Free Republic

During a town hall-style agricultural symposium in Mankato, Minn., on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers were left speechless after a citizen asked a very simple question about Obamacare.Screengrab via KEYC-TV The question: “I thought the Affordable Care Act would save $2500 per family. What happened?”Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Tim Walz, both of Minnesota, seemingly didn’t know how to respond. In fact, the room erupted in laughter after the two just stared at each other. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who also attended the meeting, was the only one prepared to respond.“I voted ‘no’, so I’ll let these guys handle that,” he said,...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

A potato genetically modified to resist the fungus which caused the devastating Irish potato famine of 1845 has been developed by British scientists. Late blight, caused by the organism Phytophthora infestans, remains the potato farmer’s greatest enemy to this day. Each year UK farmers spend around £60 million keeping the infection at bay with pesticides. In a bad year, losses and control measures combined can account for half the total cost of growing potatoes. …

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

Boudicca's warpaint puts farmer on the woad to recovery By Sarah Lonsdale (Filed: 28/09/2003) Woad, the plant whose deep blue pigment was used as a warpaint by the ancient Britons to frighten their enemies, is to be farmed commercially in Britain for the first time in 500 years. Large-scale production of woad, which was most famously used by the warrior queen Boudicca, finally died out in the 16th century when cheaper dyes imported from India made it uneconomic. Now, however, farming of the spinach-like plant, which produces colours ranging from pale blue to indigo, is to be resumed by a...

<p>California grows a mind-boggling amount of the nation's produce: 99 percent of artichokes, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, and on and on. That's why the record-breaking drought (yes, it's finally raining—no, it won't help much!) can affect your grocery bill, even if you live nowhere near California. But with almonds—the state's most lucrative agricultural export—the effect could reverberate for years.</p>

Much like the polar vortex spiked demand and prices for natural gas in the eastern U.S., another weather phenomenon — a severe drought — is threatening cattle and milk production and food crops in the West. It’s a threat that can last for months and year, and parched conditions have already driven up prices on milk and cattle futures. “The hardest hit section of California is the Central Valley — ‘the supermarket to the world’ — and [it’s becoming] increasingly clear the region won’t see relief from the devastating drought anytime soon,” said Kevin Kerr, editor of CommodityConfidential.com. “Retail prices...

Monday, 27 January, 2003, 22:36 GMTPrehistoric Britons' taste for milk The oldest direct evidence for the existence of dairy farming has been discovered in the UK. It is based on a chemical analysis of milk fat deposits left on pottery fragments found to be 6,500 years old. It is clear that by the time farming reached Britain, milk was already an important commodity Although the practice of milking animals for food was undoubtedly developed elsewhere and then introduced into Britain, this is the earliest time for which researchers have been able to show definitively that it was going on. According...

CONGRATULATIONS AFRAID FOR THE REPUBLIC 55 YEARS OF MARRIED BLISS

Whichever came first, both the chicken and the egg will be subject to a forthcoming federal lawsuit. California voters in 2008 passed a ballot initiative that require larger enclosures for egg-laying hens. Farmers in California worried the new rules, which would increase their costs, would put them at a competitive disadvantage with egg farms in other states, so the state legislature passed a measure in 2010 to require out-of-state producers to comply with California rules. That, Koster says, is unfair to his state’s egg producers. “If California legislators are permitted to mandate the size of chicken coops on Missouri farms,...

The long-tortured farm bill cleared Congress Tuesday, ending a two year struggle that split the old farm-food coalition as never before and dramatized the growing isolation of agriculture and rural America in an ever more urban House. Written off as dead just months ago, the giant five-year measure won final approval from the Senate on a 68-32 roll call and goes next to President Barack Obama for his signature.

An attorney who spoke at the 50th Colorado Farm Show in Greeley said the complex requirements of the Health Care Reform Act are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, so farmers who have fewer than 50 employees should prepare to comply by 2015. Kevin Paul, an attorney with Heizer Paul LLP in Denver, said even with more than 20 years of experience in the legal profession, he's finding the thousands of pages in the law to be difficult to interpret. "I spent a day this past weekend trying to figure out two sentences in one regulation and...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Amid severe drought conditions, California officials announced Friday that they would not send any water from the state's vast reservoir system to local agencies beginning this spring, an unprecedented move that affects drinking water supplies for 25 million people and irrigation for 1 million acres of farmland. The announcement marks the first time in the 54-year history of the State Water Project that such an action has been taken, but it does not mean that every farm field will turn to dust and every city tap will run dry. The 29 agencies that draw from the state's...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

...The results published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) also suggest tooth decay was more prevalent in earlier societies than previously estimated. The results also suggest that the hunter-gatherer society studied may have developed a more sedentary lifestyle than previously thought, relying on nut harvesting. Dental disease was thought to have originated with the introduction of farming and changes in food processing around 10,000 years ago. A greater reliance on cultivated plant foods, rich in fermentable carbohydrates, resulted in rotting teeth.High level of decayNow, the analysis of 52 adult dentitions from hunter-gatherer skeletons found in a cave...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes. But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect...

University of Cincinnati archaeologists are turning up discoveries in the famed Roman city of Pompeii that are wiping out the historic perceptions of how the Romans dined, with the rich enjoying delicacies such as flamingos and the poor scrounging for soup or gruel. Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, will present these discoveries on Jan. 4, at the joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and American Philological Association (APA) in Chicago. UC teams of archaeologists have spent more than a decade at two city blocks within a non-elite district in the Roman...