This morning, Elizabeth Warren rolled out a plan to break up Big Ag monopolies and help family farmers via an exclusive in the Des Moines Register, followed up by a Medium post. From DMR:
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is taking aim at some of the nation’s largest agribusiness companies, such as Tyson and Bayer-Monsanto, continuing her campaign’s assault on corporate consolidation.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s plan, released exclusively to the Des Moines Register before it was unveiled Wednesday, would address consolidation in the agribusiness industry, “un-rig” the rules she says favor its largest players, and elevate the interests of family farmers…
Austin Frerick, a Democrat who ran for Congress in Iowa’s 3rd District in 2018 primarily on the issue of breaking up agricultural monopolies, said plans like Warren’s have the potential to revitalize rural communities.
“Putting more bargaining power in farmers’ pockets means more money for farmers. It means more money in these communities and small Iowa towns,” he said.
Frerick, a former economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, was among the people from whom Warren’s campaign sought input as it drafted the proposal.
“People are so happy in rural Iowa to see a Democrat talking farm and ag policy, who knows what the price per bushel is, who knows their pain,” Frerick said. “Because Democrats just lack a vision for agriculture right now.”
I don’t know if Frerick’s take is accurate, but Warren’s vision of a new approach to agriculture policy is consistent with her strategies for dealing with big businesses in other sectors — using policy to break up concentrated power. I have no idea if it’ll move the needle in Iowa or anywhere else, but Warren isn’t afraid to go bold and, just as importantly, to back up big ideas with policy details. That’s a good thing.
Emma
Well, it is said that one’s character is known by the enemies one makes. You go Senator Professor!
RedDirtGirl
Anything that brings some pain to Monsanto sounds good to me.
lollipopguild
A lot more of this please!
ruemara
I could go for a Warren/Harris ticket.
arrieve
I love that she is going big and just pushing out proposal after proposal, every one of them designed to address an actual pain point that hits real people. Even if she isn’t the nominee, having those ideas out there and discussing them in the debates will (I hope) move the needle on what is possible.
Meanwhile the Republicans want to take away health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions — which is, eventually, everybody.
satby
@ruemara: those two women, in either role, are my dream ticket.
Gin & Tonic
Funny how Bayer keeps turning up with big hits – from commercializing heroin, to using slaves to build part of Auschwitz, to making and selling neonicotinoids. A real humanitarian organization.
Momentary
This is very interesting and I look forward to seeing what Sarah Taber has to say about it. I can only dream of Labour in the UK ever putting forth something like this. It kills me that Labour candidates can’t be bothered to just put on a pair of wellies and pet a cow at an ag show once in a while, like the Tories always make sure to do.
trollhattan
She says out loud the things people have been whispering since forever; people such as the farmers completely ensnared by Big Ag to the point they have very little say in how they run their own businesses. People who voted for Trump because he wasn’t her. People who are being hammered by tariffs at this very moment.
Keep speaking, Senator. Let them tell us why and how you are wrong (even knowing you’re 100% correct).
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
I was all “how could any corporation be more evil than Monsanto?” They sure showed me.
Percysowner
I started donating monthly to her yesterday. I like her, I like her ideas. I’m terrified that Bernie is going to swamp her in Iowa and New Hampshire and take away her momentum, but I’m on her train. I also like Harris, so I have a backup if Warren doesn’t make it.
zhena gogolia
OT, pretty good Onion story:
https://politics.theonion.com/shocked-vladimir-putin-slowly-realizing-he-didn-t-consp-1833575011
rikyrah
@RedDirtGirl:
Come sit by me.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: That’s such a great point — Warren is definitely saying that people aren’t even running their own businesses anymore because giant corporations call the shots. It’s true when Amazon uses data to squeeze out sellers on its own platform, and it’s true for farmers too. The points from her plan that directly address that are in the DMR piece linked above, including proposed legislation to let farmer’s repair their own equipment or take it to a mechanic of their choice instead of a dealership, ending contract farming, etc.
@Percysowner: Same. Warren is a whole lot smarter and infinitely more substantive than Sanders, so maybe she can outflank the blowhard. I mean, she not only talks the talk, she knows what the hell she’s talking about! But unfortunately, sexism and susceptibility to personality cults isn’t all on the Republican side.
