So long suckers. See you next year. In the meantime, wash down your Christmas bile with a little bit of this: Frederick H. Buttel, "Internalizing the Societal Costs of Agricultural Production," Plant Physiology, December 2003, Vol. 133, pp. 1656-1665.
Or you could stop fucking around on the internet and do something, like buy more crap at WalMart.

Maoist international music reviews! [via MeFi]

As much as Lopez would like to pretend it is otherwise, social status and wealth are inextricably linked in capitalist society. She sings, 'Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm still Jenny from the block,' as if one could go from being lumpenproletariat to fabulously wealthy without any change of class consciousness. Whether she likes it or not, she benefits from the exploitation of others. The lifestyle she leads, i.e. the rocks that she's got, is only possible through the slavery of imperialism. 'Make the money, get the mansion, bring the homies with us' may assuage her settler guilt, but it only reinforces the depressed economic conditions of the ghetto she claims to represent, to say nothing of the country-sized ghettoes Amerikan hegemony creates. "

As a carrot grower, I wish I could tell you that eating my own carrots allows me to see into the future. I wish I could say that I grow the one root vegetable that can fight fascism. Alas, these claims would be a hyperbole even I am not comfortable trumpeting. But there are a few looming dots on my carrot-enhanced radar vision I feel compelled to comment on. Did you know that 90 percent of all the carrots consumed in California are produced by just two farms, Grimmway and Bolthouse? Furthermore Grimmway now owns Cal-Organics, once the single largest independent organic vegetable producer. Is consolidation of the farming sector into a few mega producers concern you, the consumer, at all? Have you ever thought about how consolidation on the production side affects your choices on the retail side of the food equation? Or how about seed production? What do you think it means for a small number of seed buyers to have disproportionate buying power with seed producers? Could consolidation on the production front pushing consolidation among seed producers, thus helping pave the way for a few gigantic corporations to own and control the agricultural germ plasm supply that feeds us all? Given that the fastest growing sector in carrot sales are the goofy little dip delivery carrot plugs marketed by Grimmway through chain stores, school cafeterias, and prisons ought it be of interest to psychiatry that so many of us are too lazy to peel a carrot? Is dip the lubricant for unbridled corporate domination of fresh vegetable production?

Copyright 2003 Andy Griffin

whoops:

Researchers at one of the most prestigious agricultural schools in the country said Thursday they shipped a small number of genetically engineered tomato seeds they thought were naturally grown to fellow scientists during the last seven years.

The University of California, Davis, said all the seeds were shipped exclusively for research purposes, and that there is no evidence the mistake ended up in food.

Even if the engineered tomato did inadvertently end up on the dinner table, school officials said the public would still not be at risk.

No, really, we still trust you. Please tell us what our diet should be like, or something.

Funny how the World Bank can release the same report as the CEIP, but draw opposite conclusions:

"Although the World Bank found little conclusive evidence that freer trade with the US and Canada raised Mexican wage levels, the report said it had not reduced the number or quality of jobs nor devastated the country's agriculture.

The bank was broadly positive about the agreement's impact on Mexico, but said in many cases its effects seemed modest.

"The performance of the economy in terms of growth of GDP per capita and real wages was not that remarkable after NAFTA," it said.

In other words: "NAFTA failed to generate substantial job growth in Mexico, has hurt hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers there and has had 'minuscule' net effects on jobs in US."

FT's headline: "World Bank says trade deal aided Mexico." Try to curb your enthusiasm.

Also: A fascinating, if not always strictly coherent, 4-part editorial in the Arcata Eye compares Oaxaca and Medocino.

Marian Burros: "Only recently has it become clear that fruits and vegetables have been responsible for about as many reported cases of food poisoning as beef, chicken, fish and eggs combined."

Oh, really?

Not a German cannibal: "He put a face on food," she said. "Looking at hamburger meat wrapped in a cellophane package is not the same as looking at that face." [cf. below]

transparency
Can someone explain to me why no one noticed this for 113 years?

Working out of booths scattered around the exchange floor, specialists match buyers and sellers of specific stocks....

Specialists are allowed to trade in stocks themselves to keep the market moving smoothly....

