Wait ... what? I'm just pointing out a CNN reporter said $50 minus $42 is $7 on live television as a matter of fact. Sure, she might be leaving out the change, but then you round up to not look like you can't add?

EDIT - Oh wait, misinterpreted your comment, my bad.

Thinking further, the use of chemicals and fertilizers in orchards is more different than I'd first thought too.

If you take an apple orchard, every plant is priceless compared to a grain crop. Killing off insects, keeping exactly the right fertilizer amounts and irrigation are all absolutely required. In grain farming, pests like weeds or insects are measured and the cost/benefit is weighed to see if it's worth the cost of spraying. I'd imagine with a fruit crop, the benefit is almost always keeping your plants as healthy as humanly possible. With grains though guys will often estimate a 5% loss from whatever best is there and decide to leave well enough alone.

A bit of a side note, but the kinds of chemicals guys on the grain side use has changed a lot too. Plenty of chemicals used for killing insects when I was a kid where being replaced then. Farmers here universally remember a laundry list of different pesticides they remember as just nasty and downright scary stuff. The ones available today are far more selective, and for weeds round-up ready has allowed guys to abandon pretty much all other weed killers, and most of those were much more expensive and lingering than round-up.

I think I see part of the problem. The other option you wondered at is you are comparing(literally) apples to grains.

If your lucky enough to live in a climate that can support orchards and vegetables that's an entirely different story. Grain farming is a different beast and you can't farm canola and wheat the same way you'd farm apples or tomatoes.

As for out here on the prairies, the average family owned and operated farm is on the 1k acre mark. Of the 20k farms in my province, more then 90% of them will be under 2k acres and virtually none of them hire more than 2 people outside their immediate sons and daughters to work there.

As for over production, the grain vs vegetables thing still hits. Crop rotation matters with grains, over production simply doesn't. Most of the land here has been passed down from parent to child for 100 years and they've always been quick to pick up on the latest innovations from new equipment to man-made fertilizers to round-up ready crops. The only consistent theme has been greater(and more consistent) yields per acre each year and correspondingly better profits for the farmer. Your gloom and doom scenario just isn't the reality for current grain farming techniques.

@newtboy,
Some, (very few) still grow grain using old school methods, some even using old school grains (thank goodness, we will have them to thank for still having grains when/if the Monsanto grains fail). It's not even 99%, but it is 'most'.

If you count your numbers by production it's probably more than 99% fall under your idea of 'industrial'. If you want to count old school methods as no chemicals for pest control and harvesting by hand then you need 20 some old school farms to match the quantity of food produced on one thousand acre family farm.

Clearly, natural farming takes more effort, and costs the consumer more, but does not require major ecological mitigation, so if you count ALL costs involved, it's not that much more expensive.
Can you explain the ecological mitigation costs you imagine are associated with farming a thousand acres of grain by hand versus using modern equipment and some round-up? The round-up breaks down within days of application and the equipment doesn't impact the land any more than having 20 some people marching through on foot. For bonus points include the ecological foot print of everybody required to work the land in both scenarios. Including that makes it glaringly obvious that the efficiency of what you class 'industrial' farming techniques is on the whole much better on the planet. Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise producing double and triple the amount of food from the same land with a fraction of the manpower means less overall demand on the environment.

As for the propaganda in the vid, you claimed I misrepresented the Manhattan presentation, I quoted the video verbatim. I'm not interested in doing the same for every point they ran. The video is propaganda of the purest form and I stand by that.

@newtboy

If you are only growing twice what you can eat yourself, you are describing a large garden, not a farm.

More over, what you class as 'industrial' farming is in fact the entirety of all grain farming. If there is a place in farming for wheat, corn, soy, canola and so on, 99% of it is done on what you class 'industrial' farming.

Your typical family farm is over a thousand acres today. If I go out and start naming the family farms of just friends and family I know, I can come up with 30-40+. They all farm over a thousand acres, they use tractors and combines and they make a fair bit more food than twice what they can eat. They aren't the ultra rich land barons that your 'industrial' moniker would imply either, at most they have a singular hired hand to help out with the work. The ones with children interested in taking over often don't need to hire anyone at all.

If you want to abandon that agricultural production and the methods used you mean raising the cost of production more than 100 times over. I can't even fathom the cost of weeding a thousand acres of wheat by hand, let alone removing grasshoppers from a corn crop that way. I'm sorry, but what works for your garden doesn't scale to grain crops.

Oh, and the conflation of herbicide and pesticide was done by the fear monger crowd. Listing round-up as a chemical that only kills plants and not insects and animals didn't fit their agenda so now everything is supposed to be called a pesticide across the board. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing, but the bottom line is that if you had a crop completely over run with insects you could spray it once a day with stupidly high concentrations of round-up and the water in the sprayer would do about the same damage to the insects as would the round up.


