there are links about these stories on the youtube site.
All I know about this is that I was working in Liberia when a previous war closed the Suez canal, and all the big tankers had to go around Africa. This was before container ships by the way.
We had a contract with some shipping firms to treat sialors... many small ships would go around the hump to local ports, meaning first to Sierra Leone then to Monrovia, so most of those we treated were for diseases the sailors picked up from the nice ladies there. And since I spoke some Spanish (lots of Portuguese seamen could understand Spanish) and German (lots of Polish seamen could speak German) it meant I got to see a lot of these in our clinic.
since Monrovia's artificial port is small, it meant we had to go out to the larger ships to evacuate patients which I did a couple of times.
Things are now different: Container ships for example, and LPG not just tankers...
The video discusses the money part, about insurance coverage, and about the dark fleet to get around sanctions.
Tanker traffic through the energy chokepoint effectively halted after the US and Israel began a bombing campaign over the weekend that has prompted Iran to respond with strikes across the region.
As the world’s largest oil and gas importer, China is among the most exposed nations — while it has ample reserves, almost half of its crude imports transited the strait in December.
And he reminds people about the Houthis
who are Iranian proxies, who will probably start shelling ships from neutral countries in the Red Sea.
Translation: This will cause many ships going to Europe to divert around Africa, and also impoverish Egypt since it won't collect fees from ships using the Suez canal.
Another change: Huge numbers of Filipinos are seamen and in danger.
So use modern solar farms? Yup. We have them being placed all over our valuable rice growing areas here but they aren't on line yet.
we are seeing a few e-bikes being used as tricycles (which is what ordinary people here use for transportation) But you can't use solar energy for handplows.
Or for backhoes either.
Right now, the winter harvest is almost done, and it's too early to prepare the fields for rice planting, so a lot of farmers around here are renting backhoes to dig up the soil so they can pan for gold. We hope this won't destroy the rice paddies, but hey poor people are more worried about eating today than about possible ecological problems in the future.
(Note: We are approaching hunger season, when the money from the last harvest runs out but no money until the next harvest).
None of @RobertKennedyJr 's views "have any value whatsoever," say the media. But even the author admits RFK's right about fluoride, raw milk, and the danger of Big Pharma. Elites are freaking out because they know RFK will hold them accountable for their gross abuses of power. pic.twitter.com/wHFbRTzVC0
often medical studies push the expensive drugs but the old ones work. Or in the name of saving money they push and older drug that has a side effect (sedation, impotence) that no one wants to notice. But the censorship of Ivermectin and HCQ during the covid epidemic using bad studies (given too late was a major flaw in studies showing they didn't work) while pushing expensive drugs that worked but not too well. But no feedback allowed? That is what annoyed me.
as for food: Yes the chemicals in the environment induce metabolic syndrome (Plastics) and allergies, but if the alternative is short shelf life that causes food shortages, is this good? We sell organic rice. it is healthier. But the shelf life is shorter than white rice, which in the past caused beriberi epidemics. Older methods used to keep food from spoilage (smoking, salting) has side effects: stomach cancer, which was once common in the USA and is still common in Japan comes to mind. And in Japan and the Philippines, high blood pressure from the high salt diet is common.
in other words: will healthy food result in massive famines that kill more people than are saved from the chronic diseases of the obese late middle age folk?
But the pendulum has to swing back.
I see every day commercials on TV pushing junk food or expensive milk supplements. And now we see fat kids even here in the rural Philippines.
so let the discussion begin.
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the reason that I quoted Bob Dylan the times they are a a changing is something that few in the MSM or even the alternative press has noted: a lot of the folks being picked by Trumpieboy are the MotherEarth types from the 1960s: not the radicals who have since hijacked the Democratic party, but those opposed to unnecessary wars and against a materialistic lifestyle.
Our granddaughter is in the USA teaching a summer seminar for high school kids about economic matters. She loves teaching and is hoping to teach at an international school in Thailand next year.
International schools are high schools that are accredited by overseas institutions: Rubys schools are accredited by American institution, and her degree/training is in the American method of teaching (lots of thinking/writing/research). Luckily she is quite adept at catching the kids using AI.
When she comes back, I told her that she needs to teach me how to use AI, because we old folks are still in the stone age when it comes to computers.
She was teaching at an internationally credited school in Manila this year, but she only had a part time job there. We hoped she would have stayed there for another year before going to a job offer at a school in Macao (that offered her a job but she needed more experience before they would hire her), but with the political situation with China, we are actually happy if she goes to Thailand for two years to teach English literature and composition, which should be safer than living in Macao/China or here in Luzon near a military base in case war breaks out.
No, I really don't think China would invade Luzon, but the world is so crazy one never knows.
Joy is going to Manila today to testify about organic farming. She works with the Dept of Agri here, supervising a farm coop in nearby Bulacan, teaching how to grow organic rice and organizing processing, selling, etc... organic rice requires hard work for the farmers, but sells for a higher price than ordinary rice...
After that, since Kuya was able to run the farm business here with local help, she started working on a project in nearby Bulacan (where her parents had a farm), to teach and supervise farmers there wishing to grow organic rice and vegetables.
President Marcos has made the agricultural sector a priority in his policies, This is harder than it sounds: If you let the price of rice go up, the farmers will make a profit, but if you import more rice and lower tariffs on imported rice, the lower price will benefit the poor in the cities, not to mention the rich businessmen who will import the rice.
Sigh.
With land reform, most of the farmers were allowed to buy their land, and the amount of land one can own is limited (Most of the farmers who grow rice for us own land that was owned by Lolo's father years ago). The problem is that now the young can get an education, and are moving away, so there is a dearth of people willing to work on farms (our farmland here is tilled by people from Joy's home area in the Visayas, which is poorer than our area).
So as the farmers age, their kids don't want to stay, so they will sell their land to rich folk, often Balikbayan, returning retired Filipinos, who will have someone farm it for them, or maybe build a house on the land, since with the improved roads, it is only two to three hours to Manila.
There is also a project to buy or rent rice land to put up solar panels. I haven't heard if they are still pressuring farmer to do this as they were two years ago when the covid crisis had caused a lot of economic hardship, but with Manila nearby, and with the economy improving, the need for electricity has gone up.
