Why I chose not to go into Physiatry

http://www.rankenjordan.org/Stories/PatientStories/AlbertsStory.aspx
Video @4:30: "It wasn't enough to fix his broken neck, it wasn't enough to give medicine to control his spasm,  it wasn't enough to put him on the ventilator so he could breath, we were able to look at the whole patient, his whole person, to address his medical needs, his rehab needs, his therapy needs, his psychological needs, his nutritional needs, and bring it all together to give him a chance to get better."

Top reasons to go into physiatry from physician attending according to Studentdoctor.net:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=519852
Best -
1) EMG's - Diagnostic, usually no follow up as most are referrals, pays well.
2) Injections, when they work well
3) Helping someone disabled by pain or impairment to get more functional
1) Teaching. Helping baby docs take their first steps and watching them blossom into competent, hopefully outstanding physiatrists provides me with a lot of vicarious enjoyment and personal fulfillment. 
2) Agree with the EMGs. For me, this was the point of residency where it all came together. Better understanding of anatomy and pathophysiology. Mastering the neuromuscular history and examination, generating a differential diagnosis (yes – actually diagnosing!) and performing a procedure that either confirms your diagnostic acumen – or tells you to get a clue.
3) Outpatient practice. No weekends. No call. ‘Nuff said.
4) OTOH - watching truly motivated patients and family improve and regain functional independence, and when they express their gratitude – priceless.

1) Lack of awareness of the field. I’ll admit it gets tiring explaining to patients, new doctors every July, what it is we do. It is nice though when patients (and doctors) ultimately say, “I wish I had known about your specialty sooner.”
2) Patients with a pathologic sense of entitlement. They want everything done for them immediately, but are not willing to help themselves. Demanding specific pain medications. Mad at you and the world even though they don’t follow through with your recommendations. These people don’t do well within the rehab care model. 
3) Paperwork.
1. Interesting work (neuroimaging, managing neuromedical complications, spasticity/motor impairment intervention)
2. Helping people deal with devastating circumstances (come on, that should count for something, even among my outpatient MSK colleagues)
3. Developing my own learning curve to take care of patients better the next time that problem shows up.
3a. Publishing a cool paper sharing something about what I have learned to my other colleagues in the field.
1) I like helping people with chronic conditions/disabilities, great patient experiences.
2) Not a bad lifestyle in outpatient.
3) Epidemiologically, there is an increasing need especially for quality MSK and pain care as the population ages. I feel I'm working on problems that are going to very important to healthcare. I envision a day when pts with back pain see a physiatrist or sports med FP first, before getting a referral to ortho or chiropractor.
1) What you do really helps people.
2) Hours/no call.
3) Relatively low stress problems.
1. Interesting with broad range of possible employment opportunities (maybe only FM and IM have more)
2. Lifestyle and lifestyle
3. Laid-back, team approach to medicine with good patient and staff relationships

Worst -
1) Patients who are convinced they just need vicoden and nothing else
2) Personality disorders - they're attracted to pain docs like moths to flames
3) Egotistical docs in other fields who know nothing about PM&R but put it down anyway.
1. Paperwork (disability forms, insurance forms, etc.)
2. Maladaptive family dynamics
3. Paperwork (BTW, did I mention how much I hate the paperwork?)
1) The glaring lack of Level 1 evidence in most fields of PM&R, especially musculoskeletal. Many of the splints, physiotherapy, steroid injections we do are based on very few studies. (This is why I plan on future clinical research.) Some fields are further along (ie spine >> hand arm vibration syndrome), but regardless we have very far way to go.
2) There are some attendings (esp in community, non-academic settings) who do not keep up with the latest developments in neurology or internal medicine, and are practicing outdated medicine.
3) lack of recognition from other fields
1) 'What the heck is a physiatrist' from docs and lay people.
2) Jack of all trades, master of none in many cases.
3) 'What the heck is a physiatrist'. Did I mention that?
1. Narc seekers
2. Sometimes frustratingly slow improvements with possibility for zero improvement and the subsequent questioning of 'what am I really doing here?'
3. Explaining your specialty to OTHER DOCS . . . although many are wishing they had made the same choice after I talk to them for a bit
================================================
From http://www.rankenjordan.org/OutpatientCare/Physiatry.aspx
Summarizes the functions that I will be doing 
1) Physiatrists emphasize:
 prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients 
who experience limitations in function 
resulting from any disease process, injury or symptom. 
2) The Physiatry Clinic focuses on multidisciplinary, 
non-invasive pain management treatment. 
3) The goal is to restore 
optimal medical, social, emotional and vocational function.
4) Physiatry services may include:

• Medical assessment
• Medical guidance in goal setting and treatment
• Orthotic (splint) recommendations
• Spasticity management
• Botox injections
• Baclofen pump adjustments
• Pain management

Physiatrists coordinate the child’s care by working with the family and other physicians. The physiatrists may recommend that other specialists (e.g., orthotist, therapist, equipment vendor) participate in the clinic visit to provide the most comprehensive assessment and plan.

US DOE Energy Efficiency

http://www.eere.energy.gov/

DOE has a lot of info on energy saving:

Environmental preservation and Solar Home Competition

Environmentalism, according to wiki:
a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment

http://www.solardecathlon.gov/about.html
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is an award-winning program that challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.

Biomass and environmental benefits

Dung mass + salt = fuel

Sources:

1) http://nancysblog-seeker.blogspot.com/2011/02/salt-and-light.html

2) http://cr.middlebury.edu/es/altenergylife/sbiomass.htm

Good things about Anesthesiology

From 2003:
http://medinfo.ufl.edu:8050/year3/rtprograms.pdf

ANESTHESIOLOGY
•  Duration of training: Clinical base year (intern year) plus 3 years of residency
training—Total = 4 years.
•  Fellowship training after completion of core program:  ACGME approved
fellowship training programs are available in Adult Critical Care Medicine (1
year), Pediatric Anesthesiology (1  year), and Pain Management (1 year).
Fellowships also are available in other  subspecialties of anesthesiology, but
these are not accredited or monitored by the ACGME. These include
Cardiovascular Anesthesiology (1-2 years), Neurosurgical Anesthesiology (1-2
years), Obstetric Anesthesiology (1-2  years), Regional Anesthesiology (1 year),
Ambulatory Anesthesia (1 year), and Research Fellowships (1-3 years.
•  Prospects for jobs after completion of training:  Job opportunities are
extraordinary at this time and not likely to change much in the next 10 years.
There is a severe shortage of anesthesiologists, both in private practice and 
academic settings. Jobs are available in all states, although the West Coast has 
fewer opportunities than elsewhere in the country. 
•  Range of compensation that might be expected for a graduating resident:
Academic anesthesiology: $100,000 to $140,000; Private Practice: $130,000 to
$200,000. There is considerable variability  according to region of the country.
Both types of positions offer significant increases after the first 1-2 years. Many
anesthesiology practices offer partnership tracks that result in partnership in <3
years.
•  Lifestyle after residency: Anesthesiology always has been associated with 
many different lifestyle opportunities. In both the private and academic settings, 
job expectations and thus lifestyle vary widely. Jobs are available in both arenas 
that are very intense, exciting and consume considerable time. In the private 
world, this translates to significantly larger incomes than quoted above. In the 
academic world, this translates to  great teaching opportunities, more complex 
cases, and opportunities for research. At the other end of the spectrum, there are 
jobs in ambulatory centers that involve (usually) low stress cases, no call, no 
night work, and no weekend work. Part-time jobs are widely available. 2
•  Possibility for job sharing after residency: Part-time and shared jobs are
available in most areas, including academic positions.
•  Compatibility of future practice with family activities: When the day is over 
and you go home, your job does not follow you there. As described under 
lifestyle, anesthesiology is an excellent  career for working mothers and fathers 
who want to spend significant time with their families or who have diverse outside 
interests and hobbies that consume considerable time. 
•  Relative competitiveness of residency selection: If you are in the top half of
your class and interview well, you should have no difficulty getting the residency
of your choice in the part of the country you would like. If you are in the lower half
of your class, it is still possible to get a good residency position, particularly if you
perform a rotation at that institution and do an outstanding job. For the first time
in recent years, however, American graduates applying to anesthesiology have
failed to obtain residency positions in the match.
♦ If you have additional questions, please contact either:
Michael E. Mahla, M.D., Professor and Program Director—Office: 265-0077; Pager: 800-379-
1408; Mobile: 246-7583.
Tammy Y. Euliano, Associate Professor and Assistant  Program Director—Office: 265-0077;

