Are you shitting me?We have, in fact, been having a hard time getting enough limes to run DNA Lounge at the citrusy, scurvy-fighting levels to which you have become accustomed. Our bar manager said it was because of Mexican drug cartels and I assume he was joking. He was not.
LA RUANA, Mexico (AP) -- The farm state of Michoacan is burning. A drug cartel that takes its name from an ancient monastic order has set fire to lumber yards, packing plants and passenger buses in a medieval-like reign of terror.
The Knights Templar cartel is extorting protection payments from cattlemen, lime growers and businesses such as butchers, prompting some communities to fight back, taking up arms in vigilante patrols. [...]
By late last year, the cartel wasn't just extorting money from lime growers and packers. It had started charging per-box payments from lime pickers, who make only $10 to $15 per day laboring under the scorching sun.
With officials doing nothing to help, self-defense groups started to spring up in February to fight back. Heavily armed men in masks and baseball caps began manning barricades along highways and patrolling the countryside, sometimes openly battling the cartel.
Then the cartel shut the warehouses, forbidding brokers to buy limes and cutting off work for the pickers who had revolted. [...]
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the federal government recently declared a lime emergency because prices had doubled to about 70 cents a pound. For a fruit so central to Mexican cuisine, it was a crisis.
The government announced last week it would tackle the shortage by importing limes from Brazil. The government attributed the local scarcity to crop pests and "seasonal fluctuations" in production.
Please join me in falling down the Knights Templar wikihole.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Oh god here come the shitty Assassin's Creed gags.
The NY Times had a longer (but fluffier) article about the lime shortage last Sunday. Interesting facts, besides the cartel business you mention:
* lime consumption in the US has quintupled since the 1970s, mostly due to an increase in ethnic foods.
* the same cartel mostly controls the avocado trade as well
* "This time the crisis is likely to be temporary. As new crops mature, prices should be back down near [February prices] by June, and there should be plenty of limes this summer."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/opinion/sunday/is-the-lime-an-endangered-species.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
I look forward to your posts detailing the fun time you had joining the masons
Lime farm on the DNA Lounge roof?
At least DNA isn't as lime-dependent as the tiki bars and Mexican restaurants. Martin at Smuggler's Cove was quoted as saying that he's effectively going to run the place at cost and hope he can wait it out.
Seconded! Urban farming is much easier than it was ten years ago. Although limes do not appear to have a box garden-hardy variety easily available. Yet!
What advances have made urban farming easier?
Hipsters creating economies of scale, I expect.
Perhaps you are unaware of hydroponics. As spin-offs go, it's somewhere around the mylar level. And anyone reading this is about 50% likely to be socially skilled enough to get Friends of the Urban Forest to drop off a dozen assorted varietal organic and genetically modified lime trees selected for hardyness in a box somewhere in SOMA.
Aware of it as a concept, but didn't know it's come very far in the past 10 years.
still inside the Van Allen belts
Doh, posted too soon.