05 Apr 2006
Allowing cattle tests is bad policy

What am I missing here? NAIS will increase our export capability but testing every cow for BSE won't? How's this work? How stupid does USDA think we (the farmers and ranchers of this country) are?

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Monday that the federal government can't let an Arkansas City company test its cattle for mad cow disease because doing so would be bad for international trade.

(link) [Wichita Eagle]

23:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

19 Mar 2006
Mad cow excuse

This is shaping up to be the poster cow for NAIS ... what a bunch of hooey! It's already mandatory to keep records for tax purposes on every sale: if they can't track the cow from those, no amount of additional record keeping would help.

Investigators may never figure out where the Alabama cow with mad cow disease was born and raised, in part because the U.S. lacks a livestock tracking system the Bush administration promised two years ago.

(link) [USA Today]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

18 Mar 2006
The Right is Catching On

Never thought I'd link a piece on WorldNutDaily that I agreed with, but it seems as though the wingnuts on the far Right are becoming aware of NAIS. They even included a link to NoNais.org! They're getting afraid. Very afraid.

As they should be. But here's the real question: with the Left opposing NAIS too, why is the program still steamrolling ahead? It's a bipartisan issue, with its only support seeming to come from the bureaucracy and corporate agribusinesses. Makes you wonder who our Congresscritters are really listening to, eh? Well, OK, it shows you flat out who holds the real power in this nation. And it ain't us.

Reaction to the National Animal Identification System is shining a light on a growing problem that independent producers believe is threatening the entire livestock industry. Vertical marketing practices in the meat processing industry, combined with the industry's access to and influence on the Department of Agriculture and Congress, has the small producer against the ropes. The NAIS may be the final blow that puts independent ranchers and small farmers down for the count.

(link) [World Net Daily]

via TMN, who also runs an anti-NAIS blog at NoAnimalID.com

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

22 Feb 2006
Get the Number Off the Beast

No NAIS!

Today is the birthday of our first president, and in his honor NoNAIS.org is calling for us to spread the word about this nightmare that's lurking in the wings. I urge you to visit the site, get yourself informed, and take the appropriate action.

“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, least we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

Justice William O. Douglas,
US Supreme Court (1939-75)

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

12 Feb 2006
Bird Flu Detected in Italy and Greece (AP)

EU ChickensWell, it's moving rather inexorably into the heartland of Europe, and it won't be long after that before it travels to the New World as well. Is there anybody out there who actually believes that NAIS would stop this? Or even slow it down? The "experts" are still worried about human pandemics:

The U.N.'s chief bird flu expert said the spread of bird flu, which has been ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, increased the chance that the virus would mutate into a form transmitted between humans and set off a pandemic. Most human deaths from the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.

and I suppose that they're right. I'm more worried about my girls, and the lack of viable vaccine, and the destruction of my livelihood. Not to mention the roll-through effect this will have on the economy: it'll make BSE look like walk in the park. But there's not much to do at this point other than sit back and wait, and hope for the best.

AP - Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

04 Feb 2006
Free Markets

Perchance this should have been posted under 'Politics', but as the direct subject of the article I'm about to dissect is catfish farming in Vietnam, it's here in 'Agriculture' and here it shall remain...

There's been a most excellent blog on the roll for some time now, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, by Ed Brayton, who covers a variety of subjects from a mostly libertarian perspective. It was there that I discovered a link to Radley Balko's FoxNEWS essay entitled Catfish Wars: Why Is U.S. Blocking Capitalist Progress in Vietnam?. Ed characterizes it as "brilliant". I see it as a glaring example of the shortsightedness of libertarians these days, as determined as Pirates of the Caribbean to "Take what ya can, give nothin' back!".

In their zeal to dismantle trade barriers, they seem unconcerned about the reasons the barriers are in place and the effects their removal would have. They seem to see "low prices" as the final goal - but I (and, I believe, others of a paleolibertarian stripe) tend to view liberty as the ultimate political and economic destination.

I'm not going to quibble with Mr. Balko's economic analysis: he's right, you know. Government "protection" from competitors is as morally abhorrent as theft, because, well, it is theft. Nor will I argue from a nativist perspective, that jobs and enterprises should be saved simply because of their geographic location within a nation-state. That's called bigotry. However, I am going to quibble with his argument that all barriers to trade should be dropped. Nuance is a concept that most libertarian scholars (especially at the Cato Institute) seem to have lost.

