#Intensive subsistence farming

[fatehbaz]

It is always tempting to begin with problems of definition. It is particularly so for this project as there is little consensus regarding what, exactly, constitutes a desert. Throughout the twentieth century, scientists have struggled to arrive at a comprehensive definition, but today deserts are generally defined in terms of rainfall (along with temperature and humidity), even though parts of the Kalahari and Australian arid regions have a rainfall that exceeds the standard definition of 10 inches a year. Aridity – the rate at which water evaporates – is often more important than rainfall. Ultimately, scientific definitions of the desert are relative to the regions being classified.

The geologist Michael Welland remarks that ‘how you choose to define a desert depends very much on why you wish to do so in the first place’. [...]

In the environmental sciences, meanwhile, there is much debate about ‘desertification’, meaning the degradation or loss of arable land due to deforestation, intensive farming, drought, climate change and other factors. Dryland researchers David Thomas and Nicholas Middleton [...] [argue] that the use of the term ‘desertification’ since the 1970s to talk about soil degradation, drought and the misuse of land draws on [...] European cultural fears about the colonial periphery and non-European forms of agriculture.

The term itself originated in the late nineteenth century in French colonial North Africa [...]. The absence of a universal definition of what a desert is in the strict physical sense is thus particularly notable in the history and politics of the idea of desertification. The forced settlement of nomads has a long history in colonial policy, and a certain image of the desert as a place of nefarious rootlessness has accompanied this. The French sought to settle nomads not only for perceived ecological benefits but because it was part of their mission civilisatrice. Today, it is recognised that one of the major causes of land degradation in Africa has in fact been ‘the conversion of nomadic pastoral societies to sedentary lifestyles with a focus on raising cash crops instead of subsistence ones’. In an excellent recent book, Hannah Holleman suggests, following climate researcher Joseph Romm, that ‘dust-bowlification’ is a more apposite term for the intertwined processes of drought and soil erosion that have marked the intensification of capitalist colonial agriculture since the late nineteenth century, the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s being a regional manifestation of much larger global processes affecting the viability and productivity of soil. Whatever its shortcomings, however, the term ‘desertification’ continues to be used widely to denote problems of drought, overgrazing and deforestation, which have been acknowledged as major problems occurring on every inhabited continent, with some accounts suggesting that arable land is being lost at a rate of 12 million hectares a year.

---

Text by: Aidan Tynan. “Desert Desire.” The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy: Wasteland Aesthetics. 2020.

[elancholia]

@oligopsoriasis I don't know if you're still interested in the farming thing, but, regarding your land efficiency vs. energy-efficiency thing:

My impression is that, when designing an agricultural system, the basic trade-off is labor against land area, i.e. you can reduce labor inputs by using more land and reduce your land footprint by sinking more labor into it.

In this framing, I think industrial row-crop monocultures are extensive rather than intensive, i.e. they sacrifice land to save labor as well as/rather than energy to save land. Sustainability and higher absolute production might well not mean using more land.

A lot of the articles and papers that talk about modern sustainable systems trumpet them as Actually Much More Efficient than “industrial” agriculture, when, really, they’re just opting for the other end of the ancient trade-off -- they lead with productivity statistics calculated entirely on land use, and quietly note somewhere down below that “of course, this takes vastly more work, and is devilishly complicated to maintain...”

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t a better bet! The point is, there are trade-offs to be made other than technology-i.e.-what-we-have-now/primitivism. It means we’d need more greenhouse-minders and algae-scrapers, yes, maybe even more people growing beans in raised beds, but that’s Jobs, not a return to peasant agriculture.

(I’m not really considering the original thing about hunting, meat just doesn’t seem likely to ever be efficient, except on marginal lands, where it couldn’t support modern population densities, alligators or no.)

[some rambling speculation about historical intensive systems:]

Anyway, historically, intensive, labor-heavy, small-land-footprint systems make sense if you have a lot of labor and not a lot of land, and include the various clever Native American polyculture systems (the chinampa, the three sisters), but also potato-farming (Ireland, before the famine, being prototypically labor-rich and area-poor: a densely-populated, highly fertile area in which people had to subsist on glorified garden-plots), modern Dutch-style greenhouse fruit/veg/cash-crop cultivation, maybe what the Cubans do. Wet rice cultivation and terrace-farms are possibly in this category. “Vertical farming”, if it’s not a nothingburger, probably will be too (multistory buildings are capital, capital is dead labor, lotta walking up stairs, etc.).

(Classic Geertzian involution is when you can’t get any more intensive, so you have to sink more people, more bodies, more hours into it, without hope of improving productivity per head.)

My conjecture is that intensive systems make more sense when you don’t have draft animals to give you access to a larger area and incentivize more drivable open layouts and planting/harvesting techniques.

[readingsquotes]

"

Aaron Bushnell, who died after setting himself ablaze in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.(Screenshot via CBS News)

"Bushnell begins with a pertinent self-identification, as an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. Given the sincerity of his last moment in uniform, it seems he was also announcing his vocation. He was someone who had signed up to sacrifice himself for the greater good, only to discover—as so many of us, myself included, have discovered—that he had signed up for the opposite: to become a willing accomplice to evil. 