The lawsuit alleges that specialists used their insider knowledge of supply and demand to make trades that let them skim off profits at the expense of legitimate trades by market investors. At opportune times, the specialists essentially cut in line ahead of investors whose orders they were supposed to execute, the suit says. For example, a specialist who knew an investor wanted to buy 100,000 shares of Stock X at up to $50 a share might swoop in and buy the stock himself at $49.95, then resell it to the investor at $50, for a profit of a nickel a share, or $5,000.

Is that the invisible hand in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

"You have people making decisions about food production based on a concept of animals which comes out of Disney," says Francine Bradley, a poultry expert at the University of California, Davis. [Merc News]

Somehow I missed this one: Allen Roses, the head of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, said "The vast majority of drugs -- more than 90 per cent -- only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people." [via Harper's weekly review]

What's going on now among the Fighting Keyboarders is equivalent of a defensive end celebrating a sack when his team is down by thirty points in the 4th quarter.

--TBogg

The working papers from the FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Genetically Modified Animals including Fish are up:

Topic 1: Overview of the state of the art related to GM animals, excluding fish

Topic 2: Overview of the state of the art related to GM fish

Topic 3: Hazards associated with the transgenesis methods used in the production of GM animals/fish

Topic 4: Food safety risk assessment of GM animals/fish, including nutritional considerations.

Topic 5: Environmental issues surrounding the GM animals/Fish production.

Topic 6: Ethical issues surrounding the GM animals/Fish production

Also, from the FAO, J.A. Beardmore and J.S. Porte, "Genetically modified organisms and aquaculture" (35 page pdf) and the 10th biotech email conference, on marker assisted selection.

Some news items are more significant than others
Did you, perchance, notice that they almost caught the dictator? "They" being terrorists; the "evil dictator" being Pervez, leader of the only Muslim country with weapons of mass destruction; and "caught" being blew up his motorcade.

30 seconds from armageddon.

The location of the assassination attempt was unusual: Rawalpindi lies near the nerve center of Pakistan's military establishment. It is considered one of the most secure cities in the country....

A senior Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was unusual that someone outside General Musharraf's close circle of aides would know the exact timing of his movements.

Don't worry, it's all under control.

Sorry, I'm a little slow on the Canadian news these days:

Agriculture Canada stands to get money from the sale of Monsanto's Round-up Ready Wheat. Documents obtained by CBC reveal the government will be paid a kind of royalty from sales of the Monsanto product. The documents obtained by CBC news reveal that Agriculture Canada has invested nearly $4 million in the development of Monsanto's product. A portion of that royalty would be a direct cash injection, but most of it would be wages paid to Agriculture Canada researchers who have worked on the development of the genetically modified (GM) wheat and seed material.

[CBC | Toronto star editorial via cropchoice]

Also, apparently Pierre Trudeau resigned?

dismal "science"
New Science special issue on the "tragedy of the commons," (featuring among others Rosegrant and Cline, Global Food Security). Also "web resources" (which may or may not be freely accessible), including Garrett Hardin's original paper from 1968. The love of scientists for this peer-reviewed statement of the obvious has always seemed bizarre. (His juxtaposition with contemporary papers in the same journal suggests one explanation, Hardin's now-startling ability to write clearly and well). Famously,

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.*

"No shit," the less charitable reader might be tempted to respond.

This paper and its meme are inexplicably popular among those who happily, and incessantly, proclaim the wrongness of Thomas Malthus. But the "tragedy of the commons" is obvious precisely because it is Malthusian, and explicitly:

Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease. Is ours a finite world?

A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite.

Of course, the hatred of Malthus comes from this:

If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking up more land and by great encouragements to agriculture, the produce of this Island may be doubled in the first twenty-five years, I think it will be allowing as much as any person can well demand.

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase in the second twenty-five years might equal the present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the Island like a garden.

Yet this ratio of increase is evidently arithmetical.

His crime was skepticism of the perfectibility of man. He replaced blind faith in scientific progress with a careful (and then obvious) analysis of the history of agronomy, and so failed to predict the industrial scale fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, dwarf cereal hybrids, and a food supply that did therefore manage to increase at a greater than arithmetical rate. What a moron.

For these people, Malthus is totem like the luddites: people who stupidly opposed "progress". The astonishing thing is the complete logical breakdown of this totemic analysis (or lack thereof): the casual mockery of luddism is based on a refusal to acknowledge that their resistance was an attempt to preserve their own livelihoods -- an act of "rational self-interest"; that of Malthus on the inability to see that he simply articulated a problem of science -- in essence, the tragedy of the commons. Duh.

