A great weight (both standard and metric) has been lifted

Hopefully a house cleaning will be undertaken in the U.S. government, getting rid of all (or at least most? Please?) of the ignorantly-idealistic, ill-suited, armchair commando, activist neo-cons who can't differentiate fact from fantasy. Well, hopefully the last eight years will show that their unsuited experiments of fantasy won't -- and didn't -- work. Their small ideas were once untested, but have now been tested - and their follies have been found to be greatly lacking and foolhardy. People so grossly unqualified should not be in charge of anything, much less a post that requires (demands!) intelligence and a comprehension of science.

I call on President Obama to change the course of America's future, and to do what's right for the people of this great country, and the world. Not for what's good for CEOs' annual bonuses, or for the middle-management of self-serving companies that would do harm to American (or world) citizens so that they can be lazy and save a few dollars and assure their stockholders of a profit the next quarter. But for all the others of us out there who will reap the harm caused by them currently and in the future. Because I really don't want three-eyed, one armed, flipper-footed, grossly overweight grandkids.

Oh! bama

On Wednesday, President-elect Barrack Obama appointed former Iowa governor Thomas Vilsack as his USDA chief. And previously, Obama appointed former Monsanto vice-president Michael R. Taylor to his transition team.

There's just not many positives to having either of those two creeps in this administration... I guess Change™ doesn't apply to our food chain. Perhaps next, Richard L. Bond will be made head of the FDA.

(Update: and then there's this article, written by Obama's chief adviser on agricultural issues, Marshall Matz. It's all "blah, blah, industrial agricultural is so great, blah blah..." yikes.)

Disappointing to say the least. I expected better this time around, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it (and hopefully it won't kill us or give us cancer).

The latest on farm subsidies

Personally, I'm outraged that my tax money goes towards farm subsidies. Now, don't get me wrong, I want to see the [legendary] "family farm" succeed, but farm subsidies tend to go to the larger, super-profitable, monoculture farms whose products don't benefit many Americans (unless you own stock in Monsanto, Cargill, et al.), and can in fact hurt consumers through their land-use policies and GM/GMO and E. coli-ridden products.

Here's some articles that should interest you:

Farm subsidies: Beyond Simplistic Outrage

Farm Lobby Beats Back Assault On Subsidies

Betting the Farm

If you, too, are pi**ed off, contact your agricultural committee state representatives.

WTFFDA?

Yesterday, the United States was totally hosed by one of its own taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cloned animals (and their products, such as milk) to be allowed into America's food chain... and of course, without adequate testing (unless you consider testing partially funded by the same biotech firms that produce cloned animals as adequate or impartial). Plus, the FDA went against the wishes of the U.S. Senate (i.e. Congress), who passed a bill requiring a rigorous and careful review of the human health and economic impacts of allowing cloned food into America's food supply by a vote of 79 to 14. And, they of course went against the will of the American people; according to the Center for Food Safety:

Recent opinion polls show the majority of Americans do not want milk or meat from cloned animals in their food. A December 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers were uncomfortable with animal cloning. A national survey conducted this year by Consumers Union found that 89 percent of Americans want to see cloned foods labeled, while 69 percent said that they have concerns about cloned meat and dairy products in the food supply. A recent Gallup Poll reported that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that it is immoral to clone animals, while the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that a similar percentage say that, despite FDA approval, they won't buy milk from cloned animals.

For further information, read Not Ready for Prime Time: FDA's Flawed Approach to Assessing the Safety of Food from Cloned Animals.

Corn causing problems again

When will outdated monoculture corn farmers come to their senses and give up on growing thousands of acres of corn each season? And when will the government quit giving our tax money away (via subsidies) that really only benefit the big processing companies (like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Monsanto, et al)?

Well, hopefully the bubble will burst soon. A recent article in the New York Times seems to point to another wrench in their gears. (Unfortunately farmers are going to take the biggest hit when the bubble bursts; but again, time to adapt and move on.)

Here's an update.

[On the flip side, here's an article on cellulosic ethanol that sounds promising.]

What, us worry?

I have always respected other countries for opposing the importation from (mainly) the U.S. and Canada of genetically modified (GM or GMO) foodstuffs, but the strength of their resolve is getting a bit worrisome lately. Of course, it's mainly the politicians, as they're probably getting big donations to their political campaigns and/or personal accounts to push GM/GMO products onto their fellow countrymen and constituents (exactly like it was done in the U.S. and Canada).

I have a strong suspicion that lately it's due to the whole corn prices dilemma, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Here's an interesting article about a consumer choice experiment undertaken in New Zealand recently:

http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/news/stories/282.international_study_consumers_would_buy_gm_products.html

The only "problem" with the experiment is that GM/GMO products will never be cheaper than conventional products, due to the prices charged by the biotech companies to the farmers for such things as the rights to grow their seed, the seed costs, the higher pesticide and herbicide costs, etc.

