-Canola oil was derived from the rapeseed through conventional breeding.
-The word “rape” in rapeseed comes from the Latin word “rapum,” meaning turnip.
-Turnip and many other vegetables are related to the two canola species commonly grown.
-Negative connotations with the word “rape” in North America resulted in the marketing-friendly name of “Canola.”
-Genetically modified canola, which is resistant to herbicide, was first introduced to Canada in 1995.
-Today 80% of the acreage of canola is sown with genetically modified canola.
-In 2004, North Dakota produced 91% of the Canola in the United States.
-Canola oil is a promising source for manufacturing biodiesel, a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
-Europeans used rapeseed oil in lamps hundreds of years ago.

What will we use it for next??

By now, you’ve probably heard of the doomsday vault that opened in Norway last Tuesday. It is a facility built to safely hold and protect the world’s supply of seeds. The vault was carved 364 feet deep into sandstone and limestone under the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain only 620 miles from the North Pole, where, ironically, nothing grows. The vault is comprised of three spacious cold chambers, each measuring 89 x 33 feet. It has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet’s main food crops, making it possible to re-establish plants if they disappear from their natural environment or are obliterated by major disasters. Samples will remain the property of their countries of origin. The vault is protected by high walls of fortified concrete and an armored door, as well as its 425-ft altitude above sea-level, in the event that the polar ice sheets melt due to global warming. At least if that happens,there will be no shortage of fresh water to germinate the seeds. Fortunately, the vault can also withstand a nuclear attack (which could also be expected to melt some ice).

I really commend Norway for undertaking the expense and effort to build this vault. It is an acknowledgement of the difficult times we live in and the uncertainty of the future. Instead of sugar coating the planet’s situation, the Norwegian government has forked out nearly $5 million to build the vault at a time when the U.S. seems interested in only military conquests and the immediate threat of terrorists. The construction of this vault also highlights the need for vaults to store cells from all living creatures and at diverse locations. Someday, cloning technology will likely permit extinct animals to be re-created, although they may not be able to survive in the wild without training from their parents. We should also store along with the cells as much information about the species as possible (habitat, food preferences, etc). I think that this seed vault is fantastic, but it is really only a first step for our planet.

-China produces more cotton than any other country.
-Texas grows the most cotton of any state in the U.S.
-A bale of cotton weights about 500 pounds.
-Each bale is subjected to more than 800,000 pounds of force during wrapping.
-One bale can produce:
  1,217 men’s T-shirts
  313,600 $100 bills
  215 pairs of jeans
  3,085 diapers
  1,256 pillow cases
-There are about 35,000 cotton farms in the U.S.
-The U.S. produced 23.89 million bales of cotton in the year 2005.
-This is enough cotton to print nearly 7.5 trillion $100 bills.

(Some facts courtesy of the National Cotton Council)

-An ear of corn averages 800 kernels.
-800 kernels fill up about 16 rows of corn on an ear.
-1,300 kernels make up about one pound of corn.
-7,280,000 kernels make up about 100 bushels of corn.
-It takes about 910 bushels to fill one semi truck.
-It takes about 2,800 bushels to fill a “jumbo hopper” rail car.



In the U.S., corn production measures more than 2 times that of any other (legal) crop.

In 2007, fertilizer prices rose more than 200%, according to the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development, IFDC. Doctor Balu Bomb of IFDC says “reasons include new demands for food crops, especially corn (or maize), for ethanol and other biofuels, increased energy and freight prices, higher demand for grain-fed meat in the emerging economies of China, India, and Brazil, and increased use of natural gas as liquefied natural gas.” Hardest hit by this increased cost are the poor farmers of Africa who use fertilizer to replenish the nutrients in the soil.

It is interesting that a large portion of the blame for this increased costs is placed on corn, due to the rise in price of corn bushels which farmers in the United States have noticed and are growing in place of other food commodities. In my opinion, if the government policy of mixing ethanol with gasoline had not been put in place, the cost of corn would not have increased and the substantial increase of fertilizer would have been averted. When the government regulates free markets, it negatively affects more than what was anticipated; food prices are increased as more farmers stop producing wheat, soy, and other commodities for corn. The icing on the cake against these types of regulations was announced last week when a study concluded that ethanol use could actually cause more harm than good due to land use changes caused by corn production.