What to do with excess food? Burn it.

Depending on who you talk to, this is quite alarming.

This may not be the best fragile earth topic, but I find this hard to categorize.

Some of you may be aware of grain burning stoves. Yes heaters that burn grains such as wheat or corn.

A Pellet Stove is a zoned heating appliance much like a wood or gas stove which burns wood pellets as a fuel source. Most pellet stoves are easily vented through a wall as compared to their wood counterpart. There is also a wider flexibility of installation options since the venting pipes are smaller.

When compared to wood heating, the Dell-Point pellet stoves are fully automated. A hopper on the back of the stove can hold up to 60 lbs. of fuel, which is then automatically fed to the combustion chamber, according to how much heat is required. Pellet fuel is easier to load and store than wood and has a much longer burning cycle, (less filling). Instead of a typical "heat you out of the room radiant wood stove", our pellet stoves are equipped with blowers which force hot air into the room through a heat exchanger located on the front of the stove. And because these stove use the principal of convection heating (blowing hot air) clearance to combustibles (sides and back) is much less than wood stove installations.

www.pelletstove.com...

Now this isnt all that interesting. Until you take a look at whats happening in the rest of the world.

This is a two part equation.

First- We produce enough food that we can actually use the product as a heat source.

Second- There are other people in the world that would kill to eat this food source.

Now you may think, well why dont we sell this grain to these people ! It would seem that simple.

What kind of world do we live in where:

A- Farmers cannot get a decent price for their product and actually end up burning it for heat

B-We have a shortage of food and the governments wont help them.

I dont know about you, but put two and two together.

This thread actually has nothing to do with grain burning stoves. Its why we have grain burning stoves.

Some things to think about:
-Why cant we get better markets for our produce? No the farmer cant just call up africa and cut a deal.

-Why isnt anything being done?

Such a simple thing. Who profits from grain trade?

Its not the farmer. Tell that to the farmers in my area that are all going broke. And no they are not factory farmers or farming 8000 acres of land.

Why isnt the product going to places that need it? Why havnt the governments established programs to get this product to areas that need it and kill two birds with one stone?

Who is profiting in this?

You can burn yak dung to heat your home or cook if need be, it's loaded with fiber and burns very well when dried.
The same goes for the dung from most ruminants.

I want to pick this post apart, point by point, but it's late and I'll have to revisit this topic tomorrow. I will be back..............

One point:
Run the grain through an animal before you burn it.
You can burn the crap to cook the animal.

While that seems like a great solution to squeezing out every dime, im relating my example to factors on our farm.

We are only in grain production. We have no animals.

I just want to focus on why our excess (or any production for that matter) is not marketed to these areas that could use it.

They have no money? Well we have no money either ! The prices must be low enough now for them to pick up some grains.

Example: Canola, while perhaps not the best example for foods, here goes. The current price we can get for canola is somewhere around 4.50. It used to be nearly 10.00 !

I did a comparisson before, prices now, factoring in how much the value of a dollar has changed, are similar to that of the great depression, in some cases worse.

and this grain is not going to poor countries why?

Due to bad growing years we have an abundance of lower quality grain. This grain is not going to the poor countries why?


There are programs here where we actually give away grain to villages in other countries.

Who is doing it? Dirt poor farmers. Its no government program. Maybe there are similar programs, but not any I know of.

So why are poor farmers giving away grain to poor people in other countries? Is it because the common person actually has a heart and a feeling for what these people go through?

Again, the governments are not making programs to fill these food needs why?

I don't consider rape as a grain, more of an oil seed.

What do you do with the stalk???
I suspect you take the seed of your rape to sell, but you till the rest of the plant under, returning the bulk of your crop growth back into your fields. (correct me if I'm wrong)

The stalk could be used as a fuel on it's own, it's really not that different from coal or wood. If your growing brassica napus, you might want to look at bio-diesel as an end product for your crop. It's a growing concern in Canada and may be an option in the future. We may stop pumping fuel out of the ground in Alberta and start growing it in the fields of Saskatchewan.

I don't get your point of shipping your crop to 3rd world countries.
Why not use it here in Canada as fuel???

"Feed the poor" programs just don't work, all you do is make them healthy enough to breed.
That may sound crass, but you can send all the food you want to the poorer nations and it won't solve their problems. I think that has been proven over and over, the pleas for help have been going on since I was a kid.

Send condoms, not food.

I wouldn't want to be a farmer in Canada right now, your gonna get the #ty end of the stick no matter what you do. The climate is going to bend you over and the government and multinational farming conglomerates are going to take advantage of your position.
(and your not going to get a reach-around)


I must say though, when canola is in full bloom, it sure looks pretty.
But pretty don't pay unless your a hooker.................






[edit on 3/10/2005 by anxietydisorder]

The straw already serves a few purposes. Some people bale it for feed and such. There is a company here that uses it to make a form of chip board.

There will soon be a carbon credit program that actually pays for how you take care of the straw. I dont know how or if it will work.

Some burn it, some places you cant burn. We burn some. You just cant work it all under. Some is chopped up and worked in.

We rotate our crops, so one year it may be canola, the next wheat. Not uusually wheat on wheat etc.

They are building a few bio diesel plants for canola use. It may pay off.

One thing I want to add is that, I would like to see markets set up for these poor countries. Im not saying give it all to them, but there are markets for them.

Its the kill two birds with one stone approach. The grain markets are unbelievably bad.

But someone has to do it. Much like other jobs.

you make some fine thought provoking points Dulcimer.......


I have to assume anxietydisorder means GRAPE...and not RAPE........one can 'hope' for there is a BIG difference, or do they mean REAP? I am confused with the word rape in there......maybe its an everyday farming term

.....not trying to be rude here, but you need to be careful when using the word rape........and speak clearly about it.

I like this thread, and the ideas behind it......

[edit on 3-10-2005 by theRiverGoddess]

I thought the word profit was alien to Canadian farmers.

You have a lifestyle that is the envy of the city folk, but they don't understand the workings of a farm and the dedication and hard labour it takes to support a family on what you can take from the land.

I wish you luck in the future, it won't be easy to keep a family farm in the current economic climate that pervades in agri. Canada.
We've moved too far from the land and it's the farmers that suffer financially because the rest of us think meats and grains all come to us in plastic containers and bags.
(you will always be low on the totem pole because your at the bottom of the food chain)
As long as the food keeps flowing into the cities, most people could care less about your predicament as the producer. Sad, but true....

You say you burn off some of the straw.
That seems like such a waste considering the effort that goes into growing it.
The burn just releases the carbon into the atmosphere, and it just seems that all that bio-mass could go to a better use.
We waste soooooo much.

If it wasn't for the farmers, there would be no human society.
You should be a very rich man, but farmers have lost control over their production and now it's in the hands of corporations and under government control.

So much for a free market, it's gone for Canadian producers..........

Originally posted by theRiverGoddess

I have to assume anxietydisorder means GRAPE...and not RAPE........one can 'hope' for there is a BIG difference, or do they mean REAP? I am confused with the word rape in there......maybe its an everyday farming term

.....not trying to be rude here, but you need to be careful when using the word rape.

Rapeseed is a common term for canola.

rapeseed

n : seed of rape plants; source of an edible oil

A Google for rapeseed will take you to this page:
www.google.com...


Edit to add: I'm pleased that theRiverGoddess has stopped by this thread, I was beginning to feel that Dulcimer and I were outstanding in our field, but all alone...........

[edit on 3/10/2005 by anxietydisorder]

en.wikipedia.org...

Rapeseed Brassica napus, also known as Rape, Oilseed Rape, Rapa, Rapaseed and (one particular cultivar) Canola, is a bright yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae. The name is derived through Old English from a term for turnip, rapum (see Brassica napobrassica, which may be considered a cultivar of Brassica napus). Some botanists include the closely related Brassica campestris within B. napus. (See Triangle of U)

Its easy to spot.

Alot of straw can be worked under, and yes its good to do so, but sometimes theres just too much of the stuff, and you can only work so much under.

Check out these canola swaths.



There is a massive amount of straw there. Consider that the seed are just tiny and in the pods (think of pea's)

Anyone that has pea plants in there garden will understand the plant matter that is left behind. Imagine having 160 acres of the stuff !

Some people around here grow pea's. I dont know what they do with the aftermath actually. Its very low to the ground.

Something like wheat is a little easier to work with.


Only some straw matter is worth saving. Something like canola straw is quite useless.

If you want to know more about carbon credit programs, google can explain better than I can.

www.google.com...