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This is the weblog of
Raymond Powers.
Here I will be sharing what I find of import, humor, concern, inspiration and on the transformational edge
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A Quote:
"All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being." (Lao-Tzu)
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Raymond lives in Ojai, where the time now is:
10:36PM
Unique Readers:
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domain. The quotes from other people's writings, and the pictures
used might or might not be copyrighted, but are considered fair
use. Thus the license here would best be described as:
Primarily Public
Domain.
Please ask permission if there is any question in
regards to public domain usage.
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| Tuesday, August 16, 2005 |  |
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16 Aug 2005 @ 05:05
Should Factory-Style Dairy Farms Like Horizon & Aurora Be Able to Call Themselves Organic?
News Advisory
Date: 8/12/2005
Re: Key Organic Farm Decision
The Organic Pasture Debate
The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will likely make a key organic
farm management determination at its August 15-17 meeting in Washington,
D.C. At issue is the requirement that dairy cows and other ruminants obtain
a significant portion of their annual feed from grazing on pasture.
Organic family-scale dairy farmers from across the country are coming to the
meeting to voice their support for a proposed guidance document that
requires significant pasturing for ruminants. The document has already won
unanimous support from the NOSB¹s livestock committee.
A controversy was sparked earlier this year when The Cornucopia Institute
filed formal complaints with the USDA against management practices on three
of the nation¹s largest organic dairy farms. The group charged that the
operations were confining 3000-5000 milk cows into small dry-lots, with
little or no access to pasture, as a way of allowing them to more
intensively milk their herd while skirting organic production requirements.
All three farms sell all or some of their milk to Dean/Horizon, the nation¹s
largest distributor of organic dairy products. In addition, a number of
private label products contain milk from these "factory farms".
The NOSB meeting is being held at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 1330 Maryland
Avenue, SW, Washington, DC beginning at 10:30am on Monday, the 15th. Public
testimony from farmers and concerned consumers will be heard in the
afternoon.
More background on this issue as well as the formal complaints filed by The
Cornucopia Institute can be viewed on the organization¹s website, located
at www.cornucopia.org.
For additional information, contact Mark Kastel at608-625-2042 or Will
Fantle at 715-839-7731.
The Cornucopia Institute
kastel@cornucopia.org
608-625-2042 Voice
P.O. Box 126
Cornucopia, Wisconsin 54827
www.cornucopia.org
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| Friday, August 12, 2005 | |
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12 Aug 2005 @ 05:21
"Sustainable World" Conference Provides Vision for Organic & Sustainable Agriculture
Sustainable World Coming
The Institute of Science in Society Science Society
Sustainability [link]
General Enquiries sam at i-sis.org.uk Website/Mailing List
press-release at i-sis.org.uk ISIS Director m.w.ho at i-sis.org.uk
==================================================
ISIS Press Release 08/08/05
Sustainable World Coming
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Independent scientists, economists, politicians, and
activists met to share knowledge and ideas for sustainable
food systems as the industrial model is close to collapse.
Rhea Gala reports on the Sustainable World First
International Conference
Independent scientists join forces with global civil society
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Independent scientists from four continents joined national
politicians and many interested individuals and groups to
discuss strategies for changing agriculture worldwide to a
diversity of locally-based sustainable systems that can
provide food sovereignty and security to all and protect the
earth from the ravages of global warming. This was the
occasion of the Sustainable World Global Initiative's first
International Conference, organised by ISIS, which took
place 14-15 July, starting in the UK Parliament in
Westminster, London, to a near-capacity audience that
includes people who have come from Scotland, Wales and
Ireland, Belgium, Australia and South Africa.
The need to move away from large-scale high input industrial
monocultures has long been accepted by many people as being
essential for providing livelihoods to the many millions of
small farmers in the South and the relatively few farmers
remaining in the North, who are also responsible for
conserving our plant and animal genetic diversity that have
been decimated by decades of industrial monocultures. There
is now an added sense of urgency as the industrial model is
showing all the signs of failing under global warming, and
water and oil, on which industrial monocultures are heavily
dependent are both rapidly depleting.
Policies that promote food export and contravene human
rights in the South also exacerbate global warming by adding
food miles, or worse, encouraging "food swaps" - shipment of
the same food commodities such as milk and meat - across the
globe. World cereal yields from conventional industrial
agriculture have been decreasing for four years in a row; so
it was highly significant that speakers shared their
experience of sustainable agriculture systems from around
the world, which outperform the industrial model in
productivity while restoring autonomy and responsibility to
farmers, and result in greater social participation within
the local community.
But what policy and structural changes are needed to
implement truly sustainable food systems?
The big picture
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CLCIK TO READ More >
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12 Aug 2005 @ 05:12
Bill McKibben: What "Being Green" & "Buying Local" Really Mean
From
August 7, 2005
Philadelphia Inquirer
What 'Green' Means
We must do more than remedy existing problems; changing our behavior now
will prevent new ones
by Bill McKibben
Every valley in the country has some group busy trying to Make Things Better
or at least Keep Them From Getting Worse. The environmentalist creed has
sunk in deep in the last 30 years, has been lodged in so many laws and
agencies and cerebellums that it's now a fixed part of the landscape.
Even on the national level, even in the teeth of the most right-wing
corporate administration in living memory, certain kinds of improvements
lurch forward. The Environmental Protection Agency under Christie Whitman
not only kept alive a Clinton-era rule toughening diesel emissions, it
extended it to construction and farm equipment.
"These rules add up to more health benefits than any vehicle pollution
program since lead was taken out of gasoline," said Rich Kassel, longtime
campaigner for the Natural Resources Defense Council, estimating that they
will save 12,000 lives a year.
Why, then, have so many environmentalists and journalists spent so much time
talking about the "death of environmentalism" thesis that Michael
Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus presented in October in an influential paper
to the Environmental Grantmakers Association? Most of the answer comes from
the fact that carbon with two oxygen atoms is a quite different animal from
carbon with a single oxygen atom attached.
Carbon monoxide is where the environmental movement really began. Donora,
Washington County, Pa., 1948: A cloud of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide,
and other pollutants from the local zinc smelter blankets the town, killing
20 people. Los Angeles, in the 1960s: Carbon monoxide and a brew of other
pollutants turn the air brown, making "smog" a part of everyone's
vocabulary. But CO is a mistake; it's the product of incomplete combustion.
You can do something about it, namely, stick a catalytic converter on the
tailpipe of your car or a scrubber on thestack of your smelter.
That's been done in many places, and the results are clear. In 2002, for
instance, Southern California met federal requirements for CO levels for the
first time since the government set them in 1963. Carbon monoxide was a
pollutant; you could fix it, just as we could fix the sulfur, nitrogen, and
mercury still pouring out of the smokestacks of many of our power plants.
Just as the diesel engine industry will now have to make some technical
changes.
Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, isn't a pollutant in any normal sense.
Until very recently, scientists defined a clean engine as one that produced
only CO2 and water vapor. It's inevitable that if you burn fossil fuel you
will produce carbon dioxide, which we now understand as the driving force
behind global warming. And so the best hope for preventing climate change is
to burn less fossil fuel. Which is a very different task than fixing an
engine, and helps explain why, so far, we've gotten nowhere.
Adding catalytic converters to fight smog in Los Angeles was a battle, of
course. The auto industry, as with seatbelts and airbags and every
non-cupholder innovation, resisted reflexively. But in the end, politicians
ordered new standards: The cost of converters was small in comparison with
the total price of a car, and better yet, it was hidden. This was a piece of
equipment, not a tax or a mandate. No one really noticed. And it worked.
When it came to pollution control, environmentalism was up to the task.
