The End is Near111!!!

Sam's Club, Costco limit rice purchases as prices rise

Does this mean that the boxed rice that has been sitting on my shelf for ages will soon be considered a commodity investment?

I didn't know...

that those teeny tiny specks were the actual seeds! I bought a some vanilla beans and realized that.

Apparently they are very hard to germinate

Also, in a classic lesson on environmental economics, Florida gives away water to Nestle...for "free"...and it isn't going to turn out well. The state gets to collect some taxes, but actual residents need the water now that Florida is in a drought. Lesson in economics: there is no such thing as free and when you don't charge based on usage, you have problems with overdrawing.

Stevenson, the state's spring expert, says to look at the big picture. "As I see it, a real problem is the public thinks of water as limitless and valueless. ... The less water you pull out of the ground, the better for the spring,'' he said.

Why I Hate Ethanol

Interview with my environmental econ/international trade professor, which is a great summary of the food vs. fuel situation.

Money quote: "Given the questionable environmental benefits of corn-based ethanol, the large diversion of corn from food/feed that it requires and the limited potential to rely on it to achieve meaningful independence from foreign oil there is a need to rethink our current policy efforts towards promoting its production."

Hay is for horses...

and cows...and it's damn expensive. One of the last small milk operations here is closing down because of ridiculous hay prices combined with weather-related pasture declines. In one of my classes we talked about how some poor horse owners can't cope with the price increases, but since the slaughter ban, it costs more to get rid of a horse than to let it starve. Animal control has been hit with a lot of horse cases.

In that same class, a representative of the Illinois Corn Growers talked about how great ethanol is. However great it might be (it's not as far as I know), the price increases that have resulted from ethanol subsidies hurt small-scale agriculture the most.

Silent Spring

Now that spring is here, we take it for granted that the birds’ cheerful songs will fill the air when our apple trees blossom. But each year, as we continue to demand out-of-season fruits and vegetables, we ensure that fewer and fewer songbirds will return.

I've already given up out-of-season tomatoes. It's pretty easy given that the typical tomato tastes like water flavored water. But ultimately, I wonder if this is something we should hold consumers accountable for? I used to think consumer-education could be a solution, but now I feel like the vast majority of people are going to chow down on a factory-farmed McDonald's burger topped with an imported tomato no matter how many times Pollan is on the bestseller list.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic and a bad economics student, but I think import restrictions, which hold foreign farmers to our standards, are the unfortunate answer here.

Also: interesting econ aside

The presentation of a pricing policy clearly matters—something disconcerting to economists, who can translate all the pricing into mathematical equations and make the presentation go away. It seems to be acceptable to charge a higher markup for fair-trade coffee, organic bread, or lower-emissions gasoline. It is not acceptable for businesses to say, "We are such fans of exploitative coffee, pesticide-laced loaves, and dirtier gas that we're willing to discount them and accept a lower profit margin." Underneath the gloss, the pricing policies are, nevertheless, identical.

Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods

Also not tasty: farmed salmon. In fact, I think farmed salmon tastes absolutely putrid. Besides, that, every time you eat farmed salmon, you are probably contributing to the decline of wild stocks. I guess the question is: as consumers do we want expensive wild salmon occasionally or cheap farmed salmon all the time? Unfortunately, just all most animal-foods, the answer for most consumers seems to be "cheap! we don't care where it comes from!"