Whether this is good or bad I can argue both ways, but when Kuya was approached with the offer, he also had thugs looking for our house to discuss selling the land to them. Welcome to the Philippines.
When I moved here 20 years ago, the farmers used our thresher, but still planted and harvested by hand. Now we rent a thresher/harvester to do the work, although we still solar dry the rice. We also have pretty well transitioned from waterbuffalo to handplows (sort of a large rototiller) to prepare the fields. The next step: machinery to plant the seedlings.
We have two crops a year: The main season, you plant seedlings carefully spaced, but we just sow seeds by hand for the second crop, which requires a lot of money for irrigation since it is dry season.
With decent irrigation and enough fertilizer, we could get three crops a year by planting only seedling, but right now there is not enough water or profit to make that feasible.
Using the dry/wet way of growing rice (rather than constant flooding) has decreased water use (and cut methane emissions, although increasing Nitrousoxide emissions).
But all it takes is a drought or a typhoon and voila the crop is lost. Sigh.
Right now, it is the start of the monsoon, meaning thunderstorms/rain every afternoon evening, and soon the planting will start.
But I am retired, so I just sit and watch everyone else do the hard work.
SciFi author Sarah Hoyt, who grew up in small town Portugal, wrote this recently about the globalists who want to rule our lives: That's not how any of that works.
What they missed, of course, that any rural kid knows is that you don’t feed livestock on what humans can eat. Instead, you feed the stuff humans can’t eat, the stuff left after processing corn, or wheat or whatever to… well, you feed just about anything to pigs. But you can feed wheat straw to cows. And frankly, you can pasturage cows on land where you can’t grow anything. They’re not like goats, that you can feed on three tin cans and an old log, but they still can digest hard vegetable matter humans can’t eat.
One could say the same for sheep and goats.
Indeed, the reason for China not eating beef is partly Buddhism but partly because the oxen were used to plow and pull wagons, not for meat. And unlike Europe etc. they didn't have mountainous areas or marginal land for herders to raise cattle, which could then be exchanged for grain etc. as was done in Europe, where the Germanic tribes sold cattle to the Romans because it was hard to plow and grow crops before more modern plows were available.
So why all the hysteria about beef? Steak is seen as a rich man's food.
But of course, the modern hamburger is what took over the world: Cheap, tasty and filling, and a good source of protein. Along with cheap chicken and processed food full of preservatives to slow down deterioration to prolong the shelf life so that less food is thrown out.
So Asia is no longer full of small people periodically starving in famines, but has fairly large and often obese people.
But of course beef is popular but not the main source of animal protein, which is fish: both fished and grown in fish farms
And don't forget Chickens! Yes you can grow them in your back yard, but the cheap chicken meat is grown en masse in buildings: and this is one of the big revolutions in the world, what the greens lament as factory farms that mainly use one type of chicken (monoculture). \
Yes there is a danger of die off if bird flu hits, But how else do you feed the growing urban population with cheap meat (not to mention cheap eggs)
Yes, you can raise them in your back yard (I read Tolkien did this during WWII so his kids could have eggs to eat) but with bird flu, some places have banned this practice.
but instead of saying eat chicken or fish, she insists we eat fake meat,
but if people say that fake meat tastes like cardboard, well, maybe if we mix fake meat with beef we can persuade people to eat it.
Hello. one can bring a horse to water, but one can't make him drink.
One of the problems of feeding people in famines is that they will refuse food they are unfamiliar with or object to. Pork in Muslim countries, shell fish in some African areas, and bugs in the USA (except for the survivalists who eat grasshoppers).
So what do we eat here in the Philippines (aside from organic brown rice three times a day)?
Actually we eat fish or eggs, and the meat is pork or chicken.
For ten years we rarely ate beef, but after swine flu hit local farms we are now eating beef in a stew three times a week.
The reason for eating more beef? African swine flu killed a lot of local pigs so the price and availability of pork is a problem.
The real problem to feed more people is to stop agricultural diseases.
Illness is a big danger: African swine flu (which got here via smuggled contaminated food even though there was a strict quarantine to imports from countries with this problem).
We are off the migration flights so avian flu should not be a problem but now and then we get reports of isolated cases: which would mean no chicken, and no eggs, and no quail eggs, and no balut since that is made from duck eggs.
Of course, cattle (and water buffalo) are not immune: there is hoof and mouth disease epidemic in nearby Indonesia.
Right now I am reading about the diseases and nutritional deaths at the time of the Philippine revolution against Spain, and one disease that contributed to the hunger was rinderpest which meant the waterbuffalo who pulled the plows died off and local farmers couldn't grow rice.
so they imported rice to prevent starvation, but the imported rice was polished white rice that contributed to an outbreak of beriberi.
This would not happen nowadays: because in the last 20 years our area is now transitioning to hand-plows (large rototillers that use diesel) and the water buffalo are being transitioned to provide milk to local markets.
Waterbuffalo yogurt anyone?
And I am always bemused at these experts who say using factory made fake meat (to make someone rich) is the answer, when other forms of protein are widely available. Tofu, yogurt, and peanut butter are a good source of protein, as are yeast products like Marmite, and of course don't forget fish, which can be farmed.
But yes they do sell hamburgers now in town, all over the place, and it's quite cheap.
of course, she is talking about sophisticated upper middle class types, not the taxi drivers in Manila who eat a Jollibee hamburger at the end of the day (and if he can't afford Jollibee, kiosks sell them even cheaper).
Kuya is busy harvesting the rice, and last night, he lamented on the difficulty of making a profit this harvest.
He knows that our profit will be eaten up by increased expenses (high diesel prices to run the farm equipment and higher fertilizer prices, even though we mainly use organic, that price has soared too).
Awhile back Huawei wanted to put 5G antennas on our land, and he refused. But now we are short of money (the check paying for the last harvest bounced, and the buyer fled the country so we are out of six months of income. Welcome to the third world).
So now he is being told that growing rice is going to be discouraged because it produces greenhouse gases.
