In those last two years of my tenure at this large ag seed company, many things happened.  One event that stood out was that the entire company was purchased by a huge multi-national chemical concern.  A quick look at the parent company’s portfolio of businesses and locations made you think that the world was more dependent on what happened in a particular company than on what happened in any particular country.  The question presented itself to me at that time:  Is there such a thing as corporate sovereignty?

With that question, several others also arose.  Two specific questions that stuck in my mind at the time: “Is there such a thing as corporate food domination?” and “How much involvement in the food distribution system by a single company is healthy?”.  My employer at the time provided roughly half of the corn seed sold in America.  A large percentage of this corn was basically grown as the bulk feedstock for animals (beef, pork and chicken).  The animals’ ultimate fate was, of course, our dinner plate.  The nutrient density of the corn, and thus, of the meat, was “programmed” genetically by this old stalwart seed company.  That in itself was acceptable – the history of the organization was shining, with a long list of good and benevolent achievements.  As time wore on and the impending purchase became imminent, however, examining the situation more deeply gave the impression of a rapidly spreading three alarm fire.

The first alarm rang out when, after a brief courting period and a joint venture, the aforementioned large chemical concern purchased the seed company outright.  Is it still a benevolent business, seeking to help farmers be more productive through the broad application of the science of genetics?  Or is it now simply a platform to sell chemical crop protection products?  At the time, we all knew that we were the same company as when we started.  But who could guess what the future held?  The second alarm, at least for me, sounded when it became evident that the new owner had deep involvement in all aspects of food processing and distribution systems, from packaging and processing all the way to contaminant testing of finished foods, from production aids to the means of delivery.  They owned proprietary products in each critical phase of food production, processing and distribution – now including the raw genetic material that formed the starting material for that food.  The third, and maybe the loudest, alarm sounded after examining the other crop products that were available to this parent company.  Their own existing genetics programs and the programs obtained thru their new purchase provided avenues to control large amounts of available germplasm for wheat, rice, corn, soybean, sunflower, canola and a myriad of minor crop germplasm bases.

Vertical integration in the food industry reached a new milestone with this “merger” of a chemical giant with what had previously been the largest and perhaps the most innocuous seed company, having no previous ties to anyone except their own shareholders.  With the new ownership, what did the shareholders cede to this large chemical manufacturer?  Did they merely hand over control of an undisputed pioneer in the agricultural genetics industry?  Or was it actually a large chunk of the food supply that they served up on a platter?  Does it matter?  Will we all someday become ‘citizens’ of this new genetics giant by virtue of simply eating?

Corporate Sovereignty? is a post from: shannonehlers.com

My current favorite winter reading material

What do you do in the winter time?  Maybe you go hunting, perhaps a cross country ski weekend, or a day of snow shoeing.  It could be that you take saunas, you spend your days baking, or you enjoy a friendly visit to neighbors for coffee.  One of my favorite winter activities, when the evenings are long and days are short, is gardening.  You read that right – I said “gardening”.

Obviously I don’t spend much time working the soil when our high temp is well below freezing, but what I choose to do instead, is plan the garden and pick through the seed catalogs that start arriving mid-winter.  I think that this is just a naturally cathartic activity on cold, dreary days.  What could feel better than to think about warm spring days planting or hot summer days eating tomatoes or strawberries fresh from the garden?

This is something I remember so well from my childhood – my great grandma first showed me the Gurney seed catalog when I was probably about four years old.  She would tell me about peas and beans, how they grew on trellises; she would talk about cucumbers and ask if I remembered making pickles with her, trying to explain to me why we made pickles; she’d ask me about different fruits and then she’d describe the orchard in her back yard;  finally she’d ask me to circle the pictures of vegetables I’d like to grow and eat.  Lots of time was spent talking, thinking, and hoping for good crops.  My great grandma was a superb gardener and could make plants grow almost by her wish.

