I thought this was an interesting invention.  I support any product that can make farmland more productive. This new, high-volume Rock Picker promises to delivers results.

Mel Aho, owner of a farm in central Minnesota, has developed the RP1000 Rock Picker, a machine that it is capable of efficiently picking large quantities of stone from tillable fields.  This past September, Mel's brother Mark "Merf" Aho operated the RP1000 in a field in Sebeka, Minnesota.  He picked 1,500 yards of stone from 55 acres, and did so in 65 machine hours.  During that time, the RP1000 loaded a dump truck more than 175 times with 8-yard loads of stone and debris.  The owner of the field, Eric Valentin, said afterward, "Thank-you! There are several times I thought that field was never going to be farmed."

It was one of Mel's own fields, a stony 160 acre tract that motivated him to design the new rock picker.  He got help from a friend, Perry Gilmour of Clark County, WA, to build the machine.  The effort has been worthwhile.  After picking the rocks from his field with the RP1000, Mel has been able to double the speeds at which he operates his planting and harvesting equipment.  Additionally, his equipment maintenance costs have dropped significantly due to the reduction in wear on his machinery.

Mel and Merf will be hosting a public demonstration of the RP1000 Rock Picker in the Hillview Management area near Sebeka, MN on April 30th and May 1st.  The machine is available for hire in 2010.  Visit http://www.therockpicker.com, or contact Merf Aho at (603) 365-7183 for details.

The RP1000 Rock Picker is protected by U.S. Patent 7,658,233 B1.

International patents are pending.

Visit http://www.therockpicker.com/video.aspx to see a video of the RP1000 Rock Picker operating in Eric's field.

Biographical summaries:

Mel Aho grew up on the family dairy farm in Hillview, Minnesota.  He is the originator of the RP1000 Rock Picker.  Mel continues to operate his farm in Minnesota while running his home building company in Vancouver, WA.

Mark "Merf" Aho grew up farming in Minnesota alongside his brother Mel.

After selling his New England-based steel erecting business, which he had run since 1983, Merf has taken up the task of bringing up the RP1000 to operate at its full potential.

Perry Gilmour is a 3rd generation farmer from the Willamette Valley.  His background is in specialty crops, so he is no stranger to the process of developing specialty equipment.

In America, we have long enjoyed the benefits of inexpensive foods such as hamburger and chicken. However, a lot of folks are waking up to the fact that these "cheap" foods have a lot of hidden expenses. Ultimately, we all pay these costs in some way.

Last week, I had a few things to say about corporate factory farms. Let me expand on some of that.

Yes, the fact that we enjoy low prices on meat products in the USA is due largely to these huge, corporate factory farms (and at the rate they are swallowing each other up, eventually, some transnational megalith is going to control it all, just like the game of Monopoly – which will not be a good thing). The advantage to this system is that it is able to operate on vast economies of scale. This is why it's still possible to buy hamburger at around a $1.29 a pound (in Japan or Europe, you'd pay the equivalent of $7 to $12 for that same pound).

That's the only advantage.

On the flip side, the massive corporate agriculture firms that run factory farms don't give a tinker's damn about the environment, the farmers they contract out to, the welfare of their livestock, food safety or public health. For these corporations, it's all about the bottom line and next quarter's P & L statement.

You've probably heard about how these poor animals are stuffed together by the thousands into small feedlots or tiny pens stacked one above the other, and shot full of hormones and antibiotics, and even mutilated in order force them to adapt. You probably know about the problem of massive amounts of manure that creeps into public water supplies. I won't go into that right now.

For now, let's talk about what corporate agriculture has done to the American farmer.

Whereas in the old days, the various components of raising beef were handled by different persons – one farmer raised feed corn, another raised the cows, were then sold to and slaughtered by a local butcher, where folks could buy the meat directly – today, one corporation controls every aspect of production. As a result, these corporations wield incredible power that is leveraged against the small, independent farmer.

At the same time, these corporations become less accountable for the harm they do. God help the farmer who contracts with one of these corporate giants; under the terms of these contracts, he's little more than an indentured servant. The corporation sets all the rules and internalizes all the profits, while the farmer is stuck assuming all the risks and shouldering all the expenses of caring for the animals, disposing of wastes and dead livestock and other overhead costs.

To add insult to injury, guess who benefits from all those taxpayer subsidies that certain politicians and talking heads on the radio love to complain about? Not me! Not the small farmer! Nope...it's ConAgra, Monsanto and ADM, whose K Street lobbyists are paid a lot of money to convince your member of Congress to tax YOU in order to keep THEM in business! Not only that, but because they are considered "agriculture" and not "industry," they are exempt from any sort of environmental or labor regulations. Laws intended to preserve the autonomy and freedom to operate of independent family ranches and farms now provide cover to huge operations that should be treated as the large industrial concerns that they are.

