Nature magazine article blames poor Africans for global warming:
we Rice farmers in Asia have long been blamed for global warming, but now Nature Magazine is blaming Africa too. Guess we peasants need to starve to protect mother gaia.https://t.co/IAen9yyYql
— tioedong (@tioedong) January 10, 2024
in contrast, China is busy teaching them to grow rice and how to modernize their farming.
Some background: West Africa has their own rice variety, but it shatters easily, so many farmers are changing to Asian rice. In other words, many areas of Africa eat rice (the article on China is about Madagascar, which was originally populated from Malays from Indonesia in ancient time, so they grow rice).
and years ago, I had to flee my job in Liberia when there was a revolution. The cause? An increase in the price of rice
I am pro ecology and anti pollution, but the push against farmers is a very dangerous trend.
This week it is the German farmers up in arms.
As for us: The high price of fertilizer and diesel lower our ability to make a profit.
Yes, Rice Growing produces methane: Which is why we use the dry method where we flood the fields to stop the weeds from growing a lot less, but since we are organic this means we can't use the herbicides to cut down the weeds.
a dilemma: Organic vs high tech.
The Green religion pretends to love organic, but for rice farmers they hate both ways to grow rice...
so what is their plan? Starve the peasants?
Covid shutdowns already have caused inflation and economic damage.
and now, the push is not to use hydropower or geothermal electricity which we already use, but to put up solar panels (wonder what will happen when typhoons hit? Never mind)...
You see, some rich guys are planning to build huge solar farms in our area, which is a major rice growing region in the Philippines. Hmm.. wonder what that will do to our rice.
We have been offered money to sell or rent our fields for this. Being short of money Kuya is considering this for our farms on a small hill, which are expensive to irrigate so we only can get one crop a year on them.
But he is worried that the run off will poison the rice growing in the lower field.
In the meanwhile, some thugs were asking our contract farmers (who sell us their rice for our organic rice business) asking where we live, saying they want to talk to him about buying our land. Why do I say thugs? The masks of course. And because the farmers were afraid of them. Luckily for us they told them that they didn't know our address.
It almost makes me wish we still owned Lolo's World War II submachine gun that he used to keep in our closet. But now we are gun free, alas and only have dogs and machetes for protection. And alas George our killer Labrador has gone to heaven, so we only have small dogs to protect us.
Sigh.
