Woody Guthrie

According to a new study, a dramatic increase of dust in the atmosphere  is influencing climate and ecology around the world.

The study used available data and computer modeling to estimate the amount of desert dust, or soil particles in the atmosphere, throughout the 20th century. It’s the first study to trace the fluctuation of a natural (not human-caused) aerosol around the globe over the course of a century.

According to the study, desert dust and climate influence each other directly and indirectly through a host of intertwined systems. Dust limits the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth, for example, a factor that could mask the warming effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. It also can influence clouds and precipitation, leading to droughts; which, in turn, leads to desertification and more dust.

This has huge implications for agriculture and the ability to feed 7 billion people, which will be the Earth’s population sometime in 2011.

The informal survey shows the total cost of 16 food items that can be used to prepare one or more meals was $46.97, up 80 cents or about 2 percent compared to the third quarter of 2010. Of the 16 items surveyed, nine increased, six decreased and one remained the same in average price compared to the prior quarter. The total average price for the 16 items was up $4.07 (about 10 percent) compared to one year ago.

Bacon, eggs, whole milk, sliced deli ham and bread increased the most in dollar value compared to the third quarter, according to the survey.

Bacon increased 68 cents to $4.32 per pound; eggs and whole milk increased 19 cents to $1.60 per dozen and $3.35 per gallon, respectively; sliced deli ham increased 18 cents to $4.84 per pound; and bread increased 14 cents to $1.75 for a 20-ounce loaf.

“Hearty breakfast lovers felt the pinch in the fourth quarter of 2010,” said AFBF Economist John Anderson. “Increased consumer demand for meats and dairy products that began in 2009 continued through the fourth quarter of 2010. Wholesale meat supplies remained tight in the fourth quarter of the year, due to smaller livestock herds and poultry flocks, which also contributed to the retail price increases our volunteer shoppers reported.”

Here in Nebraska, another report, released by the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, said that the cost of providing for basic needs such as housing, food, and clothing, has increased for families over the last two years in Nebraska. The new report “The Self Sufficiency Standard for Nebraska 2010″ was released this week by the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.

“The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Nebraska 2010″ measures how much money a family of a certain composition in a given county in Nebraska must earn to meet their basic needs, without public or private assistance. Basic needs include: housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, miscellaneous expenses (clothing, telephone, household items), and taxes (minus federal and state tax credits). Most cost estimates are based on current market rates.

The study reveals that there is not one county in Nebraska where a single parent earning minimum wage can meet their family’s basic needs, according to Rebecca Gould, Executive Director at Nebraska Appleseed.

The findings coincide with the latest U.S. Census report that found the number of poor people in the U.S. is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans — many of them 65 and older — struggling in poverty due to rising medical care and other costs.

According to the Associated Press, government aid programs such as tax credits and food stamps kept many people out of poverty, helping to ensure the poverty rate did not balloon even higher during the recession in 2009.

Under a new revised census formula, the Associated Press reported that overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7 percent, or 47.8 million people. That’s compared to the official 2009 rate of 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million, that was reported by the Census Bureau last September.

Across all demographic groups, Americans 65 and older sustained the largest increases in poverty under the revised formula — nearly doubling to 16.1 percent. As a whole, working-age adults 18-64 also saw increases in poverty, as well as whites and Hispanics. Children, blacks and unmarried couples were less likely to be considered poor under the new measure.

Due to new adjustments for geographical variations in costs of living, people residing in the suburbs, the Northeast and West were the regions mostly likely to have poor people — nearly 1 in 5 in the West, the Associated Press reported.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Nebraska 2010 was produced for Nebraska Appleseed and the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. The Standard was calculated and written by Dr. Diana Pearce at the University of Washington Center for Women’s Welfare. The Self Sufficiency Standard and supporting documents can be accessed on-line at NeAppleseed.org/lowincome.

Other items in the American Farm Bureau Federation Marketbasket Survey that increased in price since the third quarter were sirloin tip roast, up 9 cents to $3.95 per pound; shredded cheddar cheese, up 7 cents to $4.16 per pound; toasted oat cereal and vegetable oil, up 4 cents each to $2.88 for a 9-ounce box and 32-ounce bottle, respectively.

Most items showing an increase in retail price from quarter-to-quarter also showed year-to-year increases. Compared to one year ago, bacon was up 44 percent, eggs were up 4 percent, whole milk was up 10 percent and sliced deli ham was up 11 percent.

“Increasing our nation’s livestock herd to meet the growing demand for meat and dairy products takes time, so we are likely to see retail prices continue to increase for some foods throughout 2011,” Anderson said.

Six foods decreased slightly in price compared to the prior quarter: boneless chicken breasts, down 34 cents to $3.10 per pound; flour, down 16 cents to $1.99 for a 5-pound bag; Russet potatoes, down 13 cents to $2.50 for a 5-pound bag; ground chuck, down 10 cents to $2.83 per pound; and bagged salad, down 6 cents to $2.69 per pound.

Orange juice remained the same in price at $2.97 for a half-gallon.

As retail grocery prices have increased gradually over time, the share of the average food dollar that America’s farm and ranch families receive has dropped, according to Anderson of the Farm Bureau.

“In the mid-1970s, farmers received about one-third of consumer retail food expenditures for food eaten at home and away from home, on average. Since then, that figure has decreased steadily and is now just over 20 percent, according to Agriculture Department statistics,” Anderson said.

Using the “food at home and away from home” percentage across-the-board, the farmer’s share of this quarter’s $46.97 marketbasket would be $9.39.

According to USDA, Americans spend just under 10 percent of their disposable annual income on food, the lowest average of any country in the world. A total of 92 shoppers in 29 states participated in the latest survey, conducted in late October/early November.

A recent Purdue University study found that the “United States doesn’t have the infrastructure to meet the federal mandate for renewable fuel use with ethanol but could meet the standard with significant increases in cellulosic and next-generation biofuels.”

 The study found that the United States is at the “blending wall,” the saturation point for ethanol use.

“Without new technology or a significant increase in infrastructure,  the country will not be able to consume more ethanol than is being currently produced,” according to the authors of the study. 

The federal Renewable Fuel Standard requires an increase of renewable fuel production to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022. About 13 billion gallons of renewable fuel was required for 2010, the same amount the study predicts is the threshold for U.S. infrastructure and consumption ability. And the study also found, that the country will not be able to achieve the 36 billion gallon per year goal by ethanol from corn alone.

According to the study, “…there simply aren’t enough flex-fuel vehicles, which use an 85 percent ethanol blend, or E85 stations to distribute more biofuels.”

 According to EPA estimates, flex-fuel vehicles make up 7.3 million of the 240 million vehicles on the nation’s roads. Of those, about 3 million of flex-fuel vehicle owners aren’t even aware they can use E85 fuel.

 There are only about 2,000 E85 fuel pumps in the United States, and it took more than 20 years to install them.

But according to the study’s author, “Even if you could produce a whole bunch of E85, there is no way to distribute it.”

The study found that the U.S. would  need to install about 2,000 pumps per year through 2022 to do it. 

What may need to happen to spur more investment and research into reaching the nation’s renewable energy goals is for the cost of oil to continue to skyrocket forcing the average American to pay more for their gasoline.

And that is exactly what is happening.

Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency,  recently told the Financial Times  that rapidly rising energy prices are a threat to the economic recovery.

“Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy,” he told the newspaper. “The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery. This is a wake up call to the oil consuming countries and to oil producers.”

And with easy oil not easy to get to and harder oil more expensive to get to and the dominance of the international marketplace shifting to big labor markets in Asia, demand and the cost of production are guaranteed to keep oil prices rising, especially as the global marketplace emerges from the worldwide recession and demand become keener.

For the U.S. to be competitive, that means either importing more foreign oil or government investment into alternative fuels, which so far have paid big dividends to the U.S. and states like Nebraska, who is the nation’s second leading ethanol producer.

Based on this forecast, AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi said this month could turn out to be the coldest January for the nation as a whole since 1985.

While there has been outstanding regionalized cold in January in recent years, Bastardi said that the U.S. has not experienced this type of coast-to-coast cold since the 1980s.

He said bitter arctic air has also made a return to the northern Plains, while the East and South experienced a dramatic cool down since the weekend.

More waves of arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing through next week and beyond. The period from Jan. 10-20 is when Bastardi expects the core of the cold to be in place, with the northern Plains in the heart of it.

He says Chicago and Omaha could have one or two days with high temperatures below zero during this time. People in New York City may be looking at one day with highs in the teens, while temperatures potentially fail to rise out of the 20s in Dallas, Texas, and Jackson, Miss., for one or two days.

Bastardi also highlights the potential for rare snow in Seattle and Portland with the upcoming weather pattern.

The cold air coming to Texas starting early next week could affect the state’s citrus industry, according to Bastardi. He thinks Florida citrus, however, should be safe.

 In Grand Island, in December, the daily average temperature was 26.1 degrees, which is average for the month, through, despite the end-of-the-year snow storm, precipitation was again below normal for the month. The forecast for the rest of the week calls for no new precipitation with daytime temperatures in the upper 20s or l0w 30s with nighttime lows in the lower teens. There is a slight chance of snow come Sunday.

According to an article in the New York Times:

“Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.

“Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.

“But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.”

Is that what globalism is all about, corporations and rich individuals buying water rights and land across the world?

How much can you help people by teaching them how to cope and survive on another level of poverty?

How much more can we take away people’s dignity and rob them of their pride?

Aren’t we better off teaching people how to grow food than having them stand in line with their families waiting for someone to hand them a bag of rice?

Maybe we should give them a tax cut?

The Associated Press reports that the Census bureau said Tuesday that Nebraska’s population grew 6.7 percent to top 1.8 million people in 2010.

The biggest change will probably be in Rep. Adrian Smith’s 3rd Congressional District, which will surely grow larger and encompass a bigger part of the state.

The new census numbers will probably show that urban areas continued to grow and will add new Congressional seats and that rural areas will have less representation in Congress, nationwide. With all areas of governments, including local, state and federal, facing tough budget decisions, the question is, will rural areas disportionately suffer more than its growing urban counter parts?

In Nebraska’s case, though, agriculture is the dominate driver of the state’s economy and all issues facing agriculture in the upcoming years will united Nebraska’s representatives to the House and Senate to make decisions beneficial to rural Nebraska.

That is according to a CNN story. The story said that, “The number of food stamp recipients increased 16 percent over last year. This means that 14 percent of the population is now living on food stamps. That’s about 43 million people, or about one out of every seven Americans.”

Contress recently passed Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 and signed into law by President Obama last week.

According to Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb.,  said the legislation avoids a $3.8 trillion tax increase on all Americans by providing a two-year extension of all current tax rates, as well as the 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends.

“Raising taxes during a time when our economy is struggling to recover is absolutely the wrong direction,” Smith said. “Had Congress not acted, every single American would have seen their taxes go up on Jan. 1st.”

While Smith voted for the bill because he is against tax increases, according to a Dec. 10 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the tax legislation will add $374 billion to the deficit in the current fiscal year and $423 billion in the next. Over the 10-year projection time frame, the net impact is to increase the deficit by $858 billion.

But what is the greater reality about the tax cut: A family making more than $1 million will receive more than five times the tax cut benefit, in dollar terms, as a middle-class family or 14 percent of the population  now living on food stamps?

Food for thought: Food stamps funding comes from the Farm Bill, which is due for renewal next year. If food stamps and other nutritional programs demands on the rise and the deficit on the increase, Congress faces a hard decision: Pay the farmer or feed the people.

When it come to public investments, we can’t always look for the economic return as the immediate reward, but what can it do for the greater good of humanity. Seeing the world in terms of only dollars and cents blurs our vision in what can we do collectively to improve the human conditions. There’s much compassion in science when it used for the greater good for both humankind and the environment.

In a recent new items from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, researchers there are  looking at ways to control the fungus that causes rice blast disease, which can cause yield losses of 10 to 30 percent a year, and annually destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people.

The research could have broader implications in the United States as a similar fungus causes disease in wheat, said Richard Wilson, UNL plant pathologist who’s leading the effort.

 The EPA last month agreed to allow cars and trucks that are 2007 and newer to run on gasoline with 15 percent ethanol, a blend known as E15. Flexible fuel cars can operate using a 85 percent blend of ethanol and gasoline mixture.

Challenging the EPA’s action are the American Petroleum Institute and a series of livestock and food industry groups, including the National Pork Producers, National Council of Chain Restaurants and the American Meat Institute, in asking a federal appeals court to block the EPA’s E15 decision, according to a story in the Des Moines Register.

The story said that “gasoline refiners also may challenge the decision, as well as engine manufacturers and other sectors that have expressed concerns that misuse of E15 would damage motors.”

The motivate is pretty simple, corn prices are too high and cuts into the profitability of livestock producers, which in turns has an economic impact on meat producers, grocery stores and restaurants.

The ethanol industry has been one of the biggest economic drivers in Nebraska’s economy for the past 10 years. Ethanol production in Nebraska this year will be about 2 billion gallons using almost 700 million bushels of corn. Because of ethanol, corn prices aren’t stagant at well below the farmer’s cost of production forcing producers to take a government payment so they won’t go broke.

The growth of the ethanol industry has played a vital role in helping to keep Nebraska’s economy from diving deep into the recession as other state’s have. The increase in corn prices, along with increase in yields over the last five years has added billions of dollars to the state’s economy. And Nebraska’s ability to process that corn here in the state into ethanol has added additional billions of dollars to the state’s economy in increase economic activities.

Allowing E15 increases the growth curve of the ethanol industry in Nebraska and makes sure we add additional value to a crop we grow in the state, along with the livestock feeding industry. Diminsh the growth of the ethanol industry and lowering corn prices increases the need for government subsidies for farmers and halts the economic expansion of the state’s agriculture industry’s ability to add additional value to the crops we grow.

It also opens the door to increase addiction to fossil fuels that are imported into the United States thus adding to the trade imbalance and increasing the national debt. It opens the way to adding more pipelines across Nebraska to carry foreign crude for processing at U.S. refineries. 

It also acts as a disincentive to increase alternative biofuel production. As demand for corn ethanol increases with adding more ethanol to the gasoline blend, the ability of the corn industry to meet those increase demands for ethanol will be strained. But because there will be increase demand that acts as an incentive to develop other forms of alternative biofuels to supplement the growing demand for the renewable fuel caused by increase useage of E15 and the increasing availability of E85 pumps across the nation for flex fuel vehicles.

So by killing E15, you kill the incentive of fulling immediate demand for a product by creating alternatives and leaving the corn ethanol infrastructure the burden of  meeting increasing ethanol demand.  Corn ethanol is a success because we have created an infrastructure to efficiently process and deliver the product to market. It’s only going to be because of demand for biofuels that there will be an incentive to invest in developing other sources at can be delivered the product at an economic advantage like corn ethanol.

Like wind, Nebraska is blessed with a lot of crop land. Our biggest crop in grass and some of that grassland, especially on marginal land not suited for conversion to crop ground, where alternative biofuel crops can be grown.

So kill E15 you are increasing this nation’s dependency on foreign oil, which in turn, increases the country’s debt.    

In the story, Tom Buis, CEO of the ethanol trade group Growth Energy, is quoted saying that  ”opponents of his industry were trying legal means to slow the growth of biofuel production because they have been “unable to dispute the overwhelming science in favor of E15.”

The story also said that “The EPA said its E15 decision was “based on strict adherence to the Clean Air Act and grounded firmly in science. The agency relied on numerous rounds of rigorous testing on 19 car models and, at every step, worked in close consultation with automakers and fuel suppliers.”