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I am sure you may have a few rogue farmers doing that but do you think that is the norm? do you have any clue of what organic certified is? Do you understand the penalties for selling things labelled organic if its not organic? You may start here http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=ORGANIC_CERTIFICATIO Next go to google and type organic certification. try to learn something before you mindlessly spew garbage please.

National Organic Program:

"What is organic?
Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used."

Isn't Organic now officially defined in the US?

Doesn't it exclude genetically modified?

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=ORGANIC_CERTIFICATIO

I thought the claimed reduction in use of pesticides with GM crops was widely questioned

Well, it is widely questioned, just not by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. There's plenty of info on the subject, and strangely the only ones disputing that are either some organic woo-mongering organization or outright quacks, and usually their evidence is pretty flimsy. They claim that GE crops, with an anti-insect protein, require higher pesticide usage? Even if the GE protein was totally ineffective (which is false) how the heck does the addition of that extra protein make the crops need more pesticides? That doesn't even make sense. Well, not scientifically, but if you think genetic engineering is some magical black box with crazy Hollywood effects, then it must be perfectly rational. GE crops have actually reduced pesticides so much in some places that non-target insects (that is to say, non-lepidopterans, as only they are effected by the currently used pest resistance trait) that were once controlled by broad-spectrum pesticides have for the first time become pests. The claim that GE crops increase pesticide use, sorry, absolute bullshit.

Now, two points of clarity, first, they have promoted an increase in use of certain herbicides. The Round-Up Ready ones, obviously, go hand in hand with an increase in Round-Up, and Liberty Link with Liberty. This sounds like a pretty good argument against them, until you consider that they do this at the benefit of replacing other, more environmentally harmful herbicides (as well as promoting no-till practices). Yes, spraying herbicides is bad, but this isn't a case of choice 1 vs the ideal, it is realistic choice 1 vs realistic choice 2, and for better or worse, the herbicide resistant ones, for all the ill will they get, come out on top. The other caveat is that, yes, some insects have developed resistance to the insect resistant GE trait. Ironically, anti-GE groups are quick to point this out, but (since they know bugger all about population genetics) don't understand that this is evidence that the GE trait is working. You don't create population shifts without selection pressure, and you don't get selection pressure by not working. If this resistance becomes widespread, the GE plants still will not need more pesticides, but they will lose the advantages they provide, which would be bad. It should be noted that this is not the fault of the plants themselves, rather, management practices, and over-reliance on a single trait, and also, that such instances are not unique to GE crops. Selection pressure is selection pressure and evolution doesn't care where it came from. Problems of resistance have happened before, and will happen again, GE or not.

The notion that people are against GE crops for patent reasons is a good one, but considering how how many plants are patented that go unprotested, it cannot be entirely true, though I'm sure it plays a role for those who know bugger all about plant breeding (which accurately describes most people who oppose GE crops). Lots of plants are under patent, and I don't see anyone complaining about them. when the Honeycrisp apple or Flavor Grenade Pluot came out, no one cared that they were patented (Honeycrisp's has since expired btw, and the royalties the breeders received from it went on to create my personal favorite apple variety, Snow Sweet, which is also patented). When the USDA announced the HoneySweet plum, or when Okanagan Specialty Fruits announced the Arctic apple, people did, and when they're released, you can bet there'll be backlash. Why, when they were pretty much the same things, and both under patent (though the HoneySweet might be free to prop

The European Union spends a full 40% of their budget, around $70 billion dollars on farm subsidies. The US spends $20 billion dollars (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy). The EU spends 3x as much on subsidies even though it has 1/3 of land area under cultivation (Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/WRS0404/WRS0404b.pdf)

Per acre Europe spends 9X as much as the US on farm subsidies. So no, your correction is not accurate at all.

This is an interesting idea, plenty of heat down there, I am just shocked that they would allow this in a National Monument http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/centraloregon/specialplaces/?cid=fsbdev3_035878 Aren't they protected?

No, but they have naturally built plant-made pesticides in their DNA ( here and here ) and naturally built plant-made carcinogens ( here and here ).

And no, I don't own Monsanto stock. Monsanto is financially evil, and this is the root of the problems with GM food, but don't let health get tarred with the same brush as economics.

You are so right. heck, we have our troops in there hold a rifle to their head telling them that unless they feed that cattle our corn that we will shoot them. Sheesh.

