sarahtaber

sarahtaber, 4 days ago

An acre of hazelnut trees' annual maintenance costs are the same as planting & harvesting corn, but the hazelnuts make ~5x as much income.

Farms can make far more on this new crop than on corn and soy. And the trees lock carbon into the soil.

So: why aren't already doing this?

sarahtaber, 4 days ago

We need:

1️⃣ Farm lenders who can build business models around tree crops that take 4-6 years to start producing.

2️⃣ Facilities to break off the shells, roast the nuts, and turn them into food. Without that, there’s no point in growing the nuts- there’d be nowhere to sell them!

sarahtaber, 4 days ago

That kind of coordination is real work. But it pays off! Nuts are lucrative, and tree crops work well for the parts of our state that are too hilly to plow.

Not every crop is a good fit for NC, but hazelnuts could be a good—and delicious—fit!

https://taberfornc.com/platform/case-studies#hazelnuts

sarahtaber, 4 days ago

Our land is rich. There’s no reason for so much of rural NC to be poor.

A better future is possible. But we need leadership who knows how to see our state's potential and build on it.

We can't afford four more years of business as usual.

sarahtaber, 4 days ago

And I can't do it alone! Donating today makes a big difference in winning this race. I'm rolling out more yard signs, getting press, & hitting the road to talk with rural NC about how their problems are real.

And that means they have real solutions.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon

sarahtaber, 9 days ago

Here are the facts:

According to him, we have 45,000 acres of solar power in our state. That sounds like a lot! But is it?

North Carolina has 8.3M acres of farmland.

45,000 acres is (divide by 640!)...70ish square miles. About 1/10th the size of Moore or Chatham County.

sarahtaber, 9 days ago

Farmland loss is complex, but the biggest driver is residential development. Not solar!

The best solution is to build up our food so farmers can make more $$$ growing food for all of the people moving to our state.

That sounds familiar… https://taberfornc.com/platform

sarahtaber, 9 days ago

More facts about solar & farmland!

-The most drastic estimates from anti-solar advocates still have solar panels using 1/10th of the farmland our state is projected to lose to sprawl.

And…

sarahtaber, 9 days ago

-Solar often makes farms more profitable. So they can keep farming instead of selling to development!

Every farm has a few acres that have never yielded well. Converting those acres into solar can make enough cash to keep the whole farm in business!

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

In countries where a lot of the people are poor peasants, serving in the military is the first time they get 3 full meals a day!

Japan's military relied on white rice bc of its shelf life. They got to use "all the white rice you can eat" as a recruiting/morale bonus.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

Pretty soon, the Japanese navy had so many sailors sick with beriberi that the ships couldn't function.

A doctor named Takaki Kanehiro got busy chasing down the cause. He found it was because a lot of sailors were eating nothing but white rice, due to lack of other options onboard.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

He got the word out to top brass and by 1887, the Japanese navy had eliminated beriberi in its sailors.

But Japan's army decided "that sounds fake." They really, really wanted to keep using 100% white rice as a ration. Why? It was simple to transport & prepare.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

Army officials called Takaki a "fake doctor" because he hadn't gone to the "right" prestigious medical schools.

By 1926, when the Japanese Army finally agreed to start using food other than white rice, 27,000 Japanese soldiers had already died of beriberi.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

Military doctors have played a huge role in public health- figuring out how malnutrition, hygiene, and other health problems work.

That's because often, military campaigns were the first time a government felt invested enough in their people's health to do science about it.

When commoners die of cholera, governments too often shrug. But when soldiers die of cholera on campaign? Now that's a problem worth solving! : /

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

That brings us to the school lunch program!

The US's WW2-era rationing included some school lunch programs for schoolchildren. And in 1946, the National School Lunch Act made school lunch programs a permanent fixture.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

Why? The WW2 draft had to reject a lot of men because they'd been so malnourished as kids, they were still stunted or disabled as adults.

Shout-out to my main man skinny Steve Rogers, with a convenient poster of hunger-related health problems that kept people out of the Army!

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

It's interesting to watch political fights over the school lunch program today. It's clear that a lot of our lawmakers have forgotten why we have it.

Before school lunch programs, the US had poverty & hunger so severe that it disabled lots of people for life. That's no way to run a country!

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

@jonobie Yep! "How to prevent scurvy" was considered a national security secret. So every time one country's military figured it out, they kept it from everyone else. This led to every aspiring empire developing its own anti-scurvy solutions 😭

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

We're $150 away from $1K raised tonight! I'll be here 30 more minutes! Come get your MEMORIAL DAY FOOD FACTS

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

The German navy had a lot of saurkraut in their rations. First, because it was a mainstay in many Germans' diets, and second to prevent scurvy.

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

Saurkraut rations continued once they invented U-boats.

Best-case scenario, submarines are still a bunch of dudes sealed into a tin can. The u-boats were nasty pieces of work, but pour one out for the guys who were drafted into deathtrap subs permanently perfumed with BO, diesel, and saurkraut 🍻

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

We probably owe the Monty Python "Spam" skit to wartime food supply chains.

Once lend-lease started in 1941, the US sent so much Spam to Russia & Britain that it was just...in everything. It stayed in everything for years after the war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycKNt0MhTkk

sarahtaber, 12 days ago

In WW2, the US gov't asked Hershey to make a chocolate bar that tasted bad.

Why? They needed an emergency ration protein bar-type thing, and wanted it to taste bad enough that troops would save it for emergencies.