So let's take a look at Mr. Balko's primary argument:

Today, however, when it comes to one market, it's the government of Vietnam that's fighting for the economic freedom of its people. And, sadly, it is the United States that's using the power of the state to deprive the Vietnamese of the right to earn a living. The market is catfish. And the behavior of American politicians in the so-called "catfish wars" has been consistently appalling.

As for the questions of which of our respective governments is fighting for a market economy today, he's dead on: it's the Vietnamese. He's also right about the appalling behavior of our politicians in the "catfish wars", but the behaviors he finds appalling are not the the root of the evil, just a symptom:

The politicians obliged. Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott was first up, introducing a measure in the U.S. Senate – through an obscure amendment attached to an unrelated appropriations bill, naturally – declaring that henceforth, only the U.S. strain of catfish could henceforth be called "catfish."

This is a labeling dispute, and while Mr. Balko claims that "the difference between the two varieties is almost nonexistent", that's not simply not true. I've eaten both varieties - and they are different. Look at the case of cheese: it's now completely legal to import MPC's (milk protein concentrates - a highly processed and condensed milk, mainly from bovines other than cattle) add some flavor and sell it as "cheese". Is this not fraud? Should people know what they're eating? To quote Malcolm X, "You can put a shoe in an oven but that doesn't make it a biscuit!". My brand of libertarianism condemns fraud. Mr. Balko's seems to accept it, at least in this case, as furthering a growing capitalist economy.

While on the subject of labels, let me note that manufactured goods entering the US must be labeled with their country of origin, but food is exempt. Hmmm...

The essay continues, noting that regulators in Alabama and Louisiana out-and-out banned Vietnamese catfish from those states:

Both states cited an antibiotic Vietnam allows its fishermen to use that hasn't been approved in the U.S., though as William Anderson of the Mises Institute notes, added protection from disease would seem to make the fish safer. Congressmen from those states then pushed the FDA for a nationwide ban on the imports. The FDA, thankfully, refused.

Let's leave aside the issue of antibiotics making fish safer for a moment (I think the reverse) and assume that it's true. This would then give Vietnamese catfish farmers a leg up on their American counterparts, due to a government regulation. What appalls Mr. Balko as a libertarian is that politicians acted to protect some of their citizens from foreign competition - what appalls me as a libertarian is that those same politicians are busily nailing the feet of the American catfish farmers to the floor with regulations. Mr. Balko apparently expects us to run a race with the Vietnamese in this condition, and than to stifle our complaints when we're throughly beaten, as we obviously weren't as "efficient".

Precisely. We're not as efficient because of the insane and idiotic amount of regulations our government imposes on us. Let me talk for a minute about something I know fairly well: poultry production.

Again, I'm going to ignore my particular situation as a free range, all natural producer and address something that affects the industry generally, from factory farm to backyard flock. I'm talking about USDA meat inspection.

In the state of Indiana, if I slaughter my own chickens, I'm forbidden by law from selling more than 1000 of them in any given year, or from selling any of them to restaurants, supermarkets or food processors. And I could not sell any of them outside the borders of the State of Indiana - apparently, driving a farm slaughtered chicken across the Wabash renders it poisonous. If I want to get into those markets, I have to have my birds killed and packaged under USDA inspection.

In my case, this adds nearly $2 to the cost of each bird. I'm sure that factory poultry farms have lower costs, but the point is that they have additional regulatory costs, too.

The USDA is currently considering allowing poultry imports from the People's Republic of China. If they do so (which is an incredibly stupid thing from a disease standpoint, but that's not the subject here), and they almost certainly will, and if I were a Chinese poultry producer, I could ship all the chickens I could pack to the US, selling them in any state to any customer, commercial or otherwise, with only Chinese government "inspection". Which, incidentially, is practically non-existent and priced accordingly - for all practical purposes it's free.

So soon, not only will I have to compete with the lower costs of labor, the subsidized energy and the tax incentives the Chinese government gives it poultry producers - I'll have to do so while paying through the nose for the privilege of having my government inspect each of my birds.