Look, sweet corn is not fed to cattle. Only an fool who knows NOTHING about ag would think that. However, since you will continue to simply spout off, here is who we export to. Look carefully at it. Now, do you realize that Argentina is a corn exporter themselves? They are not as large as the US, but they are up there. So, you are going to continue to claim that we export our sweet corn to Argentina to feed to cattle.

Have you considered being a side kick to Rush Limbaugh? You would make good money.

You think you're being very clever, but the green revolution has not fed anyone that otherwise would have starved.

Funny, pretty much every reputable source says otherwise. I guess all those prizes Norman Borlaug got were for his good looks.

Who told you that? That's not true, at all.

Pretty much every crop & soil scientist out there will tell you that.

The herbicides kill off beneficial nematodes and other organisms which live in the soil. Healthy topsoil can be over 40% living organic material. After using these herbicides, it drops to 0%.

And if that were the alternative you'd have a point. But the alternative is tillage. Inputs are never disirable, but it isn't a question of 'does this do harm' so much as 'does this do the least harm.'

google for "superbugs", the first time I ever did (relevant since google remembers what you've searched for) the first bunch of results were all relevant.

I know there's resistance but I've never heard of the resitnat weeds possessing any attributes besides their resistance (at least in this particular case anyway).

The point I'm making is that engineering these plants to be pest-resistant or chemical-resistant is a loser's game, because they will become resistant to it themselves.

Uh, yeah. there's been a Red Queen's race in agriculture for ages. GE doesn't change that. Of course pests will develop resistance. That's always happened, it is always going to happen.

Meanwhile, there are potential harmful side effects, and indeed Bt corn has already gone toxic in the 20th generation (just try finding the citation any more, though. I'm sure I have a bookmark saved somewhere, maybe even scrapbook'd the article, but elefino where it is now. It was all over when it happened..

I think you mean this. Turned out to be a fungus, but the transgene go the public blame. Funny thing is, Bt corn is actually safer due to lower levels of mycotoxin. Corn that doesn't get chewed on has less open area for fungal infection which means lower mycotoxins.

That's because you're being disingenuous.

Nutrition facts describe the nutritional content of something. The variety used to make it is entirely different. Its the difference between knowing a car's MPG and knowing the elemental composition of the alloy used in the tailpipe.

That's a bunch of shit. It's not a common issue that has always been in agriculture, because the technology has never existed to do these things on this scale.

We've used herbicides before genetic engineering, and we've had resistant weeds before genetic engineering. There are even non-GE herbicide tollerant varieties of some crops out there. We've bred pest resistant varieties, and pests have overcome those varieties. For example, there's no GE wheat on the market, but they still use herbicides on wheat, and they still have pest issues that require new varieties. Surely you don't deny this? And surely you're not calling the notion that a Rainbow papaya is different from Golden Rice is different from Arctic apple is different from Bt corn to be a bunch of shit?

Attacking a straw man is still a fallacy, and it's what you're doing, because I never said nature knew what it was doing; in fact, I said it didn't.

You started off by advocating organic agriculture. If you don't think that's an appeal to nature, either you don't know what an appeal to nature is or you don't know what organic farming is.

Based on this report (PDF) from USDA, "Apple juice imports from China totaled 420 million gallons in 2007, which was 60 percent of the U.S. supply. Industry reports suggest that the share of garlic imported from China exceeded 50 percent in 2007"

But "Food imports from China as share of U.S. food supply" is 0.4%.

I don't think this is in much dispute, but just for grins I found http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroeconomics/Data/HistoricalRealPerCapitaIncomeValues.xls . Take a look at the economic growth percentages of the former Soviet Union compared to almost any other industrialized country. Now look at the numbers after they shifted to a market-based economy. So no, they didn't start out rich -- but they sure avoided getting there!

Actually, in your graph, what it shows is that USSR was doing pretty well until dissolution (peaked in 1990 at almost $6k), then it goes downhill from there in the 90s -- which was the peak of "wild west" capitalism in post-Soviet Russia - and then starts recovering under Putin, and finally overcomes USSR at around 2006. But Putin's Russia is the epitome of "state capitalism", where big business and government are effectively one and the same, run by literally the same people.

