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September 27, 2011
· Time to rethink farm subsidy program
· Lego greenhouse wows design show
· Kids say potato, USDA says poh-tay-NO
· Hot sun provides a cooling solution
· S. African land a black and white deal
Time to rethink farm subsidy program
(stltoday.com) – Midwestern commodity growers could lose billions in federal funding in the coming year — and many people, including some farmers, say it's about time.
The federal government pays nearly $5 billion to American farmers in "direct payments" that are dished out each year regardless of economic or crop conditions. Many of these direct payments go to farms that make millions of dollars a year, or can end up in the bank accounts of city-based companies and landowners who haven't seen farmland or crops in years.
President Barack Obama's deficit reduction plan, unveiled this week, calls for eliminating these controversial direct payments, as well as shrinking the government's contribution to crop insurance and conservation programs. Despite tough economic times, farm income is predicted to hit record highs this year and has been soaring, particularly for grain farmers, over the past decade. A recent White House report called the payments indefensible and targeted them to help reduce the deficit. Overall, the president's cuts would result in a savings of about $33 billion over the next decade.
But talk of the proposals has been rippling through farm country where many farmers say they depend on the payments to cope with the risks and unpredictability of farming.
"We're uncomfortable with the level of the cuts the president has recommended," said Blake Hurst, who heads the Missouri Farm Bureau. "All those programs are part of a safety net. We think they're deep enough it would make it difficult for the safety net to work. They're a little severe."
Direct payments were launched in the early 2000s as a temporary program to wean farmers from subsidies and move them to insurance. But the payments were never halted, even as new price supports and programs came into being.
"What we have right now looks nothing like a true safety net," said David DeGennaro, a legal analyst for the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, which tracks subsidies and has been highly critical of them. "It's just a foot below the high wire. ... We support the president's call to eliminate direct payments. There's no reason to be paying farmers. It hurts taxpayers and we can't afford to do it."
Some farmers — even those whose farms have gotten millions in direct payments — agree.
Corn farmers, who collectively get the most in direct payments, say they are willing to forgo direct payments as long as crop insurance is not cut and other price support programs are improved.
"We understand the needs of the government to cut
spending and we're there to do our part," said Jeff Scates,
whose family farm in southeastern
Scates, who is vice president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, said the group's members are pushing for programs that pay farmers "only in times of stress."
"What's important to our members is a viable safety net," he said.
But other commodity growers say direct payments are critical for their survival.
"We still have a hard time, even with the
subsidy," said Robert Price, whose family's farm in
Indeed, growers of rice and cotton — the 'southern" crops —receive more in individual direct payments than other commodity growers. Corn, soybean and wheat growers have come to depend on the payments less, farmers say.
"Direct payments aren't important to corn
farmers," said John Doggett, of the National Corn Growers Association,
based in
Details of the president's proposal will be worked out over the next couple of months as a congressional supercommittee tries to cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. But, ultimately, attitudes about the president's plan will come down to individual farmers. A farmer who spends thousands of dollars to irrigate a crop, for example, is less prone to drought damage. So, in theory, that farmer cares more about direct payments than crop insurance that would guard against lack of rain.
Until details of the president's proposal emerge and the next Farm Bill is written, farmers will be watching carefully to see just how much more they will be getting through other price supports and how much they will be paying for crop insurance.
"Some growers will buy lower levels of protection," Doggett said. "Some will go ahead and pay an extra premium. But they'll all grumble."
Lego greenhouse wows design show
(ibtimes.com)
– The world’s first Lego greenhouse is now on show in
The fully-functioning greenhouse, created by British designer Sebastian Bergne, is made entirely out of Lego bricks – 100,000 of them, to be exact. 50,000 transparent plastic bricks make up the pitched roof and walls, allowing plants and vegetables to grow inside on a bed of 50,000 brown bricks, to give the illusion of soil.
The 11.5 foot translucent shed was “thrown together in just one night, from 10pm to 5am”, according Co. Design, and built by the UK’s only Lego Certified Professional, Duncan Titmarsh. Lego has often been used to build scale models of major landmarks and other famous buildings, but the functionality of Bergne's full-size greenhouse has prompted speculation that Lego could bridge the gap between toys and usable construction.
