“Super Synthetic Corn”: I’m not sure this is good news

29. February 2008 by P. Leslie Riley.

For what it’s worth :

http://nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.27a.html

Research Breakthrough Could Lead to Super Synthetic Corn

Iowa State University researchers helped write the first draft of the corn genome sequence that will be announced Feb. 28, at the 50th Annual Maize Genetics Conference in Washington, D.C.

Patrick Schnable, a Baker Professor of Agronomy and director of the Center for Plant Genomics and the Center for Carbon Capturing Crops, and Srinivas Aluru, a Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, led the work at Iowa State and provided the project with expertise in corn genomics and supercomputing.

Schnable and Aluru led Iowa State’s work to refine assemblies of the genomic sequences generated by researchers at Washington University. In addition, they identified almost 100 genes which have nearly identical copies in the genome. Schnable said these nearly identical paralogs may have played important roles during the evolution and domestication of corn and may have contributed to the ability of breeders to mold this important crop species to meet human needs. The Schnable and Aluru teams also discovered several hundred new corn genes that are not present in other plants. Some of these genes may be responsible for unique attributes of corn.

The corn genome is an especially difficult jigsaw puzzle to put together, Schnable said. There are some 2.5 billion base pairs that make up the double helix of corn DNA. The corn genome also has long lines of repetitive code. And corn has 50,000 to 60,000 genes to identify and characterize. That’s about twice the number of genes in humans. Plus, 50 percent or more of the corn genome is made up of transposons or jumping genes. Those are pieces of DNA that can move around the genome and change the function of genes.

Solving all those assembly challenges took a lot of computing power and some new software technology. Aluru and his research team developed software called “PaCE” and “LTR_par” that runs on parallel computers — including CyBlue, Iowa State’s IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer capable of 5.7 trillion calculations per second. PaCE can generate draft genome assemblies in hours or days instead of months. LTR_par identifies retrotransposons, another mobile genetic element that can cause genome changes such as mutations, gene duplications and chromosome rearrangements.

Implications

Schnable said the resulting draft of the corn genome provides plant scientists with a lot of data to work with. He said it’s a lot like the collection of maps, diary entries, dried plants and animal specimens brought back by the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific. The explorers gathered and assembled a great deal of basic information about the Louisiana Purchase that required years of subsequent analysis and study.

“This will enable so much exciting corn research,” Schnable said. “This will raise questions about the biology of corn and provide great tools to answer them.”

Those answers could help scientists modify and improve corn plants, Schnable said. The genome, for example, could help scientists:

• develop crops that can withstand global climate change
• add nutritional value to grain
• sequester more atmospheric carbon in agricultural soils
• or boost yields so crops can meet growing demands for food, feed, fiber and fuel.

“In addition, what we learn from the corn genome will allow us to better understand other grasses,” Schnable said.

The genome of corn is very similar to the genomes of rice, wheat, sorghum, prairie grasses and turf grasses. Therefore, Schnable said the draft of the corn genome can help researchers improve the other cereals and grasses.

Posted in Corn Soybeans & Wheat, Alternative Crops & Enterprises, Biofuels from Farms, Agrarianism, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Alternative Energy | Print | No Comments »

NZ Economy Helped by Dairy Farms — Thriving, Subsidy Free, Grass Based

4. January 2008 by P. Leslie Riley.

Mississippi’s once prosperous dairy industry is at crisis levels & may not exist much longer. Commissioner Spell in the Mississippi State Debate said this was a natural consequence of market forces.

Conventional “wisdom” big governement/ big corporation/ big land grant-USDA “experts” agree with this. The belief that they share with all is :
1) Dairy farms must be on a mega scale, confinment oriented, in dry climates, corporate owned heavily financed & with heavy inputs. And that there will be fewer and fewer.
Because of this, Mississippi cannot compete with new non-traditional dairy areas like California, Arizona, Wesr Texas, and Idaho where the arid conditions are “ideal” to put 4000 or 5000 head confinement dairy operations on 40 to 100 acres. Hire lots of help & “efficiently” run it like a factory.
2) This same folks also push for heavy subsidies on milk to “help” family farms ( they never quite say why the number of farms has decreased in direct proportion to the size/ number of dairies)
3) And, “conventional wisdom” is that Agriculture is at worst an impediment and at best a afterthought/ minor component of a healthy & growing economy.

Turning this “conventional wisdom” on it’s head with facts is New Zealand.
New Zealand’s dairy farms are almost exclusively grass based/ family owned
New Zealand got rid of subsidies 10 years ago — and are thriving.
And, according to the article below, New Zealand’s economy is in a slow down, but it being proped up by : the dairy industry.  Go Figure.

There is no reason that Mississippi can’t have a thriving dairy industry again that offers prosperity for hard working family farmers; produces healthier milk, cheese, butter, etc. for  Mississippians (which would, in turn, drive health care cost down); provides better Stewardship of God’s Creation; and is a vital part of economic growth for rural communities.

BUT, as we all know, one definition of insantiy is to continue doing the same thing, the same way, and expecting different results.

 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=195&objectid=10484890

 Dairy bonanza likely to soften slowdown

5:00AM Tuesday January 01, 2008
By Brian Fallow 

The housing market is at a standstill.

The country ended 2007 with some respectable numbers on its economic report card.

The economy expanded 3.3 per cent in the year ended September, while inflation over the same period was 1.8 per cent.

The unemployment rate is 3.5 per cent, a record low.

The terms of trade - relative prices of the kinds of things we export compared with the kinds of things we import - are the most favourable since 1974.

The Government’s coffers are overflowing.

But the outlook is less rosy than these numbers would suggest. On a quarterly basis growth peaked back in March.

The economy expanded as much in the first half of 2007 as it had over the previous year and a half.

But it has slowed markedly since then as households, whose consumption represents more than 60 per cent of economic activity, battle higher mortgage rates and global inflation in oil and food prices.

