are just the ground rules now for policy debate, and after reading about it I have realized I've wasted a lot of breath/words. It's a good thing I enjoy the process, because measured by results, I don't have much to show for decades of lobbing my opinions out there.

I read this article right after it was published and frankly it bummed me out for days, but it also seemed to confirm suspicions already lurking in my mind. Tribalism rules.

The obvious follow on question is why is this true now?

Maybe we are all looking for community and a sense of belonging. We already know that is a key factor in happiness, long-lives and satisfaction. And old communities are struggling. The geographical community of proximity, especially in rural areas is depopulated and bifurcating into large farmers and lots of low-income residents. These two groups don't have much in common.

Our civic, fraternal, and recreational organizations are fading as well. Lions and Elks are endangered species. VFW is literally dying off. Masonic lodges are closing. Bowling leagues are lame. And all the time TV and Internet offer a pseudo-community without leaving home or risking the exact social problems Ezra details above. Even work has at best a more fragile sense of inclusion, as layoffs have made everyone anxious, and lifetime employment a joke from the past.

So any real-time, fact-to-face contacts we do have are extremely important. Why not arrange your beliefs to make sure those connections stay in place? After all, what will you replace them with?

The future has hazards ahead for many of us, as well. It appears white Americans get more conservative as we slip toward a minority. So will moderates and liberals bend to go along?

Near the top of the list, they found, was a deep consciousness of being “white in a country with growing minorities.” One participant described his town as such:

Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes—there’s one library, one post office. Very homogenous.

For most of their lives, these people could ignore the country’s demographic change. But the election of President Obama was a clear sign that things were different.The result was fear and anxiety. A fear, for instance, that comprehensive immigration reform would begin a tidal wave of dependency, as Democrats won their votes with the allure of government programs such as Obamacare. “Every minority group wants to say they have the right to something, and they don’t,” said one Tea Party participant. “There’s so much of the electorate in those groups that Democrats are going to take every time because they’ve been on the rolls of the government their entire lives. They don’t know better,” said another. [More]

These issues are magnified to extremes simply due to smaller numbers in our profession and rural life. The fact that farmers overwhelmingly agree on any number of arguably illogical political issues says far less about reasoning power, and far more about fear of loneliness, perhaps.

This too will pass, I think, for the reasons illuminated toward the end of the article. Convictions grounded in ideology eventually fail to cope with reality that doesn't care. I don't know how those moments will unfold - its been 20 years and people are still adamant rampant inflation is a threat. So that would suggest it won't be overnight epiphanies and conversions.

Maybe we will rebuild new communities I can only try to imagine to give us the social assurance to change our minds in the face of evidence. I know one thing for sure: the first step is to give friends slack to consider a new position. Dancing in the end zone after an undeniable election result, for instance, is not just rude, it is an unkindness that destroys connections we need to be happy and pollutes the atmosphere of social discourse.

I still think it all began with Cassius Clay and the death of the Good Winner, but that's a theory for another time.

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ✈︎...

A confidential source reports the seed corn price war is alive in his neck of the woods, with a one Big Seed player offering the same discounts as last fall.  I think it's just getting started.

• China's one child policy: what next?
• El Nino won't save CA.
• Reasons why car deaths are down
• Why we don't take risks anymore
• Drilling the Himalayas
• Final Four is small potatoes
• Wait, wasn't Greece supposed to be toast?
• Meat, milk, eggs: stuff we're not eating

Less rain than expected - still not close to the field yet.

DIK™ has started...

This is my acronym: Discount-In-Kind.  If you haven't been offered a generous helping of free seed from a competitor, you're missing out. Of course, you can use that lever on your own dealer as well.

Seed companies are sitting on masses of 2103 production and acres seem to be down this year. The marginal cost of that inventory is way below the $400 list price, so you do the math.

This is a time honored end-around for marketing types to reduce prices without seeming to. You have to play the game, however.  Ask around, swap with your friends.

The longer, the worser...

 Or something like that. There are several theories floating around about the enigma of the long-term unemployed. Tyler Cowen, whom I often struggle to follow, has a very interesting post and column that at least illuminates some of the possibilities.

