Slowly gaining traction...  

The following video has gone viral although it has been around for a while. I'm wondering if this means anything.

 

I have been disturbed by growing inequality of both wealth and income for a long time. Not really so much because of fairness issues (although those are certainly valid) but because our economy can't function well with all the income accruing to an investing - not consuming - class. In short, I think it puts us on a path to lower demand for everything.

But as the video clearly demonstrates, the disparities are not only wider than we imagine, they are wider than we can imagine.

The other big issue for me is the lack of ways to address this short of a revolution - the traditional end to mass extreme inequality. Some of the ideas being floated are things farmers should keep an eye on, I think.

Taxing wealth in addition to income is one way to make sure that the rich contribute more to government coffers. That would essentially be a tax on household assets like property, stocks, bonds, unincorporated businesses, trusts, art and yachts.

The idea is to aim at the wealthiest part of the population, perhaps the top 1 percent, a group that has seen the most significant and consistent accumulation of wealth over the last few decades.

“A wealth tax is an attempt to fill the holes in income tax,” said Douglas A. Shackelford, a tax expert at the University of North Carolina. “The primary hole is unrealized capital gains. That’s behind the big buildup of dynastic wealth.”

COUNTRIES like Canada have a tax on asset appreciation, based on the value of the assets at the time of the owner’s death. The United States does not, and the tax code contains a huge loophole through which to pass wealth to one’s heirs.

Here is how that can work in practice:

A billionaire can borrow against his stocks, art and real estate, and spend that borrowed money without paying tax. All he has to do is pay interest on the loan. When he dies, his heirs can sell the assets to pay off the debt. Under an existing rule known as the “step-up in basis,” no matter how much the assets have appreciated in value, no one will owe income tax on that gain. And the rest of his fortune goes to his heirs without anyone ever paying income taxes on the appreciation in the assets.

Partly to close loopholes like this, Ronald I. McKinnon, an economist at Stanford, advocates a wealth tax in addition to income tax. He outlined his proposal in a recent op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Conservative Case for a Wealth Tax.”

Professor McKinnon’s plan would require households to list all domestic and foreign assets annually. There would be a $3 million wealth exemption, which, in his estimation, would exclude more than 95 percent of the population. The remainder would be subject to a flat tax of about 3 percent of household wealth. [More]

The step-up in basis is the big win, IMHO, in the estate tax compromise reached at the beginning of this year. It also is enormously expensive - about $60B per year. This is a target large enough to attract budget hawks and with a small enough constituency to be vulnerable.

In short, I don't think this battle will ever be over as long as wealth continues to pile up in a very, very few hands.

Africa: On the ground #2...  

It is a mark of my travel naivete that imagined I would be posting  frequently during the trip.  In reality during the trip, you're busy taking the dang trip and in this case, coping with wildly unexpected situations. Plus given my sad history, I've been trying to not lose critical stuff like passports, money, computer.

I have a new appreciation for my grandkids and their backpacks. We are slowly turning into beasts of burden, with all humanity leaning forward to balance our loads. Even relatively light camera equipment became a noticeable load over time.

Then you look at a slender African woman carrying 5 gallons of water on her head for miles...

We are back in SA after Tanzania and Mozambiqu, but I'm going to try to keep the posts in rough chronological order. Besides the time digesting what we saw last time here has added some admittedly shallow insights.

I spoke about the extraordinary security (by our standards) everywhere. More disturbing, we have heard absolutely horrible first-hand accounts of attacks, carjacking, fighting off armed thieves, even children threatened at gunpoint as parents watched. It was incomprehensible to Jim and me.

But here is the more difficult thing to try to grasp: the police are responding with apparent equivalent brutality, and the press strikes me as relentless in their criticism of both their methods and results.

It may strike many of you as hard to believe, but I was actually moderately diplomatic given the easy-to-sense discomfort South Africans have trying to explain these problems. But one remark struck me a helpful.

