The Free Market Religion

Phil Rockstroh, h/t mathman in the Big Picture comments:

One's sense of self and one's beliefs, as well as, the mythos and traditions of a people are inextricably bound with place, landscape, and social situation. When I was a child, growing up in Alabama and Georgia, on occasions such as backcountry fishing expeditions, I would, at times, come in contact with rural African American farmers who still lived by the agrarian rhythms of the nineteenth century.
Occasionally, taking refuge from the afternoon heat of high summer, we would lounge on wooden porches and snap green beans, and I would listen as they quoted scripture.
The Jesus of their belief system was born of humble beginnings (a mere seed) and grew beneath the hot sun, but, at the height of maturity, was cut down, sacrificed so they may live, then, like their life-sustaining crops, was resurrected as next year's seed crop. Suffused with a metaphoric analog of the criteria they lived day to day, these tales held resonance for these rural, farming people; the metaphors resounded with the verities of place and circumstance. The figure of Christ was as real to them as the snap beans beneath their fingertips.
Now, in an era in which the destination of most all of our objects and accoutrement is the landfill, Deep South mega-churches espouse a cosmology that resonates from a junk food paradigm: a Gospel of The Drive Thru Jesus…when The Rapture comes our corporeal bodies will be cast aside like fast food wrappers.
All in all, for both Christians and for secular-minded, market economy true believers, a belief in economic providence has proven our undoing -- an insistence on its miraculous influence left us mistaking ad-hoc, bubble-borne affluence for a soul-vivifying portion of divine grace. The corporate/consumer state's trickster gods of fast buck commerce offer drive-thru-window epiphanies. Members of the congregation of the Church of Free Market miracles believe their prayers will always be answered: Instantly, the consumer state's homilies of perpetual gratification arrive -- their voices crackling like a burning bush from drive-thru order-boxes.

It really blasts on working class hicks from Georgia and Alabama desperately clinging to their guns, religion and big trucks and SUVs, but it makes some interesting points, the veracity of which we will soon discover.  Actually, for me it was worth reading to find someone more pessimistic than I.

One of those tough springs

Well, so far we've planted about 140 of our 400 acres of corn, and about 50 of our 400 acres of beans.  None of those fields has been in optimal condition, and I've considered quitting what I was doing a number of times.  Probably 20% of the acres should not have been planted at all if we didn't have a ten day weather forecast showing eight days with a chance of rain.  Hopefully things work out for the best.

The one thing I have to remember is that things are a lot better here than in other places.  No matter how frustrated I get when putting in the crops, people along the Mississippi, in Japan and lots of other places have things a lot worse.  I'm doing a job I love, don't have to answer to anybody, and have to take into consideration that the last three years have been amongst the best ever.  I don't have to commute to work, deal with angry clients or get into petty struggles with co-workers (other than dad).  Plus, a little adversity once in a while builds character.  Overall, things are pretty good.

And So It Begins

Yesterday's rain dried up as it reached us, so today we're going to get started, just slightly less than a month behind schedule.  A couple of the neighbors got started yesterday, but we held off to see what the rain did.  At this point, I don't want to get in too big of a hurry, because we only have about 60 acres ready to go, and the weathermen are still calling for rain everyday.  Posting may be sporadic as I try to do a little work.

Update:  Nothing but hiccups thus far.  If I meet the designer of the valve on our starter fertilizer pump, I'm going to punch him in the neck.

Crows Are Too Damned Smart

From a story about the U.S. military considering using crows to locate Bin Laden (h/t the Dish):

The idea of using crows to find the world's most wanted man was based on the work of John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington who has been studying crow behaviour for over 20 years. Working with a population of wild American crows on the university campus in Seattle, Marzluff and his colleagues noticed that birds which they had previously captured seemed to be wary of them and were harder to catch.

The researchers therefore decided to investigate the possibility that crows can recognize human faces, and devised a relatively experiment using rubber masks. They went out on campus and in the surrounding areas wearing either a 'caveman' mask or a Dick Cheney mask. Those who wore the caveman mask caught and banded between 7 and 15 crows on each excursion, but those who wore the Dick Cheney mask did not. 

