Is Federal Crop Insurance Policy Leading to Another Dust Bowl?

As the southern Great Plains get hotter and drier, is federal policy that encourages farmers not to adapt to climate change leading to another Dust Bowl?That's the troubling question raised by a new EWG report that shows how a provision in the federal crop insurance program provides a strong financial incentive for growers to plant the same crops in the same way, year in and year out, regardless of changing climate conditions. What's worse, this program is focused on the same southern Great Plains counties hit hardest by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the worst man-made environmental disaster in American history.The federal crop insurance program guarantees farmers' earnings from their crops won't fall below a percentage of their usual income. The percentage is set based on a multi-year average of a farmer's actual crop yields. Averaging good and bad years grounds the program in reality.But a provision called the Actual Production History Yield Exclusion – snuck into the 2014 Farm Bill during conference negotiations – allows growers to drop bad years from their average crop yield calculations. The government simply pretends these bad years didn't happen. In some cases, more than 15 bad years can be thrown out when calculating the average yield, resulting in artificially inflated insurance payouts.It makes sense for crop insurance to give growers a break if they're occasionally hit by one or two bad years, but keeping growers on a treadmill of failed crops and insurance payouts is foolish. Helping farmers adapt to the new weather conditions would be considerably better, and was exactly what helped growers survive the Dust Bowl and return to productivity.The southern Great Plains are getting hotter and drier. Drought has been common over the last 10 years and forecasts show the number of days above 100 degrees quadrupling by 2050. Implementing conservation practices to adapt to changing climate conditions is vital for growers who want to stay in business.Some, but not enough, growers are already adopting conservation techniques in this region. Savings from ending the misguided yield exclusion policy could be used to help more growers change the way they farm to face the challenges posed by a changing climate

'Retired' Sensitive Cropland: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Falling commodity prices have renewed farmers' interest in expanding the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, which protects environmentally sensitive land by paying farmers "rent" to take it out of crop production. CRP has long been the cornerstone of federal conservation policy, but its benefits are fleeting. Once the rental contracts expire, farmers go back to planting crops and the benefits are lost. Long-term or permanent conservation easements would do a much better job of mitigating the negative environmental impacts of American agriculture.That's the finding of a new EWG report that shows how conservation easement programs are better for the environment and are better investments for taxpayers than CRP. Traditional row-crop agriculture is increasingly causing environmental and public health problems. Threats to public health through contaminated drinking water, poor air quality and toxic algal blooms are widespread and costly, and fish and wildlife habitats and populations face ongoing risks.Although CRP provides conservation benefits that help alleviate these threats, the benefits are lost as soon as the contract expires and land is brought back into crop production. Between 2007 and 2014, 15.8 million acres dropped out of the CRP program and were not re-enrolled. These 10-year contracts cost taxpayers an estimated $7.3 billion to rent. At the same time, only 6.7 million "new" acres were enrolled in CRP, for a net loss of more than 9 million acres.Programs that focus on long-term or permanent easements already exist. The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program works with states to target high-priority objectives, including conservation easements. The Wetland Reserve Easement option in the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program enrolls acres in easements to restore, protect and enhance wetlands.Instead of expanding CRP, more funding in the 2018 Farm Bill should go to both of these highly effective programs. That would be a better deal for taxpayers, the environment and public health.

Questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus groups

With fast changing technologies and related human interaction issues, there is an increased need for timely evaluation of systems with distributed users in varying contexts (Pace, 2004). This has led to the increased use of questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus groups in commercial usability and academic research contexts. Questionnaires are usually paper based or delivered online and consist of a set of questions which all participants are asked to complete. Once the questionnaire has been created, it can be delivered to a large number of participants with little effort. However, a large number of participants also means a large amount of data needing to be coded and analysed. Interviews, on the other hand, are usually conducted on a one-to-one basis. They require a large amount of the investigator’s time during the interviews and also for transcribing and coding the data. Focus groups usually consist of one investigator and a number of participants in any one session. Although the views of any one participant cannot be probed to same degree as in an interview, the discussions that are facilitated within the groups often result in useful data in a shorter space of time than that required by one-to-one interviews. All too often, however, researchers eager to identify usability problems quickly throw together a questionnaire, interview or focus group that, when analysed, produces very little of interest. What is often lacking is an understanding of how the research method design fits with the research questions (Creswell, 2003) and how to appropriately utilise these different approaches for specific HCI needs. The methods described in this chapter can be useful when used alone but are most useful when used together with other methods. Creswell (2003) provides a comprehensive analysis of the different quantitative and qualitative methods and howthey can be mixed and matched for overall better quality research. Depending on what we are investigating, sometimes it is useful to start with a questionnaire and then, for example, follow up some specific points with an experiment, or a series of interviews, in order to fully explore some aspect of the phenomenon under study. This chapter describes how to choose between and design questionnaires, interviews and focus group studies and using two examples illustrates the advantages of combining a number of approaches when conducting HCI research