But environmentalism, by itself, isn't up to the task of stopping global
warming. Going after fossil fuels means going after the base of our economy,
and hence of our daily habits. That is too central a target for a movement
whose successes have involved fixing things around the edges. For instance,
the obvious first step to reduce carbon emissions would be to increase the
price of fossil fuels. Everyone knows that. But political leaders haven't
done it because there are strong pressures from vested interests not to, and
no pressure at all from the citizenry to do so. The vested interests won't
go away, and voters aren't clamoring for higher gas prices now in exchange
for a more livable planet down the road. So the best our leaders (even ones
like Bill Clinton, who acknowledged the problem) have been willing to do is
talk about magic technologies a few decades away, like hydrogen cars, that
might somehow allow us to avoid ever making difficult choices.
So we have a split between a robust environmental movement taking on the
relatively simple problems of old-fashioned pollution and a weak one getting
nowhere on preventing the collapse of the planet's stable climate. That will
likely continue until something breaks the logjam.
It may be scarcity that does the trick. The currently increasing cost of oil
helps (though it does nothing to lessen the temptation of an endless surplus
of carbon-laden coal).
Maybe fear will do it. One reason Europe takes climate change so seriously
is that 35,000 French and Belgians died in a two-week heat wave the summer
before last.
Or it may be some wild card: some new metaphor, some new leader. Or, more
likely, some new vision.
More and more, for instance, I find myself writing about local economies -
in part because their supply lines are shorter, their energy demands
smaller. But also in part because the food tastes sweeter, because the
deeper community feels good, because electricity from the windmill on your
ridge is better than electricity from the wrecked Appalachian mountain or
the overstretched Mideast pipeline. ("Buy local" - is that a liberal vision
or a conservative one? Who knows? That we can't say for sure is probably a
good thing.) It's one possible vision, anyhow, of a world that might not
overheat, a vision that owes at least as much to psychology and sociology as
to the biology and chemistry that have undergirded most ecological thinking.
You didn't need to rethink suburban sprawl or consumerism to deal with DDT
or diesel emissions; we may need to do that, and a dozen basic tasks like
it, to have a chance against climate change. In the process,
"environmentalism" will have to tackle questions such as: What makes for a
secure, satisfying individual life?
If it has success, it won't be environmentalism any more. It will be
something much more important.
Bill McKibben lives and writes in Vermont. He wrote this piece for the
July-August issue of Orion magazine (www.oriononline.org).
© 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer
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12 Aug 2005 @ 05:09
Campuses Developing Organic Farms & Organic Items on Dining Hall Menus
From: Citizens for Health Newsletter Aug. 2005
Students Flock to Campus Organic Farms
By JULIA SILVERMAN, Associated Press Education Writer
Source: [link]
July 21, 2005
Plenty of college kids still subsist on a steady diet of ramen noodles, cold
cereal and beer to wash it all down.
Not Nate France. The crop and soil sciences major at Oregon State University
here wouldn't dream of following the well-beaten path to the local Carl
Jr.'s for cheap, mammoth burgers.
Instead, every Thursday afternoon until the sun sets, France helps till and
tend to a pocket-sized, student-run organic farm on a couple of soil-rich
acres just outside this western Oregon college town.
"I sowed some corn while it was raining, and then I tamped down the soil too
much < it caked up, hard as a brick, and the corn plants couldn't come up,"
said France, 27, who dreams out loud about farming his own land someday.
"This next time, I know to mix manure in. This is like a trial by fire, a
way to make mistakes before it matters too much."
In the last decade or so, student-run farms have cropped up across the
country, at almost 60 schools in 27 states. Foodies call it the latest sign
of the seasonal, regional food movement's influence, even on a collegiate
landscape that's virtually paved with Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts and leftover
pizza.
Over the past few years, about 200 schools have signed up with
farm-to-college programs, which match up local farmers with area
universities, according to the Venice, Calif.-based Community Food Security
Coalition. The University of Montana in Missoula, for example, allocates
about $425,000 to local meat, dairy and wheat products, about 17 percent of
the school's overall food budget.
At Brown University, in Providence, R.I., dining hall purchasers started
swapping Granny Smiths and Red Delicious for locally grown Macouns and
Pippins. Apple consumption tripled, and the experiment extended to locally
grown tomatoes and peaches, milk from Rhode Island dairies and, eventually,
a farmers' market that set up shop outside the dining hall.
"I was carrying a flat of local peaches into the dining hall once, it was
like having bread at the beach and having seagulls following me," said
Louella Hill, a recent Brown graduate who helped organized the on-campus
farmers' market. "People were grabbing peaches and eating them before I
could get to the fruit bowl."
But student farms, which range from half an acre to 200, turn students
themselves into growers.
Some student farmers, like those at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, sell
the fruits of their labor at on-campus farmstands, while the bounty from the
University of Idaho at Moscow gets parceled out each week to community
members who have prepaid for baskets of whatever's fresh.
Some student farms supply their dining halls with fresh produce, while
others sell directly to restaurants. At Colorado State University's student
farm, what doesn't get sold on campus or eaten by volunteers is donated to
local food pantries.
"I, like students, like the social aspects of working in the garden, and
being able to connect with other similar-minded people," said Debra
Guenther, a Colorado State horiculture research associate who helps run the
student farm.
In Corvallis, the fat green fava beans, pearly garlic, broccoli and lettuce
harvested on a recent Thursday are for sale the next morning at an
on-campus, unstaffed booth; payment is on the honor system and helps support
the farm.
This time of year rows of tomatoes and eggplants nod in the sun, waiting for
their moment in late August, and a tiny patch of strawberries grows nearly
wild < just enough for eating, not for selling. After four hours or so of
weeding, harvesting and planting, students have a communal meal.
"It's nice during school to be able to go out and get my hands dirty," said
Kevin McAlpin, 22, an Oregon State junior majoring in natural resources who
was on his hands and knees weeding a lettuce bed. "It's stress relief."
Some student farms stretch back decades, but the Oregon State one was begun
in 2001. Previous attempts to start a farm had failed when students found
that gardening was a year-round job, said James Cassidy, an instructor in
the soil physics lab, who has become the group's leader.
Now, Cassidy, a former bass player for the '80s dance group "Information
Society" who nourished an interest in soil even as group churned out hits
like "Pure Energy," is an undisputed garden fanatic.
"It's like working in a kitchen," he said. "Gardening is not a democracy."
Cassidy dreams of planting canola seeds one day to extract oil to make the
biodiesel necessary to power a tractor and of expanding the farm by eight
more acres.
"Creative people are coming to this," he said. "It gives students an
opportunity to put a seed in the ground and see what happens."
Source: [link]
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| Tuesday, August 9, 2005 | |
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9 Aug 2005 @ 06:21
Alaskan people tell of climate change
By Kate Bissell
BBC Radio 4
For the past 20 years climatologists and ice and atmosphere scientists have been working in Alaska studying climate change.
Now they have discovered a rich new source of records extending their knowledge back by decades through the oral history of native Alaskans.
Barrow is the most northerly town in the United States, lying 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
And 92-year-old Bertha Leavitt is its oldest inhabitant.
"When I was a child", she says, "it was so much colder and the winds in winter used to be fierce." She remembers her elders telling in their stories that the weather was going to change. And since her childhood she believes this has come true.
Frozen land
In a land where not just the rivers but also the sea freezes over, it is impossible not to be aware of the seasons.
Barrow whaling captain Percy Nusunginya has particular reason to be alert to change. Each autumn and spring his crew ventures out on the ice to fish at air holes. He says that working out on the Arctic Sea has become very dangerous.
"Nowadays ice conditions are thinner than in the 1970s and 80s. The ice used to be 20 to 30 feet thick but now it is more like 10 feet thick. But what can we do? Sometimes I feel sad but we just have to go with what we have got.
"Up here in the Arctic we are definitely warming up, the polar pack ice has all but gone."
Percy says Western nations need to have scientific proof that the climate is warming rather than believing the word of the native people but he adds: "The white man, the climatologists are just learning what we knew was going on."
Richard Glenn is a native Alaskan and a member of the Inupiat people, as well as an ice scientist.
He is also president of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium which is helping to combine the rich environmental knowledge of the local people with the scientific study of climate change.
There is a real camaraderie, a real sharing, he says, between the local people and the visiting experts.
One of the first to realise the value of local knowledge was Mike Spindler, a US fish and wildlife refuge manager from the Koyukuk and Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge several hundred miles away in the interior of Alaska.
He first began collecting environmental observations from elders when he found that there had been no scientific research carried out in the area before 1980, when the Wildlife Refuge was created.
He says elders have been providing a wealth of information about their environment which needed documenting.
Crazy changes
Benedict Jones is an elder who still maintains a subsistence lifestyle.
"I used to have glaciers up at my camp on the Koyukuk River, where the salmon berries used to grow. But the glaciers have all melted and the ground is drying up so there are no more salmon berries."
Further research projects to tap into elders' knowledge concerning climate change are under way at the University of Alaska's International Arctic Research Centre. And the recordings gathered are available to scientists.
"In many of the interviews elders make reference to the 1970s as the time that they began to notice changes in the climate," says Mike.
An area near Mike's base is referred to as a "drunken forest". He explains that the spruce trees are falling over because of thawing permafrost. This could be due to changing climate, he says, or natural succession.
But in the interviews elders have spoken of what they describe as crazy changes in the climate.
Margie Attla, an elder from the village of Galena, says "The last couple of years has been really crazy. It is kind of scary when the wind comes up at the wrong time and we have rain in the winter, the change is really there and I am not very comfortable with it." More >
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9 Aug 2005 @ 06:07
What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?
From: [link]
No. 159 - July 2005
by Richard Heinberg
Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply
A paper presented at the FEASTA Conference, "What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?", June 23-25, 2005, Dublin, Ireland
Food is energy. And it takes energy to get food. These two facts, taken together, have always established the biological limits to the human population and always will.
The same is true for every other species: food must yield more energy to the eater than is needed in order to acquire the food. Woe to the fox who expends more energy chasing rabbits than he can get from eating the rabbits he catches. If this energy balance remains negative for too long, death results; for an entire species, the outcome is a die-off event, perhaps leading even to extinction.
Humans have become champions at developing new strategies for increasing the amount of energy - and food - they capture from the environment. The harnessing of fire, the domestication of plants and animals, the adoption of ards and plows, the deployment of irrigation networks, and the harnessing of traction animals - developments that occurred over tens of thousands of years - all served this end.
The process was gradual and time-consuming. Not only were new tools developed, but, over centuries, small inventions and tiny modifications of existing tools - from scythes to horse-collars - enabled human and animal muscle power to be leveraged more effectively.
This entire exercise took place within a framework of natural limits. The yearly input of solar radiation to the planet was always immense relative to human needs (and still is), but it was finite nevertheless, and while humans directly appropriated only a tiny proportion of this abundance the vast majority of that radiation served functions that indirectly supported human existence - giving rise to air currents by warming the surface of the planet, and maintaining the lives of countless other kinds of creatures in the oceans and on land.
The amount of available human muscle power was limited by the number of humans, who, of course, had to be fed. Draft animals (bred for their muscle-power) also entailed energy costs, as they likewise needed to eat but also had to be cared for in various ways. Therefore, even with clever refinements in tools and techniques, in crops development and animal breeding, it was inevitable that humans would reach a point of diminishing returns in their ability to continue increasing their energy harvest, and therefore the size of their population.
By the nineteenth century these limits were beginning to become apparent. Famine and hunger had long been common throughout even the wealthiest regions of the planet. But, for Europeans, the migration of surplus populations to other nations, crop rotation, and the application of manures and composts were gradually making those events less frequent and severe. European farmers, realizing the need for a new nitrogen source in order to continue feeding burgeoning and increasingly urbanized populations, began employing guano imported from islands off the coasts of Chile and Peru. The results were gratifying. However, after only a few decades, these guano deposits were being depleted. By this time, in the late 1890s, the world's population was nearly twice what it had been at the beginning of the century. A crisis was again in view.
But again crisis was narrowly averted, this time due to fossil fuels. In 1909, two German chemists named Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented a process to synthesize ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and the hydrogen in fossil fuels. The process initially used coal as a feedstock, though later it was adapted to use natural gas. After the end of the Great War, nation after nation began building Haber-Bosch plants; today the process produces 150 million tons of ammonia-based fertilizer per year, equaling the total amount of available nitrogen introduced annually by all natural sources
combined.
Fossil fuels went on to offer still other ways of extending natural limits to the human carrying capacity of the planet.
Early steam-driven tractors came into limited use in 19th century; but, after World War I, the size and effectiveness of powered farm machinery expanded dramatically, and the scale of use exploded, especially in North America, Europe, and Australia from the 1920s through the '50s. In the 1890s, roughly one quarter of US cropland had to be set aside for the growing of grain to feed horses - most of which worked on farms. The internal combustion engine provided a new kind of horsepower not dependent on horses at all, and thereby increased the amount of arable land available to feed humans.
Chemists developed synthetic pesticides and herbicides in increasing varieties after WWII, using knowledge pioneered in laboratories that had worked to perfect explosives and other chemical warfare agents. Pesticides not only increased crop yields in North America, Europe, and Australia, but also reduced the prevalence of insect-borne diseases like malaria. The world began to enjoy the benefits of "better living through chemistry," though the environmental costs, in terms of water and soil pollution and damage to vulnerable species, would only later become widely apparent.
In the 1960s, industrial-chemical agricultural practices began to be exported to what by that time was being called the Third World: this was glowingly dubbed the Green Revolution, and it enabled a tripling of food production during the ensuing half-century.
At the same time, the scale and speed of distribution of food increased.
This also constituted a means of increasing carrying capacity, though in a more subtle way.
The trading of food goes back to Paleolithic times; but, with advances in transport, the quantities and distances involved gradually increased. Here again, fossil fuels were responsible for a dramatic discontinuity in the previously slow pace of growth. First by rail and steamship, then by truck and airplane, immense amounts of grain and ever-larger quantities of meat, vegetables, and specialty foods began to flow from countryside to city, from region to region, and from continent to continent.
William Catton, in his classic book Overshoot, terms the trade of essential life-support commodities "scope expansion."1 Carrying capacity is always limited by whatever necessity is in least supply, as Justus von Liebig realized nearly a century-and-a-half ago. If one region can grow food but has no exploitable metal deposits, its carrying capacity is limited by the lack of metals for the production of farm tools. Another region may have metals but insufficient topsoil or rain; there, carrying capacity is limited by the lack of food. If a way can be found to make up for local scarcity by taking advantage of distant abundance (as by exporting metal ores or finished tools from region A to help with food production in region B, and then exporting food from B to A), the total carrying capacity of the two regions combined can be increased substantially. We can put this into a crude formula:
CC of A+B (CC of A) + (CC of B)
From an ecological as well as an economic point of view, this is why people trade. But trade has historically been limited by the amount of energy that could be applied to the transport of materials. Fossil fuels temporarily but enormously expanded that limit.
The end result of chemical fertilizers, plus powered farm machinery, plus increased scope of transportation and trade, was not just a three-fold leap in crop yields, but a similar explosion of human population, which has grown five-fold since dawn of industrial revolution.
CLICK TO READ More >
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9 Aug 2005 @ 06:05
Birds, Bats, & Wild Plants Thriving on Organic Farms
Birds, plants thrive on UK organic farms -study
Aug 3, 9:46 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Birds and bats and wild plants are thriving on
Britain's organic farms, a study by the British Trust for Ornithology
(BTO) said on Wednesday.
On organic farms, there are 109 percent more wild plants and 85 percent
more plant species than on non-organic farms.
Organic farms support 32 percent more birds and 35 percent more bats than
non-organic farms, the BTO, a charity carrying out independent research on
birds, said.
There are also 5 percent more bird species on organic farms, according to
the study which was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs.
Smaller fields and thicker hedges on organic farms and the fact that these
farms don't use agrochemicals are all contributory factors, the study
found. "Organic farms clearly have positive biodiversity effects for wild
flowers. However if they are to provide benefits on the same scale for
species that need more space, like birds, we either need the farms to be
larger or for neighboring farms to be organic too," Dr Rob Fuller,
director of Habitat Research for the BTO said.
Just three percent of English farmland is organic, he added.
The Soil Association, which promotes organic farming, also welcomed the
study. "A greater area of organically-managed land in the UK would help
restore the farmland wildlife that has been lost from our countryside in
recent decades with intensive farming," Soil Association policy manager
Gundula Azeez said.
The data was collected from 160 farms.
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| Wednesday, July 27, 2005 | |
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27 Jul 2005 @ 21:56
NEWS BRIEFS
CHEMICAL EXPOSURE IN UTERO
A new chemical study of umbilical chord samples from the American Red Cross has found that babies have an average of 200 known toxic chemicals in their blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and a chemical used in the production of Teflon, even before being born. The tests found that hundreds of chemicals, pollutants and pesticides are stored in body fat over a lifetime and then pumped from mother to fetus through umbilical cord blood. Overall, chemical absorption can be reduced by eating organic foods, and by reducing exposure to toxins at home and at work.
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PARENTING ADVICE: EAT YOUR PESTICIDES
"Parents Magazine", one of the most influential parenting publications in the U.S., advised parents not to worry about pesticide residues in children's food in its recent August 2005 issue. In an article titled "Food Under Fire," the magazine belittles the benefits of organic foods as a myth, and endorses pesticides in foods as safe, stating: "there's no evidence that these chemicals, used at the low levels found in our food supply, are harmful to children." The author of the piece based his research on the opinion of a single "expert," never mentioning three decades of scientific evidence from academic, government and industry sources that states otherwise. The magazine serves as a "parenting guide" to more than 14 million subscribers. Read some related facts below, and write a quick letter to their editor here: mailbag@parentsmagazine.com
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QUICK RELATED U.S. GOVERNMENT ISSUED FACTS
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that one of the main sources of pesticide exposure for U.S. children comes from the food they eat.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, half of produce currently tested in grocery stores contains measurable residues of pesticides. Laboratory tests of eight industry-leader baby foods reveal the presence of 16 pesticides, including three carcinogens.
According to EPA's "Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment," children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risks in the first two years of life.
In blood samples of children aged 2 to 4, concentrations of pesticide residues are six times higher in children eating conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables compared with those eating organic food.
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Woodbury County, Iowa, has become the first in the nation to offer tax incentives to organic farmers. County Supervisors approved $50,000 for helping farmers convert from conventional to organic agriculture. "We think domestic (organic) food manufacturers are going to want a reliable domestic supply," said Woodbury rural economic director Rob Marqusee. "We know that people are making money. It might as well be us, too."
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TELL CONGRESS TO STOP CAFTA
The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central America and the Dominican Republic, will drive several million small farmers off the land—just as NAFTA has done in Mexico and Canada—as well as encourage U.S. corporations to outsource more jobs to low-wage sweatshops. We need Fair Trade as the global norm, not so-called Free Trade. Call your Congressional Representative toll free 1-800-718-1008. Ask to speak to the person who handles trade issues. Tell the office you want your Representative to vote NO on CAFTA and ask for a response email stating the Rep's position. For more information on CAFTA, please visit Public Citizen's CAFTA page [link]
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27 Jul 2005 @ 21:49
Corn: Used and Abused
The Tragic Abuse of Corn By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 20 July 2005
The wheel it has circled, time without end, Old life remembers, and welcomes the grain.
For the corn and the seed are one and the same, That which has been, will be again.
-- from Demeter's Hymn by Lyn Hubert
They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low; they are taken out of the way as all others, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn.
-- Job 24:6
It was one of those things that you can't quite believe is real. I was flipping through a magazine and saw an ad for a stove that burns corn kernels. For heat. Corn is food, not fuel, I thought, but the ad assured me that "Corn is replenished annually. It is a never-ending energy source, and thus is the new alternative fuel of choice."
Something about it felt very wrong to me. Burning food does not seem respectful. Especially when there are two billion people in the world who don’t get enough to eat.
But it is more than that. Corn production uses tremendous amounts of fossil fuel for mechanized labor, irrigation, drying, transport and fertilizer. I sincerely doubted that corn as a fuel could be renewable on a sustainable basis.
Almost one quarter of America’s farmland grows corn - maize. At nine billion bushels a year, it is our single largest crop and uses vast amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizer. Erosion and toxic runoff from the fields pollute waterways and kill fish in the Gulf of Mexico where a plume of pollution from the Mississippi Delta creates an ever-expanding dead zone. Raising corn the way we do it today depletes the soil of nutrients and creates an addiction to nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Since natural gas prices went up a few years ago, we are producing less and less fertilizer here and importing more of it from the Persian Gulf. Now we must worry about food security as well as energy security.
Burning corn in a stove may seem bizarre, but it is no more bizarre than fermenting and distilling it into ethanol to burn in our cars. As gas prices go up, people are looking to ethanol and other biofuels to substitute for oil. Unfortunately, it is a bad bargain - one that is being encouraged by giant agribusiness firms like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto that reap huge profits from corn and taxpayer’s wallets.
Corn is already America's most heavily subsidized crop, sucking up about $10 billion a year (according to OXFAM) along with all that water and fertilizer. About 13 percent of the corn crop is now devoted to ethanol production, but that would increase dramatically if the Energy Policy Act of 2005, now in a House-Senate conference committee, were to pass. The Senate version of the energy bill would require US ethanol production to more than double - from 3.3 billion gallons in 2004 to 8 billion gallons by 2012.
Subsidies hide the true monetary cost of production, but the big accounting scandal here is the energy accounting. A study by Cornell ecologist David Pimentel and UC Berkeley engineer Tad Patzek found that when all the inputs to farming and ethanol production are accounted for, ethanol uses 29 percent more fossil fuel energy to produce than it yields in your gas tank.
CLICL TO READ More >
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| Monday, July 25, 2005 | |
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25 Jul 2005 @ 17:24
College Dining Halls Turning to Organic Food
By Julia Silverman The Associated Press
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Plenty of college kids still subsist on a steady diet of ramen noodles, cold cereal and beer.
Not Nate France. The crop and soil sciences major at Oregon State University wouldn't dream of following the well-beaten path to the local fast-food restaurants for cheap, mammoth burgers.
Instead, every Thursday afternoon until the sun sets, France helps till and tend a pocket-size, student-run organic farm on a couple of soil-rich acres just outside the western Oregon college town of Corvallis.
"I sowed some corn while it was raining, and then I tamped down the soil too much; it caked up, hard as a brick, and the corn plants couldn't come up," said France, 27, who dreams out loud about farming his own land someday. "This next time, I know to mix manure in. This is like a trial by fire, a way to make mistakes before it matters too much."
In the last decade or so, student-run farms have cropped up at almost 60 schools in 27 states. Foodies call it the latest sign of the seasonal, regional food movement's influence, even on a collegiate landscape that's virtually paved with Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts and leftover pizza.
Over the past few years, about 200 schools have signed up with farm-to-college programs, which match local farmers with area universities, according to the Venice, Calif.-based Community Food Security Coalition. The University of Montana-Missoula, for example, allocates about $425,000 for local meat, dairy and wheat products, about 17 percent of its overall food budget.
At Brown University in Providence, R.I., dining hall purchasers started replacing Granny Smiths and Red Delicious with locally grown Macouns and Pippins. Apple consumption tripled, and the experiment extended to locally grown tomatoes and peaches, milk from Rhode Island dairies and, eventually, a farmers' market that set up shop outside the dining hall.