In the following months, they went out wearing the same masks, walking around  the university campus in pre-determined routes without bothering the crows. They also recruited volunteers to do the same. The crows consistently harassed anyone they saw wearing the caveman mask, scolding them with loud squawks and even mobbing them.

This happened regardless of the size, sex or walking style of the person wearing the mask., and even when the mask was partly hidden under a hat or worn upside down. They were, however, indifferent to the neutral mask - when they saw both masks simultaneously, they would ignore the person wearing wearing it, and instead follow the person wearing the caveman mask and scold them aggressively.

They always disappear when I grab a shotgun, and they sure seem to communicate well with each other. 

Ohio Amish Feel Impact of Meth

A scourge of rural Ohio has begun impacting the Wayne and Holmes County Amish community:

More than 150 Amish men and women filled a farm building this spring to learn about the chemical curse that is surrounding them. Methamphetamine, the drug peddled by outlaw bikers and street-corner dealers for decades, is on the rise in the land of the horse and buggy -- though no one caught with the drug in the area has been Amish.
The rural hills of Holmes and Wayne counties, about 90 minutes south of Cleveland, is a place where violent crime and major drug trafficking have seldom been a problem. Many associate the region with Ohio's largest Amish population, quilt shops and large family farms.
But beneath the idyllic setting is an underbelly of criminal cookers who have begun brewing the gritty, illicit stimulant into a growing drug of choice in a region that might be one of the last in the state to face the drug's scourge.

This is a more serious crime wave than Amish milk smugglers.  Luckily, none of the people caught with meth have been Amish, but the increased drug activity in the area has driven the Amish to meeting with police to understand the problem:

"The devil doesn't care where we live, whether in the city or in the country," said Ed Miller, an Amish general contractor from Apple Creek. "He seeks out the weakest. . . . There's a big concern about [methamphetamine.] We don't want that."
David Smith heads the Medway Drug Enforcement Agency, an anti-drug group that works mostly in Wayne, Holmes and Medina counties. In 2007, the agency dismantled one lab in the region. Last year, it cleaned up 17.

Meth producers have found rural areas to be good places to make the drug.  Meth, along with prescription drug abuse, is slowly growing to become nearly as damaging to rural communities as crack and heroin have been to inner cities.  Last month, the Summit County Sheriff warned highway cleanup volunteers to be careful about handling bottles used in backroad meth production.  This is an epidemic, which was highlighted in the book, Methland, which described the impact of methamphetamine around the community of Oelwein, Iowa.  It is sad how the drug destroys the lives of people so thoroughly.

Poker in the Old West

The History of Poker in the Old West:

 

Whether on a riverboat atop the Mighty Mississippi, or in the smoky dimness of a mining camp saloon, a lucky draw could turn a broken man into a winner. In the days of the frontier west, poker was king with the mustachioed likes of Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, "Canada” Bill Jones, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and hundreds of others.

In the old west towns of Deadwood, Dodge City, Tombstone, and Virginia City, gamblers played with their back to the wall and their guns at their sides, as dealers dealt games with names such as Chuck-A-Luck, Three Card Monte, High Dice, and Faro, by far the favorite in the wild west saloons.

The exact origin of poker is unknown but many have speculated that it originated from a 16^th century Persian card game called As Nas. Played with a 25 card deck containing five suits, the rules were similar to today’s Five Card Stud. Others are of the opinion that it was invented by the Chinese in 900 A.D. In all likelihood, the game derived from elements of various gambling diversions that have been around from the beginning of time.

Poker in the United States was first widely played in New Orleans by French settlers playing a card game that involved bluffing and betting called Poque in the early 1800's. This old poker game was similar to the "draw poker” game we play today. New Orleans evolved as America’s first gambling city as riverboat men, plantation owners and farmers avidly pursued the betting sport.

There is a lot more there.  It is interesting what the roots of gambling are.  I find games of chance interesting, because they often are an entertainment which is similar to the game of life.  When the cards fall right, a guy looks like a genius, when they don't, people think he's a damn fool.  It is always fun to watch the poker tournaments on TV, because almost every show you see a guy just once get dealt the one card he needs when the odds are 92% to 8% against him.

I was thinking about Amarillo Slim and Billy Walters.  Both grew up in the south and started out as pool hustlers.  Listening to Slim, when he wasn't playing poker, he tried to trick guys to get the odds in his favor.  Billy Walters is trying to take as much knowledge as possible to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities.  Neither trusts Wall Street, which is just another casino where the house has the odds in their favor. 

And yet none of those guys, not Slim, not Walters, nor the guys on Wall Street (when they aren't leveraged 30 times) takes as big of a blind risk as farmers do.  Sometimes I don't think farmers can actually understand the risks they are taking, but yet they manage to make a living, and one they love, doing it.  I think it is often like other small businessmen.  They willing take huge risks they don't understand very well, just so they can answer to nobody, and sometimes it just works out.  A lot of the time, it works out because bigger companies don't want to take on those same risks.  Life is funny like that.

Levee Blown

NYT:

EAST PRAIRIE, Mo. — Ruben Bennett, his back bent and his fingers gnarled from a lifetime of labor, has lived all of his 88 years on an expanse of rich farmland here, just below where the Ohio River pours into the Mississippi. He survived his share of floods — including the record-setting one that swept away his boyhood home — but he has never run from one, until now.
For days he returned repeatedly, despite a mandatory evacuation, with the hope of riding out another major flood in his longtime home above his shuttered grocery store. But under threats from law enforcement officials, and the cajoling of his family, he finally agreed to retreat. As explosives tore open a protective levee Monday night, he waited for the news that his home has been destroyed.
“I can’t tell you how I feel, because there no feeling for that,” he said hours earlier, sitting in his daughter’s house — nearby, and safe from possible flooding — where he has been sleeping on the couch. “I hate it so bad.”
The Mississippi River, already at record levels here, keeps rising, fed by punishing rains. As the flood protection systems that safeguard countless communities groan under the pressure, federal officials executed a fiercely debated plan to destroy a part of the levee holding back the river in the area Mr. Bennett calls home for the greater good of the region.
With a flash of light and a massive rumbling that shook windows miles away, the Army Corps of Engineers set off explosives at 10 p.m. along the first of several sections of the earthen barrier, sending 550,000 cubic feet of water a second across the 130,000 acres of farmland known as the spillway. There were 90 homes in the spillway, but under the cover of darkness it was impossible to gauge the initial devastation. “This doesn’t end this historic flood,” said Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, who commands the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, explaining that the river may rise again in a few days. “This is not the end, this is just the beginning.”
Col. Vernie L. Reichling Jr., commander of the corps’ Memphis District, said the blast was successful, calling it “historic as well as tragic.”
The move was a desperate effort to lower the river, which had climbed to about 61 feet in nearby Cairo, Ill., to head off calamity up- and downriver. In Illinois, the pressure on the levee created a geyser, forcing the evacuation of Cairo. In Louisiana, there was concern about whether levees could survive a record flood.
And it raised a new risk in this part of Missouri, which had challenged the plan unsuccessfully in court, because any water filling the spillway would put pressure on an untested secondary levee that protects more populous communities.
Some of the 200 residents in the spillway have argued that the young shoots of corn and knee-high carpet of wheat offered evidence enough that the area was worth protecting. Their claims will be soon be forgotten as the attention shifts downriver. But for these people, some of whom watched the blast, the flooding represents the beginning of a long process they say will drastically change their lives.