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
I know that I brought it up this morning, but I still can’t wrap my mind around folks just finding out about Bayer’s Nazi ties. If you were big during WWII and European and not a British firm, I almost defaulted to you having Nazi ties.
Kraux Pas
Does this mean I’m going to have to throw out my various editions of Monopoly?
tobie
I’ll be curious how the BJ community responds to this. Whenever I’ve mentioned in the past that ag subsidies could be reformulated to promote smaller farms that don’t engage in monoculture and don’t rely on petroleum-based fertilizers I’ve been told that this idea is foolish and would affect the food supply significantly. Now that progressive hero Warren has proposed it I’m sure it will be heralded as a brilliant idea.
rikyrah
@arrieve:
Well, not everybody, but LITERALLY HALF THE COUNTRY.
OVER 150 MILLION PEOPLE.
tobie
@rikyrah: It’s a fact of life in Germany given the close association between industry and the war machine in WWII. Krupps had Nazi ties. The Goethe University Frankfurt is now located on the former IG Farben campus. IG Farben made Zyklon-B for the gas chambers. It was split up into Agfa, Bayer, BASF and a few other companies after the war.
Major Major Major Major
@Momentary: I was just coming to say that I am withholding judgment until I hear from Dr. Taber. She’s great!
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: Yup. A quick google shows it is a long list of big companies still in business that had Nazi ties.
A good number of them are the sort of manufacturers that make things for other manuafacturers, like Seimens, which among other things, makes automation technology. So many of them are not household names like Bayer and Volkswagen unless you are involved in the engineering/manufacturing sectors.
War is good for business, always has been, always will be.
RedDirtGirl
@rikyrah: Here I come!
EthylEster
@tobie wrote:
by whom?
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: @Ohio Mom: also Prescott Bush, may his family live in infamy.
MoxieM
@tobie: The non-Jewish founders of Deutsche Bank betrayed the Jewish family who were the other founders (I happen to know–they were old family friends), and made a tidy profit out of the war. And so it goes.
tobie
@EthylEster: I will see if I can find out through a search. I was surprised that the suggestion was dismissed given what we know about BigAg in particular and corporate welfare in general.
West of the Rockies
@satby:
But we’d lose two powerful senators. ?
trollhattan
@tobie:
Were any straw subsidies used constructing your man here? We demand answers!
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
I hear you. But while I don’t know about Massachusetts California Dems have a deep bench right now. I’ll begin with Senator Schiff as one possibility should Harris find herself in the White House.
Wapiti
@tobie:
A great deal of the Midwest seems to be growing soybeans and corn for export, feed lots, ethanol production, and the like. I’m not sure how much it really affects the food supply in America.
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
Good point! He’s to old, but I would welcome a Senator Jerry Brown, too.
tobie
@Wapiti: Not just the midwest. I live in Maryland and just about all the farms in the state produce corn and soy for the chicken industry. This is one of the many reasons why eating meat leaves such a large carbon footprint. We clearcut huge tracts of land that could be left forested or used for other edible crops to create big breasted chickens, oversized cows, and presumably fat hogs. Another change BigAg will resist but would be good for the environment, is to try to come up with perennial forms of food crops. Seed companies hate the idea but, boy, would it be good for conserving water and top soil and reducing reliance on fertilizers.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
The sheer entertainment value of Senator Jerry would be over the top. Can you imagine him responding to the typical Turtle or Graham whining, or fvcking Jim Imhofe hauling a snowball onto the Senate floor? I’ll tell you exactly where that snowball ends up (and by up, I really mean “up”).
Mart
@Wapiti: Thanks to GMO yield increases and clear cutting rain forests in Brazil (where they can turn two crops/year) seems to be enough grain for 7.5 billion people. Reason why the dire population explosion/massive starvation predictions of the 60’s and 70’s never came to pass.
Betty Cracker
@West of the Rockies: I am not a Californian, so I haven’t followed Brown’s career all that closely. But from a distance, he seems to be a classic victim of vicious political media typecasting. When I was a child and young adult, all I ever heard about him was that he was this flaky dude with outlandish ideas — Governor Moonbeam! — way too weird for America!
Searcher
@tobie:
How, uhhh, exactly would that work?
You want wheat to produce wheat without dying afterwards?