"I was carrying a flat of local peaches into the dining hall once; it was like having bread at the beach and having seagulls following me," said Louella Hill, a recent Brown graduate who helped organized the on-campus farmers' market. "People were grabbing peaches and eating them before I could get to the fruit bowl."
Student farms, which range from half an acre to 200, turn students into growers.
Some student farmers, like those at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, sell the fruits of their labor at on-campus farm stands. The bounty from the University of Idaho at Moscow gets parceled out each week to community members who have prepaid for baskets of whatever's fresh.
Some student farms supply their dining halls with fresh produce, while others sell directly to restaurants. At Colorado State University's student farm, what isn't sold on campus or eaten by volunteers is donated to food pantries. More >
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25 Jul 2005 @ 17:22
This is an important and formative article. I've put an excerpt here yet I encourage you to read it in its' entirety at Rebuilding of Iraq's Agriculture?
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Why would corporate agribusiness be salivating??? Some history here. It is thought that agriculture started 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent - in the area now called Iraq - where the Tigress and the Euphrates rivers
intersect. The Iraqi ancestral farmers and this fertile land brought us major crops such as wheat, barley, dates and pulses (see Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies"). The area is hugely important in world history. Given they are considered the initiators, for thousands of years the contributions of the Iraqi farmers to the world's agriculture production system have been unquestionably profound.
It is also likely that women were the initiators of agriculture. Women were the gatherers in hunting and gathering pre-agricultural societies. As women were the ones gathering nuts and roots for their communities, they would have been the observers of seeds and their growth patterns. This is likely why the majority of the African farmers today are women and throughout our human history the world's farmers have largely been women.
Now comes the corporate connection. Food is something everyone needs. There is no question about this and no need for a survey - the market is a given. Huge profits are in the offing. Controlling all aspects of food ? its production, packaging, distribution and commodity markets - is the dream world of corporate agribusiness.
The major impediment to corporate agribusiness controlling all aspects of food and then reaping all of the profits, however, is competition from the independent family farmer in the US and throughout the world.
Throughout our history, the family farmer's controlling interest has been protected by two of the most important components of agriculture ? the two "s'" ? soil and seeds.
Soil is not monolithic. It is amazingly and thankfully diverse. It's components and minerals differ everywhere and farmers historically have always adjusted to this through crop rotations that will add or remove certain nutrients to the soil, and/or farmers will let the soil rest and lay fallow for a specified time. Traditional farmers will also use natural nutrients like compost and manure to replenish the soil. In this way the soil remains "alive" with organic nutrients, earthworms and the like. Seeds and plants are also selected for the type of soil and farmers themselves have performed, and still perform, this selection since the beginning of agriculture.
Seeds are also not monolithic, of course, even within the same plant family. They are amazingly diverse and the diversity of seeds is our
lifeblood. Like humans, plants are vulnerable to disease. The more diverse our plants, the safer we humans are. The more diverse our plants, the less vulnerable they will be to an all-encompassing disease that could and has wiped out some crops within days or less. Without diversity there is virtually no resistance to disease. The great Irish potato famine in 1845, for example, resulted from a uniform potato production that had no resistance to the potato blight.
How have farmers maintained this diversity and therefore protected our food supply? As mentioned, they have always adjusted seeds to the type of soil in their area by selecting and saving the seeds of successful plants. This is a very "local" process. By doing so, for thousands of years, farmers have thankfully maintained the diversity of our food chain. As Martin Teitel and Kimberly Wilson note in their excellent book "Genetically
Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature" (1999):
"Appreciation of the importance of biodiversity dates back a hundred centuries to the beginning of the agriculture process.Farmers remained powerless, however, when it came to the interaction between crops and their environments. No one could predict whether a season would be wet or dry. Consequently, farmers quickly learned the importance of diversity: maintenance of various crops that thrived under a variety of conditions to avoid entire crop failures and starvation."
Also, farmers have always historically saved seeds for next year's crop. Most farmers in the world don't go to the store and supply warehouse to buy seeds. The seeds are their on their farm and their grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents likely grew versions of the same seed stock.
The mission of farmers historically and around the world has always been to grow food for family and community sustenance, and not competition against each other - a mission that is much to the ire of western capitalists. Invariably, farmers will also share their seeds with their neighboring farmers. This collective and cooperative spirit of the farming community is legendary.
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25 Jul 2005 @ 17:17
Cotton Subsidies Devastate African Countries
The Limits of Cotton: White Gold Shows its Dark Side in Benin
By Leif Brottem | July 14, 2005
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
According to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, it is an "extraordinary moment in history" for Africa. World leaders have made a big step towards debt cancellation. If celebrity involvement is any indication, this is the largest upwelling of public concern in Europe and North America for African poverty in recent years.
One surprise theme of this movement has been cotton farming, an industry on which over 15 million Africans depend on for their livelihoods. Oxfam, a UK-based charity and development organization, has led an effective campaign to bring cotton subsidies in rich countries to the forefront of the debate on extreme poverty in Africa.
Eliminating the billions of dollars in handouts to some 25,000 American cotton growers would benefit countries in West and Central Africa that depend heavily on exporting the crop. However, the belief that cotton is a panacea for rural Africans ignores a huge problem: in the regions where the crop is grown, the land is being destroyed.
In Benin, a small West African nation that receives 80% of its export revenues from cotton,ii life passes to the rhythm of that crop's planting and harvest. In Benin¹s largest producing region of Banikoara, decrepit trucks loaded impossibly high with white fluff rumble by every few minutes during the weeks of harvest. Just as hunting is etched into the collective identity of the local Bariba people, the community's identity in recent times has been defined by growing "white gold".
Banikoara's cotton boom began long before the environmental impacts of growing the cash crop were considered. Now that most local forests have been cut down, residents point to the crop to explain why temperatures are rising, there is less rainfall than before, and all the wildlife has disappeared, including the elephants which attracted the area¹s original inhabitants.
Losing the Forest
Benin loses around 100,000 hectares of forest every year, iii a loss that is most pronounced in cotton producing regions. In practical terms, forest loss means fewer sources of medicine, wood for fuel and construction, and livestock forage. Rapid population growth has outstripped traditional natural resource management systems. To feed their growing families and produce enough cotton to pay off debt and buy necessities, people leave less agricultural land fallow and exhaust the soil, which forces them to clear more land the following year.
"Cotton production here will have to shrink eventually because the soil is being exhausted" reported Orou Guere, secretary of a local farmers' cooperative. No one knows better than those who work the land but this statement is supported by recent research. A study conducted in Southern Mali, another important West African cotton belt, raised questions about the widely held belief that poverty is the main driver of environmental degradation in the region. Instead, it showed that cotton production is a more important factor in exhausting the soil. iv
A 2002 study conducted in Northern Benin found that 65% of farmers surveyed noticed that cotton was causing deforestation. And 75% felt that cotton was responsible for depleting the soil.v Unlike other cash crops grown in developing countries such as cacao, the raw material for chocolate, and coffee, cotton does not tolerate shade. In order to maximize production, farmers are obliged to cut down all but a few trees on their plots.
Moreover, as virtually the only source of income in rural areas, cotton farming operates to a simple logic: the more planted, the more money earned. In many localities, clearing a new field merely requires the consent of neighbors. Until recently, locals were able to freely plant cotton within Regional Park "W," a recently designated UN World Heritage Site and one of the last contiguous wildlands in West Africa.
Adapting to the new pressure of sustainable development is extremely difficult given that cotton receipts pay for schools, clinics, and other community infrastructure. Sabi Dingui, a student who has grown cotton all his life, commented that without the crop, farmers would be "in the dark" without money to pay for school contributions or medicine.
CLICK TO READ MORE More >
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| Friday, July 22, 2005 | |
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22 Jul 2005 @ 01:42
City of Seattle Starts Down Long Road of Producing "Zero Waste" for its Landfills
Monday, July 18, 2005
By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The city of Seattle is talking trash.