Bushnell doesn’t spell out the precise nature of his complicity. But the mere mention of his branch of service suffices. The US Air Force has played a significant part in the killing spree in Gaza, assisting with intelligence and targeting. It has helped build Israeli airpower for decades now, and shares the same suppliers of aircraft, missiles, and munitions that have contributed to what the political scientist Robert Pape has called “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history, [now sitting] comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

The airman goes on to call the crime by its name: a genocide, an attempt at destroying a people. Their homes and farms and orchards and entire means of subsistence. Their schools and hospitals and universities. Their journalists and professors and teachers and students. The whole of their intelligentsia and their children—so many of their children. An unprecedented number, an almost instant mass killing of children too grotesque to even fathom for more than a second. Their museums and archives and age-old mosques and churches. Hundreds of registered ancient sites. Their past and present and future. Even their cemeteries, their last and only resting place.

[whentherewerebicycles]

good morning I fell asleep last night looking at photos of elderly women from my family’s part of southern italy lol to remind myself that 1) aging is going to be intensely freeing and 2) we live in an intensely image-obsessed historical moment where we are forced to be hyperaware of how we measure up against impossible beauty standards, but in the long stretch of human history that’s actually deeply weird and would be unfathomable to women of other eras. in another era I would’ve gone my entire life without ever seeing a photo of myself and I probably wouldn’t have cared what I looked like because I was too busy subsistence farming and taking care of a giant family. and being heavier would’ve been a very good thing because it would mean I wasn’t regularly going hungry!! anyway humans were not built to fret over their appearances or obsess over weight and I am going to move on and get to work engaging in more quintessentially human behavior like learning new things.

let’s see what does the DAY look like. it’s another long one with a later event at the very end—will probably leave at 8 and get home at 6:30 🫠 but that’s okay that’s okay I’m doing a good job of still eating good food and getting a good walk in even when I’m tired and don’t feel like it. here we go:

up at 6—short walk with dogs

6:24-6:45 coffee/lounge/read

6:45-7:30 shower and get ready

7:30-8 breakfast, emails, PACK LUNCH

8-8:30ish drive to campus and park (CALL MAZDA ON THE WAY). I can park in the expensive lot today since I’m staying late

8:30-9 prep for welcome event

9-10 welcome event

10-11 CB mtg

11-12 LK mtg

12-1 lunch break/emails

1-2 KA mtg

2-3 SV mtg

3-3:30 walk over for event

3:30-5:30 zine event

5:45ish-6:30 walk back & drive home

6:30-8 take dogs out, eat dinner, short walk

crash in bed early I have not been sleeping well and I am really feeling it

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Research published on Friday by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) at Cop28 reveals the huge impact of livestock emissions on the climate. Livestock produce methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so are a key contributor to the climate crisis.

The FAO found that livestock agrifood systems – which include cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens – are responsible for 6.2 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) emissions.

This accounts for approximately 12% of all emissions in 2015, the baseline year chosen for the study.

It also found:

 Of all the six animal species considered, cattle contribute to more than 60% of global livestock emissions.

 Of the edible animal products – meat, milk and eggs – two-thirds of the emissions are linked to meat production across all species.

 A further one-third of emissions comes from the production, processing and transport of feed inputs.

By 2050, demand for animal products is likely to grow by a fifth from 2020 levels

Without intervention, this upward trend could result in increased emissions from livestock systems, potentially undermining efforts to reduce GHG emissions and exacerbating global temperature rises.

The FAO concludes that more sustainable practices are needed, including breeding livestock for lower emissions and changing their feed, as well as changing human diets.

The report included some data that will trouble campaigners. Cattle in sub-Saharan Africa produce relatively far more emissions than North American cattle, according to the study, although most conservationists would regard subsistence herding as more acceptable environmentally than the mega farms of the US midwest.

The report notes that the absolute emissions of US intensive livestock farming are far greater than those of African herds, but said there was scope for interventions in Africa that would reduce emissions.

Campaigners will not want to see the US given a clean sheet and subsistence farmers taking the blame – that would be the wrong conclusion to draw from their data.

FAO will also present, separately, on Sunday a road map for the world food systems for staying within 1.5C .

Ivo Vlaev, a professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick, said: “Shifting public dietary habits, especially in affluent countries where meat consumption is high, is a complex challenge. People’s food choices are deeply ingrained and influenced by cultural, social, and personal factors.

“Interventions to change these behaviours must account for these influences, potentially employing strategies like social norming (highlighting the growing popularity of plant-based diets), framing (emphasising the personal health benefits of reduced meat consumption), and facilitating ease of access to alternative protein sources.”

X

Preliminary reporting on the roadmap here

[rollswraith]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐄 & 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐆𝐘𝐍𝐘 —

Charlie has deep seated issues with women that frankly he’s kind of justified for having, however toxic they can be.

Charlie’s mother was one of a few prostitutes in the small ramshackle 1800s mining town they lived in. They lived in the combination inn/bordello/funeral home and Charlie grew up sleeping in a coffin in the back until he was 13 and left Cripple Creek. She was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive as well as very neglectful and controlling of any money he managed to earn. So add on financial abuse. He grew up seeing one of the most unhealthy version of sex work. His mother hated him for stealing her youth. Charlie was raped at 13 by one of her clients with whom she had a confrontation over money. The man decided to victimize Charlie in retaliation for her “attitude”.

Charlie then married at 29 to a 17 year old heiress in a whirlwind romance. Her father encouraged this because he felt Cassandra was “wild” and needed a “firm hand” to keep her in line. Cassie absolutely was wild, issues quickly began to develop though it took Charlie a very long time to realize that he and his wife hated each other. Cassie was just as controlling and abusive as his mother had been. This behavior started even before the family lost everything in the one-two punch of the 1929 stock market crash and his father-in-law’s death from the shock. The most obvious and intense example of this abuse is this event from before the crash:

“Once my wife threw an oil lamp at my back, and my best coat caught fire. Do you think she ever apologized? Well! Think again. She would make fun of me at Thanksgiving and family get-togethers, pretending she was me and that she had just been set aflame. She would run around gobbling like a turkey and waving her arms, screaming, ‘Put me out, put me out!’ Her sisters always had a good laugh at that.”

