The Philips’ design team has come up with an ingenious idea: a bee hive that can be mounted in a window so that home owners can not only support the insect which is vital for our ecology but also can have their own built-in, quite literally, supply of honey. There is a great collection of photographs of the prototype, but here is the diagram:
Texas Farm, 1952. This stuff is just amazing. The glimpse it gives you into the past. This is a collection of color film reels, without sound, taken by an amateur filmmaker — it appears to be the farmer himself.
Henry Browne, Farmer (1942). More great stuff from the Prelinger Archives on Archive.org. Amazing document of farming of the era. Farmer Browne is African American, but that is not the focus of the film.
In an episode of Modern Marvels on the History channel, the history of agricultural labor was delineated as follows:
The title about says it all. The article that does the analysis is here and is published by the International Journal of Biological Sciences. The abstract states:
We present for the first time a comparative analysis of blood and organ system data from trials with rats fed three main commercialized genetically modified (GM) maize (NK 603, MON 810, MON 863), which are present in food and feed in the world. NK 603 has been modified to be tolerant to the broad spectrum herbicide Roundup and thus contains residues of this formulation. MON 810 and MON 863 are engineered to synthesize two different Bt toxins used as insecticides. Approximately 60 different biochemical parameters were classified per organ and measured in serum and urine after 5 and 14 weeks of feeding. GM maize-fed rats were compared first to their respective isogenic or parental non-GM equivalent control groups. This was followed by comparison to six reference groups, which had consumed various other non-GM maize varieties. We applied nonparametric methods, including multiple pairwise comparisons with a False Discovery Rate approach. Principal Component Analysis allowed the investigation of scattering of different factors (sex, weeks of feeding, diet, dose and group). Our analysis clearly reveals for the 3 GMOs new side effects linked with GM maize consumption, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly associated with the kidney and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, although different between the 3 GMOs. Other effects were also noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system. We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.
I read the article to the best of my abilities, but that doesn’t mean I am in a position to evaluate it. GM crops seems like such a terrific thing, but it may be that the technology has outpaced our ability to understand its impact on complex ecosystems, including ourselves.
I was lucky enough to be invited by Dwayne Gossen to watch him and his son unloading rice. While a series of augurs swept the rice from inside the bin up to a chute that dropped into a waiting truck, I was invited to see things from the inside of the largest grain bin I have ever seen. Here’s what things look like when you’re inside looking out:
I love my job when I get to do things like this. These are incredible people doing incredible things: the rice on that floor could end up on our dinner table in a few months time.