What are we left with? A nation of god-fearing, pregnant nationalists who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland; pass on traditions; how to get ahead - religions - the idiots are taking over.
Think Progress - Paranoid Hatriot Group Attempting Takeover of Local Sheriffs Offices The retired police officer and investment adviser intends to make that a reality, joining at least a dozen candidates in other states running for office on an intepretation [sic] of the Constitution they say means the sheriff is the highest law enforcer in the land, even above federal agents.
Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity.
Talking Points Memo - Should Be a Smashing Success House Republicans are re-rolling out their Health Care Reform repeal bill which not only reopens the "donut hole", un-insures 29 million people and adds almost $75 billion to the federal deficit.
Daily Kos - Obama Campaign 2.0 After going 0 for 4 in elections where the President campaigned on behalf of the candidate in question, our own Dante Atkins made an astute observation: And while some have used the results to question Obama's star power and campaigning potential for the rest of the midterm cycle, what actually seems open to more question is our President's political instincts.
Daily Kos - If BP were a human being Would he or she be charged with criminal negligence as in this case: In 1994, petitioner Edward Hanousek, Jr.
Slow Food : What's On My Food? Neurotoxins, Carcinogens, Hormone Disruptors
Ouch. I knew it was bad, but this makes it downright frightening. WhatsOnMyFood.org "is a searchable database designed to make the public problem of pesticide exposure visible and more understandable."
It wasn't just enough to plant an organic garden using the 'lasagna gardening' method. It wasn't enough to mention it on my already geeky blog, either. No, I also am going to use geekiness to keep up with the details, since we've never seriously gardened before.
For starters, I'm keeping track of estimated maturity dates for my plants by using a Google Spreadsheet, viewable to the public here.
I'm also keeping track on Google Calendar, which you can see here.
I'll try to update every once in a while with details, if they're worthy of letting anyone know about. Photos, yields, quality, etc will probably be posted as well.
We're using a 6' x 6' plot, so 30 some sq ft, minus a few stepping areas. For starters, yesterday my wife and I planted Danvers half-long carrots, Early Sunglow corn, Bloomsdale spinach, lettuce (from seed and seedlings), onions, garlic (probably won't get much from it), broccoli, rosemary, basil, lemon thyme, swiss chard, "topcrop" bush beans, and sugar pod beans.
After this weeks' bad weather is over, I'm probably going all out, at least with radishes, beets, more beans (soy and more pod peas), 4 types of tomato (Brandywine, Beefmaster, Cherokee (all from seedlings), Early Girl (from seed), small red potatoes, peppers (rainbow bell and at least one hot variety), canteloupe, watermelon, zucchini, long green cucumbers, strawberries, grapes, and "Dwarf Incredible" sunflowers. Any other suggestions?
I've developed a "spray and pray" mentality here (spray not insinuating pesticides or fertilizers, of course. I'm doing the organic thing), going partially on knowledge I've learned and partially on good old statistics. I figure the more varieties I plant, the more likely I am to get at least something decent out of this deal. Then, next time I can actually do things based on my previous experience.
Religion Discussion The Washington Post and Newsweek have jointly launched a website to discuss religion. Sam has signed on as one of the bloggers. This looks like it will be an interesting forum in which to have a discussion about the problem of faith, as Sally Quinn (Washi
How to Eat Fewer Pesticides People who eat the "Dirty Dozen" will be exposed to an average of 15 different pesticides per day, says Richard Wiles, executive director of the Environmental Working Group, while eating from the "Cleanest 12" means you'll be exposed to less than two pesticides
Clean Green This year, don't just clean up your house, clean up your cleaning products! There are lots of good, reasonably priced alternatives to the usual suspects lurking under the kitchen sink. This is EcoStreet's Guide to being Clean Green.
The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Harvey Wasserman On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these apathetic heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 g
Any such chemicals that aren't absorbed run off into the ground, causing water contamination. Pesticides and other agrochemicals can cause problems directly for laborers as well. Thousands of Costa Rican banana workers are rendered infertile by nematicides, and thousands more are at risk of the same fate. In the 1970s, at least 73,230 pesticide poisonings occurred there. These poisonings aren't just limited to Costa Rica; Honduras and Nicaragua led the world in pesticide illness and death per capita in the 1960s and 70s, and Nicaraguans and Guatemalans have more DDT in their systems than anyone else in the world (Faber 1993a:54). Although much of these effects could be limited by protective clothing, employers often do not provide their laborers with these necessities. Only 10 to 15 percent of Nicaraguan field workers have them (Faber 1993a:54).
Slow Food : GB #6 - Central America and Globalization
Much of Central America has suffered from similar ecological degradation. The Pacific Lowlands suffered, because the tenant speculators who were using the land were doing so on short-term credit. Soil cover, drainage systems, and wind barriers were ignored for the most part, because the long-term health of the land was unimportant to them (Faber 1993b:91). In the Dominican Republic, tomato production on contract farms has caused a host of problems.
