Comments on: Glenn Beck advertiser sells "survival seeds" for apocalyptic agriculture

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Antinous, where are you. Nobody laughed at my gay joke.

By: Marshall

Marshall — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why do I love that they’re keeping their website old school, with the whole narrow page, long ass scroll design. Somehow the fact that online ordering is the third option listed after ordering by phone and snail mail kind of completes the whole theme.

By: Felton

Felton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Every seed is sacred/Every seed is great/If a seed is wasted/God gets quite irate.”

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I saw it but was elbow deep in a spammer nest. Funnily enough, you can’t always tell whether they catch seed or pitch seeds.

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is rich: The Survival Seed Bank is ranked lowest in a review of seed bank offerings, has clueless sales help, and makes nonsensical claims about seed preservation:

http://seedbankscam.com/seed-bank-comparisons.html

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Damn! And I just began exposing myself to a fictional version of this kind of horror through reading The Windup Girl, written by some (supposedly) liberal-leaning author (don’t know for sure, exactly).

Who owns the heirloom seed argument, anyway? It’s one of those issues that straddles ideological groups.

“Wait — we agree with one another? Alright, one of us will have to change our minds and oppose this stuff. Who’s it gonna be?”

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We’re too busy collecting as much seed as possible to be bothered with gay jokes.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It tastes pretty good when it’s immature, but as I recall from my childhood, it tastes horrid when mature.

By: gollux

gollux — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

’cause not everyone believes in the God Almighty Hoovering of the rapture. Some are more realistic in figuring they’re gonna have to tough it out like all other natural disasters that befall earth dwellers. The God Almighty Hoovering is a rather late blooming belief among the born again set that also bought heavily into Prosperity Gospel. They’re the privileged, so they don’t have to sweat it out like the rest of us.

By: Avram / Moderator

Avram / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Just don’t spill it on the ground. God hates that!

By: gollux

gollux — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To take the analogy a little bit further, since I’ve seen too many survivalists come and go in our little piece of Dog’s country.

The ants work hard at preparing for the coming winter, like they always have…

And then comes in the Grasshopper with a bunch of money, buys himself a plot of land and brags how he has all these seeds in jars that can be planted in case of unnatural disaster while he sits back and defends his plot with his guns. Course, he never bothers dirtying his hands with planting those seeds and actually learning how to grow stuff. After while his money kind of peters out and he leaves. And still sitting on the shelves are those poor little jars of “Survival Seeds”, dried up and impotent.

Meanwhile the ants who were gardening before, are still gardening and growing their food, are shuddering against the day when the next Grasshopper comes along bragging about his “Survival Seeds”, his guns and how the next unnatural disaster is gonna wipe out all but the selected few who are determined to “Survive”…

By: Broken Window

Broken Window — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Foods shortages are nothing new in financial crisis, but an inevitable outcome from price controls. Last time dollar was heavily inflated in 70′s, Nixon ordered price controls for years, resulting lines and shortages for gasoline, food items and even for toiletpaper. Before that in the 1933, FDR made shortage by ordering millions of acers of crops to be destroyed and millions of livestock to be butchered, because shortage was hoped to prevent prices from falling. Of course this only expanded the depression.

US has no way of paying it’s debt, it can only try to inflate dollar even further in vain. I doubt Obama will rise taxes and cut spending. The industrialized agriculture is also dependent of the price and availability of energy, mainly oil and fertilizers, that seeing falling production and growing demand from Asia, pushing price in dollars even higher. There is no reason to think Obama wouldn’t try to prevent rising prices by price controls. As I understand, Obama is already trying to control prices of the medical insurance. It’s not a big step to control food, when the bubble finally bursts.

Of course Beck or Survival Seeds are propably not the best sources for help in this situation, but I suggest those of middle and low income to think about how much they really need to consume, and could they be more selfreliant.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Um, the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ seed banks there link to what I am fairly sure is the same company. I think you’ve been had.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m late to the party, but I was going to reply along the lines of “You pegged Glenn Beck? That’s epic.”

By: entheo

entheo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Xeni, that’s because your joke was very corn-y.

By: andreinla

andreinla — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fear sells. And Monsanto aims to “own the rights on” and sell non-self-reproducible forms of every possible crop known to humanity.

$149 is worth it. Look at that child!

