Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Otus the Head Cat
Pollen farmers' woes nothing to sneeze at.
Dear Otus,
I’ve read your column for years and know you to be a thoughtful and objective journalist. As secretary of the Arkansas Pollen Farmers Association, I implore you to use your considerable influence to persuade our representatives to do the right thing about these pending tariffs.
When I called the offices of both our U.S. senators to voice my concerns, I got some officious lackeys and could hear muffled laughter in the background. Our livelihoods are at stake.
— Claire Atin, Forrest City
Dear Claire,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, to thank you for being a reader and for your service to the APFA. It’s frequently a thankless job that few in Arkansas outside the industry appreciate.
I also appreciate you believing that I, as a powerful and influential member of the mainstream media, have any more sway on the public consciousness these days than Billy Bob Bloviator in his basement banging out his bilious vitriol in a blog.
In fact, I may have far less influence.
Sadly, in recent years, any mental eunuch with access to the Internet can set himself up a Website or YouTube page to superficially appear to be a well-informed, astute, enlightened observer of the passing scene. When being vetted and being correct are no longer hindrances, the trolls take over.
You can add to this the incessant cacophony from our Twitterer in Chief carping about “fake news” this and “fake news” that. When you mix the propensity of a feckless, naive, gullible, malleable percentage of the population overly eager to buy into that political subterfuge, well, I am not surprised you heard muffled laughter.
Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon me to attempt to aid you and the APFA in getting out the word to those who have the power to resist President Trump’s ill-advised and potentially cataclysmic desire to take on the world with a trade war.
Trump evidently believes that by rattling the economic saber of tariffs, all the other countries will fall in line, seek contrition and come groveling to the bargaining table — hats in hand.
That is the furthest thing from reality. We need look no further than what happened this week with China in response to Trump’s recent conniption over steel and aluminum tariffs.
China retaliated in kind. In response, Trump upped the ante by threatening tariffs on high-tech Chinese manufacturing.
The next card China played was a triple whammy tariff on U.S. large-volume exports. Of the 128 items listed, almost 90 are agricultural products such as dried fruit, nuts and ginseng. Number six on the list is refined pollen, used in Chinese perfumes, house paints, cooking oil and pig feed and as a stabilizer in assorted homeopathic medicines.
Few realize that after rice, soybeans, cotton, poultry and feed grains, pollen is a major exported crop in the state. Arkansas ranks third in pollen production, with around 22 percent of the U.S. crop.
The sprawling APFA refinery in the Little Rock Port Authority covers 22 acres and utilizes the intermodal transportation services to connect Arkansas to U.S. markets and the deep water ports of the Gulf of Mexico.
Granted, most consider pollen to be a seasonal irritant, but with the discovery of pterocarpan phytoalexins in pollen cotyledon cells proximal to the point of elicitor application, and modern processing methods, it’s the classic case of making lemonade out of lemons.
Arkansas is not called the Natural State for nothing. With 18,778,660 acres of forest land covering approximately 56 percent of the state, Arkansas is among the leaders in harvesting tree pollen for commercial use.
Trees pollinate first and cover cars, ponds and roadways with yellow-green slime. After that comes the onslaught of ragweed, plantain, nettle, mugwort, fat hen, sheep piffle and frakken, but you never get used to the sicklepod, eclipta and hemp sesbania.
Native Arkansans generally sneeze and sniffle and take it in stride. Like the annual humidity pods, pollen season is part of what makes Arkansas home.
Hap Lloyd, the official palynologist with the Arkansas State Plant Board, predicts this will be a banner year for pollen and that will make the harvesting and refining easier — and the Chinese tariffs all the more painful.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that “fake news” is an inane pejorative and 78 percent of those who use the phrase don’t know what “pejorative” means.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of Z humorous fabrication X
appears every Saturday. E-mail: mstorey@arkansasonline.com