I've discussed this in the past: When you flood the rice paddies, the weeds rot and produce methane, even with the newer dry method that irrigates a lot less produces less methane but produces more nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas.
BAD RICE!
To complicate matters, thanks to land reform years ago, farmers now own their traditional plots. But their kids are moving to the cities, so don't want to farm, (which is why we subcontract and are using more machinery, whereas twenty years ago our farmers still harvested by hand Next step: machine planting. Not there yet, but maybe soon. And with more investment, we could get three crops a year instead of two.)
So if they discourage growing rice in the rice growing region of Luzon, what should we do?
In other words, instead of investing in more hydro electric plants, investing in geothermal energy (Like Iceland), or using local coal or using the natural gas in the west Philippine sea for electricity, the idea is to take rice land and put large solar panels out to get electricity for nearby Manila.
So anyway, Kuya is getting inquiries about selling some of our rice land to put solar panels on them instead of growing rice.
Well, this explains the thugs threatening our farmers and threatening our cook trying to find where we live, saying they want Kuya to sell our plots of land.
Sigh.
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Update: Even Martha Stewart is warning you about the upcoming shortage of rice. LINK
it blames the weather, but bad weather is common: What is going on now is a perfecgt storm of bad weather, sick farmers, and the high price of growing rice (diesel and fertilizer prices soaring).
not everything is glum: Joy is supervising a course in agriculture, teaching the kids of local farmers to manage the farm by teaching skills in accounting and business.
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another minor observation: Joy had a cold and had pink eye with it (conjunctival irritation). she wasn't very sick. Then our maid got the same symptoms. And several people came here asking for help to pay for eyedrops.
Lancet has a series of articles saying we need to reset medicine because humans are equal to animals.
I am putting the articles here in a series to fisk their lack of scientific rigor, and also so that I don't have to keep going to their website to read them but can fisk the article at my leisure
The notion that the wellbeing of an individual is directly connected to the wellbeing of the land has a long history in Indigenous societies.
Define Ïndigenous societies. Indigenous societies are not a monolith. Give an example with pros and cons. And don't overlook the fact that many of them have left these pristine environments to live and intermarry with others. And don't overlook that many of them use slash and burn techniques or overgraze the land. And don't overlook that their lifestyle is only "sustainable" due to high maternal child mortality, and don't forget the kidnapping of wives and infanticide in those Amazon tribes so beloved by Pope Francis.
Nowadays, the term One Health has become an important concept in global health.
The One Health High-Level Expert panel defines One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognises the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and inter-dependent.”
True, but this is also rhetoric of the ecology minded, and again the devil is in the details of exactly what they mean to implement to do this.
On Jan 19, we published a new four-part Series online on One Health and global health security, which analyses current understanding of potential public health emergencies and explores how effective adoption of One Health could improve global health security. Although the Series focuses on pandemic preparedness,
so basic public health. And how they are the saviors who will impose their plans to "ïmprove global health security"
One Health goes way beyond emerging infections and novel pathogens; it is the foundation for understanding and addressing the most existential threats to societies including antimicrobial resistance, food and nutrition insecurity, and climate change.
again, rhetoric. And lumps microbial resistance with food insecurity and climate change as threats to society.
Modern attitudes to human health take a purely anthropocentric view—that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern.
why yes. Because we are humans who are endowed by the Creator with certain rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And because medicine from ancient times has been about treating the sick. You want to do environmental stuff, fine. But it is not medicine. (emphasis mine).
One Health places us in an interconnected and interdependent relationship with non-human animals and the environment. The consequences of this thinking entail a subtle but quite revolutionary shift of perspective: all life is equal, and of equal concern.
Ah so here we see the rhetorical trick: we need to take care of the earth (following their guidelines) to stay well, but hey, human lives are not more important than wild animals. (we in the Philippines saw this type of thinking when an alligator killed a school girl and the locals trapped him. The westerners lamented the action of the locals who didn't respect the animals dignity. As for the school girl, hey, she was only a poor Filipina girl so who cares. A similar attitude can be found in Nat Geo specials about tiger or crocadiles killing people in India: more concern about the animals than the poor villagers).
This understanding is fundamental to addressing pressing health issues at the human–animal–environment interface.
For example, providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an urgent unmet need. It requires a complete change to our relationship with animals.
Actually, despite the propaganda, starvation deaths have gone down.
Indeed, anyone involved in farming could see it is green policies that are going to cause famine: until the recent crisis, i.e. man made fertilizer and fuel shortage, food was becoming more abundant and cheaper.
I call this a man made crisis, because although it is blamed on Covid and Putin it is actually due to green policies that stopped fracking of natural gas in the US, and of course the west who is pushing the Ukraine war instead of trying to make peace there.
Dirty little secret: the greens opposed the original green revolution (that requires fertilizer to grow these crops) that saved millions of life. And these same eco warrors are are now opposing GM crops that would enable less use of pesticides and could also increase protein in the crops to enhance nutrition.
The EAT-Lancet Commission takes an equitable approach by recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.
Translation: You will eat bugs and like it. A top down tyranny not only telling you what to eat, but insisting you be happy with this man made crisis. And why do I suspect bird flu killing the chicken industry and African swine flu killing pigs and Foot and Mouth disease killing ruminants are examples of failure of these health minded people stopping these epidemics, because they want to implement low protein vegetarianism on the world. Kwashiorkor anyone?
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an important example of the need for a One Health approach.
Analyses of the successes and failures in managing the pandemic have prioritised health systems and the provision of vaccines and antivirals.
Fair enough.
But understanding the causes of the pandemic demands a broader ecological perspective. This lesson has not been fully learned and so we remain susceptible to future lethal emerging infectious diseases.
The Series recommends the involvement of more environmental health organisations to better integrate environmental, wildlife, and farming issues to help address challenges relating to disease spillover.
WTF?
I should note that the original excuse for all of this animal spillover stuff was the Ebola epidemics, which was caused by eating Bush meat (infected monkeys, because poor people will eat anything, and as my adopted son from South America instructed me: Mom, sometimes you are weak and just need to eat meat).