The consensus among economic forecasters is that private consumption growth will run around 1.6 or 1.7 per cent through 2008 and 2009, the weakest rate since 2000.

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That is in spite of household incomes being underpinned by brisk wage growth, the prospect of tax cuts and a tsunami of dairy cash.

The problem is that the necessities of life - housing, food and energy - are gobbling up a larger share of people’s incomes, leaving less to spend on other things.

The housing market has flipped from one in which house prices were climbing and borrowing costs were low to one where house prices are flatlining but borrowing costs are rising.

After doubling over the the previous six years house prices, as measured by the Real Estate Institute’s national median, have been going sideways since May.

But the long boom has pushed the average house price to six times the average household disposable income, nearly twice its long-term average.

Households with mortgages are consequently carrying much more debt relative to their incomes than they used to and are more exposed to interest rates.

And with fear and suspicion now the dominant sentiment in international credit markets, the days when New Zealand banks could tap cheap money offshore to fund home loans are over.

Two-year fixed mortgage rates are now the highest they have been for nearly 10 years.

The average mortgage rate being paid is around 8 per cent, the highest since October 1998, and the Reserve Bank expects it to approach 9 per cent by 2009.

About 30 per cent of all fixed-rate mortgages, representing a quarter of all mortgage debt, come up for an interest rate reset over the next 12 months. At currently available mortgage rates these borrowers will face increases of 0.7 to 1.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile the plateau in house prices is expected to turn off a phenomenon which has turbocharged the domestic spending side of the economy in recent years: the wealth effect.

That is when people borrow and spend some fraction - a few cents in the dollar - of the increase in the value of the equity in their homes, allowing spending to grow faster than incomes.

The biggest new factor on the positive side of the income ledger is the prospect of a bumper dairy payout.

It will pump about $4 billion more cash into the economy than last season, says Westpac chief economist Brendan O’Donovan. And it will all get spent, he believes.

While some farmers will take the opportunity to reduce their debt, others will borrow to expand their operations. Rural land prices have already risen sharply as farmers do what they always do and capitalise improved returns, O’Donaovan says.

“In aggregate they won’t be paying down debt, they will be leveraging up.”

But it takes time for higher farm incomes to flow through the rural towns to the big cities.

And every silver lining has its cloud.

The global “agflation” that is boosting dairy farmers’ incomes is also making trips to the supermarket an increasingly expensive business.

Likewise the tightness of the labour market underpinning wage growth is partly because of a dwindling of net migration inflows as a widening income gap lures more and more New Zealanders across the Tasman.

The Reserve Bank forecast inflation to be above 3 per cent all through this year.

Crucially, it also expects it to remain in the top quartile of its target band of 1 to 3 per cent through 2009 as well, even with interest rates and the dollar remaining at their current elevated levels.

Those projections assume $1.5 billion worth of tax cuts, which may well prove to be on the low side, and do not include the impact of the emissions trading scheme on transport fuel costs from the start to 2009.

This makes for an environment in which the central bank has little”headroom” to accommodate further upward pressure on inflation.

Yet the international environment might deliver just that.

The global credit crunch could well get worse before it gets better.

If 2007 is anything to go by, when global risk aversion goes up the kiwi dollar goes down and investors lose their appetite for the carry trades which underpin the exchange rate.

That might be blessed relief for exporters but it pushes up the cost of imported goods.

The biggest uncertainty overhanging the economy in 2008 is how the global credit crunch, arising from the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, will play out. Rising global interest rates would be bad news for us, a country up to our neck in debt.

---

This story was found at:
Copyright ©2007, APN Holdings NZ Limited

Posted in Foriegn Agriculture, Alternative Crops & Enterprises, Organic vs Conventional Faming, Over Regulation of Agriculture, Sale of Meat Direct to Consumers, Lester Spell, Mississippi Politics, Grass Farming, Dairy Farming, How Agriculture affects Everything else, Smaller Government, Freedom in Agriculture, Rural Development, Farm Subsidies, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Agrarianism, Big vs Small Farms, Mississippi Agricultural News, Family farm Opportunities | Print | No Comments »

Farmland Price — Bubble ?

31. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

We can hope that we are wiser than we were in the boom of the 70’s & 80s, but . . . . .