While Charlie thought about physically retaliating against her but there’s no evidence he ever did. Instead he took the brunt of her abuse and degradation in front of their children with little push back. There were several reasons for that — 1. This is just genuinely what he’s used to 2. The family relied entirely on her father’s money so realistically she had more power and sway over how things went for him/them and 3. The second he hit back she would claim he was abusive and take the girls and stay with her sister or something. Like his mother Cassie claimed he and the girls stole her youth.

Even after the stock market crash and the family was forced to try and subsist on a small farm ( something none of them had any idea how to do but it was Cassie’s idea so they did it ) the abuse did not stop, instead it arguably got worse. The trouble in his marriage led Charlie to start drinking more heavily and he spent many nights sleeping outside the house — not with other women — just not in their home. When he got the Wraith he slept in it for about 2 weeks straight. She never believed in any of his attempts to better the family’s situation and disparaged him at every turn along with abusing him.

I won’t add his second wife into this mainly because there’s no actual canonical information on her so I’m in the process of synthesizing the book, show and my own ideas so it’s not worth it to get too deep into it here at the moment. But basically Jolene was a much better and kinder person but still ended up betraying him on a fundamental level that undid any progress he’d made.

The only really positive relationships he’s ever had with women are with his two daughters, Millie and Lorrie. They’re also the primary catalyst for him to even try and grapple with these issues or consider how society treats women.

Because of his history with women being in power over him Charlie doesn’t believe in or care much for feminism. Even if he agrees in basic concepts or something related to the rights of women he would never in his life say he was one, supported it or trusted a vocal feminist. He knows many women are treated to just the same kind of treatment he was but he also takes talk about the “struggles of women” with a grain of salt. It just doesn’t matter how much he intellectually agrees with any of it, it’s hard to emotionally connect and empathize with people from the same group as those who terrorized you for nearly your entire life.

He’s deeply mistrusting of women and struggles to see them as anything other than angels or demons — though he has worked on that somewhat over the last century because of the girls. While the girls were frozen for decades at 12 and 6, Millie was just entering puberty and that started the ball on thinking ahead about her as an adult woman — a thing he still thought about even after she was brought to Christmasland. The reality is that his children are girls, they are women. He doesn’t necessarily care much for the feelings of like Any and All women he does care about them and he knows that between what he says about women and how Cassie acts there’s a lot there to make them see themselves as bad.

That consideration for the girls and being a good father to them has stayed his hand on making a knee-jerk judgments and giving in to too much hateful thought many times. He has also had encounters with women who have given him hope that not all women are like his mother and ex-wives. He’s even had various paramours and romantic attachments over the years and not all of them ended with him trying to hit her with his car. For the most part any continuous relationship Charlie has had with women was with Strong Creatives and was largely something like a work relationship as he can struggle at times connecting with and trusting women.

The counterpoint to his anger and mistrust is that Charlie is at heart an idealist and a romantic, which is also how we end up grappling with the madonna-whore complex here. He dearly wants a life partner, someone who can be a good mother to his children and ideally give him more. Someone who can give him the love and comfort he’s never had. He longs for the kind of stable safe domestic life that many take for granted. However it can be hard for him to trust and feel safe with women. For the most part thanks to age he’s come to simply see women as people at least and done away with the worst of his madonna-whore complex style issues — the only problem is that he’s seen some of the worst of humanity in his quest to save children so it’s not like it’s a massive improvement to some extent. He dislikes vulnerability with anyone and he can be very obsessive and possessive over women he has positive sentiments for.

[lake-lady]

Not surprising but people have the absolute worst environmental takes on Tumblr.com like why are you lumping indigenous subsistence farming in the same category as intensive industrial agriculture....pls stop

[donnerpartyofone]

I think one thing that's indicated by the extreme politicizing of media (that is, the insistence that you only create and consume content with a clear moral imperative that would be OK for real life) is the loss of distinction between fantasy and reality. I'm thinking about all the shit stirred up by the cottagecore trend; some people were angry about its ignorance of the real hardship of living off the land, and others were angry about the white supremacist ideology behind misrepresenting rural land as "untouched" except by you, the prospective white anglo pioneer. Both of those readings are fine for real life, but the average cottagecore enjoyer is just fantasizing. They're not making a statement about the historical ecology of their region and for almost all of them, there is a 0% chance that they will ever even attempt to start a subsistence farm out in the wilderness. The posts represent a fantasy of escaping from the pressures of modern life, of being alone in a quiet, beautiful, unpolluted place where privacy still exists. I think that's actually pretty easy to relate to, and there's no great body of proof that a majority of people who post cottagecore-type material think that that stuff is either realistic or achievable. There's also no proof that the posters themselves aren't, you know, young people with a minimal grasp of, or concern for history and agriculture. In all likelihood they're just fantasizing about not living in crowded places with dirty air and water, extreme financial pressures, and advertisements constantly screaming in your face from every available surface. They're not doing a book report on the nature of reality, they're just imagining being in a cabin in the woods where things aren't so shitty and intense all the time.

Yes, of course fantasies aren't born in a vacuum and they do have political content, but receiving every piece of media as if it were the author's manual for correct living is just lunacy.