Working Until Dropping: Employment Behavior of the Elderly in Rural China

http://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/debrauwrozelle_cj_elderly.pdf

1. Government also can help the rural elderly through medical care.  
2. The health status of the elderly is closely related to their working decisions, which has further effects on the livelihood of families.  
3. Since most of the elderly rely on their own labor to support themselves, when individuals suffer from a disease or other health problem, the health problem becomes the main obstacles to the welfare of elderly.
4.   Improving the health status of the current and future elderly in rural China will help the elderly to provide better for themselves when they are older

New term learned: Human Capital

Defined by wiki:
The skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country.


Basically, the value of an individual to its society.

Buckwheat and Barley

Toasted Barley Tea...
Bori cha (Korean)
Mugi cha (Japanese)
Benefits:
1. Lowers blood viscosity
2. Reduces S. Mutan colonizations--provides caries and cardiovascular protections

Buckwheat use:
1. Cover crop + weed control
2. Medicinal properties (potential adjunct tx for Type 2 Diabetes and high cholesterol)
3. Upholstery
4. Flour--in ethnic foods

Weed 101: Yellow Starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis)

Yellow Starthistle
(Centaurea solstitialis)

Annual taprooted heavily branched weed growing from 0.6 to 1 metre tall; stems are winged and covered with fine hair; yellow flowers are borne on ends of branches and armed with sharp thorns up to 2 cm long
Src: http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/cropprot/weedguid/yellstar.htm

Control:
Weed eating goats
Src:http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7402.html

Cover crops

Cover Crops: Options, Tips and Advantages forthe Home Garden
October/November 2009

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Cover-Crops-Soil-Nutrients.aspx
By Barbara Pleasant

You can choose colorful cover crops, such as bachelor’s buttons and crimson clover, to build
your soil and beautify your beds.

ILLUSTRATION: ELAYNE SEARS

There are three main ways to improve your soil— grow cover crops, mulch the surface with biodegradable
mulches, and/or dig in organic soil amendments (such as compost, grass clippings, rotted manure or wood
chips). All have their advantages and none should be discounted, but cover cropping is the method least likely to be practiced in home gardens. There is a reason for this: Information on using cover crops is tailored to the needs of farmers who use tractors to make short work of mowing down or turning under cover crops. But when your main tools for taking down plants have wooden handles and you measure your space in feet rather than acres, you need a special set of cover crop plants, and special methods for using them.

How Cover Crops Help
A cover crop is any plant grown for the primary purpose of improving the soil. Since the early 1900s, farmers
have used cover crops to restore fertility to worn-out land. In addition to helping bulk up soil with organic matter, cover crops prevent erosion, suppress weeds, and create and cycle soil borne nutrients using the power of the sun. Recent advances in soil biology have revealed two more ways cover crops can improve soil.

Rhizodeposition is a special advantage to working with cover crops. Many plants actually release sugars and
other substances through their roots. They are like little solar engines, pumping energy down into the soil. With
vigorous cover crop plants, this process goes on much more deeply than you would ever dig — 6 feet for oats and rye! If you are leaving your garden beds bare in winter, you are missing the chance to use cold-hardy crops such as cereal rye or oats to solar-charge your soil. Thanks to this release of sugars, the root tips of many plants host colonies of helpful microorganisms, and as the roots move deeper, the microbes follow.
But so much for scientific talk. If you’ve experimented with cover crops, perhaps you have dug up young fava
beans or alfalfa seedlings to marvel at the nitrogen nodules on their roots, or watched a stand of buckwheat go from seed to bloom in four weeks flat. Or how about this one: It’s April and the soil is warming up and drying out. After loosening a clump of fall-sown wheat with a digging fork, you pull up a marvelous mop of fibrous roots and shake out the soil. What crumb! The soil’s structure is nothing short of amazing! These are the moments an organic gardener lives for.


