agriculture
grrlscientist | December 30, 2009tags: How It's Made: Bread, baking, agriculture, chemistry, food science, technology, streaming video
This interesting video shows how bread is made in large, mechanized factories: from mixing the ingredients to shipping it out for consumption.
Once You've Got the Chickens, You'll Hardly Notice the Yaks: Re-Inventing the Diversified Small Farm
sastyk | December 29, 2009Over at ye olde blogge, on one of my Independence Days updates, a reader commented on something that I'd posted. I'd mentioned that we are having trouble with goat parasites - most specifically, meningeal worm. Meningeal worm is a parasite is hosted by snails and transmitted by the feces of white tailed deer. It is worst in camelids like llamas and alpacas, but goats are a secondary host, and two of does, Selene and Mina, have it. It is most common after a wet summer and warm fall - this past summer was the wettest in living memory here - we had almost 20 inches of rain in June alone, and…
sastyk | December 17, 2009Note: Another new reader asked if I could say a little more about the goats. Here's more.
If you were to come to visit right now, you wouldn't see The Milk Truck until you started to get out of your car. But the moment you opened your door, the little vacuum cleaners would stick their heads in, just to make sure there's no food on the floor. You see, at my house, there's always food on the floor. My children drip crumbs and leave apple cores, and the litte vacuum cleaners feel it is there job to clean up.
But let's back up. The little vacuum cleaners are Tekiah (Tekky) and Arava. They…
sastyk | December 15, 2009The seed is starting to take shape as the site and symbol of freedom in the age of manipulation and monopoly of life. The seed is not big and powerful, but can become alive as a sign of resistance and creativity in th smallest of huts or gardens and the poorest of families. In smallness lies power. - Vandana Shiva
There's an AP investigative report into Monsanto that suggests that the winner of the highly competetive "Evillest Corporation Ever" award has decided to raise the bar on evil further, trying to bring virtually all seed companies together under its own axis of evil.
"We now believe…
sastyk | December 14, 2009
The son seems to have taken a prior (and extremely common) teenage interest in "agriculture" and turned it into an actual interest in agriculture. I suppose you could see it as sinister, but I don't - I think anyone who wants to grow things, even pot, bad enough to move out to the desert and live off-grid is doing something worth taking seriously.
What's interesting about this video is the observation by the son that because the black market has set the prices, this is an extremely lucrative project for him and his mother. I've seen estimates that suggest, for example, that the entire…
sastyk | December 4, 2009The subject of food waste is not sexy. Anyone faced with the statistic that we waste 40% of our food in America is almost certainly appalled - for a second or two. But they also probably stop thinking about it just a tiny second later, probably after a moment of thinking "not us, though." And yet, it almost certainly is us.
A recent study is very clear about the costs of wasted food - food waste has risen by 50% in my lifetime, and the average American now wastes 1400 kilocalories a day of food. That adds up to 1/4 of all freshwater use, 300 million barrels of oil spent in agriculture (…
bcohen | September 25, 2009Instead of me answering that, I wondered instead how other people have argued about the question. To be more specific, since I am interested in the role of scientific practice for defining the land, I wondered how people argued about whether or not science was better for agriculture. I wrote a book about it. It's called Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil, and Society in the American Countryside. I commented here a few months ago that the book was finally on its way. Although Amazon sales do not begin until October 20th (here is their link), the publisher has it officially listed for…
awild | September 20, 2009Soybean aphids piling up in a spider web
It's been snowing aphids the past few days here in Champaign-Urbana. Trillions of them are drifting across town, settling out on our garden, getting caught in our hair. I've never seen anything like it.
I recently learned that this sternorrhynchan storm is composed of soybean aphids (Aphis glycines). That would explain all the aphid biomass. Illinois is a major producer of soy, and there's no shortage of soy fields around here. Sensing the end of summer, the aphids are moving en masse to their winter host, buckthorn.
Soy has traditionally been…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2009For a bunch of guys who are supposed to be politically smart, Obama's team sure is stupid. You're probably wondering what the hell the agricultural bill (the bill that gives farmers lots of subsidies) has to do with healthcare. Once upon a time, people always used to joke that Senator Bob Dole could be rolled if you were willing to screw with the ag bill.
Which brings us to healthcare.
One of the obstacles to meaningful healthcare reform in North Dakota senator Kent Conrad who is an ideological deficit hawk. Most of the time (italics mine):
While Conrad hasn't given up his deficit…
mikethemadbiologist | July 15, 2009In light of the policy mediocrity that is the Obama administration, it's refreshing to read that the Obama administration is supporting the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). Of course, it's early days yet, so it would be par for the courseis quite possible that Obama's support for this legislation will crumble.
I've discussed the bill in greater detail elsewhere, but here's why this bill would greatly improve our antibiotic use policy:
It covers all classes of antibiotics; there are no exempt classes of drugs.