West of the Rockies
@Betty Cracker:
That was about the size of it… It’s a shame that at 77 McTurtle shows no signs of stopping but Moonbeam has decided to retire from public life.
tobie
@Searcher: Funny you should mention wheat. Wes Jackson’s Land Institute has been working on a perennial wheat seed in part to save the aquifer. Evidently they’ve had some success:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@West of the Rockies: Pity we didn’t elect him to the Senate in 1982.
Bill Arnold
Since open thread, have to say, this makes me happier. The US (aggregate, including media) is becoming a litte more resistant to spin, notably DJ Trump administration spin.
CNN Poll: Majority says Trump not exonerated of collusion after Barr’s summary (warning autoplay video, Jennifer Agiesta, Wed March 27, 2019)
(PDF) The study was conducted for CNN via web on the SSRS Opinion Panel. SSRS is an independent research company. Interviews were conducted from March 25to March 26, 2019 among a sample of 701respondents.
Momentary
@tobie: Perennial crops will still need fertiliser, but reducing plowing and glyphosate is a plus. I would think no longer having crop rotation would be a concern for pests and disease, though?
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
I would have voted Jerry into term 5 if it were constitutionally possible. Ver 2.0 was exactly who California needed to drag us out of the recession and coincidentally, drive the Republicans to the borders.
Funny side note from the Des Moine Register article you link: Warren is literally heading to Steve King’s home town, Storm Lake. I wish my granny were alive to witness this, she lived five miles away.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Ohio Mom: @rikyrah: Fascists and Corporatists are natural allies–both believe in the same principles. Such as the belief that the best man/company should win and it is all a zero sum game. And it doesn’t matter how you win/profit, so long as you do. Etc, etc. Fascism is governmental sociopathy and Corporatism is economic sociopathy.
Paul W.
She is relentless with these policies! AND I LOVE IT!
Mart
@tobie: My reason for being a vegetarian is to lower my massive carbon footprint a bit. Giant grain plants can grind 400k bushels a day or more. Most all the farmers in the region are contracted to supply them. Other grain farmers are contracted by big ag to supply giant export elevators mostly located in gulf coast states. Don’t know how you break up this monopolistic relationship. The plants are very efficient. For corn – separate the starch to make ethanol/starches/dextrose, etc. Separated gluten is high in protein and used in animal feed. Reason chicken breasts are orangish. Oils are separated from grain flakes in tanks of hexane. Spent flakes are desolventized and further processed/sent to animal feed lots. Almost no waste, until animals convert the grain to meat.
tobie
@Momentary: Yes, perennials need water and fertilizer like annuals but not as much with their deep(er) roots. That’s their plus. I don’t know enough to say what the specific vulnerabilities would be for crops grown on untilled fields. My understanding is that even annuals are now grown as ‘no till crops.’ Isn’t that how farms are able to expand the number of crop rotations in a season?
Bill Arnold
@zhena gogolia:
The Onion really has risen to the challenge of the DJT administration.
It helps that their rule that the full joke must be embedded in the headline works on twitter really well:
Immanentize
@Momentary: and Tobie! (Your link has messed with your reply)
Seeds. Remember seeds? Monsanto will either sue you or require your crops to be destroyed if your plants prove to be grown from Monsanto seed stock.
But people need the weed resistance. And the herbicide resistance. Because your neighbor might spray Roundup or other killers. Then your crops die. But Monsanto has the solution. Their patented, non transferable seeds.
Besides being Corporate Evil, it is very bad for bio diversity (like good bye bananas!)
How many family farmers are left, anyway?
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: Beelzebayer more evil than Monsatan? Heavens forfend!
@tobie:
In fact, “Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer—[IG Farben] was seized by the Allies after World War II and divided back into its constituent companies.” Essentially the chemical companies combined into a trust & the Allies busted the trust back into its original components.
It should also be noted that Zyklon-B is “the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s… Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s…. Uses [of Zyklon-B] included delousing clothing and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains.”
IOW Zyklon-B was a respectable (if somewhat hazardous to handle) chemical of a type with recognized uses for ~60 years before it was repurposed for the death camps. The control of compounds with legitimate uses (in chemical synthesis or as standalones) that are also toxic enough to be used for killing people are a major concern (& headache) for the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Along those lines it might also be noted that the first nerve agent was identified by accident. The researcher Gerhard Schraeder found the compound (RS)-Ethyl N,N-dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate (aka tabun) extremely toxic to humans in 1936 by while he was “trying to create a more effective insecticide” for IG Farben.