Bio-drilling is what happens when you use a cover crop’s natural talents to “drill” into compacted subsoil. For
example, you might grow oilseed or daikon radishes as a cover crop where their spear-shaped roots will stab
deep into tight subsoil. Bio-drilling action also takes place when deeply rooted cover crop plants penetrate
subsoil and die. Then, the next crop grown may actually follow the rooting network mapped out by the cover
crop (see illustration in the Image Gallery). Maryland researchers were able to track this process using special
camera equipment (a minirhizotron), which took pictures of the interactions between cover crop (canola) and
crop plant (soybean) roots. As the canola’s deep roots decomposed, soybean roots followed the trails they
blazed in the subsoil, hand in glove. In addition to reduced physical resistance, the soybean roots probably
enjoyed better nutrition and the good company of legions of soil-dwelling microcritters, compliments of the cover crop.


Dozens of plants have special talents as cover crops, and if you live in an extremely hot, cold, wet or dry climate, you should check with your local farm store or state extension service for plant recommendations — especially if you want to use cover crops under high-stress conditions. Also be aware that many cover crop plants can become weedy, so they should almost always be taken down before they set seed.

How to Take Cover Crops Down
Speaking of taking down, this is the sticking point for most gardeners when it comes to cover crops, which is
why it’s a good idea to start small with your first cover crop plantings. Traditionally, cover crops are plowed
under, but most gardeners chop, cut or pull them, and use them for mulch or compost. Or you can assign the
task to a flock of pecking poultry. All are sound methods, and it is possible that composting cover crop plants
produces a more balanced soil amendment compared to chopping raw-crop residue directly into the soil. Pulling plants saves time, too, because you don’t have to wait three weeks (or more) to plant, in order to avoid possible negative reactions between rotting plant residues and the plants you want to grow. For example, the cover crop known as sudex (a fast-growing sorghum-Sudan grass hybrid) produces gargantuan amounts of biomass (leaf, stem and roots), but fresh sudex residue in the soil inhibits the growth of tomatoes, lettuce and broccoli. Oats, wheat and other cover crop plants also produce allelopathic substances that can temporarily hinder the germination and growth of other plants, too, but not in quantities sufficient to cause serious disturbances in the garden. If you chop in fresh cover crop residues, just plan to wait two to three weeks before sowing crop seeds.

Top Cover Crop Options
The following cover crops work well in a wide range of climates and situations, and they’re not hard to take
down, as long as you do it at the right time and in the proper way. We’ve selected these six because they are
easy to manage using hand tools, grow during different seasons and provide multiple benefits in the garden.
During the summer, buckwheat (Fagopyron esculentum) is in a class by itself as a cover crop. Seeds sown in
moist soil turn into a weed-choking sea of green within a week, with many plants growing 2 feet high or more
and blooming in less than 30 days. Should you need to reclaim space that has been overtaken by invasives,
buckwheat can be your best friend. In my garden, buckwheat has been a huge ally in cleaning up a spot overrun by dock, bindweed and other nasties that grow in warm weather. For two years, each time the noxious weeds grew back, I dug them out and planted more buckwheat. Throughout the battle, the buckwheat attracted bees and other buzzers in droves. Fortunately, even mature buckwheat plants are as easy to take down as impatiens — simply pull the succulent plants with a twist of the wrist, or use a hoe or scythe to slice them off at the soil line. You can let the dead plants die into a surface mulch and plant through them, gather them up and compost them, or chop them into the soil.

In late summer, while the soil is still warm, you have a fine opportunity to try barley (Hordeum vulgare), a fastgrowing grain that’s great for capturing excess nitrogen left over from summer crops, which might otherwise leach away during the winter. Barley often suffers from winter injury in Zone 6, and is often killed altogether in Zone 5 and above. This is good! The dead barley residue shelters the soil through winter, and dries into a plantthrough mulch in spring in cold zones.

Early fall is the best time to grow the dynamic duo of soil-building cover crops — oats (Avena sativa) mixed
with cold-hardy winter peas (Pisum sativum). When taken down just before the peas start blooming in spring,
an oat/pea combination cover crop is the best way to boost your soil’s organic matter and nutrient content using only plants. Both make a little fall growth when planted in September, and in spring the peas scramble up the oats. On the down side, one or both crops can be winterkilled before they have a chance to do much good north of Zone 5, and in more hospitable climates it will take some work to get the plants out of the way in spring. Do it by mid-April, because the job gets tougher as the plants get older. Cut or mow them down first, and then pull and dig your way through the planting. A heavy-duty chopping hoe works well for this.
Hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) needs a good head start on winter, too, but it’s hardy to Zone 4 and gives a huge
payback in terms of soil improvement, and saved time and labor. Unlike many other cover crop plants, you can quickly kill hairy vetch by slicing just below the crown with a sharp hoe. When hairy vetch is beheaded about a month before it’s time to plant tomatoes and peppers, you can open up planting holes and plant through the dried mulch — no digging required.

