Eideard

The farm law being written by agricultural leaders in Congress — and the lobbyists who own them — would boost support rates for some crops and may remove caps on how much money growers collect in subsidies.

Three agricultural sources said that crops grown in the Midwest and Plains — corn, soybeans and wheat — would be covered by one subsidy plan, while cotton and rice, grown in the South, each would have a separate program.

This three-track plan is designed to shore up support from a broader number of farm-state lawmakers for a new approach to farm policy.

Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees…hope to piggyback it onto a government-wide deficit bill in exchange for a $23 billion cut in their programs. It would bar any change in their plan and enact it a year ahead of schedule…

“There’s nothing good about any of this,” said agricultural economist Vince Smith of Montana State University after reviewing the expected crop subsidy changes.

Higher supports could encourage growers to over-produce, said Smith, and they could breach world trade rules against production-distorting subsidies…

Under their plan, corn, soybean and wheat growers would get federal payments when revenue from a crop was more than 15 percent below average, said a farm lobbyist. Crop insurance would cover deep losses. So-called marketing loans would put a floor on prices.

Cotton growers would operate with a higher marketing loan and revenue insurance policies. Target prices for rice and peanuts would be raised, an effective guarantee of revenue.

The package also could remove caps on subsidy payments.

What would happen if someone offered a bill before Congress guaranteeing income protection for working class Americans? Yes, I know that’s a silly question. The bill would never get out of committee much less face a vote before our manure pile of politicians.

Congress is more likely to vote for guaranteeing a healthy life for chickens before schoolchildren.

You just never know what you’ve got in the shed. This horary quadrant was found in a bag of old pipe fittings in a shed on a farm in Queensland, Australia, forty years ago. Last year the owner of the quadrant was surfing the internet and came across this article where he recognised not just the same tool, but the same stag-coronet insignia that was on his quadrant (he thought it was an astrolabe) signified it was made for King Richard II (of England).

He subsequently contacted the British Museum, which identified the item sitting on his desk for the last forty years as a 1396 horary quadrant. It will be auctioned next month and is expected to fetch between £150,000 and £200,000.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the simple quadrant which is used for telling the time, and had been in use for at least 1500 years prior to the making of this piece in 1396, has turned out to be the second oldest British scientific instrument ever discovered, the oldest being the Chaucer astrolabe, dated 1326, which is housed in the British Museum.

Dated 1396, the quadrant is one of four similar quadrants found to date (the others have been dated 1398, 1399 and circa 1400 respectively), two of which can be found in the British Museum, and the other in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.

The horary quadrant was the most commonly used way of telling the time prior to the invention of the clock. One edge of the quadrant was pointed directly at the sun, and a plumbline attached to the centre of the quadrant signified the hour of the day.

I imagine some settler or other brought the critter along to Oz because [a] it had been hanging around in the family long enough for folks to know it was very, very old — or [b] figured on using it to tell time — even though it would only be close to accurate in London.

Cantaloupes rotting in the Jensen Farms fields in Colorado
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Potentially contaminated processing equipment and problems with packing and storage of whole cantaloupes at a Colorado farm likely led to the deadliest listeria outbreak in the United States in 25 years, which has so far claimed 25 lives in a dozen states…

Pools of water on the floor of the Jensen Farms packing facility in Granada, Colo., equipment that was not easily cleaned and sanitized and failure to cool newly harvested cantaloupes before sending them to cold storage all contributed to the outbreak, the first-ever listeria contamination blamed on whole melons, federal Food and Drug Administration officials said Wednesday…

Investigators tested fruit samples and equipment from Jensen Farms and confirmed the presence of four outbreak strains of the listeria monocytogenes bacteria confirmed in the illnesses and deaths.

The FDA said Jensen Farms, which is based in Holly, Colo., had recently bought used equipment that was corroded and hard to clean. For example, the equipment used to wash and dry cantaloupe showed signs of dirt and product build-up, even after it had been disassembled, cleaned and sanitzed, the FDA’s report said. The equipment had been previously used to process raw potatoes, officials said, which could have left listeria bacteria behind.

