The bewtiching hour has arrived again on the East Coast, so it’s time for another open thread for the night owls and early risers.
Here are a couple of short videos of my favorite topic these days: regenerative farming.
We spoke with this cropland farmer from the Hoosier tropics about the challenges he faces keeping up with the inputs of traditional farming, and his decision to move to an adaptive grazing model.
More and more farmers are moving towards AMP grazing strategies to mitigate their expenses and escape the debt cycle.
At the Ranney Ranch in arid Corona, New Mexico, Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing is restoring soils and benefiting the environment while producing healthy food for consumers – and they changed to AMP grazing during a 15-year drought – this was unheard of. Ranch manager Melvin Johnson was extremely resistant to trying this new method of grazing, having been a conventional rancher all his life. Filmed in Corona, New Mexico
Just a reminder:
Super busy day…glad to call it a night.
This is a totally open thread
NotMax
Wee hours watch.
A look back at what, even in the world of 1961, can only be described as a decidedly niche profession.
;)
J. Arthur Crank
I love that card, thanks for the link.
The Cubs just handed the Padres their first home loss. Twenty games into the season they are in first place in their division.
Strange season so far. There are 7 teams in the National League with 10 or more wins. There are 4 such teams in the American League, and each of those 4 teams has exactly 10 wins.
prostratedragon
From our earlier discussion of the elephants protecting a young one, I now know that an alert circle is what the GSWarriors on the bench were forming around Draymond Greene when he fouled out in a close game.
SpaceUnit
Yay. Such progressive agriculture methods should give our farmers more time to attend trump rallies.
ETA: Of course they’ll now have to pick their own fucking crops. Yay.
No One of Consequence
Heavy pondering material for bedtime.
I posit that the fact that billionaires exist in this country is a moral failure of our society.
My reasoning is that the last $1 required to reach their net worth, to them, is negligible. The last $10.
The last $10,000.
The last $10,000,000.
Really, and most probably, the last $100,000,000.
We need to remove the cap on Social Security and/or restore the top marginal tax bracket to 90%. As it was under Saint Eisenhower.
We need The Rich to pay their fair share. They’ve gotten obscenely wealthy over the last decades, and they’ve not chipped in sufficiently. If they decline to do so, I suggest we eat them, and take their stuff.
Thank you for reading this evening’s modest proposal. Vote accordingly. Unless you are a billionaire, and then, if you would be so kind, consider a zesty salt rub inclusion into your post-shower routine?
-NOoC
Martin
@No One of Consequence: Yeah, there’s a term for that: Diminishing Marginal Utility.
The compliment to diminishing marginal utility is progressive taxation. Because each additional dollar provides less utility (to the government, less economic work) then the way to maximize the amount of work that dollar performs is to redistribute it to people where that dollar would have meaningful economic impact.
Shorthand: Elon Musk can afford a million cheeseburgers per day, but can really only eat a few, while if that money is distributed to a million people, a million cheeseburgers can be consumed. More work can be done.
sab
I am so bad at agriculture that I cannot rid my house of (introduced by me) fungas gnats. They are killing my few houseplants.
A year ago I had never even heard of those little guys. Now I am supposed to be pouring bleech down drains to get rid of them. Seems cruel (because it is) but those little guys are relentless and killing plants I have had for years.
Go outside, little insects. We don’t want you here. I will get bug sticky tape if you stay on.
YY_Sima Qian
Off the looking glass & through the map. (I pity the Onion.):
The comment was made in the context of Vance suggesting that it is in neither Europe’s nor the US’ interest for the former to be the latter’s military vassal. It’s like very reasonable “FP Restrainer” belief that Vance might have held is now distorted by the funhouse mirrors of MAGA ideology.
Meanwhile, Trump/Navarro/Lutnick/Miran/Bessent are trying to make Europe the US’ economic vassal (likely will fail miserably).
What a time to be alive…
sab
Lovely lady I got my satby rescues from has been in contact with me the last couple of days. Exchanging cat pictures. Her guys and my guys both seem happy, although my guys are wary.
