jsolomon

If you can ask noisy rude people to leave bars, why not coffee shops? I'm confused.

In a lot of cases in Nebraska, the problem is lack of land quality, and lack of weather compatibility. California, at least in the spots where the majority of the vegetables and fruits you are talking about, has much nicer weather than a place described as "The Great American Desert" which swings between 105F in the summer and -30F in the winter. The Sandhills here aren't even high enough quality to support corn, wheat, or beans. Just grass that is grazed by cattle, and a few sheep and bison. There are also social barriers. The farmers here are generally intelligent and hard-working, but they are also hide-bound. Unfortunately, so are the bankers. A farmer going to his banker to say "Corn is too damned low, give me a loan so I can turn my corn into oyster mushrooms, or shitakes" is going to not get the loan. The one set of non-hobby farmers I know in the area doing "alternative" agriculture is a sheep dairy that sells half of the milk to New York to a cheese-maker there, and the other half gets turned into cosmetics. The funny thing about your comments, russ parsons, is that 25 years ago, all of the corn farmers I'm talking about were diversified. They all had cattle, pigs, wheat, soybeans, and corn. But, if you're talking about low-price commidity cash crops like $2 bushel corn or $50 /ctwt pork, you either make your money up in volume, or you get out. Fruits and vegetables get sold at a much higher price which makes diversification easier, it also makes payoffs of investments faster. I'll tell you the one thing about most of this that really, really gets under my skin. I'm not directing it at any one person on eG, though. When the discussion comes back to farming in general, it seems like people go back to thinking about their garden, and how easy it was to grow those tomatoes, or their sweet corn, or peppers. But, the economy of doing it on a garden scale is very skewed from a "commercial" production scale. Farmers, these high school, and occasionally college educated people, are thrown into the travails of these markets where people get PhD's trying to figure out what's going to happen. These farmers are really doing quite a lot more than we can ask of them. And, finally, what kind of unfeeling inhuman clod would want to take the money away from a generally kind, honest worker who puts in over 100 hours a week when called on for either a low salary (farm owner) or an exempt hourly wage (farm worker)? Really? That's just cold-hearted. Those people work their asses off to early graves, and the thanks we give them is "can't you change"? Feh.

Wow, tough issue. What would I do in a coffee shop owner's shoes? Well, I'd probably provide several blankets for breastfeeding moms, and keep the sign that it is expected that people use their inside voices. Just like rowdy, rude adults will get ushered out, so will children. I do not see the line on this issue where "kids will be kids". Coffee is not intended as a children's drink, and neither do I see coffee shops intended as kid-friendly zones. Of course, when I ask parents to remove their children, I would probably do it with a set of to-go cups in my hand so they could enjoy their beverages... outside.

I'm not arguing that. But, I think you're making an apples and oranges comparison. Subsidy programs are generally for cash crops. Sugar, corn, rice, wheat, peanuts, cotton, beans, to some extent, milk. What is the range of things that farms as a broad group raise? Fruits, vegetables, meats, herbs, spices... and the list goes on. Let's look at tomatoes. According to USDA resources tomatoes are in the neighborhood of $.20 to $.70 per pound. If you look at corn, to have a price of $.20 to $.70 per pound you would have bushel prices of 56 times that. $11.20 to $39.20 Hell, if corn farmers got $3 per bushel, just a nickel a pound, they'd be tickled pink. You're blaming the corn farmers for overproducing and then whining to Uncle Sam that they can't make it, but you're not looking at the barrel the corn farmers are over, so you're making really illogical arguments about who's to blame and why. It's really unfortunate that corn farmers are locked in to overproducing the way the are, but the subsidies are on a bushel basis, so they have to produce to make their loan payments, which just drives the price down. They aren't the ones who made the rules to the game, but they are the ones who feed their families based on the subsidy payments. Don't get me wrong, I understand your shock and dismay at the disparity of payments, but you're mis-categorizing who gets many of the payments and why. Live in cash crop country for a while and work with the cash crop people and understand the subsidy systems before you go decrying what is wrong and why because you are mis-casting your arguments (and the NY Times is grandly oversimplifying the system).

I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't. I'm saying that we DO. That is a main reason for farm subsidies being as they are. Are you saying that out of firsthand knowledge? I have a general understanding of how many farms work it, but I think your view is somewhat distorted.

Even though I noticed that dumplings were conspicuously missing, you performed fabulously. Your inner Diva has shown through, yet again, Kathleen. Thanks for your ferreting out food, entertainment, and more beer for me to try.