I asked our host, whose judgment I have come to value highly, how he viewed the future. He replied he was optimistic, and not just because things couldn't get worse. Perversely enough as more Black Africans rise to the middle class, and become targets of the same violence as the small white minority, there is the possibility - even a likelihood - of actual political improvement. The ANC is simply running out of racial loyalty as their base of power.

We could compare this with the black support of Democrats or the Southern white support of Republicans, by asking what would have to happen for black Americans to vote against Obama, or older, white male Americans to kiss the GOP goodbye. That sort of trigger may be closer than we think in SA.

The other factor he mentioned was the rise of younger political and bureaucratic professionals who are better educated and prepared for leadership. This was not the case when majority rule began in '94 and the results clearly showed. In fact, this pattern was sadly repeated all across SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa).

I am revising my own guesses as to how fast these changes can be made. More on that in the next post, which will likely be from home.

Junkbox, Episode XIII⚗...  

(Pre-loaded for your Monday morning pleasure)

• Advice for the average and adequate
•  Do you trust your spreadsheet too much?
• Risk - can't live with it, can't live without it
• Disinterest on the deficit
• Yeah - this is going to reverse the beef consumption curve.
• Is Monsanto in intellectual property trouble from the right ?

Meanwhile, on the plains of Africa...

Africa: On the Ground #1...  

We've been in Africa for several days, but really busy. Most of my computer time has been trying to get my mail and downloading video from cameras.

South Africa was eye-opening. While I was prepared for the security measures, the reality of the fences is overwhelming. (Rats uploading photos doesn't work).

There is a semi-Gold rush sense when talking to ag industries and farmers here, as they all talk about "going north".  The hot spot is Zambia - the former Northern Rhodesia.  Good soils and some of the best infrastructure due to not having a civil war, but other countries are definitely in play. SA farmers are discreetly researching "escape plans" in case of government redistribution of their farms.

Now we're in Tanzania. One big hurdle is getting past customs without being fleeced according to warnings from our hosts in SA. The other challenge is to you kidneys on the roads. If you imagine the worst sections of your worst roads, then narrow it to one lane, you get the idea of our trip to Morogor, although there is a section of good two-highway, albeit extremely heavily traveled.

You have to be here, I think to grasp the intractability of the poverty problem. There other reality is running into Chinese everywhere. FWIW, don't get in their way at the airport, bus, etc.

Amazingly cell phones sort worked, but gmail won't here. Not sure why.

More from Nampula.

Measure it...  

And you will game it. Thanks to this app, I check the wind like an 18th century sea captain before driving anywhere. It can mess with mileage ± 2-6 mpg. on an Equinox.

When I start postponing trips, we'll know I've gone over the edge.

Say what?...  

Ponder the highlighted sentence.

Because of its dismal fertility rate, Japan's population peaked in 2008; it has already shrunk by a million since then. Last year, for the first time, the Japanese bought more adult diapers than diapers for babies, and more than half the country was categorized as "depopulated marginal land." At the current fertility rate, by 2100 Japan's population will be less than half what it is now. [More]

The mind boggles.

Africa 8:...  

I believe it was Confucius who said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with airport security".  Wise man.

Anyhoo, Jim and I got launched from ORD in a timely manner for the first leg of our trip. Random observations:

• Due to a massive scheduling blunder, I booked our outbound flight for 0845, thinking it was an evening flight. Duh. Nonetheless, it was the first time in a long time I was on a half-full plane. I may due the day flight again just for the hassle decrease.
• Our 18-hour layover was eased greatly by checking into the Yotel in LHR terminal 4. The airport was virtually empty when we arrived (2300 local) and 5 minutes of train got us from T3 to T4. 
• I'm going to try to post a video of the accommodations - no promises.
• Only partially successful with my electrical adapters. Luckily most of the electronics can be slowly recharged through the laptop USB and I did have a UK adapter for that power supply.