Late fall is not a lost season for cover crops, but in most climates you’re limited to cereal rye (Secale cereale),
the cold-hardiest of them all. Rye will sprout after the soil has turned chilly, but be sure to take it out early in
spring, before the plants develop tough seed stalks. Or let your chickens keep it trimmed; leave the birds on the patch longer in spring and they will kill the rye for you. If you’re looking for a cover crop you can plant in
October for cold-season poultry greens, cereal rye is probably the best choice.


In any season, you may find many more great cover crops in seed catalogs, or among your leftover seeds. As
you consider possibilities, think about plants that quickly produce an abundance of leaves and stems, but are easy to pull up or chop down if you decide you don’t want them. Bush beans, leafy greens or even sweet corn can be grown as short-term cover crops, along with annual flowers such as calendulas and borage in early spring, or marigolds and sunflowers in summer. Teaming up a flower with a cover crop plant is always fun, whether you’re planting sulphur cosmos with cowpeas in summer, oats with dwarf sunflowers in late summer or bachelor’s buttons with crimson clover in the fall. Whatever you do, just don’t leave your soil bare or you’ll be missing out on a chance to capture solar energy to recharge your food web.

Salad in Sealed Bags Isn't So Simple, It Seems

From NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/us/salad-in-sealed-bags-isn-t-so-simple-it-seems.html

By AMANDA HESSER
Published: January 14, 2003

For millions of Americans, preparing a mixed green salad is as easy as opening a sealed plastic bag. But here in the land of lettuce, complexity is a given, and time is the enemy.

There is a reason bagged lettuce costs more than twice as much as a head of iceberg. It is not easy getting those perfectly formed leaves, washed and still fresh, from the soil to the table. The process requires speed, technology, secrecy about that technology and plain-old farmers' ingenuity.

Bagged salad sales in the United States have soared in the past decade, exceeding $2 billion last year, according to ACNielsen, the market research company. And while iceberg may still be king, accounting for 73 percent of all lettuce grown in this country, that is a decline from 84 percent in 1992. Consumption of romaine and leaf lettuces like green leaf and red oak has more than doubled since the early 1990's.

''We have a department working on lettuce breeding,'' said Peggy Miars, a spokeswoman for Earthbound Farm, a grower here whose annual sales have grown an average of 55 percent since 1995. ''You don't want a bagful of lettuces that are all flat. That is the main reason we have the frisée in there -- for texture. They are also breeding for better colors. Deeper reds are desirable.''

Whatever the color, speed is of the essence. The moment the plants are shaved from the ground, the clock starts ticking. Six days is allowed for washing and bagging the lettuce and transporting it around the country, and about a week more to sell it. After that, the leaves turn slimy.

And slimy lettuce can be disastrous. As Bill Zinke, vice president for marketing at Ready Pac Produce of Irwindale, Calif., which processes bagged salads, said, ''It's constantly a business of staying up to and ahead of what fields you will be harvesting, not just today and this week but weeks and months in advance.''

Earthbound said it was the first company to package lettuce in bags, starting in 1986. And by packaging whole baby leaves instead of mature heads cut into bite-size pieces, it can move lettuce to market without giving it the ''nitrogen flush'' that bags of cut-up romaine or iceberg lettuce need to keep the cut edges from browning.

But baby greens have to be harvested in just a few days, before they grow too big. Each bag of what the company calls its ''mixed baby greens'' has at least eight varieties of specialty lettuce, nearly all of which had to be ready for harvest the same day.

For Earthbound Farm, the country's largest producer of organic salads, it all begins in fields here. More than 90 percent of all lettuce in the United States is grown in Arizona and in California, mostly from two regions -- Yuma in the winter, and the Salinas Valley in the summer.

The places where the greens are sorted look like a Rube Goldberg drawing. Bins of freshly cut leaves are rushed from nearby farms to the packing plant in refrigerated trucks. Then the bins are lifted into a vacuum tube the diameter of a subway tunnel.

