We see how a miniscule particle puts the world in a health crisis and on the road to a recession, some even fear a depression. Yet there are posters who think it's not going to have a lasting impact on how we will behave, economically/socially/mentally/politically etc. The Dutch population were hard to be convinced on the necesities of the behaviour prescribed to counter the virus. That changed dramatically after victims of the virus on tv from their hospital beds shared their gruesome experiences, let alone the images of the people on their bellies in IC-beds. That did put the fear of God into those Dutchies and all of a sudden they were very timid and obediant citizens. This miniscule micro organ has likewise put the fear into every policy maker with brains in businesses, gouvernments etc. And yet some think it will be back to business as usual. Really? Companies from very profitable to on the edgeof collapsing and yet if they survive it's business as usual? Trillions have evaporated in thin air, but it will be business as usual for the superclubs dependent on luxurious sponsor deals and world wide media followers. Really?
Depends on the cities, I mean we're a lot closer to major food production areas in the Bay Area than, say, places in the midwest where they don't grow anything beyond feed corn and soybeans anymore.
Well the question was what if all food production were to go away. But yeah, that is not going to happen anytime soon.
I've "known" that for years, but it wasn't until my wife and I were in rural Nebraska several years back (In Willa Cather's home town of Red Cloud, incidentally) that I fully "grokked" that point. It was upon seeing a sign in a grocery store window advertising "Fresh Sweet Corn from California." The town itself was surrounded by a veritable ocean of corn. But it sure AF wasn't sweet corn.
A friend of mine told me a story of how he and a bunch of his drunken frat brothers went out one night and stole a bunch of corn from a field. They boiled the hell out of it and it never got edible. (Most of you will be delighted to know that the university in question was Duke. But hey, this was Sigma Nu.)
Yes, this will change the way we live. The retail and restaurant apocolypse that has occured due to the internet will continue at a rapid pace. Entire sectors will go under via widespread closures. People just don't shop anymore, they buy things online. Malls and strip malls will be converted to office buildings or residential condos, or maybe temporary hospitals or something. Retailers were already struggling, and now I can't go to the mall if I wanted to. As for restaurants, they've been replacing the stores in retail. In 2018, Americans spent nearlt 50% of their food and beverage dollar at restaurants. There are just too many darn restaurants and this coronivirus thing ain't going away anytime soon. As for the world economy, I suspect there will be some continuation of localized manufacturing and agriculture - we've been burned depending on people halfway across to world to give us PPE masks and produce. Politically, we are at a crossroads. The ease at which the Republicans started handing out a social safety net gives me some hope that we'll set something up like Europe already had - a real social safety net with a public healthcare option not attached to employment; some mandated paid sick leave, and some real restrictions on how much money a company can give to it's 1% while everyone else does the work and supports the company. Maybe a CEO pay cap or something like Japan. On the other side, if the Republicans just continue to throw money at the rich corporations and their owners, and cnotinue to deregulate to the point where the environment and human capital are basically worthless resources to exploit, we can welcome the China-led world economy and try to win the race to the bottom.
I always assumed that was more of an Iowa thing ... but that's based on TV shows and TV pundits, so I'm not going to defend that assumption.
I grew up in downstate Illinois, and it was a common summer job for kids 13 and over to detassle corn for the Dekalb Seed Corn Company, which grew about 75% of the corn you drive by on various interstates in Illinois (the rest would be owned by Pioneer). There would always be some idiots* that would try to eat the corn, which was an exercise on futility, since the corn, besides being inedible, was nowhere near ready for harvest. *These were run of the mill idiots, not World Class idiots of the sort that go to Duke.
"and distribution," which is probably the more likely choke point. And that was more on my mind because apparently many farmers are currently having to dump produce or let it rot due to restaurants no longer buying their products.
Similar experience here, I visited a friend in Iowa maybe 20 years ago and while driving through endless miles of corn commented that they must have some really good corn. She started laughing and said "That corn is for animals, not people!" Then continued laughing, as if I'd said one of the stupidest things in history. Then later she related the story to a larger party at dinner and they laughed too. I felt like Pee Wee asking about the basement in the Alamo.
I'm pretty sure it is also used for corn meal and is processed for use in other food for people but it definitely not fit to eat off the stalk.
A friend of mine who grew up in Baltimore married a guy who grew up on a farm in Iowa. The first time she visited her future in laws, she assumed the food would be "farm-fresh." It took about a decade to get over her surprise that every single vegetable she ate that weekend came from a can. This was in August. Now, back in my mom's day, the farms all had gardens and root cellars, etc. But since the days of Ag Secretary Earl Butz, of "get big or get out" and "plant your cash crops from road to road" fame, even the home garden has become an endangered part of farm life.
A colleague of mine was once a supervisor of crews of detasselers in Indiana. She told me one year a group of students tried to grow sweet corn at the place they were living, but they couldn't understand why they weren't getting corn - "we did everything right, even cut the tassels off just like at work!" (For you non-plant breeders, tassels make pollen, so when producing hybrid seed you remove the tassels from the female parent to avoid self pollination. But if you detassel the corn in your backyard and there are no other corn plants around, you won't get any corn.)
This summer will mark 45 years from my first summer of detassling, and 43 years from my final one, and I still emitted a noise that caused me wife to ask "what's wrong" from upstairs when I got to the bold part. But that is a reminder that farm kids never detassled since they had other work to do: it was always town kids bussed in. Well, back then. Now it's migrant workers who don't have the highest level of employment status...
Northern WA State grows a lot of white corn. The majority goes to Japan tho. It’s a great favourite for noodles. Goes great on the barbie as well.
Did she ever explain the difference between corn for people and corn for livestock? You can't make that stick. You live in the South. I bet there are people all over the country who make jokes like this (she was wrong to take it public w/her pals). What would you say if, on a shared drive thru North Carolina, someone asked you about all that leather hanging out to dry behind the plantations? Would you laugh at them for not knowing it's tobacco?
She did, she was cool about it. Aside from laughing at me etc.... Yeah and that insult didn't really fit these people anyway, her dad and her sister are both lawyers and my friend now has her doctorate in botany and lives on the Pacific coast. But it was still funny.
Hope they didn't get paid in eggs Kids in Maine tater country used to get pulled outta school to work the fields. Not sure it's done as much nowadays.
The way you describe it, it sounds like "detassling the corn" is yet another euphemism for "choking the chicken" or "shaking the weasel" or "Jerkin the gerkin"