But then, I honestly don't know how you'd go about calculating the GDP of the country where most services (by price) are produced and consumed without being sold, so there's no "market value" as such. For example, keep in mind that all Soviet citizens got an apartment to live in from the state. Technically it was "rented", but it there was no rent to pay (only utilities), and you wouldn't get kicked out pretty much for life - so it was effectively yours, except that you couldn't sell it. How do you even evaluate the price of that? Or military - the single biggest industry in USSR - where the recipient didn't pay a cent for that production. Ditto for scientific research and many, many other things.

So if they calculated that GDP figures using the regular expenditure method, they're way, way off because of all the "free" stuff. Going off income would similarly undercount it for the same reasons. And if it's net product, then there's too much guesswork involved in figuring out the prices. Long story short, it's just not a meaningful metric to compare when you're looking at a planned economy and a market state. Better one might be something like HDI, or some other standard of living index.

Everytime I see this argument, I question the educational background of the person posing it.

I'll second that, but I was more thinking along the lines of this:

In our estimate the total global land area suitable for cultivation is 60.2 million km2. WRI (1997) estimates that about 49.77 million km2 were under cultivation (or 'domesticated land' as they refer to) in 1995. This suggests that the amount of available land, globally, for future cultivation is only about 10 million km2 some of which must be shared with forestry, wilderness and for urban use.

There's already a huge area under cultivation. I mean, think about how much you consume in a year...every bit of the corn, wheat, rice, canola, soy, beef, pork, chicken, apples, grapes, oranges, bananas, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, lettuce, squash, coffee, tea, ect. ect. ect. that you eat represents a small piece of the world. Multiply that by how many people are in the developed world, and multiply that (minus some stuff) by the population of the developing world, and add the two. IIRC, that's we've got a land area the size of South America under cultivation, and a good chunk of the land that could be under cultivation is in Africa (which is currently not being used, at least not very well). Yeah, there is a lot of land that could if need be go under cultivation, but it really isn't as much as one would like, and as you point out, putting it under the plow would come at a dear cost.

agricultural commodities

According to the USDA, China only imports around 20% of its agricultural needs from the US. Certainly not a deal-breaker if they do without or buy it elsewhere for a bit more money.

As for raw materials the main ones - oil (middle east, indonesia, canada), copper (indonesia/australia), nickel (canada/australia), iron ore (brazil) are not produced in the US. You know that when the trade deficit is negative like in the US, this means that the US does not even produce enough for its own consumption, let alone for foreign demand.

geopolitical stability

Are you serious? America produces geopolitical stability? ROFL. Ok just ignore me, you simply won't ever understand.

The refusers in question were academic researchers not government employees. Just because you receive a federal grant does not mean you are obligated to make all of your unpublished data, emails, and records available to extremist crackpots. The FOIA does apply "to data produced with federal support that are cited publicly and officially by a federal agency in support of an action that has the force and effect of law. "

Citation: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/business/awards/foia.html

There was another case involving a NASA scientist who was simply being harassed by climate-change deniers. NASA has much less leeway since it's a federal agency.

2% is anemic growth. It's no growth when you take into account inflation. And what's more I don't believe the Fed anymore. Farm prices are up 30% YEAR OVER YEAR and 68% since 2008 according to the August farm report, but the Fed is claiming 2% inflation. Go ahead and believe whoever you want to believe but the truth is that the jobs aren't coming back, the housing market is still depressed, and credit is still tight. The Fed thinks it's printing (sorry easing no sorry the new word is accommodating) its way out of recession when in fact it's just destroying the US dollar. Don't believe me? Look at gold and silver.

I can see I won't get through to you, most likely because you are being deliberately obtuse through obstinacy. Congratulations, you have the arguing skills of a five year old. On reading this, I fully expect you to put your hands on your hips and pout. Repeat after me: Culinarily speaking, nobody gives a shit what the biological function of an ingredient is. What people care about is its flavor profile and with what ingredients it mixes well. Hell, even the government considers them vegetables. Face it. Your opinion on this matter is irrelevant.

It is you who won't see the facts for the trees. Citing the government as a source of evidence regarding anything, especially something the scientific world has already cataloged and covered, is ridiculous. A tomato is a fruit as deemed by science, the god of /. Your opinion and your "evidence" is irrelevant.

I can see I won't get through to you, most likely because you are being deliberately obtuse through obstinacy. Congratulations, you have the arguing skills of a five year old. On reading this, I fully expect you to put your hands on your hips and pout.
Repeat after me: Culinarily speaking, nobody gives a shit what the biological function of an ingredient is. What people care about is its flavor profile and with what ingredients it mixes well.
Hell, even the government considers them vegetables. Face it. Your opinion on this matter is irrelevant.

