A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

I should also mention that, while the Cow Pea plant keeps making flowers, none as yet seem to have "taken" and starred a pod.

I also realized that those spare rice beans could become important soon. Given both US-China relations degradation, and the general economic depression and instability in China, I do not think it is totally impossible that imported bean supplies could soon be cut off (either due to a complete ban on ALL Chinese imports, or do to a level of mass starvation so severe that all food exports are banned due to needing all grown food locally.) If that DID happen, having a version that can be effectively grown HERE could become important to the Asian American population (many South East Asian countries also grow rice beans, but, as far as I can see, they don't export much, nor do I know how compatible theirs are with our climate either.)

 

[heirloomgal]

I should also mention that, while the Cow Pea plant keeps making flowers, none as yet seem to have "taken" and starred a pod.

I also realized that those spare rice beans could become important soon. Given both US-China relations degradation, and the general economic depression and instability in China, I do not think it is totally impossible that imported bean supplies could soon be cut off (either due to a complete ban on ALL Chinese imports, or do to a level of mass starvation so severe that all food exports are banned due to needing all grown food locally.) If that DID happen, having a version that can be effectively grown HERE could become important to the Asian American population (many South East Asian countries also grow rice beans, but, as far as I can see, they don't export much, nor do I know how compatible theirs are with our climate either.)

Interesting @Pulsegleaner, I had no idea that China was in an economic lull; not that I keep up much with the economic situation there, so it isn't surprising I'm not aware of these changes. I think I read once that China buys top tier soybeans from farmers here, probably in the prairies. The elites I guess had concerns about contamination in their own soybean crops, so wanted to outsource them or so the article said. The food situation is always teetering on precarious it seems, or at least the possibility of it becoming precarious. This is why I will never be a supporter of 'eat local' as a mantra. I like the idea of being able to depend on a reliable global food web.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Interesting @Pulsegleaner, I had no idea that China was in an economic lull; not that I keep up much with the economic situation there, so it isn't surprising I'm not aware of these changes.

"Lull" is a massive understatement. The PRC's economy is on the verge of total collapse, and all evidence suggests there is now NO WAY to pull it back from a total crash. First there was the multi year total lockdown. Then, when that ended, the housing bubble burst, taking the banks more or less with it. The youth unemployment level is now around 50% and growing each year (with the graduation of the next generation of college students, who find there are now no steady well paying jobs to be had. The birthrate is dropping like a stone (due to both the byproduct of the one child policy leaving a massive imbalance in the gender ratio in favor of males, the extreme current expense of child raising, and a lot of young people now refusing to have children for the CCP to exploit.) The population is ageing rapidly. It's almost impossible to keep your job after 35, or find a new one, and pension retirement age is currently 60 (and they want to raise it a few years). There is a massive "natural" (usually not all that natural" massive flood somewhere in the south almost every day (usually made worse by the government opening the dam gates in the middle of heavy rains without warning to keep the dams from being damaged, since the electricity they make is more important to the government than the lives of the people who live downstream. Meanwhile the North is in a massive drought and heatwave, killing all the crops. Most economists are fairly sure that this is going to wind up in a mass revolt and the end of the CCP.

That's also why Xi is probably pushing so hard on trying to get Taiwan back by force, he needs and external war to keep himself propped up. He backed Russia tacitly in Ukraine, and now that Russia is faltering enough they need massive aid he can't afford to give them, that's another problem. The CCP is literally CRUMBLING minute by minute, with many wanting a return to Deng Xioping era loosening up (or, more often a fully democratic government) while Xi wants a return to a full Maoist Politically controlled economy that experts are pretty sure would result in another "Great Leap Forward" (i.e. a set of conditions leading to the starvation deaths of hundred of millions of Chinese).

I think I read once that China buys top tier soybeans from farmers here, probably in the prairies. The elites I guess had concerns about contamination in their own soybean crops, so wanted to outsource them or so the article said. The food situation is always teetering on precarious it seems, or at least the possibility of it becoming precarious. This is why I will never be a supporter of 'eat local' as a mantra. I like the idea of being able to depend on a reliable global food web.

I could believe that. Every other article I see on China is about a new massive food scandal. Fake meat and fake rice, rat heads (or whole rats) being found in food, ice cream contaminated with fecal matter (about 87% of it, according to testing). tankers being used to transport industrial oils like coal oil then being filled with food grade oils without being cleaned. Nearly EVERYTHING the average Chinese person can buy to eat is tainted. And the CCP doesn't care since they have their own private supplies.

