Mock meat pie - harbinger of the future

     There is a need to convert corn, soybeans and small grains into meat if the world is going to feed a population of 9 billion people by 2050. We have the tools to  do the conversion today - they're called chickens, pigs and cattle - but a group of scientists report today that we're going to have to do it in vats. You know, put feedstuffs into the vat, take meat out. The scientists were 21 in number and prepared their reports for Great Britain's Royal Society, one of the world's most respected scientific organizations. The scientists foresee population growing by a third in the next 40 years, don't see more cropland being developed, but do see promise in the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More CO2 from burning things like coal could actually help crops become more productive, but the researchers still think we'll (well, "you'll" and "they'll" since I'll have cashed my last Social Security check by then) still have to eliminate the middle-animal and convert plant life directly into something like meat. Kind of like what we do today with tofu. John Vidal, environmental editor of The Guardian in the UK wrote a report about the mock meat projections. You can read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/16/artificial-meat-food-royal-society 


     Not one, not two, but three crops a year are coming off Eli Weaver's fields in Leola, Pa. Weave is a small scale dairy farmer - 30 cows on 45 acres - but a large scale thinker who went from buying most of his forages and grains. His two-year crop rotation includes 94-day corn, tritacale/annual ryegrass mix, sorghum sudangrass and oats. He also uses pasture paddocks. He's gone from buying feed to selling forages to his neighbors, and is tinkering with ways to harvest his cover crops. And he's always on the lookout for new varieties. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp Espenshade called on Weaver to talk about his methods, and prepared a report for our current edition. You can also read it on our website:
http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3122


     Maybe Baxter Black should just stick to poems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuQ-DH2M4Y8