That is just a brutal situation.  I remember reading about how the river bottom fields were covered in 3 feet of sand after the Mississippi River topped levees in the flood of 1993, and how it would take a couple of years for those fields to recover.  It would feel worse knowing those fields were intentionally flooded, but that is part of the Army Corps job in maintaining those levees, sometimes they just have to be removed.  When you have a record flood, those choices have to be made.  It will look like a pretty poor decision if those secondary levees fail, but I assume the Corps believes that is unlikely.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Two today, both ag related: First, Pigs have 'evolved to love mud', at BBC:

That analysis has led Dr Bracke to propose that mud wallowing, like rolling, could play a role in reproduction in pigs.
But more fundamentally, Dr Bracke suggests the behaviour could have evolved in pigs' most ancient relatives.
"We all evolved from fish, so it could be that this motivation to be in water could be something that was preserved in animals that are able to do so."
For many animals, this would be too dangerous, because watering holes are ideal places for predators to ambush their prey.
"But pigs, like many carnivores, are relatively large animals with enlarged canine teeth, so they would be better able to fend off an attack."
So rather than pigs needing to cool down in mud because they do not have [functional] sweat glands, Dr Bracke thinks that they "did not evolve functional sweat glands like other ungulates because they liked wallowing so much".

Second, Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto's Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced, at Alternet.  If Don Huber at Purdue is correct about Roundup, we've got a serious problem on our hands:

But Huber says this is not true. First of all, he points out, evidence began to emerge in the 1980s that "what glyphosate does is, essentially, give a plant AIDS." Just like AIDS, which cripples a human's immune system, glyphosate makes plants unable to mount a defense against pathogens in the soil. Without its defense mechanisms functioning, the plants succumb to pathogens in the soil and die. Furthermore, glyphosate has an impact on microorganisms in the soil, helping some and hurting others. This is potentially problematic for farmers, as the last thing one would want is a buildup of pathogens in the soil where they grow crops.
The fate of glyphosate in the environment is also not as benign as once thought. It's true that glyphosate either binds to soil or is broken down quickly by microbes. Glyphosate binds to any positively charged ion in the soil, with the consequence of making many nutrients (such as iron and manganese) less available to plants. Also, glyphosate stays in the soil bound to particles for a long time and can be released later by normal agricultural practices like phosphorus fertilization. "It's not uncommon to find one to three pounds of glyphosate per acre in agricultural soils in the Midwest," says Huber, noting that this represents one to three times the typical amount of glyphosate applied to a field in a year.
Huber says these facts about glyphosate are very well known scientifically but rarely cited. When asked why, he replied that it would be harder for a company to get glyphosate approved for widespread use if it were known that the product could increase the severity of diseases on normal crop plants as well as the weeds it was intended to kill. Here in the U.S., many academic journals are not even interested in publishing studies that suggest this about glyphosate; a large number of the studies Huber cites were published in the European Journal of Agronomy.
If Huber's claims are true, then it follows that there must be problems with disease in crops where glyphosate is used. Huber's second letter verifies this, saying, "we are experiencing a large number of problems in production agriculture in the U.S. that appear to be intensified and sometimes directly related to genetically engineered (GMO) crops, and/or the products they were engineered to tolerate -- especially those related to glyphosate (the active chemical in Roundup® herbicide and generic versions of this herbicide)."
He continues, saying, "We have witnessed a deterioration in the plant health of corn, soybean, wheat and other crops recently with unexplained epidemics of sudden death syndrome of soybean (SDS), Goss' wilt of corn, and take-all of small grain crops the last two years. At the same time, there has been an increasing frequency of previously unexplained animal (cattle, pig, horse, poultry) infertility and [miscarriages]. These situations are threatening the economic viability of both crop and animal producers."
Some of the crops Huber named, corn and soy, are genetically engineered to survive being sprayed with glyphosate. Others, like wheat and barley, are not. In those cases, a farmer would apply glyphosate to kill weeds about a week before planting his or her crop, but would not spray the crop itself. In the case of corn, as Huber points out, most corn varieties in the U.S. are bred using conventional breeding techniques to resist the disease Goss' wilt. However, recent preliminary research showed that when GE corn is sprayed with glyphosate, the corn becomes susceptible to Goss' wilt. Huber says in his letter that "This disease was commonly observed in many Midwestern U.S. fields planted to [Roundup Ready] corn in 2009 and 2010, while adjacent non-GMO corn had very light to no infections." In 2010, Goss' wilt was a "major contributor" to an estimated one billion bushels of corn lost in the U.S. "in spite of generally good harvest conditions," says Huber.
The subject of Huber's initial letter is a newly identified organism that appears to be the cause of infertility and miscarriages in animals. Scientists have a process to verify whether an organism is the cause of a disease: they isolate the organism, culture it, and reintroduce it to the animal to verify that it reproduces the symptoms of the disease, and then re-isolate the organism from the animal's tissue. This has already been completed for the organism in question. The organism appears in high concentrations in Roundup Ready crops. However, more research is needed to understand what this organism is and what its relationship is to glyphosate and/or Roundup Ready crops.

