Writing - How would you know...

Vanadium and a Verbless Poem.

April 25, 2024April 24, 2024humanist55

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide trade in Vanadium 2022 was $38970 million and growing…

When starting to research each of the commodities in this A-Z Challenge, I have only had some preconceived idea of the stories or interesting facts about a few of the items – for the most part – a trip to Wikipedia is good starting point or seeking the answer to the above question on World Trading – but with Vanadium, I have been faced with a wall of chemistry. yes there is a discovery timeline – of course there is – and there is a naming story involving an ancient goddess but more than any other element, my overwhelming first impression is that we are going to have to talk some chemistry…

The first discovery in the Vanadium story was in Mexico, in 1801 Andrés Manuel del Río extracted the element from a sample of Mexican “brown lead” ore, later named vanadinite. So like the “bad copper ore” in Nickel and the ouro podre, ‘worthless gold,’ we encountered in Palladium, the Vanadium story starts off being an impurity or mistaken identity in the mining of some other substance. Because the salts of Vanadium displayed so many different colours, del Rio initially named the substance panchromium (Greek: παγχρώμιο “all colours” but later renamed it erythronium (Greek: ερυθρός “red”) because most of the salts turned red upon heating. Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovered the element in a new oxide he found while working with iron ores. Later that year, Friedrich Wöhler confirmed that this element was identical to that found by del Río and he called the element vanadium after Old Norse Vanadís (another name for the Norse Vanir goddess Freyja, whose attributes include beauty and fertility and from whom we get Friday and less salubriously – frigging!).

An image of Freya created with Midjourney

Below is a science experiment demonstrating the reason for the many colours of different chemical states of Vanadium plus if this guy does not look like the original mad scientist I don’t know who would…

Of all the hard commodity metals we have encountered, Vanadium, though rarely occurring as a native metal, has one of the most varied occurrences being present in about 65 different minerals and so it has many and varied methods of extraction. More chemistry required. As well as ores such as patrónite and Vanadinite, Uranium ores such as carnotite, vanadium can be found in bauxite and deposits of crude oil, coal, oil shale, and tar sands, in sea water and in volcanic mineral springs. You can read more about the technical aspects of Vanadium here.

When such oil products are burned, traces of vanadium may cause corrosion in engines and boilers.^[62] An estimated 110,000 tons of vanadium per year are released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels
Wikipedia

Once again, we find a metal which has become vital as an alloy ingredient – about 85% of it is used in ferrovanadium or as a steel additive where it significantly increases the strength of the steel making it suitable for many tools as well as specialist engineering applications like the turbine blades in jet engines (mixed with Aluminium and Titanium) and closer to home, if you can afford dental implants – you may have some in your mouth. Vanadium is used as a catalyst in the production of Sulphuric Acid and thence in many industrial chemical processes whilst the vanadium redox battery is a vital part of grid energy storage and may be important in the development of future battery technologies.

Tunicates such as this bluebell tunicate contain vanadium as vanabins. (Wikipedia)

With the cosmic abundance of vanadium being around 0.0001%, it is hardly surprising that this chemical of complex possibilities has found its role in living creatures – more in marine environments than on land – but even on land vanadium occurs in some fungi including the iconic Fly Agaric.

*Amanita muscaria* contains amavadin. (Wikipedia)

The jury is out as to the utility or otherwise, of Vanadium in the human body – deficiency in rats has been linked to poor growth and some inconclusive experiments suggest it might help with type 2 diabetes, but neither minimum recommended doses of Vanadium as a supplement nor its threshold as a poison have been properly established. Another reflection of the complex chemistry of Vanadium…

As a trading commodity, Vanadium may be less than $Billion which is small compared to some of the commodities we have looked at, but it is a very vital ingredient in the modern world and a little of it goes a long way. But as the quote below shows – looked at in geopolitical terms – two of the top producer countries are problematic to Western interests – especially in the light of sanctions against Putin’s Russia and America’s problems squaring up to China, so these potential instabilities stoke the kind of opportunities that markets like to speculate on…

Vanadium is mined mostly in China, South Africa and eastern Russia. In 2022 these three countries mined more than 96% of the 100,000 tons of produced vanadium, with China providing 70%
Wikipedia

And so to today’s poem which as we are at “V” – is a Verbless Poem.

The poets.org, has this to say about Verbless Poetry in turn a quote from the definition by Edward Hirsch in his A Poet’s Glossary:-
Poems without verbs. On one hand, the verbless poem can create a static quality, a sense of the arrested moment, which is why it has appealed to poets who write haiku and other types of imagist poems. […] On the other hand, the verbless construction can give, as the linguist Otto Jespersen points out in “The Role of the Verb (1911),” “a very definite impression of motion.” That’s why verbless constructions especially appealed to the futurists, such as F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944), who eliminated verbs in order to create a sense of telegraphic communication in a furiously changing world.
– Seems an appropriate form for Vanadium…

Vanadium – a Verbless Poem

From a multitude of sources
through a cascade of chemical processes
to a plethora of purposes
vital to our modern world
Vanadium our alloy ally…

Soybeans and a Solage

April 22, 2024April 22, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade in Soybeans in 2022 whether or not broken” exceeded $93 billion

If you have any doubt that Soya Beans (Soybeans) ar the most important of all the beans – just take a look at the table below – note how many bolded figures (Top value of the comparisons) fall to Soy Beans! Just on this nutritional guide alone (Courtesy of Wikipedia) you would know that this bean was important before even considering it’s history, it’s culinary story and the confirmation of it’s value as revealed in the International Trade Figures… However, there is a dark side to the Soya story and one which commands our attention – more of that later.