The first epidemic in Liberia causd hysteria and took awhile to control partly due to the destruction of the infrastructure of that country due to a long civil war, but three later epidemics were actually handled by routine public health methods, using local resources, to discover cases, do ring vaccination, vaccination of the population nearby and isolation of the victims.
Similarly, yellow fever outbreaks are spill overs from animals, but again those epidemics in Brazil and Angola were controlled by mass immunizations and anti mosquito policies (draining or treating standing water, mosquito nets).
But this argument loses it's meaning when you talk about Covid2.
Covid was not a disease spill over from an animal. It was virus manipulated by man (actually a woman scientist) doing gain of function research. And through carelessness, it leaked out of the lab,
To make things worse, not only did the Chinese government and WHO try to deny there was an epidemic, and later saying yes there is an epidemic but it's not infectious, and then yes there was an epidemic but hey it came from a bat in a wet market (just ignore the lab doing gain of function experiments on the covid 2 virus). Indeed, Lancet was part of this coverup: Despite Lancet's attempt to silence the whistle blowers by allowing the head of Ecohealth to insist that covid was a disease spillover from bats, and if you even hinted that maybe the lab was the origin, you would be silenced.
Now we come to the really chilling part of their Humans are not more important than animals point of view.
One implication of a One Health approach is the need to reduce human pressure on the environment—an important medical intervention in itself.
Translation: we need population control of all those poor people who want to grow food and whose farms diminish the area of wild animals who look so nice in Nat Geo TV shows, and a pristine habitat that looks so nice on our instagram posting when we visit as eco tourists.
So Mrs Bill Gates is using money to push contraception on Africans and the West of using the WHO to push contraception on and abortion as a human right.
Next topic please:
Take antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Driven by antimicrobial use and misuse in human, animal, and environmental sectors, and the spread of resistant bacteria and resistance genes within and between these sectors, AMR inflicts a huge global toll. An estimated 1·2 million people died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections with another 4·95 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR globally. Only by applying a One Health approach can action to address AMR be achieved.
yes, a problem, and excess use of antibiotics in the animal industry is a topic that is discussed by farmers. But it is the modern factory farm methods of raising chickens, pigs, cattle, and fish that lets poor people to have access to cheap protein. People on traditional low protein diets tend to die a lot from infectious diseases, especially Tuberculosis.
Lancet might estimate that 1.2 million people die of antibiotic resistant diseases, but please don't ignore that 250 thousand of these deaths are because of counterfeit drugs or vaccines that are commonly sold in their world countries: And this is a problem of corruption and crime that could be stopped.
One huge concern is the risk of worsening inequalities as One Health networks are largely situated and resourced in high-income countries. The current One Health architecture of institutions, processes, regulatory frameworks, and legal instruments has led to a fragmented, multilateral health security landscape.
As the second paper in The Series points out, a more egalitarian approach is needed, one that is not paternalistic or colonial in telling low-income and middle-income countries what they should do.
For example, demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis might be technically correct, but if it does not account for those who make their livelihoods from such markets, One Health will only worsen the lives of those it claims to care about. Decolonisation requires listening to what countries say and what their needs are.
well, the need of the Philippines is basic infrastucture and jobs.
As the global economic crisis continues (The World Bank forecasts a sharp downturn in growth and soaring debt that will hit developing countries the hardest), One Health needs to be implemented sensitively.
yes, the wrong headed plans of the elite to handle the Covid crisis and stop the use of fossil fuels etc. are all economic decisions made by those in charge of the world. But apparantly that won't stop you from telling us what to do.
The reality is that One Health will be delivered in countries, not by concordats between multilateral organisations, but by taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.
Italics mine.
there is it again: animals and environment more important than human beings. And they expect us not to notice.
In its truest sense, One Health is a call for ecological, not merely health, equity.
Again, ecological equity. What does this mean in the real world?
Three guesses.
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Update: Fast forward to 25 minutes or so and they note that medicine is not about treating society but about the individual
when Clinton ran for president, his slogan was: It's the economy stupid.
Right now, the Philippines is getting back to normalcy: but are our OFW getting their jobs back?
And what about local investment? BBMarcos is busy trying to make ties to nearby countries such as Singapore, Korea, Indonesia... and where does China vs the US investments come into this? I'm not sure: I'm sure the human rights types who look the other way when China puts a million Uighars into reeducation camps will hyperventillate if Marcos arrests a few human rights types who actually are helping local terror groups under the thesis that these mlitants love poor people (I saw this in Africa, so it's not a Philippine problem).
But anyway, right now there are shortages of salt and sugar. And things might be worse because we import a lot of food.
I am not an expert in the economy, but we do grow organic rice and are in the early rice crop season, and the price of fertilizer including organic fertilizer, and pesticies has gone way up.,,,,,,
to make things worse, the businesslady who bought last year's crop has not paid for it yet.
Luckily we have some savings to keep the farm running, but one wonders how many farmers will go bankrupt, caught in the trap of increased prices to grow food and investors who cheat to increase prices of food and encourage importation of food instead of investing in local farmers.
will this result in large agribusinesses buying up land from these bankrupt (and often aging) farmers, and the end result being more efficent agriculture?
On the other hand, there is a limit to how much land any person can own (which is why we subcontract a lot of our crops). And there is a ban on outsiders owning local real estate and businesses (although traditionally this is worked around by outsiders marrying a local gal and putting the land/business in her name).
So will our area, which grows a lot of the rice and veggies for Manila, be essentially lost to development?
Maybe... but Kuya notes that with the local roads being improved that investors are buying up rice fields near these roads for development (country houses, resorts, factories, etc).
and the big problem right now is the shortage of fertilizer and the increase in the price of diesel/LPG...part of this a world wide problem due to the shortage of natural gas because of Russia but also because of green policies (Biden's policies changed America from an exporter to an importer of fossil fuels).
But never mind.
Corruption is a big problem, and one that the churches should be paying attention to instead of having the Pope push love of mother earth and the Catholic bishops here in the Philippines opposing investment in fossil fuels that would keep local prices down and help the poor...(one bishop actually dared to whisper that they needed to pay more attention to the plight of the poor, but one doesn't know if he means doing something practical to improve the economy and get jobs for the poor, or just getting a photo op to show they love the poor).
a lot of this is complicated, and here is a discussion of the problem that brings up a lot of these issues.
it is the start of the rice planting season, and I found this video of how locals still plant rice by hand...
