Satellites give clues about the coming global harvest
bbc.com
bbc.com
Skip the first 92 pages and go straight to 93-96 which give a total rundown of all US crop acreage and production, from corn and soybeans down to maple syrup and peppermint oil. Continue with page 97 which has a complete month-by-month rundown on US weather with comments on impact on specific crops.
Comprehensive.
I would imagine so. Something like this was a key part of the plot to the 80s comedy movie Trading Places.
I had tried some initial URL hacking that didn't work, but think I found the set here: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/k35694...
I'm not sure if this is true still today. But, I doubt they're counting every successful crop correctly. And, there's a lot that can happen before they are actually harvested; floods, insects, blight, drought, etc. For example, there'd be a huge drought and the USDA would announce a bumper crop and he'd laugh. And, that was recent.
Either way, past data is probably pretty suspect. And, today's data might have the same problem. Which means if you're basing prediction models on this you might expect to be disappointed when things don't pan out. This is especially dangerous if we enter an era where food becomes more scarce. It is an accounting issue if you think about it.
It possible that the made up numbers were discarded because they were bad predictors because they were made up.
GIS was all the rage, we collected satellite images over Europe, weather and market data and where able to model the date and volume of crop to enter the market. Fact being that we can get an indication of a given crop maturity status from its reflectance, thus how far from ripe it is, see https://gisgeography.com/ndvi-normalized-difference-vegetati... I guess when can train better models nowadays.
In the end, these estimations allowed for… drum roll… speculation.
I just remember chatting way back with an insurance agent that insures crop growth and yields and how much is in a silo and I thought it was all interesting.
Farmers and orgs, probably more the later buy policies that are payable in fiat cash for underproduction or loss. The loss makes sense, but I didn't think it was that big of a market.
I'm hoping there's a way to get their wheat while simultaneously screwing them over back to the dark ages.
This makes me almost as angry as the West investing in more oil and gas in response to being held hostage by fossil fuel producers.
I read that less than 1% of the 18-29 year-old crowd "strongly approves" of DC's half-assed responses to these crises.
I hope they have the sense to vote in their own interest this fall. Sadly, the same polls say that, like most generations were before them, they're still young and stupid, and are planning to stay home from the polls. Some things never change.
Sincere question: has there ever been any examples in US history of 18-29 year olds strongly approving of any handling of something controversial?
Even if I did approve of how any administration handled anything I am sure that at best I would fall in the "approve" category. "Strongly approve" seems to imply (to me) that I believe an administration did the best they could in handling a situation.
Yeah, like politicians and, to a point, people that say what you said. I've never voted and never will. Not, i believe, through youth or stupidity, but because I've yet to have someone convince me why i should vote.
I'm a Carlinist ..here to watch the shitshow, not to take part in it. And yes, i do accept all that comes with whoever got voted in. Quite frankly, i havent for the life of me seen a damn bit of difference between the lot of them...anx tgeir moaning, complaining, self-righteous supporters.
Don't worry, your supremacist dreams won't come to pass. You can't take on Russia and the rest of the world is already too pissed with your chauvinism.
Good luck reaping what you sow.
We could do that if we'd only replace cow's milk with nut milk and significantly reduce our (egregious) meat consumption. Then we could reforest upto 75% of our fields and it would sure help repair the water cycle / climate instability (among other good things).
If we don't do it, things will get so bad, even west will weep. Good news - it's something even we as individuals can influence. Simply choose plant based food when you can, and help reduce our agricultural impact.
Btw, our fields are not nature - we have too many of them, they are in fact green deserts, it's all deforested land, they don't influence the weather / water cycle in a good way, they destroy biodiversity, they poison everything, even most people have pesticides in their bodies. Our current agricultural / dietary practices are killing the earth.
Sorry, need sleep, so no sources, but somebody has to say it - study it yourself.
Edit: wow, 2 downvotes in less than 1 minute. Let it rain, burger chompers ;)
A billion pounds of California almonds stranded at US ports
https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9442683/a-billion-pounds-...
And sorry, but california farms are not forests. A monoculture from horizon to horizon is bad practice not only for the grains, but for the trees also.
For example, if done right they wouldn't need to water / deplete ground water reservoirs and hoard bees from around the country every year.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-f...
With a national, concerted effort I think you could slowly make headway on milk at least. Subsidies, convert flavoured milks first, UHT if possible. In theory that is. In reality, not going to happen in a hurry.
I wonder if pricing will eventually influence the meat side. Patties and sausages become non-meat first, steaks increasingly become a luxury. As it is, I'm not confident budget sausages are quality so it wouldn't take much to take them down.
When for production of 1000kJ of food you need 120m2 of land to produce beef vs. 1m2 of land to produce beans/peas, the unsubsidized market would take care of the problem. Let the capitalism work for us for once ;)
Agree that meat is very inefficient. But…
Dairy animals concentrate the calories on land that can’t be mechanically farmed, converting them into human-usable nutrition.