Sebastian Bergne told Dezeen: “What instinctively appealed to me was that I would finally have the chance to live out a childhood dream and build something huge and usable out of Lego.
"In my work, I love to make something special from the ordinary, and I hope that’s what has happened here. It’s an everyday function, made of a material we know, in an ordinary environment, but together they make something extraordinary.”
The London Design Festival is always a chance for homeowners to discover new uses for everyday objects. Eco-friendly furniture, from Sweden’s award-winning chair made out of recycled t-shirts to a table constructed from a Mini Cooper, has caught the imagination of those looking to make their home unique, but Bergne’s Lego building is the most striking structure on show.
The greenhouse follows the attempts of Top Gear presenter James May to build a Lego home in 2009. The two-storey property, which included a working toilet and bed, was made using 3.3 million bricks and was later demolished when no-one was prepared to adopt it.
But Lego is still inspiring large-scale construction.
Sebastian Bergne's greenhouse is only a temporary
installation, but with Legoland hotels being built in
both
Kids say potato, USDA says poh-tay-NO
New guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture would eliminate potatoes altogether from school breakfasts and drastically reduce the amount of potatoes served in lunches.
Collins, R-Maine, said the unassuming white potato has its place alongside more highfalutin vegetables in school cafeterias. She believes potatoes are healthy, as long as they're not fried.
"I certainly agree that french fries is not the healthiest choice, but a baked potato can be a good source of potassium for our children," said Collins, who has enlisted Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, another potato-growing state, to help her fight the anti-spud movement.
Collins and Udall will attempt to strip funding to implement the new guidelines when the USDA appropriations bill goes to the Senate floor, sometime in the coming weeks or months. The House-approved USDA appropriations bill already prohibits funds from being used to further the proposed USDA guidelines.
The proposal announced by the USDA in January puts focus on fruits, vegetables and whole grains while limiting sodium, banning trans fats and reducing starches.
The guidelines would limit starchy vegetables -- corn, peas and lima beans, in addition to potatoes -- to two servings a week. That's about one cup.
Potato growers across the nation claimed the first major nutritional overhaul of students' meals in more than a decade unfairly singled out and stigmatized spuds, which already took their lumps along with pasta and bread and other carbo-loaded foods during the low-carb diet craze a few years ago.
Many scientists insist there are better alternatives.
Regardless whether it's baked, boiled or fried, a medium-sized potato packs up to 220 calories and is a food that has been associated with weight gain in the U.S., said Dr. David Heber, director of the UCLA Center For Human Nutrition and author of "What Color is Your Diet?"
And folks needn't feel sorry for potato-loving kids, he said.
"They're not going to stop eating potatoes. They'll be eating them at home, and they'll be eating them in restaurants. But I think the school cafeteria should be place where children learn about healthy nutrition, not a copy of a fast-food restaurant," Heber said.
The National Potato Council says the proposal would carry a large but unknown cost to farmers in lost sales, as well as a $6.8 billion cost for school districts that will have to line up more costly foods mandated under the guidelines.
And some questioned whether reducing potato consumption at school would yield big improvements in children's health.
Putting an increased emphasis on physical education -- getting couch potatoes into the gymnasium or onto a sports field -- would have a far greater impact on reducing childhood obesity, said Tim Hobbs, director of development for the Maine Potato Board.
"There's other ways to address childhood obesity. I
don't know that limiting potatoes in the school lunch program is going to have
the desired impact,"
Virtually all agree that the problem is the french fry, a ubiquitous item on school menus in many parts of the country, sometimes getting served every day.
Reducing the servings of potatoes and french fries is necessary to make room for more servings of healthier vegetables, which are being muscled off school menus, said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
But some argued getting rid of the french fry doesn't require getting rid of the potato.
Heidi Kessler, school nutrition manager for Let's Go, a
program aimed at fighting childhood obesity at the Barbara Bush Children's
Hospital at
"They're inexpensive, kids like them and they're easy to store," she said, "and they absolutely have nutrient value that can contribute to a healthy diet."