I think cats, like people and dogs, never quite recover from being rehomed. They have a new hopefully comfortable world, but they never believe it is safe. They thought their old home was safe and they were wrong.
I have a step-daughter raised in scary fostercare.It took her twenty years to trust me and that trust is still iffy. I understand, sort of. How could I possibly really understand?
My husband, who is good with cats, doesn’t understand why the new guys like me better than him. He is cat guy. I am dog person.
I realize these critters (dog or cat) have just had a traumatic year. They need comfort, caring and coaxing. And nothing loud.
Figure out what they want and what scares them and what comforts them and proceed accordingly.
ETA What worked with your happily raised critters won’t always work with these guys. Trust is damaged with them. It needs to be rebuilt and that takes a long time.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: this explanation makes it clear that such wealth is wasteful, unless put back into use and circulation.
btw, sorry i gave a straight answer earlier on another thread. You may have been joking with me.. how tedious of me.
YY_Sima Qian
Bloomberg editors having fun w/ the headlines:
prostratedragon
From the Mary Rose Museum:
ColoradoGuy
@No One of Consequence: There’s a region where it is pretty much impossible to spend any more. After you own five houses in the most exclusive locations in the world, own a fleet of jets, and have 24/7 staff answering your slightest whim, there’s nothing left to buy.
My guess it’s around $100 million or so. After that, all you can buy is power … raw power to shape society to your whims, to treat entire nations like real-life Monopoly games. This is a dangerous power since it re-creates all the evils of aristocracy, and worse, seeks to perpetuate itself at the expense of the rest of society.
Which is where FDR’s, Truman’s, and Eisenhower’s 91% marginal tax rate comes in. It is a measure not about economic equity, but democracy protecting itself against malign actors. Consider the actions of the world’s two richest men … Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk. Or the oligarchs surrounding them, who have re-created medieval courts.
Jane2
Regenerative agriculture is helping to save grain farms…here’s Gabe Brown of ND: https://youtu.be/4R7mX6pChSA?si=_mLEEiWF0IrltSMP
Martin
@Gloria DryGarden: I was joking, but I appreciated the straight answer. It was very kind.
But the reason the government issues currency in the first place is to make economic activity easier (when you, the chicken farmer wants to buy a cheeseburger from the restaurant, you don’t need to have a pre-negotiation to trade chickens to the butcher for beef to trade to the chef for a cheeseburger – you just hand them $3 and take your cheeseburger, and its your problem how to get the $3 and their problem how to spend it).
To that end, currency exists to do work for the government by making the economy work. The whole argument for capitalism, is that capital holders can better put to work the surplus currency better than the government or workers can. The roughly opposing argument (socialism) is that the government and/or workers can better put it to work.
But yeah, fundamentally, concentrated wealth reduces the utility of the nations currency.
Ohio farmer
As a former dairy farmer, who still raises Holstein heifers and feeds out Holstein steers, while also crossing some with Angus….. I just don’t understand adaptive/regenerative farming…. Might be lucky in having good land in central Oh, but my family has been quite successful farming conventionally and well that kinda leaves no motivation to change…. We lived through OSU turning it’s entire dairy science program into shilling for intensive grazing in the 80s and 90s which proved to be not a good idea….
Its Ohio and cattle do really good being fed corn silage….
its 4:30am and I should be sleeping not posting farmer gibberish
sorry
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: I would argue that wealth taxes should start at $10M and really above that you get rapidly diminishing returns. With a functioning safety net that would leave you with quite a lot for say, starting a business even. Without a safety net there’s a huge incentive to hold that money and not put it to work.
Above $10M, really, you’re just trying to demonstrate you are a more important person than everyone else and disengage from society.
Geminid
Steve Witkoff: “If it’s Saturday, this must be
RomeMuscat.”Last Saturday, Trump’s personal diplomatic envoy Witkoff met with Iranian Foreign Minister Araughchi in Oman’s capital, Muscat. The subject was Iran’s nuclear program. Both parties expressed satisfaction with their get-together, and said they would meet again in a week. A couple days ago, the next venue was said to be Rome, but now the word is the next meeting will take place in Oman again, this coming Saturday.
