The Day After

Wow.  I had gone into the election thinking that voters nationwide would have seen through Trump's lies and bigotry.  People in cities and suburbs did, but folks in rural areas just want to drink from the fire hose (with Steve King, how bigoted does one have to be to lose?).  In that respect, Trump was vindicated, so we can expect more of the same in the next two years.  In Ohio, Republicans cruised.  No incumbents in the state legislature lost.  Based on the Kansas and Wisconsin examples, the Republican party has to completely drive the state into the ground before they lose a statewide election.  I personally was hoping to avoid that, but I think that is what will happen.  For example, our next State Representative, like much of the rest of the legislature, wants to roll back Medicaid expansion.  The only reason the state expanded Medicaid was because John Kasich did it by executive action.  Now we have to depend on Mike DeWine and the health care lobby to keep it in place.  If it were to be rolled back, rural areas and the people who live there will suffer, and some places may lose hospitals.  I am sure we will get more useless tax cuts which strip resources from rural areas and put greater burdens on local populations, and more talk about rolling back regulations.  I doubt that much on the regulatory front will actually happen, but I expect you won't see DeWine pushing to deal with algae blooms in Grand Lake St. Mary's or Lake Erie, either.  Overall, rural areas will continue to decline, and they will continue to work to drag the rest of the country down with them. 

Monsoon V, and sucking at blogging

First, a video:


Monsoon V (4K) from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.


I realize I've really been sucking at the blogging. For this, I blame Trump. Sure, harvest has been taking up a decent amount of time, and we are still screwing around trying to get done. We've had some breakdowns, some elevator closings over the last couple of weekends, and a little bit of inclement weather, but we've got about 4-5 days left, and I'm not going to get too stressed out about that considering it's Halloween (this is probably a few run-on sentences, but I'd like to see it diagrammed nonetheless). Yes, the forecast does look like shit, but we are a lot better off than last fall. Mainly, it is that the dysfunction of the Trump presidency (I still cringe typing that phrase) is constantly in the news, but everywhere I turn there are people who not only don't think the Donald is a complete fuckup, they actually think he's doing a good job. While alone, I constantly think that Trump supporters are stupid or evil, and then I remember that they are my neighbors whom I otherwise respect.  The festering anger is challenging to handle.  Anyway, I'll give you a little warning-I'll be live/drunk blogging/tweeting the election next Tuesday if we aren't shelling corn that day.  The current forecast indicates I'll be drunkenly ranting come midnight Tuesday/Wednesday.

We're Going To Have A.......Winter

The main Farmer's Almanacs made the news in the last few days with their winter weather forecasts, and, like today's politics, they are on the far ends of the spectrum.  The Farmer's Almanac of Lewiston, Maine grabbed a bunch of headlines with their forecast of a very cold, snowy winter:

Meanwhile, my personal favorite, the Old Farmer's Almanac of Dublin, New Hampshire predicted a wet, warm winter:

If I had to make a wager on the weather (again), I would probably go with the warmer forecast.  With the climate starting to significantly warm, I think we will have a lot fewer cold winters.  However, when we do have one, like in 2014, it'll be a very cold one.  I'd keep my eye on the weather in California.  When they get dry winters, we typically get cold, snowy ones.

Start of July Links

I'm generally not the most optimistic person out there, but last week pretty much squeezed any hope for the future out of me, as far as politics goes.  Maybe this is the turning point where it becomes obvious how wrong I am to be negative, but I'd wager it isn't.  Anyway, I did find some interesting, if not necessarily positive stories for your reading pleasure:

A-Rod, Ken Griffey Jr. and the Greatest Home Run-Hitting Team in MLB History - Bleacher Report

What Makes a Team Great? - The Atlantic 

Weeds Are Winning in the War against Herbicide Resistance – Scientific American  

As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients – The Salt

Do We Treat Our Soil Like Dirt? - National Geographic.  Betteridge's Law violation.


These tiny little bugs are a harbinger of wetland health -- and they're disappearing - Minnesota Public Radio

How to Steal 50 Million Bees – Bloomberg  

The Tragic Roots of America’s Favorite Cherry – Atlas Obscura.  Sorry, Mel, it is about Bing cherries, not Rainier cherries.

Rising seas: 'Florida is about to be wiped off the map' – The Guardian.  I'm not sure that is a net loss.

The Grandfather of Alt-Science - FiveThirtyEight.  Hoo boy!

Bavaria: Affluent, Picturesque — and Angry - New York Times.  They call it the Texas of Germany, but I'd rather try my luck in Bavaria than the Lone Star State.

Anger in America – Project Syndicate.  This makes some very important points.

After the Fall -  London Review of Books.  Another reminder of why people are angry.

One County Thrives. The Next One Over Struggles. Economists Take Note. - The Upshot

A Cleveland Revival Must Include Manufacturing – American Conservative.  I like the Cleveland focus, but I think the author has way too much faith in Trump and his tariffs.  Paying more for steel is going to drive out even more non-primary material manufacturing.  Just ask Harley.  They may be the first, but they surely won't be the last.

Best advice to U.S. dairy farmers? 'Sell out as fast as you can' - NBC News.  It is notable that the U.S. dairy farmers interviewed were envious of the Canadian supply management system that tries to maintain a large number of small dairies.  The chart below shows that the U.S. has gone the other way.

On Farming

It was about 9:15 this evening when it really hit me.  We had just finished planting the corn on our first farm, and I was walking from the north field back to my truck about a quarter mile away.  It was approaching the end of the gloaming, and in the general stillness the slightest wisp of breeze would kick up a tiny chill.  It would pass, and then I would feel the warmth of the soil radiating the stored solar energy of a beautiful May Day. That happened four or five times as I made that 5 minute walk. It was a good day.

It didn't start that way.  If you talked to me as late as 2:30, I would have had a tale of woe and frustration that stretched days as we'd managed to get 10 acres planted while neighbors seeded hundreds.  I was trying to repair yesterday's breakdown, and had just discovered that the part I ordered and that dad picked up this morning was the wrong one, and wouldn't work on our machine.  At that point, I was looking for a quick fix and dad, while expressing that immediate retirement was looking pretty attractive, said that we had waited this long, we might as well wait a couple more hours while he went to get the right part and do it right.

"Good enough never is."  That is the sales slogan at my town job, which also happens to be our family business.  It is a potent motto, but from this jaded engineer and farmer's perspective, good enough is good enough.  Dad left to get the part, and I went to work on my quick fix.  From my perspective, we could do the proper fix tomorrow when it was forecast to rain (although that may get pushed back to Thursday [and dad is right, we need to fix it correctly when we can, which I will try to do in the early morning]).  Within a half-hour we were up and running, and with minor slowdowns, were able to complete what we could reasonably expect to get done in what was left of the day. 

That is what I love about grain farming.  When you decide to try something that might not be ideal, you don't have to answer to anyone except family and maybe the banker.  Also, unlike almost every other job, there is a definite start and finish to crop production.  Sure, we are barely a sixteenth of the way to completing our seeding labor, but we got most of that done in less than seven hours from our lowest point at 2:30 to that moment where I felt the last remnants of the sun's work escaping to the atmosphere in the beautiful transition from day to night.  Few other jobs blend that physical feeling of accomplishment with the opportunity to experience nature in all its wonder and beauty.  I got to feel the warmth of the May sun, watch that sun set, and watch the moon rise.  And I got to feel the subtle shift of our work from frustration to success.

As I type this, this good day passes into the next one.  I am looking at an early start to a day that may bring rain, will definitely bring a careful balance of labor between the town job and the one that is done more for love than money, and may bring more frustration. But I am looking forward to another feeling of accomplishment as this new day fades into the next one. 

Chart of the Day: Looming Farm Crisis Edition

From AgWeb:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: unfortunately, it is going to get worse before it gets better.  As the chart on the left shows, debt-to-income is at the highest level since the late '80s, and guys are still throwing $8,000-12,000 an acre at land in this area.  This will not end well.  Also, if you are looking for a stock to short, I'd suggest you take a look at Farmland Partners (I am not a financial advisor, and would recommend that you should never short a stock).

Still Hayseed Enough to Say Look Who's in the Big Town

Sabotaging U.S.D.A.

