The Real Threat to Food Security
Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.
Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.
Lex Anteinternet: World War Two U.S. Vehicle Livery: National Museum...:
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 6, 1924. A Question
Saturday, September 6, 1924. Putting down in Boston.
QC: Japan & the bomb (p12) | Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Lex Anteinternet: An existential wakeup call.
An existential wakeup call.
Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, ...: The weather report for today from the Trib: A headline from Cowboy State Daily: ‘It Was Armageddon’: Eastern Wyoming Community Evacuated By ...
Now, from Cowboy State Daily, we learn this:
Wildfire Burns Harriet Hageman’s Family Homestead, More Evacuations Ordered
By any measure, this is tragic. And the story is well written, and sympathetic. Indeed, it provides some details about Hageman that I was unaware of, including the size of her very large family I didn't realize that she was one of six siblings.
That frankly explains why she's a lawyer. The law was, and to some extent still remains, the occupation that agricultural parents often want to see a child go into, often due to the erroneous belief that lawyers don't really work.
That's not the point here, however. At some point in her post high school life Hageman turned to the very hard right, or at least seemed to, and has been part of the Wyoming position that's all in on unaltered fossil fuel production.
The degree to which agriculturalist refuse to accept the science on this in Wyoming is itself really remarkable. Farmers and ranchers depend on the land being sustainable, worry about drought and heat, and then go on to dismiss what they're seeing with their own eyes.
The article notes that the Hageman's tragically lost their early home on the ranch, with this one currently belonging to a nephew. I believe that nephew may have appeared in her campaign ads. It also related:
About 8,000 acres of Hugh Hageman’s 25,000-to-30,000-acre spread burned, taking away some of the pasture needed for his 1,000 head of cattle.
“It’s devastating,” said Hugh Hageman when reached by Cowboy State Daily late Friday.
I'm sure it is.
Reality calls up on us to recognize it, not hide from it.
This ought to be the state's Pearl Harbor moment.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 26, 1924. Camping and plowing.
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay
Lex Anteinternet: Elemental activities.
Elemental activities.
Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not should be compelled by force.
Hilaire Belloc
Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or les...
Subsidiarity Economics 2024. Electronic eartags Edition.
From CattleTags.com
In other news which will impact a Wyoming industry that isn't going a way, new electronic ear tags are coming to the cattle industry:
Press Release
Contact:
APHISpress@usda.gov
Requires electronic ID for Certain Cattle and Bison Moving Interstate
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2024 – Today, by amending and strengthening its animal disease traceability regulations for certain cattle and bison, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is putting in place the technology, tools, and processes to help quickly pinpoint and respond to costly foreign animal diseases.
“Rapid traceability in a disease outbreak will not only limit how long farms are quarantined, keep more animals from getting sick, and help ranchers and farmers get back to selling their products more quickly – but will help keep our markets open,” said Dr. Michael Watson, APHIS Administrator.
One of the most significant benefits of the rule for farmers and ranchers will be the enhanced ability of the United States to limit impacts of animal disease outbreaks to certain regions, which is the key to maintaining our foreign markets. By being able to readily prove disease-free status in non-affected regions of the United States, we will be able to request foreign trading partners recognize disease-free regions or zones instead of cutting off trade for the entire country. Traceability of animals is necessary to establish these disease-free zones and facilitate reestablishment of foreign and domestic market access with minimum delay in the wake of an animal disease event.
This rule is the culmination of goals established by USDA to increase traceability, one of the best protections against disease outbreaks, and enhances a rule finalized in 2013 for the official identification of livestock and documentation for certain interstate movements of livestock.
USDA is committed to implementing a modern animal disease traceability system that tracks animals from birth to slaughter using affordable technology that allows for quick tracing of sick and exposed animals to stop disease spread. USDA will continue to provide tags to producers free of charge to jumpstart efforts to enable the fastest possible response to a foreign animal disease. For information on how to obtain these free tags, please see APHIS’ Animal Disease Traceability webpage.
The final rule applies to all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age or older, all dairy cattle, cattle and bison of any age used for rodeo or recreation events, and cattle or bison of any age used for shows or exhibitions.
The rule requires official eartags to be visually and electronically readable for official use for interstate movement of certain cattle and bison, and revises and clarifies certain record requirements related to cattle.
A copy of this rule may be viewed today, and the rule will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks. This rule will be effective 180 days after publication in the Federal Register.
To learn more about animal disease traceability and how APHIS responds to animal disease outbreaks, visit www.aphis.usda.gov.
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USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, ensuring access to healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
Frequently Asked Questions: Animal Disease Traceability Rule
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming: Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Lettuce Get Down to Business
Friday Farming: Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Lettuce Get Down to Business
Lex Anteinternet: Friday, May 8, 1914. Ag Extension comes into being.