In 20 minutes, the vacuum brings the temperature of the lettuce down to 36 degrees, and it goes into cold storage. Maintaining that temperature until it reaches the grocery will keep it fresh for about 15 days.

Inside, the packing plant is cold and wet, and loud as a jackhammer, as enormous production lines ferry the tiny greens from bin to bag. First, they are upended onto conveyors, passing a row of inspectors and sweeping down a flume into the world's largest salad spinners. Then up conveyors they go, to giant scales and bagging machines. More than 14,000 pounds of lettuce can be processed every hour.

This is where the secrets are kept. The way the flume swishes the lettuce and how harshly the spinners treat it affect how much it is damaged and how nearly perfect and dry the leaves are in the bag. A photographer sent to capture the process was not permitted to take close-ups of the newest machines. Pen and paper were heavily discouraged.

''It is a very competitive environment,'' Drew Goodman, the president of Earthbound Farm, said. ''At most, you get six months'' before new ideas are picked up by rivals.

''With the different service providers and maintenance people,'' he added, ''most any new development is going to be -- available, let's say, to others.''

Mr. Zinke would not discuss Ready Pac's salad washing or drying process. ''It's a very slim-margin business,'' he said. ''So you hang closely on your points of difference that give you a competitive edge.''

Almost none of the technology now used in the industry existed 15 years ago. Mr. Goodman and his wife, Myra Goodman, the founders of Earthbound Farm, started growing lettuce in their backyard in the 1980's. Last year the business, which specializes in baby organic lettuce, had sales of more than $200 million.

The Goodmans developed much of their machinery out of necessity -- a salad spinner, for example, that dries smaller batches of lettuce at lower speeds, causing less damage to the leaves. Machines like it are now widely used in the industry.

In Earthbound's new 115,000-square-foot plant in Yuma, the water flumes have swirling jets to keep the delicate leaves from clumping. The temperature throughout the plant is controlled by a master computer. Charles Sweat, the chief operating officer, travels by company jet between here and the summer plant in San Juan Bautista, Calif., and he can adjust the temperatures by remote control on his laptop.

Once the lettuce is bagged, it is sent off in refrigerated semitrailers to stores around the country. Company officials can only hope that the cooling units on the trucks work well and that the markets store the salad in a cool place.

Fresh Express, which deals mostly in head lettuce that is cut and put into bags, has processing plants around the country, so its workers can cut the heads into bite-size pieces closer to their destination, increasing shelf life. Other companies, including Ready Pac, simply have to hurry to get lettuce on the road.

One of the most important advances in keeping baby and cut lettuce crisp from the time it is packed on the West Coast until it arrives on the East Coast was the development of a new bag to pack it in.

''We had a breakthrough in 1989 that allowed us to take it national,'' said Robin Sprague, a spokeswoman for Fresh Express, one of the companies that began using the process. The packaging, a plastic film that her company calls ''modified atmosphere packaging,'' gives the cut lettuce a longer shelf life by slowing the rate of decay.

At nearly the same time, Ready Pac came up with two more innovations: a system for washing the lettuce three times and a ''pillow pack,'' a bag that is inflated with extra nitrogen to protect the leaves from bruising during shipping.

Organic lettuce is still just about 4 percent, of a giant industry whose change and growth is rippling through other businesses. ''What we're talking about,'' said Ken Hodge, the communications director for the International Fresh-cut Produce Association, ''is a phenomenon that has cut across the whole produce industry.'' Freshly cut fruits are expected to be the next big thing.

Still, salad makers are fighting to take their industry to a new level. They are busy reducing the amount of salad that clumps in the machine. They are improving the tatsoi's texture, and the time it takes lettuce to go from the Arizona field to a dinner table in Bangor, Me.

''This business is really about performing every day,'' said Mr. Goodman of Earthbound Farm. ''So that means having the best quality every day and innovating every day. So hopefully, we're on to our next innovation while our competition is figuring out our last one.''

An Unethical Way to Profit from Agricultural Businesses with investment funding and government support

Established in 1984 on a 2-acre farm, found its niche 2 years later--being the first to retail organic gourmet salads. It gained recognition from 2003-2008, including being featured in Oprah Show, People's Magazine, Live with Regis and Kelly, and organic trade shows. In 2009, it increased to a 33,000 acre largest US organic farm. How? From private equity investment capital... read the following article. These investors also invest in Arysta, largest producer of methyl iodide, a fumigant, that could cause cancer and reproductive problems.
http://www.ebfarm.com

From: http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2010/dec/09/the-midas-touch/

THE MIDAS TOUCH

Methyl iodide finds friends in unusual places.

