Chile Forum

So, as Temuco is quite obviously the "horse meat capital" of Chile, with tens of small shops around the feria, that are also selling horse fat (and it is as cheap as 500 - 700 pesos per kilo -- that I use constantly for cooking), and also the charqui (i.e. dried and salted horse meat), you have to establish the duck eggs production center in the new "duck capital" of the country, and you also must have a nice name/tredemark for your organically smoked duck meat (using organic eucalyptus bark, you know, for better taste). Use the word "patito" as part of the name (so it would sound much like the "condorito"). In China, as soon as they know, they would instantly start to ask you for the wonderful Chilean organic smoked duck.

gato wrote: your organically smoked duck meat (using organic eucalyptus bark, you know, for better taste).

Fascinating. Of course, the burning bark of the eucalyptus globulus found around Temuco is toxic. It contains cyanogenic glycoside. Perhaps the smoking does not impart enough of the toxic materials to be hazardous to those with normal resistance to toxic compounds. In the presence of certain enzymes found in meat and fish, cyanogenic glycoside converts to hydrogen cyanide.

Wait... I get it.. it's ORGANIC cyanogenic glycoside ! And ORGANIC hydrogen cyanide! Tastes so much better, and obviously not as bad for you as the unnatural, non-organic, synthetic stuff.

We will be waiting for the confirmation from other foreros that no matter how much organically produced hydrogen cyanide you absorb, if it doesn't kill you outright, it will certainly make you stronger.

patagoniax wrote:. . . . Chilean secondary students would be perfectly English-Spanish bilingual as of the graduating class of 2012. . . .

Wasn't that to have been 2014? So, they've still got two years!

First they should aim for Chileno-Spanish bilingualism, then they can worry about adding English as a second foreign language.

otravers wrote:First they should aim for Chileno-Spanish bilingualism, then they can worry about adding English as a second foreign language.

¿Me estás hueveando?

patagoniax wrote:

no country for young men wrote:

gato wrote:Now I have a brilliant idea (while the answering machine sleeps), listen. A chain of organic duck farms (either in the lakes region or close to it).

Quack.

Can't fool me. Those are tiny icebergs.

Well maybe German ducks.

Can't fool me. Those are tiny icebergs.
Well maybe German ducks.

Actually not even ducks, but swans. Black-necked swans. They are a plague down here around Natales and the fjordlands. Pretty much organic, I guess, since they contain carbon.

patagoniax wrote:

no country for young men wrote:No pesticides, no fertilizers and no genetically modified plants: just healthy, natural produce.....The plan, drafted by the Agriculture Ministry Regional Office and the National Environmental Commission (Conama), aims to make the area's agricultural, fishing and cattle sectors chemical free within the next few years..
....."

I suspect that this was prepared by the same people who dreamed that all Chilean secondary students would be perfectly English-Spanish bilingual as of the graduating class of 2012. It's obvious that the aggie people have been smoking something, too.

There is much that is patently foolish here. We have a target-rich environment in this country for the inadvertently whimsical, the clearly chimerical, and the quixotically unachievable. Please try to take none of it seriously.

Yeah, understand what you are saying on that document (it has a similar feel to NZ guv efforts). The question is what to take seriously? Chile exports product labeled "organic". Organizations like WOOF list hundreds of farms in Chile. Organic is smart business - for some, not all - from my experience.

I live on the cultural fault line here in Central California with the big chem mega produce growers on one side in the Salinas Valley (salad bowl of the US) and a bunch of hippies on the other side who have slaved on small farms for 40 years developing - rediscovering and reinventing - organic, developing it into a brand in high demand at higher prices and margins than the chem alternatives. These hippies did this without all the big ag subsidies and when faced with marketing barriers, they came up with alternative channels which have proven popular and profitable - farmers markets, school lunch programs, CSAs, etc. Maybe they won't ever own 100% of the market, but it's the chem side that is having to adopt as consumer tastes change.