Even dairy animals on a conventional dairy farm upcycle calories - just searched and learned dairy farmers can boost a cow’s low-quality straw diet with cottonseed meal (high protein). Humans don’t eat cottonseed meal.
I’ve known people with a single dairy cow, or a few dairy goats. I don’t think “nut milk” works without a nut milk factory.
You are mistaken.
Take 20-100g of any nuts (or oat flakes, or cooked rice/potatoes, what have you), 1-2 dates (or a pinch of sugar), 1 litre of water, and put it in the blender. Filter it through a sieve.
You've got milk, no factory needed !
Milk is heavily subsidized, nuts are not. We could integrate (nut) trees into our agricultural fields, it would help with local temperatures, water retention, soil erosion, biodiversity, nutrition availability, the list is endless ... and the price of nuts would go rapidly down.
> require a gasoline to be transported to places that are quite close to actual cows
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p0c41fcj.webp - Emissions (in kg CO2e) from the food supply chain – the climate impact of food miles is often a small proportion (Source: Our World in Data/Poore and Nemecek, Science, 2018)
> that thing you described does not sound like milk
That is a universal recipe for a plant based milk (lookup some recipes on the net if you don't believe it).
Cows live where I live. They spend most of the year outside. They definitely dont take 75% of fields for themselves, most of fields are for crops of various kind.
> That is a universal recipe for a plant based milk (lookup some recipes on the net if you don't believe it).
Factually, it is rice + nuts. I can take apple juice and call it non-alcoholic wine, but it wont be wine.
> Planting a lot of means changing local biodiversity for the artificially create one
People have been deforesting (fires etc.) the land for the last 10000 years or so, maybe even longer. So what you see, what you're accustomed to, is already a changed, artificial environment.
> ... cows ... spend most of the year outside. They definitely dont take 75% of fields for themselves, most of fields are for crops of various kind.
Yes, they do take as much.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
> apple juice and call it non-alcoholic wine
Let it sit for a while and you'll have an alcoholic apple wine :)
And no, cows where I live don't take 75% of the fields. And people here do drink quite a lot of milk, most of it local. Maybe elsewhere cows they do take huge amount of space, but not here.
Also, quite a lot of what is pasture is a place unsuitable for crops. That is why it is used for pasture.
Yes Almond Milk does contain Vitamine D, but not as much. Cows milk is way more nutritious while Nut based Milk frequently contain added vitamin D, calcium, and protein.
Other books by him I’ve enjoyed are 2312, set in the solar system in the year 2312, and then of course the Mars trilogy.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Weir
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin
Older:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga
Newer, leans fantasy (Siege and Engineer trilogies):
There is someone with access to that data (dB administrators). They are registered with the SEC as someone not allowed to trade go ensure there is no temptation to look at it.
I don't speak for the company above.
10 years ago farmers used memory cards for this so it didn't cross the internet. Some are remote enough that they can't get even 2g signal and still do that, but most are happy it is just done for them.
Though one of the big drivers for farmers to do this is seed companies gave customers a large discount if they share data with them. The seed companies say they use it only to see how different genetics work in the real world, but any farmer sharing with them has to trust them.
My standard response at the moment is something along the lines of "If the house is burning down and water is not flowing from the fire hydrant, you don't stop to measure the water pressue".
The assertion that "you cannot improve something if you cannot measure it" IMHO promotes a lot of unproductive activity.
https://deming.org/myth-if-you-cant-measure-it-you-cant-mana...
I asked random people om the street with a microphone. They say the same thing. There are huge things that have now been set in motion, they cannot be easilly stopped
"Eventful" is hard to objectively quantify, but subjectively I certainly think that qualifies.
But, if you take a very big view of things, both the religious and science fanatics believe the world is ending. They have different reasons, of course. Nonetheless, the world is not ending.
Obviously the world has not ended yet, but that doesn't mean all of history was equally uneventful or pleasant to live through. I'm not saying the world is going to end in the next decade, I'm just saying that it stands to be "eventful", and quite likely not in a good way.
Which decades were "uneventful"?
I feel pretty comfortable saying the 1990s were less eventful in the US than the 1930s, not that I think you're responding in good faith.
I agree the 90s were great, but I'll admit I was born in '92. So I might be biased.
I don't know what you mean by "good faith". I don't think the farmers are the short sighted ones here. They are farmers. They might be little bit interested in the long view, as hear it takes many months to grow food, and years to raise livestock. Again, I don't know, I just go to the grocery store. I hope in 10 years, whatever the farmers are protesting about, the Netherlanders can enjoy a burger [1][2], just like I do.
