Nebraska

How Do We Know What We Know?

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msmDee Chadwell – As I sit here writing, a terrible thing is happening. It started mid-week, but there’s nothing being reported on the national news.  No TV cameras or on-the-street interviews. I saw blurbs on Drudge and Breitbart this morning (Sunday), but no big fuss.  As of this moment 54 of Nebraska’s 93 counties have been declared disaster areas.  Seventeen rivers have set flood records and some six million people are affected. Offutt Air Force Base, just outside of Omaha, looks more like an inland sea – thirty buildings are closed due to the flooding. South Dakota and Iowa have been affected as well.

This was a hard winter and much snow accumulated and ice formed on all the rivers. Then suddenly the weather turned and most of that H2O turned liquid. What didn’t melt floated high-speed in chunks the size of cars, ripping out grain elevators and barns, tearing into houses and businesses. I saw one picture of a kitchen filled to the tops of the counters with dirt-laden ice. Continue reading →

State Departments Of Agriculture Are Attempting To Regulate Seed Banks Out Of Existence

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SeedsInSeedBankLast year, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture officials sent ‘a friendly letter’ to a seed bank/seed exchange group in Mechanicsburg, telling them they need to test every variety of seed with extremely impractical and pointless tests to ensure that they are up to standards with regulations.

‘Agri-Terrorism’ was cited by officials as a reason why such regulations should be enforced on something as natural as the right to exchange and possess seeds.

There are laws in every state regulating the possession and exchange of seeds. The actual enforcement of these laws is spotty, because a lot of law is actually too complex most often to even decode, and just about any crazy thing that was once written in law can be enforced if law enforcement wants to. Also, who wants to enforce laws regulating and stifling such a productive, natural right?

“There’s almost no danger,” said John Torgrimson, the executive director of the Seed Savers Exchange. “This is not a risk to agriculture in any state. This is not a risk to our food supply.”

Pennsylvania is not alone in this fight. Regulators in Nebraska are also looking at local seed banks. Continue reading →