Michael Lewis covers the Trump Administration's (and overall GOP's) hostile takeover of the federal government by focusing on the Cabinet Department that has the largest impact on the rural voters who foisted these clowns on the rest of the country.  One of the main points of the article is that most people don't have any idea what U.S.D.A. does:

One day in his new job he was handed the budget for the Department of Agriculture. “I was like, Oh yeah, the U.S.D.A.—they give money to farmers to grow stuff.” For the first time he looked closely at what this arm of the United States government actually does. Its very name is seriously misleading—most of what it does has little to do with agriculture. It runs 193 million acres of national forest and grasslands, for instance. It is charged with inspecting almost all the animals people eat, including the nine billion birds a year. Buried inside it is a massive science program; a bank with $220 billion in assets; plus a large fleet of aircraft for firefighting. It monitors catfish farms. It maintains a shooting range inside its D.C. headquarters. It keeps an apiary on its roof, to study bee-colony collapse.

A small fraction of its massive annual budget ($164 billion in 2016) was actually spent on farmers, but it financed and managed all these programs in rural America—including the free school lunch for kids living near the poverty line. “I’m sitting there looking at this,” said Ali. “The U.S.D.A. had subsidized the apartment my family had lived in. The hospital we used. The fire department. The town’s water. The electricity. It had paid for the food I had eaten.”

 And a little more along that thread:

There’s a drinking game played by people who have worked at the Department of Agriculture: Does the U.S.D.A. do it? Someone names an odd function of government (say, shooting fireworks at Canada geese that flock too near airport runways) and someone else has to guess if the U.S.D.A. does it. (In this case, it does.) Even people who have worked at U.S.D.A. for years wind up having to chug. So it’s no use pretending that I can actually explain to you everything the place does.

Lewis ends up focusing on several areas where Trump will likely do the most damage.  The folks who used to be at U.S.D.A he talks to come up with food aid for the poor, scientific research (especially related to climate change), food safety and rural development.  I think they are correct in that assessment.  Here are a couple of the most enlightening quotes from these sections:

“The food-stamps program,” he says, instantly, when I ask him for his biggest concern. The Trump budget had proposed cutting food stamps by more than 25 percent over the next 10 years and more or less abandoning the notion that the country should provide some minimum level of nutrition to its citizens. The Trump budget was just an opening bid and unlikely to become policy, at least not right away, because Congress could always fight it. But it signaled an intention and, perhaps, a shift in public attitudes. “Why is it that people channel so many of their hang-ups about people who are poor or unsuccessful into the food-stamps program?” asks Concannon as we settle into our chairs, then answers his own question. “No one really knows when you go to the doctor and the government is paying. But people see you with this card or coupon and react. People would say to me, ‘I saw someone buying butter with food stamps.’ And I would say, ‘Well, yes.’”...As the head of Oregon’s nutrition programs he learned that the country’s willingness to feed people who are hungry does not mean that hungry people are always fed. The federal government makes the benefits available, but then leaves it to states to administer them. “Where you live in this country makes a huge difference if you are poor,” says Concannon. “And it’s not just the weather. You have states with these 60- or 70-page documents people have to fill out to get benefits. Poor people are easy to wear down.” Georgia was usually a problem. Texas too. “If they ran any of their football teams the way they ran their food program, they’d fire the coach,” said Concannon. A Wyoming legislator, proud of how badly he had gummed up the state’s nutrition programs, told him, “We pride ourselves on doing the minimum required by the federal government.” An Arizona congressman proposed that the card used by people receiving food-stamp benefits be made prison orange, conferring not just nutrition but shame. In 2016, after several counties in North Carolina suffered severe flooding, the state tried to distribute federal disaster-relief food-benefit cards on the day of the presidential election, to give poor people a choice between eating and voting. In Kansas, Concannon had explained to an executive who oversaw the state’s food-stamp program how he had made it easier for people in Oregon who were going hungry to access their program. “He said, ‘Jeez, if we did that we’d have more people coming in the door.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but isn’t that the idea?’”

This gets at the heart of the crazy experiment that is federal government in these United States.  Just like with the Affordable Care Act, and throughout our history with slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the New Deal and environmental and safety regulations, state and local governments can actively oppose and intentionally undermine the best efforts of the federal government  to achieve the lofty goals set by the founding documents of the nation.  Promoting the general welfare is often not what states, especially in the American South are trying to do.  Do you know which states are seeing some of the worst financial strains on rural hospitals?  Well, Georgia and Texas are two of them.  And this article gets at one of the strangest divides in American politics-that rural voters whose communities and infrastructure are most dependent on federal spending are most hostile to that federal government.  To that point:

By the time she left the little box marked “Rural Development,” Lillian Salerno had spent the better part of five years inside it. The box’s function was simple: to channel low-interest-rate loans, along with a few grants, mainly to towns with fewer than 50,000 people in them. Her department ran the $220 billion bank that serviced the poorest of the poor in rural America: in the Deep South, and in the tribal lands, and in the communities, called colonias, along the U.S.-Mexico border. “Some of the communities in the South, the only checks going in are government checks,” she said. And yet, amazingly, they nearly always repaid their loans....

As the U.S.D.A.’s loans were usually made through local banks, the people on the receiving end of them were often unaware of where the money was coming from. There were many stories very like the one Tom Vilsack told, about a loan they had made, in Minnesota, to a government-shade-throwing, Fox News-watching, small-town businessman. The bank held a ceremony and the guy wound up being interviewed by the local paper. “He’s telling the reporter how proud he is to have done it on his own,” said Vilsack. “The U.S.D.A. person goes to introduce herself, and he says, ‘So who are you?’ She says, ‘I’m the U.S.D.A. person.’ He asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ She says, ‘Well, sir, we supplied the money you are announcing.’ He was white as a sheet.”

Salerno saw this sort of thing all the time. “We’d have this check,” said Salerno. “We’d blow it up and try to have a picture taken with it. It said, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, in great big letters. That was something that Vilsack wanted—to be right out in front so people knew the federal government had helped them. In the red southern states the mayor sometimes would say, ‘Can you not mention that the government gave this?’” Even when it was saving lives, or preserving communities, it remained oddly invisible. “It’s just a misunderstanding of the system,” said Salerno. “We don’t teach people what government actually does.”

I enjoy listening patiently to farmers bitch about how much money poor people are given by the government and then asking them how many poor people they think have been given more money by the government than they themselves have been given.  Surprisingly, they often think most poor people do, which is laughable.  However important all the economic damage the Trump and GOP clowns can do to poor people and rural areas, the threat to important scientific research is the most dangerous, because it is the hardest to recognize by everyday people.  When the funding for the water system doesn't come through or when the folks you go to church with are having to get food from the church food pantry, you tend to notice, and changes can be made.  But when research into climate change or contagious disease isn't getting done, we won't find out until it is too late:

We don’t really celebrate the accomplishments of government employees. They exist in our society to take the blame. But if anyone ever paid attention they would note that Woteki’s department, among other achievements, had suppressed the potentially catastrophic 2015 outbreak of bird flu. They’d created, very quickly, a fast new test for the disease that enabled them to cull the sick chickens from the healthy ones. Because of their work the poultry industry was forced to kill only tens of millions of birds, instead of hundreds of millions. In the early 1990s, the U.S.D.A. had also dealt with the outbreak of ring-spot virus in papaya trees, when the papaya industry in Hawaii faced ruin and extinction. Inside the little box marked “Science,” the U.S.D.A. helped genetically engineer a papaya tree that was resistant to ring-spot virus....
His (Sam Clovis, who has since withdrawn from consideration) appointment as the U.S.D.A.’s chief scientist felt like a practical joke to those who had worked there: this was the place that, back in the early 1940s, had taken Alexander Fleming’s findings and effectively invented penicillin. It had triggered the antibiotics revolution. It had coped with endless blights and outbreaks. The consequences of the science it funded—or did not fund—was mind-boggling. The person Clovis was replacing had taught at universities, worked in the White House, and, along the way, been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences....