We used this morning to do the tourist thing at Hampton Court Palace. It was really good, and with light winter crowds the guides in the rooms were happy to chat (at length) with us.  The gardens must be spectacular in season. 

With it only about 15 min. from LHR, I highly recommend it if you find yourself with time to kill around the airport.

The "Bladerunner" trial is BIG news over here - everybody is following it and has an opinion. Seems like OJ all over again. Only in super-speed. Didn't it just happen last week?

How are the lawyers gonna come up with billable hours?

An honest count...  

I have always been perplexed by our profession's obsession with over-counting our numbers. Take the ubiquitous "2%".  That's 6,200,000 people!

That's also ridiculous.

In 2010, there were 1,202,500 farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers and an estimated 757,900 agricultural workers were employed in the US. Animal breeders accounted for 11,500 of those workers with the rest categorized as miscellaneous agricultural workers. [More]

That's a pretty reliable number, I think. But there are some issues with it as well.

• The farmer number is based on the old USDA "$1000 gross" rule. In fact, 60% of the 1.2M "farmers" are retirement and lifestyle farmers who like the many advantages of Schedule F, I would suggest. So at best - even counting very small farms - the number of what most people would call farmers is around 500,000 AT MOST.
• The balance of the 2% seems to be "others living on farms". The best number I can find is 4.6M which in some Alternate Arithmetic Universe gets rounded up from 1.48% to the Magic 2%.
• Even the above number is questionable because:

In 1993 the Census Bureau stopped counting the number of Americans who live on farms. "Farm residence," it reported, "is no longer a reliable indication of whether or not someone is involved in farming. ... The cost of collecting and publishing statistics on farm residents and farmers in separate reports could no longer be justified." [More]

• So if your wife is a teacher, nurse, plumber, truck driver, or nuclear physicist, we somehow still get to count her among our ranks.
• Your kids count too.

In short, Jack Nicholson was right - we can't handle the truth. And we go to remarkable extremes to distort the data.

One of the most egregious truth-masseurs is Farm Bureau. I remember from my days as a county president (admittedly in the Paleolithic era) the hushed mumbles that accompanied membership numbers. Because FB is a well-funded, expertly-staffed auxiliary unit of an insurance conglomerate (which any Wall Street analyst would conclude from looking at their books), they have concocted unique euphemisms to describe their members as farmer-like entities.

Farm Bureau’s national membership rose to 6,279,813 member families in 2010, marking 50 consecutive years of membership growth. State Farm Bureaus overall reported a total 2,149 more member families this year than in 2009. [More]

Member families? A more accurate label would be "insurance customers who are required to become members of the FB". The fact that TN is the largest membership state should be a clue these numbers say little about actual farmers. Somehow this distinction is skirted when FB testifies before Congress, allowing the organization name to imply a vast base of voluntary dues-paying members.

But aside from the embarrassing lameness of such efforts to inflate our numbers is the question, "Why bother?" Why can't we be OK with an accurate count of our group's ranks?

We're not the only minority struggling with this anxiety.

We’re slowly getting a sense of how many TGBQLX people there are in America. I.e. how many homosexuals, lesbians and transgenders there are in the population. When I was a newbie gay, the mantra was 10 percent. We were “one in ten”. Seriously.
This immediately struck me at the time as a) obviously propaganda and b) ridiculously insecure. There was no way to know for sure, given the ubiquity of the closet back in the 1980s, but ten percent is a hell of a lot of people: 30 million. Why did I keep bumping into faces I recognized wherever I was in the US? If it were really ten percent, where were they all?
And why on earth does it matter if we make up 10 percent or 1 percent? A minority’s civil rights are not dependent on how many of them there are or how large a segment of society they form. Do we say: sorry, guys, you only form 2 percent, you don’t meet the minimal bar for becoming a minority? It’s not like running for the Knesset. It struck me then and now as part of a wearying tendency among some gays to think that every straight dude is just a few beers away from being gay (that’s not how it works); or a desperation to feel somehow more significant because of larger numbers.
Which simply make it all the more of a relief to see that Gallup has finally come up with a believable number of around 3.5 percent. (Check how gay your state is here.) DC is the super-gayest “state” – but that is a little distorted since DC is really the inner city of a larger metropolitan area and the gays tend to congregate there. But there’s also the attraction of politics for gay men. If you’ve ever spent much time among the staffers on the Hill, you’ll know what I mean: the US capitol makes the Vatican look straight. [More]

Sullivan is right: why does it matter? We don't get subsidies because of block voting - we were heavily against Obama and he is our best hope to continue the handouts, especially the ethanol mandate. Clearly government money messes with your mind.

I've always thought minimizing our numbers would have a bigger PR wow-factor. "Only 50,000 farmers produce 87% of the ag products [totally made up example]" seems more impressive to me. If farm payments are slipping away, why not change our thinking to at the very least make sure we actually know how many we are?

Farmer numbers need to come out of the closet.

Junkbox, Episode XIII♞...  

Last one before leaving. (Maybe I can cache one for next Monday posting.)

• $5.29 for a Valentine's card??
• Does anyone else see a farm business model flaw here?
• The RFS is in trouble, and not the way you think.
• Grownups are enabling Google+
• Yet another reason to watch where you surf.
• Not a cycle?
• Libertarians In Space...Space...Space

Africa 7:...  

Background geography

[Click to enlarge any of them] Best views IMHO are on Google Maps.

First the global view. Some things to note:

• All of the area I will be visiting is above the Tropic of Capricorn
• Compare the latitude with the US production areas
• Tanzania is extremely close the the equator
• Check out the proximity to India and China
• Although this is still size distorted note the immense area still available for farm development

 For South Africa:

• I will be in the area around Johannesburg - grain & livestock
• Most of the area is grazing ground
• Wine in the Cape area is huge industry
• Sugar cane around Durban is an important crop

For Mozambique:

• The old description of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is an "inverted soup bowl" with a narrow lowland rim escalating to high plateaus is apt
• No glaciers means very little topography like prairies or Midwestern wet savannahs
• I will be west of Nampula near Gurue
• Note the relationship to Zimbabwe - I think it will play an important role for better or worse in all these countries, but especially Mozambique

Finally, Tanzania

• The Rift Valley in the north is the birthplace of humanity
• The big lakes are big tourist draws, along with game parks
• I will be in the Morogoro area

I'm hoping to give lat/long coordinates to mark my progress and allow you to zoom in from the Google Earth satellite maps. Should have gotten a GPS thingy.

The honey smuggling solution...  

Everything's better with lasers. We talked about Chinese honey-running and contamination on USFR recently. Scientists are on it.

By training the appropriated isotope ratio-meter on the carbon dioxide emitted from burning a bit of honey, Weidmann and company are able to use isotopic fingerprints to compare samples from all over and determine their origins. The same process works for other foods, too, which means better regulation could be coming to the chocolate and olive oil industries as well.

Let this be a lesson to all would-be food counterfeiters. We built a laser for Mars, but instead, we’re aiming it at you. [More]

I would also suspect the price of honey is about to jump as well.

 

Africa 6:...  

Doing my South Africa homework, and it appears I'm arriving at a pivotal moment for SA farmers.

Government is to drop the "willing-buyer, willing seller" principle with regard to land reform and restitution, President Jacob Zuma confirmed on Thursday.
"We must shorten the time it takes to finalise a claim. In this regard, government will now pursue the 'just and equitable' principle for compensation, as set out in the Constitution," he announced in his state-of-the-nation address on Thursday
Telling MPs that the land question in South Africa was a "highly emotive matter", Zuma said the willing-buyer, willing seller principle previously applied had forced the state to pay more for land. [More]

This method of land redistribution did not fare well in Zimbabwe, either. 

