Not even pretending to farm

Its raining, which is good. The grain needs rain. I have planted some lettuce, beans, carrots, sweetcorn and sunflowers in my raised beds after having gone to great expense and ringed the edges with copper tape in an attempt to inhibit slug action. All seems a bit low key compared with what everyone else is up to. The ulterior motive was partly met as someone made an offer on the house, low, but it's a start. The farm we are looking to rent is proving a hard nut to crack and so we might rent a small house for a few months while we look around and await the downward repricing of the next phase of the global economic contraction (all's fair in love and war?).

Just read Animal Pharm by Mark Purdey, extraordinary book, should be on the BD reading list. As Monbiot says, 'If Pudey is right he should get a Nobel prize for medicine'. Great exploration, research and analysis of BSE (globally) and TB. Does leave you feeling disgusted and saddened at central governments (how surprising) but also relieved that there are answers to the questions BSE raised about how we keep our animals. It's in the soil. However, I am now worried about grasssickness in the horses (found where there is low pH, CU & K deficiency and excess Fe, like our buttercup covered, iron clay fields, often triggering Clostridium botulinum of the TB family). Symptons, are severe gut paralysis and sudden death. Not much of a heads up there then. I could spread some lime on the fields and an Fe chelating compound. Or I could not worry about it. Maybe I'll spray some 501. I shall go and study my charts.

Make sure you have read this regarding golden rice and its benefits (hhmmm), the proGMOers use it as their standard bearer for saving the world. It is always useful to be able to debunk that line of arguement.

I have just realised that the directgovkids link in the heading, which takes you to the UK government's site for kids on farming, is only accessible via the supermarkets' entry. Farming doesn't get its own heading, what does that say about priorities.

Happy planting, prepping, parsing, picking and packing.

I'd like to be bullish

As a summary of where the US is, this is the most succinct I have read.

It is the nature of opposition that it seems easier and more enjoyable to deconstruct arguments than to support them and rally round (hence the odd situation where the Tories dominate the blog world and Labour have no credibility). However, I am struck by the lack of intellectually rigorous, convincing arguments for society being able to support (let alone repay) the debt mountain we have created.

Although we are printing money at a rapid pace I currently believe deflation remains the issue and that bond markets will likely limit governments borrowing capacity before inflation takes hold. That suggests restructuring/default at some point. I shall be interested to see where G20 spreads trade over the next 6-12months.

Although I am intrigued by the technical argument that gold will trade back down to 600 before the mother of all rallies, I am increasingly swayed by its resilience at these levels and the longer this 2nd primary wave counter trend in equities goes on without a gold correction the more I think gold is in strong a bullish move. It is the de-facto global currency, when currencies collapse it is the only safe haven that meets the key criteria of money.

And I like this as an analysis of US debt, what we are likely to see in 2009 and why the government effectively has the mandate to ignore the law (if it has) in its prosecution of the war on recession.

Fix the Food Chain

Wandered into the fields of Plaw Hatch today to watch Richard and Tony roll out their latest gizzmos. After the (ancient) transplanter had been steamed back into life (with help from a couple of Findhorn groupies plus Claire) the latest watering contraption appeared. Fortunately it was strapped atop a tractor that was unable to exceed 5mph otherwise a little sideways sloshing might have had it aside (rather than astride) the newly planted celariac. Overall the garden looked great and the shop displayed almost an entire wall of farm grown produce.

Friends of the Earth started a campaign 'Fixing the Food Chain' earlier this year, very timely given the Swine Flu, sorry, novel human flu virus H1N1, outbreak. Read their 'Feeding the Beast' article. If you felt so inclined you could even write to your MEP (elections next month) - (European member of parliament - we all have one). And at the same time remind her/him that GM food should probably continue to be restricted until substantive, meaningful test are carried out to verify their safety.

If you haven't read it, find the time to take a look at the best commendation for ending intensive farming yet published. The UN FAOs 'Livestock's Long Shadow'. And, for those long winter nights (huh?, Ed.) the UNCTAD report on how organic agriculture is Africa's best hope. Or the IAASTD report from last year on how the world should look at agriculture, esp. Point 4 which includes the line 'Existing multifunctional systems that minimize these [environmental] problems have not been sufficiently prioritized for research.'

Sadly, Obama's new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced he will be pushing harder for bio-tech (read GM) than Bush was. Not a surprise but likely means heavy lobbying of Europe/Africa to buy Monsanto/Dow/Pioneer Hi-Bred/Syngenta products. Will there be a serious debate in the US about this? Will anyone point out that yields have not been increased, that the only success story are seeds that are herbicide resistant meaning guess what, yup, more Roundup? Oh, and this is Monsanto funded research saying their crops require a lot of work especially due to over-relience on herbicides and that super pigweed and ragweed is becoming a serious problem.

The US public don't appear to be completely fooled, despite a sharp economic downturn sales of organic food were up 16% in 2008. However, total organic meat sales are a paultry (there's a joke in there somewhere) 0.34% of total. That's $448mm vs $8.5bln on fruit & veg. Odd how people are happy eating non-organic meat but love their organic apples and lettuces. Having said that, I saw lots of very free-range, pasture-fed beef wandering around Arizona, the owners of which wore funny hats and boots, occasionally said 'yeeeha' and thought organics was for uptight, liberal citytypes (at least I think that's what they said).

A Mars a day

The Financial Times today ran a fullpage article on 'Life beyond Earth' with the estimate of 360-38,000 life forms capable of interstellar communication. Now this could just be a little light diversion from their core subject matter, or perhaps it is serious investigation of new sources of finance for World Inc.

Governments, via their central banks, are now borrowing vast amounts of money from themselves for nothing to purchase unvaluable assets (bank capital). It is a situation you can only get to through a step process of crisis management. It is not a promoter of sound money. However, quantitative easing is where we are at, printing money in the hope it reinflates the economy without debasing the currency in the process.

Anyway, sound money or no, the combination of a rapidly contracting tax base, extraordinary increases in public borrowing requirements due to bank bailouts, fiscal stimulus packages and rising social security spending (plus mounting pension liability questions, further bailouts, increased IMF funding requirements etc) in all countries, simultaneously means global sources of funding are somewhat stretched.

So, what if we could borrow from another race? Is the FT subtly suggesting Goldman's are out there trying to syndicate the first interplanetary bond underwriting? What if we could get one of the other 340 planets in the galaxy to take out an equity release mortgage with a third planet and use the proceeds to buy Treasury bonds? Problem solved. Another new source of financing to sustain us until for another decade or so, who knows?