Moving beyond recycling to preventing garbage itself as the next generation of social and civic responsibility, Seattle Public Utilities is launching an initiative called Wasteless in Seattle.
With the long-term goal of "zero waste," the city hopes to drastically reduce the need for landfills and to lower disposal, transportation and energy costs.
Through various programs, including mandatory recycling and fines for violators beginning in January, the city is urging its employees, residents and businesses to rethink how they dispose of everything from egg shells to electronics.
"We're going to have to make use of the landfills on the east side of the mountains for the foreseeable future, but we're darned if we're not going to get massive amounts of waste reduced from that flow," said City Councilman Jim Compton, chairman of the Utilities and Technology Committee.
Which is where the trash talk comes in. Garbage prevention is far more than recycling, city officials say. It is a comprehensive strategy that includes a "triple bottom line" -- environmental and public-health considerations as well as economic ones.
"Recycling is throwing something away that can be made into a different product, but waste prevention means not making the waste in the first place" said Chris Luboff, solid-waste planning supervisor for Seattle Public Utilities. "We're trying to broaden that concept."
Luboff said the city's budget, approved late last year, includes an extra $400,000 a year for waste prevention.
Meet with Seattle Public Utilities officials, and they will show you paper-free PowerPoint presentations of garbage-free programs. Copy machines are now set to default to double-sided copies on recycled paper.
After all, each year the city of Seattle uses a heap of paper higher than Mount Rainier, said Jetta Antonakos, head of the utility's new paper-waste-reduction effort called "paper cuts."
The city wants more electronic documents and presentations and fewer multiple copies of large reports.
Then there is "product stewardship," which is an effort to encourage manufacturers to take more environmental responsibility for their products and to create materials that cause fewer disposal problems. The effort includes "take-back" programs being developed for computer monitors, furniture and possibly even prescription drugs.
The utility is also moving toward more "green purchasing" -- buying non-toxic window cleaners, janitorial supplies and "environmentally preferable" electronics.
Increasingly, "if someone wants to sell a product to us, they have to go through a screening process," Antonakos said.
"In the old days, garbage was mostly organics, then came the modern era with plastics and bottles and tin cans, which are relatively easy to recycle," Luboff said. "But now, we have more complicated, combination products like cell phones and computers, with cathode-ray tubes, lead in the glass, toxics in the plastic and other hazardous materials."
Seattle, which became a national recycling leader 15 years ago, is also embarking on an aggressive program to reach a goal of diverting 60 percent of garbage from landfills by recycling. Now that percentage is less than 40 percent.
On July 1, many North End businesses such as restaurants were given new containers to encourage recycling; South End businesses will begin the program Aug. 1. Since April, residents have been converting to 90-gallon containers under a new mandatory recycling program. As of January, fines will be levied against those who throw away such things as paper and cans, which should be recycled.
"Taking environmental and health concerns into consideration has prompted us to look at everything, including waste, differently," said Julie Vorhes, solid-waste planner for Seattle Public Utilities. "For example, a triple-bottom line asks, 'What's the difference in pollution and health impacts of using biodiesel instead of diesel?' " Vorhes said costs are hard to pinpoint because the effort is so new. "We can say that recycling saves money," she said. "But waste prevention is a different animal. We're not just asking the question about economics."
Luboff said it costs the city to collect and inspect recycled materials and to promote programs, but if customers can divert 40 to 60 percent of material from landfills, the city would save $2 million a year.
Some programs, developed in the past few years, are growing -- and showing promise.
Use-It-Again Seattle, a program featuring community "garage sales" throughout the city, allows residents to drop off and pick up items free (no electronics, appliances, couches or mattresses). The effort recycled 60 tons of metal last year, and an estimated 221 tons of materials were reused and diverted from landfills.
Another initiative, the Take-It-Back Network, saw about 600 tons of computers monitors and other components returned in 2004 to participating retail stores. There are also consortiums that will intercept items that shouldn't go in landfills, such as the Rechargeable Battery Recycling
Coalition.
A city "green building" program, aimed at recycling, water and energy conservation and waste prevention, is also reaping results, city officials say. In 11 city projects last year, nearly 57,000 tons -- or $560,000 worth
-- of salvaged or reused materials were kept out of landfills.
"That's a big recapture," Luboff said, noting that the city -- taxpayers -- ultimately must pay for everything thrown away.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Call Seattle Public Utilities at 206-684-3000 or visit www.seattle.gov/html/CITIZEN/utility.htm P-I reporter Debera Carlton Harrell can be reached at 206-448-8326 or deberaharrell@seattlepi.com.
© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer More >
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22 Jul 2005 @ 01:40
Challenges of Buying Local & Organic Indian Country
Organic food is a healthy deal © Indian Country Today July 19, 2005. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 19, 2005 by: Jean Johnson / Indian Country Today Analysis
PORTLAND, Ore. - Liz Woody, member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and director of the indigenous leadership program at Portland's Ecotrust, sent a message recently about tribal salmon sales down at the Ecotrust building. ''Bring cash and a decent size cooler or cooler bag. The market goes from 4 - 8 p.m. in the Ecotrust parking lot on NW 10th Avenue, between Irving and Johnson. You will be glad that you did,'' she wrote.
It came as a surprise, though, when an organic farmer and regular seller at one of the city's Saturday farmer's markets fired back a stern missive. ''I've supported the tribal catches for years, but where are the Indians when it comes time to buy local and organic at my stand? There's one Indian woman that buys my stuff regularly and that's it. It gets old having the deal go one way when we're all after the same thing - living gently on the earth and freeing ourselves from bondage to the corporations. Yes, it costs more, but the tribal fishers aren't shy about getting $4/pound for their fish.'' The point is worth considering. Why is there a perception among at least some buy-local folks that they aren't getting the quid pro quo from their tribal friends that they think fair?
Money, of course, is the obvious conclusion. Most the folks at the farmer's markets look fairly affluent - or at least middle class. Regular customer Bob Smith said it is ''spendy'' to buy organic from local growers. ''It costs me from $25 to $30 each week on fresh vegetables, but then I eat a lot of beans and steam my own whole grains so it balances out, money-wise. Also, I can't remember the last time I bought anything packaged or processed. As far as I'm concerned, if people would get off the ''Capri Sun routine'' and quit sucking down soda pop, they'd have enough to buy their food responsibly. To me that means going local, in season, and organic.'' The New York Times ran an article in October 2004 on the California strawberry industry and its use of the ozone-depleting chemical methyl bromide. ''Planting time is near in John Steinbeck's old haunts. A fork on the back of a tanker-tractor dips 12 inches down into the soil and emits a gaseous cocktail to kill any fungus or microorganism that could threaten next spring's strawberries. Mexican workers, wearing antiseptic white suits but no face masks, follow close behind, tamping down the white plastic sheeting that covers the loamy fields. They are fumigating Will Garroutte's strawberry fields with methyl bromide, a pesticide so witheringly effective it is a farmer's dream. But it is not an environmentalist's.'' While it's true that strawberries, along with tomatoes and peppers, are some of the most heavily dosed commodities we eat, the writer's description of the ''gaseous cocktail'' - a biocide that kills every living thing in the ground - leaves a haunting, graphic reminder of how we have relinquished the growing of our food to large producers. More, it underscores attitudes about using highly toxic pesticides and fertilizers that permeate the agricultural sector. Clearly this is not the kind of behavior that tribal values support. Could it be that part of the problem lies in the marketing? The packaging? The convenience? The appearance of large, unblemished fruits and vegetables stacked up to appeal to the eye in the stores?
But any way you slice it, it's a problem. Moms and dads in Indian country are busy to the hilt seeing that the kids have what they need. Getting out on Saturday morning to buy local might not even be possible for the 40 percent of the tribal population living on reservations.
But now that the question has been raised, it might be something to ponder. Gathering roots and berries and such is certainly one way to stay connected to the land and its rhythms in a respectful way. Buying local and organic just might be another.