Quite a Cash Crop: The map shows changes in farmland prices in the U.S. from the end of 2006 through August 2007. The states shaded darkest are those with the largest gains. Above, a snapshot of rising farmland and pastureland prices in less than decade. The cropland chart combines both categories of land.   Midwestern agriculture is on the cusp of unprecedented profitablility, or the brink of disaster. You pick. We still have 7 million ‘good’ acres of CRP that ‘could’ be released for cellulosic, or grain, production. Perhaps that would buy the Presidents farm bill signature.   BARRON‘S COVER       Don’t Bet the Farm Farmland prices have soared, and bulls say underlying trends will keep the boom going. Sound familiar? By JIM MCTAGUE YOU’VE LIVED THROUGH THE TECH-STOCK BUBBLE. The dot-com bubble. The residential-real-estate bubble. Now, get ready for the cropland bubble. - At year-end 2007, farms — the latest count shows that the U.S. has 2,089,790 — are what Miami condos and San Diego McMansions were at year-end 2004: properties so hot that they’re likely to have a meltdown in their future. As city slickers in many parts of the nation see the market prices of their homesteads deflate faster than a New Year’s party balloon, farmers are watching the values of their land swell by annual double-digit percentages. Nationwide, farmland prices skyrocketed 50% over the past three years, to an average of close to $2,200 an acre through August, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While that’s the latest month for which federal data are available, there’s no doubt that prices are still sprinting ahead. - Ground zero for the phenomenon could very well be Iowa, which, like a newly active volcano, sits at the center of a massive dome of rising farm and pastureland prices stretching across America’s heart and beyond, from Ohio to the Dakotas. Bidders for Iowa farmland have become almost as eager as the politicians scurrying around the Hawkeye State desperately stumping for next month’s presidential caucuses. Mike Duffy, an economics professor at Iowa State University, calculates that the average year-end farm price in the state will be a record $3,908 an acre — $508 higher than the USDA’s August estimate (see map). Prices will have jumped an average 22% this year, he estimates. THE PHENOMENON ISN’T confined to the Midwest. In some Eastern states, where residential development has squeezed farmland supply, prices have doubled over the past five years. (The costliest U.S. farms are in Rhode Island, averaging $12,500 an acre.) And in the West, states like Montana and Wyoming have seen prices of both farm- and pastureland soar. Virginia Benz, a broker at Prairie Rose Real Estate in Steele, N.D., says that good, productive farmland is up 30% this year in her state, to the highest level she’s seen in her 30 years in the business. Even “the poorest, most unproductive land is selling for $600 an acre,” she marvels. Some purchasers are from Minnesota, where rural land is even pricier. All bubbles have catalysts, real or perceived. The tech-stock boom was driven by the belief that technology was changing both our lives and investment realities. And the residential-realty boom was driven by faith that interest rates would stay very low and that the baby boomers’ wealth would keep the new, second- and vacation-home markets robust for decades. The catalysts in the farmland bubble are federal subsidies to ethanol producers and the belief that ethanol demand will keep rising and that China’s and India’s new wealth will keep boosting global commodity prices. Indeed, U.S. farmers are switching to corn from other crops, curbing supplies of food grains. Nationwide, from 2002 to 2007, the number of acres on which corn was planted rose 24%, to 86.1 million. And the energy bill recently signed by President Bush and strongly backed by both parties mandates that oil refiners eventually boost ethanol use as a gasoline additive to 36 billion gallons a year from the current seven billion gallons. Aided by a drought that reduced food exports from Australia, net U.S. farm income will hit a record $87.5 billion this year. Americans spent $642.5 billion on food in 2006, up 4.5%. And warnings have begun appearing in print — see the Dec. 8 issue of The Economist — on TV and online about the end of “cheap food.” Farm rents also are climbing, up more than 16% since 2003. Even so, an investor who buys land will have no problem finding tenants to work it for him, says agricultural-property auctioneer Rex D. Schrader of Fort Wayne, Ind., because, with commodity prices high, they believe they will still be able to make fat profits. Rising rents appeal to Wall Streeters who want a piece of the hot action but don’t know a corn stalk from a pole bean. Schrader, who auctions off 50,000 acres a year in 38 states, says that 10% of his customers are investment groups of five or six people who want in on the current boom. Farming has become so lucrative that households with more than $1 million in investable assets rose by 17% in both Dakotas from 2005 to 2006, versus 9% in New York and 10.5% in California, reports the Phoenix Affluent Marketing Service in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Nebraska’s ranks of millionaire households’ rose 16% in that span. MANY FLUSH FARMERS are reinvesting their gains in additional acreage. This means that the market isn’t nearly as leveraged as was residential real estate, says Iowa State’s Duffy, and so is less prone to becoming a bubble. Furthermore, farmers can lock in profits on futures exchanges at current prices going out two or three years. Indeed, 2008 futures for corn, soybeans and wheat reached new highs in late-fall and early-winter trading. Investors are so sold on this story line that they still are buying farmland in water-starved areas of Georgia. “People still strongly believe that land is a good investment,” says Ben Hudson of Hudson and Marshall Auctioneers in Atlanta. “The drought had no adverse impact on prices.” Bruce Babcock, another Iowa State economist, e-mailed Barron’s that the passage of the ethanol provisions in the just-signed energy bill assured him that there is no bubble building. He went out and bought some corn acreage himself. But the case for farmland isn’t airtight. In fact, some smart money that invested in Iowa farmland in 2000 is bailing out, happy to have made a profit. According to Duffy, 56% of Iowa farmland was owned by farmers from 2000 to 2005. The other 44% was owned by investors. The split today is 60% farmers and 40% investors. Steve Leuthold no longer owns farmland he picked up for a song in the last bust. Leuthold, chief investment officer of Leuthold-Weeden Investment Capital in Minneapolis, sees ominous parallels between today’s boom and those of the 1970s and 1980s, which saw farm prices soar. In Barron’s Aug. 9, 1982, issue, he wrote a cover story entitled “Grim Reapers,” which called the farmland market’s top. His prediction of a 50% correction was overly optimistic; he ended up buying two Iowa farms at $600 an acre, 75% below their peak prices. THAT BOOM WAS TRIGGERED in 1972 when President Nixon signed a wheat deal with the former Soviet Union and also improved relations with China. The subsequent rise in U.S. farm exports lasted until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and President Carter canceled the wheat deal in protest. This couldn’t have occurred at a worse time, coming as it did in an era of fuel shortages and gas lines, inflation and soaring interest rates. Nonetheless, farm prices continued to rise, aided by easy financing. Few saw disaster arriving…until it arrived. This time around, Leuthold sees a more moderate pullback — 15% to 20% in three to five years — because buyers are employing less leverage and interest rates are lower. His main concern is that the ethanol boom rests on shaky economic underpinnings. Without government subsidies, ethanol makes no sense, he maintains. And the subsidies could disappear because of a backlash against costs of producing the fuel — higher supermarket prices and huge demand on water supplies. The measure was opposed by groups representing the world’s undernourished and by competing agricultural interests like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Big Oil dislikes the program, too, and Big Oil has deep pockets to lobby Congress. The rush for ethanol is easily the biggest factor behind rising farm prices. And a glut of ethanol could develop quickly as more and more farmers try to get rich quick by switching production to corn. In fact, the glut may be here. More than 130 ethanol plants now operate in the U.S., up from around 80 three years ago, while the number of gas stations selling ethanol is as underwhelming as the number of drivers demanding it. Recently, construction on three proposed U.S. plants was halted amid a growing oversupply of the fuel. Hart Energy Publishing reports that U.S. ethanol inventories climbed 12% from August through September, while average prices had slid from $1.91 a gallon to $1.67. ETHANOL ENTHUSIASTS DISMISS such setbacks as temporary blips that will disappear with the help of the new mandate for greater use of ethanol. But the fuel does face major challenges. For one thing, while cheaper than gasoline, it contains less energy than that fuel, producing lower mile-per-gallon readings and forcing motorists to refuel more frequently. In addition, the oil industry sees problems getting that corn crop to the distilleries and the resulting product from the distilleries to refineries. Because ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, it can’t be shipped through gasoline pipelines. What else could spoil the ethanol story? Ken Green, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says a significant decline in oil prices would burst the bubble. Scientific breakthroughs could hurt, too. Duffy says the $64,000 question is whether efforts to produce ethanol from seaweed will succeed. Ethanol, of course, isn’t the only force pushing up farm prices. A global commodities boom has been under way for several years now, lifting prices for a broad variety of foods. But contrary to the assurances of farmland promoters, demand for food isn’t endlessly elastic. Food expenditures in the U.S. dropped three times since World War II — in 1974, 1981 and 1992, years when consumers were pinched. At some point, possibly soon, rising prices for some crops will trigger declines in per-capita consumption. Meanwhile, other countries are providing more and more competition for American farms. The U.S. share of the global corn market, now about 60% or 70%, is headed to 55% or 60%, says the USDA. And high prices encourage farmers to keep ramping up production, ultimately leading to a glut of whatever crop is hottest — and lower prices. Marc Faber, a Barron’s Roundtable member who manages investments from Hong Kong, bought farmland in New Zealand some years back in anticipation of growing global food demand. But he considers U.S. farmland wildly overpriced and, as a result, sees arbitrage opportunities in farmland-rich Russia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The Russian embassy in Washington says that farmland around Moscow sells for about $1,000 an acre, while in the hinterlands the price is about $400. Peer Voss, a farmland broker in Uruguay and Paraguay, says prices are still relatively low in those countries despite rapid appreciation in the past two years. He says land in Uruguay has risen 250% and now ranges from $800 an acre in the least desirable areas to $1,700 in the best. The most imminent threat is the housing meltdown. Leuthold says that, historically, a convulsion in one part of the realty market eventually has affected all others. In the agricultural sector, ranchland and recreational farmland already have been quietly hit, having peaked in 2006, according to brokers. Jack Horton of Vale, Ore., who has been selling rangeland for 36 years, says prices are down 10% on average, and as much as 20% to 30% in some areas of his state. Recreational plots, bought by sportsmen, have also tanked, he adds. The drought in the West also is hampering demand for working ranches, as is the high cost of cattle feed, resulting from — what else? — the ethanol boom. BROKERS TOOK HEART WHEN Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management spent $175 million recently on the 250-square-mile Forbes Ranch in Southern Colorado for a holiday retreat. “It’s the American dream to own part of the West,” Doug Hall of Hall & Hall a multi-state brokerage company located in Billings, Mont., says. “There are an awful lot of people who made a lot of money who want to enjoy it while they have it.” But smaller places — under 5,000 acres — away from the mountains are harder sells, he acknowledges. John Stratman, a broker for the Mason & Morse Ranch Co. in Glenwood Springs, Colo., concurs that the lower end of the market has slowed. “I don’t think the buyers have gone away. They’re on the sidelines because of all the negative publicity about the residential and subprime markets; and they’re sitting there waiting to see which way the economy goes.” If the economy does teeter into a recession, that would make continuation of the farmland boom all the harder. At this stage, any investor should be wary of betting the farm on a farm. A Miami condo might be a better deal. After all, you can buy a nice one now for just 60% or so of what you would have had to shell out three years ago.