Staple	Maize (corn)^[A]	Rice, white^[B]	Wheat^[C]	Potatoes^[D]	Cassava^[E]	Soybeans, green^[F]	Sweet potatoes^[G]	Yams^[Y]	Sorghum^[H]	Plantain^[Z]	RDA
Water content (%)	10	12	13	79	60	68	77	70	9	65
Raw grams per 100 g dry weight	111	114	115	476	250	313	435	333	110	286
Nutrient
Energy (kJ)	1698	1736	1574	1533	1675	1922	1565	1647	1559	1460	8,368–10,460
Protein (g)	10.4	8.1	14.5	9.5	3.5	40.6	7.0	5.0	12.4	3.7	50
Fat (g)	5.3	0.8	1.8	0.4	0.7	21.6	0.2	0.6	3.6	1.1	44–77
Carbohydrates (g)	82	91	82	81	95	34	87	93	82	91	130
Fiber (g)	8.1	1.5	14.0	10.5	4.5	13.1	13.0	13.7	6.9	6.6	30
Sugar (g)	0.7	0.1	0.5	3.7	4.3	0.0	18.2	1.7	0.0	42.9	minimal
Minerals	^[A]	^[B]	^[C]	^[D]	^[E]	^[F]	^[G]	^[Y]	^[H]	^[Z]	RDA
Calcium (mg)	8	32	33	57	40	616	130	57	31	9	1,000
Iron (mg)	3.01	0.91	3.67	3.71	0.68	11.09	2.65	1.80	4.84	1.71	8
Magnesium (mg)	141	28	145	110	53	203	109	70	0	106	400
Phosphorus (mg)	233	131	331	271	68	606	204	183	315	97	700
Potassium (mg)	319	131	417	2005	678	1938	1465	2720	385	1426	4700
Sodium (mg)	39	6	2	29	35	47	239	30	7	11	1,500
Zinc (mg)	2.46	1.24	3.05	1.38	0.85	3.09	1.30	0.80	0.00	0.40	11
Copper (mg)	0.34	0.25	0.49	0.52	0.25	0.41	0.65	0.60	–	0.23	0.9
Manganese (mg)	0.54	1.24	4.59	0.71	0.95	1.72	1.13	1.33	–	–	2.3
Selenium (μg)	17.2	17.2	81.3	1.4	1.8	4.7	2.6	2.3	0.0	4.3	55
Vitamins	^[A]	^[B]	^[C]	^[D]	^[E]	^[F]	^[G]	^[Y]	^[H]	^[Z]	RDA
Vitamin C (mg)	0.0	0.0	0.0	93.8	51.5	90.6	10.4	57.0	0.0	52.6	90
Thiamin (B1) (mg)	0.43	0.08	0.34	0.38	0.23	1.38	0.35	0.37	0.26	0.14	1.2
Riboflavin (B2) (mg)	0.22	0.06	0.14	0.14	0.13	0.56	0.26	0.10	0.15	0.14	1.3
Niacin (B3) (mg)	4.03	1.82	6.28	5.00	2.13	5.16	2.43	1.83	3.22	1.97	16
Pantothenic acid (B5) (mg)	0.47	1.15	1.09	1.43	0.28	0.47	3.48	1.03	–	0.74	5
Vitamin B6 (mg)	0.69	0.18	0.34	1.43	0.23	0.22	0.91	0.97	–	0.86	1.3
Folate Total (B9) (μg)	21	9	44	76	68	516	48	77	0	63	400
Vitamin A (IU)	238	0	10	10	33	563	4178	460	0	3220	5000
Vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol (mg)	0.54	0.13	1.16	0.05	0.48	0.00	1.13	1.30	0.00	0.40	15
Vitamin K1 (μg)	0.3	0.1	2.2	9.0	4.8	0.0	7.8	8.7	0.0	2.0	120
Beta-carotene (μg)	108	0	6	5	20	0	36996	277	0	1306	10500
Lutein+zeaxanthin (μg)	1506	0	253	38	0	0	0	0	0	86	6000
Fats	^[A]	^[B]	^[C]	^[D]	^[E]	^[F]	^[G]	^[Y]	^[H]	^[Z]	RDA
Saturated fatty acids (g)	0.74	0.20	0.30	0.14	0.18	2.47	0.09	0.13	0.51	0.40	minimal
Monounsaturated fatty acids (g)	1.39	0.24	0.23	0.00	0.20	4.00	0.00	0.03	1.09	0.09	22–55
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (g)	2.40	0.20	0.72	0.19	0.13	10.00	0.04	0.27	1.51	0.20	13–19
	^[A]	^[B]	^[C]	^[D]	^[E]	^[F]	^[G]	^[Y]	^[H]	^[Z]	RDA

^A raw yellow dent corn
^B raw unenriched long-grain white rice
^C raw hard red winter wheat
^D raw potato with flesh and skin
^E raw cassava
^F raw green soybeans
^G raw sweet potato
^H raw sorghum
^Y raw yam
^Z raw plantains
^/* unofficial

Evidence for the domestication of Soya Beans predates writing but has been found in China from between 7-6,500 years ago. Because, like many legumes, they fix nitrogen from the air and send it to the soil, the plant was quickly recognised as helpful in crop rotation and yet even as recently as World War 2, that benefit was being “rediscovered” in America when fertiliser supplies were compromised. If Soya Beans were discovered today they would be touted as a Superfood if not a “Miracle” food

Prior to fermented products such as fermented black soybeans (douchi), jiang (Chinese miso), soy sauce, tempeh, nattō, and miso, soy was considered sacred for its beneficial effects in crop rotation, and it was eaten by itself, and as bean curd and soy milk.
Wikipedia

One of the interesting aspects of Soya is just how many ways it is processed into other products beyond just eating the beans direct – they are the world’s largest source of animal feed (creating protein which humans then eat), the second largest source of vegetable oil and these two uses consume 85% of the soya crop leaving just 15% to be sold as whole beans. Out of that we then get soya milk, from which is made bean curd and tempeh (from the leftover of soy milk production), then Soy Sauce and various forms of Miso – these latter being fermented soya products without which both Chinese and Japanese cuisine would be unimaginable. I have to declare an interest here since among the many jobs I have done, I worked briefly for one of England’s leading Tofu (bean curd) producers creating and making new products out of tofu – previously he made only a plain and a peanut burger and I added two flavours of pastie, tofu quiches and a tofu “eggless” custard to his range. So this feels like a good place to offer two tips that I picked up in that job. Many Western people never take to tofu because they find it tasteless and unfortunately we don’t have access to some of the specialist variations available in the East such as deep-fryable pouching tofu whose crisped casing can be stuffed with tasty things – but there are a couple of ways to make tofu tasty… First you can buy (hard) tofu in a tub of it’s own whey and carefully peel back the lid, spread a layer of Miso (another soya product) on the top surface of the Tofu, cover and leave it floating in the whey in the fridge for a few days. The Miso is a live culture, fermented product so the quite strong taste will not simply permeate the Tofu, but will interact biologically to create a new flavour. Secondly, take an unopened packet of Tofu and freeze it – upon defrosting, the frozen crystals of whey which will have formed – compressing the Tofu – will melt and leave a network of holes in the now tougher, compressed Tofu so that it will hold together better when added to say, a stew and each chunk will act like a little sponge holding the gravy so that you can even use the mixture as a pie filling! If you have only encountered one or two kinds of Miso, the map below shows some of the many regional variations in Miso.

Types of Miso from around Japan

*Various Regional Varieties of Miso and their Respective Grain Base*

Where does it all come from – this vital, amazing Soya Bean crop – well for something that originated in China – these babies have roamed far from home as the diagram below shows – 34% from America and add in Brazil 29% and Argentina 18%, that’s 81% of the world production comes from the Americas and China’s demand for Soya has increased beyond their capacity to grow it – not least because with growing affluence – the Chinese demand for pork grew and soya beans were needed to feed pigs – anybody see a problem…? Actually there are several problems – during the Trump administration – that genius of Foreign Policy decided to play to his base by launching a Trade War on China – the US already had a 25% tariff on $250 billion of Beijing goods and Trump threatened a further 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports. Naturally, China responded by slashing its U.S. farm purchases by 53% to $9.2 billion from 2017. Soybeans (American name) purchases took a huge hit, falling nearly 75% to $3.1 billion. Trump had to pay out a lot of money to support the farmers and the stockpile of Soybeans mounted… This in turn put pressure on other areas like South America (mainly Southern Brasil and Argentina) to increase their growing of Soya and this led to increased deforestation – agriculture drove up to 88% of forest loss in Latin America and up to 81% in Southeast Asia between 2000-2015. So once again we see how geopolitical issues can have a huge impact on the commodities market not to mention the environment…

Proportion of global production exported

Just a couple of other fun facts about Soya beans – Soya is one of the fourteen notifiable allergens – that is it must be highlighted in bold in any ingredient list and as we have seen, soya can turn up in many guises – about 0.3% of the general population of adults and children are allergic to Soya. Another factor requiring labelling of Soya is that Soya was one of the first crops to “suffer” from Genetic Modification (GM) and the backlash against such “Frankenstein” food has been damaging in addition to the highly industrialised style of farming and the ecological effects of the crop worldwide. The expression “Full of Beans!” refers to horses who behaved with varying energy depending on which fuel they were fed – Grass – Ordinary – Oats – Friskier – Beans – Full of It and I wonder if it was Soya Beans that they used…? And lastly a film quote – Rick saying to Ilsa at the end of Casablanca, “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” A rare example of an anti-romance ending – the plight of the world is more important than a soppy ending…

That is my quite cursory glance at Soya (considering the importance of this crop) – other commodities I might have considered for “S” include Sugar and gold’s poor relation – Silver. And so to today’s poem which is a Solage:

Solage is a specific form of humorous verse with the following properties:

It has three lines (called the hook, the line and the sinker) of irregular length.
The rhyming structure is AAB.
The third line is a pun based on the previous two lines.