[wickedsrest-rp]

NAME: Clinger

ALSO KNOWN AS: Hugger, Ticktack

RARITY: ★☆☆☆☆

THREAT LEVEL: ★★☆☆☆ | Variable; some can kill, others cause illness. Commonplace, but readily dealt with by anyone.

HABITAT: Typically found in heavily wooded environments, like the forests around Wicked’s Rest, but can also be found in wetland areas, on farms, or even just in the Common.

DESCRIPTION: It isn’t just the regular ticks you need to watch out for in Wicked’s Rest. The area has a species called, aptly, clingers. And while normal ticks are content taking a little blood and being on their merry way (while possibly transmitting disease), clingers can cause bigger problems. They slightly resemble larger-than-average normal ticks. However, when engorged, they balloon to the size of a tennis ball and must be manually removed. This is quite painful. Beyond what clingers subsist on and the infections they spread, they don’t have any supernatural abilities and weaknesses. By most accounts, they’re similar to ordinary ticks. 

There are a few different subspecies to watch out for, only distinguishable via dissection and examination from an expert unless they’re on their specific and chosen food source.

OTHER VARIANTS:

Bloodclinger: Your classic blood-feeding tick, with a side of additional unpleasantness. Those who are fed on by bloodclingers develop an appetite for blood themselves, which can last a few weeks. This usually goes beyond just developing a taste for it – once symptoms fully set in, those affected can be stirred into a frenzy at the sight of blood, only calming down once they’re drinking it.

Dearclinger: Rather than blood, dearclingers engorge themselves on any supernatural abilities someone has. Though these abilities will eventually return, it can take a few weeks. In rare cases, a person might not get all of their supernatural skills back, or they might work slightly differently than before which can be difficult to adjust to. Some assume people simply mean “deer tick” when they say dearclinger.

Deadclinger: And the existence of deadclingers further confuses things. These clingers latch on to the undead, drinking the blood, flesh, or other source of nutrition that the undead themselves feed on. This causes the undead to become starved. Deadclingers can be removed by passing them on to another undead – spawn and reanimated corpses can work if you can manage to get close enough. They’ll make the jump without prompting.

Faeclinger: A subspecies that evolved to feed on the iron-less blood of fae; these ticks aren’t able to feed on any other species. Those bitten often lose control of their natural abilities and glamours for a few weeks, though in rare cases it can be prolonged. Faeclingers can also cause fevers of variable intensity. They need to be burned off the fae with iron, which is obviously painful for the fae too. Fortunately, not a lot of it is needed.

WEAKNESS: Bug spray, especially sprays with a high percentage of DEET, usually do a good job of keeping clingers away. When they’re not clinging and engorged, they can be squashed, burned, or killed any way that a mundane tick would be.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Mega Schemes

Huge hydraulic schemes are made possible by advanced modern civil engineering techniques. They require vast international contracts that are only possible at the level of central governments, international free floating capital and supranational government organisations. The financiers borrow money and lend it at commercial rates, so they favour largescale engineering projects that promise increasing production for export markets at the expense of local subsistence economies, with disastrous social and environmental effects. Cash crops destroy settled communities and cause pollution of soil and water. For instance, Ethiopia’s Third Five-Year Plan brought 60% of cultivated land in the fertile Awash Valley under cotton, evicting Afar pastoralists onto fragile uplands which accelerated deforestation and contributed to the country’s ecological crisis and famine. There’s a vicious circle at work. Development needs money. Loans can only be repaid through cash crops that earn foreign currency. These need lots more water than subsistence farming. Large hydraulic schemes to provide this water are development. Development needs money. And so it goes.

Large-scale projects everywhere are the consequence and justification for authoritarian government: one of America’s great dam-building organisations is the US Army Corps of Engineering. Stalin’s secret police supervised the construction of dams and canals. Soldiers such as Nasser of Egypt and Gadafi of Libya and military regimes in South America have been prominent in promoting such projects. Nasser built the Anwar High dam in 1971. The long-term consequences have been to stop the annual flow of silt onto delta land, requiring a growing use of expensive chemical fertilisers, and increased vulnerability to erosion from the Mediterranean. Formerly the annual flooding washed away the build-up of natural salts; now they increase the salt content of irrigated land. The buildup of silt behind the dam is reducing its electricity generating capacity; the lake is also responsible for the dramatic increase in water-borne diseases. Nationalism leads to hydraulic projects without thought to what happens downstream in other countries. The 1992 floods of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Barak system killed 10,000 people. 500m people live in the region, nearly 10% of the world’s population, and they are constantly at risk from water exploitation and mismanagement. Technological imperialism has replaced the empire building of the past: large-scale hydro projects are exported to countries despite many inter-related problems – deforestation, intensive land use and disputes and so on. Large-scale water engineering projects foment international disputes and have become economic bargaining counters, for example the Pergau dam in Malaysia. The British Government agreed to spend £234m on it in 1989 in exchange for a £1.3bn arms deal. In 1994 the High Court ruled that the aid decision was unlawful but these kinds of corrupt deals continue.

In Sri Lanka the disruption caused by the Mahawelli dams and plantation projects resulted in the forcible eviction of 1 million people and helped maintain the insurgency of the Tamil Tigers that resulted in thousands of deaths as they fought government forces from the late 1980s onwards. In 1993 the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq were threatened by Saddam Hussein’s plans to drain the area – the most heavily populated part of the region. Many of the 100,000 inhabitants fled after being warned that any opposition risked death. Selincourt estimated that 3 million people would lose their homes, livelihoods, land and cultural identity by giant dam projects in the 1990s. The Kedung Ombo dam (Indonesia) displaced 25,000; the Akasombo dam (Ghana) 80,000; Caborra Bassa (South Africa) 25,000. Three dams in Laos alone will have displaced 142,000 people. The proposed Xiao Langdi dam in China would displace 140,000; the Three Gorges project 1.1 million people. Only war inflicts a similar level of human and environmental destruction, yet large dam projects have a chronic record in delivering water and power, or eliminating flooding in downstream valleys.