Except ... it will kill off honey bees and Monarch butterflies. (like some other perfectly "safe" genetic engineering)

You do realize that nobody believes that anymore don't you? Sure, GMO Bt pollen can affect monarch larva, but not all that much, and no where near as much as the alternative (pesticide sprays), but that study basically force fed the pollen to the caterpillars and, surprise, they died, and that's been blown way out of context by anti-GMO interest groups like the organic consumer's association and Greenpeace. As for bees, I was unaware that there were even poor studies that linked CCD to GMOs.

The government is still paying farmers to not grow corn. It's called the Conservation Reserve Program.

http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/jul/11/na-usda-urged-to-end-paying-farmers-not-to-grow-cr-ar-151982/

"At issue is the Conservation Reserve Program, under which the government has paid farmers to stop growing row crops, such as corn and soybeans, on 34 million acres across the country. "

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/crp/

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/cr-ha.asp US grain belt is massive, and we export a third of the food that the rest of the world eats.

Tax sugar! Sugar producers should pay!

Actually, it already is taxed as an import quota http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/imports/ussugar.asp. This is why corn syrup is used in most products in the U.S. Congress thought it would be a good idea to prop up corn farmers by hurting sugar importers. Coupled with ethanol subsidies, it's a wonder we have any corn left for regular unsweetened food.

All that military expense spent on things other than defending the country from physical attack is an extremely wasteful way to do those things. And it creates the powerful constituency that demands more actual war. Which always destroys more than it creates.

If the government spent $500B of the military/intel budget directly on millions of high paying jobs around the nation and the world that directly developed these interests, we'd have a lot more to show for it. And a lot less war. Or just cut it, and the debt would disappear, and the rest of the country's operations (including the remaining over 50% of military/intel spending) would deliver the benefits we want. And a lot less war.

We're not getting our money's worth our of the "Great Society / Welfare State" either. But we're getting more of our money's worth from it than from our military/intel spending.

BTW, the US has about 1.9 million family farms, about 5/6ths of the total number of farms, about 62% of the total US farm acreage, just over 50% of the total product value produced. About 1/3-1/2 of paid farm labor was paid by family farms; family members are typically not paid as labor (but rather in share of profits), so the number of people working on family farms is the majority, as is the amount of money the farms compensate. Maybe when you were in junior high school you thought the family farm disappeared. But that is far from the truth. And indeed your wrongness on that basic issue makes me distrust all of what you posted.

I see this all the time on Slashdot but I don't see why it's a bizarre idea that companies want to grow. Many companies want to grow because it makes them more efficient

[snip]

So in (oversimplified) summation - growth is what stockholders want to see. So public companies want to make their shareholders happy.

You are 100% correct Schnell. However, that doesn't mean that the results are a net benefit to society.
The ever-present push for growth drives down wages, drives up inflation and, in general, makes things more difficult for the vast majority who get their income from wages and not investments.

Those who would disagree and say things like "A rising tide raises all boats." or "We all benefit when the richest get richer." seem to have very short memories. Ronald Reagan called it "Trickle-Down Economics." Those of us who experienced it first hand called it "Pissing on the poor."

Don't get me wrong. Our capitalist system can (and has) work(ed). It has raised millions out of crushing poverty and improved the lives of even the worst off among us. But when almost 15% WSJ, USDA of the US population requires government assistance (food stamps) to get enough to eat while the richest 3% control more and more of our capital and resources, something is wrong and we need to fix it.

IMHO, creating incentives for corporations to think, at a minimum, in the medium (2-5 years) term rather than focus exclusively on quarterly gains, should be part of such a fix.

We have more agriculture department employees than there are farmers.
Step 2) Eliminate all farm subsidies and cut the agriculture department to the bone.

If you actually look at the USDA budget, you'll find that around 3/4 of it is something labeled "Nutritional Assistance" in the charts. The bulk of that money is the program most people know as food stamps. USDA Budget

In other words, even the USDA is mostly made up of one of the branches of welfare and has little to do with what you might expect. I know welfare programs are also a popular target for cuts, but I suspect based on your message that it wasn't what you expected.

Eliminating farm subsidies would barely make a dent in the budget of the USDA, as it's maybe 10% max.

You may jest but....

