CBR -- Canola By Rail

I couldn't resist. Smile.

Search the blog for "canola."

North Dakota plants 2/3rds of the nation's canola.
North Dakota company building a canola plant in Oklahoma.
Despite moisture problems, North Dakota likely to remain #1 in canola -- back in 2011.

Don sent me a link to a story on how "nanny state politics" benefits North Dakota. The Minneapolis StarTribune is reporting:

From Oregon to Oklahoma, farmers have started planting canola in earnest, rotating the yellow-flowered crop that could blossom into a replacement for artery-clogging trans fats found in myriad junk foods, such as cookies, cakes and pies.

The amount of canola being grown in the U.S. has increased dramatically in the last two decades or so, with 1.7 million acres planted in 2012. Some of it is growing in areas such as Oklahoma, which for generations has been dominated by wheat and cattle operations.

Canola seeds produce oil with less saturated fat than many cooking oils and got a boost last fall when the Food and Drug Administration announced it was changing its view on trans fats. The FDA issued a preliminary decision that trans fat, also called partially hydrogenated oils, would no longer be listed as "generally recognized as safe" and began taking comment from the food industry on a timeline for eliminating their use.

Increased use of canola has led to strong prices that can top other crops. For example, canola now brings farmers about $10 a bushel, compared to about $6 to $7 for wheat.

Statistics:

• Oklahoma went from planting 140,000 acres in 2012 to 250,000 acres last year. 
• Oregon climbed from 7,300 acres planted in 2012 to 13,000 in 2013.
• In Washington, acreage during that period doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.
• Montana the amount planted rose from 51,000 to 55,000 acres.
• North Dakota is the top canola state, with 860,000 acres planted in 2013.

It looks like it will take quite a leap for any state to leapfrog North Dakota in canola production.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Gravity really is a great movie. I don't watch television any more (rare exceptions: occasional NASCAR) and I rarely go to movies (I do watch a lot of DVDs - television and big screen).

But two movies that I went to this past year were exceptional. I can't say enough about Bruce Dern in Nebraska. It's in black and white and about as slow as watching grass grow, but ... but I digress ...

Gravity.  

Variety is reporting that the director of Gravity won the Directors Guild of America award this year, beating out directors of 12 Years A Slave, American Hustle, and The Wolf of Wall Street.  From the article:

Alfonso Cuaron, who spent five years developing “Gravity,” noted that photos from space show that the Earth is “absolutely beautiful” but do not depict the human experience.

“It’s a bizarre experiment of nature, that is the human experience,” he noted. “And it’s what we as directors try to sort out as filmmakers.”

Gravity, at some level, seemed to be a "sleeper" among movie-goers, the critics, and the intelligentsia this year. The cinematography was incredible, and the risk for the director was that the visual effects would overshadow the human element. I found it interesting how captivated I was by the "views" from space, but then the story-line took over, and I forgot (at times) about the views. The cinematography kept coming back, but it would be lost when the story grabbed me again.

The "thing" that made this movie work, as far as the story line goes: the hero was not a super-trained male fighter pilot-astronaut who saves the day through clever command of physics. Rather, it was psychologist-mission specialist clearly out of her element reacting instinctively to events bigger than she could ever imagine.

Sandra Bullock has always been on the cusp of becoming part of that very small circle of super-A list actresses, which can be numbered on one hand and include Judi Dench (who I seem to always enjoy) and Meryl Streep (who I occasionally enjoy watching). I don't think this movie moves her (Sandra Bullock) into that small circle. Maybe there are two circles of super-A list actresses: those who are among the gods and goddesses on Olympus, and then those who remained among the mortals.