Wednesday Roundup

Welcome to Wednesday! I hope you are all having a good week; in my part of the Rural Republic, fat cattle are going out today and high moisture corn will be coming in tomorrow. So, without further ado, here is (some of) the news of the day.

As I wrote about here, a major concern for many rural communities is the out-migration (or "brain-drain") of young people from their hometowns. The High Plains Journal reported this week on a presentation by Weldon Sleight, the dean of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, on the college's philosophy of encouraging agricultural entrepreneurship - going "back to our base" in farm country - to revitalize rural areas. Also important, according to Sleight, is instilling a sense of community pride both in youth and adults. This includes supporting local, small businesses. "It kills me," he says, "when people drive 40 miles to go to Walmart when their local hardware store is about to close."

However, not everyone is convinced that focusing so much attention on getting young people to stay (or come back) is the best way to "bring new life" to small towns. Kathie Starkweather of the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska told Radio Iowa this week that small towns would be better served to "let them go" and target, instead, Baby Boomers and senior citizens. Many people over 50, she says, are interested in starting small businesses and small towns offer what they want: "“The basic quiet, not having to be involved in the rat race but also being allowed to participate in the community.”

To change subjects a little bit, the Visalia (CA) Times-Delta ran a story about a University of California study examining tensions between six "semi-rural" cities in California and the neighboring farmers. The author detailed frustrations on both sides, such as farmers having equipment stolen and vandalized, and city dwellers being irritated by dust and noise. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, the "authors of the university report indicate that the chances for compatible relations between farmers and urbanites will mostly require farmers to adjust or revise their traditional practices."

Finally, NPR had an interesting report on Cuban agriculture that could serve as something of a cautionary tale. "After five decades of state-controlled agriculture," the story says, "the country struggles to feed itself, forcing the government to import some 70 percent of the island's food." When all of the farmland was nationalized with the rise of the communist regime, those who had farmed it walked away. Now, the government is trying to encourage food production by giving anyone willing to farm a free ten-year lease on federal land. Some of those taking advantage of the program are highly educated former employees of the government who are eager for entrepreneurial opportunities, however limited. As one new farmer says, "We can't all be intellectuals, because then there'd be nothing to eat."

Now that's food for thought.

Friday Roundup

It's a busy, busy time of year in the Rural Republic, so we've been kind of on again and off again with our daily roundups. We'll try to keep this site somewhat responsive to our readers' interests, so if you feel something's missing on the days we don't post a roundup, please let us know. Conversely, if you'd rather see us focus less energy on roundups and more on something else, we'd like to know that, too. We're a no-budget, volunteer outfit here, but we aim to please!

So, for your consideration, here are some stories that caught my attention today.

The U.S. government has been pouring a lot of money into expansion of rural broadband recently, but not all broadband is created equal. Apparently, some of the broadband connections in rural areas of the United Kingdom are inferior to a much lower-tech solution: carrier pigeons! The BBC has a report on a competition held in which ten pigeons with USB drives strapped to their legs took on a five-minute video upload. Seventy-five minutes after the pigeons were released and the upload was started, the birds had reached their destination 120 km away, while the upload was only 24% complete.

Moving back across the pond and heading north, a column in The Williams Lake Tribune details a British Columbia feedlot's creative attempt to find a niche market. Seeking to "produce a product that is equal to Japan’s Kobe beef, where Wagyu cattle are fed a beer a day and massaged with saki before they are slaughtered," Bill and Darlene Freding are experimenting with feeding each of their cattle a litre of wine every day. Reportedly, the results so far have been delicious... and, as the author says, "the cattle aren't drunk, just happy."

Some other cattle that may not have been so happy were reported having been "rustled" near Chadron, NE. KRVN tells us that, while cattle rustling is no longer the hanging offense it was in the "Old West," the state of Nebraska still takes this crime very seriously. Thirty-year-old Jacob Otte was convicted of two different instances of stealing about 10 head of cattle and reselling them in another part of the state. The penalty: two consecutive 3-5 year terms in prison, plus about $17,000 in restitution (mainly to the insurance company that covered both ranchers' cattle). Don't mess with Nebraska cattlemen.

And don't mess with Texas... or, at least, the Texans in Hemphill County in the northeastern corner of the state's panhandle. The Texas Observer has an interesting article about the residents of the county and their confrontation with billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has been systematically buying up water rights in rural Texas to sell to the state's sprawling cities. In another "water is for fighting over" story, the county is ground zero for a legal battle in which Texas courts will decide whether or not groundwater is - like oil and gas - owned in place by the person with rights to that water and, if so, whether a groundwater management district placing restrictions on pumping is an uncompensated "taking" of that property. It obviously gets complicated with legal jargon, but read the article: the people trying to sell their water rights are somewho both victims and victimizers in this scenario. The same story will no doubt be played out across the High Plains in the coming years.

So long for now, and have a great weekend. I hope sometime soon, we all get a little time to relax!

Tuesday Roundup

Happy Tuesday, all!  We'll kick off today's roundup with a little international flavor...

The European Union's budget chief, Janusz Lewandowski, has started a bit of a firestorm over comments in preparation for a review of farm subsidies in the EU.  In addition to seeking cuts, he wants to reduce or eliminate rebates to nations that don't receive as much subsidy allocation, such as Britain.  Countries in a united economic bloc, with different geographies and different labor markets, trying to figure out how to agree on agricultural subsidies?  Pass me the popcorn, because this stands to get interesting. 

Flooding that has destroyed this year's crops in Pakistan stands to do the same to next year's wheat crop as well.  According to the AP (via MSNBC), some areas are still underwater, and even if the floods hadn't taken away or destroyed the seed for next year, the ground wouldn't be ready for the fast-approaching Pakistani planting season.  Yes, that's even more troubles for the international wheat market.

Back on US soil, estimates on the corn crop are still uncertain, according to AgriNews online, which, coupled with high demand, are causing some unsteadiness in the prices of the commodity.  In the meantime, with the recent egg recalls, egg farms in Connecticut are experiencing increased interest in folks looking to buy their eggs.  Sure, there is a "local food" aspect to this, as the Fairfield Patch notes, but it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me: A reduction in supply, no matter how it's achieved, is going to result in better prices on the remaining supply, provided demand remains the same.  The story mentions increased demand, of course, but it's not the demand that's increasing - it's just moving to a new supply.

Finally, Indiana Biofuels has an interesting video describing the process by which ethanol fuel is made.  It's entertaining AND informative!  (Also, it kind of makes me want to get back to home-brewing beer, for some reason.)

Have a great day, everyone!

Drought Sparks Wheat Prices Ablaze

The Colorado wheat harvest is officially over and it is starting to wrap up across the country as well. With most of this year’s bumper crop in the bin there is nothing to do but sit back, watch the price of wheat fall to its cyclical lows and wait for this years harvest to be turned into flour, bread and Smack ‘Ums. But wait, hold the phone! Even with reports of bin busting yields and an estimated harvest of 2 billion bushels -1.95bb were expected- the price of wheat is headed through the roof! My home state of Colorado even reported record breaking production of 103.5 million bushels. So what gives?

Let’s look at the crop itself. Wheat accounts for 20% of the world’s caloric intake. One crop makes up 1/5 of what we eat in the form of cakes, bread, flour, pasta, ect. On average the world produces somewhere around 600 million metric tons. According to the FAO, four countries produce the lion’s share for the world: China, India, Russia and the US. In 2009-2010 these counties produce around 318 million tons. That is approximately 10.6 billion bushels for all the Americans out there. On the flipside, there are countries around the world that do not grow enough wheat to meet their consumption needs. Among these are two already mentioned, India and China. Imports are widely distributed throughout the world; the regions that import the most wheat -about 25% of all imports- are North Africa and Middle East markets.

Talib-Ag

Rural populations have long played a role in questions of power changes disproportionate to their numbers or wealth. Presumably, a major reason for this is due to the rural populations’ ownership, control, and familiarity with a disproportionate amount of real estate. Bill Ardolino, writing in the Long War Journal, has an interesting vignette reflecting on the intersection between insurgency, counterinsurgency, and agricultural economics. 

Initially, the issue seems to be one of a basic turf war between the Taliban and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) over the ownership and control of a bazaar in a rural part of the Now Zad district in the notorious Helmand province, with a suspicious, if a bit bullied, rural population standing between the two parties. Just beneath that surface, however, is a tale of economic oppression that’s a level beyond the basic, mob-style intimidation and “protection” we’ve been taught to expect; an economic oppression that seems to be lifted from the pages of the history of agriculture in the post-Civil War American South: 

And perhaps a majority of area residents are effectively indentured servants of the Taliban, beholden to insurgent drug lords through the credit system established by the Akhundzada family during their rule of Helmand in the 1980s and 1990s. Farmers receive start-up capital in the form of money, goods, and services that enable them to feed their families while cultivating a poppy crop. After the harvest, the borrowers owe a certain yield to the creditors, regardless of weather, the health of the crop, or other factors. If this debt is not repaid, the farmer falls further into debt or can be subject to beatings and even murder. The locals’ resulting servile fear of the Taliban makes cooperation with Americans and the Afghan government security forces an untenable proposition.