All Afghanistan REALLY Wants Is…

While it may sound simplistic,

I have long maintained – and in the last 20 years often said – that what the United States needs to do with regard to Afghanistan, is…

Send select, expert teams from the USDA, about 40 or 50 John Deere tractors, combines, and various other farming & harvesting equipment (and give JD a tax break for donating them, they’ll appreciate that) — and truckloads of seed corn, wheat, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, and other foodstuffs, including silage/forage, and show the people how to use and care for the tractors, plant, tend, and harvest, the crops, care for/manage the soil, and their animals.

Why?

All those people REALLY want to do is:

1.) Feed themselves, and;

2.) Feed their livestock.

Help them solve those two problems, and we’ll have a friend for life.

And, for the faithful, there’s this matter to consider as well:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. If you do this, you will make him feel guilty and ashamed.”
— Romans 12:20 (GWT)

The Nation Suffers From Severe Localized Food Insecurity:

Due to civil conflict, population displacement, and economic slowdown – the food security situation worsened in recent months due to the impact of COVID‑19 as informal labor opportunities and remittances declined; between November 2020 and March 2021, about 13.15 million people were estimated to be in severe acute food insecurity and to require urgent humanitarian assistance, including 8.52 million people in “Crisis” and 4.3 million people in “Emergency”; the food security of the vulnerable populations, including IDPs (Internally Displaced People) and the urban poor, is likely to deteriorate as curfews and restrictions on movements to contain the COVID‑19 outbreak limit the employment opportunities for casual laborers (2021).

Yes, there are problems to be overcome – most notably low education levels perhaps being the most problematic – and the language barrier can be, and has been, relatively easily overcome. But education

Big Beer Still Bets on Lager

If you’re a beer drinker, if you enjoy quaffing the suds, a cold one after work, or on a summer day, you may be interested to know that Anheuser-Busch (now Anheuser-Busch InBev), Molson, Coors (now MolsonCoors), Miller (now SABMiller) are NOT American-owned companies.

That’s right.

They’re foreign-owned, multinational corporations – every one.

The Craft Brew Beer industry in America is the antithesis of Big Beer, which in large part, developed as a result of consistently poor quality products made by Big Beer, and their inattention to customers. The emergence of me-too wanna’ be ‘craft brewed beers’ made by Big Beer is a sure sign that they’ve noticed what’s happening – a reduction in beer consumption, i.e., their sales.

Those sales have gone to micro & craft brewed beer, and their American-made, locally-sourced mom & pop competitors.

More power to locally sourced craft brewed beers!

Cheers!

***

Why Lager Is the Future of Craft Beer

BY Jason Notte | 06/19/14 – 10:00 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. (TheStreet) — Small craft brewers and the craft divisions of huge international breweries can talk about wheat beers, shandies and even IPA all they’d like: This is still lager country.

Despite recent gains by craft beer and recent shifts by Anheuser-Busch InBev, MolsonCoors and SABMiller toward brands including Blue Moon, Shock Top, Goose Island and Leinenkugel’s, the overwhelming majority of beer sold in this country is lager or some derivative thereof. It’s been so relentless and pervasive that even hard-line craft beer advocates have begun embracing it in its light, familiar form.

Consider that MolsonCoors/SABMiller’s MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev still sell about 74% of the beer this nation drinks. Consider further that Corona and Heineken make up roughly another 10% of that market. Throw Pabst, Modelo and newly “craft” brewer Yuengling into the equation and 18 of the 20 best-selling beers in the U.S. are some form of either lager or pilsner.

You can argue that most are losing sales — and many including Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite and Busch are. But import brands including Heinkeken, Corona and Modelo saw sales rise even during the recession. The same holds true for Coors Light, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Yuengling, with each posting double-digit percentage point gains in 2012 alone, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.

The problem isn’t lager, but the overall beer market. The Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau reported a 1.5% decrease in overall beer sales and a 2.6-million barrel loss in beer production. That’s basically akin to shutting down Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams brand (which produced 2.7 million barrels in 2012) for an entire year. Beer consumption overall has fallen in four of the past five years, with many of the slumping mainstream brands responsible for the damage. That has reduced reduced beer’s share of the overall alcohol market from 55% in 2000 to 49% in 2012. Meanwhile, craft beer volume increased by an estimated 15% last year, with imports putting up roughly 5% growth.

The Beer Institute, a beer industry organization based in Washington, points out that

An Encyclopedic Investment

The word ‘encyclopedic’ is often thought of as meaning voluminous, or containing great, or significant knowledge. However, even a casual examination of the word shows something entirely different.

In the middle of the word is ‘cyclo,’ which as we would imagine, refers to something circular, or round. Who hasn’t heard of a bi-cycle, a cycle with two wheels?

And then, there’s ‘pedia,’ and we’ve all heard of ‘pediatrics,’ the health practice concerned exclusively with children. Children, of course, need instruction and teaching.

Thus, we can

Draught Raises Corn Price, Milk Profits fall, Cows get Slaughtered

Regardless whether global climate change is man-made, or cyclical… it’s going to affect us all, and we would be wise to DO SOMETHING to PRESERVE, PROTECT and DEFEND ourselves NOW!

—

Milk-Cow Drought Culling Accelerates as Prices Jump: Commodities

U.S. milk production is headed for the biggest contraction in 12 years as a drought-fueled surge in feed costs drives more cows to slaughter.

Output will drop 0.5 percent to 198.9 billion pounds (90.2 million metric tons) in 2013 as the herd shrinks to an eight- year low, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Milk futures rose 45 percent since mid-April and may advance at least another 19 percent to a record $25 per 100 pounds by June, said Shawn Hackett. The president of Boynton Beach, Florida-based Hackett Financial Advisers Inc. correctly predicted the rally in March.

Dairies in California, the top milk-producing state, are filing for bankruptcy, and U.S. cows are being slaughtered at the fastest rate in more than a quarter century. Corn surged to a record in August as the USDA forecast the smallest crop in six years because of drought across the U.S. Global dairy prices tracked by the United Nations rose 6.9 percent last month, the most among the five food groups monitored, and that will probably mean record costs next year, Rabobank estimates.

“Farmers can’t afford to buy as much grain and protein, and that affects milk production,” said Bob Cropp, an economist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has been following the industry since 1966. “In California, there’ve been some foreclosures and some sell-off of cows quite heavily. You’re going to see that in other parts of the country.”

Mercantile Exchange

Class III milk, used to make cheese, jumped 22 percent to $21.05 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this year. That’s more than 21 of the 24 commodities in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index, which rose 1.8 percent. The MSCI All-Country World Index (MXWD) of equities climbed 12 percent, and Treasuries

It’s official… I’m a nerd.

Image via Wikipedia Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Hey!

What do you read for fun?

It seemed an entirely apropos title for this entry.

What DO I read “for fun”?

Well, here are two excerpts from items I’m now reading.

Ever feel like cattle in a feedlot? High Fructose Corn Syrup works wonders!

Researchers at Princeton University have discovered what farmers have known for many years.

Corn will make you fat.

Corn chips, tortillas, corn meal, grits, hominy, raw corn, corn on the cob, creamed corn, sweet corn, pop corn… there are a veritable host of corn food products.

“But I don’t eat corn!,” you may say.

Sure you do.

Just read the ingredients labels of the foods you purchase.

Many, if not most, foods contain “High Fructose Corn Syrup,” which can be found in most unlikely of foods.

Ingredients are listed in order of concentration, from highest to lowest. Often, High Fructose Corn Syrup is