Friday, May 8, 1914. Ag Extension comes into being. Dan Sickles passes on.
The Smith Lever Act went into providing for a national Cooperative Extension Service to be established.
This would allow university agriculture departments to offer rural education programs, which his a good thing.
UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING EXTENSION
This is also an example of the American System of economics, which the current GOP detests. It'd be interesting to see what they'd feel about the introduction of such a program today.
An article about the act from another site in another state:
Maryland 4-H and the Centennial of Smith-Lever
On the same day, the 63d Congress also passed a joint resolution "designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, and for other purposes"
Lex Anteinternet: Missing the point: Blog Mirror; Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture
Lex Anteinternet: Missing the point: Blog Mirror; Dennis Sun: Biden...: From the Cowboy State Daily: Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture The real thing that wi...
Missing the point: Blog Mirror; Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture
From the Cowboy State Daily:
Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture
The real thing that will affect agriculture, particularly the beef industry, is in failing to attempt to arrest climate change.
I've long been utterly baffled by; 1) grazers failure to get a clue over climate change, and 2) ongoing agricultural admiration for the Republican Party.
More than anyone, those who graze ought to be able to freakin' wake up and notice that the climate ain't what it used to be. I'll hear ranchers talk about it, but they seem incapable of closing the circle. Gee, it's been warm. Gee, it's been dry. Gee, we have no grass.
D'uh.
But climate change? Nope, not happening.
Now there are some exceptions. The late Pat O'Toole, who married into a Carbon County ranching family, was one. But by and large ranchers simply refuse to believe that something is happening, even while worrying about what is happening.
Hmmm. . .
And ironically, practices in the industry which gave it a larger carbon footprint are quite recently Older ranchers can easily look back on an industry that wasn't diesel powered.
On the GOP, ranchers seem to have a really dedicated belief that the Republican Party protects their ability to do what they want. In reality, the Democrats have preserved ranch lands themselves. The GOP is more of the development party, which never ends up actually benefitting ranchers. I'll them complain about this too, but not close the circle. Why is this oil company in my pasture? Why are squatters trailers showing up all over. Why are out of state rich buying this up and not doing anything about it?
Why indeed?
Maybe because of how we vote and whose support we choose to ignore.
Lex Anteinternet: Contrary to our natures
Contrary to our natures
When this blog was started several years ago, the purpose of it was to explore historical topics, often the routine day to day type stuff, from the period of roughly a century ago. It started off as a means of researching things, for a guy too busy to really research, for a historical novel.
It didn't start off as a general commentary on the world type of deal, nor did it start off as a "self help" type of blog either. Over time, however, the switch to this blog for commentary, away from the blog that generally hosts photographs, has caused a huge expansion here of commentary of all types, including in this category and, frankly, in every other.
If depression is partly caused by a mismatch between how our bodies and minds got used to living for thousands of years, and how we now live in the modern world, then a fundamental step in closing this gap isn’t just moving our bodies, but getting those bodies outside.
Some background
Our artificial environment
If depression is partly caused by a mismatch between how our bodies and minds got used to living for thousands of years, and how we now live in the modern world, then a fundamental step in closing this gap isn’t just moving our bodies, but getting those bodies outside.I think he's correct there. And to take it one step further, I think the degree to which people retain a desire to be closer to nature reflects itself back in so many ways we can barely appreciate it.
Truth be known, we've lived in the world we've crated for only a very brief time. All peoples, even "civilized people", lived very close to a nature for a very long time. We can take, as people often do, the example of hunter gatherers, which all of us were at one time, but even as that evolved in to agricultural communities, for a very long time, people were very "outdoors" even when indoors.
The ills of careerism.
Careerism, the concept that the end all be all of a person's existence is their career, has been around for a long time, but as the majority demographic has moved from farming and labor to white collar and service jobs, it's become much worse. At some point, and I'd say some point post 1945, the concept of "career" became incredibly dominant. In the 1970s, when feminism was in high swing, it received an additional massive boost as women were sold on careerism.
How people view their work is a somewhat difficult topic to address in part because everyone views their work as they view it. And not all demographics in a society view work the same way. But there is sort of a majority society wide view that predominates.
In our society, and for a very long time, there's been a very strong societal model which holds that the key to self worth is a career. Students, starting at the junior high level, are taught that in order to be happy in the future they need to go to a "good university" so they can obtain an education which leads to "a high paying career". For decades the classic careers were "doctor and lawyer", and you still hear some of that, but the bloom may be off the rose a bit with the career of lawyer, frankly, in which case it's really retuning to its American historical norm.