Posted in Farmland Prices, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Farm Subsidies, Alternative Energy | Print | No Comments »

WTO Rules Against Cotton; Other Subsidies

19. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

Two pieces on the WTO ruling against US subsidies for cotton & other crops follow.

Couple of thoughts :
1) As you know I think subsidies harm agriculture & the quicker we can move to a more free market system the better it will be.
2) The ruling against cotton will be particularly harmful — short term — to Mississippi agriculture and rural communities that depend upon cotton/ gins for a big portion of their economic activity. But, again, eliminating subsidies should have a long term posititve impact on rural Mississippi.
3) WTO is bogus. Globalist bodies have no right to be dictating our trade policies and the politicans that enacted this should be tried for treason. ( Their oath is still to the Constitution).

WTO releases official ruling against US cotton subsidies

Turkish Press : World Trade Organisation to rule on US farm subsidies: sources

Posted in Cotton, Mississippi Agricultural News, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Farm Subsidies, Smaller Government, Freedom in Agriculture | Print | No Comments »

Half the World Soon to Be in Cities - What does this mean for Ag ?

18. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

A while back I posted this article on the Growing Rift between Rural & Urban interests.

According to the article below. The growth in urban populations is going to continue to outpace rural increases to the point where within a couple of decades, over half the world’s population will live in cities and a huge percentage of them will be poor.

How should agriculture respond to these needs ? What are the implications for rural Mississippi ? Demographics mean everything.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/27cnd-population.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Half the World Soon to Be in Cities

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: June 27, 2007

By next year, more than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, will for the first time live in towns and cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released today.

The onrush of change will be particularly extraordinary in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 “the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation,” the report says.

This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, said George Martin, author of the report, “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.”

Cities will edge out rural areas in more than sheer numbers of people. Poverty is now increasing more rapidly in urban areas as well, and governments need to plan for where the poor will live rather than leaving them to settle illegally in shanties without sewage and other services, the United Nations says.

In Latin America, where urbanization came earlier than in other developing regions, many countries and cities ignored or fruitlessly tried to retard urban growth. “Now the levels of insecurity and violence are a product of this approach,” said Mr. Martine, a demographer and sociologist. “People have been left to fend for themselves and have created these enormous slums.”

A billion people, a sixth of the world’s population, already live in slums, 90 percent of them in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 7 in 10 urban dwellers live in a slum. The region’s slum population has almost doubled in just 15 years, reaching 200 million in 2005. Its urban population is already as large as North America’s.

