Letters to the Editor
Frank Smith, Bluff City, KS
Published Letters: 131 Editor's Choice: 15
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Corn, wheat, weather, subsidies and fuel prices
[Read the article: Where has all the wheat gone?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While Leonard's article dealt with some of the factors in grain production, it neglected others.
Firstly, the mechanization involved in growing wheat in the U.S. has caused substantial rises in crop yields, per acre. This makes farmers dependent on fuel prices, on interest costs for equipment such as combine harvesters, tractors and grain trucks, and the cost of petrochemical fertilizers that make these higher yields possible. All those prices have been rising.
Fifty years ago, a family might be able to make a living by farming grain on a quarter section, 160 acres. Now it takes about twelve times that much cropland.
Winter wheat farming is heavily dependent on the vagaries of weather. Planting in the fall is followed by sprouting in the spring. Drought in either the fall, spring or early summer will hurt crop yield. A late freeze can also do a great deal of damage to grains. Lastly, harvest in early summer is dependant on dry enough weather to allow heavy equipment into the fields.
There has been a drought afflicting the Midwest for a number of years now. Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas have been particularly hard hit. The drought moved to South-central Kansas last year. Winter wheat that has experienced yields of over 50 bushels per acre dropped to 15 bushels last year. The per bushel price rises because of the poor regional harvest, but not enough to accomodate for the decrease in production.
This year, a late hard frost, a subsequent drought and wet June produced a disaster in this part of the grain belt. Rains during harvest postponed working the fields. The wheat began to sprout on the stalks making it useless even for seed for the fall planting. Many farmers were unable to harvest any saleable crop, and plowed it under or burned it where it stood. Only crop insurance has kept them from bankruptcy, though not all were covered.
Add to this the shift to corn in the higher latitudes such as northern Kansas and Nebraska. Growing that crop requires a great deal of water and agribusiness giants such as ADM have been pushing production. But corn is an inefficient source of ethanol. Worse yet, much of the fields in which it is grown are irrigated. So we have a situation where basically post-Pleistocene era (10,000 year old) Ogalalla aquifer water reserves are being drained to take advantage of the ethanol hustle. Acquifers are not sponges. They will collapse, the ground will subside, and recharge is thereby constrained.
Leonard is absolutely correct that this is in no small part a political problem. But the same people who are dictating farm policy are the ones that brought us the Iraq war. Their policy is being propelled by ideology, deal making and campaign contributions.
Don't expect this to make any sense. You can depend on your grandchildren picking up the bill for this malfeasance, though, as Bush is putting it all on the national credit card.
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Baggage brought by AG candidates
[Read the article: Judge strikes down Patriot Act provision]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There aren't any of the named candidates who aren't worrisome. Laurence Silberman is probably the looniest and most partisan of the bunch, quite a feat when Ted Olson is on the list. An Olson appointment would open the possibility of judiciary members asking about the Arkansas Project.
Bob Barr was among those who were likely consulted when Bush 41 was pardoning narcoterrorist Dr. Orlando Bosch and the Iran Contra felons including Eliott Abrams and John Poindexter, members of Bush 43's neocon team.
Ties to crooked corporate America should also be considered. Though Larry Thompson had a relatively blemish-free public service career, his tenure at Provident through its stock scandals would be subject to question. Terwilliger defended Tyco and would be vulnerable for a Jack Abramoff connection and may have been involved in receiving the tip that the corporation was under Justice Department investigation. He also is a primary defender of Bush's "executive privilege" claims.
Thank goodness Chertoff is out of the picture. If his tenure at Homeland Security wasn't indictment enough, there was his prior service on the federal bench.
It's too much to dream that Dubya would consider anyone with substantial aptitude and integrity for the job, especially given the trouble from which he needs to be rescued. One however would have to think long and hard about which of the above was the best of a bad lot.
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"I think he's a real likable kind of fellow?" He's a mass murderer!
[Read the article: The scruffy charms of an insecure president]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush has launched and stoked a calamity that has resulted in the deaths of perhaps a million Iraqis, extrapolating from the Johns Hopkins studies. He has created somewhere between two milion and six million internal and external refugees. He has perhaps permanently destablized the Middle East, supporting the proposed attack on Iran. He approved, paid for and armed the Israelis as they laid waste to Lebanon and Gaza, and turned the West Bank into bantustans. In his spare time he's wrecked the EPA, the FCC, the Federal bench, and has left New Orleans to drown. He's the head of perhaps the greatest kleptocracy in history.
And Draper thinks "he's a real likable kind of fellow?"
Who else would Draper have found personally likable? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Suharto? Mao Tse Tung? Attilla the Hun? What exactly would it take for Draper to loathe an individual?