"Marcel lives for, and almost in his garden. From May to October he is out tending his veg at 6.30, just before he cycles to work. At 12, he comes home for lunch and does a quick bit of weeding before heading back for his afternoon stint at the arms factory. At 6pm, he is home again, and back in the garden until nightfall.It's a way of life for many in France, but fading.It would actually be wrong to call Marcel’s garden a garden. It is a veritable little biosphere. Aprt from fish on Fridays, pretty much everything that the family eat is from the garden. Fresh fruit and veg in summer and bottled, pickled preserved produce in winter."
Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Locavores--Think Rabbit
U.S. and Foreign Courts--Their Interaction
Now comes a review on H-Net of a book on the Warren Court and its influence on foreign law. (Of course, conservatives might view U.S. law, at least pre-Warren, as a model to be followed, a "city on a hill"; while liberals might be skeptical. Seems that maybe the court's example had an effect, but different in different regions.
Update on "King Corn"
"We've heard different times over the last 20 years how everything had changed. 1996 we had higher prices for corn. We had prices change in 1988 and in the early 90s as well. And each time seemed like it was forever, it wasn't....
"Yeager: But if I was to go into a banker tomorrow and try to get money to go farm, I want to take my father's 160 and farm it, I want to turn it from corn into rutabagas or rhubarb or something like that. The banker is probably going to laugh me out of the room.Kirschenmann: Sure, and there's no way that you could do it because even -- some of the research that we have done at Iowa State University makes it very clear now that if farmers added a third crop to that corn and soybean rotation they would get a lot of benefits from that. It would reduce their disease pressure, the weed pressure.
So, there would be a lot of things that would reduce their costs. But you talk to a farmer and say, well, why don't you raise this third crop? The first question is, which one, what do I add to it? And, of course, we know that we can raise wheat in Iowa but some of the farmers that I talk to, at least in Central Iowa say, if they were to raise wheat they'd have to haul it 200 miles to find a place even that will buy it. So, that adds to the cost.
Yeager: Because their structure is set up -- we have a grain co-op in basically every town and every county across the state -- the infrastructure is there.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Why I'm Optimistic on Global Warming
Changing Payment Limitation Rules in Midstream
So, if Congress changes the rules relating to limitations, the only way they can be fair about it is to extend current rules for 2008 and make the new ones effective for 2009.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Making Acreage Report Data Public
Farm Bill Status
Former ASCSer Bjorlie
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Loo Paper for the Bog
Interesting when the newspapers are reporting declines in circulation, someone thinks it wise to set up a new one in the Middle East and make it English.
I love the phrase, and I think it provides an insight on crossing cultural boundaries.
Slowly Up the Learning Curve--Video Seminars
On the one hand, that's the way to go. (John notes the traveling he would have to do to do the seminar in person, but not the energy involved. If "slow food" is good, so is "e-learning").
On the other hand, there have been many video-conferencing trials over the years. I remember doing video conferences between DC and Kansas City several times--it had too much overhead costs for the advantages. I remember trying a version of a video-phone in the late 80's--wasn't really useful. A few more years of Moore's law and maybe technology will be able to fulfill this particular promise. But still, , people are animals, and being there is part of our thing.