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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Ethylene and fruit storage

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  • From: "Sonja & Raymond Barker" <orchard1@telus.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Ethylene and fruit storage
  • Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:53:17 -0800

Hi you can buy ethylene absorbers in packets or in bulk from various sorces on the internet it's just pottasiun permanganate you only need a small amount

Ray
----- Original Message ----- From: "loneroc" <loneroc@mwt.net>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 7:01 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] Ethylene and fruit storage


Hi all,

I find that my best keeping apples start to soften excessively by March.
(They aren't very good for eating now.) Although I try to open the
refrigerators that they're stored in daily, or more often, to prevent
ethylene build-up this doesn't seem sufficient. Any ideas on removal of
ethylene from the fridge? I was thinking maybe a couple pounds of activated
carbon/charcoal baked every few weeks to drive off collected gas. Worth a
try or no? Is there anything that works?

Steve Herje Lone Rock, WI


----- Original Message ----- From: "Lucky Pittman" <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 8:41 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] barn cats(long)


There's been a discussion on barn cats on the small ruminant
practitioners e-list that dovetails to some degree with the one
that's been going on here on the NAFEX list. Received this response
over the weekend - thought it might be of interest to some of you
NAFEXers.
Lucky

>Again, I will apologize that this is a long post, as behavior and
>domestication are special interests of mine.
>
>I would like to comment on the outdoor cats issue as well. I
>recognize that cats are predators and do at times take birds and at
>times those birds are from struggling populations. However, in my
>experience, few people have the knowledge or desire to make an
>indoor environment as enriched as a cat needs for optimum mental
>health. It is much like the zoos of yester-year, when wild cat
>species were kept on boring, sterile cages. Sure they lived longer
>than their wild counterparts, but what kind of lives did they lead?
>However now zoos undergo considerable design to provide more
>enriched environments (decades back, prior to vet school, I worked a
>summer with Hal Markowitz at the Portland zoo, who was an pioneer in
>cognitive enrichment in the zoo setting). But the average cat owner
>hasn't a clue how to evaluate and design an indoor environment for the
>behavioral needs of a cat.
>
>I think we also need to examine the issue of the prey that cats are
>hunting and why humans domesticated cats in the first place. In the
>late 1990s, I lived for two years in Japan and got an English
>language newspaper. There I was reading about the serious crop
>failure that was occurring in Vietnam, which was so severe that it
>was feared it would cause widespread famine. The situation all came
>back, it turns out, to cats. What happened was the
>economy improved over the border in China, causing a proliferation
>of specialty "Little Tiger Restaurants" in the border cities
>surrounding Vietnam and in Saigon. As the name implies, these
>restaurants served up cooked domestic cat, which was considered a
>delicacy. This caused an economic draw for getting cats to supply
>the restaurants, and a number of people started poaching the cats
>from farm villages in Vietnam. As the cats
>disappeared, the rat population exploded, moving out into the farms
>fields and consuming all the staple crops. I don't remember the
>exact numbers, but it was billions of tons of human food being
>lost. I remember reading one story about a man who used a car
>battery to electrify his rice paddy every night to kill thousands of
>rats--woe to anyone else who accidentally stumbled off the path. At
>the time I left Japan and was no longer getting newspapers that ran
>the story, the government had closed down all the Little Tiger
>restaurants and were actively campaigning to the farmers to protect
>their cats as a way of protecting their fields and food supply.
>
>The reason why humans, in this case the ancient Egyptians,
>domesticated cats to begin with was because of their hunting
>prowess and their ability to protect our food supply from rodents
>and pest species of small birds. The domestication of the dog occurred
while
>humans were still primarily hunter-gatherers. Domestication of cats
>followed the domestication of grains and plant agriculture and
>storage and cats proved their value as small, effective predators
>that could live on the edges of human civilization. Cats then
>followed humanity everywhere we went, were of value to us because of
>their hunting prowess. They accompanied humans on sailing ships,
>keeping our stores of food safe from rodents. Wherever there is
>human agriculture, there cats have proved their value. I think that
>the current anti-cat movement fails to recognize the historical
>perspective and fails to recognize that the value we humans derive
>from cats' hunting skills continues today. We in our comfortable
>domesticity haven't experienced the horseman of the Apocalypse that
>was Pestilence. But what if those millions of wildlife (mainly
>rodents) killed now by outdoor and feral cats were instead allowed
