Comments JMG3Y has made

  • Tom: IMO you are overlooking the pathway through which powerful interests drive these agencies. Yes, they are driven by powerful stakeholders but the pathway is through elected officials who control the agency budgets and have the power to call congressional hearings. In my limited experience, nothing drives agency administrators more than the fear of being summoned and drawn and quartered in front of a congressional hearing, their budgets cut or being given another large but unfunded mandate. Nothing. Agency mandates already considerably exceed their budgets so agency administrators have to carefully pick and choose what the agency does. Congressmen get political benefits from passing enabling legislation but not from raising taxes (funding the mandate). IMO when regulatory authority is moved from one agency to another, the powerful stakeholders simply move their influence (money) to the members of a different congressional committee. Congressmen compete for these different committees based on the powerful interests in their district and their sources of campaign contributions. This event proves my point: Uh oh. Industry forces FDA to drop oyster safety plan http://www.foodpolitics.com/2009/11/uh-oh-industry-forces-fda-to-drop-oyster-safety-plan/ From what I've observed from my limited interactions at a policy level with administrators from both agencies, the USDA functions better in many respects than does the FDA. The number one priority of the FDA is human pharmaceuticals and biologicals because that is where they can experience the greatest damage (think congressional hearings, sound bites and budgets) from a "wreck" and the stakeholders are the most powerful. Because the agency's risk from food "wrecks" is lower, that part of the agency will always be more underfunded relative to its mission than will those parts of the agency with higher priority missions.On Why the USDA has no business overseeing conditions on factory farms, and more posted 1 week, 3 days ago 16 Responses

  • IMO this question must be approached from a systems perspective that incorporates all the c major components of the alternate pathways of the complete biogeochemical cycles of the elements involved across time. For example, one overlooked aspect is that although methane has a higher GHG effect than carbon dioxide, its atmospheric half-life is at least an order of magnitude less. Another is overlooking the entirety of the alternate pathways for the breakdown of the biomass in the forage ecosystems that ruminant animals may be a part of. Once formed, plant biomass of the type eaten by ruminants is inevitably degraded by either aerobic or anaerobic pathways involving herbiovores of differing scale and location somewhere, whether fungi, protozoa, bacteria or animal. These herbiovres are often in symbotic relationships, such as the ruminant and the protozoa and bacteria in their rumens or the fungi and bacteria in the soi matrix. These cycles have alternate pathways with intermediate steps in which the output from one stage is the input to the next. For example, if an animal herbivore eats the aerial biomass as the first step of the pathway, their manure is the input to the next stage occurring at the soil interface but if the aerial biomass had died and fallen on that soil, that soil stage would have begun earlier in the degredation pathway with a different, "higher quality" input. As a consequence of the differing inputs, the soil stage produces differing outputs. Ignoring this complexity, which we don't understand very well, likely falsely attributes environmental balances and consequences. IMO, we can't consider only inputs and outputs of single components while failing to consider the whole and expect to reach valid conclusions upon which to base our choices.

    On Debunking the meat/climate change myth posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago 92 Responses

  • Farm bill considering USDA Ag Statistics?

    In case people are unaware, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service conducts a census of agriculture every 5 years; the 2002 census being the last published, the 2007 census having just been done. These contain a mass of facts that might inform the debate.

    2002 Census of Agriculture Volume 1: State Level Data

    Pick a state, say Iowa to see a very interesting list of tables of aggregate data (meaning one has to be very careful of definitions!)

    For example, pick tables 43 and 44 (pdf), Value of Land and Buildings: 2002 and 1997 and Value of Machinery and Equipment on Operation: 2002 and 1997. Note that in 2002 the value of land and building for an Iowa farm was $707,000 and equipment was $100,000.

    According to Iowa State U estimates in 2007 IOWA LAND VALUE SURVEY (pdf), average farm land value was $3,908 in 2007, 2.1x the year 2000 values. That means the average Iowa farmer, the farm bill target, is at the very least easily over the millionaire mark and many are multi-millionaires.

    These statistics are available for all states down to the county level and for most all commodities.
    On How should sustainable-food advocates respond to the latest farm bill proposal? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses

  • Now wait one minute here

    Does the distinction of human-induced vs. "natural" really matter? Does it change the consequences if the change is human-induced or due to natural variation? No, not in the least.

    Implicit in this distinction is the idea that "nature", when perturbed, will return to a human species friendly optimum, that this intersection of human life enabling conditions exists precisely for humans. That if through our actions we push one or more metastable parameters in this dynamic system we call earth over a threshold to a different human life unfriendly optimum, Gaia or some higher being will come running in to save us from the consequences of our behavior.

    Or, alternatively, that anything we humans do we can undo simply because we did it. This either represents supreme overconfidence in our intelligence to both recognize signals and develop solutions or a failure to understand the implications of lagged positive feedbacks in dynamic systems on timeframes.

    Finally, that nature is so big we puny humans really can't alter its course. Oh, really?

    Nope, all these are flawed ideas based on misperceptions, misunderstandings or outright ignorance.

    </soapbox; start caffeine inflow>On 'The null hypothesis says warming is natural'--An inappropriate test, and one that would fail anyway posted 2 years, 11 months ago 4 Responses