Moral: Chemicals with evil applications may not have been developed with malice aforethought. The identification of those applications is quite another matter.
Searcher
@tobie: Yeah, I was just reading about that. Crazy idea, completely different from how we’ve agricultured the last ten thousand years. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Right now, it looks like Kernza yields 7-15 bushels per acre (400-900 pounds, claimed by UWis in 2017), which is closer to (optimistically) 1/3 commercial grain yields. There are also unanswered questions on weed control, long-term productivity and fertilizer use.
Assuming that the per-acre productivity can be solved (since “let’s plant 3x as many acres!” is a hard sell), I’m a little curious how this will pan out. Seed costs are only ~15% of the out-of-pocket costs of growing an acre of wheat, but you’d also be removing planting from your yearly to-do, with the associated time, fuel and equipment costs. If weed control and fertilizer don’t end up costing you too much, it’s possible you could get away with a small yield hit and still find it advantageous.
Immanentize
WTF 10,000 years?
WTF?
Hmmm. Error. That was a reply to “Searcher.” Seeds is what we are describing as well as perenial cultivars. My Grandfather would grow corn, save some, plant the following year. I.e. seed corn
Can’t do that. Now.
Searcher
@Immanentize: Wheat was domesticated ten thousand years ago.
tobie
@Uncle Cosmo: Yes, and on that note we can recall that Agent Orange was first conceived as a herbicide, then sprayed in Viet Nam to destroy the forest canopy so US forces could identify Viet Cong fighters. Little thought was given to the effects of the chemical on people on the ground. Monsanto was the manufacturer, I believe.
Betty Cracker
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
Well put! Consider it stolen!
tobie
@Searcher: It is a crazy idea. Our diets are based entirely on annual food sources. I wouldn’t want to live on a steady diet of berries and game.
eemom
7 Major Brands That Were Once Nazi Collaborators
IBM, VW, Coke, Hugo Boss, AP, Kodak. And Bayer.
AP’s is particularly bloodcurdling, and to this day they have not apologized.
SenyorDave
@Bill Arnold: A majority (56%) says the President and his campaign have not been exonerated of collusion, but that what they’ve heard or read about the report shows collusion could not be proven. Fewer, 43%, say Trump and his team have been exonerated of collusion.
This is one reason why the House should investigate Trump up the wazoo for anything that will make him look corrupt. The more people realize that he is corrupt and dishonest 100% of the time, the more people will understand what a joke Barr’s report is. Barr was hired to do one thing, and that was clear Trump.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
Often attributed to Mussolini, but may in fact be from Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher of fascism.
waspuppet
My stomach is already turning over the number of times in the next year to year and a half that we’re going to have to hear “Yes, she has great policy positions and is generally really smart, but is she likable enough to take on (checks notes) Donald Trump?”
And for what it’s worth, I like her! I find stuff like this very likable!
Wapiti
@tobie: Loomis over at LGM had a post up in the last month or two about how US forestry practice used to be to spray clear-cut areas with specific herbicides before (or during) replanting with the desired trees. The chemical effects on people and wildlife was a secondary afterthought, if that. The herbicides would not affect the desired seedlings, but would kill competitors.
patrick II
Warren will have trouble getting past the courts with most of her anti-monopolistic policies. The legal principles creating the framework for dealing with monopolies was written by Robert Bork and has become institutionalized law. She knows that, but it won’t be easy.
Antitrust was defined by Robert Bork. I cannot overstate his influence
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
This just says that political stereotyping continues long after it has lost any relevance it originally had. To those who are snared in media typecasting, Jerry Brown is still 35 years old, a Buddhist hippie dating Linda Rondstadt and Governor Moonbeam. In the real world, he reinvented himself twice, as mayor of Oakland and as a successful governor who was judicious and fought off the more liberal wing of the California Democratic Party as he shaped legislation and crafted smart budgets.