By: DaughterNumberThree

DaughterNumberThree — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Funny how their promo copy says “Remember, non-hybrid seeds can be grown practically anywhere and have the ability to assimilate mineral and trace elements from the soil that man made plants just don’t seem to have. That’s because they were created by God as we read in Genesis” — when what they’re selling are varieties developed by farmers over the years. God didn’t make cabbage, people did.

By: jasonq

jasonq — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Eh, I dunno about yellow dent in particular, but field corn is in fact edible fresh (though not as tasty as sweet corn), plus it’s able to be dried and ground for cornmeal, etc. Sweet corn varieties, however, are not terribly useful beyond fresh eating, unless you can or freeze them (quite easily done of course).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, this could be a great merged marketing opportunity for the NRA! You know you will want to protect those valuable (pricey) seeds/plants once the great social demise is underway!

Better stock up on some crisis soil builder while yer at it…

By: Sorcerer Mickey

Sorcerer Mickey — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I guess that if Glenn Beck sells enough packets of seeds, he will earn a bicycle or a catcher’s mitt. (Or maybe a free week of rehab?)

By: dculberson

dculberson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Liberal lies!! There was cabbage on creation day!

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That’s funny, I pegged Glenn Beck as a catcher, too.

By: zikzak

zikzak — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Post-apocalyptic gardens are appealing for the same reason post-apocalyptic armories are: they give us the feeling that we could “go it alone”, being independent and self-sufficient when the rest of the world collapses into chaos.

And they’re both lies for the same reason: we depend on our community not to kill us, and no amount of self-sufficiency can save us from a community that wants to kill us. Neither bullets and diesel nor hippy gardens and herbal medicine can keep a family alive in the face of large organized groups of people bent on murder, taking your shit, or doing anything else that makes survival impossible.

Once the society you live in includes an organized group that wants to kill you (be it government, religious, tribal, military, or a good old fashioned mob), and there’s no stronger group organized to suppress it, the game is already lost.

By: mgfarrelly

mgfarrelly — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So Glenn Beck is now hawking magic beans to the people?

I think this story ends with an angry giant waking up. And a golden goose. And other trite metaphors.

Seriously, the notion of the panicked residents of, as Roger Ebert perfectly coined it, Beckistan, digging up their chemically leached suburban backyards when “THE HOUR” strikes and trying to grow enough corn to keep the family fed is…sad.

By: toolbag

toolbag — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“What will your family eat when the grocery store shelves are empty?” Duh! This is America, no one is going to WAIT for vegetables to grow. Look, we’re about the laziest, most impatient culture on Earth, let’s just all plan on foraging for canned goods for a few weeks and then skip straight to the cannibalism, okay?

By: grimc

grimc — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Are kitten and puppy seeds included in the base package?

By: thequickbrownfox

thequickbrownfox — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, they are shipped in a canister which “…Can Be Buried To Avoid Confiscation.”

Maybe better termed “apoplectic agriculture”.

By: Felton

Felton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cabbage Patch Kids have gotten pretty realistic.

By: ian71

ian71 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m with toolbag (#8). My answer is “the weak and the slow.”
PREDICTION: Zombies of the apocalypse won’t be The Crazies, they’ll be The Hungries!

A wise man once said:
“right there’s another one, don’t you frown,
Chew the meat and hold it down,
It’s a tale they won’t believe,
When I get down to Hobart town.”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Food is a recurring cost. I started growing espaliered dwarf fruit trees five years ago, and have been expanding my food production annually. I also have helped to establish a gardening program at our local Middle School, as well as helping several neighbors establish gardens. The price of oil will only go up from this point forward, so it would benefit everyone to think more about the food we eat and it’s source. I believe within the next decade, organic food will be cheaper that Big Agra food. The lack of FDA inspectors is a large part of why we have these huge food recalls along with a mass distribution model which is unsustainable. We need to get serious about decentralizing food and energy production. You don’t have to do everything at once, start by planting a favorite fruit tree that will grow in your area. Grow a couple of tomato plants, or some salad greens. You can add foods to grow as you become more familiar with the process. Just start with foods you like that will grow in your area. Survival seeds don’t come with the knowledge and experience to grow straight from the box. They also are not necessarily the varieties that you like to eat, or will grow in you climate or soil conditions. My recommended seed source is http://www.gourmetseed.com