Stay tuned...we don't have to put up with it.

If you're a vegetarian because you just don't like the taste of meat, well, that's one thing. But if you have a moral issue, or believe that "meat is murder," there's a few things you should consider.

Before I go much further, let me say that I am no fan of "factory farming" and corporate commercial feedlots and slaughter houses. What these operations do to poor animals and the miserable conditions they are forced to live under is criminal and beyond cruelty. Nobody with a conscience should do business with them.  Nor to I think its a good thing to make meat – especially  beef – a main part of one's diet. Raising animals for meat is not a great use of land and resources; the acreage required to raise meat for one person could provide grains and legumes for seven.

That said, I don't think there is anything morally or physically wrong with having a meat meal on occasion. Even chimpanzees, who share 98% of our DNA and are primarily vegetarians, catch small animals to eat once in a while.

Humans have been eating meat since the Stone Age, and for a lot of First Nations, there wasn't much else (this is still true for people like the Inuit and Laplanders, who live in Arctic regions). For Plains Indians like the Arapaho, Pawnee, Sioux and Cheyenne, a close relative of our beef cattle – the American bison – was not only a primary source of food, but clothing and shelter as well.

For most people in the world however, beef was an occasional treat, because it took a lot of land to raise it. Pigs, sheep and goats were more common, since they didn't require so much acreage, but even these were not eaten every day; the latter two were used mainly to produce milk and cheese.

That all changed about 450 years ago.

What happened? The Spaniards started arriving in droves, that's what. Colonizing and claiming vast tracts of land from South America up into what's now most of the western U.S., they found for the first time enough room to raise all the beef cattle they wanted. The Spanish pretty much invented the modern beef industry, and this shows up in the language with words such as "ranch" (ranchero) and "buccaroo" (vaquero).

Of course, the world was a whole lot less crowded back then.

Today, recognizing that factory farming is inhumane and cruel, an increasing number of ranches are going with the "free range" method of raising cattle. This is much kinder to the animals while they're alive, and when it's time to slaughter and butcher them, this is done as quickly and painlessly as possible. It spells the end of 98c a pound hamburger, of course – raising beef this way is more labor intensive and therefore more expensive.

It seems like more and more people are gravitating toward this alternative however, and are willing to pay more for it – even if it means a return to eating beef only on occasion. Ranchers who adapt and meet the demands of the marketplace will find that raising beef animals can be just as profitable – if not quite as scalable – as the old ways.

I got a very interesting question the other day: "If they don't use all the pesticides and fertilizers, why are organic foods  so much more expensive than the others?"

The simple answer: supply and demand. The fact is that there is simply a lot less certified organic food produced than the stuff that is grown in the more standard ways.

Note the word "certified." In order to earn the "certified organic" label, a farmer has to go through a lot of paperwork, keep a whole lot of records, and submit to a lot of inspections. It's almost more trouble than its worth, especially when you consider that producing certified organic food is extremely labor intensive.

Now, there is an increasing debate over which is better: eating organic foods, or eating foods grown locally and seasonally with conventional methods?

If you are concerned about the overall health of the planet – not to mention national security – this is a no-brainer. Chances are that the organic grapes you served at your party last night in your home in Montana came all the way from Mexico. Now, supporting Mexico's growing organic food industry (currently located primarily on the Baja Peninsula) is a fine thing, but think about how much oil was used to transport those grapes over 2,000 miles – oil that comes mostly from countries that are not good friends of the U.S.A.

On the other hand, there's that niggling question about all those pesticides that are sprayed on conventionally-grown produce, which is more like to happen when you're buying local. One of the biggest concerns is carcinogenicity – but the fact is that when it comes to pesticides, the jury is still out. There is a lot we don't know in this area. If we did – if it could be proved conclusively and scientifically that the common pesticides used on conventionally-grown produce in fact did cause cancer, I suspect everyone would be charging toward the organic section.

The fact is however that this has not been proven. Meanwhile, if we weren't doing something about the pest problem, relatively little of what we are growing would make it to market (remember all those stories in the Old Testament about pestilence and famines?)

I'm not saying that pesticides are necessarily good for you (and you should be washing your produce before eating in any event), but neither is starving to death.

Here is something else to think about: back in Biblical times, when virtually all food was "organic" (because farmers in those days didn't have pesticides and chemical fertilizers), the average human lifespan was about 45 years. King David, who reportedly died at 70, was ancient by the standards of those days.

On the other hand, it's not unusual for people in America to live well into their 80s and 90s these days. Heck, that's a big improvement just over a century ago. And I'm willing to bet that today's octogenarians didn't confine themselves to eating organic. (On the other hand, Ewell Gibbons, a leading proponent of "natural" foods back in the 1970s, dropped dead at age sixty.)

The fact is, human longevity is a complex issue – and probably has less to do with whether or not you eat organic than you think.