A List of Double Up Food Bucks Locations in Albuquerque and Valencia County

Thanks to an initiative approved by the State Legislature this year, New Mexicans who receive food stamps can use their EBT cards to double the amount of fruits and vegetables they purchase at growers markets. Here is a list, courtesy of the New Mexico Farmers Marketing Association, of locations in the Albuquerque area and Valencia County that offer the Double-Up Food Bucks option.

• ABQ Uptown Growers’ Market 2200 Louisiana Boulevard NE, Albuquerque (Saturdays 7AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque Downtown Growers’ Market Central and 8th, Robinson Park, Albuquerque (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque Growers’ Market at Presbyterian 1100 Central Ave. SE, Albuquerque (Tuesdays 7AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque: Rail Yards Market 777 1st St. SW, Albuquerque (Sundays 10AM–2PM)
• Belen Growers’ Market Anna Becker Park, Highway 309 & Reinken Avenue, Belen (Fridays 4:30–7PM)
• Bosque Farms Growers’ Market 1090 North Bosque Loop, Bosque Farms (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• Los Lunas Farmers’ Market 3447 Lambros Circle, Los Lunas (Tuesdays 4PM–7PM)
• South Valley Armijo Village Growers’ Market Isleta Blvd. and Arenal Rd. SW, Albuquerque (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• South Valley Gateway Growers’ Market 100 Isleta Blvd. SW, Albuquerque (Thursdays 5PM–8PM) 
• Zia Bernalillo Farmers Market 335 S. Camino del Pueblo (Fridays 4pm-7pm)

Double-Up Food Bucks benefits are also available in Alamogordo, Aztec, Cuba, Carlsbad, Clovis, Dixon, Española, Farmington, Las Cruces, Las Vegas (Tri-County Farmers Market), Lordsburg, Mescalero, Mora, Pojoaque, Portales, Ramah, Santa Fe, Silver City, Socorro, Truth or Consequences (Sierra County Farmers Market), Taos and Tucumcari. Click Here to find specific information about each of these markets. 

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Local Food Production another review

National Geographic image of Earth circa 2210

When I reviewed "A Crude Awakening," CTD suggested I watch three other films:

Fuel - watched that, enjoyed it.

I.O.U.S.A. - havent watched it yet.

Collapse - I think I watched it today.

There are two "Collapse" movies on Netflix.

The first one I watched was a National Geographic film that was part history lesson, part current events tour, and part apocalyptic sci fi.

The conceit was that scientists circa 2210 would have no idea how "we" lived and why our great cities collapsed. Pretty fun, actually, as a dramatic device. Except how did these clueless future scientists manage to have 2010-era equipment (Ray-Bans and scuba gear, for crying out loud)?

The show talked about how dwindling water, food, energy, and trust destroyed past civilizations (the Anazasi, the Romans, and the Mayans).

What happens when your water runs out

The second "Collapse" film was 90 minutes of listening to Michael Ruppert talk. Michael Ruppert is a Cassandra - one who [accurately] foretells the future, but who is largely ignored.

It isnt fun to watch Ruppert talk. Hes mostly angry and bitter, and the future vision he paints is dark and painful. But I did garner a few gems:

Ruppert said, "Local Food production is perhaps the most fundamental key to human survival in the collapse of industrialized civilization. [57:00]" He goes on to talk about what happened when two communist dependencies lost access to oil when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The first state was North Korea. Rigid, hierarchical, and cursed with a harsh climate, the people starved. I remember hearing about how people were trying to survive eating grass.

The second state was Cuba. Castro immediately promoted a return to local food production - every square inch that could be exploited for food production was converted to making food. It didnt hurt that Cuba is a tropical country. Anyway, folks in Cuba now eat better than ever.

I also liked Rupperts suggestion that "Community will save us."

At the end of the day, denial, anger, bargaining, and depression wont help as we face a challenging future. Acceptance of lifes reality, with belief-inspired action will allow us to find the way out.

And when we have discovered the way out, we can learn from the parable of the hundredth monkey.

Ruppert tells of the experiments detonating nuclear bombs on the Bikini Atoll in 1946. And yes, the two-piece swimsuit was introduced around that time.