By Mary Duan

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Private equity investment – the placement of funds into a company not publicly traded on a stock exchange – is nothing new in agri-business. Examples abound all over the Salinas Valley, from HM Capital Partners of Dallas investing in Earthbound Farm in 2009, to Silicon Valley venture capitalists pumping dollar into the development of new vegetable hybrids. If the stars align for investors and companies alike, it can be a fast and efficient way to grow.

Nor is highly diversified investing unusual for the state’s pension funds. A mix of fixed income, equities and even real estate is the norm for most funds, which also place a percentage of members’ dollars into so-called “alternative investments,” namely private equity partnerships.

But parsing out who invests where can be a pain, because the pension funds frankly don’t always want to talk about it and God knows the equity guys aren’t exactly chatty. But a little bit of customized web research by a computer geek friend revealed that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System has committed nearly $1 billion to an investment vehicle called Permira IV – the fund behind the company that’s bringing the highly controversial fumigant methyl iodide to California’s agriculture market.

Trademarked under the name “Midas” by Arysta LifeScience, methyl iodide was registered by the California Department of Pesticide Control on Dec. 1. It means that barring a potential ban from governor-elect Jerry Brown when he takes office in January, Arysta will begin marketing and selling Midas in California within a matter of months.

Arysta, which has its U.S. headquarters in North Carolina, is owned by IEIL (Industrial Equity Investments Ltd.) Japan. IEIL Japan is a wholly owned subsidiary of IEIL, which is based in the Republic of Ireland. According to documents found on an official website of the European Union, IEIL Japan is a special purpose vehicle created solely for the purchase of Arysta by Permira’s “Permira IV” fund.

Connecting the dots: As of March 2010, CalSTRS has committed $968 million in capital to Permira IV. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, meanwhile, has a book value of $208.2 million with Permira IV.

According to CalSTRS’ own disclosure policy, the system has adopted a policy regarding its private equity partnerships that tries to balance the public’s right to know, subject under California’s Public Records Act, with “not disclosing when the release clearly would outweigh the public interest served by such disclosure.”

In other words, the CalSTRS 848,000 members might not know where all of their money is going. “It’s not a situation where we put out a press release on every investment we do,” says CalSTRS spokesman Ricardo Duran. He then recommended I ask CalSTRS members if they know about this specific investment.

So I’m asking them. Hey, uh, retired teachers, do you know about this one?

Assemblyman Bill Monning doubts it. Given that “the vocal nature of teachers” was responsible for creating the buffer zones that restrict fumigation and spraying around schools, he finds the whole thing troubling.

“It’s something I think warrants serious study and investigation,” says Monning, who received the investment information the same day as The Weekly. Monning said he believes the PERS and STRS members will be asking their boards a lot of questions about this particular investment, and adds, “I expect the teachers who have expressed the greatest concern on the impact of fumigation on students will be asking.”

According to Arysta’s Jeff Tweedy, the company’s head of business development and regulatory affairs, there is a lot of misinformation being circulated about methyl iodide, in particular the now infamous “54 scientists” letter, written by a group of 54 scientists, including five Nobel laureates, who vociferously opposed methyl iodide’s federal approval by the Bush administration in 2007. Arysta, says Tweedy, is the world’s second largest producer of methyl iodide.

The largest producer, at 1 trillion pounds per year, is the ocean, he says.

“If you read what’s being said, it’s, ‘There’s no acceptable level and anyone who comes into contact with it will die’ and that’s just not true,” Tweedy says. “The folks who want to create fear can say what they want and not be held accountable and not put up data to support it.”

Maybe Tweedy is right. We do have to have faith in the science, and the government institutions assigned to regulate it. But big money is driving this equation.

The strawberry industry is vital to our county’s economy. And so, too, is the health and welfare of our people, our workers. Despite the approval, questions remain.

Mary Duan is the editor at Monterey County Weekly. She can be reached at mary@mcweekly.com

Efffects of lighting, hair and makeup on news anchor, Ada Wong

May 2011
32 years old