[inoppositionflorien]

Is it true that indigenous north american societies had generally better agricultural practices that produced more outputs than contemporary european ones with less environmental destruction?

...well no, for a variety of reasons, though the statement does have a little truth in it. They had (and some who still farm likely still have) better knowledge of the local conditions. This is true in the general case of pretty much every agrarian society, wherever you look. An individual farmer with experience in a region will tend to slightly outperform farming based purely on scientific modelling. This is because scientific models built up over a few weeks or months currently have to be simplified substantially relative to human models built up over years or decades, and thus will necessarily be a conservative estimate of what can be produced from given land.

We also know that while their outputs may have been better than contemporary european agriculture in that particular region (which is what we'd expect, the europeans had generally entered a new climate zone without crops bred to handle that, whereas maize was bred to handle most of the areas it was originally grown in) the outputs also didn't come anywhere close to modern agricultural outputs. There's actually a really easy way to tell this, and that's that the population of the region that would become the United States was substantially lower even at its peak pre-colonization (before the plagues) than it is today, but most calories in the Modern United States are produced domestically. A region over time will tend to approach its equilibrium, and we don't see the high-equilibrium population of today in the archeological record. In fact, we actually see a far lower population essentially across the board. For instance, the entirety of the great plains throughout both the US and Canada had a population likely under 100,000 at its peak pre-colonization, and this vastly expanded with modern intensive agriculture. This did lead to a few problems (the dust bowl for one, it turns out it's surprisingly easy to lose your topsoil once you go at it with a disc plow, so there's a lot you need to do to prevent that happening) but these problems are actually almost entirely solvable with crop rotation (something independently invented by essentially every agricultural society at some point. In North America there was a three crop cycle, the famous three sisters, squash, maize, and beans. Much of Europe had a similar cycle, and indeed, much of the East Coast European Farmers, at least initially, had a similar cycle!) So the question is, what happened to change this? Well.

The crop rotation issue though is almost entirely a policy problem that goes back centuries and has complex causes. Many farmers would love to rotate crops or let fields go fallow for a time today. This was, in fact, what subsistence farmers tended to do historically. The problem was, in the rush by the United States in particular (other countries did this also but to a lesser extent, the US was very successful and interested in attracting immigrants in a way pretty much only Brazil really competed with, but we're not talking about Brazil today) to expand into the great plains (killing any natives who didn't like that, of course. This tended to be what happened the moment someone got railroads and bordered an arid region and suddenly could move an army there. Russia did this across most of Northern Asia, China did it into some parts of Greater Mongolia and the Western Deserts, Argentina did it into Patagonia and France did it into the Sahara). Anyway, here's what happened there.

You see, the US, by making it so easy for nearly anyone to claim land that they were busily killing their way across, created a whole demographic of subsistence farmers with very little training in agriculture, who ended up having to relearn farming essentially from first principles in a new and hostile environment. As they were not farmers, (and indeed nor were the indigenous people in the area, they were subsistence hunters who'd recently begun to ecologically collapse the bison herds after getting ahold of horses, and would have probably succeeded at causing a famine over the next century had the US government not decided to ecologically collapse the bison herds first for genocidal conquest reasons) they had no knowledge of crop rotation or letting fields go fallow, and no one to observe doing this. As a result, they screwed up immediately, the consequences emerged over the next few decades, and the dust bowl happened, which meant a lot of farms ended up getting foreclosed on because of how subsistence farmers interacted with the economy at the time. Notably, a lot of the people who stayed actually did end up subsidized by the federal government to let fields go fallow, and government people would come by to explain how to do this! The government had found out the problem, and this actually was really good at abating it, and often this allowed yields to be maintained at close to their original levels! The problem was, you suddenly had all these banks owning a great deal of land, and banks aren't farms, so what would happen is the banks would sell these huge plots of land to larger companies (made up of people who didn't farm and didn't know how to tell who knew how to farm to staff their new land) because it was cheaper to sell in bulk than individually.

Meanwhile, at the same time, grain subsidies emerged as a way to try to inject money into the disintegrating economy of the great plains. This combined with the in-theory-smart-but-in-practice-perverse-incentive-creating way water quotas were and still often are allocated (use-it-or-lose-it, as opposed to form of cap-and-trade for water usage) meant that there were suddenly huge financial incentives to grow thirsty and extremely intensive crops all year around. Grain is intensive, and because of the weird kind-of-illegal-but-also-not-easily-enforceable-by-the-woefully-underfunded-state-governments way that one farming company can dip into the subsidies multiple times, it's always profitable, and thirsty crops are desirable because if you don't use your water up to your cap you're getting less next year. This meant that crop rotation, better suited crops, and fallow fields could actually destroy a farm financially over time. The obvious solution is to cut subsidies or figure out how to enforce against double-dipping better and to change water allocation procedures, but cutting subsidies is unpopular and changing water allocation procedures is not something people think about unless they're actively buying large quantities of water, and enforcement is expensive and requires qualified inspectors, which would require taxes, which are unpopular. These however are all policy problems combining to create an incentive structure which actively punishes good agricultural practices. (They're also at least partially Reagan's fault because of that particular administration's belief that "paying farmers not to farm" (letting fields have a fallow phase) was stupid, which led to those subsidies being cut and intensifying existing problems.)