The definition of "non-therapeutic use" is very…
sb admin | April 29, 2009Today, Roche announced funding for over a dozen genomes of organisms associated with the agricultural attine ants and the fungus they cultivate. In honor of the occasion, here's a sampling of a few of the attine species and their gardens.
Acromyrmex sp. nr. crassispinus, Argentina.
The fungus of the texan species Mycetosoritis hartmanni is grown on a substrate of caterpillar frass. Not all the attines are leaf-cutters!
Acromyrmex lundii, Argentina.
Apterostigma auriculatum, Panama.
Atta texana, Texas.
Cyphomyrmex wheeleri, Arizona.
Trachymyrmex pomonae, Arizona.
The parthenogenetic…
mikethemadbiologist | April 17, 2009A recent article in MMWR Weekly with the unassuming title of "Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food --- 10 States, 2008" is incredibly disturbing.
The incidence of reported (more about that in a bit) Salmonella was 16.20 cases per 100,000 people. If we use a population size of 300 million, that means (Mad Biologist takes off shoes to do big number arithmetic) roughly 48,600 people had food associated Salmonella infections.
But it's probably higher than that, although I have no idea how much higher. For a Salmonella infection…
mikethemadbiologist | April 16, 2009The Ethicurean has a superb interview with author Maryn McKenna about MRSA and agriculture. In the interview, the following question about MRSA transmission was asked:
But isn't the industry saying that there's no definitive evidence linking MRSA in pigs to MRSA in humans?
It depends on your standards of evidence. MRSA ST398 has been found colonizing pig farms and pig farmers in the US, Canada, and in the European Union. You can argue about how prevalent it is -- it's easy to cast doubt on whether it is common, because not very many studies have been done. But you can't argue that it is…
mikethemadbiologist | April 6, 2009I recently wrote about the introduction in the House of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). This is a really critical piece of legislation that could put a dent in the evolution of resistance. Now, there's more good news.
Senator Kennedy, along with Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, has introduced a companion bill, S. 619. Again, I can't stress how important this legislation is. Among other things, it moves the burden of proof to drug manufacturers, forcing them to demonstrate that a drug is vital. It also redefines 'therapeutic use' in such a way that it…
mikethemadbiologist | March 31, 2009A small bill could have huge implications for preventing the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Every couple of years, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) is offered for consideration. Two weeks ago, Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter proposed PAMTA again for consideration. Here are the key provisions ofthe proposed bill:
The findings are very comprehensive. Given the number of times, the legislation has been proposed, you would expect this (you just keep adding more justification), but citing NARMS (the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System) and…
bcohen | March 30, 2009Just an accounting of the last month of local food, sustainable agriculture, and science/food/safety articles is difficult to produce. Let alone a full understanding of them. One problem with studying the topic is that the proliferation of literature on sustainable ag and its associated elements brings with it sifting and organizing difficulties. It's a microcosm of the problem of the internet itself - more information leads to more traffic, leading to slower travel. How to make sense of it all?
Here is a quick sampling of some recent literature on what we might call the current "food"…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2009Always listen to the Mad Biologist. By way of Joe Windish at The Moderate Voice, we find out, just as I predicted, that the pork lobby would claim we don't know enough about the MRSA ST398 problem:
Livestock scientists call the opinion piece "highly speculative", and point to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statements on MRSA that say most if not all cases of MRSA come from person to person contact, not person to animal. The column also does not define this strain as one that is found on any swine farm in the vicinity of Camden, Ind.
"They are making a huge leap…
mikethemadbiologist | March 19, 2009Always listen to the Mad Biologist. By way of Joe Windish at The Moderate Voice, we find out, just as I predicted, that the pork lobby would claim we don't know enough about the MRSA ST398 problem:
Livestock scientists call the opinion piece "highly speculative", and point to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statements on MRSA that say most if not all cases of MRSA come from person to person contact, not person to animal. The column also does not define this strain as one that is found on any swine farm in the vicinity of Camden, Ind.
"They are making a huge leap…
mikethemadbiologist | March 16, 2009I'm always loath to criticize mainstream discussions of the antibiotic resistance, particularly when the link between antibiotic use in agriculture and antibiotic resistance is raised. But, while NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof meant well, he missed the mark.
In his column about MRSA ST398, he describes things that might happen. Here's one example:
Public health experts worry that pigs could pass on the infection by direct contact with their handlers, through their wastes leaking into ground water (one study has already found antibiotic-resistant bacteria entering ground water from hog…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2009Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times about the relationship between pig farming and MRSA. I'll be curious to see what he writes about in his next column, since he says, "This is a system that may help breed virulent "superbugs" that pose a public health threat to us all. That'll be the focus of my next column, on Sunday."
I feel somewhat vindicated since this is a drum I've been beating for a long time; I've also been involved in efforts to curb the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in agriculture.
The other good thing is that ScienceBlogling Tara, who has published on…