By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

Our neighbor dairy farmers are still hurting from low milk prices, and as it turns out, the hurt is worldwide.

News from Europe is that dairy farmers there are in the worst shape they’ve been in since after World War II. Even the famous subsidies European dairy farmers receive — much more than the price supports U.S. milk producers get — haven’t been enough to keep them going.

The main problem is that the recession, abroad as well as here, has crimped the milk market, and prices have gone down accordingly. We have even seen dairy prices dropping in stores, which doesn’t always happen when farm-gate milk prices go down.
But there is another problem, and dairy farmers have largely themselves to blame. It is this: When prices go up, as they did in 2007, dairy producers scramble to build herds in hope of cashing in.

Nationwide, tens of thousands of milk cows are added to herds as quickly as possible to take advantage of the rising milk prices. Then, as supplies go up, the prices drop, as they always do. The herds have to be thinned, usually at a loss, to reduce the milk supply so milk prices will go back up.

That has been the state of the dairy industry since the 1940s, when dairy farms started getting bigger to take advantage of automated milking, advanced feeding and scientific breeding. Dairy operators of today are for the most part very large operations. In our county, we have dairies of 5,000 cows or more, when before World War II, a 50-cow herd would have been considered big-time. Today, a 50-cow herd is rare, almost a hobby, or a niche dairy.

It might be counter-intuitive to the modern and often heavily indebted dairy operator to consider this, but maybe expanding in times of high prices is not a good strategy, given the cyclical nature of the U.S. and world milk markets.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

A quick drive through the valley yesterday brought home to me what a beautiful and bountiful place it is in which we live.

You can see raisins lying row upon row in paper trays, and a motorist knows if he stopped alongside the road and trespassed on the farmer’s land (don’t do it — just dream about it) those raisins would be like candy.

A farmer friend gave me sack full of raisins right out of a tray a couple of years ago, and I brought them back to the newspaper office, and I couldn’t believe how good they were. Brush the dust off, pull the stems and taste the sweetness and concentrated flavor of the grape.

Our farmers send their raisins to processors, who in turn package them and send them all over the country — and they are a pretty good product. But even though those raisins are flavorful when they come out of a package, they will never be as good as they are right from the tray.

The wine grapes, meanwhile, are bursting with flavor, ready to give up their delicious juices to the magical, mystical processes that preserve them as wine. I say magical and mystical because, even though winemaking has been reduced pretty much to a science, there are those who can make good wine and those who can’t, and I think the difference has to be at least a little magic.

I used to try to make wine at home, and I followed the directions to the letter, and I almost had to pay people to drink it. I did not have the magic, but the winemakers of this little patch of paradise in which we live certainly do.

The almonds, walnuts and pistachios, so coveted for their flavor, nutrition and versatility, are coming off the trees and heading for the nation’s tables. Soon the olives will follow. The silage corn is ready for harvest, to make milk for our dairies. Cotton will soon be picked.

We are so blessed.

This is a perfect time to learn, and to teach a good lesson to family. People are losing jobs and homes, and having to learn to budget. This can be a good lesson. I’m 70 years old, so I already know this lesson, and so do my three sons.

But they are having to re-think some of the ways they are parenting today. They need to teach their kids to pinch pennies. This is the most important time to teach them.

If I had a kid who wanted to go to college, I’d tell him stay out of college for this year. Try to get a job between high school and college, to party and hope he or she will meet someone who can support them — male or female. It’s not just women who look for men with money. Men look, too.

If someone has to take a job at a fast-food place or whatever, that person can learn how to budget and learn what real life is all about.

They should never have a credit card unless they will pay it off each month. It’s better to pay cash, and that teaches you a lot. They can look at friends who have gotten themselves in financial trouble and thank God they did better. If they are borrowing money to go to school, they need to think about how much money they’d have to make to pay their education bill when they get out of college.

It would be interesting to see how many college students get jobs working for those who chose not to go to college and just worked hard and climbed the ladder or opened their own businesses. I think too many kids go to college who are just getting any kind of a degree, and not a specific one that you need to have to get that particular job.

Responsibility, dedication, personality and respect for an employer are the most important things you can learn. I have a ninth grade education and at the age of 31 I helped open a business and a second one 22 years later. Both businesses are still open, but operated by our children. They belong to them now.

J. Willingham,
Madera

All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content or space limitations some comments may not be published. More than one comment from the same person during the same week will normally not be published. Please limit calls to two minutes or less.

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A man agreed with last week’s caller concerning car washes to raise funds for funerals. “Get a clue,” he said. “Take a look. Invest in a life insurance (policy) for your kids instead of asking others to do so. It is your responsibility. You shouldn’t be on a corner raising money through a car wash to bury your loved one.”

A man commented on a caller’s confusion about municipal golf course layoffs. He said, “They got laid off because they got an independent contractor to do the job a lot cheaper. They are doing a lot better job in creating more jobs for another group of guys. It also saved the city some money so other people wouldn’t get laid off.”

