Andy Curliss

VP @NPPC. Chairman @Carver_Food. Lifelong focus: Fact-based, data-driven decisions that inform and guide.

[Handre @Handre]

The most spectacular economic miracle of the last 500 years occurred as food consumption dropped from 80% of income to 3%. Your ancestors spent virtually every waking hour and every earned dollar feeding their families. Today you casually toss organic blueberries into your cart without checking the price.

This transformation didn't happen because governments subsidized agriculture or bureaucrats planned better crop rotations. It happened because private property rights allowed farmers to capture the full value of their innovations, spurring relentless productivity gains.

Consider what free markets accomplished: wheat yields per acre increased 10-fold since 1800. Corn production exploded 6-fold per acre since 1930. The price of basic foodstuffs, adjusted for wages, fell by 90% over two centuries. Each breakthrough, from the steel plow to hybrid seeds to GPS-guided tractors, emerged from entrepreneurs risking their own capital to solve real problems.

The profit motive drove farmers to maximize output while minimizing inputs. No central planner could coordinate the millions of decisions required: which seeds to plant, when to harvest, how to transport goods, where to build storage facilities. Market prices transmitted this information instantly across the globe, connecting Iowa corn farmers to Tokyo consumers without a single bureaucrat involved.

Politicians love claiming credit for "feeding America" through agricultural subsidies and price supports. Yet these interventions consistently reward inefficiency and punish innovation. The real heroes remain the anonymous farmers and inventors who transformed scarcity into abundance by following price signals rather than political directives.

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

Thank you, @culvers, for acknowledging the people who put food on our plates.

[Liza Lockwood @DrLizaMD]

We have 10,000 years of experience with organic farming & 50 years of food security in the west because of scientific advances in agriculture👇🏽

When Belief Replaces Evidence, Consumers and Farmers Pay the Price — Carver Center for Agriculture & Nutrition https://t.co/BD0t9SxwUU

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

Bipartisan Farm Bill passes the House 224-200. On to the Senate.

[NASA @NASA]

Lock in, we’re Moonbound.

Artemis II astronauts are more than halfway to their destination, and preparations for lunar flyby are underway. During their trip around the far side of the Moon, they will capture imagery to share with scientists (and you, too!).

[NASA @NASA]

1972 ➡️2026
Apollo 17 ➡️ Artemis II

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA.

Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team.

After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator.

In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets.

Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record."

Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

Some believe "the food system" is failing our children's health. The data tell a more complicated story. Op-ed in @agripulse here👇and full, in-depth Carver report at: https://t.co/95EMhptGan

[Carver Center for Agriculture & Nutrition @Carver_Food]

The data on children's health is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

In @AgriPulse, @carver_food Chairman Andy Curliss examines what the numbers actually show — and what it means for the farm bill debate. [https://t.co/NPY6p12jLj]

#FarmBill #ChildrensHealth

[Carver Center for Agriculture & Nutrition @Carver_Food]

The data on children's health is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

In @AgriPulse, @carver_food Chairman Andy Curliss examines what the numbers actually show — and what it means for the farm bill debate. [https://t.co/NPY6p12jLj]

#FarmBill #ChildrensHealth

[Erik Kuna 🚀 @erikkuna]

This is the shot you can’t get from the press site. This camera was sitting a few football fields from the SLS rocket at Pad 39B for days before launch, baking in the Florida sun, surviving rain, humidity, and whatever else the Cape threw at it. No photographer behind the viewfinder. Just a camera, a sound trigger, and a bet.

The way pad remotes work: you set your camera up days in advance, dial in your composition, lock everything down, and walk away. You don’t touch it again until after the launch. The shutter fires on sound activation
with a @MiopsTrigger smart+ trigger. With SLS, the four RS-25 engines ignite six seconds before the solid rocket boosters, so the camera is already firing before the vehicle even leaves the pad. You get home, pull the card, and find out if you nailed it or if a bird landed on your lens two days ago and left your a present and you got 400 photos of soemthing crappy.

There’s no formula for protecting your gear this close. Some photographers build wooden boxes with doors that pop open. Some use plastic bags and tape. Some do plastic or metal barn door rigs on hinges. I tend to leave mine open just in plastic rain covers because boxes limit my composition and setup time, but that means your cameras are more exposed to the elements and whatever energy and debris comes off the pad. You’re basically gambling a camera body every time you set one.

That’s what I love about this genre. There’s no playbook. You make it up as you go. Every time is an adventure.

📸 credit: me for @SuperclusterHQ - Artemis II pad remote | ~1,000 ft from Pad 39B | Kennedy Space Center

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

@calleymeans This explains: https://t.co/wvikJzNZK1

[Carver Center for Agriculture & Nutrition @Carver_Food]

The data on children's health is more complicated than the headlines suggest. In @AgriPulse today, @carver_food Chairman Andy Curliss examines what the numbers actually show — and what it means for the farm bill debate. [https://t.co/NPY6p12jLj] #FarmBill #ChildrensHealth

[B.P. Cox @BPCox_]

Kids today will never know the joy of a nine team ACC where players stayed all four years and you knew the starting five for pretty much every team in the conference.

We had it all ladies & gentlemen.

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

I just called the U.S. Naval Observatory master clock on the phone - and it’s the same guy telling the time, still there since I was a kid. 202-762-1069. ⏰

[Nina Teicholz, PhD @bigfatsurprise]

Confused about saturated fat? This book published a decade ago detailed the politics, science and history of this controversial fat.

[Andy Curliss @acurliss]

A great story for March Madness.

[CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 @CBSSportsCBB]

Seth Trimble has used his NIL money for something sweet: becoming an ice cream shop owner.

The @UNC_Basketball star gives @jjones9 a tour around his store and talks about how he manages being a student-athlete and business owner.

[CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 @CBSSportsCBB]

Seth Trimble has used his NIL money for something sweet: becoming an ice cream shop owner.

The @UNC_Basketball star gives @jjones9 a tour around his store and talks about how he manages being a student-athlete and business owner.

[Judge Bob Orr @JudgeBobOrr]

The sleeping giant of election night victories...the massive block of Unaffiliated voters in NC.

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

I love this visualisation as it shows which nations dominated which categories at the 2026 Winter Olympics. We see Gold Medals only. The Norwegians dominate cross country skiing, the Dutch are fast on skates, the Germans love a slippery slope, the French boss the biathlon. Source: https://t.co/dbkOQUksPZ

[Corey Miller @corey_miller5]

"I'm lucky I'm from the best country in the world, and we've got great dentists there, too...😂 The USA brotherhood is so strong. We were so proud we could do it for them and everyone back home."

Jack Hughes post game after his GOLDEN goal for #TeamUSA at the #Olympics: