Hearing about the insanity of people overreacting to what they believe are food shortages in the United States; where they somehow believe they need to hoard rice, while people in third world countries are actually rioting due to real shortages, brought to mind the 1973 movie Soylent Green. 

"A tale of Earth in despair in 2022. Natural food like fruits, vegetables, and meat among others are now extinct. Earth is overpopulated and New York City has 40 million starving, poverty stricken people. The only way they survive is with water rations and eating a mysterious food called Soylent. A detective investigates the murder of the president of the Soylent company. The truth he uncovers is more disturbing than the Earth in turmoil when he learns the secret ingredient of Soylent Green."




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Have you seen the movie?  It’s a classic in my book.  A little hard to watch because it was poorly made.  It’s playing quite often on American Movie Classics channel.  Because it’s an old movie, I’m going to take license to talk all about it and the ‘secret,” so for those who haven't seen it, and want to without it being spoiled, don’t go any further.

The early 70’s was a time for this type of movie, and Charlton Heston, who stars in Soylent Green, also starred in another “the world is ending” movie in 1971, called Omega Man.

Here we have only the very wealthy somehow being able to find black market bits of real, old fashioned food, while the masses live on different colors of Soylent – a dry cracker-type product.



Processed Soylent Green               Wikipedia



And because the city is so over-populated, when you feel you just can’t take it anymore, you are encouraged to “Go Home” by way of a center that cleans you up, puts you on a gurney with crisp sheets, an lets you spend your last minutes before you are euthanized watching a surround sound movie of what times used to be like on Earth.  One last feel-good fling.  But there are many, of course who have never known the way the Earth once was.  They have only heard stories about it.



             Edward G. Robinson (Sol) "Going Home"




Then you are wrapped up in your sheets and carted off to a garbage truck, taken by the load-full to a processing plant and processed into….

€

€

€

€

€

Food, glorious food….Soylent Green.


So, in the 70’s, they were warning us...the beginning of the movie is black and white beginning in pioneer times, and moves all the way through industrialization and modern times…showing how we took the beautiful, clean Earth and destroyed and over-populated it.

While we won’t be making Soylent in the near future…. we are already, and have been for quite some time bioengineering food.  There are many people not happy about that.  And there are many concerns regarding the safety of such foods.

East African bananas                Wikipedia



"To all of the ill-effects blamed on man-made global warming, we might add one more. It appears that an obsession with climate change can make sane people warm to mad ideas. Take the Soil Association proposals to make it harder for produce from Africa to be labelled as organic, in order to cut the amount of fruit and vegetables flown into the UK. The justification is that this will reduce “food miles”, CO2 emissions and man-made global warming, and thus protect the developing world from the impact of climate change. The likely effect will be to put some of the most downtrodden farmers in the world out of work.

So how do we save Africa from a possible future disaster? Apparently, by creating a real disaster in the here and now: making poor Africans even poorer. That sounds like madness - or plain badness."

Maybe if we were talking about organic tea leaves it would be a different story.... 


Read the entire article in the Times Online


This organic view is bananas  í here

While chatting with Hispanic voters in a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week, Hillary Clinton stretched for an analogy to explain how all Americans are connected and their problems interconnected despite the fact that "we treat them as though one is guacamole and one is chips."

Wow, Hillary....I'm sure THAT went over really well...

...along with your statement "No woman is illegal."
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That's my sad but true lead-in joke to a real problem....

All you Guacamole lovers out there.....

Keep a stiff upper lip....

The California avacado crop is still in danger!

"The worst year in decades."

First the big freeze last year that sent the avacado prices sky-high.

Then the wildfires and winds.

And, there is a water cut imposed by officials due to the drought.

Avacados are still available from imports through Mexico and Chile.

Read the article from MSNBC

Freeze, Then Fires, May Wipe Out Avacado Farms   ç here




As far as Hillary and her guacamole and chips comment....

If she possibly makes it to the White House....

Maybe the Bush's will leave their own Guacamole recipe behind for Hillary....

But here it is, just in case....



President and Laura Bush's Guacamole Recipe

8 ripe avocados
4 lemons, juiced
7 shallots, finely chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp salt

Halve and pit avocados and scoop out flesh into a bowl. Mash to desired consistency and mix in remaining ingredients. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour before serving. Serve with tortilla chips.

 

Workers spray concrete on the walls of the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway, during the construction phase in August.

In announcing it would create a global seed bank on the Svalbard Islands,
Norway did not say exactly where but the archipelago includes a few
existing settlements like this one at Alesund

Have you ever wondered what would happen to the world's supply of seeds in case
of a global catastrophe? 

Something such as plant epidemics, natural disasters like flooding, the dreaded climate change, or war?

Are you aware of the  Svalbard Global Seed Vault  in Oslo, Norway? 

It is called the "Doomday Vault."

The vault is blasted into the permafrost of the Arctic, 300 miles from the mainland.  The temperature of the vault will be kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit.  It's like a safe-deposit box.  Each country owns what they deposit in the vault and can take it out at their own will 

The vault is due to open February 26, 2008.

"It's very satisfying to see the vault evolve from a bold concept to an impressive facility that has everything we need to protect crop biodiversity," said Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen.

Norway first proposed building what it called a "Noah's Ark" for the world's seeds in June 2005, and started construction a year later, blasting a nearly 400-foot (120-meter) tunnel into a frozen mountain and placing the vault for foil-wrapped seeds deep inside. Each sample holds about 500 seeds."


There already are about 14,000 seed banks in the world run by individual countries.  But some of these have already been wiped out, such as in the Philippines, destroyed by a typhoon, South Asia, destroyed by tsunami, or in Iraq (looters) and Afghanistan (by Taliban), destroyed by war.  The Svalbard vault is intended as a final backup for all other seed banks.  

"The vast collection is intended as a hedge against disaster so that food production can be restarted anywhere on the planet should it be threatened by a regional or global catastrophe."

Click on the icon below for information about the complete history of the Doomsday Vault, including frequently asked questions:

Were you aware we even had "seed banks" around the world? 

Do you think this is a cool idea?

Are you "unglued" when you realize the seed banks of some countries have already been destroyed and it took until 2008 to get a "Doomsday Vault?"  I mean, come on ....