The form was invented by the Sydney-based performance poet Cameron M. Semmens.

Soybeans

To know where the wind is seen
Be sure to eat more beans
Windy bottom…

On a more serious note, today is

Earth Day

and you can read an account of how Earth Day came into being by the excellent Heather Cox Richardson here.

Rubber and a Rhyme Royal

April 20, 2024April 20, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade in Rubber 2022 – $18.4B – 239th most traded product representing 0.078% of total world trade.

Gentle Reader – this post should probably carry a warning – for it contains true tales of Theft, Violence and Depravity on an Imperial scale – it will visit a city 900 miles up a river, surrounded by jungle that nevertheless afford to build an opera house with imported marble and talent, it will visit both the geographical and metaphorical setting of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and reflect, not for the first time in this A-Z Challenge, on the evils done in the name of Imperialism. You have been warned…

The story of rubber begins innocently enough with a ballgame – archaeological evidence shows that the Olmec people of Mesoamerica played a game with a rubber ball made from the sap of the Hevea tree which grew extensively in the Amazon rainforest and which could be tapped to allow its white sap to be collected – this is called latex rubber.

Vintage illustrated collectible tobacco card from the Products of the World series published in 1909 by John Player and Sons Cigarettes, depicting agricultural exports and natural resources of world cultures and countries, here with two Indian workers tapping sap from a rubber tree, the first step in the mass production of rubber (Photo by Nextrecord Archives/Getty Images).

The English polymath Joseph Priestly received a small sample of latex and noted that it was very good at rubbing out (erasing) pencil marks and thus coined the name “Rubber”. In the nineteenth century, the development of first the bicycle and later the motor car, created a demand for rubber that far outstripped the sources of natural rubber and drove the discovery of synthetic elastomers – the technical name for rubberlike substances. The initial problem with developing rubber as a commodity, was that the Brasilian rainforest was the only source of Pará rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) and Brasil had a stranglehold on the market and one thing that commodity markets don’t like is a monopoly. There was no specific law banning the export of rubber plants or seeds from Brasil but nevertheless it was a closely policed prohibition – and no wonder – the wealth generated by the monopoly of the supply of rubber paid for that lavishly marbled opera house in Manaus, far up the Amazon, and for a stream of European opera divas to grace its stage. It took until 1870 for the seeds to be smuggled out and the monopoly broken…

“Henry Wickham, who in 1876 directed an operation smuggling 70,000 rubber tree seeds”

In 1876, Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 Amazonian rubber tree seeds from Brazil and delivered them to Kew Gardens, England. Only 2,400 of these germinated. Seedlings were then sent to India, British Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Singapore, and British Malaya. Malaya (now Peninsular Malaysia) was later to become the biggest producer of rubber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber

I well remember this story of derring-do smuggling from my geography class at school in the 1960’s but looking back, there was no hint of a question as to the ethics of this act of theft and the geopolitical shift that it meant for the British empire – it seemed that was just the way of things. An even more heinous crime was happening across the Atlantic in a similar river whose basin held a hard-to-penetrate tropical rainforest – the Congo. From 1885 to 1908, while the development of British rubber plantations in the Far-East were still being developed, the Belgian Congo, operated as a private estate – the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) under the absolute rule of King Leopold II of Belgium – was another source of latex rubber. Congo rubber comes from vines and the wives and children of a village were held hostage whilst their menfolk were sent off to fulfil their quota of vine rubber. The depravity did not end there, with a bureaucracy that would have been the envy of the Nazis, every bullet used by Belgian soldiers had to be accounted for and justified, so if soldiers went hunting for meat or even sport – they would go into a village and chop off as many hands as required to justify their bullet allocation – claiming a police action as justification. No wonder Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece “Heart of Darkness” is set far up the Congo River where a European trader has gone rogue… So many people died under these imperial rules that though the exact figures are indeterminable, estimates range from 1.5 million to 13 million and the story of this genocide can be read here.

This is not to say that there were not many deaths of native Amazonian Indians as a result of rubber tapping in the Amazon but they have been overshadowed by the obscenity of Leopold’s genocide. It may be considered a boon then, that the theft of rubber tree seeds from Brazil and the subsequent establishment of rubber plantations in the Far Eastern countries of the British Empire, brought to an end the depradations in Brazil and the Congo… However, life on the remote plantations of the Far-East was at the very least a lonely station for the young men and women of the “Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets” as the globe encircling British Empire was sometimes called. Somerset Maugham (whom my mother “specialled”, or nursed one-to-one as a young nurse and who she described as a bitter old man) chronicled life on the plantations which we later watched dramatised on TV and if I can distil a typical story of his into one sentence it would be “Young planter comes back to England to wed from amongst the surfeit of girls following the First World War and returns to Malaya with his bride who later discovers he has a second family living at the bottom of the garden with a native wife – bitterness ensues…”

Somerset Maugham and some short stories of his…

Let us leave the sordid world of the early sourcing of rubber and move back to the uses of Rubber as a commodity. We have already seen one source of the name rubber, but another product that became synonymous was the “Rubber” or Rubber Johnny – prophylactic to who knows how many unborn babies… there are car tyres, cushioning and shock-absorbing devices, and still there are Rubber Balls and many more uses besides. Eventually, as demand for rubber exceeded production of natural rubber, Synthetic Rubber was invented and American dominance in the market was advanced by the Second World War, when the Allies, with their access to Far-Eastern natural rubber, stifled Axis efforts by bombing synthetic rubber factories in Germany, Italy and Poland.

Natural Rubber is still an important commodity despite synthetic products which have burgeoned over the years – styrene-butadiene rubbers , polyisoprene, neoprene, nitrile rubber and last but by no means least Silicone rubber. Even without being a chemist, that list may have conjured for you, wetsuits, surgical rubber gloves not to mention heatproof cookwear…
More than 28 million tons of rubber were produced in 2017, of which approximately 47% was natural. Natural rubber still goes into tyres and to dothat, the process of Vulcanisation had to be invented – a method of hardening the Latex or “India Rubber” (yes – the “stolen” rubber plantations of India gave their name to the raw material too) and this was eventually perfected by Charles Goodyear as a process involving heat and the addition of Sulphur.

