Wide Awake at 3AM

Sleepless night. In response to comments on this article I wrote the following:

The notion that trade liberalization will lower food costs in developing nations is based, in large part, on the assumption that those nations have the resources, particularly water, to increase food production. The fact is that many developing nations DO NOT have the water resources to make significant increases in food production and therefore must import food from nations who do have those resources.
Many of the people posting comments here seem to have a good grasp of economic theory but no understanding of agriculture whatsoever. China, India, and the United States are the worlds biggest grain producers because of geography, not because of government subsidies. All the economic theory in the world is not going to help a sub-Saharan farmer grow more grain if he has the wrong soil, the wrong climate, and insufficient water to do so.

This is not a good thing - Pivot Series

We have canals here. That is where most of our water comes from. Center Pivot's must cross canals. If a pivot gets out of alignment while crossing a bridge you get this. It can be worse. Sometimes the machine falls down or "crashes" to the ground. Then you have a real mess!

I think this will be the first post in a series.