China, the world’s most populous nation, is now at the peak of its urban transition, the report says. Urbanites will outnumber peasants within a decade. China will then have 83 cities with more than 750,000 residents, but only five with a population of more than five million, according to the report.

In fact, the report predicts that the bulk of the urban population growth is likely to be in smaller cities and towns, not the 20 mega-cities that dominate the public imagination. The future lies in places like Gabarone, Botswana, whose population is projected to rise to 500,000 in 2020 from 18,000 in 1971, as much as it does in chaotic, sprawling metropolises like Lagos, Nigeria.

Among the mega-cities with populations of more than 10 million, only Lagos and Dhaka, Bangladesh are expected to grow at rates exceeding 3 percent over the coming decade. Such super-sized cities today contain 9 percent of all urban inhabitants, while smaller cities and towns account for more than half.

“Many of the world’s largest cities — Buenos Aires, Calcutta, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Seoul — actually have more people moving out than in, and few are close to the size that doomsayers predicted for them in the 1970s,” the report says.

The report notes that while rates of urban growth have slowed in most regions of the world, the story now lies in the scale of growth in the sheer numbers of people.

The first great wave of urbanization unfurled over two centuries, from 1750 to 1950, in Europe and North America, with urban populations rising from 15 million to 423 million.

The second wave is happening now in the developing world. The number of people living in urban areas will have grown from 309 million in 1950 to 3.9 billion in 2030. By 2030, the developing world will have 80 percent of the world’s urban population.

If the coming population growth is helter skelter, with inadequate services and sprawling slums, it could pollute urban water sheds with untreated sewage and contribute to rising crime and violence, Mr. Martine said. The result of that approach is already apparent in existing slums.

“The poor settle in the worst living space, on steep hillsides or river banks that will be flooded, where nobody else wants to live and speculators haven’t taken control of the land,” he said. “They have no water and sanitation and the housing is terrible. And this situation threatens the environmental quality of the city.”

But cities are also engines of economic growth, the report notes more optimistically. “Cities concentrate poverty,” it said, “but they also represent the best hope of escaping it.”

Posted in Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life | Print | No Comments »

Subsidies — Their cost & my head scratching ?????

18. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

I have spoken out strongly against the USDA & for the elemination of subsidies.
It is no secret that I believe federal subsidies paid to farmers are a bad idea. There is a two fold reason for this.

1) They violate nearly every principle I believe about limited government — I think subsidies not only violate the Constitution, but also God’s Law and the lessons of history & economics. Beyond that they are Marxist to their core and represent an intrusion and an affront to liberty.

 2) I am convinced that subsidies are immeasurably harmful to the very farmers & rural communites they profess to want to help on more fronts than I care to list here ( a different post maybe ?)

That being said, while I have some ideas, I cannot completely explain the level of opposition they get from much of the mainstream press, liberals, neo-conservatives & city folks in general.

It is certainly not that the folks at the New York Times, the Enviormental Working Group, and other liberal media. non profit “think tanks” , and Democratic politicians have suddenly become doctrinare libertarian advocates of smaller government.

For Big government, balanced budget neo-cons who are likewise not concerned about too much government controll of our lives or aren’t hindered by questions about whether or not something is a legitimate function of government, but just seek for government micromanagement to be more efficient & business like are really confusing because of the following :

The TOTAL “Farm Bill” is less than 1% of the Federal Budget. ( not much fat would be cut out if it were eleminated entirely).
Of this 1% — roughly $88.8 Billion USDA Budget in 2007 the following closer breakdown shows that most of this does not go to farmers in the form of subsidies but rather to things like food stamps,  foriegn aid, even “rural development” includes things like grants to buy police cars & remodel government buildings in small towns.

Here are some particulars :
“Farm Programs” : $12.4 Billion or 13.9% of the total
* That means that 86% of the “Farm Program” is not subsidies paid to “rich farmers” at the expense of “poor farmers in developing nations”. Or, put another way, the farm subsidies represent slightly over 1/100th of 1% of the Federal Budget or .00139 %. I am fairly certain that even someone as dumb as me could find a whole list of other boondoggles that are much more costly.
Domestic Food Programs ( i.e. welfare, food stamps, etc): $51.4 Billion or 57.8%
That’s right, government welfare makes up almost 60% of the “Agriculture” budget
Other areas that fall under the “Farm Bill” heading include $2.4 Billion in “Foriegn Ag Service”, $3.0 Billion for “Rural Development”, $2.5 Billion for “Food Safety Inspection” and $ 5.1 Billion for “Conservation Programs”.
I wonder how many of the neocons would be in favor of cutting out the Foreign Aid or liberals at the Enviormental Working Group would want to drop off the 5 billion of Conservation Programs ? ( I think we all know the answer).

So again, I am not defending farm subsidies — FAR from it –, I just wonder why they are so derided by people who otherwise never met an increase in government spending or power that they didn’t like.

I have some ideas, but I’ll save them for later . Any of you have any thoughts that you’d like to share, please feel free to.

LR

Posted in Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Cotton, Farm Subsidies, Smaller Government, Freedom in Agriculture, Rural Development | Print | No Comments »

Jimmy Carter vs Cato & a Midwest Grain Farmer on Subsidies

13. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

Here are three opposing pieces on Farm Subsidies by former President liberal former president, globalist agitator and sometime humanitarian Jimmy Carter — the somewhat libertarian Cato Institute — and Midwest Grain Farmer/ Agri Journalist John Phipps ( in that order)First Carter’s piece for the Wall St Journal:
( if you follow the link to the originall article, there are lots of good hyperlinks to follow for more info)

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/12/10/does-jimmy-carter-really-speak-for-african-farmers/

Quote:

Subsidies’ Harvest Of Misery By Jimmy Carter Monday, December 10, 2007; Page A19Congress can still act decisively this year to right a wrong that is hurting both small American farmers and the poorest people on the planet. A long-overdue debate is taking place on reform of the 1933 farm bill, passed during the Great Depression to alleviate the suffering of America’s family farmers. I was a farm boy then, and the primary cash crops on my father’s farm were peanuts and cotton. My first paying job was working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, measuring farmers’ fields to ensure that they limited their acreage and total production in order to qualify for the life-sustaining farm subsidy prices. Tragically, in its current form this legislation does not fulfill its original purposes but instead encourages excess production while channeling enormous government payments to the biggest producers. This product of powerful lobbyists now punishes small-scale farmers in the United States and is devastating to families in many of the world’s least affluent countries. It is embarrassing to note that, from 1995 to 2005, the richest 10 percent of cotton growers received more than 80 percent of total subsidies. The wealthiest 1 percent of American cotton farmers continues to receive over 25 percent of payouts for cotton, while more than half of America’s cotton farmers receive no subsidies at all. American farmers are not dependent on the global market because they are guaranteed a minimum selling price by the federal government. American producers of cotton received more than $18 billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2005, while market value of the cotton was $23 billion. That’s a subsidy of 86 percent! The Carter Center works primarily among the world’s poorest people, including those in West Africa whose scant livelihood depends on cotton production. For instance, in 2002 Burkina Faso received 57 percent of its total export revenue from cotton, while Benin depended on cotton exports for more than 75 percent of its national export revenue. Overproduction in the United States leads to the dumping of U.S. cotton on global markets, which drives prices down. In recent years, cotton exported from the United States has been sold 61 percent below its cost of production. Fragile African economies that depend on agricultural exports, especially cotton, are sometimes devastated by these practices. A 2002 report by Oxfam International estimates that in 2001 sub-Saharan Africa lost $302 million as a direct result of U.S. cotton subsidies, with two-thirds of the loss sustained in eight countries — Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Chad and Togo. Compared with American humanitarian assistance, the subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers amount to more than the U.S. Agency for International Development’s total annual budget for all of sub-Saharan Africa. Two amendments being proposed in the Senate represent the best hopes for fixing what’s wrong with the system of crop subsidies. Sens. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have proposed the Farm, Ranch, Equity, Stewardship and Health Act of 2007 as an amendment to the farm bill; it would replace the subsidies with an insurance program protecting farmers from excessive losses and catastrophes such as flooding or drought. This approach would correct many of the flaws I’ve noted in the current farm bill. An amendment being circulated by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) would place a $250,000 cap on annual subsidy payments to a farmer. Various schemes under the present law allow these limits to be grossly exceeded, with some big farmers receiving several million dollars annually. Both amendments would go a long way toward making the farm bill fair for farmers at home and abroad. I am still a cotton farmer, and I have been in the fields in Mali, where all the work is done by families with small land holdings. Cotton production costs 73 cents per pound in the United States and only 21 cents per pound in West Africa, so American farmers do need protection in the international marketplace. But Congress has a moral obligation to protect American agriculture with legislation that will serve our national interests, that will feed hungry people and that does not suppress the ability of the poor to work their way out of poverty. Former president Jimmy Carter founded the not-for-profit Carter Center, an international nongovernmental organization based in Atlanta.

Second, Cato :

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/12/10/does-jimmy-carter-really-speak-for-african-farmers/

Quote:

Does Jimmy Carter Really Speak for African Farmers? by : Daniel Ikenson Jimmy Carter’s grasp of economics apparently hasn’t sharpened in the 27 years since he imparted a wretched U.S. economy to his successor. Or perhaps his poor-man-advocate bona fides should be scrutinized more closely. In a Washington Post op-ed today, the former president rightly protests the egregious U.S. farm bill for its continuation of lavish subsidies to American commodities’ producers. Carter explains how subsidies breed overproduction, which suppresses world commodity prices, thereby reducing the incomes of poor farmers in countries where commodities dominate the economy. Carter favors proposed amendments to the current farm legislation that would replace subsidy programs with crop insurance programs to protect farmers against excessive loss, which is an improvement, though not a solution. But, in the last paragraph of his article, Carter contradicts everything he writes before that, revealing himself to be no friend of poor farmers abroad or simply ignorant of economic processes. He writes: I am still a cotton farmer, and I have been in the fields in Mali, where all the work is done by families with small land holdings. Cotton production costs 73 cents per pound in the United States and only 21 cents per pound in West Africa, so American farmers do need protection in the international marketplace. Now wait a second. This is a very curious statement. If cotton production is so much cheaper in West Africa than in the United States, then more production should happen there and less should happen here. If Carter is really interested in the well-being of West African farmers, “whose scant livelihood depends on cotton production,” he should advocate free trade in cotton. Why instead does he advocate that U.S. farmers be protected in the international market place? West African incomes will continue to suffer if U.S. subsidy programs are replaced by U.S. tariffs, which is what Carter seems to be advocating. How does it help Malian farmers lift themselves out of poverty if they can’t effectively compete on their advantages? Higher U.S. tariffs would only drive down the world price (as subsidies do) and likely compel other importer nations to raise tariffs to protect their own producers, shrinking the market further for Malian farmers. Meanwhile, does Carter have any empathy for America’s lower income families?Apparently, not enough. Protection of U.S. cotton farmers artificially raises the prices of textiles, which means that clothing and shoes are more expensive than they would be otherwise. Expenditures on necessities, like clothing and food, account for a higher proportion of the budgets of lower income families. Thus, artificially raising the prices of those products is akin to a regressive tax – it burdens those with less income disproportionately. Perhaps Carter is not writing as the founder of the Carter Center, an international NGO, as the byline indicates, but as a small cotton farmer from Plains, Georgia, who believes the current subsidy system unfair because the big farms get most of the largesse.