Here is the Government regulated food program and I believe school health officials are permitted to give vaccines too. The local school district sends out flyers and pamphlets about early childhood vaccinations, why they're important and if you cant get them through your doctor that the school can provide them.

Actually 99% of american food doesn't come from farmers

So 99% of all that corn, wheat, pork, beef, chicken just magically springs into existence in those megacorp factories?

http://www.grains.org/corn
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/wheat/YBtable04.asp
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
http://www.fas.usda.gov/dlp/circular/2010/livestock_poultryfull101510.pdf

If you say it's converted into "american food" by those factories, that's what I'm talking about - specialization etc :).

BTW I'm not saying subsidies are good.

Say the US has 1000 nonfarmers for every subsidized farmer. As long as countries buy US products (canned food, snacks, music CDs, software, hardware, military equipment, etc) some of those 1000 nonfarmers get $$$ and the US can afford to subsidize those farmers.

Whereas if some random African country has 0.5 nonfarmers for every farmer, their farmers are not going to be able to have much of subsidies.

Of course the picture is a bit more complicated because petroleum is bought and sold in US dollars and US energy companies profit from the petroleum, and much of US agriculture is basically "leveraging" petroleum for food (fertilizer, machinery, fuel etc). So the farmers are more important as a "strategic reserve", while petroleum and coal is critical :).

Actually 99% of american food doesn't come from farmers

So 99% of all that corn, wheat, pork, beef, chicken just magically springs into existence in those megacorp factories?

http://www.grains.org/corn
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/wheat/YBtable04.asp
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
http://www.fas.usda.gov/dlp/circular/2010/livestock_poultryfull101510.pdf

If you say it's converted into "american food" by those factories, that's what I'm talking about - specialization etc :).

BTW I'm not saying subsidies are good.

Say the US has 1000 nonfarmers for every subsidized farmer. As long as countries buy US products (canned food, snacks, music CDs, software, hardware, military equipment, etc) some of those 1000 nonfarmers get $$$ and the US can afford to subsidize those farmers.

Whereas if some random African country has 0.5 nonfarmers for every farmer, their farmers are not going to be able to have much of subsidies.

Of course the picture is a bit more complicated because petroleum is bought and sold in US dollars and US energy companies profit from the petroleum, and much of US agriculture is basically "leveraging" petroleum for food (fertilizer, machinery, fuel etc). So the farmers are more important as a "strategic reserve", while petroleum and coal is critical :).

Hunger and starvation isn't a production issue, its a distribution issue. If we're facing an inevitable meat scarcity resulting from land shortages...

Somehow, land shortages in US doesn't ring true... 7.2% beef carcass exported in 2009... doesn't seem Mironov has a case with this argument... unless something changed from 2009...

Hang on! the McDonalds stock price doubled in the last 5 years... maybe there IS actually a need for low-quality/very-low price mince... use enough fat, flavors and enhancers and, if it is supersized and at the same price, it doesn't matter anymore.

Make higher quality meat than most of the current producers (that's not hard, we're not talking wagyu here) and do it cheaper than them (and that *really* shouldn't be hard, you're basically making beer here).

Economics will do the rest.

You've got it wrong, buddy, the "economy doing the rest" I mean. Here's my take on the "faith in the economy at work" (I dare you to prove me wrong, with real-world examples in the last 10 years):

1. set up the process to produce meant and do it at a good enough quality (don;t care even to do it at "higher than most of the producers", the trick is: you don't need to. Don't believe me? Continue reading)

2. outsource the production plants to India/China. This is how they'll become cheaper (and the associated env impact NIMBY, who cares that some people the other side of the globe commit suicide or are poisoned in the process?)

3. create the MeatMart chain of stores to distribute the product to US. Macas and BurgerKing will be quite happy to have a slice of it (better said "a mince of it")... after all, their most stable consumers don't care if it can be made to taste reasonable (read: "deep fried and/or full of saturated fats, MSG and other flavor enhancers"), it's dirt cheap and comes in supersized serves (now they'll be able to have it HYPERSIZED for the same price).

4. drive into the ground the US farmers, by I-don't-know-what-miracle (hormones and mexican workforce in slaughter-houses?) they still manage somehow to produce excess of beef carcases for the export (7.2 percent in 2009).. That's simply unacceptable, better drive them 9 feet under, they'll be quiet and won't get to use their shotguns the X-th amendment allows them to bear for just-in-case

5. ... profit... (what else).

