Here’s a profession you won’t find too many people doing – cutting corn mazes. NJ.com has a great story about a man who now travels around the country in season making great looking mazes.
| Farmers turn to professionals to cut corn mazes |
I never thought I would say this but, “Where is Smokey the Bear when you need him?” For that matter where is rational thought when you need it, especially when it comes to our current collective and manic pursuit for reducing our carbon footprint?
Most people don’t have a clue what their carbon footprint is, but the majority of the population now knows they have one and it’s probably too big. I recently had one of those ah ha moments that comes from a moment of clarity, when I started wondering why we are spending massive amounts of dollars and man-hours trying to solve this issue by planting trees, taxing the snot out of industry, and telling farmers how and where to farm in the name of carbon management.
This is where the original thinking came in…maybe our time would be better spent trying to save the thousands of trees that mother nature destroys every year through forest fires. (Research proved the idea wasn’t novel at all). While every environmental organization in America is wringing its collective hands about global warming, the creation of carbon gases, and the deforestation of land by cutting, not a one of them suggests that we should do something about the mitigation or prevention of forest fires through proper management
In fact the same folks spanking us all for being bad little carbon emitters are the same people who oppose cutting and burning dead timber which helps turn small fires into global chokers like the one currently ravaging Alaska. Innocent lightning strikes have led to the burning of 100,000’s of acres.
A forest fire involving primarily conifers will produce approximately 13 million metric tons of carbon dioxide for each 2.7 acres burned, and there were more than 9 million acres of forest burned in 2006 alone. Forest fires in the U.S. and Canada produced more than 80.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
This is where Smokey the Bear comes in. I think our Bear buddy needs a better PR guy. Instead of spending billions of dollars we don’t have on new carbon friendly programs, taxing hapless American consumers and businesses into the Stone Age, and making all of us study to become quasi-scientists so we can debate global warming; let’s spend the money to better manage our forests and detect and stop senseless forest fires.
Researcher Mark Adams, of Sydney University in Australia, provides plenty of ammunition for this approach. He says fires in Melbourne that have burned out 450,000 hectares of trees let off a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He estimates one week’s blazes released almost as much as the nation’s industries did in the whole of last year.
The fires that swept across Indonesia in 1997 burned relatively thin-trunked tropical trees but the devastated forests were also covered in carbon-rich peat, with deposits measuring up to 20 meters thick. As a result, the Indonesian fires were estimated to have released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatons of carbon—between 13 percent and 40 percent of the world’s annual emissions at the time.
So the next time a well meaning person tells you to work hard to improve your carbon footprint, tell them to “Get Their Smokey On.”
Corn’s Biggest Customer Gaining Momentum in Response to Critics
“We must individually and collectively police ourselves and — and I know some of you will recoil in horror when I say this — we must “police” our neighbors to ensure we consistently perform as an industry as best we can,” so says Steve Kopperud , of Brownfield Network.
“Just as we must constantly strive to improve our operations, we must constantly strive to help others in our industry do so as well. If a bad actor won’t accept the help that’s offered, and law enforcement or the media get a hold of the situation, then after investigation and the weighing of evidence, if the actor truly is “bad,” then we must be the first to stand and tell the consumer, “This is not business as usual for our industry. We do not tolerate such practices,” he says in his column.
This message needs to be shared as broadly as possible. Most of these bad actors are not hiding in the closet. Their neighbors know who they are and should work locally to clean house. The good news is they are a minority that can be managed if the whole industry makes the commitment. They exist on the cropping side too. I don’t think self regulation will completely silence critics who are clearly agenda driven, but it does provide great ammunition for our friends to continue to support the industry.
Meanwhile in Washington, DC “The Hill,” a Capitol Hill newspaper ran a special section on “animal welfare.” The special issue contained a guest column by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who notes, “It is easy to forget that the reason we raise hogs, cattle, and chicken is for human consumption. That fact is often glossed over by animal rights activists. If there were no market for meat, there would be no supply.”
These animals are not the pets we so love but part of our national and global food chain.
“If you choose not to eat meat that is, of course, your right. But we must not allow some well-intentioned activists to play with public misconceptions to treat animals that are grown for slaughter as we would treat our pets. We should instead focus on how we can make our food supply the healthiest, most nutrient-rich food supply in the world,” says Schmidt, ranking member of the Horticulture and Organic Agriculture Committee in the House Agriculture Committee.
And finally, hats off to Ohio Corn Growers Association, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) and all their supporters for the newly created Center for Food and Animal Issues. The education program just got a significant boost thanks to a $100,000 donation approved by the Board of Directors for Farm Credit Services of Mid-America.
The Center was created in May to bring together diverse interests including farmers, consumers, zoos, hunters, researchers and pet owners to make sure all voices are heard as decisions about animals are considered. The Center will develop programs and partnerships that promote dialog among all stakeholders who benefit from animals in their lives.