And starting real soon, I'll be forced to place an RFID tag on each bird, adding to my costs (the program is called NAIS). Foreign producers are exempt, of course.

The net effect of these one sided policies, free trade while maintaining excessive regulatory environments, is the the destruction of American industries. You could apply this same analysis to the auto, textile and other other industries that have been decimated by foreign competition. We're being asked to compete while our government blindfolds and handcuffs us - I have no fear of foreign competitors, as I know I can raise as quality a chicken as anyone anywhere. I do however, fear my own government making it impossible for me to sell that bird at a price my markets will bear while allowing underpriced foreign imports into the market with no regulatory penalty.

Libertarians today seem to want to implement totally free markets piecemeal - they have no problem with different rules for different players as long as the market (the consumer) "wins" with a lower price. There was a phrase for this in ancient times: it was called a "Pyrrhic victory". If this continues we will shortly find ourselves a socialist nation of unemployed masses - and does anyone recall where that leads to, politically?

Free trade is a good thing, but without the same set of legal rules and restrictions on all players there's nothing free about it. We should focus our efforts on getting government out of the business of regulating our very existence - we should work to prevent a communist state from emerging here, and not on helping former communist governments discover the miracles of the market.

If this is a focus on "America First" then I guess I am a nativist in a certain sense. But I don't want to be asked to compete as a slave with an army of free men - I know what the outcome of such a contest would be. So, barring the dropping of the onerous regulatory burden that prevents fair competition (a contest with equal rules applicable to all), I will continue to support such limited protectionist efforts as have been offered to save what's left of the American economy. The alternative is our economic suicide.

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

28 Jan 2006
NAIS Featured on Radio Show

From Sugar Mountain Farm comes this news about a radio show today from MetroFarm covering NAIS. See the links for all the details.

Coincidentally (or not) I was talking about this very topic yesterday with Miller's Meats out in Waynetown, Indiana, when I picked up some beef for delivery. And he asked the same question that Walter asks: Cui bono? And came up the pretty much the same answer: the taxing authorities, who are bound and determined to clamp down on unreported meat sales. He knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with food safety or animal health issues. And I must say it was reasonably encouraging to find another local farmer who actually gets it.

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Jan 2006
AFBF delegates aid in policy development

How stupid can some people get?

Another issue for discussion, animal identification, showed the need for source verification and proof of age of livestock for export markets. "The USDA says animal ID programs are strictly for health reasons, such as trace-back if a disease outbreak occurs," explained [Montana Farm Bureau Vice President Bob] Hanson. "We see the value not only for animal health safeguards, but as a way to make your livestock more profitable when premiums are paid for those animals that are part of the ID system."

Dude, NAIS is slated to be mandatory ... if you're expecting a premium to be paid for animals registered in the system, then all animals are going to get the premium, because all of them will have to be registered before they can be sold or slaughtered.

And that's not a premium, that's a price.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The American Farm Bureau Federation showed its commitment to America's farmers and ranchers by voting on policy that keeps the country's farmers and ranchers profitable and productive during the organization's 87th annual meeting in Nashville.

(link) [ The Prairie Star]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

13 Jan 2006
USDA Using Satellites to Monitor Farmers

Man, this is scary shit on several levels - ever see the movie Enemy of the State? And I was wondering about enforcement mechanisms for NAIS ... no longer. Remember: it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!

AP - Satellite images are now increasingly turning up in courtrooms across the nation as the Agriculture Department's Risk Management Agency cracks down on farmers involved in crop insurance fraud.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

11 Jan 2006
NAIS

Walter Jefferies from Sugar Mountain Farm had an interesting post yesterday on NAIS - the National Animal Identification System. He also commented here, asking for my opinion and help in "getting the word in the streets".

I've been aware of this bit'o'nonsense for quite some time, and have written my Congresscritters and state reps over it. To a man they responded with the "party line": this is required for "national security" (if they were Republicans) or this is required to rein in factory farm abuse if they're Democrats. The original legislation passed both houses of Congress by wide margins, and is supported by most breed associations and trade groups on some level, including many normally quite friendly to small producers.

Basically, this will mandate "premises registration" for any facility used in animal production (i.e. registering your farm or ranch with the state government, who will then share the database with the USDA and each other) and eventually will require individual marking of each animal - how this is to be accomplished is unclear.