A man commented on what he said was “mismanagement” by the City of Madera Public Works Department. “The street sweeper is running today, Tuesday, their normal day,” he said. “However, yesterday being a holiday, the trash wasn’t picked up. So all the cans are in the street making it virtually impossible for the street sweeper to do his job. Wouldn’t you think somebody would have noticed this on the calendar in the Public Works Department.”

“To the Madera Planning Commission,” said a woman, “stop picking on the Hispanic places of businesses. First it was the color of the stores. Now it’s the display on their windows. These people pay their rent, they pay taxes, and these stores are not owned by the county. It is a time when we have graffiti all over town. That’s where new laws should be applied.”

A local football lady fan asked, “Whose idea was it to place the Madera High Band in front of the booster seats and the announcer’s booth? I think it’s great for our band to play and support our teams. But they are naturally full out. They should be seated off to the side. We can still hear them while enjoying the booster seats and hear the announcer. No wonder the booster section was almost empty. I know my family won’t be buying anymore booster seats.”

A woman said, “It was nice to see the Blue Man back in the paper on Monday (yesterday). I hope he gets his health problems fixed and returns to Madera and his girlfriend. I enjoy keeping up with him since your paper made him famous and put Madera on the map.”

A lady commented on a Sunday night concert in Town and Country Park. “What a wonderful evening of food and music,” she said. “Mr. Emo greeted me with his usual smile and tip of his hat and helped me and others carry their plates to where they were sitting. He later thanked the crowd on behalf of the parks department. He and his crew and the arts council served a delicious meal, and only $5. I can hardly wait for next year.”

An online visitor, “Marlena,” wrote a message to the late Krista-Rae Pike. “Krista, I miss you so much. You were one of the first people I met when I moved to Madera and you welcomed me with open arms … You were one of my closest friends and I loved you like a sister and I always will. I’ll be seeing you again up there.”

Another Internet reader, “Alex,” commented on a previous Red Line message about the use of the skate park compared to the horseshoe pits. “Those horseshoe pits get used every once in a while,” he wrote, “but that skate park gets used every day, and when I take my son to skate and pick him up, there are usually eight to 15 kids there. That’s eight to 15 kids off the streets, not getting into trouble.”

A third guest of our Red Line Web site, “Jessie,” wrote, “What on earth is it going to take for people to slow down while driving through town? Although people may try to keep their pets contained, accidents do happen and dogs and cats can escape, freak out because they don’t know where they are, and run out into the street in front of on coming traffic.”

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Thank you for your comments. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by visiting maderatribuneredline.com.

Thursday I went to the Water Advisory Commission meeting. It proved to be rather interesting.
Item F was a presentation on the San Joaquin River Restoration project.

If you look up unattainable money pit in any encyclopedia you may find this link:
www.restoresjr.net.

As the Web site opens you should hear the sound of a giant toilet flushing as your tax dollars and our water flow down the river.

Money is shown in hundreds of millions of dollars and that is what they have set aside for it. I would imagine by the time we do all of the usual cost overruns it will reach the billions of dollars.

We could haul each salmon up to Friant Dam in a limo and put them up in a four star hotel for less money.

They realized we don’t have anywhere close to enough water so they are making the Central Valley into a giant koi pond, with recirculation pumps.

I am not kidding. We will put the water into the river, then take it back out as it gets to the delta, and pump it back up to Madera again.

When you consider we are being required to do all kinds of things to conserve energy, it seems a bit counterproductive.

Dale Drozen,
Coarsegold

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does, indeed, veto the last-minute energy bills passed by the Legislature before it adjourned, he will be doing us all a favor, at least for now. The legislation, which would require that a third of all California’s energy must come from renewable sources by the year 2020, may be setting goals which are could turn out to be not achievable, and therefore not enforceable without great cost.

It’s a little like the legislation which mandated that 10 percent of all cars sold in California by now were to be 100 percent electric. That didn’t happen. Maybe it should have, but most people weren’t willing to pony over the money it would have taken to make that mandate a reality.

Right now, relatively little of the state’s electricity comes from renewable resources, unless you count nuclear power.
Wind farms and solar farms show promise, but they are becoming ever more difficult to site because of the not-in-my-backyard reaction of potential neighbors, many of whom say they are environmentalists.

“Don’t put the solar collectors in the desert (where the sun shines) because the desert tortoise won’t have anyplace to crawl. Don’t put windmills on top of hills or at seashores (where the winds blow) because birds fly into them and they ruin the views,” these folks say.

The only way to come even close to the one-third requirement would be to buy the green energy from out of state, but the bill would have prohibited that, too.

So, the governor is going to seek to make these changes administratively for now, which may or may not work.

California’s need for energy is growing, and California is a good place for green-energy development. But the realities of energy development of any kind is that it is a slow and often unpredictable process. This legislation ignores that.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The 6.8 billion of us who live on this planet owe gratitude to Norman Borlaug, who died Saturday in Dallas at 95.

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he was a rock star among scientists, widely recognized as the founder of the “green revolution,” which improved agricultural yields throughout the world through the development and introduction of new crop varieties.