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| Tuesday, July 19, 2005 | |
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19 Jul 2005 @ 06:30
Whole Foods will label food GE-free
Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats grocery stores both committed in 2001 to using only non-genetically engineered (GE) ingredients in their company brand products. Now Whole Foods, the world's largest supplier of natural and organic foods, has announced it will label its products, including all organic food, GE-free. Growers and producers who sell to Whole Foods will have to substantiate their non-GE practices through documentation and independent laboratory tests. To read Whole Foods' policy, visit [link]
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| Monday, July 18, 2005 | |
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18 Jul 2005 @ 18:15
Yes, I know I have been focusing almost entirely on organics and permaculture topics as of late, and may continue to do so. It is my small contribution to emphasize the importance of supporting people who are pro-life in the most down to earth, life sustaining practices.
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Studies Show How and Why Organic Farming Must Become the Norm inthe USA
Organic farming produces same corn and soybean yields as conventional farms, but consumes less energy and no pesticides, study finds Susan S. Lang Cornell University, July 13, 2005 [via agnet]
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes.
David Pimentel, a Cornell University professor of ecology and agriculture, concludes, "Organic farming offers real advantages for such crops as corn and soybeans." Pimentel is the lead author of a study that is published in the July issue of Bioscience (Vol. 55:7) analyzing the environmental, energy and economic costs and benefits of growing soybeans and corn organically versus conventionally. The study is a review of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial, the longest running comparison of organic vs. conventional farming in the United States.
"Organic farming approaches for these crops not only use an average of 30 percent less fossil energy but also conserve more water in the soil, induce less erosion, maintain soil quality and conserve more biological resources than conventional farming does," Pimentel added.
The study compared a conventional farm that used recommended fertilizer and pesticide applications with an organic animal-based farm (where manure was applied) and an organic legume-based farm (that used a three-year rotation of hairy vetch/corn and rye/soybeans and wheat). The two organic systems received no chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
Inter-institutional collaboration included Rodale Institute agronomists Paul Hepperly and Rita Seidel, U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service research microbiologist David Douds Jr. and University of Maryland agricultural economist James Hanson. The research compared soil fungi activity, crop yields, energy efficiency, costs, organic matter changes over time, nitrogen accumulation and nitrate leaching across organic and conventional agricultural systems.
"First and foremost, we found that corn and soybean yields were the same across the three systems," said Pimentel, who noted that although organic corn yields were about one-third lower during the first four years of the study, over time the organic systems produced higher yields, especially under drought conditions. The reason was that wind and water erosion degraded the soil on the conventional farm while the soil on the organic farms steadily improved in organic matter, moisture, microbial activity and other soil quality indicators.
The fact that organic agriculture systems also absorb and retain significant amounts of carbon in the soil has implications for global warming, Pimentel said, pointing out that soil carbon in the organic systems increased by 15 to 28 percent, the equivalent of taking about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per hectare out of the air.
Among the study's other findings:
In the drought years, 1988 to 1998, corn yields in the legume-based system were 22 percent higher than yields in the conventional system.
The soil nitrogen levels in the organic farming systems increased 8 to 15 percent. Nitrate leaching was about equivalent in the organic and conventional farming systems.
Organic farming reduced local and regional groundwater pollution by not applying agricultural chemicals.
Pimentel noted that although cash crops cannot be grown as frequently over time on organic farms because of the dependence on cultural practices to supply nutrients and control pests and because labor costs average about 15 percent higher in organic farming systems, the higher prices that organic foods command in the marketplace still make the net economic return per acre either equal to or higher than that of conventionally produced crops.
Organic farming can compete effectively in growing corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and other grains, Pimentel said, but it might not be as favorable for growing such crops as grapes, apples, cherries and potatoes, which have greater pest problems.
The study was funded by the Rodale Institute and included a review of current literature on organic and conventional agriculture comparisons. According to Pimentel, dozens of scientific papers reporting on research from the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial have been published in prestigious refereed journals over the past 20 years. More >
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18 Jul 2005 @ 18:11
Simplifiy, Simplify, Simplify.
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Buy Local: Long Distance Food Transportation Is a Major Cause of Global Warming
Food study reveals hidden £9bn costs of transport Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent Friday July 15, 2005
Guardian (UK) Food "miles" have risen dramatically over the past 10 years, are still rising, and have a significant impact on climate change, traffic congestion, accidents and pollution, according to a report published by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) yesterday.
Food miles increased by 15% in the 10 years to 2002. The average distance we now drive to shop for food each year is 898 miles, compared with 747 miles a decade ago. Food transport accounts for 25% of all the miles driven by heavy goods vehicles on our roads. The use of HGVs to transport food has doubled since 1974.
The dramatic increase has resulted in a rise in the amount of CO2 emitted by food transport: 19m tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2002 in the course of getting our food to us, a 12% increase on 1992, the report says. Airfreight, the most polluting form of food transport, is growing fastest. The report also attempts to put a cost on the social and environmental impacts of food miles. Taking into account the time lost to traffic congestion, wear on the roads, ill health caused by air and noise pollution and accidents caused by food transport, its authors suggest the cost of food miles is £9bn a year to the UK. This is greater than the total contribution of the agricultrual sector to GDP (£6.4bn) and half the total value of the food and drink manufacturing sector (£19.8bn).
Researchers identified the factors driving the rise in food miles as increased global trade, concentration of power in the hands of supermarkets with centralised systems of distribution, greater car use to shop (particularly in urban areas), and a rise in packaging and processing.
The study shows that the concept of food miles is more complicated than just the distance food travels. What sort of transport is used and how food is grown make a difference.
Local sourcing helps as long as transport for local food is efficient. Organic food reduces environmental damage, but does not deliver a "net environmental benefit" when flown in from abroad. In simple energy terms, out-of-season British tomatoes needing artificial light and heat produce more emissions than those trucked from Spain.
Launching the report in London, the food and farming minister, Lord Bach, said the government would work with the industry to achieve a 20% reduction in the environmental and social costs of food transport by 2012.
He added that the report offered clear pointers to consumers: "Internet buying and home delivery can reduce road congestion and vehicle kilometres. Organic and seasonally available food can reduce environmental impacts, but these can be offset by the way they are transported to the consumer's home." Tim Lang, who coined the phrase food miles in 1992 as part of the Safe campaign for more sustainable food, and is now professor of food policy at
London's City University, said: "This report confirms that our so-called efficient food supply system is grossly wasteful. If the government doesn't take action to tackle this, all its proposals on climate change will be so much nonsense."
The Food and Drink Federation, which represents manufacturers, said it was concerned about the focus on food miles in the government's strategy for sustainable food.
"As food miles eat into profit, companies have already created an extremely fuel-efficient supply chain, and will therefore find it difficult to make further reductions," it said.
Andrew Opie, the policy director of the British Retail Consortium, which represents leading supermarkets, said: "A sustainable policy on this issue is one that balances the demands of consumers for a broad range of all-year-round, high quality, affordable foods with any impact this may have on the environment through transport."
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| Thursday, July 14, 2005 | |
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14 Jul 2005 @ 16:27
Ikea goes Organic
Food Navigator
A demonstration of the growing popularity of, and ongoing opportunities for organic ingredients, successful Swedish retailer IKEA said it will replace standard foods with organic varieties.
The group, the single largest Swedish food exporter, has started its project by launching organic coffee, followed by strawberry/ orange jam and blue cheese, reports Öresund Food Excellence.
This winter IKEA will launch organic schnapps, and the meat sauce that will be served at the Ikea restaurants will also be certified organic.
Organic food is taking off across Europe, driven by a multitude of reasons including environmental and food safety concerns, as well as a rejection of the ceaseless growth of mass food production.
Two years after the UK government, for example, launched an organic action plan for the entire food supply chain, the country has seen a 46 per cent rise in organic produce provided by UK farms.
