Friday, August 7, 2026

Turning away our yield

A friend and I went to lunch at a diner yesterday because she had a hankering for a BLT. I didn’t want to tell her, but what with the (fatal) cyclospora outbreak, recalls of pork products and salmonella being found on tomatoes, her sandwich might just be a couple of slices of bread with a pickle on the side.

Unless there’ve been issues with pickles lately.

(In the end, she had the brownie sundae. Good choice.)

Between the tariffs and insane Iran war driving up costs, mass deportations of migrants depleting the workforce in the fields and processing plants, and tossing away regulations and oversight on safety standards, our once-vaunted food supply chain has seen some things. That’s on top of human-induced climate change playing havoc with agricultural cycles.

Yay, us.

So today’s earworm is Nanci Griffith’s “Trouble in the Fields”. She's more optimistic about the outcome, but then she wrote it in the 90s. Bon appétit.


 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

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