Worker placing a tyre in a mould prior to Vulcanisation
Vulcanization. (2024, March 18). In *Wikipedia*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization

Many other plants other than the Hevea Tree produce latex but have never been successfully been exploited and the price of rubber is volatile – for example, during the Covid crisis, the price of rubber spiked because of the demand for rubber gloves yet many small family-run plantations had rubbed up their crop to grow more profitable lines at the time such as palm-oil. Now plant diseases (which especially affect monocultures) and climate change are threatening the supply of natural rubber further…

Before proceeding to my own poetic offering, I cannot leave rubber without referencing A.A. Milne’s wonderful poem “King John’s Christmas” which takes us back to the very first discovered use of rubber and if you were unlucky enough not to have been brought up with his poems or only know of Winneie the Pooh – let this extract introduce you to a Wold of joy…

King John was not a good man,
He lived his live aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
“TO ALL AND SUNDRY – NEAR AND FAR –
F. Christmas in particular.”
And signed it not “Johannes R.”
But very humbly, “Jack.”
“I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don’t mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!”
An extract from King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne

One of E.H. Shephard‘s incomparable illustrations for A.A. Milne’s poetry books

Which brings us to today’s poem for which I have chosen the poetry form Rhyme Royal:

The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a tercet and two couplets (a-b-a, b-b, c-c) or a quatrain and a tercet (a-b-a-b, b-c-c). This allows for a good deal of variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems. (source Language is a Virus – Poetry Guide)

Rubber

Has ever extraction so cruel
been visited on poor people
our industrial needs to fuel
our market trade coffers kept full
wealth from the Third World, First World pulls
stolen plants new plantations
bring relief to tropical sons

The smooth ride of the motor car
or even humble bicycle
wrote a trail of blood from afar
ignorance of the genocide
no excuse for the denial
when now we know how goods are wrought
with blood, sweat and tears they’re still bought

Blood diamonds the savage crop
from where bloodied rubber once grew
blood from Congo’s gold and coltan drop
tin and tungsten to name but a few
not just the Congo to give it’s due
children of seventy-eight lands
make goods never mind adult hands…

You can find a report into all 457 goods made or mined using children – let alone adults, from 78 countries in this report…

Pepper and Quatorzain Poem

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024humanist55

The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

I could find no Commodity beginning with “Q” so I am looking at another important “P” – Pepper as a commodity however the poetry form is a “Q” – the Quatorzain Poem…

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B –
548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade

It is axiomatic that the Spice Trade from the Far East to Europe was important because without refrigeration, foodstuffs, especially meat, sometimes needed a little disguising and spices not only hid any dubious smells but in some cases, had antimicrobial properties that made meals safer. Of course, if curry spices were all that effective then there would be no such thing as Delhi Belly, but there is sufficient antimicrobial action that scientists are now looking seriously at spices from a medical standpoint. Of all the spices, Black Pepper is the oldest and most widely used – what restaurant table does not have a pepper pot? Turmeric, clove, nutmeg, cumin, and cinnamon are also contenders for medical research but Black Pepper has been such an important spice, traded for so long that it was used as currency in its own right – sometimes referred to as “black gold”. The legacy of this trade remains in some Western legal systems that recognize the term “peppercorn rent” as a token payment for something that is, essentially, a gift.

Black, White and Green Pepper are all true peppers from the plant Piper Nigrum (part of the Piperaceae family). This vine is native to India but grows in most tropical areas. Pink Peppercorns are from the Peruvian Pepper Tree, members of the cashew family Sichuan Peppercorns: also not peppercorns but rather “Chinese coriander”.

Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupe of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying.^[9] The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying.^[9] The drupes dry in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dry, the spice is called black peppercorn.

White pepper consists solely of the seed of the ripe fruit of the pepper plant, with the thin darker-coloured skin (flesh) of the fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week so the flesh of the peppercorn softens and decomposes; rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried.

Green pepper, like black pepper, is made from unripe drupes. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains the green colour, such as with sulfur dioxide, canning, or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar.

All these treatments of the pepper drupes result in slightly different flavours as well as colours so for example, you might use white pepper in mashed potato in order that it doesn’t show as black pieces. For many years, I had by my bedside as nighttime reading, a book which I would still recommend as the definitive encyclopedia “Herbs, spices and Flavourings” by Tom Stobart and from the large section on pepper I learnt this – the single most important thing to know about pepper in relation to cooking – piperine is the flavour element of pepper and is easily evaporated during cooking whereas the resin that gives the heat remains – and so rather than adding pepper to say, a casserole before cooking, pepper should always be freshly ground at the table – even ground pepper loses its piperine by evaporation over time.

Perhaps because of its historical role as the source of pepper, and although the majority of pepper today comes from Vietnam, India is a hub for both importing pepper from around the world and then processing and re-exporting it. India imports large quantities of pepper from Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. Usually, the majority of the pepper is just sent once again as whole black pepper to different areas. A lesser amount of the imported pepper is utilised in the production of different goods. Pepper trade makes up one-third of the net volume of spices traded globally.

World Pepper Production and Trade

Source Wikipedia

Country	Production (tonnes)
Vietnam	270,192
Brazil	114,749
Indonesia	89,041
India	66,000
Sri Lanka	43,557
China	33,348
Malaysia	30,804
World	747,644
Source: FAOSTAT of the United Nations^[1

The quote below shows how Pepper futures typify the role of all futures in the trading world…

Farmers use commodity exchanges as a buffer against price volatility, but a pepper trading platform and speculators complicate pepper trading even more. Commodity markets’ speculative character draws people and organisations looking to make money off of price changes.
To place well-informed wagers on the future course of pepper prices, speculators examine economic statistics, market patterns, and other variables. Their involvement gives the market more liquidity but also creates a degree of uncertainty.
On the other hand, traders and investors use pepper trading for a variety of purposes, including risk control and portfolio diversification. They may engage in the spice market without physically handling the product, thanks to the Indian stock market.
Pepper Trading

Whilst on the subject of a food-related future – Pork Bellies were once almost the icon of futures trading even being mentioned in the film “Trading Places” which we encountered under Orange Juice – but icons come and they can go too. Pork bellies have yielded in popularity at the table to bacon year by year until they have fallen below the threshold at which Futures Traders find it worth investing in and Pork Bellies have been dropped from Futures Trading…

And so to today’s poetry form which is a quatorzain (from French quatorze, fourteen) is a form of sonnet. It consists of 14 lines and is, like a sonnet, divided into two tercets and two quatrains. According to my favourite source for poetry forms, Language is a Virus:-

The term is used in English literature, as opposed to sonnet, for a poem in fourteen rhymed iambic lines closing (as a sonnet strictly never does) with a couplet. The distinction was long neglected because the English poets of the 16th century had failed to apprehend the true form of the sonnet, and called Petrarch’s and other Italian poets’ sonnets quatorzains, and their own incorrect quatorzains sonnets. Almost all the so-called sonnets of the Elizabethan cycles, including those of William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel, are really quatorzains. They consist of three quatrains of alternate rhyme, not repeated in the successive quatlains, and the whole closes with a couplet.

Was Shakespeare wrong – this sounds like an academic storm in a tea pot, but whatever, this will be a quatorzain or as Shakespeare thought of it, a sonnet…

Pepper

Pepper you were known as “black gold”
precious drupes of Piper Nigrum
grown and processed in far India
sought for heat and taste, your role
was to fuel world exploration
you drove many a man’s career
searching for the better shortcut
they found instead America
then sought to go North-West but
cruel ice and snow crushed dreams there
dreams of spice isles and quick richness
so gaps filled in the atlas
bought only fame and stories told
of their futile quests for “black gold”…

Palladium and a Pylon Poem

April 18, 2024May 3, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade in Palladium in 2022 – $29.4 Billion

To be a Commodity, a substance has to be both important and tradeable on a sufficiently large scale and so most of the commodities are easily recognisable items such as iron, cocoa and orange juice – but in Palladium, we come to an element, for such it is, that most people will, if they even know the name, have no idea as to what it is or why it is sufficiently important as to be a tradeable commodity. Yet if you drive a car with a catalytic converter, are fond of white gold or are diabetic and use testing strips, you are (like rats) closer than you know to a small amount of Palladium.

