me&thegals
A Major Squash & Pumpkin Lover
I'm not sure where I want to go with this post, but I'm very disturbed by the corn and soybean harvest here this year.
The projection is a record crop, but the reality is a lot of grain being turned away because of mold and immaturity, and that's if it is gotten off the fields at all.
A local farmer fed 30 head of cattle the screenings left over from his corn this week, and all 30 died, believed to be due to mold.
A very cold summer led to underdeveloped corn. A very wet fall kept farmers out of the fields until Nov. Now, they've been going like mad, trying to get it all in. They're meeting obstacle after obstacle: Moldy corn, very wet corn, huge LP bills trying to dry it down, not much left after drying because the corn was immature to start out with, broken railway contracts that leave the corn without transportation, grain mills that can't keep up so that there is no place to put the grains, and so on.
Put this on top of terrible dairy prices for dairy farmers, following a year of flooding for many farmers, and tremendous competition with ethanol for all of us.
I hear the ethanol plants are bidding super high on last year's corn. There are many emergency meetings being held in our state trying to figure out what to do. This is all hearsay, but I also hear farmers in the Dakotas are threatening to strike (simply not harvest since it's killing them financially to do so and then it gets rejected anyway).
Any of you who have been on here for any length of time knows how I feel about our nation's food system. My heart hurts for the farmers. I am married to one. They love their land, they work their butts off and sometimes it is just not good enough.
The other part of me is so, so angry. We have such a dangerous food system in America. When you subsidize 2 grains as we do, ALL manufacturing builds up around them--fuel, containers, plastics, food, animal feed. Then, when anything goes wrong with those 2 grains, you are so, so screwed. We depend very, very little on either, but what about most of America?
I might be over dramatizing. Maybe my husband was over dramatizing this morning in our discussion--poor guy is working 5-10 almost every day. Even if things are better than I have portrayed, we are on very shaky ground.
What excites me personally is that my husband is finally coming to see this. I don't want to kick him when he's down, but he really is starting to see what a crap system he is part of, how dangerous it is in countless ways, how screwed the farmers are in the system and how ANY problems in that system shake up everything--food, fuel, etc.
As I've pointed out to him countless times, my CSA gardens can take a hit. I lost ALL tomatoes this year. It really stunk, but I had about 50 other fruits and veggies to fill in the gap.
Now, my husband faces losing his crop. Did I mention that it is snowing? Once the snow builds up, he won't be able to get to it until spring. Boy, diversity never looked better...
It has also been shocking to me that even in this total farming state and community, nobody I have talked to (nonfarmers) has even a tiny clue of what is going on. This is their food! I know people are disconnected from their food, but it still shocks me to know that even in our very rural community nobody has any inkling that there is an honest-to-goodness crisis brewing.
The projection is a record crop, but the reality is a lot of grain being turned away because of mold and immaturity, and that's if it is gotten off the fields at all.
A local farmer fed 30 head of cattle the screenings left over from his corn this week, and all 30 died, believed to be due to mold.
A very cold summer led to underdeveloped corn. A very wet fall kept farmers out of the fields until Nov. Now, they've been going like mad, trying to get it all in. They're meeting obstacle after obstacle: Moldy corn, very wet corn, huge LP bills trying to dry it down, not much left after drying because the corn was immature to start out with, broken railway contracts that leave the corn without transportation, grain mills that can't keep up so that there is no place to put the grains, and so on.
Put this on top of terrible dairy prices for dairy farmers, following a year of flooding for many farmers, and tremendous competition with ethanol for all of us.
I hear the ethanol plants are bidding super high on last year's corn. There are many emergency meetings being held in our state trying to figure out what to do. This is all hearsay, but I also hear farmers in the Dakotas are threatening to strike (simply not harvest since it's killing them financially to do so and then it gets rejected anyway).
Any of you who have been on here for any length of time knows how I feel about our nation's food system. My heart hurts for the farmers. I am married to one. They love their land, they work their butts off and sometimes it is just not good enough.
The other part of me is so, so angry. We have such a dangerous food system in America. When you subsidize 2 grains as we do, ALL manufacturing builds up around them--fuel, containers, plastics, food, animal feed. Then, when anything goes wrong with those 2 grains, you are so, so screwed. We depend very, very little on either, but what about most of America?
I might be over dramatizing. Maybe my husband was over dramatizing this morning in our discussion--poor guy is working 5-10 almost every day. Even if things are better than I have portrayed, we are on very shaky ground.
What excites me personally is that my husband is finally coming to see this. I don't want to kick him when he's down, but he really is starting to see what a crap system he is part of, how dangerous it is in countless ways, how screwed the farmers are in the system and how ANY problems in that system shake up everything--food, fuel, etc.
As I've pointed out to him countless times, my CSA gardens can take a hit. I lost ALL tomatoes this year. It really stunk, but I had about 50 other fruits and veggies to fill in the gap.
Now, my husband faces losing his crop. Did I mention that it is snowing? Once the snow builds up, he won't be able to get to it until spring. Boy, diversity never looked better...
It has also been shocking to me that even in this total farming state and community, nobody I have talked to (nonfarmers) has even a tiny clue of what is going on. This is their food! I know people are disconnected from their food, but it still shocks me to know that even in our very rural community nobody has any inkling that there is an honest-to-goodness crisis brewing.
.