As extension, whine hard about taxes and use some of your (untaxed, in a Cayman Island bank) profit to sponsor the Tea Party, lobby the Congress and fuel another bubble (at your choice, but don't try another house bubble as yet: the "economics" isn't now quite on the "build and they'll come" side)

Why don't people want to believe that McDonald's burgers are all beef?

Partly cynicism, but partly because McDonald's meat has been so heavily mangled, it just doesn't seem like meat.

And, once you've found articles like this which gives us the definition:

The definition of "meat" was amended in December 1994 to include any "meat" product that is produced by advanced meat/bone separation machinery. This meat is comparable in appearance, texture, and composition to meat trimmings and similar meat products derived by hand. This machinery separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving, or pressing the meat from the bone without breaking or grinding the bone. Product produced by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery can be labeled using terms associated with hand-deboned product (e.g., "pork trimmings" and "ground pork").

The AMR machinery cannot grind, crush, or pulverize bones to remove edible meat tissue, and bones must emerge essentially intact. The meat produced in this manner can contain no more than 150 milligrams (mg) of calcium per 100 grams product (within a tolerance of 30 mg. of calcium). Products that exceed the calcium content limit must be labeled "mechanically separated pork" in the ingredients statement.

As served, McDonald's isn't anywhere near what you'd like to think is ground beef ... it's a slurry of whatever meat they can get off the bones without crushing them; ground up in a paste, spiced, probably has some filler and binders added, and then smooshed back together as a "beef patty", frozen, and then fried. It's nothing like a burger you'd make yourself if you bought ground round/ground chuck from your grocery store.

I believe it's "beef" as defined by a statute someplace, but I don't believe it's been in the sense that a butcher would give it to me -- which is to take a slab of flesh and run it through a grinder, and give me back only the flesh that went in.

This is essentially what is at play here with Taco Bell -- by the time you are being served that, by some definitions, they can't really even call it a "meat" taco -- it's a mechanically processed slurry which started out with cow pieces, but is mostly non-cow components. But, really, only on third of the "hamburger" filling in your taco was ever actually "meat".

I tried to look up information on the Ouachita National Forest last year, and was warned by Google Chrome that the site was a potential malware host, with parts of the site coming from a .cn domain. I didn't push forward to the site to find out exactly what part of a .gov site would require .cn content.

It looks like they've fixed it now, though I'm really not sure... this sensible URL expands to a hundred character monstrosity that's just begging for a reverse-engineering attack.

crop insurance is not quite the same as direct subsidies

That's not all the subsidies beets get. "Sugar Beet Subsidies in the United States totaled $242 million from 1995-2009." Sugar Beet subsidies by state. It lists two programs. Sugar Beet Disaster Program, insurance I bet, and Sugar Beet Diversion Program which I don't know what it is. Oh it looks like it's a payment-in-kind program where farmers are paid to destroy sugar beets. Subsidies for growing beets and subsidies for not growing beets. While not nearly as much as corn sugar beets do get subsidies.

Falcon

Referring to my above, could you get robots with all capital and no workers? No. You could with all workers and no capital. Workers make things, capital controls what is made, when it is made, by whom it is made, &c. But you *have* to have workers. Capital is optional, but usually controlling.

The farmers said the same thing. In 1900, 41% of the US work force was employed in agriculture. That percentage is now 1.9%.

There is no reason not to believe that most other industrial sectors will experience the same upheaval. So, yes, it's not only entirely possible, but very damned likely, that the people you call "capitalists" will be able to get by with a negligible fraction of the workforce they've historically employed.

That is going to make for a very interesting century. The historical references to the French revolution or the Bolsheviks that many underaged, overeducated commenters in this thread are making will be of no predictive power whatsoever.

The US doesn't subsidize beets? You better tell that to the US Department of Agriculture.

Falcon

In the short term the Chinese rather have US factories through outsourcing than factory output, and is selling it's citizens into slavery to make it happen.

I think the Chinese leaders viewed the problem a little differently. They probably thought something like this: "whatever will we do with these 300-million extra people that we don't need as farmers anymore?"

Someone here pointed out recently that 90+% of the US population used to be employed in agriculture. According to this page, at the beginning of the 20th century, 41% of the US population were farmers, but now it's less than 2%.