Finally Grain Farmer/ Agri Journalist John Phipps’ comments :
(Phipps takes subsidies, but thinks they’re a really bad idea)

http://johnwphipps.blogspot.com/

Quote:

Sunday, December 09, 2007 This explains the single term, maybe…Former President Jimmy Carter, whose accomplishments after his presidency dwarf the actual tenure in office (much like Herbert Hoover, whom I also admire), demonstrates why his grasp of economics didn’t help him in office. In an editorial in the WaPo this week, he concludes with this astonishing bit of illogic. I am still a cotton farmer, and I have been in the fields in Mali, where all the work is done by families with small land holdings. Cotton production costs 73 cents per pound in the United States and only 21 cents per pound in West Africa, so American farmers do need protection in the international marketplace. But Congress has a moral obligation to protect American agriculture with legislation that will serve our national interests, that will feed hungry people and that does not suppress the ability of the poor to work their way out of poverty. [My emphasis] Mr. President, the fact that your production costs are way above your competitors does not automatically create an entitlement. Otherwise there would be no reason to control costs. What is does mean is you should not be in the cotton business. I know, I know- “This will mean the end of all cotton farming in the US!!!”. I think not. We grow about 16% of the world’s cotton and use a quarter of it here, exporting the rest. In fact, the US ships 40% of the world’s exports. If we stopped subsidizing cotton today, where would cotton futures open tomorrow? I’m guessing significantly lower than the current US supported price, but high enough to get the acres needed to supply the world. Oddly, this seems to be the case for other commodities. Posted by John Phipps

Posted in Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Farm Subsidies, Smaller Government, Freedom in Agriculture, Rural Development | Print | No Comments »

Agriculture of the Middle — Why should you care ?

3. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

There is a fairly new project/ web site called “Agriculture of the Middle” that anyone who cares about farm policy of rural culture should check out.

 This piece is particularly worth checking out —

Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle?

Posted in How Agriculture affects Everything else, Agrarianism, Big vs Small Farms, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Rural Development | Print | No Comments »

Family Dairys vs Industrial, Globalist “MegaFarms”

3. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

During my 2007 campaign for Ag Commissioner , two themes that repeatedly came up were how to best help Mississippi’s family farms & the possibly pending disapperance of the Dairy industry in Mississippi

I found the piece below on John Phipps’ excellent blog; is this just market forces at work ? Is the consolodation & even globalization of dairy farming a market-driven inevitability ? For at least two dozen reasons, I sure hope not.

You call that big?…

The injection of enormous new profits into agriculture should be the answer to the survival of small farms, right? I’m not so sure.

We’re just beginning to grasp that the economies of scale for industrial ag are over the horizon. From new module-building cotton pickers, to Class MMDXVL combines, fewer actual people are needed to reap those higher profits.

While smaller agrarian farms will flourish, the middle cannot hold, I believe. It cannot occur overnight, because of land ownership patterns, but the trend to consolidation is immune to government policy. The economics are simply too powerful to tolerate irrational business models.

Proof #16 - This announcement from EU dairy giant Danone:

Quote:

Danone is mulling the creation of several giant dairy farms around the world in order to secure supplies amid rising milk prices.The farms could be similar to that run by Al Safi, its partner in Saudi Arabia. Al Safi runs reputedly the biggest dairy farm in the world, situated 40 kms from Riyadh with a herd of 32,000 cows imported from Europe and the US. Danone uses milk from the farm to produce yogurts.

I will be in Las Vegas this week talking to the top of our dairy industry at the Elite Producers Conference. Those guys can teach the grain industry a few things, I’ll bet.

Posted in Agrarianism, How Agriculture affects Everything else, Big vs Small Farms, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Rural Development, Family farm Opportunities | Print | No Comments »

Freedom-loving Farmer Arrested in Mich

3. December 2007 by P. Leslie Riley.

If this doesn’t make your blood boil, then you have no idea what this country was founded upon — if it does, get involved.

Even though the election is over, our battles have just begun :
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071203/gumpert

Old McDonald Had a Farm…and He Got Arrested?

Just in time for the holidays, four beef carcasses hang from the improvised slaughterhouse at Greg Niewendorp’s 160-acre farm outside East Jordan, in the north of Michigan’s lower peninsula. It should be a happy Thanksgiving because, for the first time in eight months, his farm isn’t under quarantine by Michigan’s Department of Agriculture (MDA) and Niewendorp is free to slaughter cattle from his herd of twenty and fulfill contracts in time for the holidays to the couple dozen friends and neighbors who prize the specially bred grass-fed beef he produces.
Yet it’s also a bittersweet time, because the scars from his battle with the MDA are still fresh. Last February, he refused to subject his cattle to a mandatory state program to test cattle in his region of Michigan for bovine tuberculosis–a program he argues, among other things, is unnecessary because he distributes his beef privately to people who trust his animal-raising techniques, but which the state insists is essential to ensure the beef isn’t tainted.

The state immediately slapped a quarantine on his farm, prohibiting the movement of animals onto or off the property. Then, in August, an MDA inspector arrived, escorted by two Michigan State Police officers, and attempted to convince Niewendorp to have his cattle tested by a vet waiting down the road. Niewendorp angrily ordered the inspector and police off his property, telling them that, without a search warrant, they were trespassers.
Finally, in early October, a team of MDA inspectors and vets arrived again, this time with a search warrant and two sheriff’s deputies–and backed up by a half-dozen state trooper SWAT team members and three emergency medical vehicles down the road.

Niewendorp is convinced that “they would have liked to have killed me,” but this time he didn’t resist, so the vets did their deed and left. All the tests came back negative and the state lifted its quarantine last month.

While the matter is over for the state, Niewendorp says it’s just begun for him. “They’ll need a search warrant to do the test next year.” He’s also organizing the Michigan chapter of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association and says next year more Michigan farmers will refuse the test.

These should be happy times for owners of small farms. Not only are commodity prices way up, but the buy-local movement has caught fire around the country. Rapidly growing numbers of people are embracing the romantic notion of buying food directly from area farmers, sometimes driving hours into the countryside to buy veggies, meat and milk.

