Food Price Riots Popping Up Around The World

[Al_Masetti]

You believe that across the board, Al? Does that apply to America’s military, too? Does that apply to NASA? Does that apply to the interstate highway system? Does that apply to nuclear technology? The Manhattan project didn’t just give us the A-bomb it also gave us the knowledge of how to do nulcear generation.

It seems to me that when there is a national focus directed to solving a problem/crises the government can do quit well at getting things done. It’s when the Houses and Administration kiss up to constituent interests that are less than altruistic such as the ones I listed above is where the government screws up. The midwest corn growers love ethanol no matter how irrational it is as a gasoiline replacement is what I’d consider an example.

Having worked for two bureaucracies … I would say yes.

[There have been exceptions … the military rescue work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was better than exemplary. The Navy and Air Force and other services were there within minutes, but got no credit for it. I will even give the FAA credit for their work at the Katrina recovery in getting the regional airports operation under difficult circumstances.]

The U.S. military works, to the extent that it does, because of the sacrifice of junior enlisted and junior officer personnel. Then they burn out and quit.

Military procurement is a scandal because of the inordinate length of time and inordinate cost required for most items. I will make that categorical statement. Take a look at the achievements of the Lockheed Skunk Works and how amazed the military is when they make their stunning accomplishments. The F-80 Shooting Star; the C-130 still in production … by the way the C-130"J" model was a private venture and the U.S. Air Force hated it. It was only after Lockheed sold it to the Brits and everyone else [including the U.S. Marine Corps ] … who loved its vastly improved performance … did the U.S. Air Force finally reluctantly accept the plane. The F-104. The SR-71 Blackbird. The F-117 stealth fighter. These are just the known examples. Totally done outside the “system” by the Skunk Works. Look up the Skunk Works. I wrote an article about it; if you want I’ll send you a copy privately.

There used to be something called Quick Response Contracts … vendors were given 30-days to deliver combat hardware. Best information is that the QRC program … very successful … no longer exists.

The list of private sector successes goes on and on. Bureaucratic “mess-ups” goes on and on. Been that way for a very long time.

The P-51 Mustang, famed fighter of WW2, was a private venture by North American Aviation … and offered to the Brits who accepted it. The U.S. Army Air Corps reluctantly bought the plane.

Look up John Boyd. He’s on Wiki. The bureaucracy HATED John Boyd.

The famous F-16 “Viper” only came about because of the work of John Boyd who was a complete pariah within the Pentagon bureaucracy. Check him out. He pushed for a competition that produced two competing prototypes: the YF-16 and the YF-17. We know about how the YF-16 morphed into the now famous F-16. What folks don’t know is that the YF-17 evolved from the F-5 which evolved from the T-38. AND, after the YF-17 lost the competition, it morphed into the F/A-18 which is now in production for the U.S. Navy. The latest variation is the EF-18G, the Growler, intended to be the latest jammer plane. The Air Force used to have a jammer … the EF-111A. It was great. Worked just fine. The F-111 airframe is STILL in use with the Australian Air Force. But, the bureaucrats wanted it gone, so they simply transferred the two colonels assigned to prepare the budget for the EF-111A. And so with no budget it was gone.

In Bosnia, when the F-117 stealth fighter was used, it did need some jamming support. But the Air Force no longer had the EF-111A. There were some EA-6B Navy jammer planes, but they were slow. And the A-6 jammers had a problem with wing cracks. There were supposed to be fixes, but the program was cancelled and the airframes were turned into fish reefs.

So … one day, an F-117 stealth fighter was successfully tracked and shot down. AND it ended up shipped to the Soviet Union … and that’s how the Russians got our stealth technology.

I can go on and on. The whole C-17 mess. The C-5 upgrade mess. The aerial refueling plane mess.

I’m more familiar with Air Force stuff. But it goes on all over the place. The bureaucracy’s resistance to the MRAP vehicle because it was designed in South Africa. The whole mess with the HUMVEES being “uparmored” against IED’s. We had vehicles that would have worked … the M-113 was on hand … about 13,000 of them. The resistance by the military bureaucracy to Petraeus’ surge (and the Petraeus change in tactics).