I also question the accuracy of the experiment, since the GM/GMO products were labelled “spray-free genetically modified.” What does that mean exactly? Not sprayed with diesel fuel? Not with rat poison? Not with human feces? With how GM/GMO crops are produced, a large amount (when compared to conventional and especially organic crops) of herbicides, for instance, has to be applied in order to kill off resistant weeds a.k.a. volunteer "frankenweeds," so it can't mean herbicides. And it can't mean pesticides or insecticides, as farmers have increased their use of pesticides once GM or GMO crops have become established. So these fruits were free from the spray of what? I'd like to know! The term "spray-free" might have influenced customers' decisions, as it mkes it sound harmless compared to the conventional fruit, for instance.

An Onion Infographic

© Copyright 2007, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.

Alternative fuels

Of course, for many reasons, we need to find an alternative to petroleum-based motor fuels, and as soon as possible (if not 30 years ago). And, it appears as if the United States is looking towards ethanol to be the official answer to the gasoline replacement question. My main concerns with using ethanol are that it will continue the BILLIONS of dollars in corn subsidies paid by the government (especially to the VERY large commercial farmers), and that protected and/or at-risk lands might be planted in corn in order to cash in even further on the production of corn (including more forests – and especially our national parks -- will be stripped to use the wood for ethanol production). Of course, both resources (corn and trees) are renewable resources, but you know that the large corporate farmers and the lumber companies (et al.) will eventually get greedy with our natural resources (much like the oil companies do now) and the American public will suffer for it. Plus, larger amounts of genetically-modified (GM) corn and etc. will be grown, and bioengineered yeast strains, which is bad for everyone and everything but the biotech companies. Right now, my only ‘pro’ regarding corn-based ethanol production is that the byproduct (the mash) can be used as a very efficient protein feed for livestock production or even human consumption (although ex- Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan feels that animals will go hungry once ethanol production increases!).

It is interesting to see President Bush visiting Brazil to talk about ethanol production; I’d like to see what comes of it. I understand Brazil is focusing on sugar cane-based ethanol (as is Cuba and a few other countries), but I also understand that virgin rainforests may suffer (much like our national parks may suffer) once land for sugar cane production becomes too valuable to let just “lie around” and be unproductive commercially. Anyway, President Bush seems to be focusing on corn stalks, wood chips from fast-growing trees, and switchgrass for the biomass needed for ethanol production; perhaps he feels that using the ears of corn or other edible biomass will result in people drinking the finished product?

Marty Bender, a scientist at the Land Institute in Kansas, conducted studies in the 1990s that documented that an alternative fuel source such as ethanol (as a large-scale and/or total replacement for gasoline) would be ecologically inefficient and agriculturally destructive in the long run because it may cause the cultivation of every possible acre of ground (including erosive lands that have the potential to stabilize our watersheds, for instance) in order to produce the biomass needed for the tremendous supply that would be required. Plus, it would most likely decrease the food supply (perhaps greatly) nationwide and worldwide if land is considered more valuable to use for the production of fuel biomass than for edible grains.

Of course, I don’t know the answer to what the most effective (in every way) “alternative” fuel is. Perhaps using methane or another form of composting gas (i.e. as a byproduct of composting) will work; maybe algae; perhaps hydrogen would be the most efficient; perhaps biodiesel is the key; maybe fuel cells; heck, possibly solar or thermal heat will work. I’m just not sure. It’d be nice to be able to use something that’s already serving or served its main purpose (in a byproduct or recycling-kinda way), such as landfill gas or sludge, or livestock manure, or urban sewage (perhaps biosolids, even with their heavy metals), or normally unrecyclable plastics or waxed cardboard. Again, I’m just not sure what the answer is. I do think that with so many vehicles on the road that utilize gasoline, something that those vehicles can use directly or be adapted to use would be most practical, at least in the short term (with the “short term” being perhaps 20 years or so). For instance, on my salary, I’m not going to buy a brand-new 2010 year-model truck that runs on hydrogen fuel cells, I’m going to find a way to adapt or convert my 1978 Ford F-150 to use something other than gasoline (I know, I know…perhaps I should have bought a diesel). Perhaps a combination of “alternative” fuels would be best overall, as then no singular resource will be wiped out, exploited by private business interests or governments, or overly affect the environment in a negative way, and people can tailor their fuel needs to their locality and to vehicular or home heating (again, or whatever) requirements. As Rachel Burton of Piedmont Biofuels (in Chatham County, N.C.), who seems to have coined the rather brilliant term ‘Slow Fuel’ (a modification of the term ‘Slow Food’), says, “we are believers in a micro-nodal model of energy production that insists that energy be harnessed where it is used … we have decided to include fuel in our 100 mile diet.”