10 Comments

1. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

   Police Begin “Guns Drawn” Raids on Organic Food Stores in California [VIDEO]

   3 August 2010, 10:25 am

2. Henry:

   The Art of Agriculture

   American culture has lost an essential chthonic connection with the soil. Restoring it requires rethinking conventional agricultural practices — practices, in any case, for many additional reasons, unsuited for the modern world. Dare we say we’re on the cusp of an organic revolution? To get some of the story from a leading soil scientist I turned to Dr. John P. Reganold. A farsighted optimist, John points the way home. Total runtime an hour and seventeen minutes. Listen while gardening.

   http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2010/07/the_art_of_agriculture.html

   3 August 2010, 10:56 pm

3. Henry:

   The food bubble:
   How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it

   By Frederick Kaufman

   http://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/files/the-food-bubble-pdf.pdf

   ===========================================================

   Amercan Stomach

   http://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/

   ===========================================================
   Interview with Frederick Kaufman

   http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/food-bubble-how-wall-street-starved-millio

   [doesn't look like a full URL but it is]

   4 August 2010, 6:23 pm

4. C.:

   I got the opportunity to read some issues of the magazine Skeptical Inquirer today. In one article it said crackpot dissenters have a tactic of taking an issue and trying to subvert it to their own message. Well now I am about to do that.
   Another article in SKI was about how the fog of disinformation produced by special interest groups in society makes it impossible for democracies to function properly. For some reason the article started off by giving the movie in which a rich white family took in this poor black kid a taught him to play football. The article pointed out that the movie varied with reality on a number of points, such as in real life the kid was already an excellent football player. It took these examples to make the point that the movie was trying to show American society as being more compassionate than it really is.
   My comment on that is unfortunately that is one thing that has to be done. Maybe if we pretend hard enough that we are compassionate and show lots of TV shows and movies about compassion it will start to rub off and Americans will start acting the way they expect themselves to act. Like tearing apart investment systems that warp reality, and which cause hunger for hudreds of millions of people in the process, unneccessarily.

   5 August 2010, 11:57 am

5. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

   I think there is something to be said for presenting an example of life well-lived, even if through a fictional narrative. I think there is something completely different to be said for just totally bullshitting yourself with self-congratulatory glurge.

   5 August 2010, 9:27 pm

6. John:

   Hi Stan,

   This is my first post on your site, and I’d like you to know that I have enjoyed your writings, and learning about your many experiences since I first chanced upon your name – sometime around 2001 I think it might have been.

   I’m a banker (though my academic training is in international affairs & diplomacy). On the issue of food, quite separately I had noted something kind of interesting a little while ago.

   Rabobank, a very ssolid/staid Dutch bank with expertise in food and agriculture (and best known for being one of literally a handful of banks with a AAA (triple-A = very safe) credit rating from both Moody’s and Fitch, not too long ago purchased a 7.5% stake in the Rothschild Group [not necessary to go into the technical details of the various holding companies involved; suffice it to say that the family holding company (from what one can discern) owns about 72.5% of the equity of the group, with Jardine Matheson owning the remaining 20%].

   As a deal, the alliance/arrangement makes sense to a banker such as myself: I know Rabo, and know that they know the ag/food biz. They have the balance sheet and can provide loans. The Rothschilds are known for their advisory expertise, and so each brings something complementary to the table.

   ***
   [NOVEMBER 11, 2008 PRESS RELEASE, FROM THE RABOBANK WEBSITE]

   Rabobank and Rothschild have entered into a co-operation agreement in the field of M&A and Equity Capital Markets advisory in the food and agriculture sectors on a global basis. Rothschild and Rabobank both have strong global food and agri advisory franchises in mergers and acquisitions. In addition, Rabobank is the premier global financial institution providing financing and other services to food and agri business clients around the world. Under the agreement both firms will pool their respective industry knowledge, resources and relationships while expanding their respective geographic reach and client base through an enhanced breadth of services. This agreement represents a step in advancing the successful food and drink franchise of the two companies, bringing together highly complementary skills in a fast growing sector of the global economy.

   “This co-operation is an important step for the Rabobank Group and we are very pleased to have reached this agreement with such an established group as Rothschild. We are impressed by the franchise that Rothschild has developed in this sector and believe that by combining our resources, we can provide a better and more integrated platform to our clients. This co-operation will be instrumental in further developing our food and agri advisory franchise globally” says Sipko Schat Executive Board member of Rabobank and Vice Chairman of the Managing Board of Rabobank International.

