'Agriculture' Archive
Amid all the doom-and-gloom news of late — be it bank failures; the plunging stock market; the government’s (i.e., we, the beleaguered taxpayers’) bailout plan; mortgage foreclosures; continuing layoffs; the insane price of gasoline; rising food prices; stagnant wages; the war in Iraq; the Taliban in Afghanistan; the health care mess; hurricanes; floods; global warming; melamine (suspected or confirmed, in countries all over the world) in foods like infant formula, the cheese on Pizza Hut pizzas, and Cadbury candy; not to mention the smarmy campaign ads for the Presidential Election That’s Been Dragging On Far Too Long And Can’t Be Over Soon Enough — amid all this and more, comes some more small but disheartening news.
It seems there will be a pumpkin shortage this Halloween. Reports from places as disparate as Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, Colorado, Vermont, and Illinois are blaming the weather (the summer was too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry; there were hailstorms from hell and floods worthy of Noah) and even herds of ravenous deer for a poor pumpkin-growing season and a resultant scant harvest.
Farmers may be happy about the attractive prices of this year’s supply and demand pumpkin economics, and that’s all well and good. But it’s a bitter disappointment to all of us ghouls and goblins who are hungry to partake in the yearly ritual of scooping the goopy glop out of a bright round melon, carving and cutting the scariest face ever, finding just the right spot on the front stoop for our creation, and, finally, with happy memories of our costumed younger selves roaming neighborhoods long ago soothing our worldly worries, bending to light the candle we’ve placed inside it.
The brightly wrapped candy is in the big bowl usually used for popcorn, the scary music is feeding though the outdoor speakers, the porch light is on. We’re ready for the onslaught of the local kiddies, their neat-o glow-in-the-dark plastic candy buckets or humble “paper or plastic” grocery bags clutched in their eager little hands. We’re ready for the door-bell ringing and front-door knocking, as high-pitched and not very scary cries of “trick or treat” waft through the neighborhood.
But not enough pumpkins!? They’re not that hard to grow. Just one vine took over a good portion of my garden plot a couple of years ago. What are they doing, making ethanol out of pumpkins now, the corn having been all used up?
What are wannabe zombies, skeletons, ninjas, or any number of superheroes to do? (I myself was going to wrap myself in Astroturf and go to any party that needs my presence as a Chia Pet.) It’s enough to make Schroeder plunk his head down on his tiny piano or have Charlie Brown cry out a plaintive “Rats” or make Linus, waiting for the Great You-Know-Who, hug his blanket in small comfort and opine, “Good grief!”
My plan to overcome this situation is to haunt farmers’ markets and roadside stands bright and early from now until Halloween in order to score one of the big orange orbs from the threatened scant supply. Then maybe I’ll break open the candy early and drown my grief in chocolate (but not Cadbury’s).
It’s an exotic herb. It grows in South America, Central America, Mexico, and Asia. Native peoples from these regions have used it as a nostrum for centuries to treat all manner of conditions. Its scientific name, Stevia rebaudiana, is impressive, and it’s been the subject of scientific investigation for years. Sounds like a cure for cancer or a drug to treat dementia, maybe a possible drug to prevent aids? Nope, it’s nothing as humanitarian as that. Stevia, you see, is easy to cultivate, the extract made from its leaves is 300 times sweeter than refined sugar, and it contains no calories.
No war on cancer here. It’s Coke and Pepsi. They’re at it again. You see, soda sales are down. Ah, but obesity rates are up. What each of the two giant beverage companies want and need is a block-buster diet soda. Enter Coke, which, with the help of agricultural wizard Cargill, has refined the heck out of stevia, to eliminate its licorice-like aftertaste, and come up with Truvia, the uber sweetener.
Not far behind, Pepsi and its ingredient buddy, Merisant, have been test-tubing themselves and now have their own tincture of stevia, which they call PureVia. Yep, our two ever-warring beverage makers are looking for the Holy Grail, a No-Cal Soda Sale.
However, there is a third party involved in this no-love-lost triangle — that regulation-wielding hussy, the FDA, which forbids the use of stevia in food products. (Little Miss FDA is not as pure as the driven snow in this triangle; the agency does allow stevia to be sold as a food supplement. That is, it can be and is sold in powdered and liquid form and is usually available at natural and health food outlets and pharmacies.)
Coke and Pepsi have sponsored their own tests, which, as could be expected, found no harmful effects from the use of their versions of stevia. The companies are waiting for the FDA to allow its use in foods.
Past studies have suggested that stevia might interfere with reproduction, as well as possibly being mutagenic and/or carcinogenic. A just-released independent study, conducted at the University of California (which has no ties to any stevia product) suggests that the sweetener might cause chromosomal damage and DNA breakage.
Testing on humans being unethical, FDA guidelines advise potential food additives be tested on two rodent species, usually rats and mice. So far, tests have only been conducted on rats. And while a safe, natural, non-caloric sweetener would be a good thing for our expanding waistlines (as well as for Coke and Pepsi coffers), the FDA should not allow stevia, in any of its iterations, to enter the food chain until further studies establish that it is safe.
Native North Americans believed in the Corn Mother (the first woman to bear offspring, a kind of Eve). After the white man took over and tamed North America, corn became the Midwest’s gift to the country and the world – year after year of bounteous corn crops grown on rich farmland fed us and almost everyone else.
Now corn is a high-priced double whammy. At least it appears that way to the average American consumer progressing through an average weekend.