As of 2012, much of the seized land remains in large plots in the hands of Mugabe's cronies and produces little, but the small plots remaining in the hands of ordinary black farmers are now producing quite well. Their productivity does not match that of the previous large industrial farms that were displaced, but the profits are much more widely distributed and collectively these micro-entrepreneurs are one of the best performing sectors of the Zimbabwe economy.^[24]
...Before 2000 land-owning farmers had large tracts of land and utilized economies of scale to raise capital, borrow money when necessary, and purchase modern mechanized farm equipment to increase productivity on their land. As the primary beneficiaries of the land reform were members of the Government and their families, despite the fact that most had no experience in running a farm, the drop in total farm output has been tremendous and has even produced starvation and famine, according to aid agencies.^[28] Mostly crops for export have suffered severely, e.g. Zimbabwe was the world's 6th largest producers of Tobacco in 2001.^[29] It produces nowadays less than 1/3 of the amount produced in 2000,^[30] the lowest amount in 50 years.^[31] Zimbabwe was once so rich in agricultural produce that it was dubbed the "bread basket" of Southern Africa, while it is now struggling to feed its own population.^[32] About 45 percent of the population is now considered malnourished.

[More]

Combined with the recent rise in minimum farm wage, this strikes me as utterly unsettling, and one reason many economists are pessimistic about the SA economy in 2013.

 

The wealth enigma...  

I remain convinced one of the biggest problems farmers have understanding global economics (into which we have been merged) is the sheer size of the mountains of wealth in the world. As I work to get some sense of scale, there are surprises that stagger me still.

Like this:

 [Source]

After you try to wrap your mind around $200T, remember - this does not include real estate or other hard assets, just financial assets. And it's not some exaggerated measure of derivative leverage either.

Is it any wonder our corn market can be messed up so fast and easily by a tiny splash of liquidity from this ocean?

Here to stay...  

But maybe not in its present form. While opponents of Obamacare still rage about its existence, the work of learning to live with it is picking up speed.  While it might seem this kind of debate/compromise could have occurred at the outset, I'm convinced that is a pipe dream. But with deadlines looming when the BIG milestones such as universal acceptance will really, really happen, the health care industry and government are moving to comply, even if grudgingly. Moreover, I'm betting we kludge this thing around to workability pretty fast.

In the process, thoughtful ideas and experiments could ease many of the most inefficient aspects of the law.

Of all the companies worried that the Affordable Care Act will be bad for business, H&R Block may lay claim to the most unique gripe.
The firm prepares millions of tax returns, one of every seven that gets filed to the Internal Revenue Service. The vast majority of its consumers receive a refund; all told, their 26.5 million customers received $50 billion in refunds in 2012.
The Affordable Care Act could change that: It charges a tax penalty to Americans who do not carry health insurance coverage. And that has H&R Block worried that some of those refunds will get eaten up – with a lot of angry customers pointing a finger at them.
“Eighty-five percent of our customers get a refund,” Kathy Pickering, who directs the H&R Block Tax Institute, says. “That refund could be offset by the penalty. And if that happens, they’re going to be understandably angry.”
Last year, the company started thinking about how to curtail those types of surprises; they did consumer research to understand how much people knew about the law, what they liked and what they didn’t.
Now, during this tax season, H&R Block is rolling out a Health Care Review product, a no-charge assessment of the subsidies and penalties they will likely face in 2014.
The health law’s subsidies for insurance coverage and penalties for not carrying a plan don’t start in 2014. But the income that will determine how big of a subsidy an individual or family will receive — that’s the income that’s being filed right now, in 2013. [More]

Given the intense tax-prep warfare being waged now, I don't see that being a stand-alone strategy got Block.  Meanwhile, governors are analyzing the new laws to see how best to respond. While this could simply gaming the system, it represents how we can best implement admittedly imperfect rules to get better results.