In the 1950s scientists introduces thousands of monkeys to the island, to study the effects of any lingering radiation. Turned out most things were back to normal. But the coconut husks were still slightly radioactive. If the monkeys continued as they had been going, they would all eventually succumb to radiation poisoning. No one wanted to deal with thousands of dead monkey corpses.

Unable or unwilling to train all the monkeys to wash the coconuts in fresh water to remove the radiation, researchers trained 10 of the monkeys to wash their coconuts. Slowly the ten nut washers converted others to their odd practices. 12 nut washers, 20 nut washers, 50 nut washers.

Then the 100th monkey became a nut washer and overnight the other 9,900 started washing their coconuts.

One assumes the monkeys survived, but I cant find any mention of the state of Bikini Atoll monkeys in our times. At least I didnt find mention of mass extinction of the nut-washing primates.
_________________

So, we already knew aquaponics is a great system for producing food in warm, barren deserts, not to mention how awesome it can be in warm, moist climates.

But if we can get "100 monkeys" to demonstrate a robust aquaponics system that works year-round in cold climates, life starts to get sweet, indeed.

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Oxfam Volunteers Continue Advocacy on Food Aid Reform

Amanda Dezan (left) and Kathy Chavez (right) meet with Bill Woldman at Sen. Udalls Albuquerque office

A number of organizations continue efforts to urge Congress to reform our food-aid policies.  This was the centerpiece of Bread for the Worlds Offering of Letters in 2014. While we continued this advocacy effort in 2015, the main focus of our letters this year has been on reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act.  However,  food aid reform remains at the top of the agenda for some of our partners, including Oxfam America. Food-aid reform was one of the main asks Oxfam Action Corps volunteers visited Capitol Hill in April. 

Kathy Chavez, Amanda Dezan and Juliana Bilowich, volunteers from New Mexico Oxfam Action Corps, followed up on those visits with local meetings in August with the staffs of Sen. Tom Udall and Sen. Martin Heinrich to ask our senators to cosponsor the Food for Peace program.  "What the Food For Peace Reform initiative, which asks is that we allow for the money be spent how it is needed," said Chavez, one of four national peer advisors Oxfam Action Corps.  "On food from local farmers or neighboring countries for example, or if they have food and need money we can give them money. Right now only 42 cents per dollar actually is spent on food."

The New Mexico Oxfam Action Corps volunteers found a receptive ear in Bill Woldman, a long-time aide to Sen. Udall in Albuquerque, and in Ane Romero, a field representative for Sen. Heinrich locally.  Both promised to pass on the cosponsorship request to the New Mexico senators.

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Growing Live Food

 I found this site very interesting.

My goal is to grow plants that will clean the water and provide food the fish will eat.
Even if I must grow these plants outside of the fish tank I believe it would be an asset to grow live food for the fish. 

I think the fish will really appreciate this live source of food, but big fish may uproot,and destroy the plants so setting aside a special grow bed will probably be necessary.
The vegetables will of course be the intention of my system, but putting aside an area for eatable plants the fish will enjoy seems like a good  investment in their health, and an economic solution to fish food.

TC has written a very good  blog post about Duckweed
http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/aquaponics-tilapia-and-duckweed

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Theres still time to plant your winter crops

 Redwood Seeds has these to offer
 &
Johnys Select Seeds recommends these winter vegetables.

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Thorium!

Our media is not built around effectively and accurately disseminating the facts to the public.  Our media is built around putting your eyeballs on their print or their website and keeping them there.  And the best way to keep you there is to scare you to death.  - Kirk Sorensen



I know this has little to do with gardening, but the benefits we may see from thorium will drastically change the world, and possibly the way we garden.  Imagine abundant energy, abundant clean water, and sustainable hydroponics!


Watch this video to learn more!
http://youtu.be/qLk46BZfEMs


Thorium has long been rejected as a nuclear fuel - Why?  Because uranium produced weapons grade platonium and we knew how to use Uranium.  Why experiment - Right?

Why then am I getting excited about thorium?  Its because both India and China are committing to building thorium reactors!  Its been done before with total success but the Atomic Energy Commission lost interest because its useless for building bombs.  India has finalized their plans and will soon begin construction and plan to have a 300MW prototype in operation by 2016!  