Oman is important here as a safe and neutral venue for sensitive negotiations, but the country itself interests me.
In order to get a better idea of Middle Eastern countries, I started comparing them to U.S. states. For instance, Syria has a land area about the size of Florida’s and a similar population of around 25 million people.
Oman is comparable to Colorado. Colorado has an area of 104,000 square miles, while Oman’s area is 119,000 sq.mi. Colorado’s population is 5.9 million, and Oman’s is 5.3 million. One big difference: Oman is a coastal nation, and Colorado is landlocked.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: plus Omán is probably more arid than Colorado, kind of desert, inland, isn’t it? I’m not sure how lush their coastal areas are.
I had no idea it was bigger than Colo. I too like to compare countries to states. The Atlas I have, published in USA, uses a different scale for ROW than for USA states. I was fooled for a long time. Peru is twice the size of Texas. Irán too, is huge.
Gloria DryGarden
Ive been gradually learning about regenerative grazing practices. So fascinating, and hopeful.
brian Tyler cohen has a YouTube up: some reps are preparing to fly to El Salvador, go the prison, make inquiries. They hope to hear if they have permission to go in an official capacity.. quite a discussion about the unconstitutionality of what’s happened.
Princess
@Ohio farmer: Always good to have a perspective from someone with practical experience in the field. So to speak.
Being a farmer must be a bit like being a teacher confronted with new radical shifts in “no, *this* is how to teach kids how to read.”
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: With a functioning social safety net, the threshold amount that is genuinely useful probably goes down from there. We’ve accumulated the wealth we have almost entirely for the purpose of supplying ourselves with things that we’d get from the government in a better-organized society: the equivalent of a decent retirement pension, health care and higher education for our kid.
Geminid
@Geminid: Also, Colorado’s Governor is term-limited, while Oman’s Sultan is not.
So the non-term limited Sultan had a phone call with Trump yesterday, about the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program. That was a good thing; Sultan bin Tariq seems to be a level-headed guy, and Trump needs all the level-headed help he can get in these negotiations.
The phone call preceded a meeting between Trump and his national security team including Vance, Waltz, Rubio, Hedgseth, Ratcliffe and others, plus Witkoff.
Axios’s Barak Ravid reported on this in an article titled, “Scoop: Trump holds situation room meeting on Iran negotiations.” An excerpt:
Rubio and Waltz know that a maximalist approach to these negotiations will blow them up, so they are in effect pushing for a war. They might get one, too.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Iran has a population of around 85 million people. That’s pretty close to both Turkiye’s and Germany’s.
MagdaInBlack
@Ohio farmer: Speaking as a grown up northern Illinois farm kid, I can only say that one of the purposes of regenerative farming is to make sure that good land we were both blessed with, stays good land for those that will come after. We both know soil does “wear out.”
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid: I think Colorado has better skiing.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gin & Tonic: A much belated congratulations to you, on being a grandpa!
Professor Bigfoot
@ColoradoGuy: I read somewhere that the primary purpose of an estate tax is to stop the formation of a hereditary aristocracy.
Now we have a plantation aristocracy without the plantations.
lowtechcyclist
@YY_Sima Qian:
It’s all Europe’s fault! They should have stopped us from doing that bad thing!!
Sounds like abusive-husband logic to me. Which is one reason why the ‘logic’ makes no sense and doesn’t even match the facts.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: Ursula Von der Leyen, that most Atlanticist & most pro-US of leading European politicians, trolling MAGA, taking a hard turn toward realpolitik, & declared the end of the West, in the following interview w/ German media:
lowtechcyclist
@Gloria DryGarden:
That’s right. And there’s another thing: when there’s too much money sloshing around at the top, it’s worse than wasteful. Those fuckers run out of normal places to invest it, and they do shit like buying up houses to rent them or simply hold them as investments, taking them out of the housing market and making buying a house more expensive for everyone else.
So past a certain point (and we’re well past it now) it’s actually destructive to the well-being of our society for too much money to be in the hands of rich people.