That same shift has been taking place in China over the past few decades, but because they're playing technological catch-up, it's happening much quicker over there than here.

The US needed to finance a world-wide military empire, and China needed jobs for 300+million displaced farmers. Sounds like a match made in heaven to me.

Here you go. A little education goes a long way, chief.

The sun's on food stamps now?

Did its face turn red after it farted? Must be the cheap food you get from the SNAP program.

More than 70 % of all corn and 85 % of all oats grown in America are fed to cattle. Researchers Gold and Porrit found that all the grains used in agriculture worldwide are enough to satisfy the caloric needs of 8.7 Billion people, more than all the people on earth.

I think Lierre Keith hasn't done her homework ;)

As a meat eater you indirectly consume vast amounts of soy, far more than a vegan. See for yourself, straight from an agricultural statistics source (end of page especially).

Food Stamps: Are they for food or cigarettes, booze, and lottery tickets?

You don't know how food stamps work, eh? Food eligibility list.

only when it goes to teachers and transit systems and healthcare for poor people do they seem to get upset

Taxpayers in the Buffalo NY school district paid $9 million for cosmetic surgery of 500 staff members in 2009. That's $18,000/teacher worth of boob jobs and liposuction. This while NY state faces a $8.2 billion budget deficit. If you think that is tolerable you are out of your mind.

In the same twelve years cited by this story on intelligence spending the FDA's food stamp budget increased by 250% to $53 billion.

The "tea party" sees the intelligence/military spending, a thing mandated in the first paragraph of our Constitution, as providing actual value, whereas the other stuff is just vote buying.

the usa has to massively curtail its spending

Fixed that for you.

unfortunately, we will only dominate the world 2x over, rather than 10x over

The present level of US military spending as a percent of GDP has consistently prevailed since the end of the second world war. The last world war. It's a bargain at twice the price.

I was going to post a long rant about things. But I realized it's all simply explained by the fact that the St Petersburg/Tampa Bay is far more urbanized now than before. You have failed to take into account the urban heat island effect. You've also failed to take into account that all the plants you mention above (which all happen to be cultivated, invasive species) experience extreme evolutionary pressures to live in cooler winter climates.

Now, one can reasonably ask here, why didn't I take you at face value before I had come up with an explanation? Because that sort of zone change, if due to global warming alone, would indicate a far greater rate of temperature change than we actually observe. The only people in the past I've seen make those sort of claims are biology people who were a bit clueless about the effects of local climate changes (for example, there are regions near the tree line in the US Rockies that have spring start a month earlier than a few decades ago, these areas also have far smaller glaciers than they used to have and hence, just from that alone, a warmer local climate).

Anyway, I decided to look into this further. Here is a map of the US's "hardiness zones" (click on the caption to get an explanation of the colors on the map). I noted that the western plains from Big Bend up to the border with Canada had roughly equally spaced bands of zones. The bands range in color from a dark olive which corresponds to zone 8b, with minimum winter temperatures of 15 to 20 F (the USDA uses the Fahrenheit scale) to brick red in North Dakota, the zone corresponding to minimum winter temperatures of -35 to -30 F. Further, note that most of each zone I mentioned is in the US. So that's roughly a 55 F drop in temperature over a roughly 2500 km distance (Google maps indicates that I'm pretty close to correct here, definitely within 5% of the true value).

I get roughly 1.2 C change in minimum winter temperature over a north-south distance of 100 km. If climate zones really are moving 100 miles in 16 years, then that much movement corresponds to a 2C difference of winter temperature in 16 years. That's pretty noticeable.

However, global mean temperature has risen about 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. If winter minimum winter temperature really were changing that much globally (more than 1C per decade!), then why isn't it being used as solid evidence of global warming?

To reply to myself using something I found someone trying this with switchgrass (experimentally)

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=240378

I can't find the article but that is the meeting abstract. It looks like switchgrass gives them 1.430 metric tons CO2 / ha per year which is apparantly about $150 / acre so $360 per ha which is more than trees apparantly!

Kudzu yields 2-4 tons "matter" / (acre.year) so say half of that is carbon may give you better numbers..

However, there's no reason to believe it will take that long, since not only are the numbers of people falling into poverty increasing, but the speed with which it is happening is also accelerating. Enough people leave the middle class to join the ranks of the poor, and all the small businesses that cater to the middle class also close shop, accelerating the trend. This is what we're seeing now. It may actually only take 5 years. Nobody can say, because we are now into uncharted territory.