 In recent years, much of the department’s research has dealt with the effects of climate change. The head of science directs nearly $3 billion in grants each year. Woteki directed the science that leads to nutritional standards for schoolchildren. She set research priorities. Hers had been food security; domestic and global nutrition; safety of the food supply; and figuring out how best to convert plants into fuel. “All of that has to be done in the face of a changing climate,” said Woteki. “It’s all climate change.” It might sound silly that the U.S.D.A. funds a project that seeks to improve the ability of sheep to graze at high altitudes—until you realize that this may one day be the only place sheep will be able to graze. “We’re going to become even more reliant on the efficiencies that come from the investment in science,” she said. One-quarter of the arable land in the world is already degraded, either by overfarming or overgrazing. “Changing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will force changes in the way crops are grown and livestock are raised,” she said. “The changing climate brings new risks of food-borne disease. Even the pathogens are influenced by temperature and humidity.”

If the Trump administration were to pollute the scientific inquiry at the U.S.D.A. with politics, scientific inquiry would effectively cease.

The Trump Administration and Republican control of the federal government is going to do a lot of damage to the United States, and rural areas, while most responsible for putting them in charge, are going to be hurt the worst.  Unfortunately, the damage done to scientific research, both at U.S.D.A. and in other areas of the federal government, are going to negatively impact all of humanity.  This should be the first thing you should complain to your Congressperson about.

The Day the Fire Came

I highly recommend that you read this very well written story about three of the victims of this spring's Great Plains fires.  It is very moving. Well done, Skip Hollandsworth and Texas Monthly.

Planting 2017

Well, we finally finished planting (at least the first time) for the season.  May as well watch it rain some more:

FRACTAL - 4k StormLapse from Chad Cowan on Vimeo.

The Farmer

Some end-of-year farmer propaganda for you:

The Rural/Urban Divide Illustrated

The Economist, via Ritholtz:

As our map (above) of America’s voting patterns on a county-by-county basis going back to 1952 makes clear, Mr Trump’s gains were concentrated in rural areas across the northern United States. Republicans have long held the edge in America’s wide-open spaces, but never has the gap been this profound: a whopping 80% of voters who have over one square mile (2.6 square km) of land to enjoy to themselves backed Mr Trump. As the scatter plot below demonstrates, as counties become increasingly densely populated, fewer and fewer vote Republican. American politics appear to be realigning along a cleavage between inward-looking countryfolk and urban globalists. Mr Trump hails from the latter group, but his message resounded with the former. A uniquely divisive candidate, he is both perhaps the least likely politician in the country to build bridges across that gap and also the only one who has the capacity to do so.

I don't see Trump uniting the nation.  I honestly think that the appreciation of civil government increases with the number of people one is surrounded by.  Alternatively, based on farmers and business people I know, maybe the more government money you receive, the more you hate government. 

Cheap Imports Make Corn Glut Worse

Wall Street Journal:

Even as record harvests have left the U.S. awash in corn, imports of the crucial animal feed are surging. It is happening because moves in currencies, ocean shipping fees and railroad rates have combined to produce an unexpected result: Bringing in corn from places like Brazil and Argentina can be cheaper for poultry and livestock producers in the U.S. Southeast than buying it from the Midwest....
Imports remain a very small part of the market in the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of corn. Still, the notable surge is a telling indicator of how the commodity bust and strong dollar have distorted prevailing patterns of commerce.
The U.S. Agriculture Department projected Tuesday that buyers would import 50 million bushels of the grain this season, up 56% from last season, even as U.S. bins swell with grain. U.S. buyers haven’t imported that much corn since 2012-2013, when a severe drought slashed domestic production, sending futures prices to all-time highs....
 The rise in imports follows a multiyear boom in American agriculture during which Midwestern farmers ramped up production to satisfy burgeoning demand from a growing biofuels industry at home and increasingly wealthy populations in emerging markets.
The rest of the world followed suit. Brazil, the second-largest corn exporter behind the U.S., is on track this season to harvest its second-largest corn crop on record, as is Argentina. Exporters in Argentina were offering corn at a roughly 6% discount to U.S. supplies for a period earlier this year, and Brazilian corn was cheaper than its U.S. counterpart for much of last year....
In April, it could cost about $0.80 to $1.50 a bushel to ship corn from west to east in the U.S. by rail, while per-bushel costs to ship corn from South America to the U.S. recently have ranged from about $0.35 to $0.50.

