I [heart] Taco Bell

in part because they almost never get my order wrong. Now I know why.



Awesome.

[for reference]

We're all Keynesians now, but the neo-Malthusians were not wrong.

ELO, program for FFA 2009

Syngenta, video of Paul Krugman's speech at FFA 2009 [text]
nb: not sure i agree with him on the [non]impact of speculation on food prices, but he's right that it wasn't just a speculation bubble, we're in for more troubles. seriously scary stuff.

slides from Stephan Schulmeister's presentation

selected interviews:







more

statement from the FFA 2009

tangentially related: 50-year farm bill

Small discovery

The result is edible, but lime-chipotle seasoning doesn't really work as a replacement for curry powder.

Urban agriculture

Beer!

The good news: there's gluten-free beer to be had.

The bad news: you have to go to Finland to get it.

Otoh, while you're there for beer, you could get medical care, a bear dog or two, and oh, those choirs! [h/t]

When pigs fly

Well... if you are what you eat....

Grainy math

Speculation is/isn't driving up your food prices and mine, and we can't grow enough ethanol to power the US, let alone the whole world.

Just out of curiosity, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations [no, I'm not going to show my work]. Last year the world produced enough grain and soybeans [I didn't use any other foodstuffs in my calculations] to feed every man, woman, and child on the face of this earth, all 6.6 billion of us, 2000 calories every single day, provided all of it goes directly to feeding humans, no intermediary livestock, and alas, no cat food or dog food. Or saving for a rainy day, or prolonged drought, as the case may be.

This left enough extra corn to make ~30 billion gallons of ethanol, which would provide us, just us here in the US, with about 20% of our gasoline use, assuming a 1:1 substitution of ethanol for gasoline. 

In case you're curious, that 30 billion gallons of ethanol would have provided ~120 days food for 
the entire world.



dent corn, aka field corn

Spring is here!

Last year it was petunias [and kittens], white and some shades of purples, the years before it was various herbs, parsleysagerosemaryandthyme and some others.

This year I've gone whole hog, so to speak, and planted both flowers and herbs. Marigolds and salvia, mint and oregano, nasturtiums and lavender, and some aloe vera.

I'm --- just barely --- resisting the urge to plant a rock garden. In the aloe vera section of the garden shop were all those cute little furry cactuses and other alien-being looking little succulents, all of them cute as bugs, and all of them pricier than a gallon of hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free-range, locally-grown, organic milk.

I'll let you know later this summer if the glowball is warming or cooling this year.

Oh, and speaking of flowers... here, have a poppy.

Truffles!

In my next life, I want to come back as a feral cat, living in the alley behind IOZ' place.

Meanwhile, we are enjoined to fight the good fight and share recipes for the War on Christmas. For my part, I am going to play doting aunt and shameless tourist, and let other people do all the cooking this year.

I am not a complete barbarian though. I will be the geek bearing gifts [dibs on the crystallized ginger] just as soon as I figure how to use PayPal [stop that laughing!].

What they said

Because I don't feel like doing my own thinking right now.

• Income inequality. Molly Ivors proposes a New Millenium kind of WPA.
• Universal health care. It'll kill our robust lead in medical innovation! No, it won't.
• Thanksgiving. I've always disliked the idea of giving thanks by killing an animal and eating it.

My new favorite blog

cleek

Not just because I too want a pony [h/t] but also for The Web's Golden Bounty, a collection of links to surf for. The bounty includes [but is not limited to]:

No-Knead Bread from Jaden's Steamy Kitchen [I've had a link to this blog in my sidebar for some time now]

Milking the Lizard brought to you by Coturnix, whose other mission in life is the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science). My job is to try to motivate you to comment on the papers there. [I've got a link to PLoS in my sidebar too]

Also via Coturnix, if you're alert enough, you might win a trip to the the greatest science city in the world.

Crappy Graphs! which is really just way too much fun, not crappy at all. If I ever use that site to make a real graph maybe you'll get to see it. Meanwhile, you can do what I did, which was to draw a bunch of crappy graphs and then refrain from hitting Submit.

Oh, geez, you guys, thanks for noticing.