The Roadside Market

The LA Times features the Desert Market in Daggett, California, which sounds like a lot of village markets in the Midwest:

Beer, cigarettes, energy drinks and lottery tickets. They're the lifeblood of this tiny store that has been here for 130 years. It's managed to survive a fire, a population exodus and the loss of business after Interstate 40 was built and fewer motorists passed by the store on old Route 66.

To the people of Daggett, the store is part of their daily routine. They come to gossip, pay their utility bills or stock up on soda. To Joe, the market is a steppingstone to a better life.

The 43-year-old Jordanian immigrant at times spends 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the Desert Market, which is painted a faded turquoise, trying to earn enough money so that he doesn't have to come here anymore. He has saved enough to buy an off-road vehicle, take a day or two of vacation once in a while, pay someone else to stand behind the register now and then.

That's what he loves about Daggett, about the United States.

"If you are determined and you want to do something, you can," he says. "Trust me."

I've stopped at a lot of these places, and they are generally a treat. One nearby village has a store that has closed for months or years a couple of times, and the town just seems dead when it isn't open.

Musical Break

This is a great song, but that is one ugly ass shirt.

Farm Art

CHRISTOPHER GANNON/THE REGISTER

A mural by artist is Gregory Manchess of Portland, Oregon, depicts the Cresco boyhood home of Dr. Norman Borlaug inside the Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Hall of Laureates Thursday in Des Moines.

Des Moines Register:

The first of more than 100 new pieces of artwork for the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates in downtown Des Moines went up this week with a little touch-up help Thursday from restoration artist Rick Van Oel of Des Moines.
The new mural is one of four that will hang under the original 10,000-piece stained-glass skylight, which was reinstalled Wednesday after cleaning and repairs.

The budget for the $30 million renovation project in the old Des Moines Public Library includes more than $3.5 million for artwork, which will be in place for the grand opening in October.

Reminiscing about 2010

April 20 Planting update for our farm:

2010-Corn 100% completed, Beans 0%

2011-Corn 0%, Beans 0%

I kind of miss last year.  Right now in the 10 day forcast, 6 of the 10 days feature at least a 50% chance of rain.  This will be an interesting (read, frustrating) growing season.

Signs that Spring is Here

Tom Bechman gives his list:

Sign #8- Rumors are exploding that corn was planted here, and over there, and there—no one ever knows who's the first one to plant corn in Indiana, not even the person who really is, because so many rumors would just claim someone else had already planted.

Sign #9- Someone paid $5,000 for a barrow, or was it $6,000 for a gilt, and $20,000 for a steer, or was it $1,200 for a wether and $35,000 for a steer. 4-H is just getting underway and the 'who paid what' rumors are already flying. I love it when someone who raised their own or paid a minimal price wins!

Sign #10- Grandma insists on wearing her lightweight cotton shirts. Mind you grandma is 90 and never gets out of her room, where the temperature doesn't vary over 3 degrees F all year long, but it's spring, so by gosh it's warm and time to wear lightweight shirts. …And if I was 90, I would think and do what I darned well pleased too!

I will add, my own sign-the Reds are on the radio.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Top Marginal US Tax Rates, from Edward Harrison:

He is discussing Michael Hudson's explanation for why the U.S. had a 90% top marginal bracket under Dwight Eisenhower and goes back to Adam Smith.  The part about rents seemed appropriate for a farmer's blog:

[Adam] Smith argued, its industrial capitalism would have to shed the vestiges of feudalism. Ground rent charged by its landed aristocracy should be taxed away, on the logic that it was the prototypical “free lunch” revenue with no counterpart cost of production. He noted at the outset (Book I, ch. xi) that there were “some parts of the produce of land for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring them to market.”

