BAD ROADS, AND WORSE

WINTER RETURNED TO THE NORTHLAND WITH A VENGEANCE YESTERDAY...

...AND TO THE ICE ROAD 

WHEAT DRIED FOR HARVEST WITH ROUNDUP (GLYPHOSPHATE)

Wednesday,9:30 AM.  27 degrees F, up from 18 earlier.  The winD is NW, Light to moderate.  The sky is cloudy and it is  still snowing lightly after depositing 4"- 5" of new snow.  The humidity is 90% and the barometer is steady, at 29.85".

   Winter returned with a vengeance yesterday, and the roads were pretty treacherous.  I had a flat tire that needed repairing, and will ultimately result in purchasing a set of new tires for the truck, so I had to drive on bad roads to Ashland. The Ice Road looked worse.

   Traversing Wisconsin last fall I was amazed at all the obviously artificially dried fields of corn in the agricultural areas of the state.  Upon asking farmers and others who would know the reason, the consensus was that glyphosphate, specifically the weed killer Roundup, was being used extensively to treat the green corn so that it could be more easily distilled into ethanol.   I was astounded at this, as only the kernels are used to produce ethanol and the rest of the plant is used primarily in cattle feed.

   First, let me say that I think producing ethanol as a biofuel is a fools errand, as it takes almost as much energy to produce the ethanol as is derived from it as a fuel.  The whole enterprise is another expensive, dubious governmental boondoggle, resulting in 40% of the nation's corn crop, which arguably should be used for food for humans and animals, is now used to produce ethanol to enrich gasoline.  Even Pope John Paul, who was neither an economist nor a biologist, got this one right.  Will we never learn?

   Second, and perhaps more importantly, there is now considerable suspicion that glyphosphate used to dry crops (wheat as well as corn) and as an agricultural weed killer is finding its way into the human diet and causing the near  epidemic-like incidence of celiac disease, which is intolerance to dietary gluten.  The research on the causal relationship is perhaps rudimentary, but there seems to be a more than incidental connection between the two factors.

   We have had pesticide and herbicide panics in the past, such as the the concern about the use of Alar on apples, which have been unnecessarily damaging to agriculture and were overblown.
   But keep your eye on this issue.