>to live and, as rodent populations are able to do, explosively
>reproduce? We are still creating and maintaining the habitats in
>which rodents will flourish. After all, if the feral cats didn't
>have those rodents to hunt, there would not be a feral cat
>population to begin with...the few people feeding these populations
>are not maintaining them--the rodent population living in the
>habitats we people have created is what is maintaining the feral cat
>population.
>
>Cats have gone, hand in paw, along with human agriculture for
>thousands of years, which is why many farmers tolerate, even
>encourage, semi-feral populations of barn cats.
>
>I choose to have several outdoor cats in my barn because I prefer
>that to trapping and poisoning rodents. A decade ago we had a woman
>killed by Hantavirus in my community, so I know that this is in my
>resident deer mouse population. Trapping rodents puts me at
>increased risk and poisoning them puts raptors at risk. Leaving
>them to reproduce and run amok in my barn and pastures is not a good
>sustainable agricultural practice. There are snakes in my pastures,
>but being cold blooded, they aren't much help in the winter and
>don't consume prey species as much as a warm blooded species with
>higher energy demands. I have, on occasions had skunks also living
>in the barn, also eating the rodent population. But I prefer the
>cats to the skunks because the skunks kill my laying hens and the
>cats do not. My cats do kill the occasional bird--but in keeping
>with the adage that common things happen commonly, the birds killed
>are generally species that are in overabundance like starlings. I
>*don't* put out a bird feeder, which I think may be a
>detriment to wild bird populations by creating static, abnormally
>concentrated wild bird feeding locations that brings birds into
>close proximity and puts them at a higher risk of social stress,
>disease transmission and predatory risk (from more than just
>cats). (I wonder how many of the people who damn the cats also
>create these abnormal feeding stations without questioning whether
>they are potentially creating risk for the bird populations)?
>
>Most of the prey that are killed by cats are not any more "wild"
>than the cats themselves. They are species of animals who have
>either invaded into new territories because of their ability to
>exploit the niches we create (like the Norway rat), were
>deliberately introduced (like the starling, which is no more native
>than the cats) or are native populations that are living at higher
>densities because of the habitat we have created (like the deer mouse).
>
>Rare populations are also impacted by the hunting skills of the
>cats, but not to the degree that these potentially damaging pest
>species are impacted. I think we need to find another way to protect
>the rare species from all the things that are challenging them (like
>habitat destruction, competition from pest species, loss of nesting
>habitat, pollution and pesticides) and leave the cats doing what the
>cats have been doing the last 5 centuries....using their spectacular
>hunting prowess to protect our food supply. And for those of us who
>also make our living from agriculture, we need to recognize that the
>health of the outdoor cat population is related to the health and
>sustainability of agriculture and extend our hand at keeping them
>healthy and able to do their jobs (an example would be on-farm
>vaccination and worming when we are there seeing to the
>ruminants). Part of our jobs when we go on a farm, could be to see
>what the farmer needs to keep his outdoor cat population stable and
>healthy. As the Toxo case pointed out, a rapidly turning over
>population with a lot of kittens and influx of new cats is not as
>beneficial as a stable population. We could teach farmers how to
>better care for their barn cats. That is a niche we could explore.
>
>I think that those of us in agriculture need to appreciate what cats
>do for agriculture and add our perspective to the outdoor cat debate.
>
>I also don't think you can always buy the argument that outdoor cats
>necessarily live short, miserable lives. They do certainly have
>more challenges to their safety, like coyotes and cars. But I have
>a 20 year old retired barn cat who started living in my house a
>while back, after having been born and raised and spending over a
>decade as my primary barn cat. She is mearowing to be fed, so I'd
>better stop writing now.......
>
>Again I apologize for the length of this post. It is a topic about
>which I have given a lot of thought and I don't see this perspective
>addressed much in the debates about this.
>
>Janice
>
>Janice Willard, DVM, MS
>Moscow, ID
>
>
>>Peri;
>>Well said; you make some good points, and I'm sure we all value
wildlife.
>>I have no doubt that in certain situations, especially where habitat
loss
>>has already threatened certain populations, cats may have an impact. It
>>behooves us all to try to minimze our ecologic footprint and manage our
>>own habitat responsibly. We do see plenty of what our cats kill and
bring
>>home (or barf up), and birds are a very small part. The cats do a lot >>to
>>keep mice, squirrels and chipmunks out of the houses as well as the
barns.
>>I stand corrected on the issue of older cats potentially shedding toxo,
as
>>well, but still a resident adult population is likely to be healthier
than
>>a transient one.

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