   The co-operation will be led on a day to day basis by Maarten ter Haar and Emmanuel Durand, respectively heads of Food & Agri M&A for Europe and for the Americas at Rabobank, and by Akeel Sachak, Global Head of Consumer at Rothschild.

   In order to cement the relationship between the two firms, Rabobank will acquire, subject to the necessary approvals, a 7.5% stake in Rothschilds Continuation Holdings (RCH) and Sipko Schat will join the RCH Board.

   “We are pleased to have entered this co-operation agreement and believe that over time it will develop into a strategic alliance in these vitally important sectors. We are also delighted to welcome Rabobank as a shareholder in RCH and Sipko Schat onto the Board.” says David de Rothschild, Chairman of Rothschild.

   6 August 2010, 1:32 am

7. Michael Anderson:

   This came through a friend—-it’s evidently a mental disorder now to want to eat whole, healthy food! This article is a bit over the top, but, here’s a link to the Guardian, also. Evidently this “condition” was first diagnosed (sic) back in ’97, when the whole food issue was not as front and center as it is now.

   Is this another attempt by the medical and psychoanalytical professions to scam up some more business for drug companies, or is it something more sinister—-perhaps a last-ditch attempt by global ag and global pharma to completely control the chain of life?

   http://www.naturalnews.com/029098_orthorexia_mental_disorder.html

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/16/orthorexia-mental-health-eating-disorder

   13 August 2010, 7:14 am

8. Henry:

   Great article with some good resources.

   How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Respect the Chicken

   [...] The egg is one of the world’s most perfect foods, combining easily digested proteins with a mix of saturated fats, beta-carotene and cholesterol that are all essential for proper energy production at the cellular level. Your mitochondria will thank you for every free-range egg you consume. Like global warming, the lipid hypothesis is one of the most idiotic things ever promulgated by one human towards another. If you want to survive the crash, begin divesting yourself of its consequences immediately.

   Keeping chickens is relatively easy; just ask the people at Backyardchickens.com if you aren’t sure. Build them a small enclosure with a bar to roost on and a box to lay in and they will take care of the rest. I do suggest an enclosed yard or ‘chicken run’ for most places as well as designing a coop that is easy to clean out twice a year. For suburban or urban operations, check your local ordinances to find out how many hens you can keep. You may be surprised. Your grass clippings are excellent chicken food if you can’t free-range them…

   …For those living in growing zone 7 or higher the black soldier fly’s life-cycle should become part of yours. They will lay their eggs above a mass of rotting material for the larva to fall into and eat. When they mature, they will seek to climb out of the muck they’ve produced to pupate. With a properly designed composter they will self-harvest into a catch-bin, leaving behind a liquid fertilizer that is simply amazing for your garden. The captured grubs are excellent chicken food, better than the table scraps were in the first place. They can be dried and held as winter stores for your chickens.

   Traditional composting methods are slow and inefficient, producing variable quality humic acid. In addition, one can only compost vegetable material so as to not attract flies. The black-soldier fly larva produces a natural anti-biotic, which repels flies, and they will eat nearly anything that isn’t wood. That means you can compost your rotten dairy and meats along with your fruits and vegetables. Moreover, they will do this overnight. The hardest part is keeping them fed. You can even compost your chicken manure….

   …the chicken and the goat represent the two animals that give you the best chance at survival on your own. Both can turn low-quality land into high-quality food and other resources. Both can work with a nomadic group. Cows can’t do that, neither can sheep. Horses provide work and transport once you have become established in a place. They all need high-quality land to survive, no less thrive. But, the chicken and the goat, well, to me, they just scream liberty in a way that few others can1. The Free State Project missed the boat on their choice of mascot. My choice to raise these animals is on the one hand accidental (the chicken) and on the other planned (the goat) but both represent the life I want as well as the world I want to live in. They form the foundation while the others provide the super-structure.

   But you may say, now there are no new places to “run away” to. The jackasses seem to have everything under their control. Standing and fighting is the State’s method to affect change and that results in you becoming them in the end. So, that option is out. Therefore, it is only by withdrawing your support first intellectually, then removing yourself from their control physically, bit by bit, that you can create the reality you want. In that sense, the chicken and the goat still perform the same function, only the context is different. Each decision along that path is another brick removed from their wall.

   More:

   http://www.lewrockwell.com/luongo/luongo12.1.html

   9 September 2010, 3:16 pm

9. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

   “… the chicken and the goat, well, to me, they just scream liberty…” Probably because, like the rest of us animals, they don’t want to be exploited just so someone else can get theirs ?

   10 September 2010, 1:37 pm

10. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

    Why no unicode?

    10 September 2010, 1:38 pm

Leave a comment