It won't take much of an interest rate hike to kill all economic activity. We saw this in the early '80s, when rates went from 10% to 19.5%. With the much higher debt levels today, an increase of only a few percentage points will have a much more permanent crippling effect.

New York Times, November 28th 2009 - 1 in 4 children currently on food stamps

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio -- With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

Half of American Children Receive Food Stamps

Nearly half (49.2%) of American children will, at some point between the ages of 1 and 20, reside in a house that receives food stamps, according to a report in the Nov. 2 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

More than a quarter of American children (26.1%) will receive food stamps by the age of 5, the study found.

39 Million and rising on Food Stamps - Household SNAP participants increased from 12,728,981 in Fiscal Year 2008 to 15,232,105 in fiscal year 2009, a 16.4% increase. For comparison purposes, watch the growth in household participation.

and up higher again - 41,275,411 as of June. - Double digit increases in all but 4 states - average increase 18% year over year.

More from the NYTArticle:

This is the first recession in which a majority of the poor in metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, giving food stamps new prominence there. Use has grown by half or more in dozens of suburban counties from Boston to Seattle, including such bulwarks of modern conservatism as California's Orange County, where the rolls are up more than 50 percent.

Use among children is especially high. A third of the children in Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee receive food aid. In the Bronx, the rate is 46 percent. In East Carroll Parish, La., three-quarters of the children receive food stamps.

Anyone associated with agriculture will tell you that the best thing to do with organic matter is to mix it back into the soil. The polite term for it is "residue" but most farmers call it "trash", and having lots of trash is a good thing. Healthy soil holds about 40 tons of carbon per acre..

You could just as well call it "fruit sugar"

People do call fructose "fruit sugar", but the FDA does not allow HFCS to be called "fructose", since (as you point out) it isn't. Nor can it be labeled "sugar", which it is, due to the chemical processes involved (much like how you have to specify that fat is hydrogenated, even though it's still just fat).

HFCS use in foods has been declining, yet obesity continues to rise ...

Citation needed, and here it is: HFCS use in food has declined about about 20% per capita, since the high point in 2002 (source, table 50). In fact, the use of caloric sweeteners has fallen by 15%, while obesity has increased by 15% in the same time period (source).

Of course, HFCS consumption still correlates positively with obesity on the individual level – just not directly. More HFCS generally implies more junk food.

If you think fructose is bad, stop eating fruit, [because] it's the sugar you'll find therein.

Oh, if only logic worked... The obsession with HFCS vs. fructose vs. cane sugar vs. honey is the same old fantasy of being able to eat all the crap you want as long as it's the right kind of crap.

Obesity as a biological problem was solved ages ago: consume less energy and/or expend more. Science will eventually solve the psychological problem that you can't eat that donut even though you really want to, but until then, wishing really hard won't make it come true. And trying does not help.

The average American house is more than twice as large as it was in the 50s. (A single family home in 1956 would have been less than 1000 square feet).
Americans eat ~ 40% more read meat, 200% more poultry and 50% more seafood than the 50s.

Food, clothing, and housing budgets for the decade of the 50s was between 70 and 65% (65% in 1960). Today those
same items account for 50%.

Tell me, in 1956, how well off would your average single mom be? What about a family of Hispanics or African-Americans?

Nice infographic: http://www.womansday.com/wd2/Content/Family-Lifestyle/Evolution-of-the-Household
Real information:
http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.htm
http://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/reflections.pdf

You sure about those pricing structures?
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3101903 It doesn't matter where the milk comes from, Federal milk marketing orders are standing orders to buy milk at prices set based on location and those locations still are pretty highly correllated with distance from Minnesota/Wisconsin (it was changed from Eau Claire in 2002).

You're misapplying the numbers. If a farmers expenses increase 100%, then you do not have enough information to guess the affect on food prices. The only way it would be an increase of 1% is if the costs of farming expenses are 1% of the farmers cost of growing food. As this would mean 99% profit margins, that is unlikely given 30% profit margins are high. from here (pdf) the largest farms have a profit margin of 15-20%. With the 20% figure, you're talking an increase of prices by farmers of 80%. This would likely be a 10-20% increase by the time it reaches the store shelves.

What about the Americans? Will we develop a fuel based on Budweiser or Tequila?

Nope, you've already contributed your fuel idea: French Fry Grease