*In case the unfolding tragedy seems not so obvious, I append its conclusion:

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. .�.�.�But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons.

Probably his willingness to spell out the obvious at such length (and with numbers!) also explains why scientists love this guy so much more than Malthus.

Chapela news trickles down: AP story; and Nature reports:

One Berkeley scientist involved in the tenure review was so upset at the handling of the case that he has broken the strict confidentiality of the process to complain. Population biologist Wayne Getz, who sat on an ad hoc faculty committee that recommended giving Chapela tenure, says that the ecologist received overwhelming faculty support, but alleges that the review then was "hijacked" by Chapela's opponents in the university.

"The process was so irregular; it is illegitimate," asserts Chapela, who received notice on 26 November from Berkeley's chancellor Robert Berdahl that his academic contract will expire next June. University officials won't comment on the specifics of Chapela's case, but a spokesman says: "We stand by our tenure process; it is the most strenuous in the country."

12/15: Wired reports on the conference.

Hightower said it, I said it, skimble said it, Fortune said it years ago:

water is the new oil.

Now the Times is saying it:

Angry West Texans and some state officials are demanding a halt to a deal that allows a group of politically well-connected Midland oilmen to tap the desert and sell billions of gallons of water from the state's public reserves.

The process seems to be going a little faster than the Times thinks.

Much more here, esp. here.

12/15: Yes! magazine says it [via Alternet].

This Atkins thing has gone too far [Gawker; click this, then #42, then #4 to feel the hunger].
Seriously, is there anyone more loathsome than Lagerfeld?

A Leopold Center report on "eco-labels" reveals that people are more interested in local food than organic food:

More than 75 percent of consumer respondents chose �grown locally by family farmers� as their first choice for produce or meat products compared to four different organic choices, even though the survey question stated that price and visual appearance would be the same for all choices. This selection was consistent across all three of the geographic regions.

It is probably superfluous to call your attention to stories from the front page of the Times, but didn't we kill all those people for lower gas prices?

But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey....

The price of fuel sold in Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon. The price is a political issue, and has not been raised to avoid another hardship for Iraqis....

"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Phil Verleger, a California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK Verleger LLC. "That's a monopoly premium � that's the only term to describe it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the United States and Europe would salivate to have that sort of contract."

Indeed they would.

In a decision that may have far-reaching implications for the fledgling National Organic Program, an administrative judge within USDA ruled that accredited certifying agents have no right to appeal when USDA overturns their decisions. The ruling dismissed an appeal filed by Massachusetts Independent Certification, Inc.

this modern world

December temperatures hover around freezing and the gloves and scarves are out. But inside supermarkets, shoppers browse aisles lined with blueberries, raspberries, clementines and grapes.

Thank you, AP

Chapela denied tenure. [via CCF]. More to come, I'm sure.

Wal-Mart is coming
On the one hand [NYT],

Moreover, some economists note, lower prices for the kinds of basic goods on sale at Wal-Mart superstores, like food and clothes, are of the greatest benefit to the less affluent. Grocery prices, for example, drop an average of 10 to 15 percent in markets Wal-Mart has entered, analysts say.

On the other [Bee], how many poor people does it create?

Apparently Red Herring couldn't get out of a long-term deal with their hosting company, because the website still exists, and it now features a "briefing" on biopharm. So what do our captains of industry learn when they can spare a moment from their busy schedule of price-fixing, raping 401(k)s and studying flight magazine golf columns?

In 1798, the perennially cheery Reverend Thomas Malthus came to a simple conclusion: we�re all going to starve to death.

Normally, this kind of thing would cause me to rail intemperately against the american "educational" system, but as we have seen the brits have a similar problem.

"facts" &c.
Seriously, it's time to give up the claim that GM crops are bad for your health: "After months of risk assessment scientists at Europe's first food safety agency have given the green light to Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant GM maize. NK 60 is as safe as conventional maize, they declare" [Food Navigator]. Obviously, new varieties will have to be tested as they are developed, but there is nothing inherently dangerous (to human health) about the technology. People who are still trying to scare people with this claim are doing all of us a disservice.