The number of farmers markets over the last five years has increased more than 50 percent, to nearly 4,500 from 2,800, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Since the European idea of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was adopted by a handful of US farms twenty years ago, enabling consumers to buy shares in the output of local farms, the concept has been adopted by as many as 3,000 small farms across the US. Thousands of consumers are trekking out to dairy farms to purchase suddenly popular unpasteurized milk for its perceived health benefits over the pasteurized stuff, according to the Weston A. Price Foundation, a promoter of raw (unpasteurized) milk consumption. (Retail sales of raw milk are prohibited in most states).

Cracking Down

But as the re-emergence of a farm-to-consumer economy draws increasing amounts of cash out of the mass-production factory system, the new movement is bumping up against suddenly energized regulators who claim they want to “protect” us from pathogens and other dangers.

Federal and state agriculture and health authorities say farmers are violating all kinds of regulations to meet fast-growing consumer demand, such as slaughtering their own hogs and cattle instead of using state and federally inspected facilities, and selling unpasteurized dairy products and cider without the proper permits. Farmers feel there are other issues lurking in the background and driving the regulators–for example, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) under which farm animals are tagged with computerized chips for tracking; in most states the federal program is voluntary, but in Michigan it is mandatory, so the regulators who tested Greg Niewendorp’s cattle for bovine TB also affixed radio frequency identification tags to their ears.

Whatever the immediate cause, the result is the same: regulators are cracking down on small farms with a ferocity that has their new urban customers aghast.

In just the last few weeks, there have been at least a half-dozen notable incidents. In Virginia’s Nelson County, ten agriculture agents, aided by state police hauled off 62-year-old custom hog farmer Richard Bean, and his 60-year-old wife, Jean Rinaldi, for slaughtering their own hogs, charging them with a felony and eleven misdemeanors. Bean and Rinaldi were frustrated with the expense of having to haul their hogs more than two hours to the nearest slaughterhouse, and felt they could do it as well or better themselves.

In New York, health authorities shut down Munir Bahai’s apple cider operations in Victor on his busiest weekend of the season in early October, costing him $4,500 in sales because he wasn’t pasteurizing his juice. He says consumers travel thirty miles or more to buy his cider simply because it isn’t pasteurized.

Also in New York, the Department of Agriculture and Markets a few weeks ago quarantined the raw milk yogurt and buttermilk at Barbara and Steve Smith’s Meadowsweet Farm outside Ithaca, saying the state’s raw-milk permit program allows the direct sale only of milk, and prohibits other dairy products. Barbara Smith says she doesn’t sell the dairy products but rather distributes them to 130 consumer shareholders of a limited liability company (LLC) she set up as the owner of her farm’s eight-cow herd, and therefore is outside the purview of the state’s raw-milk permit system.

Some farmers are responding as Greg Niewendorp did in Michigan, with outright civil disobedience. In Pennsylvania, dairy farmer Mark Nolt continues in a standoff with agriculture authorities because he refuses to sell his raw milk under a state license. In August, authorities confiscated thousands of dollars’ worth of milk products using a court order. He argues that because he has private contracts with his area customers, he doesn’t need a license, and he continues to sell directly to consumers, despite the fact he could be arrested at any time.

The situation has gotten so bad that a group of consumers and lawyers banded together last summer to provide legal support to besieged farmers via the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Its first two cases involve farmers in New York and Pennsylvania–both distributing unpasteurized milk privately to consumers. Protecting Whom?

As much as regulators like to talk about protecting consumers, when you speak with them, it sometimes sounds more like they want more to protect corporate interests.

Bridget Patrick, who is Michigan’s Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Project Coordinator, told me recently that the case of Greg Niewendorp resisting testing of his herd “is a human health issue as well as an industry issue.” Bovine tuberculosis can be passed on to people, she stated. Moreover, the fact that Michigan is one of a few areas in the US that still has evidence of bovine TB “has been a problem for the whole country” because some foreign markets won’t buy American beef as a result.

She strongly suggested that Niewendorp was a spoilsport for not going along with the testing. ” We need to have everyone participate in the program” to prove bovine TB has been eradicated. Dairy regulators use the protection argument to justify their crackdown on raw-milk producers, though they tend not to mention the obvious: If consumers are buying milk unpasteurized, then that doesn’t leave much for processors to do. Nor do any of the regulators like to talk much about the new economic model that is emerging in the farm-to-consumer model. Farmers who sell their cattle to processors may receive $2 a pound, compared to anywhere from $5 to $18 a pound, depending on the quantity purchased and the cut of meat, when they do their own slaughtering. Similarly, when dairy farmers sell milk to processors for pasteurization, they receive in the neighborhood of $1.50 to $2.50 a gallon (depending on bacteria counts and whether the milk is organic). When they sell direct, they receive $5 to $10 a gallon. Such discrepancies help explain why the farm-to-consumer model is “the gateway to farm prosperity,” says Pete Kennedy, a lawyer who represents farmers both for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the Weston A. Price Foundation. Lawyers like Kennedy argue that buying food directly from local farmers amounts to a contract between private parties, covered by the US Constitution. That argument won the day in Ohio earlier this year, when a state court overturned an Ohio Department of Agriculture revocation of a dairy farmer’s milk license, ruling her “herdshare” arrangement, whereby dozens of consumers bought shares in the farmer’s cows so as to gain access to raw milk, was legitimate. But this battle has a long way to go. The wide discrepancy in prices farmers receive by selling direct and cutting out corporate distributors and processors, not to mention grocery chains, may help explain why the government is coming down as hard as it is on farmers. Regulators and their legislator bosses are clearly prepared to use intimidation to put a halt to such nonsense before it gets completely out of hand.

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Posted in Over Regulation of Agriculture, Efforts to Harm Rural Interests through "Divide & C, Beef Cattle, Sale of Meat Direct to Consumers, Grass Farming, Food Safety, Agrarianism, Freedom in Agriculture, Smaller Government, Difficult Issues in Agriculture & Rural Life, Big vs Small Farms, Family farm Opportunities | Print | No Comments »