The Interstate Highway System was supposed to be the National Defense Highway System. The bureaucracy reduced the heights of the overpasses, so that while it was intended to let overheight military equipment be transported, the system as built has restricted heights. In addition, the original idea was that the structures (bridges) were supposed to contain bomb shelters for the civilian population, but the bureaucrats deleted those also.

With respect to nuclear weapos, South Africa built their nuke in complete secrecy with a very small group of people for a tiny fraction of the cost of what it cost the United States. Read Richelson’s book “Spying on the Bomb”.

Don’t get me started.

 

[Doug50]

Gee – because weight loss is relevant, and the amount is also relevant. Particularly when we’re talking about a nation’s ability to feed its people.

And because people who live in bad conditions tend to vote with their feet by leaving. On the other hand, when people live in better-than-average conditions, other people tend to vote with their feet by coming to that better-than-average place.

The fact that when people get a chance they leave Cuba, and that not only Cubans but many others come to the US should tell us something about the relative quality of life in those two countries.

and BTW, Vern/Al, my family had a good friend from Cuba. He became our family doctor. He started out supporting the revolution until he saw what Castro was about. I got plenty of first hand stories about Cuba in those days. He ended up sending his family to the US but he himself had to stay behind for years, and dispiite be a doctor, had to work the fields inorder to buy his freedom and be allowed to come here. So again don’t tell me about someone wanting to get out of Cuba. I probably know better than you two.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Just remembered … here is the REAL reason why the Pentagon bureaucracy HATED Don Rumsfeld:

defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430

Just read the first few paragraphs.

You all probably never heard this speech or even heard about it. But the bureaucracy never forgave Rumsfeld.

WHY is it that you all never heard about this speech???

Check out the DATE of the speech.

What happened the next day totally overshadowed the speech, but the bureaucracy never forgave him.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks Doug,
I imagine that the farmland in the USA is in the same situation as North Korea, in that it is has been overfarmed to the point where it has no nutrients left and needs fertilizer to produce. But surely if fertilizer is phased out slowly this could be corrected by allowing fields time to replenish themselves between uses and by slowly reducing the amount of fertilizer.

I’d still like to know how much food can be produced without any fertilizer. I think the Cuba story is a good example of how things could go well without oil. It wouldn’t be all that bad if everyone had to start using their yards for growing crops.

A post that’s on topic! Neat!

I can’t testify to the condition of farmland in Korea. Nor can I quantify the loss or depletion of soil in the U.S. Doubtless there are experts who can tell us that. And, too, it’s a relative thing. Loss of 12 inches of topsoil down to the frangipan is a very bad business. Loss of 12 inches of loess soil that’s 20 feet deep is quite another thing. However, having replenished soil for years, I can say that, in general, it isn’t all that hard. There are many ways of doing it. You were correct in targeting “nutrients”, as there are many, and the proper balance is the thing. Building organic matter is the easiest. The biggest problems are in identifying and replenishing (or establishing for the first time) the right balance of trace minerals.

For eons, most animals rotted where they dropped. If wolves (or hunter-gatherers) carried off part of the carcass, the bones, in particular, would still be dropped somewhere, even if they were the bones of the wolf or the man. Thus, unevenly, but reasonably evenly over time, the trace mineral uptake by both animals and plants would recycle.

That’s no longer true because we haul trace minerals away and often don’t return them. We haul the corn (or the steer) to some processor who turns them into food and other products that tend to end up in landfills and sewers. We encase our own bones, etc in metal caskets inside concrete vaults and bury them below the roots of nearly everything.

Those who “build soils”, then, typically resort to commercially produced trace minerals. Most of them are “mined”.

But for sure, all of these things require energy, though building up organic material takes very little once you start. The sun does most of the work. Interestingly, some clays, usually not too far from the surface in many areas, contain an abundance of trace minerals. (Most clay is just soil that’s devoid of organics, just sitting there, unused.) Ideally, some “soil builders” would deep plow into the clay, mixing it into the more organically rich topsoil, then introduce measures that build up organic material infiltration even more.

This is a neat subject, and I enjoy it. I coud go on and on, but don’t want to be boring. Fundamentally, though, rebuilding soil is a matter of applying knowhow.