The processing firms that contract Dominican farmers to grow their tomatoes decided in the 1980s to begin calendar-based pesticide application rather than need-based. Fertilizer use and mechanical cultivation was also increased. The overuse of pesticides fueled an infestation of white flies in the Azua Valley. They simply used more force with their pesticides until the land was no longer usable then moved on to another location, where the white flies followed them, creating a cycle of infestation and overuse of agro-chemicals (Raynolds 2000:447-448).
Slow Food : Industrial Agriculture and Vertical Integration
Modern, industrial agriculture is a massive, global force. Most money spent on food today goes to one industrial food producer or another. The Phillip Morris and Nabisco conglomerate Altria alone gets 10% of all the money consumers spend on food. Three Canadian companies control 70% of all fertilizer sales, five banks control agricultural credit, two companies control 70% of beef packing, and five companies hold most of the control over food sales (Halweil 2004:65). This kind of control over the food system would be very difficult or impossible without industrial, centralized agriculture and vertical integration.
Industrial agriculture is typically highly specialized and involves farms that grow only a few crops at a time, usually to be sold. This is in contrast to traditional farmers, who are self-sufficient and grow a multitude of crops, only the surplus of which might be sold or shared with others. Specialization of this kind requires significant capital investment in order to acquire and use multitudinous inputs and resources such as fertilizers, machinery for planting and harvesting, hired labor, and pesticides (Solbrig 1994:205). The point of this is to produce large quantities of cheap food to feed an ever-growing population. This has been accomplished, although it doesn't do much to end hunger for those who can't afford to buy that food.
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Because of an increased dependence on these fertilizers and other inputs, industrial agriculture is sometimes called "subsidized agriculture." Fertilizer is not the only input that is required in large amounts. Energy is essential to modern farming in order to run machinery, in the form of food to feed laborers, and to transport the food from centralized locations. The system is actually energy unsustainable, because one calorie of production costs 2.5 calories of fossil fuels. Most fertilizers are actually made from fossil fuels as well, which is part of why this number is so high (Barlett 1989:261).
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Industrial agriculture threatens biodiversity, sustainability, and food security. If only a few large, powerful companies own everything in our agricultural system, including the farms, it could lead to their working harder to make money than to secure resources. These firms, since they control the farmland and choose what is grown on it, put the citizens of the world at their mercy as far as food prices, selection, and security. This system is unsustainable, because if the same crop is grown by a large company in one area of the world, and blight or other disease effects that particular crop, a large portion of the world's supplies of it could dwindle or vanish (Grey 2000:146). Because corporations clear large swaths of forest for farmland, cattle grazing land, and the like, biodiversity and the stability of natural systems are at risk. How many species that we've never even seen might be going extinct because of this?
When it comes to the industrial food system, vertical integration is the most impressive and possibly the most dangerous tactic. Vertical integration is the bringing together of two or more successive steps of production or distribution under one ownership. It can be achieved by directly purchasing the resources necessary to control each step or through contract farming, wherein a contract is made between farmers and companies specifying conditions of production and/or marketing (Goldschmidt 1978:xxvi). Vertical integration also allows the passing on of risks to lower levels by outsourcing. Contracts "provide control over production methods and inputs, assuring standardization and quality controls" (Grey 2000:145).
The control inherent in vertical integration allows a corporation to make most or all decisions about a product's life cycle from what fertilizers are used, what seeds are planted, and how they are grown to packaging, advertising, and pricing. An example is the partnership between Monsanto and Cargill, "which controls seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, farm finance, grain collection, grain processing, livestock feed processing, livestock production, and slaughtering, as well as some well-known food brands." This leaves farmers little to no control. If the area where you want to grow corn has feedlots or mills or elevators controlled by a certain company who also owns the bank that makes loan decisions, owns the hog farms, owns the food you eat, and owns the fertilizers and pesticides, you're hard-pressed to use anything but that company's brands of basically everything you need (Halweil 2004:65-66). You won't be producing much organic food there, that's for sure. The consumer also suffers from a lack of retail choices in this situation.
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Though industrial agriculture has produced large supplies of cheap food, the way the system works in the U.S. is not as efficient as we may be told. Japan's productivity per acre is approximately 10 times America's (Goldschmidt 1978:xxxii), and small farms produce as much as 1,000% more output per unit of land (Halweil 2004:75). Considering this inefficiency and the environmental and social problems caused by industrial agriculture and vertical integration, it would seem that considering alternatives would be a good idea.
References Cited
Barlett, Peggy F.
1989 Industrial Agriculture From Economic Anthropology. Pp. 253-291. Stuart
Plattner, ed. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California.
Goldschmidt, Walter
1978 As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social
Consequences of Agribusiness. Pp. xxiii – 54. Allanheld, Osman & Co Publishers Inc. Montclair, NJ
Grey, Mark A.
2000 The Industrial Food Stream and its Alternatives in the United States: An
Introduction. Human Organization. Vol. 59, No. 2. Pp. 143-150.
Halweil, Brian
2004 Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Pp.
59-78. W.W. Norton & Co. New York
Solbrig, Otto T. & Dorothy J.
1994 So Shall You Reap: Farming and Crops in Human Affairs. Pp. 204-252.
Island Press.
