|  Zephyr-The-Zeph | Mar 14, 7:21pm | | Not just that, He said he would give me FIVE million dollars if I secured a mere 10,000$ bond. |
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Sponsor |  Kibiyama | Mar 14, 7:28pm | | I look forward to getting 419 errors. |
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Sponsor | | Klassy | Mar 14, 8:52pm | Big Corn may be growing into the "Big Oil" of the 21st Century.
Never mind Ethanol. They're making most of the grocery store food with corn now. Especially those heinous high fructose corn syrup. It's like corn filler to make the product stretch further for the manufacturers' money.
Plant your veggie gardens, kids!
(And yet, the corn subsidies keep on coming.
If it were actually "cost-effective" this should be happening without subsidies. I think what's happening now is that THE MAN -- the big agro corporations are suckling from the government teat on the basis of something they call grain ethanol, which SOUNDS like the "ecofriendly" wave of the future, but really, if the agro-counter-economic revolution happens, there won't be Big Corn, Big Oil or BIG Anything for that matter!)
Grow your own veggie gardens, kids! |
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Sponsor | | Klassy | Mar 14, 10:46pm | 572: To add to that, no known corn ethanol production system will ever be efficient to power even a significant segment of the economy without petroleum inputs. I did some reading online and there is this thing called "cellulosic ethanol", which is based on biotechnology and switch-grass, and it just might be able to do this as an alternative.
But then again, I don't even know if "Big Grass" is possible. lulz.
The way I read this whole crisis now that I think about it is actually more that -- given today's explosive rise in food prices -- agricultural commodities might become even more bullish and oligopolistic (is there such a word? lulz, you get what I mean right?) than energy. Especially if energy becomes more distributed because of wind and solar energy.
At the end of the day, you still hafta eat. You know?
Anyway, d00d, thanks for the video link. I thumbed it up. |
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Sponsor | | Bunty | Mar 15, 5:55am | Except the current system relies on cheap fuel: for transport, for treatments such as fertiliser and pesticides, for running the machines that make it possible to farm hundreds of acres with one manager and a half-dozen cheap contractors.
Agricultural devolution is as necessary and as inevitable as energy devolution. The trick is to wrest it from the control from the corporations now, before they've moved in and taken ownership of the means of production with gov't subsidies and assistance. Especially the case with agriculture and people like Monsatano actually creating and patenting seed crops that can't exist without the pesticides and etc. they provide. whilst trying to kill off the existing ones. |
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Sponsor | | Klassy | Mar 15, 6:56am | 574: Well it seems that the price of food will continue to rise along with the price of energy when the bulk of the production is mechanized, centralized, and non-organic. But yeah, Bunty, I hear you on that sentiment of yours in your second paragraph. Hopefully, food production will become distributed along with energy production. Rhizome in our time. But see that was another point I was trying to express earlier: if corn were actually cost-effective it should be happening without the subsidies. These big agro corporations are suckling milk money from the government's nipples, taking advantage of the idea of grain ethanol - they try to make it sound like an ecofriendly innovation of the future, but if you really look into it, on further investigation, this idea seems to fall pretty flat.
Waitamievenstillmakingsense.
Random. Here's something a lot more wordy to chew on:
salon.com/books/review/2008/03/14/superclass/ [salon.com/books/review/2008/03/14/superclass/]
Enemy of the Enemy (Who?)
Enemy of the Enemy (What?)
Enemy of the Enemy-my-my
Babylon is really burning this time
Coming home to roost on a Soviet landmine
Climbing out the subway burning eyes spinning head
Walking through the station breaking into a cold sweat
Is the ticking time bomb in my head or your bag
Have you been snorting white lines with President Gas
Crawling from the wreckage of my tumblin' tower block
Someone else had to finish the job
It was the enemy of the enemy
The enemy of the enemy
He's a friend
Til he's the enemy again
Enemy of the Enemy (Who?)
Enemy of the Enemy (What?)