 

[vern_humphrey]

You and Al can go rant somewhere else for all I care. Go tell it to someone who cares about that. The whole point of the Cuba example was about food production, not anyone wanting to get into Cuba.

Oh my, testy aren’t we?

Sometimes it helps to wait a bit before hitting the “submit reply” button, to avoid coming across that way.

 

[Doug50]

Oh my, testy aren’t we?

Sometimes it helps to wait a bit before hitting the “submit reply” button, to avoid coming across that way.

speak for youself

 

[vern_humphrey]

and BTW, Vern/Al, my family had a good friend from Cuba. He became our family doctor. He started out supporting the revolution until he saw what Castro was about. I got plenty of first hand stories about Cuba in those days. He ended up sending his family to the US but he himself had to stay behind for years, and dispiite be a doctor, had to work the fields inorder to buy his freedom and be allowed to come here. So again don’t tell me about someone wanting to get out of Cuba. I probably know better than you two.

Do you know who Milton Olive is?

I served with him in the 30th Infantry in the early '60s.

 

[Doug50]

Do you know who Milton Olive is?

I served with him in the 30th Infantry in the early '60s.

I know this is getting even more off topic but…
and he left Cuba?

 

[BamaRider]

I’ve been out of this thread for awhile, and don’t feel like reading all these posts. All I wanna know is the price goin up at my local Chinese Buffet?

 

[vern_humphrey]

I know this is getting even more off topic but…
and he left Cuba?

He was an officer in the Cuban exile brigade that invaded at the Bay of Pigs. He was later commissioned a major in the US Army.

 

[rlg94086]

Getting back to the other off-topic discussion…

I’ll be attending this shindig next week:

WELCOME TO THE KCOMM SIGNATURE EVENT SERIES
2008 International Clean Energy & Power Forum

**Date ****Tuesday, April 29, 2008 **
6 - 9 P.M.

Location****University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Tom Bradley International Hall
417 Chancellor Charles Young Drive West
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Event Focus**To discuss clean energy and power issues facing our world **with a focus on near term business opportunities and commercialization of real solutions. Topics will include advances in Battery Power and Storage, Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Generation Systems, Solar Power and Clean Water, among others.

A Product Showcase will display leading company products and services in the alternative energy and power industries. Next generation companies will showcase their products and applications for attendees.

Event DetailsSeating Limited

No Registration Fee

Business Dress

Dinner, Wine and Cocktails Provided

Parking Complimentary

If y’all are in the neighborhood, please stop by. If you go to the website and register, I’ll buy (iow…there is no fee ): kcommenergy.com/

If none of you can make it, I’ll just have to report back.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Neil:

Hope this doesn’t bore you, but I think of it as an interesting footnote to the whole subject of soil depletion.

For decades, it has been supposed that farming in the Amazon (typically “slash and burn”) was a bad idea. Notwithstanding the lush jungle canopy, the soil, once bared and farmed, turns to “laterite”, a kind of brick-like substance, in a couple of years. The nutrients, you see, are all in the trees and brush of the jungle, and the soil itself has almost no nutrients in it. It rapidly bakes into something like adobe brick in the tropical sun.

That Amazon jungle should never be farmed has been accepted for decades. Not long ago, however, having read long-discounted accounts of Spanish explorers describing vastly greater, and prosperous, populations in the basin than anyone now thought could possibly have existed, some anthropologists and archaeologists spent a considerable amount of time re-exploring some of the places where the Spanish described enormous settlements.

What they discovered was that the soil in those areas, which looked just like the other jungle areas, was actually quite deep and rich, and did not turn to laterite when exposed. There was no natural explanation for it. But excavating, they found that the soil in those areas was full of pottery shards, seemingly deliberately broken into tiny pieces, and decomposed charcoal; over far too large an area to be explained by accidental pottery breakage and cooking fires. Doing some testing, they discovered that charcoal “binds” organic material in the soil and thus resists the “washout” from tropical rains that aid in the laterization of the soil. Charcoal also aids in the proliferation of fungi and bacteria that can be soil-building. In addition, the charcoal returned many trace minerals, once locked up in wood, to the soil. The purpose of the tiny pottery shards is still uncertain, but they do introduce some firmness into what would otherwise be pretty boggy soil. These anthropologists, then, concluded that the “uninhabitable” Amazon basin was, indeed, far more habitable than was long thought, and that the very first Spanish explorers were correct in reporting large, prosperous civilizations along the river, but that it took a particular approach to make them habitable on a long-term basis. So “slash and burn” farmers are close to what they really need to be doing, but don’t do it.

