Labels: fun

Labels: blog, fun

Labels: blog

• I could be dead by then.
  
• Given the fact I struggled to follow the examples published recently, I anticipate a major, major education problem for FSA offices. Good thing they won't be closing many soon, huh?
  
• As some have noted, the idea of an option is a guarantee for serious laments after the choice is made. Wanna bet there is a heads-you,win-tails-you-win amendment in 2011?
• The act should be called the Farm Economist, Extension Meeting, Farm Media, and Crop Insurance Full Employment Act. [Arguably, that beats "The Heartland, Habitat, Harvest and Horticulture Act of 2007"] Try to imagine how many magazine pages of explanations, downloadable spreadsheets, websites, extension meetings, PowerPoint paralysis, letters to editors, advisory services, and outright scams that will latch onto this complex scheme by 2010. You will be so sick of reading about ACR, you'll skip over those articles for the ads.
• We can't predict ag conditions next summer, so who knows what will be going on in 2009 as we first make this choice? The possibility for legislator's regret could be significant.
  
• Regardless, by 2009 this optional program will be sooo gamed out by everyone - not just early reactors such as what happened with the "Dakota shuffle". Ah - those were the days...

Labels: farm bill, farm program

• Here Comes the Light by Joseph Graham ( 10029872) *
  
• Fear Not Good News by Robert Sterling ( 10033742)
• And the Stars Sang by Joseph Martin ( 10029840) *

Labels: Christmas, music

People turned to farming to grow fiber for clothing, and not to provide food, says one researcher who challenges conventional ideas about the origins of agriculture.

Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, says his theory also explains why Aboriginal Australians were not generally farmers.

Gilligan says they did not need fiber for clothing, so had no reason to grow crops like cotton. [More]

Labels: history

Labels: fun, photo

A critical determinant of China's long-term economic growth and social stability will be whether the wealth of its economic boom can reach the majority of its 700 million farmers, who make up approximately 56 percent of the total population. The benefits that the rural population has received from the economic reforms of the past two and a half decades, while significant, were largely achieved in the 1980s, and now the countryside lags badly behind the urban sector. A survey we conducted in 17 provinces, among 1,962 farmers and other respondents, confirms one fundamental cause of the widening rural-urban income gap: most Chinese farmers still lack secure and marketable land rights that would allow them to make long-term investments in land, decisively improve productivity, and accumulate wealth.

Farmers in China face multiple threats to their land rights from local government and village officials. The most prominent threat is land expropriation or acquisition through eminent domain to satisfy demands of industrial growth or urban expansion. Despite a series of central laws and policies, in practice, farmers who lose their land typically receive little or no compensation. Closely related as another source of insecurity of land rights is the persistent "readjustment" or "reallocation" of farmers' landholdings that is administratively conducted by village officials. Today, such land-related problems are the number one cause for rural grievances and unrest in China, which reported 17,900 cases of "massive rural incidents" of farmers' protests in the first nine months of 2006.

China adopted a Property Law in March 2007 that aims to strengthen the security of farmers' land rights, and the next key step will be full implementation of the law. We calculate that securing rural land rights would bring more than half a trillion dollars of value to farmers. Implementing the property law requires major institutional and legal measures on several fronts that China must tackle in the immediate future. [More]

Labels: land, law

Labels: blog

How will the apparent inclusion of an ever-ready ag disaster program impact a producer's attitude toward buying up crop insurance?

What if.. If as I suspect that the CBO assumes in their analysis that x-percent of producers would buy up insurance to a higher level, the savings resulting from that assumption may not be realized near to the degree that CBO might have predicted. [More by subscription - seriously, ya need to find room for this in your budget]

Labels: farm bill, production

Labels: fun, Internet

Labels: ethanol, production

It's been a brave new world for genetic crops for some time now but Chicago-based researchers say they have developed a method to take crop manipulation to a higher level: the chromosome.

Creating an artificial chromosome, into which several manipulated genes can be inserted, may speed efforts to produce fuels and medicines from plants as well as boosting crop nutrition and yield.

In a scientific paper set for publication Friday researchers from Chicago-based Chromatin Inc. and the Universities of Chicago and North Carolina reported success in creating an artificial chromosome for corn plants. Through four generations, the corn treated the man-made chromosomes as if they were natural and passed them along to offspring intact at a rate nearly as high as for chromosomes native to the plants.

"This appears to be the tool that agricultural scientists and farmers have long dreamed of," said Daphne Preuss, a University of Chicago professor of molecular genetics and Chromatin's president. [More]

Labels: biotech, production, technology

Lake Lanier, the water source that serves a third of Georgia's residents, only has a 4 month's supply of water. Forecasters predict the drought could last months, and residents should look for news ways to conserve.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin says, the city has cut water use by not watering parks. She says maintaining water supplies for drinking and fighting fires is the primary concern. Atlanta commissioner for the Department of Watershed Management, Rob Hunter says Lake Lanier has a 121 day supply of water. He says reducing consumption is key. He offered residents several suggestions: take shorter showers, repair leaky faucets and pipes, and cut outdoor water usage. [More]

Labels: physics, science, weather

But the broad strength of commodity prices may also reflect the appeal of the sector as an “alternative asset”, along with hedge funds and private equity. Ever since the dotcom bubble burst, investors have been keen to diversify away from their traditional focus on equities and government bonds. That has led to the launch of a whole series of exchange-traded funds based on commodities, which have made the asset class accessible for a much wider range of investors; the latest example, from Barclays Global Investors, is a fund based on timber prices. And Wall Street has been gearing up to meet demand; a survey by Options Group, a recruitment consultant, found that the hiring rate of commodity traders is up 33% on last year.

The recent credit crunch may have given commodities a further lift. Speculative money that had been flowing into high-yield bonds and structured credit is now looking for a new home. Some commodities, particularly gold, are also seen as a hedge against a declining dollar.

Robin Bhar, a metals strategist at UBS, says investors seem to feel they have an each-way bet on commodity prices. Either global economic growth is strong and supply remains tight, or the world slips into stagflation, as it did in the 1970s. In either case, commodities should perform well. [More]

Labels: land, wealth

And, when you make it on a stupid YouTube video entitled, "Drop that Pot Pie," you know you are in trouble.

Labels: food, media