Things are going to get really, really ugly in the next few years.  We had 25 years of low prices after the last grain price boom in the Seventies.  I wouldn't be surprised if we had another very long agricultural depression.  With Brazil and Argentina growing huge crops and needing to bring in as many dollars as possible, I think we will have a really hard time getting back to the windfall prices we got used to from 2007 until the last year and a half.  A bumper crop bailed us out last year, but any more large harvests are just going to further depress prices.  I would strongly suggest avoiding agricultural land as an investment vehicle.

Love Is In The Fair

Love Is In The Fair from THE BITTER SOUTHERNER on Vimeo.

A Welsh Family Tradition

I'm Not Dead Yet

Yeah, I haven't posted anything for a few days, but I'm still among the living. We did finish planting crops last night, so I've got that going for me. More posts to come.

Plant By The Almanac? No, Thanks.

Ohio Country Journal:

At the office, we consulted multiple farmer’s almanacs this spring to identify the best days to plant corn. In general, according to almanac wisdom of old, it is best to try and plant corn in the first quarter following the new moon. In both April and May, the new moon phase starts on the 18^th. The very best dates are after the first quarter, which starts on the 25^th of both months. Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces are considered the best Zodiac signs for planting.
With all of this in mind, we came up with a list of the best days to plant with input from Blum’s Farmer’s and Planter’s Almanac, Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac and the Old Farmer’s Almanac. For planting corn in Ohio, the best days are April 19, 20 and 23 though 25 and May 21, 22, and 28 through 31.
Scott Labig, who farms in Darke County, looks at the field conditions, soil temperatures, and carefully tracks the weather forecast like every farmer during planting season. He also considers the phase of the moon in his planting decisions.
“I think it does have some merit,” he said. “In February or March I dig the almanac out of the nightstand and start looking at the dates for the windows we need to plant in. This year the key planting dates are more limited than what they have been in the past.”
Then, if all the other factors for planting are right, Labig tries to get as much corn in the ground as possible during the windows of optimal planting according to the almanac.
“We are right in an optimum period right now and we are missing it around here,” Labig said. “Usually when I get started rolling I don’t stop, especially if I’m in that window. I really try to go on that day to get that corn in if I can and slow up or stop when I get way outside that window. But if I am outside of that window, it is hard to sit idle and watch the neighbors farming around me.”
Along with telling farmers which days to plant, the moon phase also offers advice on when not to plant — the last quarter. In both April and May this year those dates are the 11^th through the 17^th. Labig said that he has noticed that planting by the phase of the moon does translate in some positive realities in his fields.
“Last year I planted into Mother’s Day weekend. That was the worst corn I had and it was outside of the window,” he said. “I don’t know that I see it so much in the yields, but I have seen differences in the emergence. Years ago Dad asked me why I thought some fields we planted would emerge so much better than others. That is when I started buying the almanac.”
As an experiment this planting season, we are going to keep track of planting progress around Ohio and the country and take note of the percentage that falls into the optimum planting windows (and the not so optimum windows) according to the moon phases in the almanacs. At the end of the season we will make a 2015 corn yield estimate based on what we find, then see how planting by the moon phase translates into a final yield at the end of the season.

Can anybody give me any non-magical explanation of why the phase of the moon would have any impact on plant growth? I might as well check my horoscope to see if it is going to be a good day or a bad day. I hope everything goes well for the guy who tries to wait until the moon phase is right to get his corn planted.  However, I have enough trouble deciding whether the bad spots are bad enough that I shouldn't plant, or whether the weather forecast is reliable enough that I probably should go ahead and settle for not-quite-good conditions.  Worrying that nice weather and fit soil happens to fall on or after the full moon doesn't seem wise to me.