Another odd thing was discovered. The jungle seems like just wild jungle, except that one notices a vast number of food bearing trees and bushes; with major concentrations here and there, but tending to be heaviest near the old “mythical” large settlements and stretching for long distances from them. It was hypothesized that once, before European diseases decimated the natives and drove the scanty remnants into primitive and guarded isolation, huge swaths of the Amazon Basin were, in truth, gigantic “orchards”, but not monocultures. Non-bearing plants were present as well, but most of the food-bearing plants appeared, in fact, to have been “planted” among them and tended. So, likely there is no place on earth that is truly “primeval”.

The very earliest explorers of the U.S. noted a similar thing. At earliest times, more than half of the trees in Georgia, for example, were American Chestnuts…food bearing. European pests killed nearly all of them off, but that was the report at the time. Vast areas in the Eastern U.S. were reported as being full of food-bearing trees and plants. Of course, long before English speaking Europeans even reached the Mississippi, European diseases (Non-American worldwide diseases actually. People on the Eurasian continent got around more than many think.) had decimated the Indian populations, without whose husbandry, things took on a progressively “wilder” appearance the further west explorers and settlers got. It is believed by some that the “beginning of the end” was DeSoto’s tiny army. Spanish armies at the time brought herds of pigs with them to slaughter for food along the way, and the journals of DeSoto’s exploration records that they did, indeed, bring pigs along. Some escaped, of course, pigs being difficult to “herd”, notwithstanding that they are such excellent foragers the Spanish did not have to bring feed along for them. Pigs are one of the worst disease vectors on earth, capable of harboring nearly every human disease and mutating them into more deadly strains. There is a lot of “back and forth” trading of diseases between domestic animals and men. It’s usually not too harmful unless your population is not used to it and has no immunity to the “trade goods”. As Indians were greatly more traveled than people often think, it did not take long for disease to nearly wipe them out continent-wide. Just a few years after DeSoto, French explorers of the Mississippi could not find the large settlements along the Mississippi and tributary rivers described by the Spanish, and the Spanish accounts were disbelieved because of it.

In my own area of the country, “wild, native pecans”, much treasured by the Park Service for a time as a unique species, were found, through DNA analysis, to have actually been brought by Indians from Oklahoma (and from Texas to Oklahoma) and planted here. It is believed that, because of pecan trees’ relative inability to compete with more vigorous and taller hardwood species that abound here, most had died out before Europeans came into this area because Indians were no longer present in sufficient numbers to tend them effectively, leaving only small, very rare, isolated groves here and there. But for human disease, the earliest white settlers might have found vast pecan groves in addition to the hardier species they did find.

Things are not always as they seem.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Interesting link on Post #316. One does need to wonder, though, whether European central banks are grousing about the decline of the dollar and considering intevention in order to give a cover to something that could actually make them a lot of money.

If the Treasury collected billions and billions of dollar bills together and burned them at high noon on Wall Street, the value of the dollar would go up, all other things being equal, there being fewer remaining.

Doubtless the Euro central banks are aware that the U.S. economy is pretty much in the process of doing just that. Billions, perhaps trillions (I don’t keep count) in dollar wealth are simply disappearing, like so much matter touching antimatter. Again, assuming all other things remain equal, a rise in the value of the dollar in the not-too-distant future is a pretty safe bet.

No one can ever really when something is at the bottom of its cycle, and no one can ever totally predict events that could change things.

It would be my guess that European central bankers are getting close to buying dollars in a big way. They are likely to make a great deal of money, will be able to claim to be the saviors of European business, and can blame the whole “painful”, profitable thing on the U.S. Of course, American travel and goods will not be as cheap for European buyers as before, and there will be a bit of European inflation to contend with, but that will all be “the Americans’ fault”. N’est-ce pas?

