Tomorrow 4/22/2008...

I poured some paint thinner down the drain yesterday, in honor of Earth Day.

Wasn't much, but it was all I could spare.

What comes from the earth, should go back to the earth, correct?
 
Troglodyte27 said:
Are you going to start an apiary?
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That's the idea.

The goal is to become totally self-sustaining. I can grow food, I have goats for milk if I have to, and meat for the family... We are getting off the grid with solar power. Next step, luxury items... HONEY!
 
Damocles said:
That's the idea.

The goal is to become totally self-sustaining. I can grow food, I have goats for milk if I have to, and meat for the family... We are getting off the grid with solar power. Next step, luxury items... HONEY!
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VERY COOL! I have a friend in the upper part of NY State. He raises clover (horse feed), bees (clover honey), and maple trees. Some years he sells raw sap, some years he boils a batch. He also rents hives to apple growers.
 
Troglodyte27 said:
VERY COOL! I have a friend in the upper part of NY State. He raises clover (horse feed), bees (clover honey), and maple trees. Some years he sells raw sap, some years he boils a batch. He also rents hives to apple growers.
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Yeah, that's another one you can do. Often organic farmers will let you simply put your apiary on their property so that you can own more than just what you can sustain on owned property.
 
I'm transplanting a tree that grew from its parent to another part of the property. Also I've just started arranging my annuals for this year.

I'm still concerned about the chemicals, esp. the defoliant but also the insecticides (boll weevils are a problem here) used in the cotton fields that surround our property on three sides. I don't want to eat that stuff so won't be planting foodstuffs. Also for that reason and a couple others, I no longer let the dogs stay in the back yard during the day, even in nice weather.
 
'Unintended Consequences' which aren't. They were warned:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=arSRWU0yDL7M

Food Crisis Shows How Bad Policies Can Be Deadly: Kevin Hassett

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

April 21 (Bloomberg) -- Sometimes, bad economic policies create small annoyances. Sometimes, they lead to catastrophes.

For years, the U.S. has heavily subsidized the production of corn-based ethanol. The global impact of that policy is beginning to lean toward the latter category.

There is no question that subsidies have had their desired effect: An enormous share of the grain crop is now devoted to energy production. How much? A new World Bank report states that ``almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S.'' Go back and read that sentence a second time. It is stunning.

With the world population growing, and incomes rising, increased food production is necessary to maintain an acceptable level of basic human welfare. Since 2004, corn production available to individual consumers hasn't budged.

While corn isn't the only foodstuff out there, it is an important one, and a shortage has led to soaring prices for just about every grain. Again according to the World Bank, from February 2005 to February 2008, overall global food prices increased 83 percent.

That's causing significant distress in the U.S., especially among seniors with relatively fixed incomes. In the developing world, the risks are becoming extraordinary.

After all, in the classic economic study of the Bengal Famine, which stretched from 1942 to 1944, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen found that food-price increases were the fundamental cause of perhaps 3 million deaths. The higher prices led to starvation, because workers' wages didn't increase enough to allow subsistence.

Signs of Strain

Back then, the famine began in earnest when the price of rice increased about 61 percent between December 1942 and March 1943.

One may hope and pray that labor markets and relief efforts have improved enough worldwide that another Bengal Famine won't occur even with food-price increases of a similar scale. However, the signs of strain have become deeply disturbing.

On April 12, NBC Nightly News broadcast an interview with a Haitian man eating ``hard discs made of butter, water, salt, and dirt.'' The man explained through an interpreter, ``If we don't eat this, we'll die because we don't have anything else.''

`It's Too Little'

Two days later, Louisiana Shary, a vendor in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, explained in an interview with National Public Radio: ``My children are hungry; things are too expensive. I can't give them food even if I sell all my merchandise. With the profits I get, I can't feed them on it. It's too little.''

In Haiti, the food riots led to seven reported deaths, including the killing of a Nigerian officer in the United Nations peacekeeping force, and the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.

The disorder was described by Haitian President Renè Prèval in a radio address on April 9, during which he pleaded for his people to stop the destruction: ``People of Haiti, you who are suffering, you who have taken to the streets because of the high cost of living; I am asking you to cool down. Those who are spreading chaos, those who are destroying things, throwing rocks and burning people's property, the police will no longer be able to tolerate the disorder.''

Only the Beginning

If food prices fail to go down in the coming weeks and months, the experience in Haiti might only be the beginning.

Food riots have, by my count, now occurred in nine countries around the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said in a recent report that Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have also seen food-related violence in recent weeks.

To what extent is ethanol to blame for the high prices? A new study by economist Thomas E. Elam of the consulting firm FarmEcon LLC explored the question.

The study, to be sure, was commissioned by livestock farming interest groups, yet it appears to rely on widely accepted economic models. Elam used his model to simulate what the price of corn today would be if the U.S. hadn't been subsidizing biofuels. He found that prices are about 50 percent higher than they would have been in a world without subsidies.

Limited Potential

Energy independence is important, but biofuels have very limited potential in that regard. Elam states that it would take the entire world grain crop to make enough ethanol to replace just the U.S.'s annual consumption of gasoline. A solution to an excessive reliance on greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels must be found, but biofuels aren't it.

During the Bengal famine, Sen found that the government failed to fight the catastrophe effectively because it didn't recognize that high prices were the true source of the problem. Cognizant of the lessons of history, then, the initial steps being taken seem prudent given the enormous risks.

For example, the U.S. has already committed an additional $200 million in food aid to help in the current crisis.

Still, we must also look ahead to policy changes that can have a longer-term positive impact. With that in mind, how can one possibly justify continued government subsidies for bio- fuels?

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org
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