Because these things disappear behind subscription walls sometimes, I steal the whole thing for you here.

Editorial
The Farmer’s Nightmare?
Published: August 10, 2007

Only a few years ago, ethanol was just a line in a farm-state politician’s stump speech — something that went down well with the locals but didn’t mean much to anyone else. Now, of course, ethanol is widely touted — and, within reason, rightly so — as an important part of America’s search for energy independence and greener fuels. One day, we may be using cellulosic ethanol, the kind derived from grasses. For now, the ethanol boom is all about corn. And the real question is whether that will finally kill American farming as we know it.

Farmers in the corn belt have watched the coming of the ethanol boom with an ill-concealed excitement. They’ve invested in small-town processing plants, and they’ve happily seen the price of corn fluctuate steadily upward. But land prices have also moved steadily upward. Land set aside for conservation is being put back into production. And a bidding war has broken out over acreage, a war that farmers are sure to lose to speculative investors.

In short, the ethanol boom is accelerating the inequity in the rural landscape. The high price of corn — and the prospect of continued huge demand — doesn’t benefit everyone equally. It gives bigger, richer farmers and outside investors the ability to outcompete their smaller neighbors. It cuts young farmers hoping to get a start out of the equation entirely. It reduces diversity in crops and in farm size.

For the past 75 years, America’s system of farm subsidies has unfortunately driven farming toward such concentration, and there’s no sign that the next farm bill will change that. The difference this time is that American farming is poised on the brink of true industrialization, creating a landscape driven by energy production and what is now called “biorefining.” What we may be witnessing is the beginning of the tragic moment in which the ownership of America’s farmland passes from the farmer to the industrial giants of energy and agricultural production.

Oh, barf. More later.

"... famines are complex social phenomena,

... and a lack of food is seldom the reason why people starve."

something i stumbled over while researching corn just now

First, a disclaimer or three...

It's a blog, not professional journalism, but like the professional journalists [ought to] do, I'll indulge in a bit of disclosure:

I have opinions. You're entitled to them.
It's why I blog. I make no claims to fairness or balance, but I will sometimes try to back up my opinions with supporting materials, but they'll be supporting materials that I've gleaned from the internet.

Oil, biofuels, wevs.
Whatever carbon-based energy choices you make, I and my family will profit from you, just so long as you continue to burn, baby, burn! We grow the corn and soybeans that go into biofuels and we have ties to the petroleum industry.

I like my anonymity.
Or what little of it I've been able to preserve to this point. This is pretty much the extent of disclosure you're going to get from me.


So, rather than litter the comments to ellroon's ethanol post with lengthy and rambling dissertations, I'll just babble boringly [and perhaps only ocassionally] about ethanol and related subjects here in my own blog.

Farmers pushing up daisies... and corn... and soybeans...

Sure, this was an excuse to add another lolcat to my blog, but here, have some farm bill reading:

• Dead farmers got $1.1 billion from USDA [new link]


• Mulch blog on Farm Bill 2007


• Blog for Rural America from the Center for Rural Affairs


• FarmPolicyFacts.org


• EWG's Farm Subsidy Database


• He Only Saved a Billion People [tangentially related]

Save birds: drink coffee.

Shade-grown coffee, that is, and do so in moderation.

Appalachian Springtime

Kimchi


via

Speaking of China

It's not just our pets that they're poisoning.

Kinky fats.

It's been a while since everybody was up in arms over banning trans fats. What people didn't understand at first [maybe they still don't] is that -- for once -- no, the food nazis were not trying to keep you from eating calorie-laden food. Instead, the point is to make restaurants serve you food, not some chemically-altered something-or-other thought up by food scientists. That stuff'll kill you.

Anyways, I was going to go into some explanations of cis versus trans fat, but it's already been the Molecule of the Day elsewhere.

FDA: Fibbers and Dissemblers Administration

Uh oh. Cloned food animals really are different from ordinary food animals. Not that the FDA was going to tell you that.

I swear, it's enough to make you wonder if the Bush administration is so obsessed with controlling sex that not even farm animals can be allowed to indulge in it.