Tag: food

So far nothing has worked; not bailouts, or conversions to bank holding companies, not front page stories or investigative committees…nothing is helping the economic crisis it only continues to get worse.

What if we cannot stop the economic crisis from continuing to deteriorate, what if the economic levees break?

How is our government (Federal, State, Municipal) preparing for the worst case scenario?

How are we hoping they are preparing, what should we be expecting of them, what can we do?

cross-posted at Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

If you’ll forgive the unfortunate Batman reference in the title, I must say that I’m glad our worst fears haven’t yet come to pass.  We’re at a major fork in the road, and there’s still a chance that we’ll prove to be a reality-based nation after all.  For the last 60-plus years, and especially over the past 8…we haven’t so much been ‘told’, as we’ve had it jammed down our throats relentlessly that food is just another commodity best left to international commodity traders and chemical companies.  Unsurprisingly, globalization as defined by those types in this area has proven to be a massive failure, as has everything else based upon their theories.

The simple fact is that our food system is completely broken.  We’re drive-thruing ourselves to ruin while trying to drown out the sounds of our destruction with the popping of Pringles…

If we intend to remain a “first-world” nation, we need to ensure we have the bare basics to begin with.  Like food, which comes from our soil…the health of which directly impacts the nutrients contained in same.  

It’s time we had people in positions of power in Washington who understood that, people like Jim Riddle.

Crossposted as always from La Vida Locavore, jump below the fold…

Saturday morning, November 22.  Jay awakes (and refers to himself in the third person) in his tiny apartment in an inner Southeast Portland neighborhood.  Showers, dresses…tries to leave but gets sucked into 30 minutes of college football pregame shows on ESPN…breaks free eventually and throws on a jacket and a hat.

Let’s take a walk to the Portland Farmers Market at PSU, shall we?

First though, we need coffee.  Stumptown of course, mmmm!

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, journey below the fold…

A little bit of shuffling in New Jersey’s state government leading up to next year’s elections.  New Jersey holds state elections in the “odd-numbered” years – in 2009 there will be a gubernatorial election with incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D-Hoboken) running for a second term, while all 80 seats in New Jersey’s General Assembly (the Lower House of the NJ State Legislature, currently controlled by Democrats 48-32) will be up for election.  Elections for seats in the Upper House (the NJ State Senate, currently controlled by Democrats 23-17) are held in years ending in 1, 3 and 7.  A “2-4-4 cycle” in order to reflect redistricting changes due to the Census.

In the midst of a recent certain other (heh…) important and closely-watched election, came news that Charles Kuperus, the head of New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture, has resigned the position he’s held for the past six years after originally being appointed by former Governor Jim McGreevey.

As someone who grew up in New Jersey, and was a resident as recently as two years ago…I’m sad to say that we lost a really good one here –

“Charlie has been taking the heat from many in the farm community who would rather be able to sell their land to developers, growing houses [rather] than crops,” Tittel said. “He has helped protect farming for the future.”

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, more below the fold…

While Larry Kudlow and the rest of the neo-con Kudlowites are telling you the economy is Goldilocks, reality is trying to remind us that things aren’t so golden.

Greetings ladies and gentlemen to the latest episode of Manufacturing Monday. Couple of interesting things to discus today, and some interesting numbers to watch this week.  First we have what appears to be a new take on price fixing by manufacturers.  Next we explore the recent collapse in the price of grains. Our last piece is a story from the Financial Times where companies and groups are hiring the very element that help drive up their costs, speculators, to well…sorta fight speculators.  Kinda reminds me of those old westerns where they hire a gunfighter to take on the baddie.  Finally, as mentioned, there are numbers we’re watching, the Producer Price Index being released tomorrow, Jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed Survey on Thursday.

There was once an alarmist diary at dKos about the coming hard times, and how people in the country can grow their own food, but city-dwellers and those people who will be rendered homeless by the mortgage implosion during the Great Depression Redux will have no such recourse.

And it made me remember a few things.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/u…

That link goes to a pic of one of the most famous headlines in 20th Century U.S. journalism:

“FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”

and it ushered in what we were subsequently to understand was the GOP’s compassionate conservatism toward all beings, human and otherwise.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles with a special h/t to Mishima for including it in Thursday’s DD Times

Salicornia

Salicornia, believe it or not, is a plant that can grow in inhospitable, desert soils and can be watered with, of all things, ocean salt water.  Never heard of this?  Neither have I.  I’ve sat on the beach and wondered what it would take to remove the salt from sea water to grow things in sand, but I never thought about reversing the process,  leaving the salt in the water and finding something that would grow in it.  In today’s LA Times I found an “ah hah” moment.

Please join me below.

He says we need to be told by the Pope that people are precious, that right and wrong matter!

And, it’s just a “tough” patch we’re going through. Bush just said so. here. But worse:

Listen up, you utterly deprived (not-fit-to-be) lying president, because you caused a great deal of the pain and suffering Americans are right now encountering. You have caused a war that was unnecessary that killed hundreds of thousands of people and wounded many more. Millions are refugees because of your war. Talk about precious life? “Sacred” life? You don’t know the meaning of the word.

Famines may occur because you were unwilling to act on climate change because you wanted to help the rich get richer. Don’t tell me the Pope needs to talk to me about right and wrong!!!!!

Don’t you hate being lectured by an idiot?

~~cross-posted at orange~~