You may not have heard of Palladium, but its sibling is Platinum and grouped together in the Periodic Table, the members of the Platinum Family (platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements) consist of ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum. As is often the case with elements found close together in the Periodic Table, they have similar properties – their main characteristic has determined their greatest utility – they have many catalytic properties and so the major driver of Palladium as a commodity is the demand for Catalytic Converters in car exhaust systems. Incidentally, palladium recycles well and so there is a trade in used catalytic converters which sadly also drives the theft of them too…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_group

As early as 1700, miners in Brazil were aware of a metal they called ouro podre, ‘worthless gold,’ this demonstrates that alloys can occur in nature – and ouro podre is a native alloy of palladium and gold and today, Palladium is one of the metals alloyed with gold to make “white” gold for those who don’t want the gold colour but want jewellery that is stronger and less tarnishing than silver. However, these native metal sources are not where Palladium is commercially extracted from – the ores are limited to four main sites in the world and 37% of the Palladium sold comes from Russia. So once again, Putin’s unwarranted war on Ukraine and the sanctions that followed it, have been a major lever in the trading prices of Palladium just as we have noted they were in oil and gas prices. Incidentally, every commodity has a Trading Identity Number and for Palladium it is HS Code 71102900.

A comparison of “gold” colours including Palladium/Gold alloy

Lastly, Palladium was named by its discoverer (as an element) William Hyde Wollaston in 1802 after the asteroid 2 Pallas, which had been discovered two months earlier. The nymph Pallas was killed by her childhood friend – Athena – daughter of Zeus who – seeing Athena and Pallas sparring, wanted Athena to win and distracted Pallas who was then accidentally impaled by Athena’s spear and Athena was thenceforth known as Athena Pallas. As recompense for killing her friend, she created a STATUE that looked like Pallas and she named it the Palladium which was later housed in the city of Troy. Pallas Athena had many responsibilities as Goddess of War, Wisdom and Health which is a rather mixed job description…

Athena and Pallas sparring whilst Zeus watches from the sidelines – in the style of Titian generated by Midjourney

And so to the “P” poem for today. I had a choice of a Pantoum – a form with a lot of repeating lines giving an incantatory feel which didn’t feel right and so I am going to go with another poetry movement, this one before the Second World War. The Pylon Poets made reference to, if not celebrating, modern technology – taking their name from a poem by Stephen Spender called The Pylons. Other Pylon Poets included W. H. Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice. Most famously was perhaps W.H. Auden’s Night Mail which was also made into the soundtrack to a short film. I have chosen the Duplex form which is one of my favourites for the way each couplet passes a theme on to the next one creating a great sense of progress.

Palladium

Palladium which celebrates poor Pallas
Was first a statue made by her killer

The wooden statue was protector of Troy
A job not done so well so history tells

Her story languished for many decades
Later her name graced a minor planet

When telescopes revealed the heavens
Then science paid yet another tribute

When Wollaston found another element
With minor use named for a minor body

But now we crave the miner’s hard-won produce
for catalysis, jewellery and more

At last we found purposes for “useless gold”
Palladium which celebrates poor Pallas

Orange Juice and an Ottava Rima

April 17, 2024April 16, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

For those of you who read my a-z Challenge Theme Reveal, you will know that the choice of Commodities as this year’s theme (plus poems), began with a wondering about whether there could really be enough oranges in the world to supply our desire to have orange juice on hand wherever we go – in case you missed it I reproduce the wondering below.

The Wondering…

Consider this – you go to your local supermarket to buy, among other things, some orange juice. You find the right section where there are several brands to choose from, fresh in the chiller and long-life too – perhaps a hundred-litre packets all told. That’s just your local shop, imagine how many shops there are in your town or city each with a hundred litres of orange juice on sale at any particular time – and remember, this stock is turning over all the time – being bought and then replaced with stock from the store room. Multiply by the number of cities in your country and then by the number of orange juice-drinking countries in the world and you have imagined an ocean of orange juice! Where does it all come from – especially considering it takes eight oranges to make a litre of juice? Are there enough orange trees in the world to account for all this juice?

Of course, if you believe in Solipsism – then you will think that the world only exists because you imagine it into being and of course, you want to have plenty of orange juice wherever you go, so you imagine it into being present in all those thousands of shops worldwide. I am more of a realist and so I know that there must be enough orange trees to provide the juice – I just have no idea where!

Most people have no idea where all that orange juice comes from either and what about dried mint in all those expensive little jars – you may have holidayed in some sunny spot and seen oranges growing, but when did you ever see a mint farm?

The Answers!

Before giving those answers, you will know by now that I like to tease out some unusual facts about each Commodity and for today it is legislation nicknamed the “Eddie Murphy rule”. At the end of the 1983 movie Trading Places, Eddie Murphy jumps into Dan Aykroyd’s arms, the pair shouting in delight because they have just gamed the orange juice futures market bandstand to make a fortune. In the film, Murphy and Aykroyd created a fake crop report to scam the market as a result of which Wall Street eventually made it illegal to trade on inside information obtained from the government and immortalised Eddie Murphy (as if he needed it) in the hallowed halls of financial investment.

For years, the trade in Orange Juice Futures was something of a backwater in the Commodity Trading world, but in 2023, all that changed – the price of OJ futures surged by 92% and it is what that tells us about both the perils and profits to be made from soft commodity futures which is interesting.

The great orange juice trading rally – and why a big squeeze could lie ahead

Although the US is only number 3 among the world’s orange producers behind Brazil and China by a country mile, a disastrous crop of oranges in Florida, which grows 90% of US orange crops annually, led to the dramatic rise in prices. Once the prices started to spiral in the US, then investors started buying futures from outside the US and so the spiral, like a tropical storm passing over warm seas, was fuelled. In fact actual tropical storms were part of the problem – hurricanes Ian and Nicole, in the Autumn of 2022 autumn, which destroyed 10% of the orange trees, followed by freezing conditions were compounded by the third factor in a triple whammy – an incurable citrus greening disease that has been ravaging trees for years. The disease, also known as Huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, typically kills off crops within five years. So the harvest in Florida was the lowest in 2023 for a century. But all this turmoil is what thrust OJ futures into the trading limelight – as long as a commodity “future” remains stable, there is nothing to gamble on – and that is what all trading in stocks, shares and commodities is – gambling. As soon as the prices of OJ futures started to climb, then the possibility of making a killing by getting in whilst the prices were lower and cashing in when they were highest became irresistible to traders.

So now for the answers to where the oranges come from to gratify our needs worldwide…

And here are the countries that consume the orange juice…

**Source:** United States Department of Agriculture

Why orange juice? Well because the demand is for juice more than for whole fruit and its cheaper to transport the frozen, concentrated juice without all that skin and pith. Hence Orange juice futures. And what about those little jars of dried mint – are they a commodity? They are not – the sector is too small and diversified around the world – to be a commodity, you have to be big – in the case of orange juice – $6 Billion big!