With that being said here are some statistics

    World Energy Demand 2009

    5,000,000,000 tonnes coal
   31,000,000,000 barrels oil
5,000,000,000,000 m³ natural gas
           65,000 tonnes uranium

1 Kg Thorium = 13,000 barrels oil


2.2% of fossil fuel is used by freight trains .   1 Ton of cargo can be moved 430 miles on a gallon of diesel.  Hydrogen is twice as efficient as diesel  Im guessing that means by weight.  Guess what - Hydrogen can be a product of a thorium reactor!

A coal plant releases 100 times the amount of radiation as a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy - Scientific America

Amazing isnt it?  Nuclear has gotten such a bad rap for so many years.  
Its actually a lot safer too. This chart shows natural and man-made sources of radiation
 

Check this out - Thorium is a very concentrated source of energy.  
1 gram = all the energy you use this year!

 Thorium is abundant and found with rare earth materials that would further benefit our energy efficient technology.  Remove the restrictions over mining thorium in the USA, and we would have a win/win.



 

We seem to be falling short when it comes the using this technology
















 Its much less expensive to build molten salt reactors that use thorium than it is to build light water reactors that use uranium.  Once a good design is finalized they could be mass produced unlike conventional Uranium U235 technologies which can only be cast in Japan.





And there are other benefits!
Almost no economic penalty to desalinate sea water.  There is an abundance of thorium, and it is a waste product of rare earth mines therefore the cost of fuel is very cheap.  The cost of Molten Salt Reactors (MSR)  is many times less expensive that light water reactors.  There is no possibility of a melt down and MSR require very little education to run - in fact they do not even require supervision for months at a time.  The process creates insignificant amounts of transuranics (the dangerous stuff). The temperatures are higher which is why there is no need for high pressure water.  The turbines are smaller and more efficient creating more power.  Thorium does not produce materials that can be used for weapons so its a low security site.

Other products can be made besides electricity.    Hydrogen can be made which in turn can be used to make ammonia for agriculture.  Finally sustainable hydroponics!

With a little chemistry synthetic fuels such as methanol for gasoline or dimethyl ether for diesel can also be made




Transuranics (the dangerous stuff)



The thorium cycle generates only 1% of waste in comparison to conventional Uranium U235 technologies which run into other problems.



Thorium provides safety and less problems





Its really sad and deceptive that oil companies claim to be promoting green technology such as Algae bio-fuels, wind, and solar when Thorium reactors are far more efficient, less expensive to build and maintain. Why?  Maybe its because they know these cant compete with oil.  These methods are prone to failure.

Thorium can compete and will provide the world with cheap, clean, safe and abundant energy on a smaller foot print while providing clean water and hydrogen as well as other hydrogen products for fuels.  We can breakup carbon dioxide, disassociate water to create hydrogen, ammonia, and make fertilizer and desalinate sea water for crops and residential use.  All of this at extremely low cost, and very little damage to our environment.  Thorium is so abundant that we will not run out of it for thousands of years!

If there was a lot of energy and it was cheap and not harmful to the environment, what would you do that you are not doing now?

Exxon Mobile attempting to improve their image.

 Oil companies spread rumors and untrue ideas about nuclear energy.  Campaigns like the one below are intended to scare the public.  But even Light Water Reactors are safer and less damaging to the environment than coal, gas, or oil.  Which have been well know to explode, and spill and coal mining is not only dangerous and unhealthy, its destroying vast areas of pristine forests.

This report was given to JFK in 1962.  The government had the information, and designs to built Thorium Reactors, but the information was suppressed.  Who might want this information suppressed?  There had already been a reactor working for 4 years in the 1960s.   Instead of making progress we abandoned this technology, and now its being developed and patented by India and China.   We still have a chance to set this right but our politicians bow to the demands of big oil.

We live much better lives today because we learned how to use carbon.  What about thorium?  Thorium has a million times the energy density of a carbon hydrogen bond.

Watch this video to learn more!
http://youtu.be/qLk46BZfEMs

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Review of Food Inc the movie

From The Official Food, Inc. Movie Website

So my daughter goes to school and tells her teacher about The Future of Food. The teacher tells my daughter she has to watch the movie Food, Inc.

There isnt a free version of Food, Inc., on the internet, but you can watch it on Netflix.

They discuss a variety of issues that have been exacerbated by the industrialization of food:

• Nasty food-borne diseases. Kevin is the poster child for this, a boy who died from contaminated food. Legislation to prevent future occurrences of this tragedy has been batting around for years, now. But the film illustrates a now where the majority of food is processed in a handful of plants. The FDA has been stripped of the power to shut down such plants, presumably because to do so would have massive repercussions.
  
