Went for a walk locally today. At one point we walked through a field of sweetcorn which was way taller than me and had at least two or three sweetcorns per plant on. None of the sweetcorn had been harvested and a few in which the edible bit was visible all looked well beyond their best-before date.
So I presumed that the farmer gets paid a subsidy for growing something (rather than nothing) but harvesting it just isn't economically justifiable. Or maybe they use foreign labour which wasn't available this year. Maybe it's used as animal feed so best-before doesn't matter so much. Or some other reason.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Last edited by: smokie on Wed 11 Sep 19 at 14:51
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Hmm possible I suppose but it looked a lot but probably wasn't that much really.
But that takes me back a few weeks to a discussion on a different walk as to whether sweetcorn and corn were one and the same plant.
Walking raises some seriously dull questions doesn't it... :-)
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>> Walking raises some seriously dull questions doesn't it... :-)
>>
Oh I don't know. Last walk I went on with our local group I had a great discussion with a mathematician about Fermat's last theorem and its solution. One of the joys of living near Cambridge perhaps!
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A few folks ( a very small minority) in our walking group are avid hill tickers. Climbing up the list in the Hillwalkers Register is their goal. They’ve done the County Tops in Ireland, all the Donalds in the Scottish Lowlands, Marilyn’s and are now ticking off Donald Deweys ( hills between 500m and 609m) plus Humps & Tumps along our walking routes. You can imagine some of the conversations, and my lagging behind is purely coincidental.
Scottish Munros aren’t as important as these obscure tops.
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>>Last walk I went on with our local group I had a great discussion with a mathematician about Fermat's last theorem
In that case you might be interested to know that somebody has just found the 3 cube roots that add up to 42. This is the last of the numbers from 1 to 100 that was unsolved for.
i.e. if x3+y3+z3=42, what are x, y, and z? Bet you can't guess. It took a lot of computers a long time. You've probably already worked out that at least one of them will have to be negative.
tiny.cc/cubes42
I haven't checked it. I'm sure that Excel won't handle the necessary precision (there's a clue).
So most of us won't be able to argue with him even if we wanted to.
But it's good to know.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 11 Sep 19 at 17:18
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Thanks Manatee - just spent a happy while prodding about with that. As you say, Excel throws its apron over its head and runs from the room screaming, but Bing just works it out. But that isn't very satisfactory, so I've just "proved" to myself that it's right by doing the sum longhand, which was tedious but vaguely satisfying.
The deeper questions that occur to you with this cube root thing, such as "why, what's extra special about 42" or "why is 1 so intuitive and easy" or "where does any other number lie on that line between easy and bizarrely hard to solve, and why", or if there is indeed a "why" to be found here at all is fascinating though, as with much maths.
It's coincidental - the same mathematician was describing to me recently how to work out cube roots from first principles.
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>> It's coincidental - the same mathematician was describing to me recently how to work out
>> cube roots from first principles.
>>
Can you do that without starting with a guess and iterating?
Edit: Calculus?
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 11 Sep 19 at 21:38
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>>I had a great discussion with a mathematician about Fermat's last theorem and its solution. >> >> One of the joys of living near Cambridge perhaps!
>>
On my cycle rides I have great discussions about Occam's Razor (always relevant).
One of the joys of living near Ockham, perhaps!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
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Some farmers use it as cover and food for the pheasants, and then have a local shoot.
How do I know? been on one with the dog.
Sometimes the spot price at time of harvesting is not worth the effort.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 11 Sep 19 at 15:51
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"Sweet corn is harvested in the "milk stage", after pollination but before starch has formed, between late summer and early to mid-autumn. Field maize is left in the field until very late in the autumn to thoroughly dry the grain, and may, in fact, sometimes not be harvested until winter or even early spring."
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...and it's not peculiar to the UK. I've walked through and past fields and fields of unharvested maize in the Bayerische Wald today.
"The corn is as high as an elephant's eye" (and a pretty tall one at that!).
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There is a difference between sweet corn and maize. They are both maize as such, but usually different cultivars bred for different purposes. Most of the maize you see in fields in the autumn is for animal feed. The crop is harvested in its entirety, chopped into smaller pieces and is then used for maize silage. A sort of pickling process that preserves fodder for the winter feeding period.
The production of maize for grain is a dicey business. A long, dry autumn is needed to dry the grain out sufficiently, and a wet period can be nightmare. Grain maize is marginal in the UK. I remember the very wet autumn of 1974 and seeing a combine struggling through a field of maize whilst the ground was frosted in February 1975. I bet he didn't plant that crop again.
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Thanks for the replies! Such a good source of info here isn't it :-)
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That was a near miss :)
Mrs FC doing a push bike ride along the Danube Passau to Vienna.
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A very nice ride, particularly if the weather is kind, as it currently is.
We like it herej the countryside is attractive along the border, and it is relatively tourist-free.
Going to dip into the Czech Republic tomorrow (though, in fact, we have already walked across the border this week).
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>>Going to dip into the Czech Republic tomorrow (though, in fact, we have already walked across the border this week).
Funny things, European borders. I used to live & work in Annecy. I always flew in and out through Geneva. So I did the Swiss/French border 2 0r 3 times a week. I even knew exactly where it was. Never saw anybody there or actually slowed down or anything though.
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Within Europe, I've had little disruption at most borders for a good few years.
Got asked for papers at the Slovenian border crossing from Italy last year; they were locked in a safe, and as it was a minor road, I had to go through the checkpoint to avoid blocking traffic in either direction. When I walked back with the passports the young, armed guard wasn't very interested, but at least he was good-humoured throughout.
Been held in a long queue couple of times recently to be "visualled" crossing from Austria to Germany on the Autobahn near Salzburg, and surprisingly, the same when crossing from Germany to Denmark.
We walked across into the Czech Republic in a very minor road crossing where there is no border presence at all (but there are weight restriction signs asking if you would kindly refrain from trying to sneak anything over 3.5t across). ;-)
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Had a holiday in Slovenia a few years ago. We went white water rafting in Italy, which involved crossing from Slovenia into Austria and then into Italy and then back again afterwards.
The only people who showed any interest were the Austrians, who asked us in good English who we were and where we were going.
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Growing and harvesting sweetcorn (& subsidy?) - Bromptonaut