Xi is also trying to deal with the crop failures and food price increases by reminding people that "everything is edible", so there are probably going to be some ecological problems as well.

And over all of this is the government trying every method they can think of to take what little money the public has left away from them either in taxes and fees or by forcing them to spend more, in order to try an pump up the economy (while simultaneously allowing unlimited printing of new money to pay off debts, thereby making it worth less and less.)

And, as I have mentioned, as a side note, all that elite soybean buying is also draining the native genebank, as it is all replacing the growing of older, traditional varieties.

 

[heirloomgal]

"Lull" is a massive understatement. The PRC's economy is on the verge of total collapse, and all evidence suggests there is now NO WAY to pull it back from a total crash. First there was the multi year total lockdown. Then, when that ended, the housing bubble burst, taking the banks more or less with it. The youth unemployment level is now around 50% and growing each year (with the graduation of the next generation of college students, who find there are now no steady well paying jobs to be had. The birthrate is dropping like a stone (due to both the byproduct of the one child policy leaving a massive imbalance in the gender ratio in favor of males, the extreme current expense of child raising, and a lot of young people now refusing to have children for the CCP to exploit.) The population is ageing rapidly. It's almost impossible to keep your job after 35, or find a new one, and pension retirement age is currently 60 (and they want to raise it a few years). There is a massive "natural" (usually not all that natural" massive flood somewhere in the south almost every day (usually made worse by the government opening the dam gates in the middle of heavy rains without warning to keep the dams from being damaged, since the electricity they make is more important to the government than the lives of the people who live downstream. Meanwhile the North is in a massive drought and heatwave, killing all the crops. Most economists are fairly sure that this is going to wind up in a mass revolt and the end of the CCP.

That's also why Xi is probably pushing so hard on trying to get Taiwan back by force, he needs and external war to keep himself propped up. He backed Russia tacitly in Ukraine, and now that Russia is faltering enough they need massive aid he can't afford to give them, that's another problem. The CCP is literally CRUMBLING minute by minute, with many wanting a return to Deng Xioping era loosening up (or, more often a fully democratic government) while Xi wants a return to a full Maoist Politically controlled economy that experts are pretty sure would result in another "Great Leap Forward" (i.e. a set of conditions leading to the starvation deaths of hundred of millions of Chinese).







I could believe that. Every other article I see on China is about a new massive food scandal. Fake meat and fake rice, rat heads (or whole rats) being found in food, ice cream contaminated with fecal matter (about 87% of it, according to testing). tankers being used to transport industrial oils like coal oil then being filled with food grade oils without being cleaned. Nearly EVERYTHING the average Chinese person can buy to eat is tainted. And the CCP doesn't care since they have their own private supplies.

Xi is also trying to deal with the crop failures and food price increases by reminding people that "everything is edible", so there are probably going to be some ecological problems as well.

And over all of this is the government trying every method they can think of to take what little money the public has left away from them either in taxes and fees or by forcing them to spend more, in order to try an pump up the economy (while simultaneously allowing unlimited printing of new money to pay off debts, thereby making it worth less and less.)

And, as I have mentioned, as a side note, all that elite soybean buying is also draining the native genebank, as it is all replacing the growing of older, traditional varieties.

So much shocking yet fascinating info in this post @Pulsegleaner, I'm going to go poking around on the net after reading this. Definitely did not realize that the contamination issue was that enormous; I recall years ago a scandal with baby formula and how manufacturers had been thinning the powdered milk so much that they added a paint to increase the whiteness and fatalities resulted. I remember being flabbergasted by that, but assumed it was a fairly isolated incident.

'Everything is edible' sounds like a science fiction title. Scary.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

So much shocking yet fascinating info in this post @Pulsegleaner, I'm going to go poking around on the net after reading this. Definitely did not realize that the contamination issue was that enormous; I recall years ago a scandal with baby formula and how manufacturers had been thinning the powdered milk so much that they added a paint to increase the whiteness and fatalities resulted. I remember being flabbergasted by that, but assumed it was a fairly isolated incident.

'Everything is edible' sounds like a science fiction title. Scary.

For a crash course, I suggest going on YouTube and watching some of the the backlogs of China Truths, China Observer and China Uncensored.

