Agri-Industrial Food

Traveling to my childhood home, back in 1977. It was in an epicenter of the so called "Green Revolution." Pullman, Washington where agricultural science flourishes at Washington State University.

Some folks don't like the fact that they are tinkering with genetics, fertilizers, feeds and so forth to increase crop yields. It keeps getting more sophisticated. Grafting in orchards, cross breading, even irrigation could be seen as a form of manipulating nature.

Agriculture, itself could be considered manipulation, I guess. Should we go back to "hunter gatherer" societies?

Not with 6+ billion people to feed.

Now days, there are ever more technological "fixes" from the lab.

I feel it isn't all bad, it's basically just an outcome of population growth. With 6+ billion mouths in this world to feed, what do you expect?

Almost 30 years ago, I took a tour of some agricultural facilities on the WSU campus.

First stop was a beef farm where they were doing a lot of cross breading. The tour guide was a bit embarrassed to say that part of his job was to jerk off the bull. Semen samples were collected, frozen and used in various breeding pens.

Another stop was the WSU nuclear reactor.

Yes, the nuclear reactor.

Various experiments, samples, seeds and so forth, are irradiated in this small research reactor. No power generated.

We even experienced an "emergency core shutdown" during the tour. It wasn't planned as far as I know.

I can now say I was in a reactor during a shutdown.

Right after we looked into the reactor pool, we headed for the next stop on the tour. Alarms sounded as we proceeded down a concrete star well.

People had questioning looks on their faces. The tour guide said, "just wait here, I'll find out what's going on."

In a minute, he came back to say a minor glitch had happened in a control panel and the reactor always errs on the side of safety. It shut down till they could figure out where the glitch was.

No loss, except for, probably, the experiment that was being run.

The tour continued. No big deal.

One memory from that tour was looking down into the deep blue water of the reactor pool. There was a fuzzy blue glow. Tour guide said it was neutrons interacting with water molecules around the reactor core. Also one could see a few spent fuel rods sitting on the bottom of the pool.

When I was in high school, I found a little trail that led into some bushes behind that reactor building. I decided to see where it went and ended up bushwacking my way along the backside of the reactor building. I wasn't that much of a dare devil, but that seemed like a strange thing to do. No one was around at the time and I suvived with no problem; so I think.

Actually, I have wondered why my hands seem to glow in a dark room, at times.

Just kidding.