Category Archives: Agriculture

Sinkholes in Florida, and in Lowndes County, Georgia

The sinkhole that formed under a man’s bed and pulled him in has made a lot of news in Florida, plus another one a few miles away. But the news seems to neglect why those sinkholes are forming. Could it be the same reason sinkholes are forming in Lowndes County, Georgia? And will the Lowndes County Commission do anything about that before we see news about somebody here falling into a sinkhole?

Will Hobson, Laura C. Morel and Jodie Tillman wrote for the Tampa Bay Times 1 March 2013, Seffner sinkhole 911 call: ‘Bedroom floor just collapsed’,

Jeremy Bush just went to bed when he heard what sounded like a car hitting the house. Then screams from his brother Jeffrey’s bedroom.

“Help me! Help me!”

Someone flipped the lights. Jeremy, 36, threw the door open, revealing a sight that defied belief: The earth had opened beneath his brother’s bedroom and was swallowing everything in it. The tip of Jeffrey’s mattress was the only thing left, and it was sinking into a churning sinkhole.

The Tampa Bay Times has a long series on what happened afterwards, rescue workers who didn’t find him, the demolition of the house, objects found, etc. They never quite get around to saying why the sinkhole was there. They first say (Shelley Rossetter 2 March 2013),

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Videos: Ham and Eggs Show 2013-02-20

The Lowndes County Ham and Eggs show is the only one in Georgia and one of only two in the country. Now, you might wonder why? Many folks are interested in good, local foods and the craft of curing meats. Well, it has to do with regulations and having the hogs slaughtered and cured in USDA certified facilities.

Years ago, men, women and children would cure the meats at home and bring the hams on the appointed day to the contest (and auction). But, now no meat can be sold Continue reading →

Nuclear is over —Jeremy Rifkin

Economist, author, and advisor to governments Jeremy Rifkin told an agent of the world's largest uranium field operator at a conference of global investors that there's no business future in nuclear power.

Jeremy Rifkin answered a question at the Wermuth Asset Management 5th Annual Investors Event 26 September 2012, Nuclear Power is Dead,

I don't spend much time on nuclear technology, unless somebody asks me about it, because frankly from a business perspective, I think it's over….

Here's the video, followed by more transcript and discussion.

Nuclear power was pretty well dead in the water in the 1980s after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It had a comeback. The comeback was the industry said "we are part of the solution for climate change because we don't emit CO2 with nuclear; it's polluting, but there's no CO2".

Here's the issue though,

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Videos: Commission voted against the people @ LCC 2013-02-26

Apparently one person with a lawyer can persuade the Lowndes County Commission that hundreds of people are just an unruly mass, not the public it’s supposed to represent. For whatever reason, not clear to the public, the Commission voted 3 to 1 with 1 absent to close the end of Old State Road to Hotchkiss Crossing, thus barring the only public access to the Alapaha River in Lowndes County. We shall see whether they will follow through with their hint that they might make a park on the Alapaha River at another location. Congratulations to Commissioner Demarcus Marshall for speaking up for due process and for voting for the public!

Public Works Director Robin English spoke about road conditions and Emergency Services Director Ashley Tye spoke about Local weather conditions,

Update noon 27 Feb 2013: Link to weather conditions, and to Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.

The Commission reappointed J. Glenn Gregory to the South Regional Joint Development Authority and appointed Commissioner Joyce Evans to the Southern Georgia Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council. They are applying for a grant for the county’s MIDS bus system and reapplying for a CDBG grant for Second Harvest.

Here’s the agenda, with links to the videos and some notes, followed by a video playlist. See also the videos of Monday morning’s Work Session.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
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I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing —Gretchen Quarterman @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

And now a word from the only person in the room at the the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 with actual experience in bringing Internet broadband access to new areas, invisible behind the camera but clearly audible, Gretchen Quarterman:

I’m super-excited about the whole broadband thing, because you know that’s near and dear to our heart, and our background.

But please be very careful about the buill that’s before the legislature that will prohibit municipal Internets. Right now the legislature is trying to take off the table muncipal Internets. And I think that a municipal Internet would be a really great solution here. So let your legislator know that’s a bad idea; they shouldn’t take that off the table from us.

That’s HB 282, in opposition to which Amy Henderson of Georgia Municipal Association said:

Broadband is economic development.

Gretchen continued:

At the Chamber’s annual meeting when a local speaker stood up she talked about the that’s doing really well right now is agriculture and I’m pleased to announce that the South Georgia Growing Local Conference will be here in January of 2014 the last weekend, a Friday and Saturday. It’s an equivalent of the Georgia Organics big conference that they have in Atlanta. Except that it’s for south Georgia local growers, farmers, homesteaders. We just were in Reidsville this last January and Lowndes County is going to have it next year.

And the whole series of South Georgia Growing Local Conferences (this will be the fourth) has been organized largely online, in yet another use of Internet access for economic development, in this case sustainable local development.

OK, one more: Rotary Clubs need broadband.

-jsq

Renewable energy much needed in Georgia —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today; I’ve added links, plus some more after the op-ed.

Finally! Kewaunee, Calvert Cliffs, and now Crystal River permanently closing say it’s time for Georgia to stop wasting money on Southern Company’s already over-budget and increasingly-late nukes and get on with solar power and wind off the coast: for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and plenty of clean water.

February 2013:
Duke Energy is closing the Crystal River nuclear reactor (Tampa Bay Times, 6 Feb 2013), 160 miles south of us, because nobody wants to pay to fix it: between “$1.5 billion and $3.4 billion, plus what it costs to buy power to replace what Crystal River would have produced while it is being repaired” [Charlotte Business Journal, 11 Jan 2013].
November 2012:
NRC terminated Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs 3 (NRC 1 Nov 2012) after Constellation Energy dropped out because the cost “is too high and creates too much risk for Constellation” [Bloomberg 10 Oct 2010].
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Return of water misinformation by Forrest H. Williams in the VDT

Seen today on the WACE facebook page is an image of an op-ed in the VDT, and alongside it I include here Michael Noll’s initial comments, plus a few links.

There is good reason why Stephen Hawkins once said “the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” When entities like Fox News can claim that “solar won’t work in America because it’s not as sunny as Germany”, we shouldn’t be surprised by the results of such “educational” efforts. The fact is that we have a number of clean and renewable forms of energy (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal) that already work. Just go to Spain, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, or simply stay in the US and visit places like from New Jersey and New York to California and Arizona. Combine these pieces of a larger energy puzzle with meaningful initiatives of energy conservation and energy efficiency, and we find a way out of our current predicament (i.e. continuing dependence on finite and dirty sources of energy), while saving money (see solar vs. nuclear), preserving our natural resources (e.g. water, forests), and providing clean, healthy and safe environments to live in (e.g. wind and solar do not produce radioactive waste, pollute our air and groundwater).

The guest columnist appearing above is the same individual who thought

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Rural AIDS: poverty the cause, solar power part of the solution

Director Lisa Biagiotti spent two years travelling around the South interviewing people about AIDS to make a film, deepsouth. She found rural AIDS is a bigger and faster-growing problem than AIDS in center cities, yet most health and prevention funding goes to urban areas. The root cause seemed clear to her: poverty. Here’s some deeper dirt (literally) on rural poverty in the U.S., and one thing we know can help with that: distributed solar power, for jobs, for reduced electrical bills, and for energy independence. What politician wouldn’t want jobs for their constituents?

The director said the screening at VSU at the end of November drew more people than the day before in Little Rock. There were clearly more than 150 in the audience in Valdosta. It’s a topic very relevant to here, as Dean Poling wrote in the VDT 26 November 2012,

Organizers note that Georgia is ranked sixth highest nationally for its cumulative number of AIDS cases reported through December 2009. More than 40,000 known HIV/AIDS cases were reported in Georgia as of 2010.

The South Health District’s 10 counties, which include Lowndes and surrounding counties, report 950 confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS, while many more are likely infected and risk becoming sick because they are not being treated. More specifically, there are about 460 reported cases in Lowndes County.

In reporting these numbers, HIV is the virus (HIV disease) and AIDS is the medical diagnosis made by a doctor of the symptoms, according to South Health District.

It’s a great movie and I highly recommend it. Director Biagiotti spent a substantial amount of her own money and two years to make this film, yet there are aspects she could only note in passing, such as incarceration. She can’t be expected to have researched every aspect; maybe somebody else can step up and help follow more threads.

The movie starts with some maps about poverty and AIDS in the South. It did not, however, look outside the South for poverty. Here are better poverty maps, from the CDC:

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Solar: Pieces of a Puzzle —Dr. Michael G. Noll

Op-ed in the VDT today, responding to a response to my op-ed. -jsq

If the attempt of a guest column from Jan 13 was to shine light on solar power, it left everyone in the dark. Neither mockery nor close mindedness will assist us in finding real answers if we want to solve the energy puzzle of the 21st century.

In July 2012, the Financial Times interviewed Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE. GE knows perhaps more about the world of energy business than any other company. Immelt stated that

“on a cost basis it is impossible to justfy investing in nuclar power for the future.”

People who sitll claim that solar is more expensive than nuclear are not paying attention. If solar is viable as far north as New Jersey, it certainly is in Georgia. If countries like Germany can excel in solar energy production, so can we. Companies like Walmart, Costco, Apple, and Google are havily investing in solar because it works.

It should also be noted that the nuclear plant on Crystal River has been idle since 2009. As the Tampa Bay Times reported last December,

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Microloans for small farmers —USDA

USDA PR 0010.13:

USDA Finalizes New Microloan Program

Microloans up to $35,000 aim to assist small farmers, veterans, and disadvantaged producers

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2013 — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced a new microloan program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) designed to help small and family operations, beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers secure loans under $35,000. The new microloan program is aimed at bolstering the progress of producers through their start-up years by providing needed resources and helping to increase equity so that farmers may eventually graduate to commercial credit and expand their operations. The microloan program will also provide a less burdensome, more simplified application process in comparison to traditional farm loans.

“I have met several small and beginning farmers, returning veterans and disadvantaged producers interested in careers in farming who too often must rely on credit cards or personal loans with high interest rates to finance their start-up operations,” said Vilsack.“By further expanding access to credit to those just starting to put down roots in farming, USDA continues to help grow a new generation of farmers, while ensuring the strength of an American agriculture sector that drives our economy, creates jobs, and provides the most secure and affordable food supply in the world.”

The new microloans, said Vilsack, represent how USDA continues to make year-over-year gains in expanding credit opportunities for minority, socially-disadvantaged and young and beginning farmers and ranchers across the United States. The final rule establishing the microloan program will be published in the Jan. 17 issue of the Federal Register.

Administered through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) Operating Loan Program,

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