As for the sci-fi thing, you may not be all that off the mark. China already has a huge issue of random young people being kidnapped by the government and murdered for their organs in numerous ways (people actually being kidnapped, young people with extremely minor injuries suddenly dying in hospital and their organs disappearing during "autopsies", and, of course, the mass harvesting of organs from prisoners, both political and ethnic. ) And they have also basically banned burials for land saving and require bodies to be cremated in government crematoriums. Plus, there are a lot of reports of hospitals selling bodies to suppliers of medical skeletons without family consent. Converting the flesh into a food supply would be well in their modus operandi and, from their POV be a multiple positive (increase meat supply, make it harder for the tracks of "disappeared" people to be followed (proving a person was murdered becomes a lot harder when there's no body left. )

 

[Blue-Jay]

China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba. These are all examples of government controled economies. They don't work. You need to allow the normal principles of economics to work. This is what we are going to get if Harris is elected here in the U.S. If she gets in we are next.

 

[flowerbug]

...Converting the flesh into a food supply would be well in their modus operandi and,...

historically China has had regular famines every few years (on average) and they even have a cultural term for giving children to other families where they would be killed and eaten. not in recent years but if things get bad enough it may happen again.

bush meat and eating everything available has also been a common feature of their culture and several others. which may help them get through a tough time but it horribly depletes their natural biological diversity.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

historically China has had regular famines every few years (on average) and they even have a cultural term for giving children to other families where they would be killed and eaten. not in recent years but if things get bad enough it may happen again.

bush meat and eating everything available has also been a common feature of their culture and several others. which may help them get through a tough time but it horribly depletes their natural biological diversity.

Hence why I expect mass extinctions of endangered species that live within China's borders. When it comes to actually practicing environmental protection, China has a TERRIBLE track record. The can fine and arrest random private citizens for violating "rules" but when it's a state run plan, or someone has paid a few bribes, they turn a blind eye every time.

They even do it when presented with a major mystery. In my study of cryptozoology, I came across an incident where some PLA soldiers caught an unknown quadruped they referred to as a "hippo-turtle-ox". They dragged it to a nearby village and then, when it died, rather than contacting the authorities or science community, they barbecued and ate it. And, when the realized the Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) was super endangered, the INCREASED their catching of them to cook them for major banquets for important people (especially pregnant ones since the fetus was considered especially gourmet) (they're totally extinct now, the Three Gorges Dam ensured that.)

If there actually IS a formal conflict, when China is defeated (that isn't patriotism, pretty much EVERYONE who knows anything about military matters knows China wouldn't have a hope of winning.) I might suggest that part of the deal is China having to relinquish ownership of all pandas being held outside of China (they're all rented or lent, no country outside of China can own a giant panda,) just so that they don't go extinct during the next period of hard times (throw in some of those white non panda bears from Shenongjia as well for good measure.)

That's also part of why I do all of this searching and saving. Between government policies, market factors, food instability, and cultural matter, I'm no longer sure some of this stuff will BE around in the future.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Fist two pods off the "wild mungs" harvested. Seed appears to be just flat green (so looks like domestic, which the planted stuff did not) but it hasn't dried down yet, so it may change (as I mentioned, since this is wilder material, I can't let it dry down on the plant, for fear of the pods shattering and losing the seed).

Also, since there are now so many variations in habit and leaf type among the plants, it would hardly surpise me if there is a lot of variability between the seed colors and textures as well.

A few of the re-plant mungs are also flowering (the ones I sowed when the Tangier Pea was done). Again quite a difference, they're hairier, and seem to want to climb. Those may be the ones I selected from the Afghani mix I bought as well, so the mature seed may be brown, not green.

 

[heirloomgal]

China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba. These are all examples of government controled economies. They don't work. You need to allow the normal principles of economics to work. This is what we are going to get if Harris is elected here in the U.S. If she gets in we are next.

So true @Blue-Jay. I would add Canada to that list too, sadly. We really don't operate a free market economy anymore...for anything. Even hiring practices are totally government manipulated. The gov now uses (steals) our tax dollars to subsidize businesses to not hire Canadians; the government will pay a percentage of all the wages for all non-Canadians working in any business. When you go to the coffee shop, the hardware store, grocer, bank, you hire a roofer, a driveway sealer - all subsidized wage people. It's nuts, unaffordable, unsustainable - a huge percentage of the workforce is on a subsidy. We had some Europeans visit us recently and they were stunned at the absolutely deplorable state of Ontario, the incredible cost of EVERYTHING. We're on a forced death march.