Archaeological Studies for the San Antonio Channel Improvement Project, including Investigations at Guenther\u27s Upper Mill (41BX342)

Under Contract No. DACW63-81-C-0022 to the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio, in the spring of 1981, conducted historic research and survey in the areas to be affected by the San Antonio Channel Improvement Project. In the summer of 1981, extensive archaeological testing and excavation were done to determine the extent of the structural remains on the sites of Guenther\u27s Upper Mill and the Stribling House. In the spring and summer of 1982, the Center documented the removal and replacement of the mill\u27s west wall. As a result of the investigations, it can now be affirmed that most of the foundation of the east section of the mill is still present beneath the ground. The main foundation walls are made of cut limestone and measure two feet in thickness, except for the west wall which is three feet thick. Of the other buildings at various times related to the mill, only portions of a late (ca. 1910) stone and cement foundation for the Reigler Creamery still remain in the ground. The survey revealed no other cultural resources to be affected by the project

Global staffing in developing countries: a case of American and Japanese multinational companies in Vietnam

This paper addresses three research areas of global staffing: to determine the influences of the home country on multinational companies (MNCs) global staffing strategies at their overseas subsidiaries, how institutional and cultural distance affects the \u27context generalisability\u27 of global staffing policies; and how MNCs localize their human resources within their subsidiaries

Human resource management in multinational companies

Globalisation has provoked some interesting speculation on the part of enthusiasts about a \u27globalised economy\u27 in which distinct national economies are subsumed into region-states and companies follow the same set of \u27best practices\u27, adopt a convergent model of organisation that leads to a process of homogenisation in their behaviour and a deterioration of national management models (Rowley & Benson 2002; Bartlett & Goshal 1989). On the other hand, nationalists point out that, for the time being, the world economy is still fundamentally characterised by exchanges between relatively distinct national economies, in which many outcomes, such as the competitive performance of firms and sectors, are substantially determined by processes occurring at the national level (Harzing & Noorderhaven 2009; Rowley & Benson 2002). Far from being stateless, evidence suggests that MNCs remain primarily rooted to their country-of-origin\u27s national business system (Ferner & Quintanilla 1998). Companies are under pressure to maximise the benefits of global co-ordination, while maintaining responsiveness to differences at a local, national or regional level. As a result, MNCs are faced with a \u27think global\u27, \u27act local\u27 paradox (Harzing & Noorderhaven 2009; Rowley & Benson 2002; Smale 2008)

Craftivism

Craftivism is a participative exhibition responding to the resurgent interest in craft as it relates to socially-engaged art practice. It involves 14 projects developed by artists and collectives that work with craft-based traditions and activist practices, and who employ the tactics of ‘craftivism’ (combining crafting & activism) to question the prevailing codes of mass consumerism. The artists involved engage with craft-based traditions through diverse practices including art, technology and fashion. Craftivism has been developed in relation to a range of contexts and includes nine artist-led participatory projects developed with local communities, shown as part of the exhibition. Craftivism is an Arnolfini / Relational project curated by Zoë Shearman (Director, Relational), Geoff Cox (Associate Curator of Online Projects, Arnolfini) and Ann Coxon (Assistant Curator, Tate Modern)

Labour politics in East and Southeast Asia

In East and Southeast Asia, trade unions find themselves in very different relationships with the state, from full incorporation (Singapore) to pluralist competition (Indonesia), marginalisation and exclusion (Malaysia and Thailand). In this paper we will outline the political role organised labour has taken on a range of policy issues including the minimum wage (Indonesia); migrant workers and productivity (Malaysia, Singapore); precarious employment (The Philippines); labour struggles and social movements (Thailand); industrial disputes and the role of unofficial worker representatives in challenging established communist institutions (Vietnam); and claims for distributive justice (Taiwan). We argue that this cross-examination confirms that industrial democracy and development remain a useful heuristic for the study of labour in the region and supports the view that states play a dominant role of 'pacification', with capitalist 'accumulation' being the primary motive and labour conditions subordinated to that agenda