Category Archives: Economy

Looking for Longleaf

So you’ve read Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and you want to know more.

Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest, by Lawrence S. Earley

The tallest and strongest of pine trees, longleaf made great sailing ship masts , tar for caulking ships, and of course saw timber. How the early settlers cut down trees for houses and to clear land to farm. Their hogs and cows running loose in the woods ate the young longleaf, suppressing new trees for a hundred years. Then professional forestry took over, trying to suppress the fire that destroyed northern white pine forests, yet which preserves southern longleaf pine forests. The sad story of turpentine: we knew better, but we did it anyway.

The peculiar life cycle of a tree that starts out looking like a clump of grass, and can stay that way for decades, yet promotes and survives fire and can grow more than 100 feet tall and live for centuries. The thousands of species of plants, animals, and fungi the forest protects, many of them, like wiregrass, also adapted to fire.

How tuberculosis and quail led to new understandings of longleaf and fire, and the people who discovered those things. We do know how to grow these trees now, and lots of people are doing it: for jobs, for sawtimber, for the beauty of the forest.

Monsanto Price Drop

Monsanto’s stock price is down almost $4, or more than 7% today. Why?
Monsanto Price Drop ST. LOUIS, May 27, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON – News) today announced it is repositioning its Roundup® business in the face of fundamental structural changes that have caused upheaval in the glyphosate industry. Focusing its glyphosate products on supporting the core seeds-and-traits business, the company plans to drastically narrow its Roundup® brand portfolio to offer farmers a simple, quality product that meets their needs at a price closer to generics.

“By reducing the uncertainty associated with Roundup, we free Monsanto to grow on its fundamentals,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said. “What matters to our long-term growth is our seeds-and-traits business, which is on track.”

I think that’s CEO-speak for demand is down, competition is up, and Monsanto is retrenching in hopes of saving its core glysophate business. So sad.

More clarification from the CEO: Continue reading →

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

The other day somebody asked me to recommend some books about longleaf forests, how they used to be, what happened to them, what can be done now.

I was going to start by posting a short list, but each item was turning into a review, so I’ll just post them one by one as reviews.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home), by Janisse Ray.

How dirt poor crackers and corporate greed destroyed most of the most diverse ecosystem in North America; yet these same people are the tragic heroes of the book. Half autobiography, half ecology, this book will either get you with Janisse’s “stunning voice” or you won’t get it. If you’re from around here, you’ll hear the wind in the pines, feel the breeze, and see the summer tanagers yellow in the sun. If you’re not, here’s your chance to meet a “heraldry of longleaf” up close and personal.

“I will rise from my grave with the hunger of wildcat, wings of kestrel….”
See Janisse read in Moultrie. “More precious than handfuls of money.” See her wikipedia page for a pretty good bio.

But read the book. If nothing else, you’ll never think the same again about Amazon deforestation once you realize we already did that to ourselves, and in the south we live in the devastated remnants of what was one of the most extensive forests on earth, with longleaf pine trees 100 feet tall and 500 years old, maintained by fire, protecting everything from the Lord God bird to the lowly Bachman’s sparrow, from the rattlesnake-eating indigo snake to the beetles that live in gopher tortoise burrows. The forest can return, because reforestation can pay. Meanwhile, there are still places where you can see how it used to be. Janisse Ray had a lot to do with preserving Moody Forest, too, but that’s another story.

-jsq

Haitian: Monsanto seeds are a new earthquake

Beverly Bell writes in truthout that Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds:
In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”
Fortunately, the Haitian government agrees:
For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.
Well, who could doubt Monsanto? Apparently some influential Haitians. They even get that it’s not just about the chemicals:
Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
Maybe people in other countries will also act to preserve what is left of our environment.

Hunt’s removes HFCS from all its ketchups

A couple of weeks ago Melanie Warner predicted this, and now it’s happened: Less is More: Hunt’s Ketchup Removes High Fructose Corn Syrup From Entire Retail Line
OMAHA, Neb., May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Hunt’s®, a ConAgra Foods brand, is pleased to announce that it has removed the high fructose corn syrup from every bottle of its ketchup products. Hunt’s 100% Natural Ketchup brings forth the naturally rich tomato flavor of Hunt’s tomatoes and contains only five simple ingredients: tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, salt and other seasonings, with no high fructose corn syrup, artificial ingredients or preservatives.

“In direct response to consumer demand(1), Hunt’s is pleased to offer ketchup sweetened with sugar and containing only five simple ingredients,” said Ryan Toreson, Hunt’s Ketchup brand manager. “Parents are looking for wholesome meals and ingredients they recognize—and the taste of Hunt’s ketchup is something both kids and adults love. Even with the new recipe, we have maintained the same great tangy, sweet taste that Hunt’s has always had and that consumers tell us they prefer.”