As for the video's other claims, I stand by my characterisation. You can't honestly tell me the video is trying to put forward on open and honest picture of Monsanto's actions and history. For example, the Manhattan Project, here's a transcription for clarity:
"Monsanto head Charles Allen Thomas was called to the pentagon not only asked to join the Manhattan project, but to lead it as it's co-director. Thomas put Monsanto's central research department hard to work building the atomic bomb.Fully aware of the implications of the task the budding empire sealed it's relationship with the inner cicrcles of washington with two fateful days in Japan.
"
- queue clip of nuclear blasts-

I think I stand by my summation.

I'm all for the FBI avoiding escalation as long as they're all eventually rounded up and sent to prison.

Wow....Carson really meant a "moment" of silence for victims, didn't he.

Did Christie really just say that working with congress is going to make his eyes glaze over? He knows that that's a large part of the job he's trying to get, doesn't he?

"They don't need to be forced, they need to be asked." is about the worst, most uninformed, proof of a lack of understanding answer Fiorina could have given to the question..."They say they WONT help the FBI, now, crack encrypted communications from ISIS, should they be forced to?"

"You would carpet bomb where ISIS is...not a city, but the location of the troops."...I guess Cruz just doesn't know the ISIS troops are mainly in the cities.

"If you're an American citizen, and you decide to join up with ISIS, we're not going to read you your Miranda rights, you're going to be treated as an enemy combatant, a member of an army attacking this country..." shows clearly that Rubio doesn't understand 'innocent until proven guilty', the basis of our legal system, and has decided that anyone ACCUSED of joining ISIS deserves illegal imprisonment without trial and without end. Marco Rubio has joined ISIS....go get him boys.

"Getting our smartest and getting our best to infiltrate their...internet." That's going to be fairly hard for Trump after he rounds up all the Muslims and deports them for being in the wrong religion, or executes them for something a family member did. I don't really think our best and smartest Muslims are going to want to work for him at that point.

I'm pretty sure that's the first time in history that Trump complained about being mentioned too often.

I'm stunned that I watched the whole thing. My brain hurts, and I just threw up in my mouth a little...but I did it.

Face=>Palm

So, you quote the same hyper partisan types of 'media' Fox uses and claim to not know about Fox at all...oh really. That's an impressive blindness to a political giant not only here, but in your country as well.

Yes, red herring. I'm not bothering with your over abundance of partisan right wing sites, but the one I did randomly check said almost exactly what I said, that they had found NOTHING illegal and probably could never prosecute even if they did because they could not prove she knew it was illegal, but more likely what she did wasn't illegal or improper at the time she emailed from/to her private server. I'm sure the rest told you what you say they did read in the right light...but you don't understand it's all BS. How do I know? No charges. If/when they ever found anything substantive, there will be charges pending the next day and republicans on every channel dancing a jig. Since there aren't, I know there's nothing there.

Your smattering of anti-socialist sites mean nothing. No one said socialism was perfect, just that it's part of society and railing against any instance you can identify is just plain silly. Too much socialism without incentive for production is never a good idea...but none at all is Mad Max, where your precious degree won't be helping save you from the gas boys.

Again, more crazed right wing articles making claims against the ACA mean...what? Nothing. It's survived every challenge so far, and hundreds of attempts to repeal it. It's alive and well, contrary to what you've apparently read. It could certainly be better, but obstructionists would have nothing of 'single payer' and many states have done all they can to sabotage it.

Now for Trump...not a single one of those ideas is anything more than laughable.
1. Good luck with just 'not letting any more in'. You'll need to put the entire army on the borders, and the navy off shore to even come close. Won't happen in any way. The borders and shores are too large to patrol or wall off, much less both.
2. What free Federal resources do you think exist that can round up 11 million people and move them across a border? They don't exist, and would cost the entire GDP to try if it went smoothly...and it wouldn't. And it ignores the millions of legal children left behind which would cost billions-trillions more to take care of poorly. It's just laughable.
3. Smile because you just ate a tasty turd Trump told you was the best, most luxurious chocolate mousse.
Uncontrolled immigration is an issue, but not one easily solved, certainly not with his outrageously expensive plans.

Mexico building a wall because we illegally stop trading with them? (we have a binding trade agreement that precludes any such thing by law) You've got to be kidding. First, can't and won't ever happen, it would cost us trillions to replace/lose the products and trade that come from Mexico, if we could. Second, as I mentioned, illegal. Third, what happens when other nations side with Mexico, who's being illegally and outrageously bullied and blackmailed by the US, and stop trade with us too...like China? The plan is incredibly short sighted and given no thought at all, he just assumes that if we push, they'll all lie down and cry uncle. That's not how the world works.

You claim to have a degree and work for a bank, but you have at least twice tried to pin the entire debt on Obama. Perhaps you don't understand that the debt was about 12 trillion when he took office with the economy in the toilet thanks to the kinds of ideas you support? Our last president, a "conservative" far more than doubled the debt, and took a budget surplus and made it a HUGE deficit (source-https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm) and those numbers were while keeping two wars 'off the books' that are now being paid for. EDIT: and Obama has taken an enormous deficit and shrunk it precipitously while also turning the economy around...the right way (yeah, the last pres. turned it around too) Don't get it twisted...I'm pretty disappointed in Obama, I was from the first term, but because he didn't go much farther, not because of what he did get done.