At the beginning of 2004, about 4 per cent of UK farmland - 696,000 hectares
- was under organic production, up from 30,000 hectares in 1993. The market is projected to grow by 9 per cent a year to 2007.
Overall, the EU organic market reached around €10 billion in 2002, according to data from UK market analysts Organic Monitor, but growth has slowed in recent years: an increase of 8 per cent between 2001 and 2002 shrunk to an estimated 5 per cent between 2002 and 2003.
According to the market researchers, dairy is one of the fastest growing organic categories, with 2004 sales up on the previous year by 12.5 per
cent. Within the category, organic milk and yoghurt reported the highest levels of growth.
The introduction of organic dairy products under supermarket private labels has boosted sales growth, while future sales are tipped to be driven by scientific research into the health benefits of organic milk, and by a greater penetration into the foodservice and catering sector. More >
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14 Jul 2005 @ 05:54
Great Lakes Restoration Will Cost $20 Billion
DULUTH, Minnesota, July 11, 2005 (ENS) - A new collaboration among federal,
state, city, tribal and nongovernmental partners has issued an overarching
draft strategy to restore and protect the Great Lakes ecosystem. While
government officials declined to put an overall price tag on the strategy,
environmental groups estimate it would cost $20 billion over five years.
More comprehensive than previous attempts to purify and enhance the five
lakes that contain one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply, the strategy
is now open for public comment.
In Duluth on Thursday, senior representatives of the Great Lakes Regional
Collaboration (GLRC) issued the draft strategy, the result of six months of
work on the part of more than 1,500 people from government and
nongovernmental organizations.
Teams worked on eight critical environmental priorities - aquatic invasive
species, habitat conservation and species management, near-shore waters and
coastal areas, areas of concern, non-point sources, toxic pollutants, a
sound information base, and representative indicators and sustainability.
Lake Erie Islands State Park. Due to a water quality concern, the cabins at
South Bass Island State Park are not available for rental at this time.
(Photo courtesy Ohio DNR)
The reports of these teams and their recommendations for action form the
basis for the draft action plan. The teams kept the long term restoration of
the Great Lakes in mind as they mapped the steps that must be taken over the
next five years to achieve results.
At this early stage, the draft has not been officially endorsed by any
members of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration. First the public will
have its say. Following a 60 day public comment period, including five town
hall style meetings, the collaboration's leadership will consider the draft
recommendations and public comments as they develop a final strategy for
approval by the collaboration membership.
The draft document provides the full range of recommendations, options, and
ideas generated by the eight strategy teams. The final strategy - scheduled
for release in Chicago on December 12 - will acknowledge the funding climate
in which implementation is likely to occur. Public input is expected to help
clarify priority actions for funding.
Implementation will proceed promptly after the plan is released, the
organizers said." Because we share the Great Lakes with Canada, we must do
everything possible to make sure that our plans and actions are compatible
and synchronized with their efforts," they said Thursday.
In December 2004, President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order
directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lead a regional
collaboration of national significance for the Great Lakes.
"The unique nature of these majestic lakes and their role in the cultural,
economic and environmental well-being of our nation requires us to take bold
action in their defense," said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. "Working
separately, environmental progress is limited. This collaborative strategy,
bringing together resources and ideas from our partners, is the next step in
ensuring the Great Lakes remain an international treasure - forever open to
trade and tourism, and providing a healthy ecosystem for its surrounding
communities."
Sailing along Lake Michigan shoreline at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Photo
courtesy Lake Michigan Federation)
"If it is funded, the Collaboration¹s draft plan will make critical
progress toward our goal of restoring balance to the Great Lakes,² said Andy
Buchsbaum, director of National Wildlife Federation¹s Great Lakes office,
and co-chair of the Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition. "Cleaning up
raw sewage and toxic hotspots, and restoring habitat is not cheap, but
there¹s no alternative: Our economy, our environment, and our way of life
depend on it.²
Legislation pending in Congress calls for $4 billion to $6 billion to
restore the Great Lakes.
"This is the summer of the Great Lakes - an unprecedented opportunity to
ensure that they are protected and restored for our children and
grandchildren," said Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.
"Most importantly, we recognize that immediate and aggressive action is
needed. Hundreds have taken part in this collaboration and we invite the
public to help us identify the steps that must be taken now and in coming
years," Doyle said.
"Many Great Lakes Tribal Nations have been participating in the
collaboration in recognition of their sacred duties and responsibilities to
the waters of the Great Lakes," said Tribal Chairman Ettawageshik. "We look
forward to hearing from the public about how the final strategy can help to
protect the Creator's gifts of pure water and sustainable ecosystems that
provide the foundation for the health and welfare of all people in the Great
Lakes basin."
CLICK TO READ THE STRATEGIC OUTLINE More >
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13 Jul 2005 @ 04:21
G8 Nations Summit Fails to Deal with Climate Change
AUCHTERARDER, Scotland, July 8, 2005 (ENS) - The G8 leaders have signed a
climate change agreement without measurable targets and timetables for
reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
At the close of the G8 Summit at Gleneagles today, the heads of government
of the world's eight wealthiest nations agreed that "climate change is
happening now, that human activity is contributing to it, and that it could
affect every part of the globe." But they decided on dialogue, technological
development and marketing rather than emissions limits to address the
problem.
"We know that, globally, emissions must slow, peak and then decline, moving
us towards a low-carbon economy. This will require leadership from the
developed world," the G8 leaders state.
"We resolved to take urgent action to meet the challenges we face," they
declare. "The Gleneagles Plan of Action which we have agreed demonstrates
our commitment. We will take measures to develop markets for clean energy
technologies, to increase their availability in developing countries, and to
help vulnerable communities adapt to the impact of climate change."
But the Gleneagles Plan of Action disappointed environmentalists who had
hoped for an immediate emission reduction program to avoid catastrophic
climate change. The campaign group Friends of the Earth blamed the United
States for the lack of progress, saying the Gleneagles document offered
nothing new, with no commitment to firm action agreed.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair outlines the G8 decisions at the close of
this year's summit. (Photo by Anita Maric courtesy G8)
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who hosted the gathering, said, "We
speak in the shadow of terrorism. But it will not obscure what we came here
to achieve." Referring to the terrorist bomb blast in London Thursday that
claimed at least 50 lives, Blair said, "There is no hope in terrorism, nor
any future in it worth living. And it is hope that is the alternative to
hatred."
"We came here to acknowledge our duty to be responsible stewards of the
global environment," said Blair.
"We do not hide the disagreements of the past but we have agreed a process,
with a plan of action, that will initiate a new Dialogue between the G8 and
the emerging economies of the world to slow down and then, in time, to
reverse the rise in harmful greenhouse gas emissions," said Blair. "The
Dialogue will begin on 1 November with a meeting here in Britain."
To further their Plan the G8 leaders have asked the World Bank to create a
new framework for mobilizing investment in clean energy and development.
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said, "A first high-level meeting on
this is scheduled to be hosted in Britain on November 1st by Prime Minister
Blair and the World Bank Group.²
These arrangements were not strong enough to reassure environmentalists.
Friends of the Earth International Vice Chair Tony Juniper said, "Despite
the growing evidence of human induced climate change and the dangers of its
impacts becoming more widely known and understood, the outcomes of this
summit leave us very little further ahead. While the leaders carry on
talking, the world continues warming."
The G8 leaders "warmly welcomed" the involvement of the leaders of the
emerging economy nations of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa,
who they said contributed "ideas for new approaches to international
co-operation on clean energy technologies between the developed and
developing world."
"Our discussions mark the beginning of a new Dialogue between the G8
nations and other countries with significant energy needs, consistent with
the aims and principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This will explore how best to exchange technology, reduce emissions, and
meet our energy needs in a sustainable way, as we implement and build on the
Plan of Action," the G8 said in the Chair's Summary document.
CLICK TO READ More >
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Sounding Circle - Category: Permaculture