And so to the poem whose “O” form today is Ottavo Rima (I imagine meaning eight/rhymes) and consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three rhymes following the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c.

Orange Juice – an Ottavo Rima

When I grew up, the orange was a treat
Compared to the apple, fruit of England
The orange came from far away to meet
Our post-war need for vitamin C and
Exotic fruit from far-off lands of heat
In a world our parents had fought for, and
Too, beside the fresh and juicy fruit we
Also had a glass of orange juice for tea.

Orange drink made from concentrated juice
Which tasted all the better when we were
Allowed to make it stronger, rules loose
Or a blind eye turned by him or her
For indeed they loved it just like us
Post rationing is it any wonder
That orange juice was the prize of their life
For family and for husband and wife.

Nickel and a Nonet Poem

April 15, 2024April 15, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

World Trade in Nickel (2022) $4.7 Billion

Nickel is a silvery metal which is the fifth most abundant element on Earth. It can occur as a native metal but this is quite rare and often is from the interior of meteorites. More commonly it is found in combination with sulfur and iron in pentlandite, with sulphur in millerite, with arsenic in the mineral nickeline, and with arsenic and sulphur in nickel galena and of course, in many meteorites. The core of the Earth is a Nickel-Iron mix. The chemical and physical properties of Nickel make it extremely useful for many purposes both on its own and in combination with other metals.

“Because nickel ores are easily mistaken for ores of silver and copper, understanding of this metal and of its use is relatively recent. But unintentional use of nickel is ancient, and can be traced back as far as 3500 BCE. Because nickel ores are easily mistaken for ores of silver and copper, understanding of this metal and of its use is relatively recent. But unintentional use of nickel is ancient, and can be traced back as far as 3500 BCE. In medieval Germany, a metallic yellow mineral was found in the Ore Mountains that resembled copper ore. But when miners were unable to get any copper from it, they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick), for besetting the copper.” (Source Wikipedia)

There are some uses for pure Nickel, but the majority of Nickel is used as alloys (Nickel readily alloys with other metals) because it lends some of its great properties to these metallic combinations. Principal amongst these alloys must be Stainless Steel where Iron, Nickel and Chromium are combined – the nickel adds strength and the chrome gives the self-healing property of stainless steel (Stainless steel can rust but the chromium heals the rust!). Below is an illustration of the many uses of Nickel.

In America, the Nickel is an iconic small denomination coin but even that is nowadays made largely of copper and electro-plated with nickel – another thing that Nickel does very well. So although we do not hear as much about nickel as say, Iron and Steel or Copper, nevertheless Nickel is all around us in many forms and combinations with other metals.

This is a good place to consider the difference between investing in Hard commodities like Nickel, and investing directly in the mines that extract the commodity. This is a complicated question so I decided to ask ChatGPT for advice – you will see from the tabs at the top of this web-page that I have done quite a lot of research into AI this last year and particularly on the word generating side, I have sometimes found it a good starting point for ideas although you need to fact-check its offerings carefully to make sure there are no “hallucinations” present. The answer to this query seems to be very clear and comprehensive and this is what it said:

Direct Exposure vs. Indirect Exposure: Investing in hard commodities like metals involves directly purchasing physical assets such as gold, silver, copper, etc. When you buy shares in a mining company, you’re investing in the company’s business operations, not directly in the underlying commodity. The value of your investment in the mining company is influenced by various factors beyond just the price of the commodity, such as company management, operational efficiency, exploration success, geopolitical risks, etc.
Risk Profile: Investing in commodities themselves tends to be more straightforward in terms of risk. The value of commodities is primarily driven by supply and demand dynamics, inflation expectations, and currency fluctuations. On the other hand, investing in mining companies introduces additional risks associated with the specific company, such as operational risks, regulatory risks, environmental risks, labor disputes, etc. The performance of a mining company’s stock may not always perfectly mirror the price movements of the underlying commodity.
Leverage and Volatility: Mining stocks can exhibit higher volatility compared to the underlying commodity due to the operating leverage inherent in the business model. In times of rising commodity prices, mining companies can benefit disproportionately as their profit margins increase. Conversely, during downturns, mining stocks can experience amplified losses. Directly holding commodities typically involves less volatility, although it depends on the specific commodity and market conditions.
Dividends and Growth Potential: Mining companies may pay dividends to shareholders, providing income potential in addition to capital appreciation. Furthermore, investing in mining companies offers exposure to potential exploration successes and resource discoveries, which can lead to significant growth opportunities not available when investing directly in commodities.
Diversification: Investing in mining companies provides exposure not only to the price of the underlying commodity but also to the broader equity market. This can offer diversification benefits within a portfolio compared to a concentrated exposure solely to commodities.
ChatGPT

And so to today’s poem and the poem form I have chosen for N is the Nonet. In poetry, a nonet is a nine-line poem, with the first line containing nine syllables, the next eight, so on until the last line has one syllable. Nonets can be written about any subject, and rhyming is optional.
So much “modern” poetry is written in free verse and the strictures of form are much relaxed, but in order to write free verse with a poetic voice, it is necessary to exercise the mind with tight forms – just like playing scales on a musical instrument and writing a Nonet is just that kind of exercise…

Nickel – A Nonet

Shiny metal Nickel whose ore was
often confused with Copper
you make Stainless Steel all the
stronger, our world safer
cleaner and brighter
in so many
places we
must give
thanks…

Milk and a Martian Poem

April 15, 2024April 15, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade – 893 billion U.S. dollars in 2021

Life begins with ‘mother’s milk’ – if you are lucky – if you lost your mother in childbirth or your mother is unable breast feed or is driven by outdated mores not to breastfeed – then you will likely depend on ‘formula’ milk which has been sourced from other animals – most frequently cows. If your country does not produce sufficient milk for the production of dried milk, then your formula will contain milk-powder that has been imported from some other part of the world. Powdered because it is easier and cheaper to transport than the fresh liquid. Some parts of the world are unfamiliar with fresh milk and all their milk has been processed into UHT (Utra High Temperature treatment), or else they re-constitute milk from dried powder but both this and UHT milk are not the same in terms of quality – powdered milk often lacking the fat element of fresh and UHT having an aftertaste…

https://www.babymilkaction.org/archives/32584

If you think of milk only of a dewy glass of fresh milk straight from the fridge (and already you have made a choice between Full-fat, Semi-skimmed and Skimmed), then you are forgetting all the ‘Preserved Milk’ products – for that is what all the various yoghurts, butters and cheeses in the world are – forms of preserved milk. Preservation means treating something so that it will last longer without spoiling. For example, in rural Ireland in the 18^th-19^th centuries, a reasonably prosperous family might keep a milk-cow as well as grow potatoes, and in the Summer, they would churn the higher yield of milk into butter. The byproduct – buttermilk, was dunk fresh or allowed to ferment slightly and consumed with last seasons potatoes. The butter was wrapped in the leaves of the Butterbur plant which are suitably large, and then buried in the peat bog where the anaerobic and acid conditions perfectly preserved the butter. Come Winter and the family consumed new season potatoes with butter dug up from the bog. This was a surprisingly heathy diet since potatoes are very rich in vitamin C whilst milk products have a good balance of protein , fat and carbohydrate and are a very important source of essential nutrients, including calcium, riboflavin, phosphorous, vitamins A and B12, potassium, magnesium, zinc, and iodine. So the preservation of milk, by freeze drying it to a powder or turning it into a secondary product like yoghurt or cheese is a huge part of the journey of milk on the international market.

