Well, one of those things is BBQ sauce. BBQ sauce is supposed to have a sweetness to it. Even the vinegar based sauces call for some sugar. As much as half a cup. So I set out to build a low carb BBQ sauce that wouldn’t taste nasty. Here is what I came up with:

• 1 Cup – juice from a jar of banana peppers
• 1 Cup – yellow mustard
• 1/4 Cup – Jack Daniels whiskey
• 3 Tbsp – bacon grease
• 1 Tbsp – liquid smoke
• 4 Tbsp – stevia or splenda
• 2 Tbsp – chili powder
• 1 tsp – paprika
• 1 tsp – black pepper
• 2 tsp – onion powder

Stir this all together in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Since most of the alcohol cooks out of the sauce, this will yield a sauce with approximately 5 carbs per half cup. And it tastes delicious. Since your meat will have very few carbs, you can really slather this stuff on. It’s great on pulled pork.

This dip is awesome. Make it this weekend in a small crockpot as a good alternative to Rotel cheese dip. Better yet, buy another crockpot and serve ‘em both up.

• 10 oz. shredded deli corned beef
• 1 (16 oz.) can sauerkraut
• 1 c. Thousand Island dressing
• 10 oz. shredded Swiss cheese

Dump it all in the crockpot and go.

The protection of the creation isn’t just about seagulls and turtles and dolphins. That would be enough to prompt us to action, since God’s glory is in seagulls and turtles and dolphins (Gen. 6-9; Isa. 65).

Pollution kills people. Pollution dislocates families. Pollution defiles the icon of God’s Trinitarian joy, the creation of his theater (Ps. 19; Rom. 1).

Will people believe us when we speak about the One who brings life and that abundantly, when they see that we don’t care about that which kills and destroys? Will they hear us when we quote John 3:16 to them when, in the face of the loss of their lives, we shrug our shoulders and say, “Who is my neighbor?”

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

His point here is a decent one, but I think he’s on the cusp of over-spiritualizing the issue though. It might be right, in principle, for a Christian to be more in touch with the land and environment around him or her. In fact, I’m in the process of doing that very thing with my family at the moment. We are trying to buy some rural land where we can have livestock and larger agriculture on our homestead. But, tying the reputation of the Christian message to the ecological conscience of those who proclaim it is suspect. Augustine has been quoted as saying “never judge a philosophy by it’s abuse.” It’s the job of the hearer to rightly discern the truth of a particular message, independent of the messenger. If a fellow throws his #2 combo wrapper out of his car window and then turns to the passenger to tell him about Christ, so what? This Christian fellow is simply misinformed about the liability of his littering. He doesn’t understand properly how his actions harm others around him. That’s a separate argument from the legitimacy of the gospel. Confusing the two is strange.

I understand why he is linking the oil spill to Christian environmental attitude though. It’s an easy connection to make if you only read headlines and don’t look behind the curtain of government/media propaganda. He’s almost right when he says:

Too often, however, we’ve been willing not simply to vote for candidates who will protect unborn human life (as we ought to), but to also in the process adopt their worldviews on every other issue.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

I would put it another way. We’ve been grossly naive to think that politicians who espouse pro-life rhetoric have any intention of actually doing anything about abortion on demand. Bush ran on pro-life this, pro-life that. What did he do in eight years in office? He signed a meaningless executive order to repeal the Mexico City policy. What a joke. Likewise, liberals are finding out the hard way that Obama has no intention of actually carrying through on all of his green rhetoric. I’ve posted here recently on how in bed with the oil industry he is and how the grass roots left are totally confused at how silent he has been on the oil spill issue. The religious right expected the conservative majorities of the 90′s and early 2000′s to gain some serious traction on the abortion issue. They didn’t. And, likewise, the liberal left expects the liberal majorities of today to do the same thing on the environmental issue. They won’t. The problem is not just that we have adopted the worldview of our political blowhards, it’s that we’ve actually believed that they took the issues seriously.

And this leads me to my real beef with his argument. There is an underlying assumption that state power is absolutely necessary, and that social power is only effectual when it is used as a tool to aim state power at a certain issue. He isn’t entertaining the notion that there is any effectiveness in social power itself to solve problems directly. He says:

Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

He didn’t think that statement out clearly before he wrote it. This is a question of ownership. If I own something, and it makes money for me, I will protect it and care for it. Why wouldn’t I? Allowing my property(an oil field in this case) to be ruined profits me nothing. It’s totally contrary to any logical expectation of human behaviour. You better believe that BP has every incentive in the world to get that leaked fixed and cleaned up rapidly. They are losing millions per week over this. That’s a far more powerful incentive than some government regulatory threat that has no teeth because the people making it are bought and paid for by BP lobbyists. This is the real world, not a naive 12th grade civics class.