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker recently became the 13th governor to turn down federal money to expand Medicaid, opting instead to move Wisconsinites between 100% and 200% of the poverty line into the ACA health care marketplaces. [More of good two-sided coverage of this effort]

This reminds me of all the work by seed companies, land investors, and farmers to manage climate change on their own microeconomic level even as they deny much of the evidence for it.

People deal with reality, but they are not required to acknowledge they might have been mistaken or even cease to be irritated. Obamacare seems to be more permanent as an idea every day, but like the rest of our social safety net, it will constantly be evolving.

I still say opponents will rue the day they attached the President's name to it to capitalize on the antipathy toward a person. Universal health coverage will become as strong an entitlement in the public mind as Medicare or SS.  

Or crop insurance. We all demand a little socialism just for us.

After all my bad-mouthing...  

Apple Maps comes up with a cool view of my farm.

If you have anything with iOS6 (iPhone, iPad, etc.) and have upgraded to iOS6 enter my address:

23957 N 2100th. St.
Chrisman, IL 61924

Then select "Satellite" view.  

If you magnify down you can see my house, our farm to the NNE about 1/2 mi. and our combine in the field cutting beans just east of the house.  At the north end of the field is the grain cart half-full, with me likely sleeping in it. The date was September (?) 2011.  The weird patchwork to the east of the combine is a Pioneer Impact plot. The pattern in the field to the north was down corn from a wind in August.

I would have waved had I known...

Chemicals...  

They're like, everywhere!

Nothing good has ever come of chemistry. From the toxic gases that slaughtered billions in World War I, II and III, to the toxic liquids pumped into our innocent, crying children daily under the pretence of “vaccination” and “public health”, we’re surrounded by chemicals. Chemicals are toxins. Chemicals are evil.
Sadly, no matter how vigilant you feel you are, it’s likely that chemicals have infiltrated your home. This is partly the government’s fault: with their engorged wallets bursting at the seams with cash “donations” from Big Chemistry, it’s no wonder politicians turn a blind eye to the blatant poisoning of their citizens. But you’re also to blame. Your ignorance of basic science is probably killing your family.
But luckily, with a few easy modifications and substitutions to your way of living, you can begin an effective physical (and spiritual) detox and be rid of 6 of the major sources of household chemicals.

Books

It’s no secret that chemists love to read, so it’s no surprise that many, if not all, books contain some truly deadly chemicals. You may not have been taught this in school, but paper (the primary component of books) is made out of cellulose, a substance so foreign to our bodies that our own digestive system refuses to break it down, much like chewing gum. Cellulose, in turn, is made of glucose, which has been implicated in numerous diseases, including (but surely not limited to) diabetes. Glucose is also the main fuel for cancer, which makes a whole lot of sense considering 99.5% of cancer patients read, on average, one to eight books prior to their diagnosis. Coincidence? There are no coincidences when dealing with chemicals.
Chemical-​​free replacement: Ancient scrolls. It’s safe to read any text printed before the discovery of the structure of cellulose, but make sure you wear gloves. [More shocking news]

Those wacky Aussies...

Into Africa 5:...  

Another farmer heads to Africa from the opposite direction.
 

[via realagriculture]

Note the side reference to western Canada as another place to be.

Hmmmm...

Into Africa 4:...  

In researching my trip, I was surprised to find this chart about who the big players in African agriculture are.  I thought the Chinese and Indians were the dominant players.

Allowing for the POV of the source article, I will assume the numbers are correct because the original study source is gated and costs.

There are several noteworthy funds investing in Africa, but one name that caught my eye was Bruce Rastetter.