.
...after flooding and plowing under the last years's chaff and the weeds, you end up with nice clean mud.
For the main harvest, you grow rice seedlings separately in a box (or buy it from the local rice institute) and then plant them by hand.
,.
We still plant by hand, although we rent a harvester/thresher to harvest the rice.
.
In the future, of course, machines will be planting the rice seedlings also.
this 2016 video explains why: even though we have high unemployment, younger people simply don't want to work that hard so that they can live in poverty when they can get a job in the city or overseas.
“More than 20 countries have made restrictions on the exports of their food products, and the lingering war in Ukraine continues. So there is really a major disruption of the food supply chain...
But the increase in diesel and fertilizer prices mean it will be more expensive to grow rice, and sometimes you can't find enough fertilizer, so your yield will be lower:
Compounding this is the fact that rice production in the first semester declined by 6 percent, which Dar attributed to the low usage of fertilizer, the cost of which has risen sharply. Figures from the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority showed the average price of urea, the most commonly used fertilizer, had nearly tripled to about P3,000 a 50-kilo bag from only P1,200 a year ago.
...
So no, I have not been exaggerating in my previous posts about the rice farm crisis.
Marcos has a history of supporting farmers, but even he can't stop the crisis snowballing.
Biden, of course, could reverse his green policies that has stopped the oil companies from drilling/refining/transporting oil products, but hey he has to listen to his green masters...
speaking of the Philippines, we expect the left to mount huge demonstrations for the inaugural (they do this all the times) (in the past being a demonstrator paid you 500 pesos plus a meal, but I suspect now it is higher).
But this suspicion does not bode well for US/Philippine relations: again from the Inqurer:
“That’s part of their playbook. Whoever sits in Malacañang is their enemy because ultimately, all they want is to overthrow the government through violent means to be followed by a socialist revolution,” he said.
Incoming chief presidential legal counsel Juan Ponce Enrile had also warned of a “credible” plot to embarrass the incoming administration, supposedly by groups in the country and the United States.
...
StrategyPage had a long article about this a couple of days ago: it starts with the attempt of getting back all the loot that BBM's father stole
my favorite part of the article:
the PCGG has identified over half the stolen billions and recovered about half of that, which comes to $3.5 billion. Less than half of that has actually been returned to the Philippines and some of that was in turn stolen by senior politicians then in power."...
something to remember the next time you hear that the affluent nations need to give money to poor countries, where much of it will be stolen of course but never mind.
the rest of the SP article is about China stealing everything in sight in the West Philippine sea.
and speaking of china: WTF was this famous restaurant doing in the Paracels?
...
I guess they didn't notice that it is monsoon season, where afternoon thunderstorms are common.
Sigh.
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update: The food crisis in Africa could be terrible.
Well, that conspiracy theory is busted: No, someone isn't killing off cattle in Kansas.
The modern Jeremiah, Ann Barnhardt, who is usually ahead of the curve in reporting conspiracy theories that later turn out to be true, has some expertise in the cattle business, and she explains why this conspiracy theory is bunk:
The reported “epicenter” of this heat event was Ulysses, KS. That’s my old stomping grounds, and I would take a spitball guess that within a 100 mile radius of Ulysses, KS there are close to a million cattle on feed in confinement feedlots, maybe more.
So 10,000 deads, statewide, really isn’t a “massive die-off”.... This has happened before – much worse, in fact- and will happen again. Heat death loss is a calculated and accounted-for risk in cattle feeding. As is death loss from blizzards and ice storms. It’s part of the deal.
Yes, farming is a high risk occupation, be you small farmers or running a huge farm.
As noted in earlier posts, there are major problems for farmers all over the world from the Ukraine war and from the post covid supply chain problems, which have resulted in the shortage and increased price of fertilizers, and the increase in the price of fuel has made things worse.
Agri sites have a lot of information out there, but the MSM reporters often get things wrong: one wonders if their rural knowledge comes from Green Acres.
I have noted here on my blog the problems of our rural area, including African swine flu that led to some of our friends who raised a few pigs for extra income to lose them to disease.
And the problem of bird flu is big in Asia, but not so much a problem since we are off the bird migration routes, but we do have times when chickens develop disease and are lost (not to mention typhoons which destroyed our chicken farm a couple years ago, luckily at a time between "grows" so we didn't have to bury a couple thousand chickens).
We grow rice, and other farms in our area grow vegetables or have chicken farms. We didn't rebuild our chicken farm because the profit margin was minimal and our nephew who ran it decided to move to the UK and work as a caregiver, where his children, now proud UK citizens, have made a life for themselves.
Sigh.
All that romantic blather about mother gaia and the wonderfulness of traditional life is bunk: trying to make a living on a small rural farm requires hard work and has a lot of times when you lose the crop. Which is why ten perecent of Filipinos migrate to work or live overseas either as migrants or contract workers.
thanks to land reform, many of our family's farm fields were bought by the farmers who cultivated them. But many of these farmers are now old and since land reform made them more prosperous, they sent their kids to school, and the kids got jobs elsewhere, so many of our farmers are from Joy's family's town in the Visayas.
A lot of people moved back to our area when they lost their jobs with covid, but a lot of them don't know how to plant and harvest rice like their parents and grandparents, and they are now hoping to get their jobs back.
We are slowly mechanizing our farms (our remaining fields and the fields of the farmers who we subcontract to grow rice).
But now the price of fertilizer (both ordinary fertilzer and the organic chicken manure for our organic fields) has skyrocketed. And the price of diesel to run the machines and irrigation pumps has also gone up.
the small farmers who no longer want to farm their land sometimes have sold portions of land to outsiders (returning OWF for example, who subcontract someone to farm the land). Others, especially near the roads, have sold plots to people who want to own a rural house.
This has been noticed by our mayor who is trying to make our city diversify from rice and sandle making into a tourist area since with the new expressways we are only two hours from Manila, and there are many urban attractions and nearby nature areas.