Many of these labor market problems were brought on by the financial crisis and the collapse of market demand. But it would be a mistake to place all the blame on the business cycle. Before the crisis, for example, business executives and owners didn’t always know who their worst workers were, or didn’t want to engage in the disruptive act of rooting out and firing them. So long as sales were brisk, it was easier to let matters lie. But when money ran out, many businesses had to make the tough decisions — and the axes fell. The financial crisis thus accelerated what would have been a much slower process.Subsequently, some would-be employers seem to have discriminated against workers who were laid off in the crash. These judgments weren’t always fair, but that stigma isn’t easily overcome, because a lot of employers in fact had reason to identify and fire their less productive workers.In a nutshell, what we’re facing isn’t your grandfather’s unemployment problem. It does have something to do with modern technology, and it will be with us for some time. [More]

I find this pretty persuasive, but also think we are largely underestimating the effect of technology, even though it is getting attention. Perhaps it is not as obvious as robots on the assembly line, but more along the lines of me troubleshooting and sending my new iMac back (yes - total FAIL) without ever talking to another human. Even the tech support guys in India are losing out.

People with little economics training intuitively grasp this point. They understand that some human workers may lose out in the race against the machine. Ironically, the best-educated economists are often the most resistant to this idea, as the standard models of economic growth implicitly assume that economic growth benefits all residents of a country. However, just as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson showed that outsourcing and offshoring do not necessarily increase the welfare of all workers, it is also true that technological progress is not a rising tide that automatically raises all incomes. Even as overall wealth increases, there can be, and usually will be, winners and losers. And the losers are not necessarily some small segment of the labor force like buggy whip manufacturers. In principle, they can be a majority or even 90% or more of the population. [More]

Economists also constantly look back to data and anecdotes about past technology advance that spurred so much growth that displaced workers were easily absorbed into new industries, with even higher pay. I know we always think this time is different, but that cannot be ruled out either. A disruptive technology could wipe out whole sub-sectors, and recently has.

Farmers too often let their eyes glaze over on such subjects. But many will lose farms and careers as consolidation continues. More importantly, the job prospects of our children and grandchildren become much more arbitrary. 

TC's point about men and service jobs is chilling as well. 

[Good comments after the post about people like TC on tenure grasping the feeling of unemployment.]

The computerectomy...

Is not going well.  Thank goodness for my iPhone and iPad or I'd be severed from the Collective.

Stalemate, mate...

While many Americans like to gripe about the lack of progress on, well, anything in Congress, few of us are particularly interested in looking beyond facile reasons why it exists.

For example, most of the outrage centers on the people of Congress and their character. This is too superficial by half, IMHO. We have had venal, self-serving political hacks in office for centuries and stuff still got done. I can't find much evidence our current crop of legislators is markedly different than previous members.

Sarah Binder has studied the phenomenon for years. Her take on gridlock:

Three forces fuel today's gridlock. First, divided party control of government raises the bar against major policy change. Parties are the only glue for bridging policy and electoral differences between the ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, meaning that more can be done in periods of unified party control. Just compare President Obama's first two years in office (with Democrats controlling both branches) with the second two years (after Republicans captured the House). Congress was remarkably productive under unified control, enacting numerous landmark accomplishments, from health care reform to Wall Street reform. Under divided government, only do-or-die deadlines brought the parties to the table. Divided government continues in the 113th Congress, handicapping Congress even before it gets underway.Second, legislative parties have polarized over the past half-century, even though Americans remain centrist in their policy views. Polarization increases deadlock, because our political system requires large coalitions to adopt major policy change. Such coalitions are harder to build when few legislators occupy the ideological center. Increased polarization reflects the parties' ideological differences over the proper role of government, plus a strong dose of sheer partisan team play. As a result, much of congressional disagreement is strategic: The parties hold out for a full loaf rather than compromise on a half. Not surprisingly, when deadlines forced parties to the table in the 112th Congress, they often kicked the can down the road. As a result, the 113th Congress starts with a huge plate of leftovers, leaving little room for new issues.Third, stalemate is fueled by bicameral disagreement. Even when a single party controls both the House and Senate, disagreements arise that reflect electoral and institutional differences between the chambers. Bicameral differences are compounded when the parties split control of the chambers, as Congress's recent record attests. Bicameral obstacles remain high this year, with a smaller and more conservative Republican House facing off against a larger and more liberal Democratic Senate. [More]

One analysis I do find worth considering is the fundamental philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats. It turns out intransigence is not a half-bad way to fight political battles.