  
• Obesity. One in three individuals is obese. When we talk minorities and poor folks, it grows to one in two. The subsidized foods are cheap and easy, and have been engineered to maximize appeal. So it is cheaper and easier to eat sugary, fattening foods than to eat vegetables. Nuts!
  
  
• Illegal immigration. The highly mechanized, significantly subsidized US grain supply has put many farmers in other nations out of business, particularly once the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) prevented Mexico and Canada from retaining protective tariffs. Food industries, e.g., slaughterhouses, recruit across the border and bring in illegal workers.
  
  
• Indentured servitude for farmers. Since there are so few markets for food, now, those markets can demand conditions. Like making farmers buy the latest equipment ($250,000 per chicken shed, for example). Upgrades (at profit to the industry) become mandatory as a condition of keeping the contract with the buyer. Per the film, a poultry farmer with two chicken sheds would have a debt of $500,000 for the sheds along, and only net $18,000 per year out of which that debt must be paid.

Interests of the food industry are protected by the US government. The movie presents a nice montage of executives who have worked for key food companies (e.g., Monsanto) and for the highest levels of government, under both parties.

But despite the crushing dominance of this mechanized food system, the film offers hope. It shows how customer demand for organics is causing Walmart to start carrying organics. And the film ends with a hopeful note, showing how we can "vote," at least three times a day, to make a difference.

The movie went to wrap before the most recent food crisis, arguably a major contributor to civil unrest in Egypt and other countries (though Twitter and Facebook have no doubt contributed).

With this same civil unrest causing increased risk to petroleum resources, it will be interesting to see what happens in the US to the price of gas and a food industry that is so completely dependent upon petroleum to fertilize, harvest, transport, and process food.

I suggest this movie as a holistic explanation of the 2010+ US food market. Much becomes clear after seeing this.

My daughters teacher will be using Fridays class time to show Food, Inc., to her health students. I project several of those students will commit to an all organic diet, if not become full-out vegans, as a result of Fridays showing.

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Food and Energy in the Cold Northeast

The Cold Northeast Regions of China and the United States
Point A: Shenyang, Jilin, China
Point B: Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States

I found a delightful report the United Nations put together in 1994 on how to produce crops and energy in the cold northeast (42 degrees north of the equator). Its got a wealth of information on topics from methane production to solar homes and greenhouses, and integrated plant/animal ecosystems.

Its also chock full of charts and graphs and experimental results.

The full title is "Integrated energy systems in China - The cold Northeastern region experience."

Happily, the cold northeastern region of China is eerily similar to the cold northeastern region of the United States - same latitude, near an ocean, and populated by millions of folks who like to eat and stay warm.

I particularly liked the documented results from the experiments comparing Subterranean heating/Cooling Systems or Underground Heat Exchange Solar Greenhouses (UHESG) to Conventional Solar Greenhouses (CSG). The 1980s-era researchers document greater than 50% improvement in yields (in both weight and money value) for UHESG over CSG.

The English in the report is a bit awkward and laden with engineer-ese, but there are plenty of great ideas for those of us who have uncomfortably cold winters.

[Post Script - Latitude isnt the only story. The hardiness zone in Shenyang is between 4 and 5, while the hardiness zone of latitudinal twin Plymouth is an ocean-warmed 6. Due to the Gulf Stream, London enjoys a hardiness zone of 9, though it is almost 10 degrees further north than either Shenyang or Plymouth. Id have to travel south to Florida to get to a hardiness zone of 9!]

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Ten Calories Of Energy To Produce One Calorie Of Food

I just read the article  "The Permaculture Solution – an Interview with Warren Brush". It said "Estimates are that the modern agriculture system uses ten calories of energy to produce one calorie of food."

Fearing that I too may be growing negative net energy food. I immediately looked at the energy costs involved with my soil-less gardens. My hydroponic pump uses 160 watts-hours per day or 137.6 KCal or about 576 KJ/day.   Chris Carr was kind enough to remind me that nutritional calories (KCal) are equal to 1000 chemistry calories (cal).    A chemist would probably use Joules and Kilo-Joules (KJ) rather than KCal.   But the we think of food in terms of KCalories rather than Joules, so Ill keep it in KCal also known as large calories as much as I can.  There were other errors in my first draft,  so heres the rewrite.  Many of my calculations will be done using the Energy and Work Unit Conversion at unit-conversion.info/energy.html. 