This wintertime activity always helped chase away the cabin fever if you’d been shut in by bad weather for a few days.  One thing I noticed, though, as I got older is that you can sometimes order seeds just to stave off cabin fever.  More than one time, I have done this and then found out that while it worked to cure the cabin fever, I now have much more seed than I could ever hope to grow in my garden spot.  I won’t be surprised this year if that happens.

Above, in the picture, you see the catalog of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – a Missouri company dedicated to help preserve long, lost varieties of food crops.  I am not compensated in any way to tell you that this has become one of my favorite seed catalogs simply for the wide variety of foods you can now grow for yourself.  You really have to see it to believe it – and you can see it at their website (link).

Winter Means Gardening is a post from: shannonehlers.com

I have compiled a group of Midnight Blogger posts from previous months on Agriculture.  Below are links to a the posts, as well as a brief description if appropriate.  Enjoy!

• Cloning gets government approval:  Do we really want this?
• Las Vegas is building a vertical farm:  Sharing a news article
• Farm Broadcasting and its value
• Ethanol Industry – Part 1
• Ethanol Industry – Part 2
• More on Ethanol
• Ag Employment:  Leaving your first job can be a little like leaving your first love
• The Harvest:  A twist on harvest, and why I love the fall of the year

Be sure to drop a line in the comments and tell me what you think!

Eight Farming Links: The Ag Compilation is a post from: shannonehlers.com

I love fall.  It is by far my favorite time of the year.  Harvest happens now.  My birthday is in the fall.  The endless heat of summer actually ends.  The bugs go away.  It’s all good.

The video above is of a harvest of a different kind than we are familiar with in the midwest.  This is the grape harvest in the Napa Valley, at a winery that bears my last name.  These guys are doing it right – check out the other videos on their YouTube list (especially the one describing biodynamic practices).  Very cool.  I’m no wine conniseur but this is some very good wine, highly regarded and quite popular in the restaurant trade.  If you’re up for something nice, pick up a bottle at www.ehlersestate.com.

Fall is my Favorite is a post from: shannonehlers.com

My real passions are small town life (love the people), travel (because sometimes you need to get out of the small town) and food (love to eat it). I really want to make life better for the people in the little town where I grew up and then I want to be able to repeat that good turn for people in small towns all over our great country. The challenges faced in small towns that aren’t necessarily present in larger cities include adequate housing, affordable energy, transportation, accessible goods and services (including food), and cultural choices. There are more, but these come immediately to mind.

I’ve been recently inspired by Chris Brogan and his series of posts on social media, especially those posts specifically addressing small business. I’ve also been so impressed with Britt Raybould.   Her post on agriculture in Idaho really struck a chord with me. Finally, Chris Pirillo’s YouTube video about the slow way tech is being taken up in Iowa also stirred something in me.

I think much can be done to improve life in places like small town Iowa. Technology certainly has a role and the emerging class of young people with electronic connectedness – people who are being called “digerati” by the likes of Tim Ferriss) can certainly help, too. This is likely to be a major direction of my online presence as I move forward, although I may spin the effort off into its own site or community or whatever.

Note to Chris Pirillo, just in case you happen onto this somehow:  I get what you’re saying about Iowa’s need to stop exporting people and I agree.  I know that we can do more to improve creative opportunities in places like Iowa, but in fairness, you are arguably Seattle’s leading geek.  Your expectations of culture change in Iowa with regard to technology are comparable to sending Duffy Lyon to Seattle and having her wander around asking “Where are all the butter sculptors?”   Although Seattle surely doesn’t have anything against butter sculpture, it just isn’t the best atmosphere for that particular brand of culture to thrive.  Can/should we change that?

Stay tuned, much more to come. Please add suggestions or ask questions in the comments and pass this along to others who can help.

Do you have a PURPOSE?? is a post from: shannonehlers.com

In the photos below, you can see the SFG with plants just emerging from the soil mix and then again about a month later.  What a difference a month makes!

Note to the very observant & somewhat curious:  yes, I have moved the mower since taking the first picture.  I’ve actually mowed three times.

Anybody else doing the SFG thing?  Tell me how it goes for you in the comments!