And we also have a lot of motocycle rallies that go through here on weekends.
I am hoping all of this will improve the economy and supply local jobs.
Kuya had renovated some of our upstairs guest rooms for BNB tourism shortly before covid hit, so hopefully we will be able to take advantage of tourism if things continue to improve.
in my last rant, I lamented that the green types (including the Pope) seem to want to go back to the good old days of (methane producing flooding of) rice paddies, using manure and plowing with a waterbuffalo, because they are nostalgic, and hey it isn't their backs and heads that ache after a day plowing or weeding the fields in the hot sun.
Now, we sell organically grown brown rice, and Joy supervises and teaches local farmers to grow organic rice and veggies in nearby Bulacan. There is a market for organic produce and rice among the growing middle class here in the Philippines and it is good for farmers to be encouraged to grow traditional strains of rice because monoculture of high yield rice makes food more vulnerable to pests and disease...
but our prices are too high for the average factory worker or tricycle driver to buy. And of course, farming is vulnerable to disasters (like typhoons, droughts, floods, insects and plant disease, not to mention climate change, aka global warming or maybe global cooling from volcanic ash).
Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation in the Population Bomb in the 1980s, but he lost a bet with Julian Simon, who pointed out that new technology would probably prevent that from happening.
Enter Norman Bourlag, the least known hero of the modern world, whose green revolution in new crop strains probably saved the lives of a billion people.
Which is why I am not anti GM food or chemicals and herbicides: as the saying goes: embrace the power of "AND".
It's a big world and there is a need for diversity and natural food, but if we are going to feed 8 billion people, we will need newfangled technology to do it.
and the dirty little secret is that this technology will be invented by people seeking a solution to the problem, but the harder step, the implementation of the technology, will probably be done by Big busines types so hated on conspiracy page sites (with good reason: because you need critics to keep them in line, but don't make a religion about it and burn them as heretics just because they are changing mother earth or something).
So does big agri tech have an answer to those who lament famines and TEOTWAWKI scenerios?
Maybe. And one possible (partial) solution could be Vertical farming and hydroponics. (and maybe robot farmers).
Lots of details with links there, and not my area of expertise.
but just put it this way: it could be the wave of the future. I mean, these big money guys are not investing money out of the goodness of their sweet little pea picking hearts. If it fails, they lose their investment and move on. But if it works, people don't starve to death, and they get rich.
Most of the articles discussing hydroponics and vertical farms are about a way to grow fresh veggies for city dwellers, as an alternative to importing veggies from other parts of the USA or Latin America. USDA article link.
Indoor and vertical farming may be part of the solution to rising demands for food and limited natural resources. Photo credit: Oasis Biotech
Some of this tech is known to me, because this is similar to how we grow organic veggies on our farm: in a greenhouse made with sheets of clear plastic and a wooden frame (we used soil and rice husks in a tray for them to grow): you plant and grow the veggies inside the greenhouse and so you don't need herbicides or pesticides. Our greenhouse was cheap to build, and so when the typhoons hit and flattens it, (something that happens every couple of years), you just rebuild instead of trying to fix an expensive glass or plexiglas house.
Ah, but man does not live on veggies alone: What about grain: specifically, what about rice, the grain that feeds one third of the world?
So they are seeking self sufficiency just in case of other problems arising: first water, then food.
Well, Singapore is small but wealthy, but what about smaller less wealthy countries like the Philippines.
Inhabitat has an article (2013) about how this could be done in the Philippines.
a 2021 article and this article from the Philippine Rice Institute also discusses vertical farming to grow vegetables (similar to what we do, but more advanced because it uses many layers, not just a single flat bed to grow the veggies) and using modern tech ways to grow rice.
in other words, most of this is in the future, but there are people trying to find solutions to hunger (and make a profit while they do so).
in Pennsylvania Dutch country, the smells of spring is not the smell of flowers but the odor of Manure, used by the Amish to fertilizer their fields.
we do organic farming, which is popular among the church outreach types and the government (never mind that it means we have to import our rice, it will keep the Pope happy.) And with the bishops pushing the idea not to invest in fossil fuels, presumably the next step is going back to plowing with a waterbuffalo.
Here, years ago, the farms were given to their cultivators with land reform, but now their kids and grandkids are educated and have migrated to cities or are working overseas, so there aren't a lot of people who know how to do this.
To save the beloved Waterbuffalo, Erap started dairies to use the high cream milk products (which we buy locally for our consumption), and we still hold races to keep up the interest in breeding these friendly beasts:
but mainly, the waterbuffalo has been replaces with the handplow, (sort of a large roto tiller) for small farmers, and in many places, as more people move to the cities, we will start imitating China and Japan and use mechanized tractors/tiller/planters.
Quick lesson in traditional rice growing:
You have to flood the fields, and when it is sticky mud, you plow under the plants/weeds/left over straw. This gets rid of weeds but also fertilizes the fields naturally: but often you have to add minerals to the soil, and of course you add fertilizer.
PhilippineRice Institute has an article explaining what needs to be done to prepare the fields LINK.
'
this is a man using a handplow to prepare the mud;
the next step is to plant rice seedling, which are started in a small box or bought. For the winter dry season, you simply plant the seeds, so it takes longer to grow.
If you use seedlings and enough fertilizer, and have irrigation available, you can actually get three plantings a year, but for us usually it is two plantings on our low fields and one on the higher rice fields where irrigation is too expensive for us to plant rice. (we have fruit and greenhouse organic vegetables on these fields, but since the last typhoon destroyed the plastic greenhouses, we aren't doing this at present).
The government is pushing organic growing. Part of this is because the elites love green ideas (ignore how that policy has resulted in famine in SriLanka ). But because the price of labor here is higher than elsewhere, it is cheaper to import rice and grow other things for export, (and that includes gourmet organically grown brown rice and specialty black and red rice to export) and of course, because people learn English and blue collar skills are taught, ten percent of our people work overseas because of not enough local jobs (it's the corruption stupid).
Importing rice has not been a problem, but with the latest problems of a fertilizer shortage, it could be a problem in the near future.
but the real worry is that the huge increase in the price of fuel and fertilizer is going to result in a rise in the price of rice.