Anyhow, this had driven a section of the American demographic towards a view that economics and careers matter more than anything else. More than family, more than location, more than anything. People leave their homes upon graduating from high school to pursue that brass ring in education. They go on to graduate schools from there, and then they engage in a lifetime of slow nomadic behavior, dumping town after town for their career, and in the process certainly dumping their friends in those towns, and quite often their family at home or even their immediate families.
The payoff for that is money, but that's it. Nothing else.
The downside is that these careerist nomads abandon a close connection with anything else. They aren't close to the localities of their birth, they aren't close to a state they call "home" and they grow distant from the people they were once closest too.
What's that have to do with this topic?
Well, quite a lot.
People who do not know, in the strongest sense of that word know, anyone or anyplace come to be internal exiles, and that's not good. Having no close connection to anyone place they become only concerned with the economic advantage that place holds for them. When they move into a place they can often be downright destructive at that, seeking the newest and the biggest in keeping with their career status, which often times was agricultural or wild land just recently. And not being in anyone place long enough to know it, they never get out into it.
That's not all of course. Vagabonds without attachment, they severe themselves from the human connection that forms part of our instinctual sense of place. We were meant to be part of a community, and those who have lived a long time in a place know that they'll be incorporated into that community even against their expressed desires. In a stable society, money matters, but so does community and relationship. For those with no real community, only money ends up mattering.
There's something really sad about this entire situation, and its easy to observe. There are now at least two entire generations of careerist who have gone through their lives this way, retiring in the end in a "retirement community" that's also new to them. At that stage, they often seek to rebuild lives connected to the community they are then in, but what sort of community is that? One probably made up of people their own age and much like themselves. Not really a good situation.
Now, am I saying don't have a career? No, I'm not. But I am saying that the argument that you need to base your career decisions on what society deems to be a "good job" with a "good income" is basing it on a pretty thin argument. At the end of the day, you remain that Cro Magnon really, whose sense of place and well being weren't based on money, but on nature and a place in the tribe. Deep down, that's really still who you are. If you sense a unique calling, or even sort of a calling, the more power to you. But if you view your place in the world as a series of ladders in place and income, it's sad.
As long as we have a philosophy that career="personal fulfillment" and that equates with Career Uber Alles, we're going to be in trouble in every imaginable way. This doesn't mean that what a person does for a living doesn't matter, but other things matter more, and if a person puts their career above everything else, in the end, they're likely to be unhappy and they're additionally likely to make everyone else unhappy. This may seem to cut against what I noted in the post on life work balance the other day, but it really doesn't, it's part of the same thing.
Indeed, just he other day my very senior partner came in my office and was asking about members of my family who live around here. Quite a few live right here in the town, more live here in the state, and those who have left have often stayed in the region. The few that have moved a long ways away have retained close connection, but formed new stable ones, long term, in their new communities. He noted that; "this is our home". That says a lot.
Get out there.
Go hunting, go fishing, go hiking or go mountain bike riding. Whatever you excuse is for staying in your artificial walls, get over it and get out.
If you haven't tried something, try it, and the more elemental the better. If you like hiking in the sticks, keep in mind that the reason people like to do that has to do with their elemental natures. Try an armed hike with a shotgun some time and see if bird hunting might be your thing, or not. Give it a try. And so on.
Get elemental
At the end of they day, you are still a hunter-gatherer, you just are being imprisoned in an artificial environment. So get back to it. Try hunting. Try fishing. Raise a garden.
Unless economics dictate it, there's no good, even justifiable, reason that you aren't providing some of your own food directly. Go kill it or raise it in your dirt.
Indeed, a huge percentage of Americans have a small plot, sometimes as big as those used by subsistence farmers in the third world, which is used for nothing other than growing a completely worthless crop of grass. Fertilizer and water are wasted on ground that could at least in part be used to grow an eatable crop. I'm not saying your entire lawn needs to be a truck farm, but you could grow something. And if you are just going to hang around in the city, you probably should.
The Land Ethic
A person can Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) Leopold and the the "land ethic" and get his original writings on the topic. I"m not going to try to post them there, as the book was published posthumously in 1949, quite some years back. Because it wasn't published until 49, it had obviously been written some time prior to that. Because of the content of the book, and everything that has happened since, it's too easy therefore to get a sort of Granola or Hippy like view of the text, when in fact all of that sort of thing came after Leopold's untimely death at age 61. It'd be easy to boil Leopold's writings down to one proposition, that being what's good for the land is good for everything and everyone, and perhaps that wouldn't be taking it too far.
If I've summarized it correctly, and I don't think I'm too far off, we have to take into consideration further that at the time Leopold was writing the country wasn't nearly as densely populated as it is now, but balanced against that is that the country, in no small part due to World War Two, was urbanizing rapidly and there was a legacy of bad farming practices that got rolling, really, in about 1914 and which came home to roost during the Dust Bowl. In some ways things have improved a lot since Leopold's day, but one thing that hasn't is that in his time the majority of Americans weren't really all that far removed from an agricultural past. Now, that's very much not the case. I suspect, further, in Leopold's day depression, and other social ills due to remoteness from nature weren't nearly as big of problem. Indeed, if I had to guess, I'd guess that the single biggest problem of that type was the result of World War Two, followed by the Great Depression, followed by World War One.
Anyhow, what Leopold warned us about is even a bigger problem now, however. Not that the wildness of land is not appreciated. Indeed, it is likely appreciated more now than it was then. But rather we need to be careful about preserving all sorts of rural land, which we are seemingly not doing a terrible good job at. The more urbanized we make our world, the less we have a world that's a natural habitat for ourselves, and city parks don't change that. Some thought about what we're doing is likely in order. As part of that, quite frankly, some acceptance on restrictions on where and how much you can build comes in with it. That will make some people unhappy, no doubt, but the long term is more important than the short term.
It's not inevitable.
The only reason that our current pattern of living has to continue this way is solely because most people will it to do so. And if that's bad for us, we shouldn't.
There's nothing inevitable about a Walmart parking lot replacing a pasture. Shoot, there's nothing that says a Walmart can't be torn down and turned into a farm. We don't do these things, or allow them to happen, as we're completely sold on the concept that the shareholders in Walmart matter more than our local concerns, or we have so adopted the chamber of commerce type attitude that's what's good for business is good for everyone, that we don't. Baloney. We don't exist for business, it exists for us.
The irony of that is that our economic model is corporatist, not really capitalist, in nature. And a corporatist model requires governmental action to exist. The confusion that exists which suggests that any government action is "socialism" would mean that our current economic system is socialist, which of course would be absurd. Real socialism is when the government owns the means of production. Social Democracy, another thing that people sometimes mean when they discuss "socialism" also features government interaction and intervention in people's affairs, and that's not what we're suggesting here either.
Rather, I guess what we're discussing here is small scale distributism, the name of which scares people fright from the onset as "distribute", in our social discourse, really refers to something that's a feature of "social democracy" and which is an offshoot of socialism. That's not what we're referencing here at all, but rather the system that is aimed at capitalism with a subsidiarity angle. I.e., a capitalist system that's actually more capitalistic than our corporatist model, as it discourages government participation through the weighting of the economy towards corporations.
It's not impossible
Now, I know that some will read this and think that it's all impossible for where they are, but truth be known it's more possible in some ways now than it has been for city dwellers, save for those with means, for many years. Certainly in the densely packed tenements of the early 19th Century getting out to look at anything at all was pretty darned difficult.
Most cities now at least incorporate some green space. A river walk, etc. And most have some opportunities for things that at least replicate real outdoor sports, and I mean the real outdoor activities, not things like sitting around in a big stadium watching a big team. That's not an outdoor activity but a different type of activity (that I'm not criticizing). We owe it to ourselves.
Now, clearly, some of what is suggested here is short term, and some long. And this is undoubtedly the most radical post I've ever posted here. It won't apply equally to everyone. The more means a person has, if they're a city dweller, the easier for it is for them to get out. And the more destructive they can be when doing so, as an irony of the active person with means is that the mere presence of their wealth in an activity starts to make it less possible for everyone else. But for most of us we can get out some at least, and should.
I'm not suggesting here that people should abandon their jobs in the cities and move into a commune. Indeed, I wouldn't suggest that as that doesn't square with what I"m actually addressing here at all. But I am suggesting that we ought to think about what we're going, and it doesn't appear we are. We just charge on as if everything must work out this way, which is choosing to let events choose for us, or perhaps letting the few choose for the many. Part of that may be rethinkiing the way we think about careers. We all know it, but at the end of the day having made yourself rich by way of that nomadic career won't add significantly, if at all, to your lifespan and you'll go on to your eternal reward the same as everyone else, and sooner or later will be part of the collective forgotten mass. Having been a "success" at business will not buy you a second life to enjoy.
None of this is to say that if you have chosen that high dollar career and love it, that you are wrong. Nor is this to say that you must become a Granola. But, given the degree to which we seem to have a modern society we don't quite fit, perhaps we ought to start trying to fit a bit more into who we are, if we have the get up and go to do it, and perhaps we ought to consider that a bit more in our overall societal plans, assuming that there even are any.
The irony.
Same day, same paper. One ad celebrating agriculture, and one celebrating its destruction.
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Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Lettuce Get Down to Business : Photo from 1918 of the Mahon Ranch, west of Buena Vista. Pictured are Martha M...
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So, having published this screed over a period of days, and then dropping the topic, we resume with the question. Why, exactly, do you think...
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And what's this thing about Agrarianism? I believe that this contest between industrialism and agrarianism now defines the most fundamen...