In addition, a truck used to haul culled cantaloupe to a cattle operation was parked near the facility and could have introduced contamination to the facility, investigators said. Low levels of listeria in the field also could have introduced the bacteria into the packing facility. And the design of the plant allowed stagnant water to pool on the floor. The FDA had not inspected the farm before the Sept. 10 session that first detected listeria problems…

The outbreak has claimed lives in a dozen states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. They include six in Colorado, five in New Mexico, two each in Kansas, Louisiana, New York and Texas and one each in Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming…

Four illnesses were related to pregnancy, including a newborn who fell ill. One miscarriage has been reported.

Rest assured our elected officials are on top of the situation. Between Congress, the White House, the bureaucrats within the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture — the company has been mailed a warning letter detailing violations.

WTF?

To the untrained eye, Pollard Farms looks much like any other cattle ranch. Similar looking cows are huddled in similar looking pens. But some of the cattle here don’t just resemble each other. They are literally identical — clear down to their genes.

Of the 400-some cattle in Barry Pollard’s herd of mostly Black Angus cattle there are 22 clones, genetic copies of some of the most productive livestock the world has ever known.

Pollard, a neurosurgeon and owner of Pollard Farms, says such breeding technology is at the forefront of a new era in animal agriculture. “We’re trying to stay on the very top of the heap of quality, genetically, with animals that will gain well and fatten well, produce well and reproduce well,” Pollard told a reporter during a recent visit to his farm.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008 approved the sale of food from clones and their offspring, stating the products are indistinguishable from that of their non-clone counterparts. Japan, the European Union, and others have followed suit.

The moves have stirred controversy about whether tinkering with nature is safe, or even ethical, prompting major food companies to swear off food products from cloned animals. But consumers are likely already eating meat and drinking milk from the offspring of clones, which are technically not clones, without even knowing it…

“If you don’t need as much corn to feed your cattle, you might be able to cut back on the amount of fertilizer put out there on the countryside that might end up in a river. You can cut the amount of diesel that’s spent raising that corn,” Pollard said. “Just like they improve the genetics of corn, so they can produce more bushels per acre, we’re trying to do that same type of thing by using cloning and superior genetics to produce more meat with less input.”

Long detailed article. Read through it and understand what that scary word clone is all about.

But, geneticists are well on their way to tailoring fat content, growth rate vs. consumption of whichever grain or grass is preferred, that in the long run can reduce consumption and production of products on both sides of the Green equation.

Obviously – it worked

Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.

Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.

“They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains,” Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar’s remote Banke Bazaar town.

“This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily.”

India this year suffered its worst start to the vital monsoon rains in eight decades, causing drought in some states.

Something interesting had to come from climate change. South of Greenland.

30mm AK630 cannon is the type used in the attack

A Russian naval ship has accidentally fired on a village near the city of St Petersburg during military exercises, officials have confirmed.

No one was killed or injured in the incident, which occured in the Vyborg region on Thursday evening, but some damage was reported.

Locals at a farm where the shots were fired said people took cover in basements to shield themselves from the shelling, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported.

“This is, of course, a disgrace, people could have died. This is the height of the planting season and there are a lot of people at the farm,” Tatyana Kostaryova, a spokeswoman for the local administration, told the agency.

Yury Mikhailov, the head of the farm, said most of the shrapnel fell on rooftops and greenhouses…

Russian naval forces said a small anti-submarine vessel from the Baltic Fleet made the mistake during exercises in the Gulf of Finland.

Igor Lebedev, a regional military prosecutor, said the ship was conducting target practice and that some shells or rounds fell on houses near the village.

So, uh, what were they trying to hit? And did they ever hit it?

One of the largest offshore wind farms in the world has been approved to be built off the coast of north Wales.