Many schools already are reducing potatoes.
In
"The potatoes and some of those other starchy vegetables
are part of a balanced diet,"
The new school lunch guidelines were required by the Healthy
Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required the USDA to issue science-based guidelines
based on recommendations of the
If all goes according to plan, the new rules would take effect next summer. But first, the USDA must review more than 130,000 comments from supporters and opponents. All of those comments will be considered before the final rule is issued, said Kevin Concannon, USDA undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services.
Some see the writing on the wall.
The government already put the kibosh on potatoes in the USDA's program for low-income pregnant women and their children, known as WIC, barring federal dollars from being spent on potatoes.
Now the USDA is going after potatoes again.
Wootan said parents are on board.
"When parents tell their kids to eat their vegetables, they don't mean french fries. They don't mean hash browns, either. Potatoes have a role in the school lunch program, but they shouldn't on the menu every day. The USDA proposal is completely reasonable," she said.
Hot sun provides a cooling solution
(FastCompany.com) – In places where power is scarce and refrigerators are scarcer, scientists have found ways to power the ice box with the heat of the sun.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear
furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of
degrees. But despite its intense heat, it's being used to do something paradoxical:
provide refrigeration (apologies to They Might Be Giants). A winery in
The solar cooling concept absorbs solar radiation to heat water above 200 degrees F, then uses the heat to drive a compressor that lowers the temperature of a refrigerant, explains Tomas Núñez, a scientist at the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. It's a process similar to that used for propane refrigerators, but the sun--not gas or fossil fuels--is the heat source.
"Our method is ideal for countries which have many days of sunshine and in remote areas where there are no conventional means of refrigeration owing to a lack of water and non-existent or unreliable energy sources," says Núñez . "It is environmentally friendly and reduces the use of expensive electricity for conventional refrigerators to a minimum. Refrigeration is always available when the sun shines, which means that it is produced at the times when demand is at its highest."
The MEDISCO project (short for Mediterranean food and agriculture industry applications of solar cooling technologies) has built several of these solar refrigeration plants in Mediterranean countries with plenty of sunshine, but not much infrastructure. Engineers are using concentrating collectors to direct the sunlight onto an absorber that heats water.
Although the concept of using a heat source to cool is not novel, MEDISCO is recombining solar and cooling technologies in a new way that could change development decisions in remote areas unlikely to receive electricity, or affordable fossil energy, anytime soon. MEDISCO says it is "aiming at the best compromise towards innovative technologies use, primary energy savings and economic issues."
S. African land a black and white deal
(Daily
Mail UK) –
The South African government has spent a fortune trying to redistribute the country's land wealth from the white minority to the black majority.
It has bought thousands of hectares of white owned farm land and either given it or sold it on to poor blacks.
But the country's minister of land reform admitted that many of the new black farmers have simply resold the land back to the original owners.
Gugile Nkwinti said black farmers have resold nearly 30 per cent of the white farmland bought for them by the government.
He said: 'The government bought land and handed it over to aspirant farmers who then sold it again, in many instances back to the original owner.'
Land economists say that the redistribution policy is highly inefficient as the white-owned land is often bought at above its market value by the government.
After the land has been given, or sold at a discount, to the new black owner, he is able to simply then able to sell it on.
This means that both farmers - black and white - are able to turn a profit from the government's involvement.
After black majority rule was won in 1994, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) government set a goal of redistributing 30 per cent of agricultural land to blacks by 2014.
However, so far it has managed to buy and successfully redistribute just two per cent of the country's land.
The problem is hugely emotional in
In neighbouring
Even though
Addressing the problem yesterday, Mr Nkwinti said: 'In our country we wanted to solve it yesterday.
'That's not possible. So we think it's going to take a bit of time and it will require patience.'
Studies of the South African model have shown that as many as 90 per cent of the new black-run farms fail because the new owners do not have the experience of running a large enterprise.
Although whites make up less than 10 per cent of
Advocates for reform argue that this massive inequality is a
direct result of the colonisation of
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