And this problem started last year, and it is parly due to Biden shutting down the American fossil fuel industry to please his green supporters. Full explanation (2021) here: I'd say it was a conspriacy theory, but the increase in fossil fuel prices has exacerbated the problem long before the war in the Ukraine.
another "who do you believe: us or your lying eyes" story.
'
aka Gell-Mann amnesia effect. which says that people recognize that there is a lot of fake news and obvious errors about stuff they actually know about, yet these same people believe the news reports on things they don't know anything about: and it never occurs to them that maybe they shouldn't trust those reports too.
So yes, the Ukraine war is going to make fertilizer skyrocket even more, but it didn't start there. So why are they gaslighting farmers about this?
"Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer. And even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia," Power said. "As a result, we're working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost. And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway."
Hmm... guess no one in the Biden Administration reads Bloomberg, which noted last year there is a manure shortage too.
What is missing from this is the idea that US Sanctions will stop Russia from exporting fuel and fertilizer. And right now there seems to be a lot of stuff going on about countries making deals with Russia (and China and Iran). for example: The Philippines is seeking fertilizer from China.
India for example is renewing their ties with Russia, buying fertilizer and fuel while exporting pharmacuticals.
Don't ask me. I am not a citizen, and rarely get out of the house for the last six months.
But you know, if China does not implode from over extending their covid quarantine, or by invading Taiwan, then the Russia China Iran alliance could become a real power and a threat to the American century of peace.
and in that case, a China friendly Marcos might be better for Filipinos than a Leni who toes the orders of the USA state department.
the joint training often emphasizes humanitarian stuff (e.g. bringing in supplies by the US when a typhoon or other problem hits us, something that happens all the time). But this time, we have had China harassing out fishermen so they are also training for amphibious type stuff.
the usual leftists are saying oy veh this might upset China, but the problem is not that the US will actually do something: The problem is that no one trusts Biden to do anything.
here the US often helps the military with electronic stuff, since it is taboo for outsiders to actually fight against local insurgencies.
Last year, someone (china?) attacked gov't websites here, and of course, the main cable passes south of Taiwan so a major cut in the cable could put us in the dark. Of course, Huawei has their 5G internet here now, (Joy uses it for her teleconferences) background of why this could be a problem LINK.
if war breaks out in Taiwan or China decides to play dirty to punish the Philippines for asserting their legal rights in the West Philippine sea, we could lose our internet.
Or maybe not: From SP: an article discussing communications in the Ukraine war: and how the Russian hackers attacks didn't work because Elon Musk supplied Starlink for their troops.
Sigh.
I know nothing about the Ukraine war because I simply don't trust the propaganda which is manipulating the public to hate conservatives by saying they back Putin. That of course is not true: pointing out provocations to Putin and that Biden's ineptitude might have something to do with the war is a valid criticism, as is the criticism that the elites who want the Great Reset are using this to their advantage. That is not the same as backing a paranoid dictator who for years has expressed the wish to reunite Russia with their lost empire.
But how will it affect us? Famine... Ukraine's wheat crop has been feeding the Middle East, so now hunger might strike. And with the increase in the cost of fertilizer and diesel, the farmers will have more expenses so the price of wheat will go up.
Lots of reports out there that China is hoarding grain. well, as the saying goes: Been there, done that. China knows if famine strikes, people could revolt.
and these problems will affect the price of rice too: Kuya sighs and says that the increased expense might make him stop growing organic veggies etc. and stick to rice only. And even that might not give us much of a profit.
Sigh.
China is having other problems: One reason for their (illegal) premature takeover of HongKong was to get money moved from HK Banks to Shanghai, so that they could manipulate the international money stuff (and probably steal stuff).
But now Shanghai is locked down.
,,,,
So what is going on? Is this covid or is this (as is reported) the Omicron covid, which is not stopped by the weak Chinese vaccine but also is not very lethal.
Omnicron spread in the air and is more infectious that traditional covid so lockdowns and masks don't help much.. heck, recent studies suggest they didn't help much in the original outbreak either, since the cost of the lockdown outweighed the benefits.
In other words, is this over-reaction, or is something else out there that we are not being told about?
in contrast, the official figures in the Philippines show only 25 deaths and 385 cases of covid here.
Here Dr. C notes what a lot of leftist types noted for years about news stories and a lot of docs noticed about Medical journals: Before you believe the data, follow the money.
Usually we docs had journal clubs where we discussed and dissected articles to detect problems, but for lay folk who are repeatedly told to "Trust the Science", it will make them actually distrust science instead of distrusting those who interpreted the science wrong...
Sigh.
the main problem here right now is not Covid, but the heat: it's TagInit, the hot season before the monsoon rains come.
the heat is stressful for the elderly with high blood pressure and/or diabetes, and although there are more aircon now, the poor only have fans to keep them cool....Another neighbor's husband died of a heart attack yesterday and of course in the hot season we also will see children needing IVs for diarrhea dehydration.
Me, I am in the air conditioned bedroom much of the day and it took me two days to recover from heat exhaustion after the brown out a few days ago... my small generator did keep the air con running a bit, enough to keep the room under 85 degrees but not enough to stop heat exhaustion.
and if threats of war, famine, and disease don't worry you: how about a volcanic eruption?
not near us, so we are safe.
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The election is in full swing. The airways and social media are full of ads for Robrero, meaning the money folk (and probably the CIA linked money folk) are behind her, as are the major news papers.
The elites are going full court press to destroy BBMarcos.
However, the people tend to vote for who they want. True, sometimes who they want is the one who pays the best for their vote (they're all crooks, so may as well make money), but if the voters want a populist they will vote for the one they want. Which is how Erap and Duterte won over the candidates of the elite oligarchy that runs the country. In other words, don't trust the social media on this one: BongBong Marcos could win.
The streets are noisy with sound trucks advertizing their candidates, and the local election posters are up all over.