My SFG (Square Foot Garden) is a post from: shannonehlers.com

Along with the discouraging results from last year, the fact that I rarely eat a tomato is enough to make you wonder why I bother.  Certainly I could probably get by without growing as many plants as I have going in my south window but still, I find it fun.

The pictures above include the tomatoes at left, just beginning to show their first true leaves.  These will soon be transferred to pots.  More pictures of that process will be posted, too.   The picture to the right is not too clear, but you can see the first pepper plant to poke through the soil.  This one is a serrano type (hot) pepper.  I have started several hot varieties and a few sweet peppers, too this year.

I will share a few photos of the final growing locations of some of these plants when they are in the ground, as well as an update on how many actually survived and  how they harvest goes.  So far it is looking very good with all but six plants germinating.  These six were all of one variety – a yellow tomato called “Pink Grapefruit”.  Maybe I’ll re-try, but probably not.

More on the plants’ progress is a post from: shannonehlers.com

I worked for a while in the research center of a large agricultural genetics company where we used to estimate that 80% of corn seed is grown for inclusion into livestock rations. Considering this, can we assume that the price increase in the broad category of food is completely due to increases in just this one input, largely used for meat production? I don’t think so. I think a main contributing factor is the cost of fuel, both as a cost of transport and as other additional costs in food production and delivery.

Enter the renewable fuels industry, tasked with creating an American-style innovative revolution both here and around the world in how we turn raw materials into usable energy. Think about this and what that statement really means: we want to totally change the model for energy production. Why?

Currently our energy production is almost wholly unsustainable. We import a finite natural resource, crude oil from a politically unstable part of the world at a fairly high transportation cost and a potentially catastrophic political cost. Crude oil usually requires much processing in large refineries located mainly around the gulf of Mexico. This creates byproducts that are useful, as well as several byproducts which are poisonous, and of course the main product which then must be transported via pipeline, rail car, and truck to various points throughout the country. We extract coal from deposits deep within the earth leaving unsightly and poisonous landscapes in our wake. Coal is similarly destructive in its production and use.

We are moving towards using a diverse set of renewable resources, some based on biological inputs, some based on geophysical inputs. Frequently these can be turned into fuel more efficiently with much less processing, can be produced locally with much less pollution than oil import/refining, frequently producing companion industries based on other useful co-products, and can be made again and again while leaving the sources intact.

So what’s the catch? In the case of corn, critics point out that it is an inefficient substrate for alcohol production. Depending on whose scientist you talk to, you can find people who say that you only get 1.1x efficiency (it takes 1 unit to produce 1.1 units) up to 1.3x efficiency. When we think about building plants to make fuel at a 10% to 30% advantage, it almost seems pointless doesn’t it?

The typical ethanol plant currently consists of three main parts: a milling operation to separate the starchy part of the corn kernel from the germ, a mashing and fermentation operation to convert the starch first to sugars then turn this into an alcohol / water mixture known as “liquor”, and a distillation and purification operation to separate the bulk alcohol from the liquor, with purification to remove the last bit of water from the alcohol.

As Jeff Bruck, an associate in the ethanol industry, points out in his comment on Part 1 of 2: Squanto Would Be Proud (LINK),
“Biofuels use corn and other grains which right now are logistically and economically the best source. This won’t always be true. Cellulostic technology is improving every day and will someday be the standard.” Bruck also made good points about the need for greater support of flex fuel technology (both cars and distribution points).

The good news is that there is a much larger advantage in cellulosic ethanol production (utilizing fibrous plant biomass as a carbohydrate source). However, this leads to another criticism (LINK) of biofuels, which is that we are essentially mining the nutrients out of our land by growing intensive monoculture to support an almost endless appetite for more corn. Although somewhat dated, Bloomberg News published a piece that examined many of these issues in more detail.

I don’t argue with the idea that we are diminishing our soil tilth, but I do think that corn for ethanol is a strictly “now” situation. Today we use corn as a feedstock because of its abundance and the easy conversion of the energy portion of the grain. We have perfected the milling and mashing process already, so this involves little to no learning curve, allowing us to instead focus our innovation on the remainder of the energy conversion and fuel delivery process.