In 1814, David Buchanan published an edition of The Wealth of Nations with a volume of his own notes and commentary, attributing rent to monopoly (III:272n), and concluding that it represented a mere transfer payment, not actually reimbursing the production of value. High rents enriched landlords at the expense of food consumers – what economists call a zero-sum game at another’s expense.

The 19th century elaborated the concept of economic rent as that element of price which found no counterpart in actual cost of production. and hence was “unearned.” It was a form of economic overhead that added unnecessarily to prices. In 1817, David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation elaborated the concept of economic rent. Under conditions of diminishing soil fertility in the face of growing demand, value was set at the high-cost margin of production. Low-cost producers benefited from the rising price level. Ricardo helped clarify the concept of differential rent by applying it to mining and subsoil wealth as well as to land. Heinrich von Thünen soon added the more helpful concept of rent-of-location (site value).

The important classical point was that economic rent was produced either by nature or by special privilege (“monopoly”), not labor effort. Hence, it was that element of price that could not be explained by the labor theory of value, except by marginal costs on what Ricardo hypothesized to be “rentless land” as recourse was made to poorer soils. Ricardo’s follower John Stuart Mill explained that being income without labor or other costs, such rent formed the natural basis for taxation.

Yeah, landlords are greedy.  Unless you are my landlord and are reading the blog.

You've Got To Be Kidding Me

So looking at the weather forecast, after today they are calling for a 50% chance of rain or greater for 7 of the next 8 days.  Damn you, La Nina.  This is shaping up to be one long and frustrating spring.  You know, if we were looking at $3.25 corn for fall delivery, I might not get in such a big hurry.  Now we are looking at a wet spring, and I just have this gut feeling that we'll have a very dry summer. Meanwhile, the corn we've already sold could end up being a very high precentage of our fall crop, while prices skyrocket.  I'll be pulling my hair out delivering corn for $5.50 when the elevator is paying $8.50, knowing we've only got half a crop out there.  Please let me be wrong on this, as I am on most everything else.

Rural Counties and Subsidies

Monica Potts looks at farm subsidies and life in rural counties (via Mark Thoma):

  A 2008 USDA report found that over the previous year, the population of rural areas increased at a measly rate of 0.4 percent, compared with a growth in metro-area populations of 1.1 percent, and attributed the difference mostly to people moving into cities. Most rural counties actually saw a population decline. Unemployment has skyrocketed. Children in rural areas are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to die, and more likely to be held back a grade. Rural areas receive more government support in the form of farm subsidies and income support like Social Security, but that's largely due to their aging and more disabled populations. In general, rural communities receive less money per capita to support community services like law enforcement and higher education.
Klein notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an office of Rural Development that supports small-time entrepreneurs and infrastructure development like broadband in rural areas, but spends most of his time arguing against farm subsidies. First, farm life and rural life aren't quite interchangeable, and the billions we spend to support farms, including the $8.3 billion in direct payments and crop insurance we call subsidies, no longer support the actual people who live in rural America. In fact, they support the big factory farms that have eroded the quality of rural life.

The fact of the matter is that while grain farmers have been doing extremely well the past few years, before that, things were tough.  I can remember several years in the late 90's when about half of all farm income was either LDP payments or crop insurance payouts.  Our area isn't too bad for maintaining smaller farms.  We (guys on the other side of the river) have some monkey dirt, where guys can farm small farms and get pretty good returns, and there are a lot of town jobs guys can hold down and farm on the side.  Once you get out west, though, if you aren't farming, there aren't too many other things to do.  Take a look at the census data, and rural counties are emptying out.  It is pretty depressing.  And if the trends continue with oil prices, and we see peak production, things will be worse.  People will be hard pressed to live in the middle of nowhere if gas costs $8 or $10 a gallon.