Land – Our Relationship to the Ground upon which we stand
In Growing Potential – Wealthy Investors snap up farmland amid rising food prices Bernard Condon writing for the Associated Press notes that a Tulsa software executive snapped up 430 acres of Michigan cornfields for $4 million and a California insurance executive purchased 156 acres in Iowa, overbidding the farmer who had rented the land for 20 years. The farmer’s maximum bid was $1.1 million. A former Goldman Sachs executive has been reported buying arable land in Africa, competing with Chinese investors seeking to profit from coming food shortages. Investors are free to invest in farmland; however they are removed from the land – its texture, smell. They do not experience the land’s response to hoe or disc harrow. They rarely experience the excitement...
A possible solution to global warming – Eliminate global dairy and cattle production
According the United States Environmental Protection Agency the 100 million cattle in the US emit 5.5 million metric tons of methane. Globally, cattle flatulence and belches account for 66 million metric tons and methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 – carbon dioxide. What if we ended dairy and beef operations today? What might be the possible long term consequence? Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, may have the answer. She suggests that 13,400 years ago the Americas were extensively populated by large herbivores particularly 12,000 – 20,000 pound woolly mammoths. This was the end of the Wisconsin glacial period and a time of rising temperatures. By 11,500 years ago and roughly 1000 years following...
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