I did some research and found a daily harvest of 8lbs of lettuce and 100lbs of tomatoes to be respectable averages for a 100sf garden. So I will be using those figures throughout.
Just for grins lets say you irrigate 100 square feet of garden with 10 gallons per day, and you are pumping water from lets say 100 feet below the surface. 

To calculate the power used to pump 10 gallons per minute 100

P_whp = q h sg / 3960

where

P_whp = water horsepower (hp)
q = flow (gal/min)    = (10)
h = head (ft)              = (100)
sg = specific gravity = (1)

P_whp = 10x100/3960 = .2525whp = 0.04497210699688 KCal/sec
This could also be expressed as 188.2892175745  J/sec which is the definition of a Watt.

If you are following along and checking my math you can use the Power Unit Conversion to find the Power.
Power and Energy are different.  Energy is what is delivered and Power is the rate at which it is delivered.
In the above example we deliver 188 Watts for 10 minutes or 31.38 Watt-Hours



We pump for 10 minute so
0.04497210699688 KCal/s  x  600sec = 26.9 KCal
So how many lbs of vegetables would you need to produce 26.9 KCal
Lettuce is 67.37 KCal per lb so you would need 26.9/67.37 = 0.40 lbs of lettuce per day from your 100 sq ft garden. If you harvest 8lbs / day the net gain is 19.97 times
Tomato is 80 KCal per lb so you would need 26.9/80 = 0.34 lbs of tomatoes per day from your 100 sq ft garden  If you harvest 100lbs / day the net gain is 296 times

Below is a list of common vegetables which I got from http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_in_vegetables.htm


Lets put this in perspective of a soil-less aquaponic or hydroponic system:
Lets say you use a 20 watt pump 5 hours a day.
    Thats 20 watt-hours x 5 hours/day = 100 Watt-Hours / day  (W-Hr/day)
    Each W-Hr is equal to 0.859845227859  KCal so you spend about 86.0 KCal to pump water each day.

If you grow 8 lbs of lettuce per day on your 100 sq ft aquaponics garden,
8lb/day x 67368 cal/lb = 538944 cal/day or  ,  538.944Kcal/day

You would spend 86.0 KCal to pump water to produce 538.944 KCal of lettuce.
A return of over 6.27 to 1.  Not quite 19.97 times like soil gardening but pretty good!



How about tomatoes...
Lets say you grow 100 lbs of tomatoes per day in your 100 sq ft garden.   
Let also say you use the same amount of electricity - (86.0 KCal/day).
100 lb/day x 80 KCal/lb = 8000 calories/day
So you would spend 86.0 KCal/day to produce 8000 KCal of tomatoes.
A return of over 92 to 1.  Soil gardening was 296 but this is not bad!

Compared to soil gardening the power efficiency is not as good, but water is also a commodity worth preserving and my guess is any of the soil-less methods will beat soil based gardening several times over.   It gets pretty complicated if you consider that some of the water applied to soil returns to the aquifer but ponics are definitely more efficient with water.  

Back to my hydroponic system which consumes 137.6 KCal per day.  It would need to produce 1.72 lbs of tomatoes per day.  But this is just the power used to move water.  Warren Brush was including the power used to make fertilizers, mine, and apply nutrients, and maintain the crop from start to finish.  Thats beyond the data available to me, but at least it still looks like a positive net gain whether you are gardening with soil or without and probably far better than the modern agriculture system using ten calories of energy to produce one calorie of food.

Aquaponics has a side benefit of fish protein which I have not included, but the energy used to make fish food should be considered.  Bioponics on the other hand is free of any further input save iron and magnesium which is also required in aquaponics.


Ill admit this article was difficult for me,  I feel like I have dyslexia where it comes to keeping units straight.  If you find any errors I will correct them, but to my best knowledge I have presented this correctly.

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Water Storage

As water becomes more difficult to obtain we are going to be forced into looking for better solutions.
This is a section of a modular water wall.

I did a quick search and others are also thinking along these lines and some of the walls are very decorative.  The idea of free or cheap drums is admirable but they are not large enough nor are they aesthetic.
 