Contrariwise, the oft-alleged benefit of pesticide reduction by GM crops has been revealed to be, um, disingenuous:

The planting of 550 million acres of genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds, according to a report released today by the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center....

Substantial increases in herbicide use on �Herbicide Tolerant� (HT) crops, especially soybeans, accounted for the increase in pesticide use on GE acres compared to acres planted to conventional plant varieties. Many farmers have had to spray incrementally more herbicides on GE acres in order to keep up with shifts in weeds toward tougher-to-control species, coupled with the emergence of genetic resistance in certain weed populations....

The report concludes that the other major category of GE crops, corn and cotton engineered to produce the natural insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in plant cells, continues to reduce insecticide use by 2 million to 2.5 million pounds annually. The increase in herbicide use on HT crop acres, however, far exceeds the modest reductions in insecticide use on acres planted to Bt crops, especially since 2001.

Try to focus, people.

12/11: Also, GM corn in cattle feed has identical results as normal corn.

From the Dakotas to the Texas Panhandle, the rural Great Plains has been losing people for 70 years, a slow demographic collapse. Without even the level of farmers and merchants that used to give these areas their pulse, many counties are also losing their very reason to exist, falling behind the rest of the nation in nearly every category as they desperately try to reinvent themselves.

And now a broad swath of the nation's midsection seems to have lost something else, as well: its optimism. Polls show a quiet crisis in confidence, the one thing that had seemed a part of rural American DNA. More than ever, people feel powerless to control their lives and pessimistic about the future, according to the annual University of Nebraska poll of rural attitudes.

[NYT via ABE]

Food: finally, no more turkey
Russ Parsons is a Span. can fan -- but who isn't? [LA Times]

The bread doctor meets the fruit detective, who outs the yuzu, dammit. [NYT]

Mendocino GM ban gets on ballot [via tidepool; original story].

Glo-fish is toast, in Cali.

In the news: Justin Gillis on the front page of Sunday's Post.

More foie gras stupidity in Sonoma [LA Times]

One subscription too far: cloned food in the Chicago Trib.

Monsanto v. Schmeiser in Wired news.

Three years after a genetically engineered corn banned from human consumption turned up in taco shells and was pulled from the market, contaminated grain is still showing up in the nation's corn supply.

A federal testing program found traces of the banished grain, called StarLink, in more than 1 percent of samples submitted by growers and grain handlers in the past 12 months, government records show.

[Cropchoice]

To some extent, Slow Food picks up where the organic food revolt left off. 'It's adding fire to a revolution,' says Patrick Martins, Slow Food USA executive director.

Once dismissed as a fringe market, organic foods now are a staple in most grocery stores. Annual U.S. sales rocketed to $11 billion this year from $1 billion in 1990, says the Organic Trade Association.

Slow Food might take off the same way, retail experts say."

[USA Today]

"[CDC] Microbiologists ... found that the bug likely acquired the vancomycin-resistance trait from another microbe common in hospital settings [Enterococcus faecalis], a dangerous alliance that health officials had long feared. The new S. aureus strain also resisted most common antibiotics, including penicillin, methicillin, and ciprofloxacin, and it possessed the genetic machinery to pass drug resistance on to drug-susceptible S. aureus strains." [Science]

Jeanine Baker and Christopher Preston, "Predicting the Spread of Herbicide Resistance in Australian Canola Fields," Transgenic Research 12 (6): 731-737 examines 4 models of transgenic gene flow. The math is over my head, but here's the money quote:

This suggests that there would be less than 1 in 20 occurrences where the average resistance in a field surrounded by four fields planted with transgenic canola would be over 0.1%.

Also, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (6) is devoted to GM crops.

Lessons from Thanksgiving
1. Under certain somewhat mysterious circumstances, a 15-lb. turkey can cook in 2 hours.
2. I understand nothing about football.
3. Paris Hilton and I are apparenly the only people in America who have never bought anything at Wal-Mart.
4. Make sure your flight is really, really delayed before you attempt to get on another one. Unless you enjoy spending the evening at the airport hotel with Old Grandad and the tragic salesman types.

Bear with me.

5 minutes later: Shit, I did shop at Wal-Mart once, but I was in Mexico so fuck off. Someone has to make NAFTA work. Plus, everyone is allowed at least one Paris Hilton joke per day.