Lucky Friday the 13th

We've had some vog, some wind, and some rain. Today was absolutely perfect -- cool, clear, sunny. Then a beautiful evening. Don't feel too sorry for us poor folk stuck out here in the middle of the Pacific!

A Math Lesson

I'm a numbers guy, so when I read in Omnivore's Dilemna that declining corn prices since their heyday in early '70s were forcing "thousands of [farmers] into bankruptcy every week" (p. 53), I thought: "Wait a minute. Thousands (plural) should means three or even more. If three thousand farmers went bankrupt each week, that would be over 150,000 per year. That's a lot of farmers going bankrupt." So I checked. A Kiplinger article from 2003 on the good and bad news of farm bankruptcies reported: "The number of farm bankruptcies is heartening: For 2004, 400-500, same as 2003, a third of early 1990s' counts. " Hardly "thousands every week."

Then I found a 2004 article by the USDA research department which stated: "The number of farms in the United States has declined by two-thirds over the past seven decades, from a historic high of 6.8 million in 1935 to 2.2 million in 2002. While this decline is commonly associated with high rates of farm bankruptcy, a new study by ERS and the University of Arkansas finds the link between dwindling farm numbers and farm bankruptcies to be weak." The article further reported that "during the farm financial crisis of the early to mid-1980s, farm numbers declined to about 2.3 million, and the rate of bankruptcy filings rose to 23.1 per 10,000 farms in 1987."

So how many farms are there? I found that the number of farms hasn't changed much since 1990. In fact there were a few more farms in 2002 than in 1990 -- the recent peak being just over 2.2 million in 1993, and the 2007 number being 2.076 million. If there were around 2.2 million farms in 1987, and 23.1 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, we'd have a high of about 5,000 filings per year.

So apparently farm bankruptcies have gone from a recent high in 1987 of about 5,000, to 1,200-1,500 in the early '90s, to 400-500 in 2003 and 2004 ---- a far cry from "thousands every week."

The moral of the story: Be skeptical. If things don't sound reasonable, they probably aren't correct. As for Pollan's comment, I have no idea where he got his numbers.

Superdelegates

Wondered what they look like. (Doesn't this guy know I-80 runs E-W? Costs him some credibility!)