From experience here, it's possible to live side by side with chem farmers to a degree, but as you pointed out in another post Px, Chileans are overusing chems and I doubt they are worried about overspray and runoff onto a small farm next door doing organic. Not great especially if they are using persistent chems banned most places (as they are so effective being persistent).

Personally, I believe that development of an industrial cluster (including farmers adopting a particular practice) needs to proceed, well, organically. Top down guv white papers and rules are likely to be as you rightly point out, 'inadvertently whimsical, the clearly chimerical, and the quixotically unachievable'.

But bottom up works I think. A key issue is the learning curve. It took over 30 years for growers here to get organic strawberries to market. That just shortens the curve for followers.

So I should refine my questions:

Is there a trend towards organic in Chle?
Are there any particular clusters of organic? Either a geographical region or a particular product, say cheese or grapes.

patagoniax wrote:

Can't fool me. Those are tiny icebergs.
Well maybe German ducks.

Actually not even ducks, but swans. Black-necked swans. They are a plague down here around Natales and the fjordlands. Pretty much organic, I guess, since they contain carbon.

1/2 and 1/2 swans that look like tiny icebergs.

Swans in kelp. Who cudda known!

Plague? Convert to food?

patagoniax wrote:

gato wrote: Of course, the burning bark of the eucalyptus globulus found around Temuco is toxic.

Ah geez, think I will just check off Chile if they imported eucalyptus. Trash trees. Here, they were brought in after the gold rush, before the sugar beet rush and the dot.com boom. They are weeds here and worthless, but the enviros won't let you touch them. In Pacific Grove on the other side of Monterey Bay, Monarch butterflies hang out in them so a big tourist attraction. One shed a branch and killed a tourist a while back. They burn like a gas station.

And stop with the organic chemistry, Px. Gives me a headache.

no country for young men wrote:Ah geez, think I will just check off Chile if they imported eucalyptus.

And stop with the organic chemistry, Px. Gives me a headache.

Ah, but there are many reasons for our headaches here. And this time you didn't complain about the oblique reference to a tiny corner of Nietzschian philosophy, so we are indeed making some headway.

But I digress.

Lots of eucalyptus in Chile, and throughout South America. I remember volcano-climbing in Ecuador and found eucalyptus growing at nearly 14,000 feet elevation in the paramos.

Just ask an Ozzie: eucalyptus is their biggest contribution to the rest of the world. A trifle friendlier than some of their snakes, but only just barely.

Big crop in Chile. You see hand-painted signs along the roads in VI and VII regions advertising eucalyptus for sale. There are plantations of eucalyptus along that coast that are so extensive that I have literally gotten lost in them. Something like 600,000 hectares in commercial eucalyptus plantations, not counting the loose ones lining the roads and boundaries and elsewhere. Eucalyptus wood chips are a huge export to Japan, where they are ceremoniously piled on top of smouldering nuclear power plants and used to manufacture high-fibre Hello-Kitty diapers.

These trees have given rise to local cultural developments:

Once a jolly roto
Sat beside a charco
Under the shade of an árbol eucalipto...


Our Finnish friends know that lots of Finnish forestry equipment is being sold for the Chilean eucalyptus industry.





Welcome to Chile. Here, have a gum-tree.

patagoniax wrote:And this time you didn't complain about the oblique reference to a tiny corner of Nietzschian philosophy, so we are indeed making some headway.

Eucalyptus wood chips are a huge export to Japan, where they are ceremoniously piled on top of smouldering nuclear power plants and used to manufacture high-fibre Hello-Kitty diapers.

That's exciting to hear that Chile may have already made a contribution at Fukushima already. The diaper material - which went in "the trench" after the a few wheelbarrows of (apparently post hole grade) concrete didn't set up - who cudda known?

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fuku ... re-on.html

.... 8 kilograms of water-absorbing polymer in 80 bags... miniaturization, this being Japan.



Hello Kitty? Bring in the bath salts.

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fuku ... -bath.html

My Nietzche days are 40 years buried in post hole grade concrete and a failed endeavor like organic chemistry - above my pay grade both. Please repeat the tiny corner with the the unsubtle smilie.