So the statement of "native people of the americas were better at farming than europeans in the region and did less environmental damage for similar yields" is only kind of true. The first part was only really true for a short while on the (some of the) east and (most of the) west coasts and some parts of the midwest and south, the Great Plains were almost entirely unfarmed until the 1800s and were initially farmed by people who didn't know how farming worked. Arguably if they'd been farmed by actual farmers instead of terminally optimistic non-farmers, the Dust Bowl wouldn't have happened in the first place. Later, modern, more intensive agriculture was invented, which does produce far higher yields than any historic agriculture does, whether the people know the land or not. If this was not true, the world population would have stayed stuck around a couple billion. This can be environmentally damaging (nitrate contamination is a real problem that should probably get figured out sooner rather than later) but the question is one of mitigating the damage more than stopping modern agriculture, because stopping it would almost certainly kill billions.

You should support some level of reparations to the native peoples because the various genocides has led to impacts well into today, and more generally, doing massacres as a matter of state policy is a thing that should be apologized for. It's unclear what form those reparations should take, I favor something like cash to be paid in, say, monthly installments over a few decades, because this would have the added benefit of setting up UBI infrastructure for future use while also giving survivors of genocide and their descendants the chance to be the first test case in the US for UBI and getting to experience the benefits thereof first, though other forms of reparations could be considered. Maybe this could also include granting full and proper citizenship to the native peoples rather than the weird bantustan-esque system we've got going on now that continues to make it a huge pain to get government services for many native people and native-majority communities in the US.

You should not, however, base your support of the native peoples on something they supposedly did better, because I can essentially guarantee you that "they did this better" statement comes with dozens of caveats. Large-scale environmental destruction over time was not invented in Europe three hundred years ago, and in fact has been a standard practice of life for nearly two and a half billion years, and no species, much less small group of one species, is immune to doing it or indeed particularly good at not doing it. Consider instead basing your support on "doing multiple genocides and then variously disenfranchising and granting a weird kind-of-a-citizen-but-not-fully-able-to-use-many-government-services-status to people is a bad thing to do and that should definitely be fixed and probably apologized for in some concrete way."

[solisusa]

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[newstfionline]

Saturday, April 27, 2024

University protests and political arguments (NYT) Arnold Kling, an economist, published a book a decade ago that offered a way to think about the core difference between progressives and conservatives. Progressives, Kling wrote, see the world as a struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed, and they try to help the oppressed. Conservatives see the world as a struggle between civilization and barbarism—between order and chaos—and they try to protect civilization. The debate over pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and other universities has become an example. If you want to understand why university leaders are finding the situation so hard to resolve, Kling’s dichotomy is useful: The central question for colleges is whether to prioritize the preservation of order or the desire of students to denounce oppression. There are also divisions among students. Pro-Palestinian students will say that Israel is the true source of disorder, while pro-Israel students will say that Hamas is the true oppressor.

Tennessee Parents Question Whether Arming Teachers Is the Answer (NYT) Devon Dixon believes guns serve a purpose. That is why she is licensed to carry and conceal firearms. She is also a mother living in the Nashville suburbs with three school-age children. She worries about their safety, especially after three 9-year-olds were among the six killed in a school shooting in the city last year. “It’s pretty heavy on my heart,” she said. But those concerns weren’t enough to persuade Ms. Dixon that Tennessee lawmakers were right to pass a bill on Tuesday that would allow teachers and other school employees to carry concealed handguns on campus in an effort to protect students. The skepticism has come not just from those who want tighter restrictions on firearms but also from some who generally believe strongly in gun rights. Their reluctance was rooted in doubts about the wisdom of placing such a daunting responsibility on teachers and other school workers.

Angry farmers in a once-lush Mexican state target avocado orchards that suck up too much water (AP) You know how people always talk about conflicts over water that are supposed to take place once our planet starts to dry out far into the future? Those are happening right now in Mexico. Mexico has been facing an extensive and intensive drought for a while now, and farmers have begun feuding over water, with local subsistence farmers taking on commercial avocado and berry farmers. The subsistence farmers claim that commercial farmers have long diverted water sources away from local towns, leaving local residents deprived of the water necessary to live their daily lives. Recently, things have come to a head—residents and subsistence farmers from the town of Villa Madero marched up to commercial farming operations, ripping out the illicit water pumps and holding pools that the commercial farms are allegedly using to steal water. That action might have been satisfying in the moment, but local leaders are worried about repercussions from the groups who back the commercial farmers—avocado farmers often pay protection fees to national cartels, which might retaliate for the damage.

Europe needs to be stronger, not a U.S. ‘vassal,’ says France’s Macron (Washington Post) French President Emmanuel Macron made the case for a stronger, more independent European Union, arguing that Europe needs a more credible defense policy to stand up to Russia and not be a strategic “vassal” to the United States. In a sprawling speech delivered under the soaring ceilings of the Sorbonne in Paris, Macron outlined his updated vision for Europe’s “strategic autonomy,” including plans to bolster European defense production and expand industrial policy to stand firm against Russia and compete with economic superpowers that no longer play by free-trade rules. Europe needs to create a union that is more integrated, better defended and more competitive—and never too reliant on the United States. Macron stressed that Europe can no longer rely on the United States alone for its security. “The United States has two priorities: the United States first and the China question second. The European question is not a geopolitical priority,” he said.