Is this the end of the story? No, certainly not if you compare an ethanol plant to an oil refinery. Unlike oil refineries, which are concentrated around importation points (especially the Gulf Coast area), we are building these modern and technologically superior plants in this country at a rapid pace, among geographically diverse locations. This is creating a source of economic diversification for thousands of small communities. This diversification will hopefully outlast the ethanol boom. They are far too numerous and geographically separated to become easy infrastructure targets for terrorists. They can be considered a local source of energy, requiring fewer transportation miles for either the feedstocks or the finished product.

Additionally, today’s ethanol plants are potentially useful beyond just fuel production, so that when and if we find the “next big thing”and move away from ethanol, there will be entrepreneurs lined up to occupy and use these very functional facilities. Combining fermentation, distillation and purification under one roof presents numerous value added manufacturing opportunities, both within and beyond the agricultural realm. No white elephants here. Possibilities exist from food and beverage production to pharmaceutical preparative processes, low tech to high tech, these facilities will serve well and should be easily expandable to accommodate a wide variety of uses and any needed growth.

Compare these features to those of an oil refinery, often old and decrepit and rarely found far from the Gulf of Mexico, offering very little alternate use and situated in a concentrated area of production, which concentrates the ill effects.

Finally, are we demanding too much of a single source of alternative fuel? We want diverse choices for our energy, so let’s use a diverse array of fuel sources. Why try to get it all in ethanol? People want ethanol to be a green fuel, a renewable fuel, a domestic fuel, a cheap fuel, a fuel whose manufacture doesn’t affect market prices for any of the inputs, and the list of wants goes on. No energy source can do all of this, no energy source is the be-all, end-all. But we’ve treated Middle Eastern Oil as the one source for all these years, basing whole industries, even entire economies, on its use.

Creating diverse and reliable energy sources should be our priority. This is like product development on a world scale. To change our entire model of energy production, we will have to progress through several stages. On that path, we may need to accept ethanol production from corn as one stage due to the rapid availability of corn, our mastery of its production, and its status as the current “low hanging fruit”. It is almost certain, though, that development of the next stage will be quicker than the corn ethanol stage. Additionally, we need to consider corn ethanol only one part of a large set of energy production tools to free us from dependence on one or two main energy sources (currently oil and coal). We need to look to the future and say “What next?”. I’d suggest continuing with ethanol and biodiesel, and beyond that, pursuing solar energy, nuclear power, cellulose based fuels, waste derived fuels, wind generated electricity, biomass replacement for coal, and hydroelectric generation just to start.

Thanks to the many people who have patiently given me input for this post, I appreciate and respect each of you, and I owe you all a favor. It is a big topic, so there may be more…

Part 2 of 2: Squanto would be proud… is a post from: shannonehlers.com

This leads us into the topic of our post, corn for ethanol. In a politically charged year, and in a state where this subject is also politically charged, I put myself into the path of the train by saying anything at all about the subject. But I can’t resist.

I try to listen to Bob Brinker’s Moneytalk program every chance I get, and not because I need to learn market timing strategies or because I have a big old jar of money I need to invest, but because I typically find his guests informative.

Today, Bob’s main guest was John Zogby, the pollster. Before letting us hear the polling guru, though, Bob tackled this issue of corn for ethanol, making the statement that has oft been made in the news lately that the ethanol industry is responsible for dramatic increases in food costs. His proposition was that instead of using corn for ethanol we ought to be pushing for more and better nuclear power.

Bob is using a technique that frequently is used by politicians, and creating a question around an issue that is hard to challenge or disagree with. Obviously, we can understand the basic economics of using a commodity that is chiefly a livestock ration as a source of fuel alcohol. For livestock feeders, supply goes down and price goes up. Fine, no disagreement. The issue of nuclear power is a bit more touchy, but again, it is hard to argue with the idea of using a clean source of power for which the production technology has largely been mastered by U.S. and international industry.

The ideas that I can challenge, though, are the premises for the argument. Bob Brinker’s statements about ethanol and nuclear power stem from two main points. The first is the notion that we need to keep the cost of food down, at least as low as it has been and maybe lower. The second is a direct challenge to biofuel production as a viable alternative to foreign petroleum, by painting the whole industry with a single “ethanol” brush. I want to examine the food production part today, and take the energy issue into consideration in a future post.

Do you agree with the idea that our food costs are already too high? I don’t. I know that many people have much too much ‘stuff’ already, so much so that “decluttering” has become an industry unto itself. This points to the idea that our disposable income is such that more food costs can be absorbed by the average family, while perhaps displacing spending on some of this unneeded “stuff”. It is really a matter of examining what we define as “needs” and how they differ from “wants”.

If we value a high-quality, low-risk food supply, then we must be willing to pay a fair price for it. Someone has to produce that food, and to my way of thinking, we get only what we pay for. We ought to have the very best food production system in the world. Hands down, the best. And we shouldn’t sacrifice quality for price in this area.

The people who produce, prepare, and deliver food should be able to live comfortably on the income from their operations. This is equally as vital as the service a doctor provides. Additionally, growing corn is capital intensive, it requires investment in land, machinery, and seed – all before any return is realized by the farmer. It is hard work in often harsh conditions. And it is a huge risk (many things can ruin a crop, and the farmer won’t know until harvest time if he has a harvest or what his yield will be).

Food production is something we ought not try to cheapen just because some people don’t want to spend more money for the pizza or steak that they eat. It is something we certainly shouldn’t outsource to other countries. I take this position partly due to the recent history of quality control we have seen from certain foreign nations, and partly due to what I consider another real cause of food cost increases: transportation cost, especially related to the increase in fuel cost.

Despite a growing awareness that we ought to eat more local foods, both for economical and ecological reasons, we don’t actually do it: look at your potatoes, I bet that unless you live in Idaho, they aren’t very local; look at your apples, and then look toward Washington state; take a look at your oranges, and send thanks to California and Florida. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Our food production cost requires attention, and although corn is a legitimate input cost in many consumer goods, until we attempt to deal with 300% to 500% increases in basic fuel costs, it will not really matter. We still will need to process the food, to store and often refrigerate the food, and to get the food to the consumer (including the cost of trucking the food to stores and the cost of shoppers driving to the stores).

This is where we will pick up next time: fuel cost, energy, and transportation and how they all relate.

Give your thoughts, I’m anxious to hear!

Part 1 of 2: Squanto would be proud… is a post from: shannonehlers.com

I’m not a farmer, and I don’t own land or livestock, so I don’t really have any skin in the game, so to speak.  I do have fond memories of my grandfather’s farm, and I did spend a good portion of my early professional life with a large agricultural concern doing research on silage production and animal nutrition.

I guess what I really like about the local farm broadcast is that you get to observe the market in real time, as it reacts to weather, and to the news and events of the day.  The broadcasters, if they are good professionals, will help you to understand the ins and outs of this dynamic marketplace, and how the food you are eating for lunch fits into the entire matrix of local, regional, national and world events.

Like most everything, technology has vastly influenced farm broadcasting and in the case of my own local station, it has been positive.  We now have podcasters doing features, we have multiple ways to receive the live broadcast including streaming audio, digital radio and regular over the air signals.

If you’ve never tuned in a farm broadcast because you’re not involved in agriculture, why not give it a try?  You don’t need to live in ag-land, you can “surf” to many ag broadcasters, including our local station at http://whoradio.com where you can click the “Listen Live” link at the top of the page from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM Central Time.  Alternately, you can also visit the site’s own dedicated farm show page, http://www.whofarm.com/, where you can read about the “Big Show”, as the daily farm broadcast is called.

If you are a regular ag listener, why not reply and let us all know which station and show are your favorite?

What Can I Learn From Farm Broadcasters? is a post from: shannonehlers.com