Republicans vote more or less exactly the same way, regardless of what kind of district they represent. The Republican representing the squishiest, most RINO-ish district in the country votes almost as conservatively as the one representing the most bullet-munching conservative district in the country. Republicans are voting in lockstep to defeat Mr Obama's legislative priorities; Democrats are showing nowhere near the same kind of discipline in supporting them.This doesn't predict what might happen if Republicans gained control of the Senate, or of the presidency. It's possible that with more power Republicans would feel freer to disagree with each other. With their backs to the wall, out-of-power Democrats might feel the need to present a more united front. But basically Democrats have less voting discipline than Republicans. George W. Bush was detested by Democratic voters every bit as much as Mr Obama is by Republicans, but Democratic legislators cooperated with him to pass major education and Medicare reforms; they negotiated an immigration-reform bill with him, and would have passed it, had he not been abandoned by his own party.In other words, if all else fails, the gridlock of the American government will probably end the next time the country elects a Republican president, since Republican legislators have the discipline to stonewall Democratic presidents while Democrats are more willing to compromise. That asymmetry is probably infuriating to Democrats, but unless their legislators adopt different voting behaviour, it's not going to change. [More]

But the driving force behind this discipline it the importance of gaining and holding political power as the paramount goal - not governing (getting stuff done).

One other theory about what could change this is also worth pondering.

“You should be depressed,” says Keith Poole. “It’s going to get worse.” Poole, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, has spent three decades studying congressional votes that stretch back to 1879. With collaborators Howard Rosenthal of New York University and Princeton University’s Nolan McCarty, he’s found that members of Congress are now less likely to vote against their party than at any time since the first decade of the 20th century.The small number of seats Democrats need to take the House (17) and Republicans to take the Senate (3) makes the problem worse, says Frances Lee of the University of Maryland. She argues a minority party with a plausible chance of reversing its fortunes in the next election has no incentive to cooperate with the majority to pass legislation. “They don’t want to cut deals that will blur the differences,” she says. From the 1950s to 1980, the Republicans couldn’t imagine a majority in Congress and settled for an ability to trade votes in exchange for altering Democrats’ bills. When Ronald Reagan won the White House, Republicans won the Senate and began to dream of the House, the beginning of an increasingly ruthless competition between the parties for control of the Capitol.McCarty is at least somewhat encouraged by the weakened filibuster. It may only address the symptoms of the larger problems, he says, “but some people can live fulfilling lives with illnesses, as long as they have the right drugs.” Lee is less optimistic. She says only one thing can force Congress to get back to legislating: One of the political parties must suffer a crushing defeat. [More]

It would be easy to despair of our future, but somehow in the midst of all this gridlock the country has emerged from a recession, ended two wars, and begun to address our health care problems. It could also be that freeing up unlimited outside money for candidates will have the effect of creating some free agents somewhat less tied to party discipline. I can see that helping compromise, but it will throw a new wrench in the works.

There is an economic question here: how much money can the political system absorb effectively? At some point, I would assume air-time commercials, robo-calls, mailers, GOTV volunteers ads, etc. reach a saturation point and produce few additional votes. Do we know where that level of spending is?  Could we find out?

For years, scholars of elections have argued about whether campaign finance limitations adversely affect electoral competition. In this article, we examine how the institutional campaign finance restrictions differentially affect the performance of incumbents and challengers. Using elections for the state high court bench between 1990 and 2004, we demonstrate that candidate spending in judicial elections has diminishing marginal returns, but that the returns to challenger spending diminish more slowly than incumbent spending. Since this is the case, campaign finance restrictions that limit candidate spending disproportionately harm challengers, increasing the incumbency advantage and decreasing electoral competition. More specifically, we show that states with more stringent contribution limits have lower levels of candidate spending, and these restrictions thus put challengers at a competitive disadvantage. [More]

I could see more Americans becoming more inured, even resistant, to campaign efforts.  We already dread the endless commercials and yard signs. While the big winner in unlimited contributions is those in the business of political campaigns and media, I could see a rapid decrease in bang for the buck.

Psst, buddy - want some mangos?...

As horrified tequila, gin, and guacamole consumers are discovering, the price of limes has quadrupled due to disease, drought, and...organized crime.

As a result of high prices and rampant lawlessness in some Mexican regions, criminals who may be linked to drug gangs are plundering fruit from groves and hijacking trucks being used for export, said Bill Vogel, president of Vision Produce, a Los Angeles-based importer. A truck headed for Vision’s sister company in Texas was hijacked two weeks ago in Mexico, he said, and growers and shippers now are hiring armed guards to protect their green gold.The produce wars on the ground are not limited to limes. Criminal cartels now control, to a shocking extent, the growing and packing of much of the Mexican produce on which United States consumers depend. An article last November in the Mexican newspaper Vanguardia reported that the Knights Templar drug cartel has used kidnapping, murder, money laundering and terror to take over the lucrative avocado business in Michoacán, the top state for production and export of the fruit.Criminal elements also have significantly infiltrated the Mexican mango industry to launder money, said Richard Campbell, a horticulturist and mango expert who travels to Mexico several times a year as a consultant. “Many growers don’t go to their fields because they’re afraid,” Mr. Campbell said. “I’m sure that this has lowered the quality of the mangoes, because it’s harder to control quality.” [More]

As bizarre as it looks in print, US drug enforcement success is pressuring cartels to find new things to extort money from. But seriously, mangos and avocados?

The green citrus fruits are largely grown in one specific region: the state of Michoacán in the country's southwest. And that's where a cartel called the Knights Templar has been elbowing in.
Gustavo Arellano, a syndicated columnist and author who writes about Mexican cultural issues, says the Knights Templar have been making their presence known in an area called La Tierra Caliente for a few years now. 
"So what they've done over the last couple of years, is that, if they're nice, they put humongous taxes on the farmers. If they're not nice, they just kill farmers and take the land and take over lime production themselves." [More]

First off - Knights Templar Cartel???

There are all kinds of guessing as to the effect of creeping legalization in the US on the cartels' income. They don't exactly provide press release balance sheets, but all the models show significant losses.

However, experts and studies note that legalization in two U.S. states -- even if the federal government allows it -- probably won't put Mexico's drug cartels out of business.In the lead-up to the referenda in Mexico and Colorado, the Mexican Competitiveness Institute released a study estimating that Mexico’s cartels would lose $1.425 billion if the initiative passed in Colorado and $1.372 billion if Washington voted to legalize. The organization also predicted that drug trafficking revenues would fall 20 to 30 percent, and the Sinaloa cartel, which would be the most affected, would lose up to 50 percent. [More]

If legalization were to become national - which is increasingly being seen as inevitable -  I can't see Big Tobacco simply stepping aside from this lucrative business. Most experts disagree, but I think they underestimate the ability to of our domestic tobacco industry to change course and compete even with illegal challengers.

The only feasible way for Altria, Reynolds American, and Lorillard to compete against lower-priced competitors is to build premium brands that deliver consistent quality. Marijuana comes in all different varieties and potencies; the average consumer of legal marijuana may not want to get a surprise every time he or she inhales a new purchase. Big tobacco companies are in position to provide large-scale, consistent-quality marijuana cigarettes to an American public that wants to take the edge off.For instance, Altria's Marlboro brand already has a strong following of loyal cigarette smokers. Marlboro has a 43.7% share of the tobacco market. Reynolds' Camel and Pall Mall brands have a combined 17.8% market share. Lorillard's retail market share is nearly 15%, thanks to Newport's 12.6% market share. Although not all tobacco smokers will smoke legal marijuana, those that do may stick to their cigarette brand. So Newport marijuana cigarettes will have an advantage over some upstart brand. This gives tobacco companies a built-in advantage in the nascent market.Moreover, tobacco companies can leverage their current infrastructure and distribution channels to dominate the marijuana market. Altria lists $4.7 billion in land, machinery, buildings, and equipment on its balance sheet (before depreciation). Reynolds' fixed assets exceed $2.5 billion and Lorillard's cost nearly $800 million. Tobacco companies have already made the huge investments in infrastructure required to manufacture and distribute cigarettes; all they would have to do to enter the marijuana market is change the ingredients. No other group of companies in the U.S. is better-suited to dominate the marijuana market, which is why Altria, Reynolds, and Lorillard can do so if and when it makes sense.  [More]

But meanwhile, back in the orchards, how serious could this problem become if the drought continues in the Southwest? Mexico is already gaining serious market share of produce - thanks to NAFTA and the CA shift to tree nuts.

[Source]

Also this excerpt from a supporting chart (same source):

[Click to enlarge]

I find myself growing more uneasy with the trends toward concentration of ag production - whether it's the corn monoculture in the Midwest or almonds in CA. This seems to be asking for a catastrophic failure. I think it is tied to what happens with capitalism after years of success: concentration of wealth. The problem with discussing this of course, is the economist who first postulated this problem. Recently, Marx has gotten some respect despite his failure to see the problems of communism. Free markets are a great answer for growing economies, but seem to have some problems with mature ones.

We may be about to see those problems face-to-face.

Did I miss anything?...

Now that was a break!  I just kinda dropped out as a string of events from speeches to church to computer sucked up my time. Oh yeah - I also got totally sucked in to a couple of cheesy SF novel series (No, I'm too embarrassed to tell you which ones).

I'm also deciding which of my favorite sources to subscribe to as the free Internet is slowly evolving into free sponsored-content pitches or usable subscription-based sources.

Plus, once you get out of the habit of posting...

So let's start slowly with a burning question: Why do Danes eat so much dang fruit (apples and oranges, anyway)?

[Click to make readable]

[Source]

I'm open to guesses.

The second morsel will undoubtedly be just the beginning of a longer discussion about water.

But faced with fast changing ecological trends that put the nation’s water and food supply in jeopardy, America exhibits little of the national resolve it once had to address the challenges. The country, by and large, is not developing new ideas about pollution control, making new investments in water conservation, and inventing new and environmentally friendlier production practices that respond adequately to new conditions.This is one of the central findings of Choke Point: Index, Circle of Blue’s penetrating assessment of water supply and consumption in three iconic American agricultural areas – the Great Lakes in the country’s Midwest, the Ogallala Basin of the Great Plains, and California’s Central Valley.The second conclusion of Choke Point: Index, drawn from months of field reporting and data collection and analysis, is that the United States’ important food-producing regions are buffeted by the same pollution, scarcity, and water-security deficits that affect China’s Yellow River and Yangtze River basins, India’s Punjab, Australia’s Murray-Darling River Basin, Mexico’s Tehuacan Valley, and other prominent global food baskets.Yet just like farmers and government leaders on other continents, U.S. growers and elected officials cannot agree, or choose to overlook, the urgency of changing conditions, or the potential for real solutions. Instead American agriculture, and its international counterparts, pursue the business and marketing strategies that led to the precarious condition of national fresh water reserves in the first place: Produce more grain and protein. Use more water. Apply more fertilizer and farm chemicals. Consume more energy. [More]

Finally, this thought which has been the subject of a casual search: Did anybody call this rally for corn to over $5? Not just throwaway "volatility" comments, but an actual marketing tactic of seriously expecting selling new crop when above $5? My memory has been, with the exception of Sue Martin (who is congenitally optimistic) and Mike Florez (technical trader), the folks on USFR and in print have been uniformly and relentlessly preparing us for $3 corn.

I have long been ambivalent on the value of market advisers, so consider my bias. But this rally looks like a surprise across the board.

Meanwhile, the enormous rent-seeking cost of Wall Street is slowly coming to light. One hot area is high-frequency-trading (HFT). That questionable practice may already be waning as a reliable revenue stream.

This is silly. I’ll tell you what happens when the little guy presses that key: his order doesn’t go anywhere near any stock exchange, and no HFT shop is going to front-run it. Instead, he will receive exactly the number of shares he ordered, at exactly the best price in the market at the second he pressed the button, and he will do so in less time than it takes his web browser to refresh. Buying a small number of shares through an online brokerage account is the best guarantee of not getting front-run by HFT types. And there’s no reason whatsoever for the little guy to think twice before pressing the button.
HFT is dangerous, I’d like to see less of it, and I hope that Michael Lewis will help to bring it to wider attention. But my tentative verdict on Flash Boys (I’ll write something longer once I’ve finished the book) is that it actually misses the big problem with HFT, in the service of pushing a false narrative that it’s bad for the little guy. [More]

I'm not sure this is the case for commodities, since they tend to lag Wall Street in their self-policing, but I reiterate my caution on trading anything on the exchanges - you are playing against folks you don't know using rules you often don't understand. While you may not miss the few cents you lose on every trade, it's enough to rack up huge profits for no value given. I'll stick to cash contracts, averaging, and my own idiosyncratic analysis and use the time saved for surfing and bad SF.

And to round off the morning, some too-late-for-me-but-not-for-my-grandchilden advice about bullies, from Wil Wheaton:

Later today, I will be beginning a whole-body computerectomy: replacing my iMac with a new one. My theory is the ~$2000 I spend every 2-3 years for a new machine pays for itself in speed and security and problems I don't have. Compared to rolling a combine it's a rounding error, and it makes me far more money than that pile of steel.

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV✜...

Just about off the road for this season. Hartley, IA this week.  Max, ND later in the month and then home to enjoy the rest of the winter.

• Stop saying this
• A thoughtful take on Big Data 
• By today's any standards, The Founding Fathers were lushes.
• Great summary of all the Ukraine situation backstory and details
• Why I think we need a permanent military draft
• For my many soccer-fan readers, more than you want to know about the new and improved ball
• The consolidation beat goes on: flour millers
• Silence is gold
• The English winter wasn't so great either

Enjoy the few mild days. Wear something not made of flannel, for instance.

Huh...

Blew my mind, anyway...

[More]

I think I see one problem...

Like most corn/soy farmers, I'm essentially clueless as to how other crops are grown, especially when it come to irrigated crops. So when I visited Visalia, CA last weekend to talk to young farmers there, it was a true learning experience.

In fact, during one interview (to be shown later on USFR), an almond producer causally mentioned almonds "take about 4 acre-feet of water".  The figure slid by me at the time, but on the flight back, I starting thinking "per what?" - bushel, ton, etc?

It turn out it's PER ACRE. Yup - almonds need 4 FEET of water per year, more or less.

Which led me to this semi-helpful graphic.

[Source]

It turns out almonds are just one of many increasingly thirty, but lucrative crops straining the water supply in CA.

In the past 20 years, the Central Valley has doubled its acreage in almond orchards to nearly 800,000, producing 2 billion pounds a year and exporting 70 percent of the crop, which yields nearly $4 billion in revenue.But almond trees, unlike vegetable crops, can't be taken out of production in dry years. The trees would die. Each acre of almonds needs about 1.3 million gallons of water a year, twice as much as fruits and vegetables, but farmers have planted them without securing sufficient water rights. [More]

This situation looks like a train wreck from here, and that's pretty much what the producers I talked to hinted as well. It looks unlikely that long-term relief will arrive in time or quantity enough to prevent loss of trees (citrus, tree nuts, stone fruits, etc.) since drip irrigation, while efficient, encourages shallow roots which are useless in a drought.

One of the producers also had little sympathy for the almond "speculators" who planted without securing sufficient water rights to cover shortages. He also stated that since the surface water allotment for agriculture this year is ZERO, the rush to drill wells has drillers backed up for a year. His reference to "the longest straw" was explained as the guy with the deepest well will outlast others drawing on the same underground pool of water.

Those supplies are not easily replenished either, so wells are a short-term answer.

I'm looking for a more upbeat ending to this story. Just can't find it 

Bravo, Rep. Camp...  

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

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

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

Some of the farm-specific details I could find:

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

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

Current law:

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

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

Provision:

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

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

expenses paid or incurred in tax years beginning after 2014.

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

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

More later.

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

Years ago...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peak of the Week...

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

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

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

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

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

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ⨩...

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

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

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

Lucky us...

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

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

Why we can't have nice things...  

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

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

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

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

Aussies are realists...  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Walmart of space...  

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

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

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

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

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

Another hint... 

The GMO labeling battle is only beginning.

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

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

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

Literally lost...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Junkbox, Episode MMXIV ⋇...

Rain, believe it or not.

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

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

In case you missed it...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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