Spain’s leader is mulling his future while denouncing a ‘smear campaign’ against his wife (AP) Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez left Spain in suspense after announcing he may step down because of what he called an “unprecedented” smear campaign against his wife. Sánchez, who has been in office since 2018, stunned the nation Wednesday by announcing that he was canceling all official events until next week, when he will unveil his future plans. The announcement came hours after a Madrid provincial judge agreed to study allegations of corruption brought by a right-wing group against Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez.

Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats (AP) Ukraine has sidelined U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 battle tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press. The U.S. agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023 after an aggressive monthslong campaign by Kyiv arguing that the tanks, which cost about $10 million apiece, were vital to its ability to breach Russian lines. But the battlefield has changed substantially since then, notably by the ubiquitous use of Russian surveillance drones and hunter-killer drones. Those weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect the tanks when they are quickly detected and hunted by Russian drones or rounds. Five of the 31 tanks have already been lost to Russian attacks. The proliferation of drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means “there isn’t open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection,” a senior defense official said.

China warns diplomatic ties with U.S. could face “downward spiral.” (AFP) U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his second visit to China in less than a year, said he hopes for progress but has also raised concerns on areas of difference between the two countries, including Russia, Taiwan and trade. China, which has also been infuriated by President Joe Biden’s economic pressure, said relations between the world’s two largest economies are “beginning to stabilize,” but that “negative factors are still increasing and building.” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned Blinken that the U.S. should not “trample on China’s red line” on security, sovereignty and development.

Almost every Chinese keyboard app has a security flaw that reveals what users type (MIT Technology Review/Citizen Lab) Almost all keyboard apps used by Chinese people around the world share a security loophole that makes it possible to spy on what users are typing. The vulnerability, which allows the keystroke data that these apps send to the cloud to be intercepted, has existed for years and could have been exploited by cybercriminals and state surveillance groups, according to researchers at the Citizen Lab, a technology and security research lab affiliated with the University of Toronto. These apps help users type Chinese characters more efficiently and are ubiquitous on devices used by Chinese people. The four most popular apps—built by major internet companies like Baidu, Tencent, and iFlytek—basically account for all the typing methods that Chinese people use. Researchers also looked into the keyboard apps that come preinstalled on Android phones sold in China. What they discovered was shocking. Almost every third-party app and every Android phone with preinstalled keyboards failed to protect users by properly encrypting the content they typed.

“Politicians are not made of stone.” (BBC) Australian ex-Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed to ABC News that during his time in office he reached points of pure exhaustion and struggled with anxiety. “Politicians are not made of stone, yet they're often treated as though they are, including by each other,” he said. He has shared on social media that he wants to “normalize” the act of asking for help when struggling with mental illness, even for people with jobs like his.

Israel could still force an exodus into Egypt (Washington Post) Amid a somber Passover in the Holy Land, a chilling reality remains: Israel could soon trigger an exodus into Egypt. For weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled his intent to launch a full-scale offensive into Rafah, the southern Gazan city that’s now home to more than a million Palestinians seeking safe haven in their war-ravaged territory. Netanyahu and his allies want to wipe out militant group Hamas’s footprint in the city—no matter the skepticism of experts who reckon the Islamist organization is far from defeated or the concerns of foreign diplomats and aid workers who fear the calamities for civilians that would follow the Israeli onslaught. A major move would trigger the frantic flight of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, many of whom arrived in the city after their homes and neighborhoods elsewhere in Gaza were pulverized by the Israeli military in its post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas. For months, there’s been speculation over whether Egypt would allow tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee to safety in the Sinai desert. Cairo is not keen to admit a refugee influx, given both its own internal security concerns and larger Pan-Arab worries that the Palestinians will be blocked from returning to their homeland like a previous generation of Palestinian refugees.

Flooding Inundates Kenya, Killing at Least 32 and Displacing Thousands (NYT) Days of heavy rains have pummeled parts of Kenya, leaving at least 32 dead, 15 injured and more than 40,000 people displaced, according to officials. They said that flooding had killed nearly 1,000 farm animals and destroyed thousands of acres of crops, with more rain expected across the country. The rains began in March during what is known in the country as the “long rains,” but precipitation intensified over the past week, according to the Kenya Meteorological Department. In Nairobi, where some of the heaviest rain has fallen, more than 30,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. Edwin Sifuna, a senator in Nairobi County, said on social media that the local government there was “clearly overwhelmed,” and he called on the federal government for help.

South Africa will mark 30 years of freedom amid problems (AP) South Africa is gearing up for celebrations Saturday to mark 30 years of freedom and democracy. But much of the enthusiasm and optimism of that period has subsided as Africa’s most developed economy faces a myriad of challenges. They include widening inequality as the country’s Black majority continues to live in poverty with an unemployment rate of more than 32%, the highest in the world. According to official statistics, more than 16 million South Africans rely on monthly welfare grants for survival. Public demonstrations have become common as communities protest against the ruling African National Congress’ failure to deliver job opportunities and basic services like water and electricity. An electricity crisis that has resulted in power blackouts that are devastating the country’s economy added to the party’s woes as businesses and homes are sometimes forced to go without electricity for up to 12 hours a day.

[traveldemystified2024]

Gujarati (Kutch) Speciality

The scenic Maliya Bridge, which spans salt marshes often teeming with birds, creates an enticing impression of the gateway to Kachchh. Yes, this region is perhaps the least appealing in terms of climate, and it is certainly the least populated. It is well and truly off the beaten path. The various communities, such as Rabaris, Ahirs, and Meghwals, each have a distinct dress that is still an integral part of daily life, and each practice a specific craft, which is fostered and promoted by a number of co-operatives and non-governmental organizations. Kachchh offers some fascinating opportunities for adventurous, life-affirming travel for the adventurous traveler willing to forego such luxuries as hot showers and reliable bus schedules.