I tried last year to get my fellow farmers here excited over it, to no avail. My mentor in this business, Kevyn, more or less supports the idea - and he's big in 4H, and well aware of the reporting requirements. Most other organic or natural farmers around here are Red Corpuscles in the Reddest of the Red States, and if Dubya and Mitch say it's OK, well, then, God bless'em and fill out yer forms.

In short, although I find the idea idiotic and draconian, fighting it on a political level is pretty much pissing into the wind, at this point.

But there is a saving grace here: as with any government program, the devil's in the details, and we're talking some serious details here.

The premises registration doesn't bother me: I do that every April 15th anyway. I also tag and/or tattoo my large livestock, and keep detailed pedigrees on most of them. Will this program mean more paperwork for me - sure, as any government program does. I already have an egg license, a food service license, and a reefer truck food distribution license. I file quarterly taxes, monthly sales taxes, monthly food/exempt sales taxes and keep my corporate information on file at every supplier I use to qualify for the sales tax exemptions. What's a few more forms on cattle, sheep and goats?

Ah, but there's the rub. The problem isn't registration and tracking of large livestock - it's poultry that causes the real headaches. I keep 200 laying hens and run meat birds in flocks of 200-400 at a time. And that pales in comparison to commercial operations: the average commercial flock is 60,000 birds. And we produce over 150,000 flocks per year. That's 9 billion meat chickens a year. Additionally, there's nearly a billion birds moving thru the national laying flock (about 300 million active layers at any given time) on a yearly basis. So make that 10 billion birds. Add in other poultry (ducks, turkeys, geese, commercial quail, Cornish hens, etc), and you're up to nearly 11 billion birds produced in the United States every year.

Theoretically, each bird will have to be "registered" and then each movement of the bird (from brooder to house, and from house to slaughter) recorded. That's three records for each bird, minimum. To accomplish the tracking, the records will have to contain the bird ID number, and a pointer back to the premises of origin, as well as the information pertinent to the record (movement from/to, birth, death, etc.). That's 33 billion records in this database just for poultry. Every year. Now add the rest of our livestock in and you'll see the implementation problem.

It'll be a real pain for me to track each of my birds, no doubt about it. But think about the problems the factory farms will face here: it'll be damn near insurmountable without considerably driving up their costs. And while legislators simply regurgitate the party line to me, I can assure you that they listen far more assiduously to those making large campaign donations, such as agriPAC's.

But assume it flies. Assume that we all dutifully tag and register each bird, cow, horse, pig and llama. And record every move it makes: my recent trip to Dulls would've generated over 100 records. And given the governmental proclivity for verbosity, I guarantee that each record will be considerably larger than it needs to be. What kind of computer system are they going to use to store and track this data? Whatever they use, it'll be quickly overwhelmed - it's simply not feasible to track this much data over any extended period - and the data will only be useful if tracked over an extended period.

In short, our best hope for defeating this proposition, or at least watering it down, is to depend on the technology being unable to implement it, and on the large producers to scream so loudly when it's actually mandated (currently it's strictly voluntary, but will be mandated at some point) that our Congresscritters sit up and take notice.

My prediction? This will go ahead, and will eventually morph into a logging system, where each producer logs activity for a given premise, which will be filed yearly. Obnoxious? Sure - government is obnoxious almost by definition. But it's not going to put me out of business, and I really think that, once the nightmare of actually doing it becomes apparent, it'll tone down to something we can live with. I hope I'm right.

One final caveat - the only thing that could literally force small producers out of business would be a bio-terror attack originating from a farm. Imagine a terrorist organization buying a small farm in the heartland and intentionally infecting the livestock with ... bird flu? anthrax? BSE? and then selling them through normal channels to slaughter. Once the epidemic was controlled, you can bet the public clamor for shutting down "insecure" livestock operations would be wild and successful. Of course, an Iranian genetic engineer could modify the tomato to exhibit more of it's familial characteristics, and backyard gardens would go the way of the dodo, too.

In the final analysis, it's all a matter of education, public perception, and a willingness to accept the responsibility of a free society. As Franklin famously quipped, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

00:00 /Agriculture | 2 comments | permanent link

Previous 15 entries