I work in a Gelato (Ice Cream) factory and as we soon upscale to much bigger capacity equipment – we face the choice of whether to stick with fresh whole-milk (meaning a tanker sized refrigerated tank on the outside of the factory) or go with powdered milk (a vast reserve of palleted powder, reconstituted with water and probably coconut oil added). Our Italian gelato consultant tells us that in taste tests, most no-one can tell the difference but that people (the ones who read the ingredients) like to see Whole Milk (in bold because it is a notifiable allergen!) Previously I had a small frozen yoghurt shop and I made my own mix of plain yoghurt, milk and sugar and I also sold Boba Tea. Boba Tea was not big in Britain back then and so it survived the 2008 Chinese dried milk scandal and is now slowly gaining traction. The real scandal was that some 54,000 babies got sick and four died due to formula made with Chinese dried milk powder contaminated with Melamine (read the full story here) but the damage to the reputation of Chinese agricultural products was enormous and the Boba Tea mixes which were largely powdered milk in particular, causing the collapse of Boba Tea shops across much of Europe though not in the UK where Boba Tea was in its infancy. This is not the sort of thing tat is supposed to happen in the world of soft commodities – as I write, it has just been announced that following the latest safety scandal regarding Boeing aircraft, in which a door plug came off one whilst in flight, the senior management have been axed because they suppressed any whistleblowing over safety concerns by workers and middle management. When the episode occurred, Boeing shares took a nosedive and the change of management will not immediately restore the value of those shares. These things happen in the world of stocks and shares and the nearest equivalent in soft commodities is a bad harvest which as we saw with Frost Futures, can even be hedged against – but a crisis of confidence due to criminality at worst, negligence at best as happened with Chinese milk – is not supposed to happen – commodities are supposed to be what those in the heady world of high finance buy to ameliorate the vicissitudes of their portfolios…

Who are the exporters of Milk and who are the great importers?

And here are the places that produce milk…

And lastly – here are the top milk processing companies in the world – see if you can spot one you know…

And so to today’s poetry form and the poetry form I have chosen is Martian Poetry. The Martian Poets were a small group of poets who were reacting against the somewhat dour and sometimes pessimistic poetry of the post-war group known as The Movement which included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn and Robert Conquest. The Martian Poets were named for a poem by Craig Raine (whom I met once) called A Martian Writes a Postcard Home. Other Martian Poets included Christopher Reid, Oliver Reynolds and John Hall Wheelock and the nature of the poetry “drew inspiration from surrealism, metaphysical poetry of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, etc., nonsense poetry of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and Anglo-Saxon riddles.” My poem below is a homage to Craig Raine’s original Martian poem…

Martian Report 11011/101 Milk

Where does milk come from?
I asked my host’s sprout No.2
Zoe identifying as she/her
100¹ solar rotations
Tesco! She replied
No silly! Cows!
Mark – sprout No.1
identifying as he/him
110² solar rotations
supplementary identity brother
Dad! What’s a cow?
Asked Zoe
We will take our Martian friend
to a farm this weekend
and you shall see cows!
Host and pod senior
11100³ solar rotations
identifying as he/him
supplemental identity – Father

Cows – it turns out
are breast-feeders
on four legs
unlike the host identifying
as she/her
supplementary identity – Mother
who walks on two legs
– cows are enslaved
and farms are prisons
enclosures of grass
which is a brush
for brushing up sunlight
and converting the energy
so cows can make milk
and – as it turns out – meat

Zoe imbibes a lot of milk
she made that weird expression
I cannot fathom the meaning of
when the cow breast
was pointed out
It’s dirty! She said
she ran off to look at
some cow progeny
that were being loaded
into a transporter
– diesel class/lorry
Why haven’t they got breasts
Zoe asked the prison superintendent
They identify as he/him
she was told
and we don’t need them
so we are selling them…
Why make the cows
have them then?
asked Mark
If the cows don’t have babies
they won’t make milk
for you to drink!
What happens to
those boys? Asked Mark
They will be fattened up
and go to market
said the superintendent
Go to market for what?
asked Mark
Why to be eaten!
Zoe made a high-pitched noise
and ran away shouting
I’m never going to drink milk again
or eat meat!
Now look what you’ve done!
Said Mother…

¹ 4 Years old
² 6 Years old
³ 28 Years old

Lacquer (Shellac) and a Limerick Poem

April 12, 2024April 12, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide trade in Shellac – 2022 – $167.84 million

Of all the commodities that I have or will be dealing with this month, Lacquer or Shellac, is the one that I expect most people to know little about despite it being a material of great ubiquity and one that most people will have come into contact with in one of its uses or other…

Imagine you are the guest in a posh house and that the lady of the house has just handed you a glass of whisky and you turn to place it on a magnificent antique dining table standing next to you – before you can say “knock me sideways with a feather” – the good lady darts forward and pausing your placement of the glass with a tight grip on your arm, she deftly slides a coaster beneath your glass before allowing its descent to complete. “It’s the French Polish, you know!” she says to you. She was afraid that an odd dribble of alcohol might run down the glass and cause a ring to be “melted” into the French Polish necessitating an expensive visit from the French Polisher to repair the damage. On a personal note, I have attempted a little French Polishing in the course of my chequered career and it is hard work (and no, I am not talking about the kind of French Polishing advertised in London phone boxes – that is another story altogether!)

You see French Polish, or Shellac, is a wondrous material – one of whose both benefits and deficits, is that it can only be dissolved in alcohol, ethanol or methanol will do it and alcohol is pretty rare in nature, especially distilled to the concentration required to dissolve shellac! This wondrous material may certainly be associated with furniture, both as a polish but also as a stain, yet that is only one of the many jobs we have found for it! “It is currently used in a wide range of applications, such as coating pharmaceutical pills, food, musical instruments, material conservation, painting, and electronics insulation, as well as in the military industry. Lac has insulation properties, adhesiveness, tastelessness, moisture resistance, and a smooth film texture and is non-toxic. Due to these properties, lac is anticipated to be widely used in the future for finishing many industrial products.” You can read more here. So you may have encountered shellac as the shine on an M&M, the coating of a pill, it may be inside a transformer you possess or a motor winding in your hair dryer, you may have drawn with it as the binder in Indian Ink. In the past, it was used to seal letters and more recently, was a vital part in a stage of making phonographic records – a stage known as “the shellac”. And so I say again – this may be one of the greatest products you have not been aware of… This is not merely an ancient substance from which we get the word Lacquer itself, but a substance for which we are constantly finding new uses as shown in the graph of patent applications being filed (below).

Applications of natural lac products: (A) uses in industries, and (B) patents on the use of shellac in the last few years.