Its time to think outside the box.  What about large reservoirs of water under our houses or hidden within our walls which would also be used to moderate temperature with its thermo-mass.

I used to live in a very old house in downtown Tucson.  The walls were built of adobe and they were nearly 3 feet thick.  The hot Tucson summers were quite bearable due to the thermo-mass of these walls even though I had no air conditioning.

If we were to build houses like this our energy and water consumption would both drop.  A stucco finish would make the walls look like any other house except for thick walls, and the comfort would be amazing.  This water could be collected during the rainy season and used later in the hot dry summer months to grow food and ensure a beautiful cooling landscape.

.
A family of five uses  about 1 acre foot (about 325,000 gallons) or (1225 m³) of water a year.  So saving water from your roof top may only make a small difference, but small differences add up.   Right now it costs about $1000 to process that much water from waste water or to build a new reservoir.  

Desalination has been done in other parts of the world and California is going to build a desalination plant in San Diego capable of 50 million gallons (189000 m³) a day.  But the cost is probably going to be twice the cost we are used to.  There are also concerns that the plant will kill fish, but efforts are being incorporated that should solve this problem.

In total fifteen desalination projects using reverse osmosis are proposed along the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay.  In the past many other desalination plants have been closed due to the high cost of operation.  The plant will use an enormous amount of energy -- about 38 megawatts, enough to power 28,500 homes.  
The efficiency works out to be about 3 kWh for 1 m³or 88 gallons / kWh fresh water.  Sounds like a lot of water, but the reality is this will only provide about 7 percent of the total water needs of San Diego County.   

Another problem I see is that this is going to be privately owned.  I would prefer to see communities own their own water source.

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Buying Healthy Food

Buying healthy food is becoming quite a challenge.  It may surprise you to know that even baking powder can contain GMO.  At the bottom is a list of ingredients to be wary of from
http://responsibletechnology.org/ShoppingTips-2013.pdf?key=35730635
 
Studies in cell research have demonstrated the mechanism by which micro RNA from genetically engineered foods may alter organ function in humans.  This means that these studies have found that micro RNA can attach to the receptor sites of our DNA!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3351922/

Several stores have good reputations for selling Non-GMO.  Whole Foods and Costco should be praised for their efforts.  But just because the package says Organic you may still be buying GM food.  This is because some foods come from China where there is no testing.  But in an exploratory fashion, Whole Foods Store goes the extra step by testing those foods!

Im have mostly negative feelings about buying seeds from Seminis because even though they claim to sell Non-GMO seeds they are a subsidiary of Monsanto.  My preference is to avoid putting any money in Monsantos pockets.  On the other hand if Seminis does well it may wake Monsanto to the fact that we prefer not to be poisoned.  Imagine that! 

Another reason to avoid buying from corporations like Seminis is they sell hybrid seeds.  These seeds are protected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or by the USDA’s Plant Variety Protection Office.  This means you can not and would not want to use the offspring seeds from your crop. While you may not plan to use the seeds you are still supporting world wide ownership of our food supply when you buy from a company that restricts further use of the seeds. Buying seeds from a company such as Redwood Seed Company  ensures the seed you plant are open pollinated (OP) so you too can save your own seeds.   Redwood encourages their customers to save seeds and even goes so far as to offer free classes about how to do it!  I like people who share and would prefer to see them excell because of their fearless trust in mankind and their product.

So heres the list.  Some of these may sound kinda strange.  Like baking powder.  I never knew it has corn starch in it.  As you can see GM comes in many products you might never suspect.  Right near the top is aspartame.  It contains phenylalanine which may be manufactured with the aid of genetically modified micro-organisms (escherichia coli). This process has been used industrially in the USA for many years.

Another wake up call about ascorbic acid – it is synthesized from corn syrup. - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/is-your-vitamin-c-the-real-deal-or-a-gmo-wannabe/#sthash.j4uUQjaA.dpuf

Another wake up call is ascorbic acid.  I never would have guessed it is synthesized from corn syrup.  The problem with this unnatural Vitamin C is that is not discriminatory in its anti-microbial abilities as it also wipes out good bacteria or probiotics in the gut.  Whole foods based vitamin C does not harm beneficial intestinal bacteria in the same way as synthetic vitamin C does.

