"So far, few traditional farmers lining up to grow marijuana in Washington state, Colorado."

WaPo reports:

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law....

The Justice Department has not said whether it will try to block the two states from implementing their new laws, passed late last year.....

In addition, marijuana is a crop that can’t be insured, and federal drug law bars banks from knowingly serving the industry....

Both states are in the process of developing rules for a legal marijuana industry....

How can state rules possibly make the industry legal? They can only make chaos that might conceivably move Congress to change the federal law. I don't see that coming any time soon. The Justice Department might say something encouraging, but will the next President's Justice Department stick with whatever position Eric Holder embraces?

Even if you felt sure you wouldn't be prosecuted, would you want to sign up on an official list as someone who is conspicuously committing an ongoing felony? Would you switch from a legal crop and expose yourself like that? And even if some farmers would go ahead and violate the criminal law — presumably because the upside profits are high — does the inability to buy crop insurance and use banks wreck the whole idea?

Dozens of marijuana experts, who have been growing plants for medical use or in secret for illegal use, are educating state officials about the potential for the crop. Probably 95 percent of those people choose to grow their plants indoors, despite higher costs, to control light and temperature, improve quality and increase yields....

Indoor crops generally allow for up to three harvests per season, compared to just one harvest for an outdoor crop, and allow for easier security measures. 

So "traditional farmers" have an entirely separate reason for not responding to the new program. You can't be growing marijuana amber-waves-of-grain-on-the-fruited-plain style. This stuff will be grown in big warehouses, pulling in loads of electricity for intense lighting and heavily guarded with guns! guns! guns!

Oh, but here's a little old lady, "Gail Besemer, who grows flowers and vegetables near Deming, Wash., [who] has expressed interest in a producers’ license."

Besemer already has three hoop houses, which are essentially temporary greenhouses, but could see expanding her business slightly to grow marijuana for a local clientele in northwest Washington.

Slightly! Flowers! Grandma!

However, “I’m concerned about druggies invading my property — ne’er-do-wells invading my property to steal, to get free dope,” she said. “Security would be an issue.”

Where do you get off with that contempt for the consumers of the product you want to grow? Seems to me, these are your people. Don't insult them.

“My family is not particularly excited about me being interested in this. But if someone has an integrated farm, growing a number of different crops, I would think it would be a high profit plant,” she said. “Taxation and security might get in the way of profits, and it might end not being so profitable.”

Yeah, you'd better think about it, lady. There's a reason it's a high profit plant. If it weren't for all these problems, any idiot could grow his own in his house. Take away the obstacles, and it's not a business at all. Which removes half of the attraction for the government, since there won't be anything to tax if there isn't a big rules-heavy structure burdening business. This isn't a game for the little old lady with her flowers and hoop houses. But that's the screwy, sentimental anecdote The Washington Post ties to plant in our brain.

"Humans need straight lines, nature doesn't. Indecisive river and orderly farmers, central Asia."

Tweeting photos from space.

"Their ideas point to the way that agriculture has to be in the future."

"There’s wide consensus that we have to figure out this fusion of ‘organic’ and 'industrial.' They’ve illustrated what that fusion looks like. It’s power and efficiency."

Mendocino cops helicopter in to a backcountry marijuana farm.

"We have old hippies in our county growing marijuana and they are not our problem... These are people who are trying to get rich quick.... Mendocino County was basically being taken over by thugs."

"It sends the wrong message to distraught farmers when the Agriculture Secretary suggests that the best response is to pray."

"For a Cabinet official to recommend prayer as a solution or call attention to his own devotions may violate the Constitution’s prohibition against establishment of religion. Most important, though, is that prayer doesn’t work. But if you want to test the power of prayer yourself, consider this. Apparently Secretary Vilsack’s been praying for rain every day; how’s that working out?"

Says the Council for Secular Humanism. They're wrong about the Establishment Clause, and I think the phrase "may violate" indicates that they know it. But they do have a point about government officials talking about prayer... or is that nothing more than the same point you could make about anybody praying? All that praying for things that don't happen generates evidence that prayer doesn't work.

I know the religion-based answers to that last point. (God answers prayers in ways other than granting the thing prayed-for, etc.) But I think it's different when a government official bandies religion about. A short, respectful reference to God or to prayer is standard rhetoric that isn't out of place in politician-speak. Did Vilsack go too far with "I get on my knees every day. And I’m saying an extra prayer now. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it”?

It's not like he's trying to excuse himself for failing to do something he could do. I know government officials frequently act as though they could control the great forces of nature/human behavior/the economy, so I'd rather see the open acknowledgment that there's nothing to be done, which is basically what Vilsack is saying.

Now, if that means praying is nothing, maybe religionists should be offended. Also, "rain dance" might be offensive to Native Americans. Come on, everyone, let's get offended.

A farm in Perrysville, Indiana.

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"The Myth of Sustainable Meat."

A NYT op-ed, prepping you for the slaughter... of your carnivoraciousness.

Opponents of industrialized agriculture have been declaring for over a decade that how humans produce animal products is one of the most important environmental questions we face. We need a bolder declaration. After all, it’s not how we produce animal products that ultimately matters. It’s whether we produce them at all.

It's noted in the piece that "It is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients," which leads to the suggestion that "Farmers could avoid this waste by exploiting animals only for their manure, allowing them to live out the entirety of their lives on the farm...."

Exploiting animals only for their manure.... I don't know about that, but it got me thinking about op-ed writers. You know, they are animals. We could exploit them for their (metaphorical) manure.

Dibbing Sun Gold Tomato Seeds.

Here's the Rolling Stones song I bring up as Meade dibs.

Obama administration calls Christmas trees "Christmas trees"... and taxes them.

It sound amusingly Grinch-y, but let's be fair. The 15-cent charge is to support a program to "enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States."

What makes it very funny to me is that just yesterday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was lambasted for calling a Christmas tree a "Christmas tree." Linking to my post about that, The Anchoress wisecracks:

See, this is where Governor Walker made his mistake: If you want to call ‘em Christmas Trees, you have to tax them, first. Then you’re allowed.

Now, I said I was going to be fair, so here goes, and this isn't intended to be funny at all. This is intended to focus on the constitutional principles about religion and government. In Wisconsin, we've got a tree in the state capitol, the government's own display. Calling that particular tree a "Christmas tree" adds something to what already is the appearance that the state is endorsing or favoring a holiday that originated with one set of religious groups, the Christians.

In the case of the Department of Agriculture's new Christmas Tree Promotion Board, the government is involving itself with a particular crop and using the name of the crop that is used by those who are in the business of growing that crop. That is, the Department of Agriculture is going about its usual business — which you are welcome to view as too intrusive — and not giving special hands-off treatment to this crop that happens to have an end-use in activities that have some connection to a particular religion.

UPDATE: The Department of Agriculture is delaying the new fee, and a White House spokesman is saying:

"I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign."

"Occupy Wall Street, Occupy State Street, Occupy Everything and Never Give It Back!"

That's the chant at one point in this video — shot by Meade and me, edited by me — of the Occupy Madison protest at the Capitol Square today here in Madison, Wisconsin. The Dane County Farmers' Market was going on at the same time and, as you'll see, one farmer-vendor takes action.



ADDED: These protesters have a variety of topics, but they keep coming back to Monsanto and GMO. At 1:50, when the chant is "Organic feed/Is what we need," a Farmers' Market vendor — who has walked right up to them — retorts "What we need is for you to get out of here!" She continues: "We can't make any money with you guys yelling around here and scaring the customers! Get out of here!"



We can hear a protester respond: "Aw, the customers. Yeah, baby." There are a few other negative-sounding words from the protesters, which I can't make out, other than the one who taunts her for wearing a Bucks jacket. (What's wrong with liking the Milwaukee Bucks in Madison? Did he confuse the Bucks with the Bulls?)

But within 5 seconds, the protesters begin walking off, with a few (female) cries of "We're sorry" and "I apologize." I'm not sure how sincere they were. It felt kind of like George Harrison saying "Sorry we hurt your field, mister" in "Hard Day's Night."

Anyway, it was good of them to stop damaging the farmers' business and amusingly out of line with "Occupy Everything and Never Give It Back!" They gave it back. Thanks. You know, there's a real problem with this Occupy [Your City] protest format: It doesn't have an exit strategy. You come, you conquer, and then time passes, protesters get dirty and ugly, internal divisions crack them up, the nearby residents get disgusted, the local businesses get mad, and then what? There's isn't going to be a revolution. It's not Egypt. In the end, they'll have to break up and go home. Or hope the cops come in and bust them up so they can end with a bang.

"Milwaukee recognized for urban farms, aquaponics."

"International team recognizes Milwaukee's 'high potential' to improve access to healthy food, revitalize neighbor hoods and create jobs."

Many cities, including Milwaukee, have "food deserts," or large areas without traditional grocery stores because poverty is high, and supermarkets choose not to operate there. As a result, residents have less access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Neighborhood corner stores and convenience stores typically don't offer quality fresh produce....

Hence, "high potential" for urban farms and aquaponics. I sense high potential for boondoggle-ponics. There aren't enough grocery stores, so you want people in the city to farm? You want the poor to become farm workers... subsistence farmer workers? Is that really a good use of city space and human labor? Who benefits?

By the way, inserting a space in the word "neighborhoods" — see above — creates the wrong impression.

Don't send 4-year-olds to school. Send them to work.

Says Cornell Anthropologist Meredith F. Small:

Look outside Western culture and watch children, even very small children, as they gather firewood, weed gardens, haul water, tend livestock, care for younger children and run errands. And no one complains because they are mostly outside and usually with other children....

When we were an agriculturally based nation, American children used to work just as hard and contribute in the same way. But now, Western children are trained intellectually, in school, where they are taught to think about things as the entree to adulthood...

Everyone sits quietly at their desks, thinking and thinking, just when they’d rather be out tending cows or weeding the garden.

And then we think and think about why there's so much obesity.

Small talks about how young children, working, contribute economically, and notes that we've lost that economic value to children, because we're not farmers. Ah, but confining very young children to classrooms is an economic concept in America. It's childcare, paid for by taxpayers who wouldn't accept paying for the childcare of parents who want (or need) to go to work. The children, unschooled, would be an economic burden on parents who would either purchase private childcare or forgo income from the second of 2 parents working.

If what's really going on is taxpayer-funded childcare, then not only are taxpayers tricked into accepting paying for something they would reject if they knew what it was, but also children are being run through hours and hours of confinement performing exercises that are not honestly premised on benefiting them.

ADDED: There's also that new study that says sitting is as bad as smoking. Since we wouldn't force kids to smoke, why are we forcing them to sit? We're even giving a lot of the kids drugs to overcome their disinclination to sit. It's like forcing kids to smoke and giving them drugs to help them smoke.

When a ridiculous law is proposed, I assume it was designed to address some specific problem...

... and the drafter simply (and stupidly) forgot to think about what other things would be covered by the text. But this law, making it a 1st degree felony to photograph a farm, has so many inappropriate applications that it's hard to imagine a drafter that oblivious.

And what was the original specific problem that fired him up in the first place? There's this:

Organizations such as PETA and the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida contend [Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa] drafted the legislation in response to a number of high-profile exposés that revealed horrific conditions on farms around the country, and worry that without whistleblowers the industry will operate with impunity....

On the Sugar River Trail.

We biked the Sugar River Trail today, from New Glarus Woods State Park to Albany and back — 33 miles.

Caught in a rainstorm, ducking into a small-town libraray, I read the Utne Reader yesterday.

I used to subscribe back in the 80s, when I loved it. But what is it now? I found the cover pretty amusing:



I can't find a bigger picture of that at the site. Too bad! They should show it off. It's funny — Obama biting into a sloppy cheeseburger and cringing as the angry Michelle waves a bunch of carrots much like wives in old comic strips used to wield rolling pins. And you know what it means when a First Lady gets after the President to eat carrots.

Of course, the article inside isn't critical of Michelle Obama and her eat-your-vegetables shtick. It's critical of Obama, but not because he eats cheeseburgers, because he "loves up industrial agriculture." We're supposed to identify with the angry woman swinging her lo-cal phallic symbols at her man. (At least they aren't cut up phallic symbols like the ones Hillary famously foisted on Bill.) The cheeseburger Obama prefers — like the onion rings Bill Clinton preferred — is a symbol, a symbol of what he loves. In Obama's case, according to the article, it's agribusiness. He "loves up" agribusiness, that big sloppy, gooey cheeseburger.

It's Utne Reader, that magazine for aging lefties, and the article assumes you're into the anti-business agenda. The magazine assumes you'll identify with Michelle and her vegetables and is oblivious to the possible revulsion you might feel to the angry face they've given her. You're supposed to think:  Yes, Obama, come back to your lefty roots. (Note: Carrots are roots.) Your policies need to kick big business in the ass and embrace the local and sustainable and holistic.

But I didn't get that far into the magazine. The library was closing and the rainstorm was ending, and we needed to get back to the Glacial Drumlin Trail. I only had time to read: 1.  a letter from the editor by a subscriber who was sending back an issue of the magazine because it had Sarah Palin on the cover and she didn't want to look at that ever ever ever (though presumably the articles inside assailed the Alaskan), 2. "On Being Fat and Running: Abandoning insecurity for a full life," by Brenton Dickieson, from Geez, and "Sentenced to Life: A man ages in prison and outlives society’s fears," by Kenneth E. Hartman, from Notre Dame. But none of those things are accessible on line, so I can't send Utne Reader some traffic and set up some discussion about that here.

The Hartman article is a reprint, and — unlike the Geez reprint about running while fat — the original is on line, so you can read it.

Prison is a young man’s world, a world of physical violence and posturing, a world of brute strength and primal, unfocused rage. It is not a place to grow old, although more and more of us are doing just that: growing old in prison.

But Utne Reader is not a young man's world — or a young woman's world. It feels like an old person's place. I felt too young for it... and I'm old. Or it's for those other aging Americans... the lefties.  I see these people in Madison all the time. Do they feel left behind? Do you think the day will come when "lefty" will seem to mean left behind?

IN THE COMMENTS: lemondog has a way to get to an enlargement of the cover. Here's a closeup screen grab that shows Michelle's face:



The artist is Jason Seiler. Nice work. I notice the cigarette over the ear now. Ha.

Using lemondog's method, I can get to that letter about Sarah Palin. If you page forward in the magazine, you'll find it. You can see the cover that upset the poor woman so. She complains:

When the media gives air space, page space, and cover space (albeit in jest or irony) to crazies such as Palin, they are complicit in her plan to lend credence to the climate of ignorance, sensationalism, and just downright muddled thinking that is passed off as a national discourse these days — and which she is one of the most visible muddlers.

Jeez, the mere image of Sarah Palin unleashes hysteria.

AND: The image of Michelle Obama drives other people nuts. Women's faces. They're so provocative.

"Robot suits to aid elderly Japanese farmers with toiling in the fields."

"People aged 65 and older are a key pillar of the agricultural work force, accounting for about 60 percent of the agricultural population in Japan. Development of the robot suit may come as welcome news to such elderly farmers."

Key word: "may."

Wisconsin farmland.

Seen from Blue Mounds.

"I used to think diversity was my best friend marrying a black guy."

"But the guy graduated from rich-kid private schools and has tenure at UCLA and, at this point, I think diversity is not skin color but rather social upbringing."

Writes Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist blogger, who married a farmer. The link post is actually about remodeling the farmhouse, or that's the factual context anyway. It's titled "How to cope with diversity." There's a list of 7 tips for coping with diversity, all explained in remodeling-the-farmhouse stories.

***

Here's a spoken-word performance that I love on the subject of home-remodeling: "Terrors of Pleasure," by Spalding Gray. God, I miss Spalding Gray.

And we missed Penelope Trunk, when she went almost a month without blogging after writing that post.

"This is not a good path for kids if the relationship isn’t going toward marriage."

"So I waited until a day when the farmer and I were holding hands, walking between rows of corn higher than our heads. And I told him that I can’t keep bringing the kids to the farm because we’re not getting married and I’m scared the kids will get hurt. The farmer didn’t say anything for five minutes. And then he said, 'Okay. Let’s get married.'"

"His father would refuse to drive him to soccer practice because he thought using a car to travel somewhere to exercise was ridiculous."

And now, 19-year-old Alex Liebman, has taken a year off from college to work on an organic farm.

This will be Mr. Liebman’s third farm internship. He has come to love the muscle fatigue that sets in at the end of a day. The rhythm of farm life is a welcome break from cellphones and Facebook. And the work makes him feel as if he is doing something to better the world.

“I’m not sure that I can affect how messed up poverty is in Africa or change politics in Washington,” he said, “but on the farm I can see the fruits of my labor.”

“By actually waking up every day and working in the field and putting my principles into action, I am making a conscious political decision,” he added.

Are you raising your child to be a farm hand?

Or maybe you are a farmer, in which case: Do you want a farm hand like Alex Liebman?