Corn/Mais

I found the following statement on the agronomy department website at the Iowa State University in 'Origin, History and Uses of Corn'. Link here.

The word "corn" has many different meanings depending on what country you are in. Corn in the United States is also called maize or Indian corn. In some countries, corn means the leading crop grown in a certain district. Corn in England means wheat; in Scotland and Ireland, it refers to oats. Corn mentioned in the Bible probably refers to wheat or barley.

In German the word is Mais.

Transporting the bales

The electricity pylons stand guard as the bales of hay are loaded onto a tractor trailer for transport.

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Bales

These are the stalks of cereal plants that have had their grain removed. At least, that is my assumption.

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Fields of gold

Looking at Villigen as one drive in from Brugg. The little S-shaped "cloud" at the right is from Leibstadt, one of the handful of nuclear power plants in the vicinity.

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Cows in the corner

I don't know if you can even see the animals in the upper left corner. Perhaps you can make out some flecks of brown and white. For shots like these I do miss my old power-zoom point-and-shoot.

There are these bits of land around Villigen that are used to pasture animals during the summer months. I should try to find out more about how the system works.

Today's side topic is lab-grown meat. I quote from The Independent newspaper (link) in the UK, to describe how it came about:

... the culmination of years of work by Mark Post, a medical physiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. 

And about the points in favor of the stuff:

One assessment, published in 2011 by scientists from Oxford University, estimated that cultured meat uses far less energy than most other forms, apart from chicken, and some 45 per cent less energy than beef, the most environmentally destructive meat.

They also found that synthetic meat needs 99 per cent less land than livestock, between 82 and 96 per cent less water, and produces between 78 and 95 per cent less greenhouse gas. In terms of relative environmental damage, there was no contest. 

I think the greatest challenge will be to get people to eat it. But for the sake of the world, I hope something will change in the meat business.

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Organic

Organic - or Bio as they call it here - fertilizer being applied to the fields. Give thanks that olfactory properties don't convey over the Internet (yet?)

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The road to Stilli

I took this on the 21st of October, as I walked along Hauptstrasse away from Villigen. The road leads to Stilli (pronounced shteelli, or thereabouts), an entity that was incorporated into Villigen in January 2006. I believe the combined population is now 1855. I like the way the leaves were blown off the tree; they seem to form a shadow.

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