None of the political typecasting, in this case, had any impact on Brown’s career. He leaves politics as a child of his father, another generation of Browns who loved their state and who lived lives devoted to public service.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker:
Facism (Mussolini) is the elision of government and corporations.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Betty Cracker: I’m flattered! Feel free.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gin & Tonic:
to inventing nerve and mustard gas..
patrick II
So, I was just listening to Trump on NPR and he said that getting rid of Obamacare (he still calls it that — telling) was the first step. Then “we” will have something much better. I think if he wins the court case (and who knows really if the fix isn’t in) he plans to ask congress to write a new health care plan. The Republicans in the Senate will come up with something that sounds good to their base (free market principles, selling across state lines, etc. ) which the democrats in the house won’t agree with. The will have their own plan — Obamacare plus? I don’t think Medicare for everyone. But that plan will be portrayed as not as good as the wonderful free market Senate plan, nothing will be passed, and those socialists in congress have stopped you from having cheaper and better health care.
And he plans to run on that and the wall and “the best economy ever”.
Barbara
@patrick II: Congress legislates. That is all.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Ford, Henry the first that is, was a big supporter of Germany, and IBM provided the Nazis with card processing machines to track their behavior. Prescott Bush, Ambassador to Great Britain and a Senator, was a big supporter of Germany also, too. Lots of people you might have respected were Nazis, real ones.
My dad had an elderly friend in Florida, named Hortense, who asked him to take her to the Cadillac dealer to help her buy a new car. He asked me, rhetorically I guess, why she didn’t buy a Lincoln, and I told him it was because she was pretty conservative Jewish, and Henry Ford was a famous anti-semite and supporter of the Nazis. He looked at me astonished. Racist too, I told him.
And that’s why black folks rarely drive a Lincoln, and prefer a Caddy. Same for jewish wealth.
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
The Onion is great on Instagram because the photograph is right there. It makes it even funnier.
debbie
@Immanentize:
Intentionally or unintentionally! When a bird poops the seed out on a neighboring property, that farmer will get sued to Hell and back if it’s discovered.
ETA: Monsanto is the Adobe of the farming world. :/
tobie
@Wapiti: I’ll have to look into that. Thanks.
MazeDancer
So impressed how Elizabeth Warren rolls out one big policy stance after another.
And don’t know what to do with the reality,, if she is the nominee, it will be all Pochahantas all the time.
Want to fight back. But don’t know what to do with media who need a “but her emails” for 2020.
Feel like puke I am letting Trump control the narrative. But he must be stopped and I don’t know if she has the charisma to do it. (And I voted for her and kept her bumper sticker on my car for years.)
But she’s so smart and has such great ideas.
Momentary
@Searcher: Honestly it seems like it would work well with grazing livestock. It’s basically grass, where humans want the grass seed — so I presume harvesting is done by cutting it like hay and then threshing, after which you can put your cows or sheep on the field to graze what’s left (grass likes that, and will grow back stronger as long as it’s not overgrazed) which takes care of fertilising, and you’ve got straw from the threshing to feed overwinter. I’m not an arable farmer nor are my neighbours, but I see arable farmers in the lowlands talking about wanting to get back to having grazing livestock in their rotation to rebuild the soil and reduce inputs, and looking for livestock farmers who want the grazing.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Nothing prevented Republicans from writing a health insurance plan before. They have had years to come up with something. As is always the case, Trump just flat out lies.
rikyrah
Tom Watson (@tomwatson) Tweeted:
What I really like about @AOC’s ambuscade of the GOP on the #GreenNewDeal is that – even in losing – she gave the Republicans hell. We need to do more of this. More Bronx. Less polite clubbiness. https://twitter.com/tomwatson/status/1111027419614507011?s=17
rikyrah
Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) Tweeted:
On Fox News, Judge Napolitano says the full Mueller report is 700 PAGES
The actual length has never been publicly disclosed, so this is new information, if accurate https://t.co/T3fQjkbkbg https://t.co/8JxOvOMHg5 https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1110993101789765638?s=17
debbie
@eemom:
Jesus, I did not know about AP.
Momentary
@tobie: I think the point of no-till is to preserve soil structure and avoid losing topsoil to runoff and wind after plowing, I don’t think it affects crop timing, but I could be wrong, as am not an arable farmer!
Uncle Cosmo
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Sulfur mustard was first prepared in 1860 & was not recognized as a candidate for use in chemical warfare until 1913, after a British chemist working in Berlin had developed an improved production process & been hospitalized due to an accident with the stuff. The first nerve agent, as I have noted above, was first prepared some time before its toxicity was accidentally discovered by an IG Farben researcher in search of a better insecticide,
debbie
@Brachiator:
The NPR report pointed out how long the Rethugs have had to write up a plan. I’m worried about the gap. I can’t imagine, if he wins the court case, that Trump will leave ACA in place until his “much better” is ready to go.
Gin & Tonic
@Ohio Mom: It’s Siemens, not Seimens. My maternal gf worked for them between the wars, until he lost his job because he wouldn’t join the party.
Searcher
@Momentary: Hilariously, the major limiting factor on organic agriculture is the lack of enough shit for fertilizer. Sure, you get the occasional news story of a factory farm’s giant manure pit spilling into a local water supply, but basically all manure is spoken for at this point.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
“Isn’t that Horense?”
“Looks pretty relaxed to me.”
Old joke. (very)
Momentary
@Searcher: Preach, brother =) I definitely think that’s got to be a fundamental principle: when the shit turns into a problem rather than a resource, then you’re doing it wrong.
J R in WV
@tobie:
Yes, in a little river town named Nitro, WV, so called for the first chemical plant in town, which made nitroglyceryn for WW I ammunition. I still recall seeing the tall earthen dikes built between the crumbling brick buildings of the factory, to prevent an explosion in one building from setting off chain explosions in other buildings of the plant.
I worked across a majik chain link fence and a rail spur from the Monsanto plant, in an office building, where Agent Orange was made. It still seeps out of hidden dumps up little rural hollows around that area.
While I worked there, ironically for the Department of Environmental Protection [God is an Iron is one of the principles of the universe!] I was exposed to a chemical called either carbon di-sulfide or carbon bi-sulfide, which can cause in humans (1) insanity or (2) severe eczema. I apparently got (2) eczema, which was treated by injections of corticosteroids, and long term use of corticosteroid creams. I still keep it on hand~!!~
I still have scaly spots 25 years later from that. The majik chain-link fence didn’t prevent that legally released poison from drifting off the site of the very old chemical plant and into my office building. Imagine that!!!
J R in WV
@eemom:
Another one we’re all missing is The New York Times, which backed Adolph Hitler beginning in 1922, until war was declared! Look up their many positive stories about the strong leader they admired then, and ponder why they still back the strong Mr. Trump!
rikyrah
TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) Tweeted:
“I have watched the last few days this whole thing go down with such open-mouthed astonishment”
“Everybody so quickly capitulated to this frame put forward by the Republicans” about the Mueller probe – @michelleinbklyn https://t.co/Us020c4mbx https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1111027440720187392?s=17
debbie
@rikyrah:
Really? Have you capitulated? I haven’t.
Brickley Paiste
@J R in WV:
I was amazed the last time I drove through there – how much cleaner the Coal and Kanawha rivers are. I don’t ever remember seeing seagulls on the Kanawha 30 years ago, but there were flocks last year Many more ducks than I remember, too. I hope that was not an aberration.
J R in WV
@Momentary:
“…you’ve got straw from the threshing to feed overwinter….”
Straw is nutrient-free, which is why it can be used for buildings, but not for feed. It doesn’t attract rodents, they can’t eat it either.
I think they’re talking about deeply rooted plants that come up every year, like the bluebells behind our house, or the ramps in the front, not reseeding, which is what Monsanto provides at a high cost.
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
Yeah, but see the poll commissioned by CNN I linked above. There was enough pushback (and existing attitudes perhaps) that the framing didn’t take or at least not to the degree that people have been assuming and complaining about.
J R in WV
@Brickley Paiste:
The Water Quality folks are doing the best job the Captive Legislature will allow them to.
Air Quality is still in the stone age — when a leak is reported, they go down to the plant and drive around with their windows down. All state release data are computed from the feedstock reports the company provide. It’s all majik, really!! Voluntary, don’t ya know.
They report that “nothing left the plant site” when a release / leak happens, when there’s nothing but a chain-link fence to stop it.
I like the rivers too, used to sport on them a lot!
Aleta
@rikyrah: It stunned me too. Is it, again, because Rs have laid groundwork for using the press and know how to pull the levers? It reminds me of how quickly the press turned to accept and promote the rightwing-organized defense of the Covington students. Instead of describing the full set of videos (which appeared later) they used the description given by conservatives. Reasonable support of Nathan Phillips’ experience disappeared overnight. Liberal press stopped reporting on the incident and instead reported on ‘how the press got it wrong.’
Momentary
@J R in WV: Um, no? Straw is regularly fed to cattle overwinter around here. See http://www.fao.org/3/X6510E/X6510E04.htm for an example discussion.
J R in WV
@Momentary:
Feeding out straw, in my farmer’s opinion, is animal abuse.
In your link they talk about treated straw, with no descriptions of the treatment. They used to feed out animal parts to cattle, and stopped when “mad cow” disease took off in Britain. Lots of things can be fed to hungry animals, they will eat anything when starving. People eat grass and mud during famine, but I wouldn’t recommend that either.
Just my opinion. Good timothy hay, or even alfalfa for a dairy cow. And a little sweet feed…
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
To clarify, once kept dairy cows, work horses, pigs and a flock of yard birds. This was probably 25 years ago… maybe more, memory has never worked for dates.
Nothing beats fresh milk from your milk cow!!!
Brachiator
@debbie:
Early on, Trump talked about “repeal and replace.” Then he dropped the replace part. He has no clue and doesn’t really give a crap about health care reform. You have never and will never get anything from him or the Republicans.
Eric NNY
Fantastic idea. I’m over the moon she’s adressing this issue. I was favoring her but keeping my options open. She’s distancing herself from the field, at least for me.
Disclaimer: I will vote for ANY Democratic nominee when the time comes and will not be tearing the others down.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@Brachiator: The Republican plan, should the need for one ever arise, will consist of blowing the dust off the 6-7 shitty ideas contained in every other Republican “health care plan” since the dawn of time: HSAs, tort “reform,” selling insurance across state lines (Arkansas knows best!), block granting Medicaid (who knows more about healthcare than state legislators?) , etc. etc. and combining those same ingredients into the same package while pretending it’s fresh and new. Spam, egg, sausage and Spam.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Kraux Pas: Reportedly, the makers of Monopoly are coming out with a new version that encourages rule-breaking and cheating
This is just so… symptomatic!
tobie
@Eric NNY: I need to take a much closer look at the proposal before I can say I’m on board. There are so many different aspects of agriculture she’s addressing at once — from consolidation of seed and chemical companies to contract farming to farm equipment dealerships to prohibitions agains foreign ownership of agricultural land — that it’s hard to judge how effective it would be. Again, I think her best proposals are those that are targeted at specific problems (the need for universal pre-K). This one is sweeping and it feels a bit ad hoc to me.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Momentary: That’s how it was done — with innumerable local variants — for many centuries. The current methods of buying fertilizer, broadcasting herbicide, etc, which MOnsanto et al have turned into a sort of agrifascism can’t be sustained. They destroy the soil, destroy the gene pools.These comanies operae like Trump.
In the end, you fuck with Nature at your extreme peril
Chris Johnson
@tobie: Food supply is always a political problem, not an efficiency problem. Huge amounts of food are just thrown away. The argument that everybody will starve if we don’t farm just like Big Ag says to, is put forth (at great PR expense, both public and astroturf) by Big Ag.
Sebastian
@Searcher:
No it isn’t, it’s just in the wrong place. It’s cheaper to just dump it into the Gulf or rivers than to process it.
Chris Johnson
@MazeDancer: Yeah, you know, it’s tough. People are just going to have to vote for the smart, capable woman with loads of experience and tons of amazing video clips out there of her tearing new holes in corrupt bankers and malefactors, as she persistently suggests policy tactics for fighting back against the titans of capitalism we all hate, all while plausibly claiming she is in fact capitalist, just not capitalist in THIS horrible broken way.
(sarcasm not meant to be mean to you, just kind of marvelling at the situation)
One thing about it, if she doesn’t clobber the senator from Vermont, I call shenanigans. I would happily have backed her LAST time, and if I can get two cents to rub together she’s getting some financial support from me.
I think the point is, this is not so impossible. Reasonable policy, decent governance, is not nearly as difficult as people think. It only seems impossible because we’ve had demented Republicans wrecking the joint for as long as I’ve been alive. But this time around they have to make the argument that things are good, and I think that may be beyond their capacities, especially when they keep wrecking the joint faster as they approach the guillotines :)
And who can blame them. Last chance to smash the state, I guess.