YY_Sima Qian
Seems like a symbolic gesture toward the possibility of conciliation, w/o any suggestions of concessions, all the while continuing to stand firm & selective applying the screws in substance (gift link to Bloomberg article):
I suspect Beijing is also playing to 3rd parties, especially the EU & other Western countries, to present itself as the responsible, stable & predictable actor
These asks are also consistent with/ the EU’s stance. No one knows what the US wants out of these negotiations.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: Asset price inflation, a consequence of the hyper-financialized economy, which suits the plutocrats & kleptocrats just fine.
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
Actually, there are more expensive toys. NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL franchises. AFAIK, they’re all in the billions now. Part of that is that there are only so many major-league teams to buy, so the abundance of billionaires who’d like to own one inflates the prices a bit. But without that, they’d still be in the hundreds of millions at least.
Regardless, there’s still too much money sloshing around at the top.
Used to have an acronym for that – TALOMSAATT – “there’s a lot of money sloshing around at the top” which even a couple of decades ago seemed to explain far too many of our problems.
Gin & Tonic
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you. The baby is, of course, perfect in every way.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: Xi may be a dictator, but that man ain’t stupid.
Not by any stretch.
And as a warship watcher, the PLAN is building some pretty ones right now that look very capable. Mr. Xi is building himself a serious blue-water navy.
Professor Bigfoot
@Gin & Tonic: I dinna get a chance to congratulate you, Gramps, but CONGRATULATIONS! And OF COURSE, that wee one is absolutely perfect in every way (in Granda’s eyes, always).
stinger
Thanks, TaMara and Jane2! I’m the child and grandchild of farmers and still living on the farm, though my neighbor does the hard work. And my dad died of ALS, so the Gabe Brown TED talk hits home. When I finally have to move into town, I hope I can sell my place to a young couple interested in integrated farming. There’s a maturing orchard on the place, a few remaining outbuildings, etc. The guy who farms the cropland has recently begun planting a rye cover crop and says he already sees a big difference in soil nutrients.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah, the PLAN has been on an impressive, world historical even, modernization program for the past 2 decades. Same w/ the PLAAF, & to a lesser extent the land forces branch. This happening when the PRC is only spending ~ 1.7 – 1.9% of GDP on defense, so barely breaking a sweat fiscally.
One of the semi-serious suggestions circulating on Chinese social media is that the PRC will likely need to boost fiscal stimulus to counteract the economic headwinds from the sudden decoupling w/ the US (& potentially global recession), & one way to do so is military Keynesianism (as the Europe is doing, & the US as well). The US (& countries of the “Indo-Pacific”) might not like the PRC that is spending 3+% of GDP on the military, & accelerate its rapid modernization program (quality) into a true expansion in quantity, too.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gin & Tonic: Babies always are! :-)
Gloria DryGarden
@lowtechcyclist: thank you.
im still learning about economics. This helps me understand more about it.
one addition: they buy up homes, housing, condos, and if they go un rented, like the luxury condos built a few years back next to my favorite denver food bank ( against all our objections)
it’s a nice tax haven- they can declare a loss. But still own this great asset.
Gloria DryGarden
@lowtechcyclist: military vassal. I’ll look it up.
Sigh
abusive husband thinking, I like that, great illustration.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: a sultan is basically a monarch, right? Only they have a big team of advisors, family, a different structure that a king/queen, am I understanding this concept? Not exactly an authoritarian dictator, but could be..
im just considering this, exploring how things work in other places.
Re Turkiye and Germany, and Iran, 85 +-, is loosely 1/4 of USA population. That’s pretty big. I was comparing land mass size. I love that you always spell Turkiye right. A lot of people, even journalists, haven’t caught on, yet. Respect.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: what’s the safety net you propose for these millionaires?
I only know about the low income persons safety net, which I’ve gratefully availed myself of.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, a Sultan is a monarch, like a king. Same with an Emir; the head o Qatar is Emir al-Thani. The Prime Minister is also an al-Thani, and so is the Foreign Minister. That government reminds me of the Sly and the Familiy Stone song “It’s a Family Affair.”
I like the new spelling for Turkiye. I joke that it was instituted because President Erdogan resembles a turkey, and other world leaders were snickering at him at conferences when he sat behind a sign identifying his country.
But poor Recip Soylu.* He’s always getting grief from other Turks because he uses the old spelling. I’m pretty sure that’s because he works for Middle East Eye. They’re part of the BBC and their stylebook has not changed.
* ragipsoylu,bsky.social
Gloria DryGarden
This thread has turned into regenerative agriculture and sustainable economics, and sustainable proposed models for international relations.
i don’t get how trump enjoys day in, day out yanking on everyone’s chain, creating layers of disruption, undoing things, rolling out new ways to bully and tear things down, and collect attention of all kinds. Ok, i understand wanting attention, sometimes, but not the kind he seems to relish.
if it were me, I’d set up a board of competent advisors, and delegate things, and coordinate, and hold meetings about if we met our key values, sustainability, regeneration, the common good, and well, yes, DEIA. I’d arrange for things to be stable, and sustainable, and adjustable, w stable negotiating relationships.
[ which in some ways things were, at least partly, sort of, in terms of global trade policies ( before herr destroyer et al )]
once things were running like a smooth machine, I’d go to my introvert lair, and read books, and look at maps, and take folks on nature walks, and hold interviews with people about how they think, and what they like about their culture. As an introvert, the constant cuttthroat overturning and destruction, just to have too much money at the cost of the world, it baffles me.
inspired my typo/ auto predict error, I’ll say the crazy that’s been going on, defiles our world. It defiles culture, and people and nature. Thus it goes against my deeply held value, harming none.
I do know about the kids who erect beautiful towers and castles in the blocks corner of early ed, only to crash another’s construction. Tears, tantrums, renegotiation, have to happen pretty often. Learning to share, and respect. And remake.
So forgive my cute little innocent bubble.
whatshis face would have never graduated from early childhood education without a lot of intervention. IMHO
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: great joke.
didnt they actually change it because of the double meaning of turkey, in English?
don’t know if I ever said, but the movie about the cats, Kedi, was lovely. A little slow paced. I took breaks every 20-40 minutes. But delightful. All that care. And they didn’t mind if cats got themselves fed extra times.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Turks really respect cats. When I started following Turkish “sosyal medya” I ran into videos like one where a cat laid down a couple feet past the top of an escalator. No one shooed it away; everyone stepped past it or over it.
Another video showed a cat lying at a grocery check out, and a customer handing items over the cat to the clerk.
And then there was some security camera video of an urban street. Some jerk kicked a cat for no reason; just walked up and kicked the poor cat. A couple seconds later another man who’d seen it ran into the frame and started pummeling the first man with his fists.
I would have liked to have heard what the second man said. There is a Turkish saying: “Persian is for poetry, Arabic is for prose, and Turkish is for cursing.”
Ohio farmer
@Princess: I mean I have no problem any of the other practices, be it organic or regenerative or whatever the name is…. To me too much of this is driven by folks who were not successful at conventional farming practices so they had to change to stay in business…. Which is great for you but I don’t need to make those same changes to make a living….and believe me and 10-20 years there are always new buzz words or trends on this is the best way…. Well, maybe….
Ohio farmer
@MagdaInBlack: we have been practicing no/minimum tilling for nearly 50 years…. At one point my home county was referred to as the no till capital of the world(well, probably self proclaimed)…. We also spread lots of cow manure on fields to help…. For me…. I think if you can make an actual living off the land… you are probably doing things correct….
Anyway
Exactly an authoritarian dictator.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ohio farmer: thank your your sacred work, and your no til methods.
Do you compost that cow manure and age it awhile first?
i get mine in bags, in the city. Or by a cubic yard, once or twice 20 years ago.
Ohio farmer
@Gloria DryGarden: not near as much manure produced now without 100 cow milking herd…. It was stored in pit that was as covered to keep rain water out so it was considered semi solid and we could hold a couple of months at a time, but not in anyway composted…. Now it’s mostly straw pack manure and wasted hay that gets spread…. Having cows really did increase soil fertility and saved us a lot of money on fertilizer over the years…