Enemy of the Enemy-my-my
Starin' out the window at 50 000 feet
At the mercy of the skies there's no escape velocity
And as your eyes meet my skin see the terror on your face
Do You want it to stop put yourself in their place
Where what your life is worth depends on where you live
Too many generations down the line to forgive
If all you knew was total war from every side
You'd have to decide
Who's the enemy of the enemy
The enemy of the enemy
He's a friend
Til he's the enemy again
Choose the enemy
Know the enemy
Love the enemy
Feed the enemy
Sleep with the enemy
Arm the enemy
Sell the enemy
Bomb the enemy
Keep your friends close
But keep your enemies closer
It was the enemy of the enemy
The enemy of the enemy
He's a friend
Til he's the enemy again
Choose the enemy
Know the enemy
Love the enemy
Feed the enemy
Sleep with the enemy
Arm the enemy
Sell the enemy
Bomb the enemy
lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/asian_dub_foundation/enemy_of_the_enemy.html [lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/asian_dub_foundation/enemy_of_the_enemy.html] |
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| | b-bear | Mar 15, 9:38am | Let's at least do SOMETHING about the enemy. But, yes, what? All of the above?
Corn? Hmmm, I've got corn on the brain and possibly also in the stomach...
I need to grow more vegetables!
This corn conspiracy is intriguing. But I agree that this is still a problem merely inside the agricultural economy, not matter the empire of corn. It really is the centralisation that is the problem. This economy is set up to produce as cheap as possible food. The production-factory lines of animals that supply the agricultural industry with food and products and (rarely now) labour require either good pastures or a ready supply of staple produce. Corn provides the perfect staple - it's cheap at this stage. And the animals are kept alive, like the poor people in the supermarkets, through this shitty little sugary vegetable which should never be a staple. And, in the machine of death that is this economy, nothing goes to waste - it is just converted into a shiny commodity. Corn is becoming an oil - an oil the greases the wheels of the relentless agricultural machine, that will tolerate no redistribution and no localisation that will lower prices and provide quality over quantity and bounty according to the seasons.
So corn for me is just the sign of a system that is requiring sameness and lack of noise to run. Lack of diversity could then become an argument against this system. Taste then becomes important in this case, and the majority of the people in the country that produces all the corn - the US - seems to lack distinct tastes. So this is a worry.
I've been a little more worried about palm oil, however. It's an immediate killer of a precious endangered species.
palmoilaction.org.au [palmoilaction.org.au]
The problem with a system like the agricultural economy is that on all fronts it soaks up the kills as it goes, and replaces this trail of mayhem, death and destruction with a breakfast cereal with a picture of a swimmer on it.
There are some answers to the high prices of food in this article on the high global price of breakfast cereals:
bakeryandsnacks.com/news/ng.asp [bakeryandsnacks.com/news/ng.asp]=[emailcode]
"Among all agricultural commodities, dairy products have witnessed the largest gains compared with last year, ranging from 80 per cent to more than 200 per cent," the report said.
Meat and poultry prices have also gone up by ten per cent, with higher feed costs compounding pressures from a growing demand for meat and more liberal trade barriers.
Looking forward, the FAO suggests that the only solution is a simple one - plant more crops, as "a strong expansion in wheat production is bound to bring down wheat prices."
The real problem in the agricultural economy is, then, meat and dairy production - and the involvement of animals in this economy. Other reports point to the fact that demand is skyrocketing in China for edible oils and vegetables. So it will become necessary to plant more crops. Corn is just a stop gap solution to a real problem - how to feed the world. This is becoming problematic. And at this point I have to blame the western, dairy-centred diet, which takes away any gains in crop production that agriculture makes. We'll have to junk the breakfast cereal, I suppose - it'll take such close to the bone changes for the West if the world is to be fed. |
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Sponsor | | Bunty | Mar 15, 5:07pm | 575: I think it was probably the economist Marx who did the math regarding how tech can substitute for labour (within reason) e.g. if you have a certain task to be done then you can to some degree balance labour and machinery to do it, based on which is cheapest. What he didn't (as far as I know) factor in is fuel. It really acts as the leg of the tripod, although it is also in part a symbiotic element of tech. It's also acted rather like a gold card in terms of what is affordable. Without cheap fuel, in order to maintain the same degree of production, there will either need to be a commensurate increase in labour, or a pretty large increase in the technology.
I would agree about corn and subsidies, although that isn't a general rule, often technologies don't create more than their inputs until after a period during which they are subsidised (allowing for economies of scale and more effective methods and processes to develop). Corn, of course, has been subsidised up the wooha since forever (hello USAID!), so not really so much a factor in this case.
hmm I am rambling, for I have fine ales and French ska.
a brief history
longer still, and very much worth reading on the topic.
576: This is just the early days of a better apocalypse.
Hopefully. |
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Sponsor | | Kibiyama | Mar 16, 8:05pm | | I'm thinking of taking part in Google's Summer of Code. $4500 for working on an open source project for the summer. |
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