[Source]

His name pops up occasionally in IA politics, such as here:

In a letter to the university, Harkin wrote that concerns about restrictions on research led him to make the decision, despite the appeal of leaving his papers at ISU where he learned “the force of ideas” and was exposed to diverse opinions.
“But after a time, it became evident that the university would not grant the Institute the very freedoms that I learned to cherish at Iowa State,” wrote Harkin, a Democrat who is not seeking re-election in 2014.
The institute has been a source of political controversy since the Iowa Board of Regents, which governs the state’s universities, voted to create it in April 2011. Republicans have questioned the ethics of naming the institute after a sitting senator. The institute’s advisory board and regents leaders also battled over guidelines for agriculture research.
State Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, on the Senate floor Wednesday, decried the circumstances that resulted in Harkin’s decision. Specifically citing Regents Craig Lang and Bruce Rastetter for “unnecessary meddling,” Bolkcom said he was disappointed in what had occurred and described it as a threat to academic freedom. [More]

I realize this type of investing attracts the umm, more speculative investors at first, and many of them tend to mingle politics and profits. But I'm getting a nervous feeling too much of what passes for legitimate business practice in the world of global farmland is only our version of LIBOR rules.

More to learn...

The curious case of guns and hunters...  

President Obama has been a godsend to the gun industry, with sales booming after each conspiracy myth is rolled out. But at the same time, fewer homes have guns.

 Second, for all the attention given to America’s culture of guns, ownership of firearms is at or near all-time lows.  Since 1973, the GSS has been asking Americans whether they keep a gun in their home.  In the 1970s, about half of the nation said yes; today only about one-third do.  Driving the decline: a dramatic drop in ownership of pistols and shotguns, the very weapons most likely to be used in violent crimes. [More]

So it would appear we have a smaller number of citizens with a larger number of guns. Not sure what that means.

But at the same time, the popularity of hunting is dropping almost as fast. Take ducks, for example.

The annual duck hunting season in the United States is traditionally big business, but while bird numbers are rising faster than they have for decades, the number of hunters continues to fall. Far from being good news for ducks a new study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin shows how the loss of revenue from ‘duck stamps’ could result in millions of lost dollars for vital conservation work.

“The last 15 years have brought hunting opportunities not seen since the turn of the last century,” said Dr Mark Vrtiska from Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. “The waterfowl population has passed 40 million six times since 1995, something only seen nine times since records began. These should be the glory days for duck hunting.”

However, in stark contrast, the annual sales of the ‘duck stamp’, the Federal licence needed to hunt, are declining. While over 2,100,000 stamps were sold annually in the 1970’s, between 2004 and 2008 this declined to 1,300,000. This fall is continuing with an annual decline of 36% in duck stamp sales. [More]

Or deer.

The fact is, hunter numbers peaked nationwide in the late 1970s and then started sliding. By the 1990s they were plunging across America as the percentage of hunters in the population declined.
Wisconsin dodged that 1990s plummet, insulated by a large rural population that embraces hunting and has easier access to hunting land. From 1991 through 2000, Wisconsin averaged 675,185 gun-deer licenses annually, up 2.6 percent from 658,257 during 1981-1990.
But as more urbanites built homes and planted lawns where cows, steers, deer and farmers once roamed, our hunting population was destined to drop. From 2001 through 2010, annual gun deer licenses averaged 642,466, down 5 percent from the '90s. [More]

The decline of hunting could be a real game changer as fewer of us are familiar with firearms and probably more likely to be averse to ownership as a result. Nor is it a sport you "take up" like golf, I would think. It seems more like something you grow up with, as a rule.

This is one reason I don't waste much time debating gun issues - it's slowly going the right direction without all that vitriol in my life. I'd like to be able to prevent another Newtown, but that looks like tilting a windmill. Pretty pathetic I know, but anything else just seems to add fuel to a dying fire.

Junkbox, Episode XIII∻...  

Two more shots to go for Africa and I start malaria pills Wednesday.

• Aptly named food establishment category
• You knew this was coming after the "God made a farmer" commercial
• Remember when Traverse City used to be on Lake Michigan?
• Jeez - I just wrote something like this for TP, and this guy did it much better.
• The kind of chart that gets my attention now.
• The safe-asset shortage - I will post more about this.

See you at the Louisville Farm Machinery Show.