To stay on topic. For gardening, I favor what I call “depleted manure”. Find a farmer with an ancient barn or loafing shed no longer in use. Inside will be a wealth of a dirt/manure/decayed hay mixture, but it will not be full of acid like fresh manure. Wonderful stuff to mix in with one’s garden soil. If it’s old enough, well trampled into the dirt, and doesn’t have too much hay or straw in it, it’s good garden soil all by itself. It’s even better if there’s a bit of red clay near the surface of your garden to dig up and mix into it. Drop the depleted manure into the center of the rows and dig the clay up from along the sides, put it on top and mix it in. Adds minerals, tang and helps drainage. The farmer will usually not care if you get a couple of pickups full of it. But it’s hard to dig because it has been trampled down. So, ummmm, if the farmer will lend you his tractor and front-end loader for a few minutes for a little bit of cash. He might even dig it for you.

Ah! The very self of tilth! Strawberries like dark rubies! Tomatoes “as delicious as mortal sin”, as the Cajuns say. Cucumbers, sweet as candy, that resound juicily with a “snap” when you bite into them right off the vine! Green beans you’ll eat raw while you work. If you want to see your garden do what it needs to do for you, and avoid the temptation to riot over the tastelessness of store produce, believe what I tell you.

 

[Doug50]

I’ve been out of this thread for awhile, and don’t feel like reading all these posts. All I wanna know is the price goin up at my local Chinese Buffet?

Yes. It costs a lot to ship Chinese over here.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Kind of interesting.

Enjoying Ridgerunner’s essays on soil development and ag species propagation.

When I worked in Puerto Rico, there used to be complaints that even their rice and beans were imported … even though everything grew there. Some folks were so passionate about their “mini-farms” that they worked their property on weekends and actually grew stuff for export. In Central America, again everything grew there, but few people had gardens.

In West Africa, although there was drought and starvation, there was water available … believe it or not … and again everything grew there [tomatoes, mangoes, watermelons … the local cash crop was peanuts … groundnuts/ niebe.] . In fact, there was a “major scandal” that never made the papers … some satellite photography people in South Dakota found a “bad pixel” in one photo of the African desert. They contacted the U.S. Embassy and asked if someone could drive out there to see what the heck was there that showed up as green instead of as brown. They needed to recalibrate their imagery computer analyzer.

So two guys set out and found the mystery pixel. Turned out that there … way out in the desert … was a cattle ranch … kneed deep in grass. Belonged to one of the relatives of the local dictator.

Everything grows … or can grow … everywhere.

Amazing.

[By the way, you can do amazing work with compost. Or worm castings. Decades ago, I sold an article on vermiculture based on some experiments I had conducted. On the commuter train going home one evening, my boss was giving me a terrible ragging about it. One of his friends leaned in and asked how I overcame the acidosis problem. My boss was stunned that anyone had any idea of anything to do with raising worms. What a hoot. I guess you had to be there.]

Somewhere around here is an article I cut out about termite guts being the perfect device for making ethanol. I will find it and post it. After getting the ethanol, the leftover stuff is excellent soil conditioner. I will find that article.

Not sure what the technical/Latin expression is for raising cultured termites.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Kind of interesting.

Enjoying Ridgerunner’s essays on soil development and ag species propagation.

When I worked in Puerto Rico, there used to be complaints that even their rice and beans were imported … even though everything grew there. Some folks were so passionate about their “mini-farms” that they worked their property on weekends and actually grew stuff for export. In Central America, again everything grew there, but few people had gardens.

In West Africa, although there was drought and starvation, there was water available … believe it or not … and again everything grew there [tomatoes, mangoes, watermelons … the local cash crop was peanuts … groundnuts/ niebe.] . In fact, there was a “major scandal” that never made the papers … some satellite photography people in South Dakota found a “bad pixel” in one photo of the African desert. They contacted the U.S. Embassy and asked if someone could drive out there to see what the heck was there that showed up as green instead of as brown. They needed to recalibrate their imagery computer analyzer.

So two guys set out and found the mystery pixel. Turned out that there … way out in the desert … was a cattle ranch … kneed deep in grass. Belonged to one of the relatives of the local dictator.

