Why is organic farming now considered bad, and are farmers hoarding land if they don’t to sell and pay inheritance tax when the property is passed from generation to generation? When we should be celebrating our bounty the climate change cult wants us to abandon what makes us healthy and independent.
Michigan Joins Push To Limit Organic Farming
In the past we have discussed how Michigan Department of Agriculture and Recreational development (MDARD) has exceeded authority and destroyed farm coop products.
Show Notes: Be Destructive and Fractionalize
Raw Milk Wars
In Chapter 6 COVID Tools of Tyranny On The Road To Severed Conscience of our book Severed Conscience we described the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and their tyrannical tactics during COVID. They were responsible for the arrest of a Holland MI Pizzeria Owner
They are now using Avian Flu as an excuse to intervene in the private transactions of co-op members and prevent the distribution of raw milk products, even if they are for pets.
A cooperative of several small southwest Michigan farms is fighting back after the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development recently seized $90,000 worth of raw dairy products.
The Whitmer administration raided Nourish Cooperative on May 28 over the sale of raw dairy products, seizing $90,000 worth of milk and butter the government deemed dangerous for human consumption.
Michigan Department of Agriculture (in red and green) has seized $90k worth of raw dairy from Nourished Co-Op.
— Harry Gray 🥩⚡️ (@MeatMafiaHarry) July 3, 2024
The two Michigan Department of Agriculture employees watched on since they were unwilling to do the raid themselves.
If you care to learn more check out the links… pic.twitter.com/459KUNGroP
At least one person in Michigan sickened by E.coli linked to organic carrots
A national E.coli outbreak linked to organic carrots has reached Michigan. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sunday that at least one person in the state has been infected.
The outbreak has infected 39 people and hospitalized 15 across 18 states. The CDC also reported one death.
Federal officials have linked the outbreak to organic whole and baby carrots sold by Grimmway Farms, headquartered in Bakersfield, Calif,. The supplier has issued a recall on organic whole carrots that were available for purchase at retail stores from Aug. 14 through Oct. 23. and organic baby carrots with best-if-used-by dates from Sept.11 through Nov 12.
MIT Study on Organic Farming Being Bad
“The key message from my perspective is that you can’t really have your cake and eat it,” says Laurence Smith, now at the Royal Agricultural University in the UK, who was part of the team that performed the analysis. Smith is a proponent of organic farming and says “there are a lot of benefits to the organic approach”. But his analysis shows organic farming has downsides too.
But going 100 per cent organic could harm global biodiversity. Again, this is because there would need to be more land used for farming and so the land available just for wildlife would be smaller and more fragmented.
- While organic farming practices can reduce direct greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, they require more land to produce the same amount of food as conventional farming.
- Clearing additional land for organic farming, especially converting carbon-storing grasslands, can lead to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, outweighing the initial reductions.
- A study analyzing the impact of a complete shift to organic farming in England and Wales found that it would reduce direct emissions from livestock by 5% and crops by 20% per unit of production. However, it would also reduce yields by 40%, necessitating increased food imports.
- Meeting the increased food demand through land conversion, particularly from grasslands, could increase overall greenhouse gas emissions by 21%.
Cutting Out Big Agra
The WEF wants to re-engineer seeds to reduce the need for nitrogen. Note that this all leads to centralization.
- Organic farming prohibits the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms, which are key to increasing crop yields in conventional farming.
- Organic farmers rely on animal manure, compost, and crop rotation to maintain soil health and fertility, but these methods are less effective at boosting yields compared to synthetic fertilizers.
- The nitrogen-fixing legumes used in organic crop rotation take up space that could be used for food crops, further contributing to the need for more land.
- The study emphasizes the need to find ways to reduce emissions and pollution from synthetic fertilizers without requiring more land for agriculture. [7]
- Researchers and startups are exploring alternative solutions, including developing new agricultural inputs that reduce emissions without sacrificing yields, creating crops that absorb more nitrogen from soil, and developing meat and milk alternatives.
Technocratic Research
https://sustainability.mit.edu/article/making-agriculture-more-resilient-climate-change
This energy intensive process accounts for about 1.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the transportation required to deliver it to farms around the world adds even more emissions.
What we’re trying to do is make tools that get information into the hands of farmers very quickly, fast enough for them to make adaptive decisions that can increase yield,” Strano says. “We’re in the middle of a revolution of really understanding the way in which plants internally communicate and communicate with other plants.”
This kind of sensing could be deployed in fields, where it could help farmers respond more quickly to drought and other stresses, or in greenhouses, vertical farms, and other types of indoor farms that use technology to grow crops in a controlled environment.
Varanasi and his students began exploring strategies to make drops of pesticide stick to leaves better, instead of bouncing off. They found that if they added polymers with positive and negative charges, the oppositely charged droplets would form a hydrophilic (water-attracting) coating on the leaf surface, which helps the next droplets applied to stick to the leaf.
During the testing for this product, they realized that there weren’t any good ways to measure how many of the droplets were staying on the plant. That led them to develop a product known as RealCoverage, which is based on machine vision. It can be attached to any pesticide sprayer and offer real-time feedback on what percentage of the pesticide droplets are sticking to and staying on every leaf.
COP Summits Are Our Only Hope
More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been operating in and around Cop29, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. Many, including Greta Thunberg, now argue that the UN climate process has been entirely hijacked by corporate interests, reduced to a global stage for greenwash.
Diplomacy in this space has led to the recognition of 1.5C as a critical threshold. It has led to recognition, even as we wait for the world’s richest countries to put some money in the bucket created, of the need for global finance for loss and damage. Progress has not been enough and too slow. But how does a new world come into existence?
