blogs
A novel idea to battle world hunger.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 08/03/2009 - 7:31pm.
Hungry people weigh on our collective conscience, they create volatile politics, they live in despair, they die young, and the dead, the dying and the permanently afflicted are too often children. For decades, the United States, followed closely by Japan, have been battling world hunger with food aid, and they will continue to do so.
At the recent G8 summit meeting of the globe's richest nation's, world leaders enlisted a new weapon in the fight against hunger. It's called "private enterprise." In an interview published in London's Financial Times yesterday, Oscar Cherminski told reporter Javier Blas that the International Finance Corporation is aiming for a 20-30 percent increase in agribusiness lending over the next three years. Cherminski is director of global agribusiness for the IFC, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank.
"Industrial" farmer speaks his mind
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 5:39pm.
Blake Hurst was on an airplane recently headed back to his farm in Missouri. Like most farmers, when he flies he flies coach. It was easy to eavesdrop on the guy in the seat behind him, because he was so close and because he was talking so loudly.
About food.
A subject with which Hurst is more than vaguely familiar. The speaker was holding forth on the evils of industrial farming. Hurst considers himself an industrial farmer - except that he says "industrial" - because he grows corn and soybeans with fossil-fueled tractors, uses insecticides and herbicides and puts nitrogen fertilizer on his fields. He's about to spend the next six weeks on a combine seat, and after that he might schedule a board meeting. Around the kitchen table.
What's new is coming around again.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 6:08pm.
The day he died, my grandfather became, by his measure when he was alive, a rich man. His farm was a hilly five acres in Akron, Pa., and it was destined for higher uses than the alfalfa he planted for his two Jerseys, his small pen of feeder pigs, the Rhode Island reds that provided market eggs and meat, and the garden where my grandmother planted vegetables.
Dairymen lay it on the line.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 8:29pm.
Dairy producers, consumers and diary support groups gathered for a planning/gripe session in Delhi, New York, about a week ago. They talked about the current dismal state of the industry, and very few could recall rougher times. The meeting organizers handed questionnaires to the dairy producers in the crowd to gauge their mood.
The producers were asked such questions as whether or not they're behind on their accounts payable, do they think the dairy industry is more like Main Street or Wall Street, and would they support Tom Vilsack if he ordered an immediate raise in the floor price for Class II and III milk. (Duh!)
Texans beaten down by the heat.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 12:02pm.
Slithering snakes seek surcease from the driest summer Texans have seen in the last half century. Snake bites are reportedly up around Austin and San Antonio as the reptiles crawl from their usual haunts in search of shade and water and run into Lone Star citizens.
Rambling rattlers aren't the worst part of it for ranchers and farmers. A rancher in central Texas had to sell 600 head of cattle because his grass dried up. Lake levels are down as much as 30 feet, 100-degree days are the norm, and cattlemen have suffered $1 billion in losses so far.
The latest word in biofuels is...slime.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 3:01pm.
Algae, that slimy stuff on your farm pond, could be pickng up speed in the race for an economical alternative to fossil fuels. That's according to an article in The Economist, which you can read here http://www.economist.comsciencetechnologydisplaystory.cfm?story_id=14029874. Exxon Mobil, working through Synthetic Genomics in San Diego, Calif., has so far sunk $300 million into a pilot algae based biofuel project. And if the pilot is successful enough, the company has earmarked another $300 million for the project.
Most biofuels now on the market are made either from corn, sugar cane or plant oils, such as soybean oil. Algae could do it better, Exxon believes, and in the process use the carbon dioxide from power generation utilies and other producers of greehouse gases.
Synthetic Genomics is headed up by Craig Venter, a pioneering geneticist who led a privately financed version of the human genome project.
Many algae produce oil, which they store in their bodies as a hedge against lean times. It is difficult to extract this stored oil. Venter is developing a strain of algae that excrete oil, which floats to the top of the culture medium. There could be a time in the next decade or so when Exxon just skims the oil off its algae tanks, puts it into a tanker truck and ships it to your tractor.