Where does this miraculous material come from you may well ask although given its many uses, you may understand why it is important enough to be traded as a commodity and on the futures market. Shellac is the boiled up bodies, eggs, droppings and secretions of the Lac Fly – a group of insects “of the family Kerriidae (Hemiptera), also known as scale insects, which produce a resinous material that forms a hard scale test over their bodies.” The females of the species cling to twigs of very particular trees and suck the sap at one end, whilst at their rear end they extrude a tunnel of chitinous resin that contains and protects their eggs. Whole twigs become entirely covered (stick shellac) and are harvested, scraped, heated and filtered to extract the pure resin which is Shellac. There are several grades and colours of shellac depending on an interaction between the particular species of Lac Fly and the particular tree they were on since there are a number of species of both insects and suitable trees – at least 400 trees species have been identified. Only the least coloured shellac can be further processed and more colour removed to make the food grade and pharmaceutical grades of shellac – nevertheless, if you are of a squeamish disposition, you may want to think about what you are consuming next time you pop certain shiny glazed sweets in your mouth…

Drawing of the insect *Kerria lacca* and its shellac tubes, by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, 1909

Stick Shellac from an article on Insect Farming

“Lac production is limited to south, east, and southeast Asian countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar” With all the uses being found for shellac in the First World, you can see how important a crop the Lac Fly represents to these Developing countries. And indeed, it is the fact that shellac production depends on a natural, growing insect, that makes it a “Soft” Commodity which is very amenable to those who wish to gamble on Shellac Futures – there are food years and bad years and a shortage of product in one country may be offset by a glut in another…

And so to today’s poem which as L has to be a Limerick. And as much as I looked forward to and enjoyed writing about Lac Flies and their wondrous product, I found the Limerick the most difficult to get right and it took endless tinkering to get the rhythm, the humour, the rhymes and just the right hint of bawdiness – I hope you like it…

Shellac – a Limerick

Sue who thought French Polish “encroyable!”
Knew nothing of the substance fabled
Poo, eggs and secretions of Lac Flies
Speechless, poor Sue nearly died
When told of the shit on her table!

Kerosene and a Kyrielle Poem

April 12, 2024April 12, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day

Worldwide trade in Kerosene 1998 $9 Billion – rank 151 / 771

It’s some times hard to find the exact date figures for each commodity and for Kerosene I commend this site for its excellent infographic on producers and importers of kerosene (even if it is 1998 and not 2022 as I have tried to stick to…)

The Lady with the Lamp…

One of the iconic images of the early Nineteenth Century, is that of Florence Nightingale depicted as “The Lady with the Lamp” and I imagined that she might have used some sort of oil lamp and that might be a good place to start with talking about kerosene, but the truth of this image is rather more complicated.

I already mentioned Kerosene under the letter H for Heating Oil as a commodity and Kerosene is a specific form of Paraffin derived from Crude Oil distillation. Kerosene can be used contemporarily as heating oil but also as aviation fuel, rocket fuel and it was one used as a replacement for whale oil in lamps, much to the relief of whales who were being hunted to the brink of extinction by the 1860’s. The growing scarcity of whales raised the price of whale oil as a commodity and drove the search for alternatives such as petroleum-derived Kerosene. So today I want to examine the historical importance of Kerosene as a major commodity for lighting.

A “fanoos” lamp from the Florence Nightingale Museum

Going back to “The Lady with the Lamp” for a moment – The Florence Nightingale Museum exhibits a Turkish Fanoos lantern which it claims is the correct type of lamp that the eponymous inventor of The Nightingale Ward would have used. This is a concertina-style paper lantern – a collapsible travelling lantern which would have had a candle inside. Candles, incidentally, can be made from Paraffin Wax – another product closely related to Kerosene. But the more romantic image of Florence Nightingale carrying a Greek or “genie” lamp burning some form of oil, caught the public imagination more after several depictions of such – so much so, that “A further layer of meaning was added to the lamp with the foundation of the Nightingale Training School in 1860. The oil lamp was already a symbol of learning because it had enabled reading in the hours of darkness since classical times. Now the lamp came to represent nurse education.”

A so-called toy lamp (because of its small size) which burnt Whale Oil.

Oil lamps had been used for thousands of years often vegetable oils so in the Mediterranean countries this would have been Olive Oil. There were many seeps of crude oil around the world and one of the oldest attempts to extract oil for lighting oil, is the Persian scholar Rāzi, who created a form of kerosene by filtering petroleum through an alembic with materials like clay. It was not until 1854 that “a Polish pharmacist, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, invented the kerosene lamp – a device that quickly went on to light up Europe. He also went on to open the first oil mine and kerosene refinery in the world, becoming a pioneer of the oil business.” In America, “Until the late 19th century, an oil find often was met with disinterest or dismay. Pioneers who settled the American West dug wells to find water or brine, a source of salt; they were disappointed when they struck oil”. But with the perfection of the method of extracting kerosene from crude oil, the new commodity was set to take over from Whale oil and literally save their blubber.

A Sperm whale being hunted for the spermacetti oil in its head which made the best quality lamp oil…

Later, the major commodity to be extracted from Crude Oil, would become Gasoline which we encountered under “G” – which just goes to show how commodities can change over time. Whole industries such as whaling (1780-1860) can rise and fall in less than a hundred years. Likewise, the shift from crude oil’s importance as a source of kerosene lamp oil was eclipsed by the advent of electric light although it gained a new lease of with the advent of jet engines and as a heating oil and the gasoline fuelled the growth of the motor car and the asphalt created the roads for cars to run on until every fraction of crude oil was utilised for something – spanning many separate commodity markets.

Con trails – the water vapour resulting from burning Kerosene in aircraft jet engines also releasing CO2

The other narrative running through this evolution of commodities, is the way that we humans have exploited the natural world for whatever riches our burgeoning “civilisation” has required. Vegetable oil lamps were sustainable, whale oil lamps nearly extinguished whales and fossil fuels are largely responsible for the unfolding disaster of climate change! Hmmm…

And so to today’s poem which at “K”, brings us to a French poetry form called the Kyrielle. “written in quatrains (a stanza consisting of 4 lines), and each quatrain contains a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza). Each line within the poem consists of only eight syllables. There is no limit to the amount of stanzas a Kyrielle may have, but three is considered the accepted minimum.
Some popular rhyming schemes for a Kyrielle are: aabB, ccbB, ddbB, with B being the repeated line, or abaB, cbcB, dbdB. Mixing up the rhyme scheme it’s possible for an unusual pattern of: axaZ, bxbZ, cxcZ, dxdZ, etc. with Z being the repeated line.”

Kerosene – A Kyrielle

Homes once lit by Whale Oil lamps
were the reason why whales were hunted
– long before the “Save the Whales” camp
‘twas Kerosene saved the whales.

Kerosene a component of crude oil
scars our skies with jet vapour trails
but when whalers ceased their toil
then Kerosene saved the whales!

Electric lamps made safer homes
then aviation took up the slack
made tourists of us – ones who roam
but kerosene saved the whales!

Whale watching is the latest fad
no matter how much Kerosene burnt
do you not realise it’s mad
when Kerosene saved the whales

only to have them share our fate
and all die from global warming
we denying it till it’s too late
– did kerosene save the whales…?

Worldwide trade in Vanadium 2022 was $38970 million and growing…

Vanadium – a Verbless Poem

Worldwide Trade in Soybeans in 2022 whether or not broken” exceeded $93 billion

Types of Miso from around Japan

Soybeans

Earth Day

Worldwide Trade in Rubber 2022 – $18.4B – 239th most traded product representing 0.078% of total world trade.

Rubber

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B – 548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade

World Pepper Production and Trade

Pepper

Worldwide Trade in Palladium in 2022 – $29.4 Billion

Palladium

The Wondering…

The Answers!

Orange Juice – an Ottavo Rima

Worldwide trade in Shellac – 2022 – $167.84 million

Worldwide trade in Kerosene 1998 $9 Billion – rank 151 / 771

The Lady with the Lamp…

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B –
548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade