I blame Gilligan's Island...

Ever since the Professor (notice you can't remember his name) and Maryanne, scientists have suffered from stereotyping of the worst sort.  And now when clear science communication would help on any number of issues, they seem to be living up to their pathetic image.

On August 11, 1999–ten years ago tomorrow–the State Board of Education in Kansas voted to take evolution out of the state’s science curriculum.
This came as quite a shock to a lot of biologists I spoke to at the time. A lot of them couldn’t understand how it have happened. Some decided to get together to plan what to do in response. With lightning-fast reflexes, a meeting was arranged over a year later. Representatives from major scientific societies gathered to make a plan. They invited a number of other people to join them. I was one. And, frankly, I felt like I was observing a meeting of representatives of tribes from some New Guinea highland forest, who were following rules and speaking a language that I could not begin to understand. At the end of the meeting, these dozens of scientists made a momentous decision. They would…wait for it…go back to their societies and suggest that they post on their web site a statement that evolution is good science.
I sat there, gob-smacked, wondering exactly how many people actually visit, say, the American Phytopathological Society. And yet everyone at the meeting seemed so happy, so excited that they had really done something–that they had let the public know just where they stand.

The experience was a stunning lesson for me about what scientists think is effective communication. And while some of that spirit still survives today, a lot has changed–at least based on my highly non-scientific intuition. Many scientists have been thinking about what they can do in their interactions with the media to get a better sense of their science across. Many, fed up with what they consider to be a sadly broken media machine, have taken matters into their own hands with blogs. [More]

If only they were as articulate and effective as say, economists.

Blog note...

I'm traveling for the Cargill meetings and had a big family event last weekend.  Also I've decided not to post on Sunday anymore.

Best of all, we are on the verge of getting real high speed (both ways!) Internet (6 Mbps) and will be fooling around with our computers here on the farm. 

Posting will resume momentarily.

Thanks for reading.

Friends and strangers...

We don't know as much about either as we think.

A growing body of experimental evidence suggests that, on the whole, we know significantly less about our friends, colleagues, and even spouses than we think we do. This lack of knowledge extends far beyond embarrassing game-show fodder - we’re often completely wrong about their likes and dislikes, their political beliefs, their tastes, their cherished values. We lowball the ethics of our co-workers; we overestimate how happy our husbands or wives are.

“Our friends will surprise us much more than we would imagine,” says David Dunning, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has done influential research on how we perceive ourselves and others.

Although such blind spots might at first seem like a comment on the atomization of modern life, the shallowness of human connection in the age of bowling alone, psychologists say that these gaps might simply be an unavoidable product of the way human beings forge personal bonds. Even in close relationships, there are holes in what we know about each other, and we fill them with our own assumptions. [More]

Part of the reason for this lack of understanding - especially among men - is difficulty talking about personal topics and poor listening skills, I think.  What I know is long-time friends in the past few months have surprised me with remarks or opinions I sure didn't see coming.

I think it's a good thing.  It shows we're all still growing and changing, and maybe even listening a little better.

Really bad movie titles...

And the movies weren't that hot either. My favorite:

 

[More]

It wasn't an easy decision either.  I've actually seen one of them (on Mystery Science Theater 3000).

[via neatorama]

Pedantry alert...

So are there more women working than men?

Catherine Rampell at the NY Times Economix picks up Mulligan's error: The Mancession
Casey B. Mulligan noted, for example, that for the first time in American history women are coming close to representing the majority of the national work force.
At least Rampell used "work force" instead of "labor force" but she repeats Mulligan's error. Women are coming close to holding a majority of payroll jobs, but not a majority of the work force or labor force. Back in February, Rampell phrased it better:
With the recession on the brink of becoming the longest in the postwar era, a milestone may be at hand: Women are poised to surpass men on the nation’s payrolls, taking the majority for the first time in American history.
To belabor this point: Say there were 50 women and 100 men in the work force, and each women worked two jobs (men only one). The CES would report 200 payroll positions; half for men, and half for women. The CPS would report 150 people had jobs, 50 women and 100 men. Would it be correct to say there were as many women in the work force as men? No.

Both surveys have value, and I'm using this to make a point: The CES is about positions. The CPS is about people. [More]

OK, I get the point, but beg to differ on the importance.   When (and I think it's likely) women do outnumber men in the workforce, will economists begin to wonder what's happening?

If women are working two jobs, maybe some credit should be accrued.   Disdaining "positions" is frankly sexist, and I rarely use that term.  I think more economists would understand if there were no tenure and they had to support a family on their own.
 
Regardless of the call, the trend is not to be argued with.

Daily rations...

One of the biggest areas of debate in the health insurance reform is the idea of "rationing".  It could be perhaps the most overused and misunderstood term in the debate.  For example, Megan McCardle points out the now-predictable threat of "granny and a pacemaker".

But there is also a real difference between having something rationed by a process and having it rationed by a person.  That is, in fact, why progressives are so fond of rules.  They don't want to tell grandma to take morphine instead of getting a pacemaker.  It's much nicer if you create a mathematical formula that makes some doctor tell grandma to take morphine instead of getting a pacemaker.  Then the doctor can disclaim responsibility too, because after all, no one really has any agency here--we're all just in the grips of an impersonal force.

But this won't do.  If you design a formula to deny granny a pacemaker, knowing that this is the intent of the formula, then you've killed granny just as surely as if you'd ordered the doctor to do it directly. That's the intuition behind the conservative resistance to switching from price rationing to fiat rationing.  Using the government's coercive power to decide the price of something, or who ought to get it, is qualitatively different from the same outcome arising out of voluntary actions in the marketplace.  Even if you don't share the value judgement, it's not irrational, except in the sense that all human decisions have an element of intuition and emotion baked into them. [More]

This is not my understanding of most of the proposals being considered - even the Republican ones - which back comparative effectiveness research (CER).  Many critics hold CER as the thin end of the wedge leading to rationing.  However, rationing as Megan describes only occurs if you prevent people from buying more coverage on the private market.  Several other commentators point out this logical flaw.

Guaranteed minimum healthcare doesn’t forbid anyone to seek more on the private market – paying out of pocket, extra insurance. No more so than a guaranteed minimum income would forbid you to get a job to earn more than the minimum. So guaranteed minimal healthcare doesn’t ensure its minimum by positively forbidding anyone to get more. So it isn’t really rationing. (Is any of this getting through?) To put it another way: rationing is a response to scarcity. But the scarce item in the healthcare case isn’t healthcare, it’s money. (If you want to accuse the goverment of rationing taxpayer money, that would be closer to the truth, but still a weird way to talk, I say.) There just isn’t going to be any attempt by the government to ration healthcare, as opposed to its own spending of taxpayer money. Because: why would there be? [More]

The rationing debate is one of the ways this debate is being waged in our fears.  Given the uncertainty of the times, it could be an effective strategy for those who have oppose any changes. But if the campaign to stop reform actually stops it rather than helps shape it, what will they have won? David Frum points out some flaws in that strategy.

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.
We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.
Not a good outcome.
Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.
If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed. [More]

The health reform proposals a typically ugly pieces of legislative work.  Not unlike the farm bill - heard any of the angry comments about ACRE recently?  But those issues won't be ironed out with loaded language and misinformation.

There is at least one reason to push the process too. Farmers know dang well you only have a tiny window of non-campaign mode before business in Washington devolves back to tracking polls against your primary opponent(s).  It controlled the flow of the Farm Bill, and does so with most major legislation.

Right now the feeling is reform may run out of steam. I don't know, because too many on all sides of the issue want to see at least some things changed in the way we provide health insurance.  And the more times we see seniors ranting about keeping "government hands off my Medicare!", the more times it sinks in who is getting the best of our current system.

Help for your marketing...

And mine.  I will be working with the folks at Cargill in upcoming weeks with their Cargill Connection meetings.  And, no - I'm not giving marketing advice, other than some personal experiences and insights  - many of which I've shared here - about how my brain is sometimes the enemy of my wallet.  I will be moderating and trying to insure everyone has a chance to develop a better relationship with folks who buy a lotta grain.

I'm happy to be a part of these meetings for several reasons.  First, Cargill is my best customer, and I have had very good results working with them for decades.  Second, I will get the chance to visit with producers all over the Corn Belt.  Finally, after being in a dozen or so presentations, perhaps some of the advice might sink in and my marketing improve slightly.

At any rate, I'd love to hear what happening on your farm, so check out the dates/locations below, and call your Cargill rep.  As we move into an uncertain future, you may be surprised what tools to are available to help manage risk and reduce stress in your marketing.

Full information here.

Fungus breakthrough...

Note I did not say "fungicide".  Nope, we're looking at a possible bioherbicide, and it's aimed at a major weed problem: kudzu.

Boyette first began studying Myrothecium (strain IMI 361690) in 1998, after Louisiana Tech University scientist H. Lynn Walker provided him with isolates from diseased sicklepod plants. In greenhouse experiments, spray formulations of the fungus killed 100 percent of kudzu seedlings, and 90–100 percent of older plants in outdoor trials. Disease symptoms—wilted leaves and necrotic stem lesions—appeared on the plants within 24 hours of infection. By 14 days, all but the plants’ roots were diseased.

How Myrothecium breaches the defenses of the seemingly indestructible kudzu is still being investigated. One telltale clue, though, may be its use of cell wall-degrading enzymes. Besides kudzu and sicklepod, Myrothecium attacks hemp sesbania—which is problematic in soybean crops of the southeastern United States—morningglories, pigweed, redvine, and trumpetcreeper. The last two are native perennial vines that typically infest cultivated and fallow fields, wastelands, fence rows, yards, river banks, swamps, and forests. [More]

This borders on the "organic"as preventative measures go, and represents a subtle shift in crop protection emphasis. If it succeeds in clearing up kudzu, it will make believers of many skeptics.

Good news for my 40th Anniversary...

By 2011, I may be able to afford some serious carats.

Despite its celebrated slogan "Diamonds Are Forever, De Beers, which has dominated the diamond business for over a century, is discovering that diamond profits are not forever. It reported in July that its profits for the first half of 2009 fell by no less than 99%. The problem is not that the mining giant is running out of diamonds. Its highly efficient diamond mines in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia still supply about 40 percent of the world's gem-sized diamonds. Nor have diamonds lost their value. They not only remain a vital part of the engagement ritual but their retail price of engagement rings has actually risen in 2009. What is killing De Beer's profits is the prohibitive cost of running a cartel. The cartel arrangement is necessary to sustain the illusion that diamonds are rare. [More -short, but great article]

My son who is a geologist as well as a mining engineer has always said diamonds aren't that rare, and recent discoveries of diamond pipes in Siberia, Africa and elsewhere would seem to verify that.

Diamonds are expensive because we think they are expensive. Sounds stupid, but it's true. The mining industry is not unaware of this development.

The global diamond mining industry is currently under extreme pressure. This is possibly the most challenging period yet faced by the global diamond mining business, as product inventories have risen and prices fallen. As a result, the sector is experiencing serious difficulties. Since late 2008, production has been suspended at some of the world’s largest and (previously) most profitable diamond mines:

• The industry has fragmented considerably over the last ten years; numerous new entrants have arrived in the sector

• For many miners, tough market conditions have arrived at a particularly inopportune moment; just as they are implementing expensive expansion and life extension plans

• Many of the more recent entrants into the business have only recently raised significant amounts of debt and equity finance, acquired mines and projects or commissioned new mines

• Operating cost rises, which have impacted across the breadth of the mining sector, are yet to unwind, squeezing margins still further

• Over the medium term the industry cost structure is undergoing radical change, as existing mines mature

• Many are switching from open pit to underground mining, or exploiting smaller, lower grade satellite orebodies; substantial changes in mine economics will occur as a result. [More]

Now add in the emergence of a robust artificial diamond industry.

Recent decades have seen some modest successes. Starting in the 1950s, engineers managed to produce tiny crystals for industrial purposes - to coat saws, drill bits, and grinding wheels. But this summer, the first wave of gem-quality manufactured diamonds began to hit the market. They are grown in a warehouse in Florida by a roomful of Russian-designed machines spitting out 3-carat roughs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A second company, in Boston, has perfected a completely different process for making near-flawless diamonds and plans to begin marketing them by year's end. This sudden arrival of mass-produced gems threatens to alter the public's perception of diamonds - and to transform the $7 billion industry. More intriguing, it opens the door to the development of diamond-based semiconductors.
Diamond, it turns out, is a geek's best friend. Not only is it the hardest substance known, it also has the highest thermal conductivity - tremendous heat can pass through it without causing damage. Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing. Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon. But manufacturers have been loath even to consider using the precious material, because it has never been possible to produce large diamond wafers affordably. With the arrival of Gemesis, the Florida-based company, and Apollo Diamond, in Boston, that is changing. Both startups plan to use the diamond jewelry business to finance their attempt to reshape the semiconducting world. [More]

I think the DeBeers management is right.  If the price drops for even a short time, the mystique of diamonds will be lost, umm ...forever.  Just think of all those dowagers in Boca Raton dripping in diamonds when they learn the average teenager has body studs with more raw carats.

Imagine me buying Jan a huge rock for less than our teensy engagement ring!

Let 'em be Senators and governors...

But maybe not board members.  An interesting study on the effect of women on corporate boards and the ensuing changes in governance and behavior of the boards could easily be misterpreted.

Justin Fox outlines the findings.

1. Women boost attendance. Female directors are 30% less likely to not show up to meetings. When there are female directors around, men show up more often, too.
2. Women have a significant impact on corporate governance. Once you've got a woman in the mix, CEOs are more likely to lose their jobs over poor stock performance. You see the same effect when boards have a large fraction of outside directors. Women do not, however, meaningfully alter the level of CEO pay or the amount of it that is incentive-based. (It's worth noting, women are less likely to sit on compensation committees.)

3. Women hurt corporate profits. Well, that's not exactly what the researchers say. What they say is when companies score high on a particular measure of corporate governance (the ability to resist takeovers), having women on the board hurts performance—as measured by return on assets and Tobin's q. However, when corporate governance is weak, they actually give companies a boost. [More]

It was my observation as women began showing up on Farm Bureau, school, and other organizational boards similar things happened.  I think the meetings went better because the discussions stayed away from ribald jokes and farming stories. There was a tendency for a woman to be elected secretary or at least tasked to take notes, which made a quantum leap in board efficiency since you weren't always starting at square one, and the notes were actually legible.

These days locally, women may be carry the larger burden of community governance simply because they volunteer.

As women slowly become more common in the hierarchy of agriculture it will be interesting to see what changes in our traditional patterns of behavior and commerce will result.

Eat 'em while you got 'em...

As if we haven't been waiting all summer for tomatoes to finally ripen here in the soggy, cool Midwest, just as we begin to enjoy the fruit of our (ahem - Jan's) labor, a nasty problem has developed.

The latest trouble is the explosion of late blight, a plant disease that attacks potatoes and tomatoes. Late blight appears innocent enough at first — a few brown spots here, some lesions there — but it spreads fast. Although the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, it has devastating effects on tomatoes and potatoes grown outdoors. Plants that appear relatively healthy one day, with abundant fruit and vibrant stems, can turn toxic within a few days. (See the Irish potato famine, caused by a strain of the fungus.)
Most farmers in the Northeast, accustomed to variable conditions, have come to expect it in some form or another. Like a sunburn or a mosquito bite, you’ll probably be hit by late blight sooner or later, and while there are steps farmers can take to minimize its damage and even avoid it completely, the disease is almost always present, if not active.
But this year is turning out to be different — quite different, according to farmers and plant scientists. For one thing, the disease appeared much earlier than usual. Late blight usually comes, well, late in the growing season, as fungal spores spread from plant to plant. So its early arrival caught just about everyone off guard.

And then there’s the perniciousness of the 2009 blight. The pace of the disease (it covered the Northeast in just a few days) and its strength (topical copper sprays, a convenient organic preventive, have been much less effective than in past years) have shocked even hardened Hudson Valley farmers. [More]

Jan tells me her garden websites are full of blight news - and it's been detected in Indiana and Wisconsin.  Even better it's related to the same fungus responsible for the Irish potato famine, so potato growers are being clobbered too.

2009 is going to be one for the books.

More than you want to know...

About butter sculpture.  At this time of year it is obligatory for the media to cover a butter carving of some sort at a county/state fair.  In fact, we're doing one next week on USFR.

But a cow sculpture is soooo 1960.  Here is an example what I think we should be looking at.

 

[More]

Pass the bread, please.

[via presurfer]

Keeping the "phos" is glyphosate...

We sometimes forget that the stuff we buy requires its own inputs, and some of those are very basic materials.  Even as glyphosate prices plunge again - it's $15/gal at my local farm store- (yeah, I know it's Chinese, but glyphosate is glyphosate) - Monsanto is trying to keep the pipeline full.

[BTW - the rumor at my dealer is the Roundup price is going down big-time]

As it races to replenish phosphate supplies for its weed-killing cash machine Roundup, Monsanto Co. insists its history of polluting southeastern Idaho's high country shouldn't prevent it from digging fresh open pits here.
Three of the St. Louis-based chemical company's previous mines in this region of broad valleys and forested ridges are under federal Superfund authority; a fourth is now violating federal clean water laws. In all, several companies are responsible for polluting at least 17 sites southwest of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
With its current mine in the region nearly played out, Monsanto now wants federal regulators to let the company open a new one by 2011, contending safeguards on the project will keep poisons out of the Blackfoot River. The trout stream just a few hundred yards away is among 15 southeastern Idaho waterways where selenium that leaked from mines exceeds legal state levels.

David Farnsworth, Monsanto mining manager, walked the 1,400-acre Blackfoot Bridge site in late July, describing a liner meant to stop pollution. Even if it fails, he said, vast containment ponds below will keep poisons out of rivers downstream. [More]

Meanwhile, the scuttlebutt I'm hearing from seed industry contacts is a strong "meh" on hyper-stacked seed with $300+ per bag prices. In working on my budgets, it takes a significantly higher yield bump to justify top-line seed corn at $3.50/bushel, and I'm not sure our farm will demonstrate that value this year.

In fact, if we are in for a series of wet years here in the Eastern Cornbelt, "fiple-stacks" may just be expensive overkill. Indeed, weather may be the big factor.

In sum, this research provided strong evidence that precipitation, temperature, and a
linear time trend to represent technological improvement explained all but a small portion of the variation in corn and soybean yields in the U.S. Corn Belt.  An especially important finding was that relatively benign weather for the development of corn since the mid-1990s should not be discounted as an explanation for seemingly “high” yields.  The potential impact of this finding on the agricultural sector is noteworthy.  Trend yield forecasts based on perceptions of a rapid increase in technology may eventually lead to poor forecasts.  Unfavorable weather in the future may lead to unexpectedly low corn yields that leave producers, market participants, and policy- makers wondering how such low yields could have occurred despite technological improvements.  [More]

We're about to enter into the treacherous waters of reducing our input costs.  Seed corn has made itself a big target by breathtaking price increases.  If the past yield jumps were one-off or weather flukes, that will soon become clear to growers.

It could be corn traits will deliver the goods, but I am growing more suspicious that genetics and weather will be the deciding factors.

Why we keep trying to go...

"Back to basics".   We think that tactic is the answer to too many problems.  Only "basics" is another word for habits. Under stress, habit beats logic.

When the scientists studied a region of the rats' brains called the dorsal striatum, they also found striking differences between the two groups. In stressed rats, neurons in the dorsomedial striatum, an area associated with goal-directed behavior (for example, pressing a lever to get a specific treat), had shrunk, making fewer connections to other cells. Meanwhile neurons in the dorsolateral striatum, an area that controls habits (such as pressing the same lever regardless of outcome), had grown and formed more branches. The researchers conclude in tomorrow's issue of Science that chronic stress rewires brain areas involved in the switch between goal-directed and habitual actions. Rui Costa, an NIH neuroscientist and co-author of the study, says that "those changes in the brain bias your behavior tremendously for a while after the stress."

The study provides an animal equivalent to "a frequent, maladaptive feature of human behavior during stress: We fall into doing the same thing ... instead of trying something new," says Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at the Stanford School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. John Morrison, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, says that the study is significant because it highlights how stress acts differently on specific brain circuits. "And we need to understand that specificity" to help design treatments for stress disorders, he says. [More]

This would explain my marketing skills.

Rings a bell...

Timely comments about public opinion and scientists.

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science unveiled the latest embarrassing evidence of our nation’s scientific illiteracy. Only 52 percent of Americans in their survey knew why stem cells differ from other kinds of cells; just 46 percent knew that atoms are larger than electrons. On a highly contentious issue like global warming, meanwhile, the gap between scientists and the public was vast: 84 percent of scientists, but just 49 percent of Americans, think human emissions are causing global warming.

Scientists are fond of citing statistics such as these in explaining conflicts between the public and the scientific community. On politicized issues like climate change, embryonic stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, and the safety of vaccines, many Americans not only question scientific expertise but even feel entitled to discard it completely. The reason, many scientists infer, is that the public is just clueless; perhaps we wouldn’t have these problems if the average citizen were better educated, more knowledgeable, better informed.

Yet while scientific illiteracy is nothing to shrug at, the truth is that it’s only part of a broader problem for which scientists themselves must shoulder a significant portion of the responsibility. Decrying ignorance and scientific illiteracy, many scientists treat their fellow citizens as empty vessels waiting for an infusion of knowledge. That is exactly wrong, and exactly why so many people, in turn, see science and scientists as distant, inscrutable, aloof, arrogant. Rather than blaming, scientists ought to be engaging with the public, trying to personally make their knowledge hit home and to instill by example (rather than from a distance) the nature and virtues of the scientific mindset - while also encouraging average Americans to ask their own questions and have their say. Scientists must make it clear that while they don’t have all the answers, science is about searching for the truth, an imperfect process of doing the best one can with the information available, while knowing there is always more to learn - the epitome of humility. [More]

Oddly, farmers also are affected by anti-intellectualism on many fronts, as Blake Hurst pointed out. It seems to me our commitment to the scientific method extends no further than our own prejudices.

Still, it doesn't matter if you are right (or at least more nearly so) if you can't persuade anyone else.  This is the hurdle facing our culture for many issues.  For various reasons, there appears to be a cafeteria approach to knowledge, perhaps grounded in our traditions of egalitarianism and democracy.  Choose those facts that fit your world view, deny the rest.

Unfortunately, opinions are not as equal as the political standing of those who espouse them.  Nonetheless, as several have said, " Folks are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."

It does not help to be discussing Big Issues in a time of economic fear.  I think those anxieties bleed over into other areas, despite our best efforts to be impartial. 

Still, the conclusions drawn by the author above are helpful, I think.  And time has a way of eroding all but the truth.

Helpful fashion hints for farmers: #21...

[More - check out his non-socialist health reform plan]

BTW - who are these people?

This explains my blood pressure issues...

From my crop scout:

A recent observation by my field scouts requires some comment.  They have been finding in some select corn fields a fair number of Sap beetles (A.K.A picnic beetles) borrowing their way under the husks and feeding on the end kernels of the ear.  In some areas in some fields as much as 20 percent of the ears have been found to be so infested.  While sap beetle damage is not uncommon, the level of infestation in some of these fields is a matter of concern.  Although the actual damage they are doing to the ear and kernels is not insignificant, of greater concern are ear and kernel diseases that the feeding may initiate. 

            At this point it is unclear if the infested fields were treated with a fungicide, which may have inhibited pathogenic agents which typically limit sap beetles populations, or if there is another reason for their increased activity (cool weather, lack of predators, etc).   University recommendations state that control of sap beetles with an insecticide is typically only economical with seed corn.

            While I understand that this information is coming to you rather late, there may be some justification for adding an insecticide to fungicide applications that are yet pending.  Please call me if you have concerns.

After a few of these all I hear is "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!"

And now I have passed the anxiety along.   A burden shared...

Meanwhile, back in the oil patch...

We haven't checked in with the Peak Oil debate for a while, and this could be a good time to do so.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA), has pulled in his prediction for when world oil production will peak to only 11 years from now.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

The reason for the change? The IEA has found that production from existing oil fields is dropping a lost faster than they predicted.

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

The faster existing field production declines the faster new fields must be discovered and developed just to break even. The problem: world oil discovery peaked in 1965. In spite of all the technological advances since 1965 the discovery rate is less than a fifth the peak rate and less than a third of the yearly oil consumption rate. [More]

Of course, exactly what Peak Oil means to our economy and culture is debatable.  But it is hard to try to fit the consumption increases we know are coming in Asia with declining oil production and not envision much higher oil prices sooner than later.  Not to mention inflation and the value of our heavily leveraged dollar.

This is good news I think for all kinds of alternate energy, but especially ethanol, as the comparative economics get better as oil prices rise.  Dirt cheap natural gas has to be helping too.


But the niggling question I have with "problems in the oil fields" reasons is how many of them would magically find a solution should oil wander back into triple digits?

Our imagined past...

Second only to the adamant, but unsupportable conviction that our country was established as a Christian nation - which can be countered by reading just a few biographies of the Founding Fathers - is the belief in founder-established free market orthodoxy.

Especially for agriculture, which has long been dominated by efforts to have the government alter the market in favor of the constituency-of-the-moment, the paradox of this firm assertion in the face of historical fact continues puzzle me.

One example that struck me was discovered when I visited the Lincoln Museum this summer. (BTW - a must-see).  In a side room showing Lincoln's contributions to agriculture were the expected mentions of land-grant colleges and homesteading, and his staunch support of protective tariffs for ag commodities.  I was stunned that my hero could swerve from the True Path so enthusiastically.

Political scientists at the Monkey Cage investigate this belief:

We hear a lot about the free market approach to policy problems, much of it couched in terms that imply that free markets are in some sense “natural,” or that free markets are the grand tradition of our country which nefarious politicians are attempting to undermine. The question whether free markets might be “natural” to humans is a complicated one, relying on a picture of individual human nature which I’ve already criticized. The same acquisitive nature that makes man a competitive market being can also hamper markets when it becomes anti-competitive, and thus libertarians admit that government is necessary at least to restrain monopolies and trusts. In a sense, libertarians (and all other rights-based thinkers) support competition, but not scorched-earth victory.
But my topic today is instead the role of the free market in our nation’s history. As I said, free market policy proposals are often put forward with the implication that markets are the default setting in American life. Obama is charged with wanting to “supplant” free market capitalism with socialism. Regulation is an “interference” with the operation of free markets. Surely, socialism is alien to American traditions (and alien to the Obama administration as well, but that’s the subject of a different post); and a norm against the over-regulation of commerce is one of the hard-won insights of American history. But this doesn’t mean that free-marketism has been the norm in the past; or that the absence of regulation has ever been the status quo.
In fact, the American economy from our founding onwards grew in a symbiotic relationship with government action. And we forget that history at our own peril. As important as the American self-image of entrepreneurship is, our government has (which is to say, we collectively have) always been active in creating the playing field on which commercial competition occurs. We build the field, and we shape its rules – and when we re-shape its rules we are not interfering with time-honored and sacred rights, but merely making the sort of collective decisions aimed at our shared progress which we have always made.

In the early 19th Century, state governments chartered the first corporations as a method of encouraging public improvements (say, building a bridge across the Charles River in Massachusetts, or laying and maintaining usable roads in Pennsylvania). The “corporation” in its inception was a private or semi-private entity aimed at encouraging individuals to team together for public purposes by granting them public lands (and sometimes private lands taken by eminent domain) as well as a right to the profits made by their improvements.

In the late-19th Cenury, government owned most of the land in America, and enacted policies meant to encourage the peopling of the West and the improvement of those lands. It sometimes granted rights to water or land to railroad companies, who would have an interest in creating and fostering towns in the Midwest and West so they could transport the goods produced to the East. And it also granted certain bundles of property rights to individuals to encourage them to go west. Our government fostered what we might think of as one of the largest public-private-popular cooperative schemes in the history of man. (This story is necessarily truncated here, but for an excellent retelling of the role of the government in distributing property rights in the American West, see this book by Donald J. Pisani.) [More]

It is a series worth reading, especially for "fallen" or confused libertarians such as myself.  Basically, we move our political economy up and down a scale between the power of government and the power of individuals, rather than alternate between poles.  How libertarian you are at any time seems to be a function of how well those moves benefit you.

Right now, with the strident cries of creeping socialism (which may actually be accurate) many simply forget we have a long history of government intervention for whatever reason.  If such intervention is good for ethanol backers, why should we be surprised those who struggle with access to health insurance coverage should apply the same strategies?

Furthermore, given this long history of free market "tampering", how can such ideas be any less "American" than agriculture policy?  More importantly perhaps, if intervention in ag markets has not led to soviet-style communal farms, why should we expect health insurance reform to automatically lead to a UK-style government health system?


Some slopes may actually be sticky, it appears.

Maybe it's me...

So I speak to IA Soybean Growers and when I arrive, a whopper hailstorm shows up too.  No kidding, the next day's drive home was stomach-churning.

Then today I speak to the Farm World Expo.

And a nasty wave of storms clobbers the area.

Look out, Columbus.