Note: This is the first of several blog posts that will summarize some initial data we are receiving from USDA on the Conservation Stewardship Program. In January of 2011, the third sign-up period for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) closed and in June National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Chief Dave White reported to the House Read the Rest...
By Todd Moss - I’m thrilled that the 2nd edition of African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors is out this week. Thanks to Chris Blattman at Yale, Callisto Madavo at Georgetown, and others who have used it in their courses, demand for the first 2007 edition was high enough that the terrific Lynne Rienner asked me [...]
By Todd Moss - This is a joint post with Stephanie Majerowicz. As Congress looks for cost savings, a logical first step would be to compare the various investments the USG makes to figure out what gets taxpayers the highest returns. One debate is bilateral versus multilateral, and the administration has signaled a preference toward the latter wherever possible [...]
By Charles Kenny - My Foreign Policy column this week suggests that in the Twenty-First Century, famines can only occur with the active engagement of local leadership – taking away food from producers and/or denying access to agencies delivering emergency relief. In Somalia, the leadership that is denying access is al-Shabab – the group in control of the areas [...]
By Amanda Glassman - This is a joint post with William Savedoff. The latest effort to address aid coordination problems and health system issues – the Health System Funding Platform (the Platform) – is evolving slowly and beginning to recreate the same traps it was supposed to solve. In a paper released this month, Bill Savedoff and I show [...]
By Kimberly Ann Elliott - I wrote here three years ago, during the last food price crisis, that corn-based ethanol subsidies were economically inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and inequitable. So I listened with great interest yesterday to an NPR story on the likelihood that the ethanol subsidy will be eliminated as part of a budget deal. But as I wrote in [...]
By Alan Gelb - This is a joint post with Caroline Decker. With the expansion of cell coverage and mobile banking, millions of poor and rural people can now access financial services. But as financial institutions reach new populations, it is becoming clear that there are other issues keeping people from formal banking, such as the need for identification. [...]By Charles Kenny - My column for Foreign Policy this week has a theme that will ring familiar to anyone who has been around global poverty advocacy for the last few years. It puts a price tag on ending poverty. My price is $100 billion, based on just handing over enough money to everyone worldwide living on less than [...]
By David Wheeler - Progress toward an international agreement to cut CO2 emissions has been stymied by disputes about burden-sharing between rich and poor countries. Many participants assume that poor countries will only begin to reduce emissions after an agreement is signed. This conflict has been shaped by the view that clean energy development is an expensive game that [...]
By Lawrence MacDonald - “Why Think Tanks Hate Women” was the inflammatory subject line on Foreign Policy’s email newsletter this morning. The misleading packaging aside, the relevant FP article by Micah Zenko contained some interesting numbers. In the ten foreign policy-focused think tanks for which Zenko crunched the numbers “women constituted only 21 percent of the policy-related positions (154 [...]
China and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have agreed to collaborate in the sector of renewable energy. The agreement was reached between officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Korean Workers Party (KWP) when the latter were visiting … Continue reading →
: : skip to main skip to sidebar Kopsa Otte Agriculture Blog Kopsa Otte CPAs Advisors have been involved in Income Tax Planning , Estate Planning Succession Planning for over 30 years . For more information about Kopsa Otte services , please contact us via e-mail at lkopsa kopsaotte.com or call 800-975-4829. Friday , July 15, 2011 ANALYSIS : ONLY 23 OF FARM BILL DIRECTLY SUPPORTS AG PRODUCTION Federal farm policy has direct and indirect consequences for Nebraska's economy , in both rural and urban areas . Because of the soaring U.S . debt , some in the media and on Capitol Hill have called for large cuts to the farm bill , which is set to expire next year . Critics say the U.S . cannot afford to financially support farmers at a time of record-high commodity prices . But according to an
By Nancy Birdsall - There was a lot of justified hand-wringing and tough talk too in the media and in think tank and NGO-land about the unseemly use by Europe of its unwarranted voting weight at the IMF to push the election of Christine Lagarde. The appointment this week of Zhu Min, a former deputy governor of the People’s [...]: skip to main skip to sidebar Kopsa Otte Agriculture Blog Kopsa Otte CPAs Advisors have been involved in Income Tax Planning , Estate Planning Succession Planning for over 30 years . For more information about Kopsa Otte services , please contact us via e-mail at lkopsa kopsaotte.com or call 800-975-4829. Thursday , July 14, 2011 FARMLAND'S FIVE-YEAR BOOM MAY END AS INTEREST RATES GAIN' Bloomberg Bloomberg.com reports , A five-year bull market in U.S . farmland values may peak this year as interest rates increase and crop prices decline , Rabobank International said . The story notes , gains in the past five years as high as 70 in Nebraska , were spurred by record grain and livestock prices and the lowest borrowing costs ever . One analyst said that the cost of agricultural land is
By Charles Kenny - In 2003 the world was on the edge of eradicating polio when a virulent outbreak occurred in the Northern Nigerian state of Kano. Efforts to contain the outbreak by vaccinating the local population were stymied when imams in the region said that the vaccine program was part of a U.S. plot to sterilize people in [...]
: , skip to main skip to sidebar Kopsa Otte Agriculture Blog Kopsa Otte CPAs Advisors have been involved in Income Tax Planning , Estate Planning Succession Planning for over 30 years . For more information about Kopsa Otte services , please contact us via e-mail at lkopsa kopsaotte.com or call 800-975-4829. Tuesday , July 5, 2011 WHAT USES MORE WATER , FARMS OR LAWNS Many times I have read in the media about farmers wasting water for production of crops . Actually , according to a recent article in The , Week farmers are actually better stewards of the land than us people that want green . lawns WHAT DOES A NICE LAWN COST Lawn care is a 40-billion-a-year industry in the U.S . Because much of the country is not hospitable to turf grasses—none of which are native species—we use 90 million