About Kachchh: The great and little Ranns, which flood seasonally, surround Kachchh. The Gulf of Kachchh, a large inlet of the Arabian Sea to the south, has a marine national park and sanctuary with 42 islands and a variety of reefs, mudflats, coastal salt marsh, and India’s largest area of mangrove swamps.

The Kachchh Peninsula is relatively high, with a thin layer of volcanic lava covering the often saline soil. There is little natural surface water on the dry and rocky terrain, but there are numerous artificial tanks and reservoirs. Intensive grazing has prevented the development of the rice vegetation typical of neighboring Sindh in Pakistan, and there is only sparse woodland along the frequently dry river beds. Some of the lakes serve as important wintering grounds for migratory birds such as pelicans and cormorants. In the north, the Rann of Kachchh disappears into the Thar desert.

The saltwater of the Gulf of Kachchh invades the Rann in June, and the Rajasthan River pours freshwater into it. It then transforms into an inland sea. Kachchh effectively becomes an island. When migratory Flamingos arrive near Khavda in December and February, they spend the winter on the Great Rann. Sand grouse, pelicans, and avocets are also present.

When the monsoons flooded vast areas of Kachchh, farming was forced to be abandoned, and handicrafts flourished, not only expressing artistic skills but also providing a means of subsistence. There is mirror work, Kachchh appliqué and embroidery with beads, gold and silver jewelry, gilding enameling, and colorful wool felt namda rugs.

Best Of Time: The best time to visit is between late October and mid-March. If the Rann of Kachchh and the desert wildlife sanctuary of the Great Rann were not separated by a road, they would form India’s largest contiguous tract of protected wildlife territory. The Rann is mostly a saline wilderness, broken up by belts of grass, bushes, acacia, and thorn scrub that form islands during the monsoon. The salt works, which clear the vegetation, release toxic effluents into the wetlands, and pollute the air, pose a serious threat to the area. Prosopis juliflora, a fast-growing thorn scrub, is destroying most other vegetation.

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[homeopathypharmasofficial]

Punganur Cattle in Agriculture

Introduction

In the diverse landscape of agriculture, where modernization often takes center stage, there are hidden gems that possess invaluable contributions. One such gem is the Punganur cattle, a unique and diminutive breed that has been quietly serving farmers in various regions. Despite its small stature, the Punganur cattle hold great significance in sustainable agriculture and local economies. This article sheds light on the remarkable qualities of the Punganur cattle and its role in agriculture.

The Punganur Cattle: An Overview

The Punganur cattle, hailing from the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India, is one of the world's smallest cattle breeds. Known for their compact size, these cattle stand around 70 to 90 centimeters tall and weigh between 115 to 200 kilograms. Despite their diminutive appearance, these cattle possess unique characteristics that make them stand out.

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Adaptation and Resilience

One of the key reasons behind the popularity of Punganur cattle in agriculture is their remarkable ability to adapt to challenging environments. These cattle are well-suited to the hot and dry climate of their native region. Their small size minimizes their feed requirements, enabling them to thrive even in areas with limited vegetation. This adaptability makes them an ideal choice for small-scale and subsistence farmers who may lack access to extensive resources.

Multipurpose Utility

Punganur cattle exhibit a range of characteristics that contribute to their multipurpose utility in agriculture. Their milk, though limited in quantity due to their size, is rich in nutrients and is used for household consumption. The Punganur breed is also valued for its draught power, despite its small size. Farmers often utilize these cattle for plowing fields and transporting goods, showcasing their strength and efficiency.

Conservation of Genetic Diversity

In an era where industrialized farming has led to the decline of many traditional livestock breeds, the Punganur cattle stand as a testament to the importance of conserving genetic diversity. These cattle have evolved over generations to adapt to specific local conditions, and their unique genetic makeup could hold the key to improving the resilience of cattle populations in the face of changing climates.

Role in Sustainable Agriculture

The rise of sustainable agriculture practices has brought the Punganur cattle back into the limelight. Their modest feed requirements, coupled with their ability to thrive on locally available resources, align perfectly with the principles of sustainable farming. These cattle can contribute to reducing the environmental impact of livestock farming, making them an appealing option for environmentally conscious farmers.

Empowering Local Economies

Punganur cattle are not only an asset to individual farmers but also play a significant role in boosting local economies. The breed has gained recognition, leading to increased demand for Punganur cattle for various purposes. This demand has spurred economic activities related to breeding, trading, and training, thereby generating income for local communities.

Challenges and Future Prospects

While the Punganur cattle offer numerous benefits, they are not without challenges. The limited milk production of these cattle restricts their contribution to dairy farming on a larger scale. Additionally, their small size might not make them suitable for certain intensive agricultural practices. However, these challenges can be addressed through selective breeding programs aimed at enhancing specific traits without compromising their unique characteristics.

Conclusion

In the grand tapestry of agriculture, the Punganur cattle stand as a testament to the importance of diversity and adaptability. Their small stature belies their significant contributions to sustainable farming practices, local economies, and genetic conservation. As the world continues to grapple with the implications of climate change and the need for more sustainable food production, these small but mighty cattle remind us that solutions can often be found in the unlikeliest of places. The Punganur cattle have proven that size is not the sole determinant of impact, and their legacy continues to shape the way we view agriculture and its intricate connections to the environment and local communities.

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