He continues:

But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”

The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesn’t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.

Caesar’s sword is there, by God’s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.

…

Moreover, we’ve seen some of the theological and ideological fringes in the environmentalist movement, fringes that enabled us to see them as not “with us,” and, frankly, to enable us to make fun of the entire question as a silly enterprise. But perhaps the void is being filled by leftists and liberals and wannabe liberal evangelicals simply because those who ought to know better are off doing something else. Working with our secular progressive neighbors on, for instance, saving the Gulf no more compromises the evangelical witness than our working with feminists to combat pornography or with Latter-day Saints to protect marriage.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

If I’m reading him correctly here, he starts off by saying that having government set business regulations is like having the fox guarding the hen house. I would whole-heartedly agree with that. But then he diverts into the typical mistake of using bad analogies to demonstrate how the free market is just like any other organization or group that would be dangerous if given “unfettered license.” The fact is, the free market is not just a different version of a government or corporation. It’s not an entity at all. It’s not a “system.” The free market is a loose set of concepts that identify human behaviour and economic law. It says “when X happens, Y will be the natural economic or praxeological result.” Giving an analogy of pornography as a result of unregulated free speech isn’t a legitimate criticism of the free market. That’s like saying, if you pay someone a salary, they might buy drugs with the money. Therefore, we should heavily regulate wages.

The problem with the BP oil spill is that someone made a mistake and lots of oil is now flowing into the gulf and needs to be cleaned up. That’s it. Period. BP screwed up and needs to clean up their mess. The thing that needs to be remembered is that the oil industry is NOT a free market. They haven’t been a free market in over a hundred years. They enjoy all types of regulatory protection from competition in exchange for lobbying dollars to Congress. Therefore, making arguments about the failure of the free market as it relates to this oil spill is illegitimate. And, likewise, arguing that the government should stay out of BP’s way and let the free market work is also illegitimate, because BP’s market isn’t free. The true solution is to have the government get out of the way altogether so that the economic and praxeological principles of free market exchange can work correctly, unencumbered by artificial influence from the outside.

Conservatives Christians aren’t to blame for turning a blind eye toward ecological concerns. We all operate in a rigged system, where the real answer to the problem is prohibited. But, things are changing. The local, organic food movement is a tide that has been rising for quite a few years now. Farmer’s markets and CSA’s are appealing to people of all political persuasions – conservatives and liberals. These things represent real alternatives to the artifical food marketplace that has been created by misleading government regulation of agriculture. In short, a real market is being born to compete with the fake one. And, people are flocking to it. Just drive around. You’ll see hundreds of people planting gardens for the first time this year. Many of these people are conservative Christians.

My criticism of Russell Moore’s argument is that he isn’t seeing these issues clearly. You can’t say that conservative christians have neglected ecological concerns when the game has been rigged the whole time. When the only options they are given are two different types of new government regulations then what are they supposed to do? If they choose to remain silent in the face of that rigged proposal, that isn’t the same as being unconcerned. It just means they’d rather not choose between two decisions that both serve corporate interests through increases in state power.

	Step 1 – Grow some cabbage. Or buy it at the store if you’re a loser. We grew Savoy cabbage, so that’s why it looks a bit different.
	Step 2 – Assemble your materials: cabbage, a large crock or food-grade bucket, sea salt or kosher salt (non-iodized), a plate that fits snuggly inside the crock/bucket and a knife to chop the cabbage with.
	Step 3 – Chop the cabbage and place it in the crock/bucket, sprinkling salt on it in layers so that the salt is evenly distributed throughout the cabbage. Use about 1 tablespoon of salt per head of cabbage.
	Step 4 – Press your plate down onto the top of the cabbage.
	Step 5 – Place something heavy like a gallon jug of water on top of the plate to provide constant downward pressure on the cabbage.
	Step 6 – Put a towel over the whole thing to keep out bad stuff and wait a week for the fermentation to do it’s thing.

