Masks
We have the best mask on our face. Our nose is the most efficient mask one can imagine. Breathe through your nose and keep your mouth shut and you’ll be a happy healthy person immune to all viruses
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Another vote for Dr Elaine Ingham and her superb work!
The soil food web approach is a solution to many of the problems created by coventional ag - or as she prefers to call it “toxic chemical agriculture” - may as well call it what it is.
When I first came across it, I assumed that it would be applicable at a small scale horticultural/ intensive gardening level. What I found surprising & encouraging
is that is that it can scale up to large farm level, there’s one farmer using the soil food web approach on a 10,000 acre arable property and many others on farms of several hundred acres.
I think she would make an excellent guest for Chris to interview.
Anyway, back to making my compost piles and squinting through my microscope.
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yikes.
Thx for data!
General Foods Plant Hit By Plane
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18337149/general-mills-covington-georgia-fire-plane-crash-live/
The plant had some tractor trailers destroyed but the plant is okay. I guess he missed. Too soon?
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For What It’s Worth
As a long time subscriber to Azure Standard, I was saddened to hear of the fire to HQ. I agree with the context that Chris lays out. There’s just too broad an array of attacks on food production recently. Still, for what it’s worth, this was the report summary of the arson investigation sent to members of Azure yesterday. I can’t speak to plausibility. Just wanted to share with the community.
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A “tote of corn in a cooler?”
Well, okay then. Seems odd, but these things can happen…
I wonder how easy it is for an experienced arsonist to fool a fire marshall? You know, like a Dexter but in the field of arson instead of homicide lab work.
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My thoughts exactly…
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I received the email with the press release also and thought the same as you Chris. But there was another interesting video in the email which causes me to question the official explanation. I put it here for any fire investigators to opine. I’ve been witness to a couple massive accidental fires and neither burned this uniformly at the height of the burn. https://m.youtube.com/watch?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=210767919&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9jbY1ocS5KPvFINXk4YGiVjhdxLXNvL-EetxjUoinmyFKuKIu0paj4OIlkszsV3a2_LzMsUxEW90_qRh7NAUJRRa_YZA&utm_content=210766285&utm_source=hs_email&v=JFsywssQnEQ&feature=youtu.be
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Chris Watch Your Accuracy On The Sound Bytes! There Are No Burning Farms, Just Plants
At 1:40 and 3:40 you say this is about “Burning Farms” and then start to talk about destruction of food processing plants. You did not document a single burning farm. Burning up food might have been appropriate?
Since you’ve become a farmer, surely you now understand the difference between a Farm and a Food Processor?? Make sure your city viewers get it too.
There are now automated farms and we could loose a lot of this fall’s food quickly if the systems that feed cattle and control planting and fertilizing equipment go down. We can plant and feed without automation, but it is slow, produced lower yields, and needs manual labor farmers can’t hire.
Now to be honest, Farms DO burn. I’ve seen it. When I was a child in a one room country school, the farmer next door - up wind - set the corn and wheat stubble on his hill ablaze with a spark from his ancient tractor. The kids were piled in the car and the teacher was about to race away when there was a scream to stop. A child had seen the farmer running toward us with flames at his heals. I can still remember the teacher backing up through the very rough field, where he jumped on the running board and we then sped away.
When old farmers see smoke, particularly during a dry spring or fall, all the neighbors hook up their plows and begin to cut fire breaks through the fields upwind of the farm buildings. They saved the school and a farm downwind. I’ve seen it a couple dozen times. My parents had probably seen it a hundred times. And this is a wet area. In the more arid high plains, it doesn’t take long to burn a thousand acres - I’ve seen “grass fires” move faster than most non-pine forest fires.
There is a place where food processing and farms tend to blend - Industrial agribusiness factory farms. Grain silos are especially explosive and indoor storage of wet hay can cause a fire. Huge turkey barns, large milking facilities for dairy, huge chicken barns could be burned. Lets keep an eye out for the burning of on-farm processing facilities. In a drought, an “accidental” grass fire started upwind could reach facilities. Also, there are more high wind days in the last few seasons. If it’s dry any small flame could get out of hand.
For those of you who do own a rural acreage, have a fire plan. Find out where your official fire department is and how long it would take them to get there. Many of your younger neighbors may not be familiar with control of field fires. It might be good to chat them up and develop a cooperative plan.
Decide if you can set up more permanent fire breaks. Which of you have equipment that could cut a firebreak (plows, tillers, brush hogs, etc.) and how easy can you get them going in an emergency. Do you have a pumpable water supple? Also, if you have animals in barns or sheds, you might need a cooperative effort to get them out to safety. When you see fire in the country, pay attention. Someone could need your help. A fire kit might be as important as a go-bag.
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Uk Food Crisis
These articles from the last few weeks show the UK is really in trouble with food.
Egg production down due to costs and bird flu, thousands of birds culled, the owners saying they’re gonna give up.
Milk production costs through the roof, prices up around 50%in the supermarkets.
Pig producers too.
It’s as if anything that’s not vegan is in real trouble!
Then again fertilisers are up something ridiculous like 300%.
This is not going to be pretty.
https://inews.co.uk/news/free-range-egg-producers-crisis-industry-perfect-storm-rising-costs-virus-1576970
https://www.cityam.com/dairy-crisis-looming-as-british-farmers-warn-out-of-control-milk-price-rise-is-creating-acute-shortage-of-cheese/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/milk-shortages-farmers-wage-increase-b2043812.html
https://www.farminglife.com/country-and-farming/egg-industry-in-crisis-uk-retailers-must-take-urgent-action-in-next-two-weeks-3634679
https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/farm-policy/britain-braced-for-food-crisis-as-rising-costs-hammer-farmers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-60516864
https://www.poultrynews.co.uk/production/egg-production/british-egg-industry-crisis-as-production-costs-soar.html
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Here is another supplement to this. Unwinding is not an accident or economic predicament, it’s a political one. https://youtu.be/tzIPJfqFETU
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I received the same email from Azure. Is it really possible for a tote of high moisture content corn in a cooler to spontaneously combust…really? I’ve heard of some kerosene soaked rags doing it, maybe, but high moisture corn all packed tight with no oxygen in a tote. I burn stuff all the time and I’m not really sure what I’d have to do to get that tote of corn to catch fire, but I’m pretty sure it would take some diesel and a propane torch.
“The marshal stated the fire started in a tote of rolled corn which was being temporarily stored in a cooler, at the Azure headquarters due to receiving an oversupply in the company’s warehouse. “There are two ways that it may have started,” according to the marshal. “Because of the high moisture content of the corn, it could have started smoldering on its own and self-combusted or the tote or corn dust could have come in close contact to a nearby electrical outlet, shorted the electrical wiring and sparked the tote of corn,” she concluded.”
Also, wouldn’t that facility have fire suppression? why would such a large facility burn to the ground like that if it did have fire suppression?
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Yet Another Article On Burning Food Facilities
The author does a decent job of compiling this long and growing list:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/fire/
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They make buckets that allow you to take baby potatoes out of the bottom as they grow.
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Not much food for animals already as Biden decided to up the demand for ethanol in gasoline. The last time this happened, petrochemicals producers bought grain away from farmers. It’s getting worse
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I’m wrong I think. I tried to find the news story on hailto mountain poultry farm but couldn’t find it to see if it is a farm or a processing plant
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*Hamilton
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