Robert Buck2 H
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
-283- PANEL DISCUSSION OF IMPLICATIONS Of WEATHER IN AGRICULTURAL POLICY PLANNING Karl Fox , 1 moderator 4 Panel: Robert Buck2 Donald R. Kaldor H . G. Halcrow3 Lauren Soth5 Karl Fox I'm sorry that I wasn't abte to come to some of the sessions myself. It's a little difficult to say anything very intelligent when one does come in cold toward the tail end of the conference. Also, I think it is particularly difficult in an interdisciplinary conference for a person who is steeped in one particular discipline to make any kind of brilliant comment or wise crack that won't be strictly "old hat" to members of another discipline. I would like to mention one thing that I came upon in my reading. just a few days ago. This was a statement by the inventor of the barometer, Toricelli, to the effect that "man lives submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air." Of course, his crops and livestock are also living submerged at the bottom of this ocean of air. There is no escaping the importance of the weather! I doubt that anyone during the conference presentations up to this point has paid much attention to a man named Henry Ludwell Moore. I would like to read you three or four short quotes from two books which were published by Moore in 1914 and 1917. One of these is on the forecasting problem -- crop forecasting or yield forecasting, if you will. If there are USDA people in the audience, especially Crop Reporting Service people, let me say that this is not a current criticism but was made in 1917. Henry L. Moore said then that on the basis of some regression analyses he had made "it is possible for any person from the current reports of the Weather Bureau as to rainfall and temperature in the states of the Cotton Belt to forecast the yield of cotton with a greater degree of accuracy than the forecasts of the Department of Agriculture," and also "from the prospective magnitude of the crop to forecast the probable price per pound of cotton with a greater precision than the 1/Professor and Head, Department of Economics and Sociology, Iowa State University. YFarmer, Waukee , Iowa. ]/Professor and Head, Department of Economics, University of Illinois • .YProfessor ,.Department of~Economics·:and Sociology., Iow·a State .: University ...- ·_· . .§/Editor of the Editorial Pages, Des Moines Register and Tribune. -284- Department of Agriculture forecasts the yield of the crop." Now I'm sure this endeared Henry L. Moore to the Crop Reporting Board! But he did start some people thinking and researching and 1 I suppose in some cases, rationalizing on problems of both weather and economic forecastmg, I note that the theme of periodicities appears at least in the title of the conference and I would like to read you a quotation from Lord Kelvin 1 18 7 6 1 out of a footnote from Moore's 1914 book . Lord Kelvin is being asked by another member of the Royal Society of England, "Suppose you make observations on weather during the sun spot cycle -- 11 years let's say-- now can you analyze these ll years of observations and regard the job as done once and for all -- ..QL will you then want to go on and analyze 22 years 1 33 years and so on." Lord Kelvin's reply was: "I cannot say whether anything with reference to terrestrial meteorology 1s done once and for all. I think probably the work will never be done." So from the employment standpoint I I think we're safe 1 either as meteorologists or economists! There are about three more short passages I would like to mention here. The title of Moore's 1914 book is Economic Cycles-- Their Law and Cause. Moore investigated yields of four crops6 in Illinois and weather records from about 1860 1 and came out with this kind of summary: "The investigation of these four crops taken together leaves the general conclusions: (a) That there is a rhythmical movement both in the yield of crops and in the rainfall of the critical (growing) periods which is summarized in the compound cycle in which the constituent elements are a ground swell of 33 years, and its semi-harmonic and a short super imposed cycle of eight years with its semi-harmonic; (b) that the cyclical movement in the weather conditions represented by rainfall is the funda mental persistent cause of the cycles of the crops," Just one more quotation along this line and I'll turn the rostrum over to Harold Halcrow., You see 1 Henry Moore was primarily an economist. I think he had been influenced at Johns Hopkins University by an astronomer -- a man named Simon Newcomb -- who introduced him to periodogram analysis of time series and other techniques I but Henry L. Moore was really an economist. And this is where he came out toward the end of his book: "The links in the sequence of causation were completely established. The fundamental persistent cause of the cycles in the yield of the crops is the cyclical movement in the weather conditions represented by the rhythmically changing amount of rainfall. The cyclical movement in the yield of the crops is the fundamental persistent cause of economic cycles" ( and by this he meant business cycles) . .§/Hay I corn and a couple of others. -285- I am simply saying here that over 50 years ago there was at least one man who was vitally interested in the interconnections between meteorology, crop yields in agriculture and fluctuations in the rest of the economy. Now some of his fellow economists had a higher opinion of his meteorology than of his economics, but that is another story! Harold Halcrow has been to, I think, all of the conference sessions here. Harold Halcrow, most of you know, is head of the Agricultural Economics Department of the University of Illinois. I am going to ask Harold to make the opening statement for the panel. Harold Halcrow This conference has added to knowledge which should be useful to economists. Those who are engaged in economic studies and analyses may have gained additional insights into effects of weather on agri cultural production and output. Some of the information presented should be useful as background for additional economic studies of agri cultural productivity and policy. We are more aware of the limits of weather forecasting and of the range in production response of agriculture to weather. As information becomes more adequate for estimation of weather cycles , trends and related output responses , we can be more realistic in assumptions concerning national policies and programs. I feel, although I cannot be certain, that the years since 1958 combined with the poor crop years of the 1930's are distorting our picture of agricultural production potentials even though we must admit that our potential has greatly increased and is continuing to increase as new technologies and new methods are built into agricultural production systems. The conference has brought together new information and I hope that it will be followed with additional work on the effect of weather and related policy problems. My interest in the relation of weather to crop production was developed while doing graduate work at the University of Chicago. My Ph.D. thesis title was "The Theory of Crop Insurance" which dealt with the problem of weather and yield variation. Dr. Fox: Thank you, Harold. The next panelist to speak will be Lauren 8oth , Editor of the Editorial Pages of the Des Moines Register. Lauren, you were living out here in the Iowa weather way back in the 1930's, weren't you? You take over from here. -286- Lauren Soth Since Harold Halcrow has brought up the subject of crop insurance 1 perhaps I should tell you that when President Roosevelt appointed a committee on crop insurance back in 1936, I was a flunky on the committee. So I share a little responsibility with Dr. Halcrow for it. The fact that they haven't followed Halcrow's thesis 1 though 1 I had nothing to do with that. I don't have any qualifications for this panel, but I can contribute to this ocean of air the chairman says we're living in. I have liveq and been reasonably awake for the last 30 years I and it has always impressed me the tremendous impi;ict -- we're suppose to be talking about agricl.lltural PQlicy and the weather -- it has always impressed me the tremendous impact that the 1934-36 period has had on agricultural policy in this country in several different ways. This was a period of such drastic weather effects that we had (I looked up the figures) just about half of normal production of grain in those two years. In 1934 we raised l. l billion bushels of corn and half a billion bushels of wheat; in 1936 1 1. 3 billion bushels of corn and 600 million bushels of wheat. In the years preceding that we had been harvesting 2. 5 I 2. 8 billion bushels of corn and around 800 or 900 million bushels of wheat. The shortfall of production was a shock 1 and it came to us just at a time when we were all worried about surpluses. The farm organizations at that time had more or less "got together 1 " after a long period of debate in the '20s I that producticm control was necessary. And here came this period of '34 and '36 when our production was cut in half on these two important grains.