I read a very interesting book the other day entitled Eat Right for Your Type, which talks about eating a diet that suits your blood type.
As a result of a few "Ah ha" moments as I read it, I ditched a product from my diet.
Within 24 hours, my excess mucus production (sorry about the graphic description) was gone, and 12 hours after that, a bad dose of footrot was on the mend.
By mistake, two weeks on, I had some of unsaid product for breakfast and within two hours was reverting.
If I needed reminding that diet IS everything, that did it.
I do not have sufficient space in this column to cover carbon dioxide (CO2) and its sequestration into soils in full, but perhaps to give a taste of the futility of current proposals to save us all from global warming, from which some more lateral thinking may in time emerge, I offer the following thoughts.
The disciples of global warming would have us believe that depending upon where you live you will be subject to one of the following: drought, flood, excess cold, excess heat and, for a few special cases, more than one of these.
The reason for this is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is going to stuff up the climate big time.
The critical point here is that the problem (a build-up of CO2 = greenhouse gas) is already in place.
All the promoted saviours involve hopefully reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emitted in the future - which is fantastic.
However, the only way to improve the outlook for the future is to reduce the amount of gas already there - that's profound.
There is, fortunately, a very simple way for us to do that and it is called photosynthesis, and we Kiwi farmers are bloody great at it and can get heaps better.
Incidentally, there is no other way to reduce the greenhouse gas concentration, other than waiting for an ice age to come along and tidy things up.
Challenge away.
The nice new animal identification system unveiled by Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton at the field days is rubbish and should be ditched.
This view was formed about seven years ago when I was involved with the Beef Council.
It was very clear to me then that it was being driven aggressively by those who supply tags and ancillary products - and there appears to be no change.
Why should we dump it?
1. The evidence supporting its efficaciousness is very slim - actually, it's not slim, just not compelling. You could in fact use the evidence as a doorstop.
2. In spite of all we hear to the contrary, US farmers are far from enamoured with their equivalent scheme and 12 states are fighting in court to bin it.
3. We propose to use second-rate technology - low frequency, not high, which has very significant implications, particularly for on-farm usability
4. The tags will not be read-and-write tags, which means that in the event that foot and mouth, bird flu, or whatever it is we are waiting for this week does arrive, the management information required by the inspection agency is not on the tag attached to the animal, but in a repository somewhere.
It would be a disaster if the power was off that day and said information could not be accessed.
5. To further compound its ineffectiveness in the event of a national emergency, we will record only one of the four points involved in the movement (by truck) of a tagged animal.
1. The animal goes up my ramp.
2. On to a truck.
3. Off the truck at your place.
4. Down your loading ramp.
My understanding is that we will only record step 2 of the process, which will leave very serious holes in the information and great opportunity for skulduggery.
Not a bad winter so far and an even better spring coming. - Graham Clarke
Graham is an organic farmer from Waipahi.