There is no actively growing onions in the field. It looks like it’s about ready to seed.
The brown rows is likely barley. It’s used as a cover crop over sandy soil. Before they plant the onions they spray the field with an herbicide. The beds are cultivated and seeded leaving a few inches of the dead barley.
The rows of dead barely acts as a windbreak to reduce sandblasting of the young plants with the wind.
All farming is bad for nature. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly farming. The “less damaging” methods of farming are “it only destroying 95% of the habitat, not 98%.”
We could grow everything we need with 1/2 of the land if we banned dry land farming and moved to all irrigated. What’s better? less damaging farming or millions of acres re-wilded.
It’s ironic that what most people think of as a highly intelligent person is a polymath aka somebody who is an expert in multiple topics.
Academia today is designed for extreme specialization of knowledge. So it actively selects against anyone that would be classified as a polymath.
It’s a pretty big disconnect between expectations and reality.
“Seed” in 1910 was not even close to what it is today. This was also likely cereal grains and maybe some pulses. What you could buy was basically grain from the previous year.
Also the local Coop’s/grain sellers would absolutely give free seed to new immigrants anyways. It was just smart business for them. The new farmers had no place else to sell the harvest but to them. More production = more money for them. A few pennies invested that yielded dollars for years.
Oh boy, a population genetics question in the wild.
In technical terms what you are asking is:
When a selection pressure is removed for a deleterious allele, what happens to the allelic frequency on the population?
The answer: they remain stable in the population, unchanging from when the selection pressure was removed. Every generation will have the same ratio of affected individuals as the previous one
Look up Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium for more info.
In this instance it’s likely a different variety. I would guess it’s a processing variety versus a shipping variety.
Most strawberries for long distance shipping are bred for a lower degree of softening during the ripening process. This is done by selective breeding for a lower expression of expansin activity. This allows for them to have a shelf life of 3 weeks.
Processing varities (preserves, freezing, etc) have a very sort shelf life. Often only 3-4 days. They are selected for the deep red color throughout the fruit as well as yield. This deep red color looks better in the finished products.
My mother who I haven’t seen or spoken to in decades was a horrible excuse of a human being. She loved to sew and spent tons of money we didn’t have on it.
As a teenager, I figured out how to sharpen scissors.
I would deliberately use my mom’s expensive fabric scissors in front of her to get her to scream (I was taller than her so the backhand across the face wasn’t an option). Then when she was gone I would give them a quick sharpening before she used them for fabric.
I would constantly give her shit about how they were still sharp.
Soon everyone in the house used the amazing “never dull” fabric scissors for everything. I sharpened them weekly in secret (only takes 2-3 minutes).
Then I moved out.
The drama that unfolded a month later was truly epic.
It’s a multigenerational issue with first cousin marriage. The coefficient of inbreeding increases as generations with repeated first cousin marriage.
Cultures where first cousin marriage is allowed have double the number of babies born with birth defects. They also are thought to have a higher rate of miscarriage.
Some insular small religious groups have an inbreeding coefficient so high that every marriage in the group is the equivalent to that of siblings. A small
Not to scare you but it happens every year, constantly. There is always another new disease or an new mutation to an older disease that is attacking crops.
It’s only by constant research, phytosanitary processes and breeding efforts that our food supply is as secure as it is.
It makes more sense if you use it as intended. It’s designed to be a simple way for farmers/gardeners to classify the basic soil composition by particle size.
Take a cup of dirt, put it in a mason jar, fill it full of water, put a lid on tight and shake the hell out of it. Come back in 3-4 days and measure the layers.
This comes in helpful in applying pesticides and basic water management. It’s pretty much pointless for anything else.
In a research driven company, research is a basic operational cost. These are all sunk cost paid for by other products. Before the product is introduced all of the research has been paid for.
So let’s take a look at this companies financials.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVO/financials?guccounter=1
Their cost of goods was 36 billion. Out of 232 billion in sales or around a 85% margin.
It says they spent 32 billion dollars research.
They claimed a profit of 104 billion dollars after spending 2x the total research bill on sales/marketing and admin (62 billion) in other research driven industries this would be around 1/2 research budget.
They still made enough money to pay for more than 3 years of research.
In better regulated industry where greed didn’t rule the day. They should be making less than 1/2 the gross income.
This is pure greed based upon people’s suffering
I just roll my eyes at it now.
FYI there is no reliable way to tell if a watermelon is ripe after it is harvested. The most reliable indicator is the tendril on the node the peduncle is attached to. When it is fully dry, the fruit is ready.
It’s just stupid design and should not be allowed on the road.