After about a week you can start scooping it out and eating it. The pressure and salt cause all of the water to be extracted out of the cabbage. This creates an acidic brine that bad bacteria can’t grow in. Lactic bacteria love it though, and will colonize and ferment your cabbage into sauerkraut. Just make sure you sterilize your utensils and crock before you begin, to minimize bad bacteria growth. And make sure your plate fits really snug inside the crock so that it will minimize air contact. With store bought cabbage, you may have to add some water to the crock to get the brine level up above the plate where it should be. Fresh cabbage from the garden or farmer’s market has more water content.

Gluten is produced through the kneading process. As you knead the dough, the protein in the wheat is converted into gluten, which makes it gooey. It’s this gluten that turns the dough into a balloon so that it traps all the gasses produced by the yeast and helps it rise really well. So, if you don’t have enough protein in your flour or if you don’t knead long enough, you won’t get enough gluten and the bread won’t rise well.

I think this is probably where the notion that ground wheat doesn’t rise well came from. Not enough kneading and/or using the wrong type of wheat. “Hard Red” wheat has the highest protein content with as much as 15% for spring wheat. That’s even higher than bread flour. Hard or soft “White” wheat has a much lower protein content and thus, won’t produce a fluffy sandwich bread without adding extra gluten. So, with all of that said, here is the recipe. I’ve provided links to the various ingredients. Enjoy!

Sandwich Bread Loaf:

Dry Ingredients:

• 3.5 Cups of Ground Hard Red Wheat Flour
• 2 TBSP of Ground Flax Seed
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 TBSP of Soy Lecithin

Wet Ingredients:

• 12 oz. of Warm Water
• 2 TBSP of Olive Oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 2 TBSP of Honey

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together into the mixer bowl. Don’t add the yeast to the dry ingredients.
2. Now add the dry yeast, oil and honey to the warm water and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the honey is dissolved.
3. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes. The yeast is going to get really active and start to foam up(this is called “proofing” the yeast).
4. Start the mixer on medium speed, using dough hooks, and let the dry ingredients get thoroughly mixed together.
5. Now begin drizzling the yeast liquid mixture into the bowl until the whole thing is mixed in.
6. Knead the dough on medium speed for 15 minutes.
7. Flour the counter top and dump the dough out onto it.
8. Knead the dough by hand for a few minutes just to make sure it’s smooth and not too wet.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour or until it doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
16. Form the dough into a square shape, seam side down, and drop it into the loaf pan.
17. Cover and let sit again until it rises about an inch above the sides of the pan.
18. Mix one egg together with 2 TBSP of cold water in a small bowl. Using a sauce brush, wipe the top of the loaf thoroughly with the egg/water mixture(called an egg wash) so that it’s coated good. You can also crush up some almonds and sprinkle them on top for a nice touch.
19. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
20. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
21. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour, then slice and eat.

Beer Bread:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2.5 Cups of Wheat Flour
• 1 Cup of Bread Flour
• 1 TBSP of Salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 12 oz. bottle of warm beer
• 1 oz. of olive oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 2 TBSP of Honey

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Don’t add the yeast to the dry ingredients.
2. Warm the beer by putting the bottle/can in a bowl of hot water for about 10 minutes. Longer if it came out of the fridge. You want it warm. Not hot, not cold. Warm.
3. Now add the dry yeast, oil and honey to the warm beer and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the honey is dissolved.
4. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes. The yeast is going to get really active and start to party. Don’t crash it.
5. Come back and dump the liquid/yeast mix into the dry ingredients.
6. Get your hands wet with some water and begin to mix. You will get messy, but it’s worth it.
7. When everything is mixed thoroughly, flour the countertop and dump the dough out onto the flour.
8. Knead the dough for 6 minutes until smooth, adding plenty of flour as needed. Don’t skimp.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour until it at least doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
16. Cover and let sit again for about 30 minutes. It will rise quite a bit, but don’t let it get too big where it’s ballooning out over the sides of the pan.
17. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
18. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
19. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

The Scratch Version:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of Wheat Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Bread Flour
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 tsp Cocoa Powder

Wet Ingredients:

• 5 oz. room-temp Whole Milk
• 1 oz. of Vegetable Oil
• 1 TBSP Sugar

Pre-ferment:

• 1 Cup (8 oz.) of Yeast Water
• 1/2 Cup of Milled Wheat Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Bread Flour

Instructions:

1. Mix up your pre-ferment 72 hours before you plan to make your bread using the recipe above. On the day of bread making, move to step 2.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and dump in your pre-ferment dough.
3. Dump the milk and oil into the mix.
4. Get your hands wet with some water and begin to mix. You will get messy, but it’s worth it.
5. When everything is mixed thoroughly, flour the countertop and dump the dough out onto the flour.
6. Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth, adding plenty of flour as needed. Don’t skimp.
7. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
8. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
9. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
10. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for a few hours until it at least doubles in size. Give it plenty of time. I’ve even had to leave them overnight before.
11. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
12. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
13. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
14. Cover and let sit again for as long as it takes to rise again. You want it to double in size.
15. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
16. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
17. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

Now, you’ve just made bread totally from scratch. Little House on the Prarie eat your heart out.

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Bread Flour
• 1/2 Cup Wheat Flour

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 Cup (8 oz.) Yeast Water

Directions:

1. Combine flour and yeast water in a medium sized container, something about the size of a pickle jar.  Cover with a clean hand towel and let sit for 48 to 72 hours.  If you can’t use it immediately after the 72 hours is up, just lid it and stick it in the fridge until ready to use.
2. After 24 hours it will start to look like a sponge, with large air holes all in it.  This is the yeast doing it’s magic.

That’s all there is to it. The yeast in our home grown yeast water will take over and begin to grow and produce great flavours as they eat the sugars in the mixture. Remember, it’s the yeast that makes bread taste like bread. That’s why this pre-ferment makes such a big difference in flavour. It’s also very important that you remember to subtract these amounts from your main ingredients list for your bread.  So instead of using 6 oz. of water and 5 oz. of milk, just leave out the water from the final recipe.  Adjust the flour amounts down to compensate as well.  I’ve read that a pre-ferment also helps the bread to preserve longer.  I don’t understand the chemistry involved in that so I’ll just have take that on faith.

In the next post we will put it all together and give a complete scratch bread recipe with full instructions. Now go make your pre-ferment.

Ok, the first thing we’re going to need is yeast so that’s what we’ll cover today. Have you ever been making bread and wondered what people did before instant yeast? Well, they either didn’t leven their bread or they cultured their own yeast in the form of “yeast water.” It’s actually very simple.

Yeast Water:

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 Handful of Raisins
• Pinch of Sugar

Wet Ingredients:

• Quart Sized Jar full of Tap Water

Instructions:

1. Put raisins and sugar in a jar full of water. Something about the size of a pickle jar should do. But, please don’t use a pickle jar unless you want some dill bread.
2. Leave the jar open and sitting on the countertop for 5 days.
3. When it smells strongly of yeast, you have yeast water!

Yes, it really is that simple. The yeast that is naturally occurring on most fruits and vegetables will begin to eat the sugar and replicate into a nice yeast colony. Now, using the yeast water involves replacing your 5 ounces of water in the original recipe I gave you with an equal amount of yeast water. But instead of mixing it with the milk/sugar/oil, we will mix the yeast water into a “pre-ferment.” I’ll show you how to do that in the next post.

* I learned about making yeast water from this great site: http://originalyeast.blogspot.com/

Monsanto was predictably demonized in the film. They have been a favorite target of the hard left and environmental groups ever since Vietnam when they manufactured “Agent Orange” and later “DDT.” This wasn’t necessarily fair though, since many other chemical companies manufactured those products as well. Their record of chemical dumping, such as in Anniston, AL has also gained them much grief and drove them to the verge of bankruptcy under the weight of all of the lawsuits. Their new emergence as an agricultural company gave them a fresh start in the public opinion realm, but they soon stepped in it again with the whole patented seeds issue. They just seem to be a magnet for bad P.R. Patenting and genetically modifying seeds, I think, is one idea that they and the farm community as a whole is going to live to regret. I said yesterday that they have sold their soul to the government for short term gain. I think that’s the real evil behind the whole thing. I did my research and came up with some conclusions that I’ll share with you.

First off, it’s important to recognize that just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Abortion is legal, but it’s not moral. In Alabama, firing someone for no cause is legal. But it’s a bad idea. Who would want to work for you? In the same way, Monsanto has put all of it’s recent efforts since the late 90′s into patenting certain strains of seeds that are resistant to weed killer. These are the so-called “Roundup Ready” seeds that have been genetically altered to be resistant to Monsanto’s weed-killer chemical called Round Up. Because these plants are un-harmed by Round Up, the field can now be flooded with weed killer and everything dies, except the crop.

