walt k’s Recent Comments

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  I can only agree with Des. While in the case of NAIS, government is the messenger of bad news, the whole nonsensical scheme is at the behest of big Ag. Ironically, reclaiming our republic and making government serve average Americans instead of the elite is the only solution. That will take a lot of folks shooting their TV sets, getting out of their cars, and as Madison put it, "a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."On Can the USDA really keep our food safe? posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago 10 Responses

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  Great article Tom, hits the nail on the head. Vilsack's coments translate to: "The USDA will do everything possible to enhance the public's perception that ground beef is safe, so long as this does not in any way impact the market share and profitability of the major meat packers." Having Ag Departments (at either the federal or state level) responsible for food safety is insane in this era of corporate controlled agriculture and agencies. The conflicts of interest are enormous, and whatever the regulations, they are enforced primarily against small farmers. That this is usually done at taxpayer expense just gives additional subsidy to industrial ag. In conjunction with stricter regulations for mass distributed food, enforced by the FDA (or perhaps a new, not-yet-sold-out agency) and state & local health departments, we need to allow small farmers who sell directly to end consumers to be free of inane regulation. Usually they are required to build expensive infrastructure that actually reduces the safety of their already safe product. They admit that the industrial system produces "hundreds of thousands of pounds of infected beef," (probably an underestimate) and want the taxpayers to fund a needle in the haystack game. Do they even consider allowing local decentralized meat and poultry production that produces a much, much safer (at least 10 times lower coliform counts) product? No way. (Fed law actually does alow for such poultry production, but the states, instead of jumping at a chance to increase local ag production have been stepping in to protect the industrial producers.)On Can the USDA really keep our food safe? posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago 10 Responses

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  I don't have experience milling flour, so I looked it up. Extraction rate refers to the percentage of the wheat kernal that winds up in the flour. For whole wheat flour, it is 100%, for white flour 50 to 60 %. (And the industrial millers sell the wheat germ and bran they leave out of the flour). I also want to clarify that it is entirely possible to get a lower yield than I cited. These number assume good farming practices: proper fertility levels, low weed germination, proper variety for your area etc. Harvesting is another issue where there could be losses. A fit person can mow about an acre a day with a scythe (google Marugg). Old style equipment for threshing is hard to come by. Modern equipment is scaled to thousand acre fields and costs big bucks. Logsdon has long remonstrated about the need for appropriate scaled equipment, there may be some available now. The task of hand or animal threshing an acre's worth of wheat would be daunting for the average American these days.On Farmer Gene Logsdon on the promise of a home 'pancake patch' posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago 7 Responses

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  Small grain (wheat, barley,oats, rye, spelt, etc) yields start at about 40 bushels per acre for dryland, can easily reach 125 on good organic soil with irrigation. You can do companion plantings so a legume grows up in the aftermath. Wheat is 60 pounds per bushel, so at the yields above that would be 2400 to 7500 lbs per acre. So even a 100' x 100' plot (roughly a quarter acre) at the lowest yield could produce 600 1 pound loaves a year for your family. A full acre, tended intensively, would obviously make more than a "couple of pancakes." And as another of Gene's marvelous books, "Good Spirits: A New Look at Ol' Demon Alcohol," points out, you don't have to limit yourself to bread or pancakes. Depending on what kind of beer you brew, 600 lbs of grain a year could equal about 5 gallons of beer a week. As far as better taste- fresher is better, and your homegrown would be fresh, plus less toxic and more nutritious. Fruit and chickens are good too, I guess everyone should try to do something. Chickens eat grain and growing your own would improve your chicken and profits if you sold them. 100 Cornish Cross broilers, slaughtered at 8 weeks, averaging 5 lbs cleaned weight, require about 1200 lbs of feed if raised on pasture. I don't think we're talking about the urban core here, but lots and lots of land is going to waste within 20 miles of most downtowns.On Farmer Gene Logsdon on the promise of a home 'pancake patch' posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago 7 Responses

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  Thanks Singlelens. The info about neurons unique to the brain was new to me. I asked that question at the time of the Mabton discovery and USDA could not answer it. Most of what you said is as I understood it, so I mispoke when I said zero chance, I should have said one-in-a-million chance. I am concerned though that as the original article points out, USDA rules do not preclude cattle getting parts of other cattle to eat, particularly the practice of feeding chicken litter. I suspect Salatin is off base, as I've found absolutely no confirmation on the alternate origin theories he sugested. As I said, that book is very uneven in quality, hurting the good points it does make.On With House food-safety bill a done deal, questions remain [UPDATED] posted 3 months, 4 weeks ago 19 Responses