This is the same ConAgra that said:
“Our focus is on consumer preference, not the science.”
That would be the science that said:
“When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”
So a corporation that doesn’t care about science that says a key ingredient in their product makes rats fat, every one of them, in ways that produce the same risk factors that in humans contribute to high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer, and diabetes, that same corporation does care when its customers say they don’t want that ingredient.

As ConAgra says in the press release:

(1) The 2009 HealthFocus® Trend Report indicated consumer concern over high fructose corn syrup has risen from 27% of shoppers being extremely or very concerned in 2004 to 45% of shoppers in 2008.
Voting at the supermarket checkout works.

Food Conversations Quantified

Bill McKibben on Why Future Prosperity Depends on More Socializing — Access to cheap energy made us rich, wrecked our climate and left us lonely, and what to do about it:
Often a farmers’ market is the catalyst — not just because people find that they like local produce, but because they actually meet each other again. This is not sentiment talking; this is data. A team of sociologists recently followed shoppers around supermarkets and then farmers’ markets. You know the drill at the Stop’n‘Shop: you come in the automatic door, fall into a light fluorescent trance, visit the stations of the cross around the perimeter of the store, exit after a discussion of credit or debit, paper or plastic. But that’s not what happens at farmers’ markets. On average, the sociologists found, people were having ten times as many conversations per visit. They were starting to rebuild the withered network that we call a community. So it shouldn’t surprise us that farmers’ markets are the fastest-growing part of our food economy; they are simply the way that humans have always shopped, acquiring gossip and good cheer along with calories.
Local food isn’t just about food: it’s also about conversations and community.

So if you want to act the way you feel, one way to start is to change your obesity network by going to the farmer’s market. It’s good for the local economy and environment, too.

Monsanto under investigation by at least 7 US States

According to The Organic and Non-GMO Report, April 2010 :
At least seven US state attorneys general are investigating whether Monsanto Company has abused its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices on seed. Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and two other unidentified states are in a working group to investigate the biotech giant.

The states are probing whether Monsanto violated laws by offering rebates to seed distributors for excluding rival seeds, imposing limits on combining the product with other genetic modifications, or offering cash incentives to switch farmers to more expensive generation of seed varieties.

The state investigations add to pressure on Monsanto. The US Justice Department is investigating the company’s marketing practices, and DuPont Company has accused Monsanto of anti-competitive practices in licensing litigation.

And Monsanto’s stock price is down more than 30%, from $93.35 in May to a 52 week low of $63.75 Friday.

Interesting developments.

Reforestation for Profit

It seems that reforestation and land restoration produces twice as many jobs as biomass and nine times as many as nuclear.

Nor does any of this have to adversely affect the Georgia lumber industry. It’s well established that the currently popular method of clearcutting isn’t the only way. Pine forests can be managed profitably via selective logging; here’s more about that.

That permits the forest to remain a forest, with native vegetation, wildlife, hunting, recreation, flood control, etc., all for more forests than we have now.

Plus carbon sequestration credits.

Cotton farmers might like growing trees better under such economic conditions.

All this is shovel-ready for stimulus. There’s no new technolgy to develop for forest planting or management. Just implement carbon-sequestration credits for ongoing sustainability, and perhaps use stimulus funding to speed planting trees.

Mutant Pigweed vs. Glysophate-Resistant Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton

It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything that affects that particular variety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

Here’s the good news: Continue reading →

Who Owns Monsanto?

The answer in 1939 turns out to be about the same as in 2010: minority shares by its own executives, and the majority by, well:
Last week’s survey of stockholders—lavish to the point of including pictures of “typical” Monsanto stockholders in the “typical” city of Cincinnati—was frankly designed to prove that Monsanto is not owned or run by any of “America’s 60 Families.”

Outstanding as of June 1, 1938, were 1,241,816 common shares held by 4,300 men, 4,084 women, 2,708 trusts, groups, institutions. Mr. Queeny holds only 3.4% has beneficial interest in about 4.5% more through relatives and trusts. One officer of the company owns 1.47%, no others own more than .25%.

The magazine named as “stockholders, once removed,” students in 42 universities which together own 1% of Monsanto and the 25,000,000 policyholders in 72 insurance companies which together own 3%. Tucked away in a graph was the fact that 81% of the company’s shares is owned in blocks of 101 or more shares ($102-to-$104 a share last week).

So, mostly funds in 1939. And 71 years later, it’s even more so. Continue reading →