[1]"The ruling coalition has earmarked an extra 24.3 billion euros ($25.6bn) to finance changes that will likely make many farmers drastically reduce their number of livestock or get rid of them altogether." https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/22/thousands-of-dutch-...
[2]"According to government estimates, this could lead to the shutting down of about 30 per cent of livestock farms." https://thewest.com.au/politics/dutch-farmers-block-roads-po...
That's not what it's about. Farmers in NL are protesting because the government wants to slash NITROGEN emissions; which are associated with synthetic fertilisers and composting. It has nothing to do with CO2 emissions on tractors...
"Pulling a Giuliani" just seems like a weird expression. First, the events weren't all that comparable - 9/11 versus an hours long riot. If the worst terrorist attack on American soil didn't weaken democracy enough for a mayor to take a third term, why would a protest turned riot overthrow the presidency? Second, what Giuliani tried wasn't even that bad. And, third, not even Giuliani could pull off a Giuliani.
Personally, people who think the January 6 riot was some coup seem a bit hyperbolic to me. Was it a coup attempt when violent protesters attacked Trump's inauguration? I'd say no, of course not. Neither was January 6th.
Russian army is losing.
Ghost of Kieve.
Putin is unhinged.
NATO more United than ever
That's the propaganda and rehtoric.
Ukraine was yet another massive failure from the ruling elite.
Their attempted fix, extreme sanctions has made things worse... for us and many millions of people in the world.
Reality is catching up to the propaganda. I have no idea why generation after generation keeps calling for it and going on these disastrous adventures.
Empty stomachs breed political unrest. A human constant.
Even in middle school history class we were taught that the 1930's rise of fascism wouldn't be possible without the economic downturn that preceded it. And that the French Revolution never would've happened without huge inequalities.
Now this may have been socialist propaganda (middle school was ~6 years after Yugoslavia), but a lot of it rings true.
And it isn't always fascist authoritarianism either. 1910's Russia and 1930's China got the communist kind. 1940's Balkans got both kinds, but communists won the civil war.
Other than superficial rhetoric, there is not a lot of substantive difference between Lenin/Stalin/Maoism and the common factors set of things that are more commonly referred to as fascism (Italian Fascism, German Naziism, etc.)
Fascists usually collaborate with the rich whereas communists tend to strip their wealth. At least that’s my lay understanding.
Not as much as the rhetoric makes it seems.
> Fascists usually collaborate with the rich whereas communists tend to strip their wealth.
Fascists usually integrate the rich that the leadership doesn’t have some other reason to hate into the system, while liquidating those–and not always just their holdings–that don’t fit that description, even if wealthy, so long as they are willing to cooperate, retaining their nominal property but with their actual power and influence more determined by their degree of attachment to the regime, not their nominal ownership of property (that’s a consequence of the authoritarian corporatist–viewing all institutions of society as necessary subordinate to a single vision–aspect of fascism.)
Leninists (et al.)…do pretty much the same thing, except that they are more likely to not allow even nominal ownership of property. But since Leninism is (and its derivates are) also an authoritarian corporatist system, it is not ownership of property but position (formal or informal) in the ruling heirarchy that really allows you direct the use of property, just as in fascism.
You’re right that the Chinese communist revolution happened in 1948. For some reason I thought it was 10 years earlier.
The rise of the today's Russian fascism has followed exactly the same path as in Germany back then - a lost war (Afghanistan and Cold War) resulting in the crash of empire followed by a decade of economic hardship resulting in the rise of a "strong man" regime with all the same trappings of revanchism, "master nation" ideology, total suppression of basic liberties and democratic institutions, etc. (even the triggers used by the regime to grab the total governmental power are very similar - Reichstag fire in Germany and the FSB bombing of apartment buildings in 1999.) And so far we've had annexation of Crimea being extremely similar to the annexation of Sudetenlend back then, and the current stage - Ukraine invasion - is the start of the actual implementation of Lebensraum (Polish invasion back then) - last time it led directly to WWII, and i don't see how we can cheat the historic logic this time.
Hitler was outsider to political power, building his party from bottom. Putin represents continuity with soviet era. He was insider whole time.
Reichstag fire in Germany and the FSB bombing of apartment are quite different also, among other things because it was not inside job as FSB bomving was.
I could continue, but this comparison just does not compute.
Every society is 3 meals away from chaos. - Lenin
And similar goes with french revolution. The old regime was getting weak every day and unsustainable.
> In the four years following the First World War, the situation for German civilians remained dire. The severe food shortages improved little to none up until 1923.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic#Burden_from_th...
Hitler took power in 1933. And the stab in the back myth was more motivating thing for these groups then purely economic issues.
The yet other factors was Germany being heavily militaristic state, both ideologically and practically. Government employing primary military man on all levels, democracy not really functioning and being a mess. The whole country was violent mess.