The 250 turbines of Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm will be built eight miles off the coast, 10 miles away from Llandudno, Conwy. Gwynt y Môr, combined with three other nearby wind farms, will provide enough green electricity to power the equivalent of 680,000 homes.

In granting approval, DECC took into account both the distance of the development from the shore and work Npower Renewables Ltd had done to minimise the visual impact.

The Welsh Assembly Government said it had requested for the DECC to have a public inquiry into the Gwynt y Môr proposal on grounds of its visual impact and taking into account Llandudno’s historic built environment.

“Now that the decision is made, Welsh companies should seek to capitalise on the significant economic opportunities that will arise in the supply chain of this huge project,” said a Welsh Assembly spokesman.

One practice common to wind farms in the UK is training local folk for the construction and maintenance of the wind turbines. Usually lacking here in the States.

Republican farmer’s golf cart

Too many rich farmers continue to receive U.S. farm subsidies in spite of income caps designed to restrict their participation, and the Agriculture Department needs to do more to enforce the rules says the auditing arm of Congress.

More than 2,700 people whose gross income topped $2.5 million — making many of them ineligible for farm programs — received more than $49 million in payments between 2003 and 2006, the Government Accountability Office said in a report.

“If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president,” President-Elect Barack Obama said in a news conference on Tuesday…

About 2 million farmers and farm entities receive about $16 billion per year in programs designed to help stabilize incomes when prices fall or to help protect sensitive land.

The farm programs have long been criticized for spurring overproduction and hurting world markets, as well as for giving money to people who don’t need it.

No one has an argument over subsidies and loans assisting traditional family farms, folks working towards healthier, more natural crops. Farming is a tough, chancy business.

I also know a few lawyers who got involved for tax shelters.

One of France’s most iconic cars, the Citroen 2CV, is celebrating its 60th birthday this October.

Some may dismiss it as nothing more than an old tin can. The BBC Top Gear programme’s Jeremy Clarkson wrote it off as a “weedy, useless little engine”. But enthusiasts like Xavier Audran who owns a dozen of them, worships the 2CV “not just as a car, but as a way of life”.

It may be 18 years since the 2CV went out of production, but Mr Audran is adamant that its charm has never gone out of fashion…

It was originally destined as a cheap country round-around for farmers, designed to be able to carry four people (or sheep) and a basket of eggs across a ploughed field without breaking any shells… or indeed bones.

But its cheapness meant that the low-income segment of the French population could afford one, and soon there was a waiting list of five years.

Economical on fuel, cheap to repair with an almost indestructible air-cooled engine and with a comically soft suspension that made it springy enough to bump along off road, the 2CV was the perfect family holiday car.

There are a few here in Santa Fe. I’d buy one tomorrow – if I could get it with a tiny turbo-diesel.

A salmonella outbreak in the United States and Canada has been linked to irrigation water and serrano peppers at a Mexican farm, says the FDA. Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s food safety chief, said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and called the discovery “a key breakthrough.”

The salmonella outbreak, which has sickened more than 1,200 people since April, had been linked to raw Mexican jalapeños and serranos. Last week, the Mexican government had called an FDA advisory saying so “premature.”

The FDA now advises consumers to avoid raw jalapeño peppers grown in Mexico and any foods containing raw jalapeño peppers grown in Mexico. Likewise, no one should eat raw serrano peppers from Mexico.

It still remains that these bureaucrat flunkeys for the food distribution industry wasted months before they would even say the word “Mexican” publicly. So afraid of harming the revenue stream when people were obviously getting sick after eating in Mexican restaurants.

Half the population where I live is Mexican-American – and we all figured out what the problem was as soon as the FDA twerps admitted what was happening. Couldn’t they have said, “Hey – most of these folks ate at a Mexican restaurant before getting sick. Don’t eat anything uncooked when you go to your favorite Mexican restaurant till we track this down”?