And yes we are open: I still wear a mask outside but it's only required in stores.
and this morning, I heard the music of the local exercize class at dawn. So things are improving.
things must be getting bad in the Ukraine, because the Philippine gov't told all our OFW there to come home.
one doesn't have to be cynical to see the MSM pushing the war war war meme: We saw this before both Gulf wars, by the way. And noting that propaganda is being pushed doesn't mean that behind all the propaganda there isn't a reason to think the Russians are the "bad guys" here.
summary: He gives a long background on the geopolitical history of the area. But he also notes, like the covid epidemic, the evil guys behind the scenes didn't cause the problem but they are taking an advantage of this. Mainly linked for later reading.
The real problem? Vigano is not an Alex Jones conspiracy theorist: he was a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps, and that groups is known for their knowlege of the story behind the story.
And he includes notes about how this foreign war might affect you:
The current Ukrainian crisis entails secondary, but no less serious, consequences on the geopolitical balance between China and Taiwan. Russia and Ukraine are the only producers of palladium and neon, which are indispensable for the production of microchips.
so where does Russia come into this?
“If it is true that a Chinese invasion of Formosa would put the global technology supply chain at risk, it is also true that a sudden shortage of raw materials from Russia could stop production, so as to make the island lose the “microchip shield” and induce Beijing to attempt the annexation of Taipei.”
add to this that China is licking their chops to invade or destroy Taiwan, who makes most of the good computer chips, and you see the problem.
All of this is pushing Russia to join with China, which is not good news.
and then there is stuff about crypto currancy, which Biden now wants to regulate... and of course China is trying to oust the USDollar as the main world currancy.
Vigano has a lot of history and diplomatic background on the Ukraine invasion, and here is StrategyPage's take on the war:
Above my paygrade: I'm a doctor, not an expert on geopolitical strategy or even conspiracy theories.
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Election time here. Background article in the (liberal) Inquirer notes that Leni isn't liked by politicians but has a lot of "volunteers" backing her (read young folks inspired by the social media), but one mayor pointed out Duterte had few politicians (or social media rich kids) support him and he won anyway.
there have been a few pep rallies locally in the city plaza which is near us. Covid restrictions have been pretty well lifted, so no problem. Businesses are opening up, and presumably a lot of OFW will be able to return to their jobs soon...and in our area it is time to start preparing the rice fields for the next harvest, so a lot of folks are busy.
Here, votes are bought, and a lot of folks take the money figuring that hey, they are all crooks, so at least I should get a few dollars. However, the problem is that when people feel strongly about an issue they can't be bribed...so Duterte won, despite all the money poured into other campaigns and the CIA funded press and social media, because he promised to push against drugs and crimes, and his time as mayor in Davao proved he was mean enough to do it...so now crime is down, a lot of folks had justice (or paid for a hit man to get justice), and I can walk the streets again without worrying we will be kidnapped...all elections are local, you know.
Before Duterete, the cartels who were trying to make the Philippines as a narco state so they could easily send drugs via OFW all over the world.
Duterte is now being criticized because he made pals with Putin, but the back story of this is that the US stopped a shipment of small arms to the Philippines to punish him for "human rights" violations, i.e. shooting druggies and pushers for resisting arrest (/s) and as a result the Islamicists took over a city in the south, and the Philippines lacked weapons, which were then promised to us by Russia.
but since ballot box stuffing and outright fraud in voting machines is suspected to play a part in the next election, it is uncertain who will win the next election.
Our area backs BongBong Marcos, because Leni is seen as a snobbish upper class lady whose main claim to fame is that her popularist husband died in a plane crash a couple years back. Which is why the Smartmatic voting machine fraud may come up again if things go to her.
but it is the local elections that could turn murderous: our maid attended a political meeting this morning but won't talk about it because "it is dangerous".
often they hold clinics for free rabies shots for dogs, but the virus has messed everything up, so I suspect a lot of dogs never had their rabies shot. And there are stray dogs thrown because their owner's can't afford to feed them: Although after two years of covid related poverty, most of the strays have disappeared.
Sigh.
One of our farmer's wives needed help to pay for rabies vaccine. The dog is a neighbor's dog, and he was too poor to get him a rabies shot. True, one could wait and see if the dog died, but rabies is fatal so no one wants to take the chance. We get one or two requests for help to pay for rabies shots each week.
The mayor had a program for free rabies shots, but apparantly they ran out of money. The treatment is three shots and each costs 7 dollars (or more? The farmer's wife said it cost her 13 dollars but that might have been for the antibody shot that you get first, and then you get the slower vaccine that takes a couple weeks to work)... this is not a lot of money for Yanks, but here it the minimum wage is 7 dollars a day, and farmers, who sell their crop, often run out of money about this time, because they need all their money to plant the next crop.
It is also considered hunger season, because this is about the time the farmers run out of their rice stores.
so employees will be asking for loans. And there are expenses to fix the farm machines, buy fertilzer , get good quality seedlings, etc.
To harvest 100 cavans, up to 8 bags of urea fertilizer should be applied. This amounts to P20,000 per hectare in costs on urea alone.
But farmers should also apply phosphorus and potassium containing fertilizer. The farmer will spend about P30,000 per hectare on fertilizer alone.
At P15 per kg per unmilled rice, this translates to about 2,000 kg or about 40 percent of the value of a one- hectare yield at 5.0 tons per hectare. That is for fertilizer alone. What about land preparation, seeds, labor and harvesting costs?
This simple calculation suggests practical action by the farmer—cut down on fertilizer use or not plant at all, as some farmers had done. inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook
The dirty little secret is that most famines in today's world are not caused by lack of food but by wars, or because the price is so high that the poor can't afford to buy enough to stay healthy.
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in family news:
I just cashed in another long term investment, but alas most of it is gone to help with the farm expenses, (the lady who buys Kuya's rice every year without any problems in paying is now sending us bad checks, so I have had to lend him money for the next crop.) I also had to pay to fix up the shop/apartment we have in Manila, which is getting a new tenant. The cheap pipes and the electric wires and the roof need replacement.
Sigh.
Oh well. God will provide.
So hey, move to a tropical paradise and you won't have to worry, except for earthquakes, typhoons, floods, covid, and Dengue fever, add the worry that war (or shortages from war) might make things worse for us.