I hear all the talk about favorable planting dates every year, but I can only remember one time when somebody attributed moon phase to poor yields.  That was 1996.  The weather was awful that spring.  I graduated from college on May 19, and corn planting finally broke loose on the 20th.  After about 3 or 4 days of planting, rain returned.  Soil conditions were extremely marginal on the first of June, but there was more rain in the forecast.  Everybody hit the fields and put as much corn in the ground as they could.  The first also happened to be a full moon.  On the second, it rained some more.  I'm not sure when anybody was able to get into the fields again, but I' guessing it was around June 12. By that time, dad and grandpa decided to switch their remaining corn acres to beans.  I believe they only planted about 70 percent of their intended corn acreage. I believe they finished planting on June 23rd, which is about three weeks later than normal.  June 1 may have been the latest we've ever planted corn, although I'm not sure of that.  I'm pretty sure the fields planted on June 1 also had cutworm damage.  So we had terrible planting conditions, very late-planted corn, terrible weather after that corn was planted and insect damage.  At the end of the season when everything was harvested, all the corn was disappointing, but the corn planted on June 1 was the worst-yielding.  And somebody said, "well, there was a full moon on June 1, and you aren't supposed to plant corn under a full moon (even though this article says don't plant in the fourth quarter)."  Personally, I'll cut the moon some slack for that year, and just leave the poor corn yields for corn planted on June 1 to all the other negative factors present. 

Don't get me wrong.  I buy an almanac almost every year, and I'll flip through it once in a while, consult the weather forecast for shits and giggles, and just read parts of it for entertainment.  But deciding when to plant, or when to set fence posts (in the dark of the moon, according to a former co-worker [according to him, the moon's gravitational pull when full would pull the posts out of the ground, or some such nonsense {I would think high or low tide would be more significant since the moon moves oceans then}]) will not be determined by the almanac.  I will be interested to see if the folks at Ohio Country Journal find any statistical link between corn yield and moon phase.  I'll wager they don't.

Alcohol and Drug Use by Job

Wonkblog, via a friend's facebook post:

Agriculture, in the top half on drinking, but not way up there.

How To Destroy Millions of Chickens

Suffocating foam, then composting.  Seriously:

And despite all that, the virus has managed to infect flock after flock, more than 40 in all, mostly in Minnesota. Wherever the virus is detected, those flocks are killed with a suffocating foam. The carcasses usually are composted in the barns where the birds had been living. It can be months before the farms are back in operation.
The biggest infected flock, by far, were the 3 million egg-laying chickens identified this week in Iowa. A spokesman for the Iowa Department of Agriculture tells The Salt that the birds will be euthanized later this week. In this case, the birds may not all be composted. Some could also be buried, or sent to rendering plants.
Robert O'Connor, a veterinarian and senior vice president of Foster Farms, a large producer of chickens and turkeys on the West Coast, says no one is quite sure how the virus is evading the industry's careful biosecurity efforts. "We're all trying to answer that. There's a lot of speculation about how it might be getting into enclosed houses," he says.
John Clifford, chief veterinary officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ticked off several theories. Perhaps wild ducks are getting into stored poultry feed. Or maybe strong winds are blowing dirt and debris into the houses. "We've had some strong winds in Minnesota, 20 mile-an-hour winds to 40 mile-an-hour winds," he says.
The weather soon may come to the industry's aid: Hot summer temperatures usually kill off this virus.
It probably will resurface in the fall, though. By that time, Clifford says, he wants to have a better idea how this virus is spreading — and how to stop it.

Man, that would be so depressing.  And so disgusting.

Rural America is Dying. Literally.

USDA ERS:

The number of people living in rural (nonmetropolitan) counties declined for the fourth year in a row according to population estimates released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. While hundreds of individual counties have lost population over the years, especially in remote or sparsely-settled regions, this marks the first period of population decline for rural (nonmetro) areas as a whole. Population declines stem from a combination of fewer births, more deaths, and changing migration patterns. From July 2013 to July 2014, the increase in rural population that came from natural change (58,348 more births than deaths) did not match the decrease in population from net migration (89,251 more people moved out than moved in), leading to overall population loss. The contribution of natural change to rural population growth will likely continue its gradual downward trend due to historically low fertility rates and an aging population. Net migration rates are prone to short-term fluctuations in response to economic conditions. This chart is based on the data found in County-level Datasets: Population on the ERS website, updated April 2015.

More bad news for rural areas here.