First, on the average American’s to-do list for the weekend: gas up the car. We all know the story on that. Suffice it to say the price of gas is out of sight. (Hummers, and even your run-of-the-mill SUVs are the dinosaurs of the auto industry — big galoots doomed to extinction but that’s another blog.)
Then on to filling the fridge for the week. A fryer from the supermarket, a gallon of milk from the convenience store – it doesn’t matter where you go. It’s costing more. And if our average American decides to see a movie – alas, even the popcorn at the theatre, never a bargain in the best of times, costs more.
What does corn have to do with all this? Lots. You see, in December 2007 the federal government passed an energy bill mandating that ever larger amounts of ethanol be used to run our vehicles. The bill was passed with seemingly good intentions (if not outcome). It was meant to reduce the US’s dependence on foreign oil and to help curb global warming.
But our lawmakers forgot to take into account that the product of choice for making ethanol in the US is corn, as in an ingredient that food manufacturers large and small turn into Aunt Jemima Syrup, Froot Loops, Fritos and hundreds, if not thousands, of other products. (There are other options for ethanol production. Brazil, for instance, makes it from sugar cane, probably no better a choice, as it is a food crop as well. But ethanol can be made from agricultural byproducts such as corncobs, straw and sawdust. Kraft and General Mills don’t use much of those in their plants, at least I hope not.)
Corn farmers supported the bill of course, but hey, here was a chance to make some extra income. The law awarded farmers money for every bushel of corn that was used for ethanol production. Ethanol manufacturers (everyone from agricultural giant, Archer Daniels Midland – the #1 ethanol producer in the world — to small newly formed companies created to take advantage of the government’s largesse) became preferred corn farmers’ customers, at the expense of long-time corn users/customers such as dairy and poultry farmers, beef ranchers who use corn for animal feed, and food and food-ingredient manufacturers who use corn for people feed.
(Big oil companies like Exxon are trying to fight back the ethanol scourge, no matter what it’s made from, but they seem to have lost their influence in this debate.)
The double whammy (a whammy we’ve smacked our own selves over the head with) is this: We use corn to make foods we eat, we use corn to fill the fuel tanks of our cars and trucks. Food vs. fuel.
It’s not nice to try to fool Mother Corn. She’s known for millennia what corn is for. It’s for sustenance. It’s for eating. It is her gift to us, a gift of food — for human, not transportation, systems.
Delighted dolphins, giddy gators, happy herons. What is all this wildlife wonderment about? It seems these and the many other species of fauna and flora that inhabit the Florida Everglades may have been given a pass from extinction. And for once, mankind is not the villain in this tale. In fact, one man, Florida governor Charlie Crist, might be its hero.
Seems the guv had a meeting sometime back with the nabobs at U.S. Sugar Corporation, the largest cane-sugar producer in the country. They, like all good Big Sugar companies are wont to do, went to call on Gov. Crist to complain about Florida enacting some laws that forbade the company from pumping its polluted water back into the Everglades.
Expecting due deference from the guv and a “pat on the back” solution allowing the sugar maker to skirt the new laws — they, again, like all good Big Sugar companies, being large contributors to political campaigns, mostly to pro-business Republican candidates — U.S. Sugar got instead an unexpected, nay, shocking offer. The governor suggested that Florida buy U.S. Sugar. No need to find a way around ever-increasing environmental regulations, just go out of business — and with a pretty penny in its pocket too — $1.75 billion.
It’s a nice bit of money for U.S. Sugar, which has suffered bottom-line woes due to increasing sugar imports from countries such as Brazil and Thailand, which have lower labor costs. (Not to mention having to do continual battle with both the state and the feds over water and land pollution and the rising costs of the clean-ups it is forced to make by these authorities.) The company is also involved in a nasty lawsuit brought by former employees, charging that the company bilked them out of their retirement funds. The deal offered by Crist amounted to some $350 a share, far above other offers it has received over the years. So U.S. Sugar, which has operated on its land since 1931, said, yes, it would sell itself to the state.
And what does Florida get for its pot of gold? It gets, among other assets, 187,000 acres (or about 300 square miles) of land north of Everglades National Park, which the state would turn over to its South Florida Water Management District for use as part of a plan to help restore the Everglades’ pre-development ecosystem. (Cue the dancing endangered animals.)
The land would connect (or reconnect, actually) Florida’s Lake Okeechobee with the so-called River of Grass, the swampy natural waterway that carries overflow from the lake to its natural runoff into the ocean. The waterway, which is made up of marshes and forests rich in reptile and bird life, has been unable to drain itself adequately for years due to development, including sugar farming, and that has led to the stagnation of Lake Okeechobee’s waters.
So the Everglades’ ghost orchids and royal palms can perhaps sway in joy; their death knell has been silenced. Maybe. You see, despite the efforts of the Caped Crusader of the Everglades, Gov. Crist, and the, ahem, pragmatic decision by the elders of U.S. Sugar to sell, the deal might not go through. It seems that U.S. Sugar is owned by its 1,700 employees through an employee-ownership plan. And while the buyout deal allows U.S. Sugar to operate for another six years in order to fulfill its long-term commitments, after that, its employees are facing certain unemployment. Saying it will be regulated out of business anyway, the company has offered its wage earners one year’s pay as severance, with salaried workers being offered two years. The state has offered retraining. The deal is supposed to be finalized by November.
Put yourself in the place of a third-generation sugar worker, living in the small Florida town of Clewiston, being forced to weigh the relative merits of the survival of, oh, say, a rare panther and putting food on his or her family’s table. It’s a tough call.