Everything grows … or can grow … everywhere.

Amazing.

[By the way, you can do amazing work with compost. Or worm castings. Decades ago, I sold an article on vermiculture based on some experiments I had conducted. On the commuter train going home one evening, my boss was giving me a terrible ragging about it. One of his friends leaned in and asked how I overcame the acidosis problem. My boss was stunned that anyone had any idea of anything to do with raising worms. What a hoot. I guess you had to be there.]

Somewhere around here is an article I cut out about termite guts being the perfect device for making ethanol. I will find it and post it. After getting the ethanol, the leftover stuff is excellent soil conditioner. I will find that article.

Not sure what the technical/Latin expression is for raising cultured termites.

How in the world could anybody raise enough termites to make ethanol in enough quantity to make it worthwhile?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I am hard put to understand people failing to garden in places where things grow well, where there is poverty and where food is imported.

Reminds me of some of the things Chesterton said about there being all kinds of idle farmland in the England of his day, yet most foodstuffs being imported. He maintained that the problem had to do with peoples’ growing assumption that the only way one could live was to work for wages and spend it all on consumer goods of one kind or another, but also with poor utilization caused by poor distribution of the means of production.

What, in your opinion, is the reason for this phenomenon in such places as P.R. and Central America? Not enough land ownership? Lack of skills? Some kind of institutionalized dependency? I assume the problem in W. Africa you observed is inaccessibility of water to most.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Another example of the possibility of using foodstock waste for biofuel feedstock:

Freshly Squeezed Ethanol Feedstock

Food processing waste looks very promising for materials. I know Tyson’s has been linked to using their waste for materials.

 

[Al_Masetti]

How in the world could anybody raise enough termites to make ethanol in enough quantity to make it worthwhile?

Termites are “self seeding”. If you’re not careful, they will eat the office of the termiterium.

 

[Al_Masetti]

I am hard put to understand people failing to garden in places where things grow well, where there is poverty and where food is imported.

Reminds me of some of the things Chesterton said about there being all kinds of idle farmland in the England of his day, yet most foodstuffs being imported. He maintained that the problem had to do with peoples’ growing assumption that the only way one could live was to work for wages and spend it all on consumer goods of one kind or another, but also with poor utilization caused by poor distribution of the means of production.

What, in your opinion, is the reason for this phenomenon in such places as P.R. and Central America? Not enough land ownership? Lack of skills? Some kind of institutionalized dependency? I assume the problem in W. Africa you observed is inaccessibility of water to most.

I feel a rant coming on.

What I will do, pre-emptively, is list:

www.dripworks.com

www.powerflour.org

Noel Vietmeyer

Office of Arid Lands Studies (Univ of Arizona)

National Academy of Sciences.

[There I feel somewhat better.]

[The only effective cure for a rant is a pre-emptive treatment of natural depressant … preferably single-malt.]

---

Corruption.

Based on what I have been told:

Everything grows there. So if someone “does agriculture” or gardening, then folks feel free to steal the fruits and veggies. So, there is a cultural disincentive to farm or garden.

Sometimes, if someone gets a few pennies ahead, then the corruption escalates and “government representatives” [guys with guns] will steal and maybe kill.

Land ownership may be an issue. In a lot of these countries, title to land is squishy … the government will expropriate steal ] it. And the land will be “given” to favored friends who are likely to be incompetent. The original owners will be lucky if they have the opportunity to flee with their lives … they end up in Queens, NYC.

Classic case: Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) … once virtually the breadbasket of Africa, now unable to feed itself.

Corruption.

---

Political incorrectness.

That dripworks catalog thingee I listed above. Modern water management was pioneered by Israel. Everybody knows that. Can’t use it. Politically incorrect.

Decades ago, the National Academy of Sciences published a TON of stuff on water management. My recollection is that Noel Vietmeyer was involved in studying and publicizing a lot of that technology and also a lot of the crops that thrive in desert regions.

Dr. Vietmeyer has moved on. I looked him up. Out of curiousity. And found he is informally associated with this group whose web site is: www.Powerflour.org which is another life-saving development that costs virtually nothing and can be set up in any country that grows barley. Meaning: anywhere.