Pretty on the outside, gorgeous on the inside. Our annual Dairy of Distinction supplement is included in the current edition of Lancaster Farming. More than a dozen family dairy farms are featured this year, and it's apparent from reading the articles that it takes more than a pretty face to earn the Dairy of Distinction honor. It also takes a family, lots of hard work, a good bookkeeper and great cows.
Speaking of slime... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNIktyQcgRE
Is a happiness meter just around the corner?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 12:12pm.
How happy are you? Really? Let's say on a scale of 1-to-9? If you're feeling "triumphant" you're 8.87 happy on the 1-to-9 scale. If you had "pancakes" for breakfast you're at 6.08 on the happiness scale. And if you're a "hostage," you're 2.20, which presumably is a miserable condition but still measurably happy.
Exshcushe me missh, have you sheen my, um, cow?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 1:15pm.
The latest word from Dublin is that Sinead Noonan, aka Miss Ireland, will be teaming up with the winner of a beauty contest featuring 30 of Ireland's finest young ladies parading around in the altogether. Judges will be looking especially closely at contestants' legs, necks, backs and udders.
Beat it, MJ. Just beat it.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 1:55pm.
Beat it. That's the message Iowans sent to the Iowa State Fair organizers who were considering a Michael Jackson butter sculpture at this summer's upcoming fair. Butter sculptures have been a popular part of the fair since 1911, and fairgoers jostle for position in front of the glass-enclosed displays to watch the artists at work. Besides a life-size Butter Cow, which always makes an appearance, sculptors usually whip up another display, according to an AP story which is here http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=331906
The straight story about...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 07/20/2009 - 4:12pm.
The Straight Story. How long do you think it would take to ride a John Deere riding mower, with a top speed of 5 mph from Laurens, Iowa, to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, a distance of 240 miles? Alvin Straight did exactly that in 1994, when he was 73 years old and his riding mower was pushing 30. Alvin's sight was going, his hips could barely carry his weight and he didn't trust buses. He certainly couldn't drive, even if Iowa had given him a license.
So he rode his mower. Hitched up a wagon with supplies and a sleeping bag, drove to Wisconsin to see his dying brother, Lyle, and, along the way, met some interesting people and had some adventures.
David Lynch made a movie about Straight's trip, a movie starring Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek as his daughter. You might know David Lynch as the writer and director behind Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Elephant Man. The Straight Story, distributed by Disney, is nothing like those other films. It's squeaky clean, nobody curses, and nobody even looks like they want to have sex. Alvin Straight took the slow road to Wisconsin. By slow, I mean s-l-o-o-o-w. He left Laurens on July 5 and pulled up to Lyle's place in Wisconsin six weeks later.
Lynch shot the film in chronological order, featuring some of the same towns Straight drove through. There is lots and lots of countryside in this movie. Look carefully, and you can see the corn growing day to day as he crawls east. If anything, the movie actually feels slower than the trip itself. I can't say it's a great family movie, because half my family, i.e., my wife, found the movie boringly s-l-o-o-o-w.
This is a movie for people who actually like slow movies, and I love good, slow movies. It's on DVD and available at Netflix and rental stores or from Amazon. You might think it's boring. And in a way, it is. But it's worth watching.
I discovered, after seeing the movie, that my sensibilities were upheld by the fact that Richard Farnsworth, the actor who played Straight, was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal. In a sad note, the 80-year-old Farnsworth was actually suffering from terminal bone cancer while the film was being shot. Hobbling around on two canes was not an act for him, but a fact of his later life. A year after the film's completion, he committed suicide to escape the pain of his disease.
And when Alvin Straight's heart gave out in 1997, his funeral procession was led by a John Deere riding mower.
Pennsylvania's 25X'25 Alliance hosted a group of German farmers touring renewable energy sites in Ohio and the Keystone State. The tour stopped in Harrisburg to learn more about how the Alliance hopes to increase the state's use of alternative fuels to 25 percent by the year 2025. A report of their visit appears in our current edition. It was written by staff writer Chris Torres.
Now you see yourselves. And now you don't. Können Sie sagen, "Count Dracula?" http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=20768775.