Trump's the Republican second place runner...among republicans willing to answer presidential poll questions a year before the election. He's completely toast in a general election, even if he managed to get the other 76+% of republicans to vote for him (hint...he won't), he won't get any independents.

Vulgar language?!? I re-read my entire post, and not a single vulgar word IMO. One abbreviation of a vulgar word. You have GOT to be kidding me about that. If not, wow...get off the internet NOW and never come back, it's SO not for you. ;-)

WTF?!? "Tangible plan"? What on earth could you possibly mean by that?
The "plan" to round up over 11 million people and deport them, but with zero details about it?
The "plan" to make Mexico pay to build a 2500 mile wall, with zero details about how?
The "plan" to illegally deny fugitives entry to states because, you know, Muslims are bad...MmmmK?
The "plan" to skew the tax system even more in favor of those in the top 5%, to the detriment of the middle and lower classes?
His "plan" to be a smarmy, dickish, douchebag to anyone that isn't in his camp...but also to completely control those people to make them do exactly what he wants...again with zero details how he plans to do so?
The "plan" to force China to...I don't know...ignore all our debt and treat us like the boss we are?

As for Clinton's being 'currently under Federal investigation by America's FBI department.'...the "email scandal" has, just like Benghazi, turned up absolutely zero illegal behavior and is nothing more than a red herring designed by the (absolutely not) "conservative" side of our political system, has gone absolutely no where, and only matters to people who would NEVER have voted for her in the first place...if you think differently, you really need to get out of the Fox bubble and look around at reality for a bit.

Little could be more disastrous for the country than having that vitriolic humanoid pumpkin as our 'leader', since the only successful leading he's ever done is leading people to hate each other, and leading far more people to hate HIM. He's a fairly terrible business man, successful only due to starting with a "tiny loan" (his words, really more of a gift from daddy) of a million dollars and being forced to allow others to take control of his investments. He's a bold faced liar, in fact the truth does not seem to be palatable to him in the least....and he's clearly admitted that in his books and sees it as a good thing to hyper exaggerate and minimize. He's a 'good Christian', who's been divorced how many times? There's no way on earth his plans would even be tried. He (and other republican candidates) don't even have a grasp of what the president does or how, claiming they'll 'repeal the ACA on day one', and they'll discard multiple government departments...somethings the president simply CAN'T just do...along with most of their other ridiculous, impossible 'plans'. They all know they wouldn't actually have that power, yet they all lie to you and tell you they will do the hateful things they've convinced you are the right thing to do by themselves. Fortunately our system is designed so that one nutjob, or even one party of nutjobs can't change laws precipitously.

I hate to tell you, but Bernie Sanders is not excluded for being honest and knowledgeable. ALL candidates are socialist, he's just honest enough to admit it. Tax breaks for the rich...socialism. Bailouts for the airlines and banks...socialism. Social security...socialism. Medicare...socialism. "jobs programs"...socialism. Public parks...socialism. Public roads...socialism. Need I go on?

Your mischaracterization of Obama's record is so patently ridiculous it's not worth contradicting.

Thank you very much for your answers -- here's a couple more questions maybe you can give thoughts on if you have time:

Quick googling says the average US home uses a bit under 12,000 kWh per year. Divide that by 365 and get ~33 kWh per day, divide that by 24 and get ~1.4 kW per hour (rounding up in all instances). Of course, that's going to be higher in the day and lower at night, but one of the points of the batteries is to help smooth out that usage curve and make it transparent to the homeowner / user.

Anyway, questions related to those figures:
*Do those numbers sound ballpark to your experience?

*You've got 1kWh of lead acid batteries. Ignoring the fact that night usage would tend to be lower than daytime, an "average home" draw of 1.4 kW per hour would give you about 40 minutes of off-the-grid power (without help from the solar). That would probably require lifestyle changes to deal with; it seems like an average home couldn't get through a night without fully draining the batteries. True?

A 10 kWh pack like shown in the video would give 7+ hours, not accounting for lower drain at night. Seems like an average US house might well be able to go a whole night with that kind of battery without any lifestyle adjustments (assuming solar can handle 100% of the load during daytime PLUS charge up the batteries).

* Could your existing solar cells handle daytime load and charging of 1 or 2 of these 10 kWh packs so that you could be comfortably 100% off-grid?

* How much area do your solar cells cover?


I'm been very impressed with Tesla as a car company, even though I've never driven or even seen one in person (only a very few super-rich people have imported Teslas to Thailand). I thought that electric cars were going to be impractical toys for really out-there tree huggers, but everything I read about the Model S and other Tesla cars tells me that they are the real deal, actually superior to internal combustion for MOST use cases.

Hopefully without sounding too much like Howard Hughes, I believe that baseline practicality will let economy of scale take over and make Tesla and other electrics the way of the future. And this makes me likewise optimistic that Musk can similarly revolutionize the future of energy in general. Pretty exciting stuff!