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The World Is Studded With Artificial Mountains – Atlas Obscura

The World Is Studded With Artificial Mountains – Atlas Obscura

From atop the jagged mountain, cars, people, and houses appear as tiny versions of themselves, the noise of their day to day activity muted so high in the air. Scrubby vegetation grows from cracks in the rock, soaking up the sun and rustling in the slight breeze. Birds caw as they alight at the top of a slope, observing the expanse below them.

The mountain is just another part of the topography to those that live near it, but it is not a natural part of the landscape. The mountain is completely artificial, a colossus formed not by eons of geologic change but the vigor of industrial concrete production. Artificial mountains have sprung up all over the world, the result of hellish manufacturing processes, piled construction and mining waste, or in some cases built deliberately to add a humongous new feature to the horizon.

A Farmer’s First Foray into Hemp

A Farmer’s First Foray into Hemp

4/15/2020 by Field Work

Web player: https://podplayer.net/?id=102128754
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/APM_Fieldwork/play.publicradio.org/itunes/o/the_water_main/field_work/2020/04/15/fieldwork_20200415_6_128.mp3

Growing hemp was illegal in the U.S. for decades. But recent changes in federal law have opened the door to growing the crop. So as farmers across the country begin to experiment with hemp, hosts Zach Johnson and Mitchell Hora decide to learn more about commercial hemp production. In October, Mitchell visited Scott Thellman at Juniper Hill Farms in Kansas to hear about his first stab at growing industrial hemp. They talk sourcing seeds, keeping hemp under legal THC limits, harvesting with chainsaws, and much more.

I’ve heard a lot about hemp farming in the past but didn’t know much about it. Apparently it’s a good thing for farmers to live in a state that also has a recreational system in case the hemp comes in too hot. Also, since hemp has become federally legal the growers have greatly expanded while the market have grown more slowly, leaving it hard to market some of the production. Definitely interesting interview.

Agriculture can be a bit of a misnomer 🌾

Agriculture can be a bit of a misnomer 🌾

Agriculture means field cultivation. Cultivating fields is a big part of farming but a lot of agriculture, is not field crops as much as grasses.

Grasses for pasture and hay, converted by rumens, especially beef cattle 🐮 into meat 🥩. A lot of areas aren’t really well suited for field crops and tillage due to slope and shallow soils but grow grass pretty darn well. Some corn silage 🌽 is a required for high performance Holstein dairy cattle but not so much for beef and other breeds.

You can see that well on the National Land Cover Dataset for New York. There are far more acres of pasture and hay (yellow) than cultivated crops (brown) even in many rural farming parts of the state. 🗺

Map: Oliverea Mapledale Trail