Putting down the asphalt started 20 August 2009:
The county is holding a ribbon cutting at 10 AM this Thursday, 10 September 2009, at the north end of the north canopy. It’s a public event. Y’all come. Don’t be late; the chairman starts things on the dot.
Monsanto
grows much of its seed corn on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, apparently including its new “water-efficient maize”:
In law, two-thirds of the water from the Molokai irrigation system should go to homestead farmers. In practice big landowners, especially Monsanto, take 84% of the irrigation system’s water consumption. Monsanto alone, according to Yamashita, takes almost twice as much water as all 200 homesteaders.We would expect nothing less from the company that brought us Agent Orange.So I think I have this right. In the cause of developing crops that will allow the world’s farmers to use less water, Monsanto is so overusing the water in its own backyard that local farmers are have resorted to legal action to get their water back. As the Molokai Dispatch’s headline has it: “Monsanto could be its own worst enemy.”
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, August and September 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Very tasty.
Picture and grilling by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 August 2009.
You’re a big one, about a foot wide: Continue reading
 Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant |
By Jack KaskeyThat’s quite a price hike! Why are they doing this?Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed maker, plans to charge as much as 42 percent more for new genetically modified seeds next year than older offerings because they increase farmers’ output.
Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans will cost farmers an average of $74 an acre in 2010, and original Roundup Ready soybeans will cost $52 an acre, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in presentations on its Web site. SmartStax corn seeds, developed with Dow Chemical Co., will cost $130 an acre, 17 percent more than the YieldGard triple-stack seeds they will replace.
The new seed boosts yields 5 percent to 10 percent compared with other products, partly by reducing the amount of land that must be planted with conventional corn to 5 percent from 20 percent, Monsanto said.It will be interesting to see if farmers really do get such improved yields. If not, there’s a simpler possible reason for the price hike: now that Monsanto has gotten pretty near every farmer locked in to using its seed, it’s exercising its monopoly power and raising prices to increase its profit.“They are in essence splitting the value of the extra yield 50-50,” Gulley said by telephone.
Meanwhile, is Monsanto splitting the costs of all the dead birds, frogs, house pets, and ill humans caused by their chemicals? Or the costs of the epidemic of obesity caused by the high fructose corn syrup that their corn is used for? Ah, no. Those would be what Bloomberg would call economic externalites, which is to say other peoples’ problems. Monsanto gets the profits; the rest of us get the problems.
Hm, maybe somebody should investigate.
-jsq
It’s only about 9 inches across. I’m not certain it’s a gopher, since it doesn’t have the flattened shell top. But it’s acting like a gopher, and is not near water.
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Stills:
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 1 Sep 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Both snake and dog appear to be unharmed.
On hummingbirds it thought to snack, ee i ee i oh! Continue reading
To get out of the way of the car. Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 29 August 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia. Click through to the big picture to count the 9 rattles on this timber rattler.
Update: added links to just the snake Continue reading