Obviously, you can see the benefit of this. Weed management is a breeze now and much less labour intensive. But, I hope you also see the inherent down side. We now harvest crops that have been saturated with weed killer. Who knows what long term effects that has to the plant, and consequently, to us as consumers. The whole thing strikes me as a really bad idea. We’re always assured that things are safe in the beginning. It’s not until a few decades go by that we often see the unintended side-effects of what we do.

I’m more interested, however, in the patent aspect of all this. It’s my firm belief that patents are immensely harmful to society, across the board, without exception. Patents are entirely created by government. Without government, patents don’t exist. In fact, patents have really only existed for about 200 years, starting in 1790(yes, I’m aware of common law patent writs before then, but I’m talking about codified law). Before then, businesses and entrapeneurs did just fine, and innovation wasn’t “stifled.” But, Monsanto relies exclusively on the validity of patent law to make their moral case against farmers who save their seed:

Food, Inc. Fiction: The film states/suggests that the ability to patent plants and living organisms came into being only in the 1980s.

Truth: Plants have long been subject to provisions of U.S. patent law, and plants were patented long before the 1980s.

The film, Food, Inc., briefly raises the issue of patents on seeds in the United States. The patenting of seeds was first permitted under the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Since that time the law has developed as technology has advanced.

–Monsanto’s Food, Inc. Page

That just doesn’t cut it with me. The Plant Patent Act of 1930 specifically excluded the patenting of plants that propagate “sexually or tubers”, so technically Monsanto is wrong. Patenting of asexual varieties at least makes sense, since you’d have to get them from the creator every year anyway. But, the spirit of Monsanto’s defense is just wrong. Patents are destructive devices that corrupt the free market and inhibit innovation. Just look at what happened with the patenting of the cotton gin, airplanes, television, and most recently, software patents. These patents completely screwed up the market and hurt consumers. The Wright brother’s patenting of the “flying machine” so screwed up the airplane industry(which existed way before their patent), that by the time of WWI we had to purchase most of our airplanes from the French. This has been the consistent legacy of patent law.

And, what it takes in order to police the whole endeavor ultimately just infuriates people. The Monsanto “seed police” remind me of the Business Software Alliance that many software vendors entered into a few years ago. The BSA hasn’t been nearly as active recently as they used to be in prosecuting small businesses for software piracy. The reason is that software makers got a lot smarter about how to handle piracy, such as using product activation, so that they no longer have to go “bust” people in the community and generate so much bad publicity. Monsanto should learn that lesson. The RIAA and MPAA campaigns against users for downloading music should also be sufficient evidence to show any company that it doesn’t matter how good of an argument you make for the legality of patent law. The public just doesn’t buy it as being morally ok to come after people for “intellectual theft.” It just doesn’t fly.

Monsanto has also put their own guys in government, and in turn hired former government officials. This fuels suspicion of the company, and with good reason. If I’m their competitor it would infuriate me to know that former Monsanto executives were now holding key positions inside the USDA, FDA and EPA. Just like former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson became Treasury Secretary, it ruins any credibility on both sides. Just a cursory look into the matter shows that Michael Taylor, the VP of Public Policy(i.e. lobbyist) at Monsanto, was appointed to the FDA by Barack Obama. Bush also appointed Linda Fisher, another lobbyist for Monsanto, to the EPA. Michael Friedman also joined one of Monsanto’s subsidiaries after leaving his position as the head of the FDA. All of this reliance on government to get their job done is going to come back and bite them at some point. Trust me. It always does. Just ask GM and Chrysler.

If Monsanto wants it’s credibility back, it needs to once and for all stop relying on the government. Quit the legal tricks and worn out patent rhetoric and start leading the charge to re-empower small growers in a way that doesn’t require policing them. They control the product, so they control what it does. They should look into making seed that doesn’t germinate well in it’s second generation. This would give farmers a legitimate reason not to save seed, rather than just hitting them with this “i’ve got a patent, now pay up” balogne. Farmers wouldn’t save seed that is only going to give them a 30% germ. rate. Or if they do, they would still have to buy more to get a whole crop.

This is getting really long, so I’ll continue tommorrow. Until then, listen to Jeff Tucker’s excellent lecture on intellectual property:

Tucker – Evils of Intellectual Property: