Still Our Wisest Pursuit

No matter who wins the US election, will agriculture be re-engineered so that more water and energy resources can be devoted Big Tech's Panopticon of Surveillance? Farms are our last defense.

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson

Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict, or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb, or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.

Yuval Harari

Fall is harvest time, and we are blessed with a bounty of food from our local farmers. But that practice is endangered by plans to curtail climate change. This article will show the many ways our government is being used as a tool by global corporations to eradicate the independence found in local farming, assume priority for the use of water and land for renewable energy and data processing.  Along with that comes erosion of our ability to communicate.  In order to stop the spread of ideas counter to the climate change narrative, those ideas must be isolated.  One of the sources for this article called Yanasa TV was demonetized for criticizing carbon capture and the use of eminent domain.  We are so accustomed to these style events from Covid censorship, it hardly raises an eyebrow.

Being resourceful is the foundation of a resilient life, and until recently we have prided ourselves on being hardy, robust people.  For those technocrats whose religion is central authority, the strength individuals exhibit is a stark reminder that the technocrats' position of authority is superfluous, we don’t need them.  Fending for yourself by growing your own food for your family and for a community is the ultimate statement that counters the sentiments expressed by World Economic Forum Advisor Yuva Harairi.  Farming, gardening, homesteading, and building IS thinking for yourself.  Driving is thinking for yourself.  You chart your own course, not society.  

Our new world no longer has patience for that.  

Fending for yourself by growing your own food for your family and for a community is the ultimate statement that counters the sentiments expressed by World Economic Forum Advisor Yuval Harari.  Farming, gardening, homesteading, building IS thinking for yourself.  Driving is thinking for yourself.  You chart the course, not society.  Our new world envisioned by the World Economic Forum and IMF no longer has patience for that. 

When you listen to the experts, our independent behavior must be stopped.  Over the past two years that OZFest has been in existence, both Orange and I have focused on the “front men” for the global elite who arrogantly state that the US and their delusions of liberty and individualism get in the way of the progress that must be achieved if we are to survive.  Those figures include:

• Daniel Callahan, progenitor of the Community of Care. Orange his written extensively on him.

• Dennis Meadows of the Club of Rome and World Economic Forum who we featured in our documentary

• Yuval Harari whom I have written of many times in Rationed State. He is best represented by the quote above.
  

• Frederick Taylor, father of the Scientific Management movement. 

Individualism and resourceful actions of those who can live free from the edicts of central authority have been under attack for as long as we have yearned for freedom.

Agriculture represents the backbone of our society in many ways beyond the fact that we all need to eat.  If a community has a high degree of self sufficiency, then there are far less economic incentives to yield to corporate interests.  Each day a farm remains under the capable hands of a family is another day that the family and their community has won.  Earning independence with each task completed is a reward in itself, and eating healthy food is another.  Entering into business relationships where you assume the risk and do not need the interference of an overzealous agency that will destroy produce or milk products is your right as a free adult.  But that right is at severe risk.

And why?  Because attacking food is an ancient tactic of war and coercion.  

The Broken Promise of Urban Farming and Homesteading

One of the selling points of collectivized action is the theme “we should all do our part, we are in this together”.  In that spirit, many think back to World War II when our grandparents and great grandparents “Did Their Part” and everyone had Victory Gardens.  This was so that people could feed themselves while supplies were diverted to our troops overseas.

In that same spirit, many have turned to gardening in urban settings as a way to reduce the need for fossil fuels when transporting vegetables, and also as a way to return their immediate surroundings to something “more natural”.

But there is a nasty surprise.  In a recent University of Michigan study, it turns out that many practices in urban gardening produce 6 times the CO2 when contrasted with traditional farming techniques in the agricultural industry.

On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted 0.42 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving, six times higher than the 0.07 kg CO2e per serving of conventionally grown produce.

“By assessing actual inputs and outputs on urban agriculture sites, we were able to assign climate change impacts to each serving of produce,” said study co-lead author Benjamin Goldstein, assistant professor at U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability. “This dataset reveals that urban agriculture has higher carbon emissions per serving of fruit or vegetable than conventional agriculture—with a few exceptions.”

https://news.umich.edu/study-finds-that-urban-agriculture-must-be-carefully-planned-to-have-climate-benefits/

There are several things occurring here.  First there is a psychological signal:  you are doing more harm than good.  You may be using techniques that you have learned or read about, but those must be abandoned if they, in the end, produce more carbon than Big Agri.  It's interesting to note that there’s a small win in that the study finds that tomatoes raised in an urban setting consume less CO2 than their greenhouse counterparts.  But open air means one season, and so no greenhouse for you.  The article on the study doesn’t mention that in many greenhouses they pump in CO2 for better crop yield.

But overall, authority is established here:  you’re doing it wrong.  And tracking all outputs of your activities are required.  Data collection is at the heart of validating if you will be allowed to grow your tomatoes in a climate friendly manner.

The World Economic Forum Plan

As you can see from the U of M study, data is needed to make the most basic decisions. The World Economic Forum published a white paper in June of 2024 where it outlined what steps should be taken to avert the impending food crisis being caused by man made climate change.  You’ll notice this white paper proposes future state initiatives.  For example, in the spirit of reducing the impact of CO2, we must stop current practice first before AI can assist us in inventing new types of fertilizer that do not use nitrates.

The paper discusses the importance of renovating and reinventing the food system to address challenges such as climate change, population growth, and resource scarcity. Not only must we achieve sustainability, we must achieve equity with our food supply.

Though the product-level impact is small, the overall contribution to diet can be significant. For example, if one multinational food company adds whole grain to its main product line of snacks, it could increase Americans’ fibre intake by 5% by 2030. By prioritizing nutritional reformulation, we can mitigate adverse effects on public health, including the rise of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular conditions.

Animal based protein consumes too much CO2, so that must be eliminated.

These sustainable replacements for animal proteins play an important role in reducing the overall impact of food supply chains, while enabling us to meet the growing demand for low-cost, nutrient-rich foods. Rapid advancements in plant-based R&D as well as bio-identical plant or animal proteins, fats and oils produced through precision fermentation and cell-cultivated biotechnologies, are opening up spaces for Reinvention. In 2024, Unilever launched their first precision-fermented “cow-free dairy”,

The New Plan:  Individualized Diet Guided By AI

Advances in technology such as AI and data analytics could create diets unique to an individual’s genetic make-up, lifestyle factors and health goals. Personalized nutrition can also minimize food waste by matching individuals with meal plans that use ingredients efficiently and effectively, reducing the overall environmental impact of food production and disposal.

Replace Breast Milk

Alex Jones used to say that the globalists said “breast milk was bad”  Guess what

Disruptions in food systems begin to scale as companies partner to combine different technologies. For example, the French start-up Numi is using cell cultures to develop a breast milk replacement for specific cases of restriction, while TurtleTree are using precision fermentation to create bovine lactoferrin to boost immunity.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/06/renovation-reinvention-food/

All of these advances proposed in this whitepaper require two central things that drive the consumption of energy sky high: the first, tracking resources to a finite level of details to provide food supply and supply chain analysis; and secondly, the use of Artificial Intelligence to assist with all the human interaction with apps, reports and large scale data sets sourced from IP addresses the WEF wants to assign to trees and other elements of the Internet of Things. In this plan EVERYTHING must be tracked. Everything.

And notice that the theme is that multinationals must decide for you. The multinational must add more fiber to their products because it is better for you. This side steps individual choice, and ignores the fact that it is healthy to build a diet from raw components, and many times those can be found from local farming communities as the alternative to decisions made for you by a corporation who may not even be in your region. Co-ops, homesteaders and local farmers fall outside of the WEF plan, and would, by their nature, be untracked decisions and transactions made independently.

The Government Has Decided What Land Should Be Used For Renewable Energy

The Biden administration issued an order that 31 million acres be set aside for solar panel farms.  The question is what is currently being done on the land, how much of this land is used currently for grazing, and other agricultural activity. 

The second issue is that decisions for millions are made now by officials unaccountable at election time, and faceless corporate boards, many who are not nationally based but are global companies who get consideration above and beyond citizens' needs.  

Let’s put this into more tangible terms.  The state of Maryland plans on constructing a power transmission corridor called the PJM.   The dimensions are 70 miles long, and 15 miles wide.  This is what you would call contiguous space; that is, the expanse runs uninterrupted by gaps. In the graphic below, I’ve displayed a corridor of roughly the same size and what regions of my state Michigan would be affected if the project were run along I 696 in the Detroit metropolitan area.  I’ve highlighted Pontiac which is approximately 15 miles to the north of the freeway.  The shaded area is a rough estimate that stretches 70 miles to the west on the route to the capital of Lansing.  All the cities and towns that you see along the way would be eliminated if the corridor were instituted in the region I chose on the map.  This is to bring perspective to the scope of what Maryland wants to do.

I picked out the towns and cities that would be eliminated, and here are the respective populations:

Madison Heights - 28,238

Royal Oak - 57,452

Huntington Woods - 6,260

Berkeley - 14,934

Beverly Hills - 10,435

Birmingham - 21,434

Pontiac - 61,689

Troy - 87,339

Bloomfield Hills - 4,377

West Bloomfield Township - 65,123

Southfield - 75,687

Franklin - 3,027

Farmington Hills - 82,528

Wixom - 17,134

Walled Lake - 7,297

Novi - 66,314

Milford - 16,996

Brighton (Northern Portion) - 4,906

Hartland - 15,467

Howell - 10,008

Fowlerville - 2937

Webberville - 1,296

Williamston - 5,253

Population Total is 666,131

That is 1,050 square miles which is roughly 672,000 acres.

This is not to say that Maryland is displacing 666,000 people, but I am merely painting a picture of the size of the area affected.  And for Michiganders this should really hit home as you imagine this corridor cutting through the northern ramparts of Detroit.  This is a massive area.  This area is not for solar panels, this is for power transmission lines.  

At the urging of solar energy lobbyists, the Biden administration has increased the area that will be open to solar panel farms by 11 million acres.  The new area is 31 million acres, or 48,438 square miles, spanning 11 states.  This land is currently under the Bureau of Land Management regulation. 

By the way, this 31 million acres is slightly smaller than North Carolina, which is approximately 48,607 square miles.

Abandon Fracking and Use Pipelines for Carbon Capture

Carbon Capture is yet another proposed solution to prevent further destruction of our climate. The premise is to remove CO2 from the air and store it underground, and this could potentially create a market where companies, states and regions could trade the CO@ reduction credits on a financial market. Despite ignoring the facts that CO2 is required by plants for photosynthesis and that many greenhouse production facilities pump in CO2 for healthier crop yield, removing CO2 from the atmosphere is being considered as a viable solution. While it seems whacky to me for very obvious reasons, it has been already decided that it is worthy of federal subsidies.

Project Bison, based in Wyoming was to be an initiative that proposed to collect 5 million tons of carbon annually. Pipelines would carry the CO2 in liquid form. While the company CarbonCapture was a favorite startup of the Biden administration, the project itself was canceled because it required too much energy to operate economically from current fossil fuel based energy sources.

The California-based startup pointed to competition from other energy-hungry customers such as data center operators and cryptocurrency miners, which have been embraced in Wyoming. Corless said his company intends to build its first commercial-scale project outside of the Cowboy State, which gets more than 70 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants.

What is also important to note here is that while many think that these climate initiatives belong to the left side of the political spectrum, that is not the case.  Wyoming Republican governor Mark Gordon was also behind the project.

A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, who aims to transform the state from a major CO2 emitter to a leader in carbon removal, said in an email that “the Governor is disappointed that the proponents of Project Bison have determined to transfer the project out of Wyoming.”

https://www.eenews.net/articles/project-bison-fails-whats-next-for-the-carbon-removal-megaproject/

What is amazing to me is that for years we heard that fracking is dangerous for groundwater and was the source of increased seismic activity resulting in earthquakes, yet none of these concerns are raised when carbon capture is proposed.  In fact, pressurized CO2 underground can create carbonic acid, which erodes metal from rock and is poisonous for drinking water.  In 2022 in Satartia Mississippi a carbon capture pipeline burst, resulting in 45 residents requiring medical attention.  The pipeline transported liquified CO2 kept at cold temperatures, which cracked a weld in the pipeline.  Somehow this seems more precarious than the transportation of oil via pipeline, but that discussion is rarely considered in the public venues when decisions are made by unelected officials.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2022/09/11/here-minute-details-2020-mississippi-co-2-pipeline-leak-rupture-denbury-gulf-coast/8015510001/

Eminent Domain

With the examples listed above, each has used eminent domain in order to advance the project schedules and place property on sale.  It is a destructive use of government power.  Farmland is the target, you can go to media sources in your state and you find numerous projects that ignore current infrastructure in industrial areas and instead, rezone farmland and destroy generational farms.  All in pursuit of projects where the benefits are questionable, and are based on future state technologies.  New technologies attract investors, perhaps that is something that should be considered when thinking about using renewable energy which cannot, by their nature, produce the same BTUs required for farming and industry.

Yanasa TV, a great YouTube channel devoted to farming and homesteading, relayed the plight of farmers in Maryland who are affected by the PJM project.  One farmer just purchased a farm only to find that a year later, eminent domain will be invoked to create that corridor I described above.  Another farm has been in a family for 5 generations.  And while fair market value is used to describe the value a owner could receive, once word gets out that eminent domain will be used to cease property, the value of that property drops.  

This video is well worth your time viewing.

Big Tech Energy Needs

Here is another irony.  While Big Tech platforms such as Google and ChatGPT from OpenAI actively promote the superiority of emerging technology as the scientific basis for rapidly employing renewable energies to save the planet, they are quiet regarding their own surge in energy use to power the AI that we currently use today.  They are also silent on the amounts of water required for cooling the large server farms that power AI.  This is 2024 levels of usage, not the new Utopia that the WEF has proposed where we track all commerce, agriculture, and CO2 emissions.

For example, the Google AI summary that you now see at the top of the search results requires 10 times the amount of energy than a regular search.  Isn’t it curious that this has been implemented without question from the climate change activists, most likely because they are equipped with devices that consume the information that is demonstrably slanted to their cause.  Yet we have universities studying agriculture and warning us that many methods are detrimental to the environment due to excessive CO2 emission, and we need more training.

Each time you search for something like “how many rocks should I eat” and Google’s AI “snapshot” tells you “at least one small rock per day,” you’re consuming approximately three watt-hours of electricity, according to Alex de Vries, the founder of Digiconomist, a research company exploring the unintended consequences of digital trends. That’s ten times the power consumption of a traditional Google search, and roughly equivalent to the amount of power used when talking for an hour on a home phone. (Remember those?)

https://jacobin.com/2024/06/ai-data-center-energy-usage-environment

In Ohio where Meta runs a data center, the daily requirements for water to cool facilities is 9 million gallons of water a day.  In Michigan at the controversial Gotion lithium battery plant, the current estimate is 750,000 gallons of groundwater a day, which is less than half of the groundwater in the region.  How this won’t impact agriculture is beyond belief.  

https://boisedev.com/news/2022/02/18/meta-kuna-facebook/

Still Our Wiest Pursuit

We started with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, and it is fitting that he had much to say about the strength of farming.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

We see farmers pay the price of capricious decisions by our state and federal government in favor of technologies and solutions that are not yet viable with respect to providing energy.  We see the destruction of their hard work, their homes, and way of life that bred independence.  Our officials are guided by the white papers like the one reviewed here that admonishes us to abandon current, proven practices in agriculture, submit to constant data collection, and forgo current proven energy resources.  

But this is, in the end, about our choice for providing ourselves food.  Yes, we all use data and technology, it’s how much of our economy is driven, but how we grow food, acquire food is the basis for our liberty.  We cast that aside and we lose our most precious gift.  We need to heed these warning signs.