#Farming on the eastern border is in trouble because the tractors do not get the correct location information from the GPS positioning system. The interference is apparently coming from Russia. #finland#news#suomimastodon
Traktorit sekosivat itärajalla – piirtävät nyt peltoon vihreitä raitoja | Etelä-#Karjala | Yle https://yle.fi/a/74-20092403
Good from Desmog on the far right EU election MEP candidates spreading manure about food and farming. Some cast doubt on the reality of climate science, while others painted EU regulators as part of an authoritarian “sect” wishing to control citizens through green measures.
THREAD: This might sound crazy, but in Ursula von der Leyen's official schedule, which you can view online, there wasn’t a single meeting with environmental activists listed at any time in the past year. What we did find, in the past 4 months alone, were 3 separate meetings with farming groups.
The concentrated ills of concentrated agribusiness, By Bart Hawkins Kreps, originally published by An Outside Chance May 31, 2024
"...Now that American consumers have learned to buy fresh – albeit nearly tasteless – fruit twelve months of the year, it’s essential for Driscoll’s to have suppliers in countries with different seasons. ...Frerick writes: “the Driscoll’s model is based on shifting farming out of the country to companies that don’t...worry about US minimum wage laws or environmental regulations.”
"...It matters not whether these products are truly nutritious. What matters is whether the products are cheap and, in line with WalMart’s directives to suppliers, cheaper year after year. Still, French explains, not cheap enough for WalMart’s own employees to afford – WalMart employees in many states require govt assistance just to feed their families..."
From ChartR: There might soon be a vitamin C-shaped hole in many Americans’ breakfasts: orange juice prices are hitting all-time highs, as a series of poor harvests strain the existing supply of frozen juice futures.
Indeed, while the price of OJ has climbed at an alarming rate in recent years due to reduced production yields, this week saw frozen concentrated orange juice futures ...reach a record price of $4.87 per pound. That’s roughly 5x where they were trading in 2020.
These juiced-up figures have arisen from a blend of bad weather and disease that’s long plagued the world's orange groves...And Florida, world-renowned for its oranges, won’t be able to pick up the slack. The Sunshine State has seen output decline steadily for more than 2 decades, thanks to citrus greening, hurricanes, falling yields, and a booming housing market that’s turned citrus farms into premium real estate.
Chatting to the local farmer (land owner rather than the tenant actually looking after the sheep) and he was claiming that locally nesting Buzzards are killing lambs. I'm suspicious about this, and even web 'rural life' forums you'd kinda think would be anti-raptor seem to be largely unconvinced that this happens. Ravens may seem more likely to blame, but of course a Buzzard's gonna peck at an already dead one. 🤷 #ukBirds#farming
From the law of the minimum to soil health By Gunnar Rundgren, originally published by Garden Earth May 29, 2024
"...Emergent properties are characteristics of systems that the individual parts of a system do not possess. It is thus not possible to study the individual components and understand how a system functions. The system can be a living creature such as a human, an organ (the brain) an ecosystem or life itself. The soil has a number of emergent properties which can’t be reduced to simple components, the soil is alive. It is no coincidence that one of the canonical books of the organic movement had the title The Living Soil (by Eve Balfour).
...We still don’t know more than a fraction of what is going on.
...As Grandy et al phrase it: “Plants are not just passive players in the N cycle but actively shape intricate three-way interactions with microbes & minerals..."
Târ y donc a tori – Lessons on the Subversive Nature of Transmission, from a Stubborn Welshman
By Adèle Pautrat, originally published by ARC2020 on May 24, 2024
"...There is no effective way of obtaining concrete information about old varieties and the people still growing them, which contributes to their progressive disappearance.
Without a doubt, hindering the exchange of seeds between farmers has had disastrous consequences for the preservation of agro-bio-diversity. There are gene banks and seed collections, but it is on farms that the most beautiful treasures are often unearthed...
Highly critical of legislation that prevent people from accessing and exchanging old grains, Gerald has committed to doing his bit. He has joined the Gaïa Foundation’s ‘Seed Sovereignty’ initiative to safeguard cereal varieties, while as a seed grower he has always made sure to share these with other farmers..."
This could be a mere human error, but I suspect more as I've seen it too often.
The German supermarket chain #Rewe promotes their continual offers of regional goods, especially fruit and vegetables. Small signs tell customers that certain items are from the local area, and people seem to trust them.
An occasional check, though, and it is clear this is not the case. These potatoes are from #Egypt which, no matter how you fold the globe, is not regional to #Bremen. A second container had potatoes from Israel, also not local by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, none of the items marked as Regional goods on offer in Rewe Bremen yesterday were regional at all.
Time, perhaps, to give someone a geography lesson, or ask whether this is being done on purpose.
A new and silent land grab is underway – we must stop it - By Ian Scoones, Angela Serrano, originally published by Open Democracy May 20, 2024
“For us peasants, land is not just an investment or something we own, but is part of our lives and our existence”, said...the Network of Farmers’ Organisations & Agricultural Producers of West Africa at a meeting co-convened by the Land Deal Politics Initiative...and activists concerned about the rise of land, water and green grabs.
...Participants of the meeting agreed that policy debates on land have...been stuck in the hallowed halls of the UN or government bureaucracies, where they are captured by market demands, such as offsetting. The subsequent ‘solutions’ then end up incompatible with local livelihoods, failing to consider food-provisioning, as well as people’s cultures, histories and intimate connections with nature..."
I cannot date this, but apparently some time in the distant past (possibly 80’s?) the International Harvester tractor company used punch cards for inventory and parts ordering. #retrocomputing#farming