Of course it is. It is a unit of volume about as large as your largest individual poop... which as we all know is the corpse of previous meals--so this is still food-related

That's really unfair. I know personally several of the "select large producers who then use this money for intense lobbying and PR to continue the subsidies". As far as I know--and I know a lot about one--they give more of this money to the church than they do to the political process. For the most part, they are still family farms that have become large through careful management and luck. What is large? Well, 8 employees, 6 who are permanent, and 2 who help during planting and harvest. Farmers aren't out to screw people. And, it is very unfair of people to think this way.

It also makes sense for the extremely larger number of smaller farms that need the subsidy to put food on their own tables. The farm subsidy programs are not for farmers to get rich. The farm subsidy programs are for the ~1,000,000 (give or take a few hundred thousand) to stay employed. It would be very devastating to the U.S. if within one year 90% or more of the farmers were so far in hock that their land, equipment, houses, and crops got repossessed by the bank. We wouldn't be able to generate that many new jobs in a year, and we would have some very, very angry people on our hands who would want answers, shelter, and food. The simplest answer is that there are farm subsidies for numerous reasons, but one reason why we have them at all is that we simply can't handle the sheer number of unemployed if our farm economy were to tank (which it most certainly would without farm subsidies, especially with fuel costs as they were this year). The funny thing is, the corn that they are speaking of is not "food grade". So it's not directly entering our food supply. It'll go toward industry such as making ethanol, fructose corn syrup, starch production, and other "manufactured" or "value-added" agricultural commodities.

Sometimes you're the hot skillet, sometimes you're the hash, Sam.

Define small number.

Not to stir the pot, but what is the controversy? Granted, I follow the wine industry about as closely as my fingernail length, but I have some experience with chemistry, biology, and biochemistry, so I'm curious what it looks like in the wine field.

MUSTN'T LAUGH-SPEW TUNA HELPER!

So, if fat is so bad, where does that leave athletes like me who typically eat between 4000 and 5000 Calories a day? Maybe my supersized is a necessary part of my performance diet. The thing that strikes me is that there is paltry amounts of this thrust to the real solution to the quandary: consumer education. But, the thing that strikes me is that marketing is so rarely about enabling educated choices. Especially when it comes to food. But, if I argue down this road, I'll just expose myself as a cynic.

And corporations were, not so long ago, individual people in a society. It comes full circle. But, GroupThink doesn't always explain individual choices, like why to be pedantic in one area, but not another. So, I'm begging my previous question. Pomme frites = good french fries = bad? B.S. Why?

buy low, sell high?

I have both. All work fairly well. The ergonomics on both styles I have are pretty much crap. The beauty of both, well see the ergonomics. They go hand-in-hand. But, they boil water which gets me caffeine. So, life can still exist within the realm of a homely tea kettle.

And ABV levels/trends (since that's already going in another thread). Your views, as a person, not corporate, please.

Yes, please.

Silly question. How come we wax poetic over fleur de sel (salt) and beef marrow (fat) and we call salty fries fried in beef tallow crap? Someone please 'splain. McDonald's does very well what it sets out to do and that is sell food that tastes good enough for people to purchase again, and not get anyone sick with food poisoning. They do this by strict controls on what they sell and how they keep it. By that standard, those people really do quite an amazing job. Millions of servings per year with a tremendously low rate of illness/dissatisfaction. Granted, they have chosen to pick the low fruit by choosing foods that are dried or frozen generally. But still. They do an enviable job. So, back to my initial question. What is our disconnect?

There are some very tricky and extremely greedy pandas around in the world of human endeavor. But who expects a panda to have any ethics? They are merely cute fuzzy bears. So adorable. Sort of like Ronald Mcdonald. ← I don't know who expects them to have any ethics. All of those little black-eyed blighters eating up all of those bamboo shoots meant for My Americanized Chinese food! Fie, I say, fie!

You should really make it four. Beer is kind of like the nuclear family and is well suited to splitting tasks, like the nuclear family. (why you need four beers) When debearding mussels, which is inevitably hard and thankless work, one must have a tasty tipple near the elbow to help stave away boredom. One to cook the mussels in (or steam them with) One to have to pass the time while the mussels steam One to have with the mussels. . . . Or, you can make it six. The twin of the cooking beer goes into the beer-batter dumplings, and the youngest sibling is consumed as dessert.

Quality food grows profits. Panda eats, shoots and leaves. I hope you understand how difficult it was for me to type the first sentence.

If fat-free is the goal, and the raw flour taste in the thing you want to remove, why not use corn starch as a replacement?

Unfortunately, if you shop at a large grocery store, you're likely to find that all of the meat you purchase is from the same companies that McD's buys from... so you're feeding the same shite-treating beast. Edit to add: I am waiting to see the pictures from the McDonald's Salt Mines.