There are so many things that weve been lead to believe are good for us.  Well they may be, but if they are the product of GM, then we really need to know.  Would you have questioned vitamin B12, vitamin E, isoflavones or lysine? 

Another wake up call about ascorbic acid – it is synthesized from corn syrup. - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/is-your-vitamin-c-the-real-deal-or-a-gmo-wannabe/#sthash.j4uUQjaA.dpuf

  ascorbic acid (vit C) Aspartame
 (also called
 AminoSweet®, NutraS-weet®,
 Equal Spoonful®,
 Canderel®,
 BeneVia®, E951)
 baking powder
 canola oil
 (rapeseed oil)
 caramel color
 cellulose
 citric acid
 cobalamin (vit B12)
 colorose
 condensed milk
 confectioners sugar
 corn flour
 corn masa
 corn meal
 corn oil
 corn sugar
 corn syrup
 cornstarch
 cottonseed oil
 cyclodextrin
 cystein
 dextrin
 dextrose
 diacetyl
 diglyceride
 erythritol
 Equal
 food starch
 fructose (any form)
 glucose
 glutamate
 glutamic acid
 glycerides
 glycerin
 glycerol
 glycerol monooleate
 glycine
 hemicellulose
 high fructose corn syrup
 (HFCS)
 hydrogenated starch
 hydrolyzed vegetable
 protein
 inositol
 inverse syrup
 inversol
 invert sugar
 isoflavones
 lactic acid
 lecithin
 leucine
 lysine
 malitol
 malt
 malt syrup
 malt
 extract
 maltodextrin
 maltose
 mannitol
 methylcellulose
 milk powder
 milo starch
 modified food starch
 modified starch
 mono and diglycerides
 monosodium
 glutamate (MSG)
 Nutrasweet
 oleic acid
 Phenylalanine
 phytic acid
 protein isolate
 shoyu
 sorbitol
 soy flour
 soy isolates
 soy lecithin
 soy milk
 soy oil
 soy protein
 soy protein isolate
 soy sauce
 starch
 stearic acid
 sugar (unless cane sugar)
 tamari
 tempeh
 teriyaki marinades
 textured
 vegetable
 protein
 threonine
 tocopherols (vit E)
 tofu
 trehalose
 triglyceride
 vegetable fat
 vegetable oil
 vitamin B12
 vitamin E
 whey
 whey powder
 xanthan
 gum
 Popcorn is NOT GM

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Fish Food

For fingerlings 

1/16" 50% protein pellets from Arthur Aquatics CLICK HERE

For your larger fish

I discovered my local Tractor Supply does not carry the brands listed on their web site.
What I ended up buying is Purina Game Fish Chow.
Its 20 pounds for $12.99 - 65 cents per pound

Guaranteed Analysis
Crude Protein, not less than 32.0%
Crude Fat, not less than 3.0%
Crude Fiber, not more than 6.0%
Phosphorus (P), not less than 0.8%

Supposedly there is a mix of pellet sizes, but I did not find much difference. Most are about 3/16" and I ended up putting it through a blender so that my 4" fish would be able to eat it.

Below are the products listed at the web site.
These fish foods list for less then 75 cents a pound. 
 
Catfish Diet - Crude Protein (min.) 32.00%, Crude Fate (min.) 4.00%, Crude Fiber (max.) 7.00%.
Trophy Fish Feed - 36% protein
Farm Pond Diet - Crude Protein (min.) 36.00%, Crude Fat (min.) 5.00% and Crude Fiber (max.) 6.00%

Product Comparison

 

	506005599	107773399	506006399
PRICE	$17.99	$12.99	$12.99
PURCHASE OPTION	Available in-store only. Please check your local Tractor Supply Company store.	Available in-store only. Please check your local Tractor Supply Company store.	Available in-store only. Please check your local Tractor Supply Company store.
NAME	Nutri Source® Catfish Diet Floating Fish Food, 50 lb.	Sportsmans Choice® TrophyFish™ Feed	Nutri Source® Farm Pond Diet Floating Fish Food, 20 lb.
TYPE	N/A	Nugget	Mixed-Particle
BRAND	Nutri Source®	Sportsmans Choice®	Nutri Source®
LIFE STAGE	Adult	Any	All
ANIMAL TYPE	Catfish	Fish	Fish
PACKAGE SIZE	50 lb.	25 lb.	20 lb.

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