Given Trump’s longstanding commitment to climate denial, his second presidency is unquestionably a disaster that will slow the transition just when we need to accelerate it. But it’s also entirely conceivable that, whatever the US does over the next four years, the momentum of a new world order will continue to be fashioned through future Cops in Brazil and Australia, as well as in other forums – and that, as the transition continues to gather pace, America’s abstention will not derail the process but open up a space of new possibility.
Because US Is Stepping Back, Who Will Lead Climate Change Fight? China
None of this is driven by “altruism” on China’s part,” Prof Jacobs continues.
According to Li Shuo, the shifting economics of renewables explains why China is likely to be a bigger player.
“The green transformation is very much being led by China – not necessarily the government, but its private sector and companies”. These companies lead the rest of the world by what Li Shuo says is a “very significant margin”.
Eight out of every ten solar panels are made in China, and it controls some two-thirds of wind turbine production. It is reckoned to produce at least three-quarters of the world’s lithium batteries and more than 60% of the global market for electric vehicles.
AI Is At the Center of WEF Vision For Agriculture
In previous episodes we have discussed the WEF plans for monitoring.
Show Notes: Food Wars – Want Fries With Your Bug Burger?
The New Plan: Individualized Diet Guided By AI
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/06/renovation-reinvention-food/
Advances in technology such as AI and data analytics could create diets unique to an individual’s genetic make-up, lifestyle factors and health goals. Personalized nutrition can also minimize food waste by matching individuals with meal plans that use ingredients efficiently and effectively, reducing the overall environmental impact of food production and disposal.
Farmers are Hoarding Land
As importantly, a key principle that has underpinned all human societies – that we have a right to share in the bounty of inherited assets – will be reaffirmed. Whether ancient Rome or feudal Europe, societies have taken the view that just because an individual got lucky and came out of the right womb, they are not entitled to inherit everything without paying some levy or tribute on their inherited wealth. After all, wealth is enjoyed in a societal context and society made a contribution to the existence of the wealth. Of course society should share in the transfer, if only in a minor way, and the principle should extend to everyone, with as few exceptions as possible. Far from a death tax, it is a life tax on undeserved good luck.
Selling a little of the estate to pay inheritance tax is off limits; instead, the assumption is that the tax will have to be paid from the business’s cashflow, to preserve the estate in perpetuity – hence the over-egged predictions of devastation.
argument must be made from first principles. Inheritance tax springs from the universally held belief that society has the right to share when wealth is transferred on death as a matter of justice. This is not confiscation, especially if the lion’s share of the bequest is left intact. It is asking for a share. The principle should apply to all estates and to everyone. It is fair. It limits the entrenchment of wealth and privilege. It breaks up monopoly, especially of land. It enlarges the tax base. It gives the next generation a chance. Any other argument is the special pleading of plutocrats – and should be seen as such.
AI Demands Too Much Energy
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/ais-insatiable-appetite-energy-threatens-irelands-grid
Artificial intelligence requires a stunning amount of energy to train and power its complex computation systems. Currently, the approximate amount of energy needed to sustain the sector’s growth is doubling every 100 days. At a global level, the AI sector alone could be responsible for 3.5 percent of all energy consumption by 2030 according to expert projections. “When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, an electricity regulator, told the Washington Post earlier this year. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
Already, the yearly power consumption of AI is more than most entire countries – only 16 nations in the entire world consume more annually. Ireland is a hotspot country – along with Saudi Arabia and Malaysia – where existing energy supplies are simply insufficient to power the data centers currently planned. “The almost overnight surge in electricity demand from data centers is now outstripping the available power supply in many parts of the world,” Bloomberg reported in June
The Folly of Batteries for All
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/home-based-battery-storage-fantasy
At a cost of around $12,000 installed, that translates into a cost of $36,000 per home. The U.S. has over 80 million single-family homes and over 130 million dwelling units. Hence, 240 million Powerwall units would be required just for single-family homes, costing almost $3 trillion. By comparison, Tesla’s current manufacturing capacity is 700,000 units per year. Thus, outfitting all single-family homes with them would require almost 350 years of Powerwall production. The minerals requirements would also be staggering and would require mining billions of tons of ore for the necessary lithium, copper, cobalt, and other metals.
In theory, an electric system could be designed to provide reliable service using wind, solar, and battery storage. However, in reality, huge investments would still be required in new transmission and distribution lines, regardless of how many storage batteries are installed. It would also be ruinously expensive.
Data Centers Take Primacy Over Zoning and Farmland
When Michigan approved subsidies for a data center in Grand Rapids in 2015, the data storage company Switch promised it would create 1,000 jobs.
A 2022 state report said Switch had created 26 jobs or 2.6% of its promised goal.
Despite that broken promise, last week, the Legislature approved House Bill 4906 to extend to exempt large data centers from sales and use taxes until 2050. Some exemptions will last until 2066.
The bill would reduce state and local revenue between $52.5 million through fiscal year 2065-66, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency. The loss to the general fund could exceed $90 million
“That’s why the promises of follow-on high-tech development around data centers almost never deliver,” Mozena said. “Developers say that companies will come to town to be near the data center, but only a tiny fraction of very specific industries, such as high-speed Wall Street trading firms, need to be physically close to the data centers they’re using. Otherwise, data centers and IT companies are often looking for very different things in the site selection process. Data centers care about cheap land, power and water, in places with a low risk of natural disasters. IT firms, however, are almost entirely focused on the availability of a skilled local IT workforce.”
Eagle Township Survives
It was applause and celebrations at Thursday’s Eagle Township Board meeting.
“This just shows what a township can do with the right people saying ‘no,’” one resident told the board. “So thank you!”
“Some places want economic development; it’s not a bad thing,” said local Cori Feldpausch, who led the charge to quash a proposed EV mega site. “What I don’t like is when it’s forced onto a community without them saying, ‘Yes, this is what we want.’”