He is widely credited with preventing mass starvation, especially in third-world countries, by helping to more than double world food production.

“He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody that has done that much,” The Associated Press quoted a friend of Borlaug, Dr. Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University’s Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, as saying about Borlaug. “He made the world a better place — a much better place.”

At the end of World War II Borlaug began the work that would lead to the development of better wheat, rice and corn varieties. They were resistant to disease and produced more edible product. India, Pakistan, China, Mexico, Africa, and other countries were saved from famine when crops developed by Borlaug and the scientists who worked with him were introduced and used.

Of course, in the United States his crops and growing methods are widely used, lowering the cost of food as a proportion of income, and helping foster prosperity.

As head of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, he trained thousands of young scientists who went on to improve the lives of billions by making sure they had enough food.
Borlaug often said his work was not merely to grow better crops, but to do as much as he could to improve people’s lives by making sure they had enough to eat, so that other resources could be devoted to education, housing and other needs.

All of our lives are better because of Norman Borlaug.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

If you are wondering whether to go to the Madera District Fair this year, the answer is a resounding yes.

CEO Scott Sample, the fair board and the fair’s staff have been working hard the past few months to spruce up the fairgrounds, and their efforts have paid off.

Fresh paint and attention to cleanup details have resulted in what may be the nicest fairgrounds of similar-sized events in California. Landscaping is the best it has been in recent memory. The parking lots, although still not paved, have been carefully groomed and laid out with the result being a minimum of dust and a maximum of accessibility.

Lines of people move quickly and smoothly through the gates, even though all who enter are searched in order to keep all fairgoers safe. Like the attendants in th parking lots, the people at the gates know what they’re doing.

Even when crowds are filling the fairgrounds, it remains clean because an army of cleaners moves smoothly through the fairgrounds, keeping garbage cans from overflowing and picking up litter. Again, these are folks who know what they’re doing and who do it with a smile.

The Headline Stage is the best it has been, an excellent venue for the outdoor concerts it hosts. Improvements in lighting and sound quality are evident, and the concert-goers have responded by praising not only the quality of the entertainment, but also the effort that has been made to make their experience as enjoyable as possible.

The carnival has rides for everybody, from hair-raisers for the adventurous to kiddie-gentle for the little ones.

Besides the main concerts in the evening, events are scheduled throughout the day on the Chukchansi and Amphitheater stages, as well as in the exhibit halls.

Go the fair this weekend, A lot of people have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure you have a good time. Thanks to all of them for a great family event in our city.

I am living in Scotland and I am desperately trying to find living relatives in Madera County.

I have come up against a brick wall with my research into my grandfather’s brother’s family. Time is marching on, and the only name I have is getting old, she in fact may have died. I hope not.

If you can spare a few minutes to let me explain, I would be very grateful.

June Margaret Alexander was born in March 1924 in Toronto, but crossed into the states in 1947. Her grandfather died, and I found info that he was buried in Madera County in December 1948.

As he was in his late 70s, I am sure the whole family would have stayed together on arrival in California. They initially stayed with friends in Hermosa Beach.

June M. Alexander crossed with her father and mother, Norman and Eleanor Margaret Alexander (nee Bacon), both of them born in the UK.

June’s grandparents came, too. Alfred Pearce Bacon and his wife, Sarah Ellen Bacon (nee Thompson), both born in the UK. They were in their late 70s.

It is very possible June Margaret married, but finding her spouse is difficult in your state.

If you know of a fellow family historian that you could put me in contact with may be I could do some research in UK for them.
I am really stuck and I would love to know if I have living relatives in America; it would be a great excuse to come over and visit.

Muriel Armstrong,
alanearm AT bigpond DOT com

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

President Obama’s health care speech Wednesday was well delivered and well staged. He even had the advantage of a GOP congressman yelling out to call him a liar. That congressman, Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, has since apologized and the apology has been accepted, but his Democrat opponent already had raised some 5,000 new donations in less than a day from viewers angry over his outburst.

Aside from its bully pulpit demeanor, the speech allowed Obama to seize the initiative on health care change, at least for the moment.

It became a question of whose ox will get most chopped up by the changes, and Obama left no doubt that the GOP ox — aka the medical insurers — should be ground into hamburger and popped on the barbecue.

He also poked a bit at the Democrat ox — aka the plaintiff’s attorney lobby — and said maybe that ox should be put on less-fattening rations.

He was smart to focus on the insurers. There is little love out there in viewer land for those firms. And they are dumber than stumps when it comes to making their case.

These companies’ ad agencies are coming up with stories about how government will take over health care and send grandma down the road before her time, but not saying one word, publicly, about the important the roles the insurers play in health care. For every one person who has had a bad experience with health insurers, hundreds are alive today because health insurers did their jobs wisely and well. We just never hear about them.

Rising costs of health insurance are a huge issue, but among the big reasons for those cost increases are state and federal regulations that raise hospital rates.

Obama chose his targets wisely, and in so doing seized the initiative in the health care debate.