What are Pulses? In technical terms, they’re the dry, edible seeds of plants in the legume family. In understandable terms, they’re a category of superfoods that includes chickpeas, lentils, dry peas, and bean varieties. They’re also incredibly healthy, affordable, sustainable and tasty.
The International year of Pulses 2016 (IYP) aims to heighten public awareness of the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food production aimed towards food security and nutrition. The IYP 2016 creates a unique opportunity to encourage connections throughout the food chain that would better utilize pulse-based proteins, further global production of pulses, better utilize crop rotations and address the challenges in the trade of pulses.
Author: Mike Lawrence
How can buildings help with climate change? It’s all about renewables and “sequestered carbon”.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ 2010 report on Low Carbon Construction concluded that construction was responsible for around 300m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which is almost 47% of the UK’s total. Of this, around 50m tonnes is embedded in the fabric of buildings.
Making one tonne of steel emits 1.46 tonnes of CO2 and 198kg of CO2 is emitted make one tonne of reinforced concrete. One square meter of timber framed, hemp-lime wall (weighing 120kg), after allowing for the energy cost of transporting and assembling the materials actually stores 35.5kg of CO2.
If we can convert plants into building materials, we are in a win-win situation. Plants use the energy of the sun to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into hydrocarbons – the material from which plants are made.
The plant acts as a carbon store, sequestering (absorbing) atmospheric CO2 for as long as the plant continues to exist. This CO2 is only re-released when the material is composted or burnt, and the great thing is that through replanting it you can re-absorb this CO2 annually, in the case of straw or hemp, or every decade or so in the case of timber, rather than the 300m years that it takes to recycle coal or oil.
The first national study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they’re disappearing in many of the country’s most important farmlands–including California’s Central Valley, the Midwest’s corn belt, and the Mississippi River valley.
If losses of these crucial pollinators continue, the new nationwide assessment indicates that farmers will face increasing costs–and that the problem may even destabilize the nation’s crop production.
The findings were published December 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research team, led by Insu Koh at the University of Vermont, estimates that wild bee abundance between 2008 and 2013 declined in 23% of the contiguous U.S. The study also shows that 39% of US croplands that depend on pollinators–from apple orchards to pumpkin patches–face a threatening mismatch between rising demand for pollination and a falling supply of wild bees.
In June of 2014, the White House issued a presidential memorandum warning that “over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.” The memo noted the multi-billion dollar contribution of pollinators to the US economy–and called for a national assessment of wild pollinators and their habitats.
This video explores the different perspectives of food providers on agroecology and the calls from social movements to embed agroecoogy in the struggle for food sovereignty. It focuses on the International Declaration for Food Sovereignty which has been advanced by social movements to claim agroecology as a bottom up practice, science and movement and the most important pathway towards a most just, sustainable and viable food and agriculture system.
Visit: https://www.foodsovereignty.org/forum-… to read the declaration and www.agroecologynow.com for more information on this project.
Watch More Videos on Cawr Coventry University’s Youtube Channel
Author: Andrew Martin
Environmental and animal-rights groups have spent decades arguing against large-scale, intensive livestock facilities, arguing that these so-called factory farms are bad for the environment, farm animals, and human health. A private equity investor is taking a different approach to the same fight.
Jeremy Coller, who founded London’s Coller Capital, is warning investors that ignoring animal welfare and other risks associated with industrial livestock farms can be bad for their bottom line. He created the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return Initiative to create a network of like-minded investors who consider animal welfare and other factory farm issues in their decisions. Coller, a vegetarian, said the effort is “about materiality,” not morality. “It’s about being a bad investment risk.”
Coller has just released a 31-page report that includes “killer stats investors can’t ignore” about intensive livestock farming. The report doesn’t single out companies for investors to avoid. Instead, he outlines more than two dozen environment, social, and governance issues related to industrial livestock farming that he says pose financial risk. For instance, the report notes that livestock produce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, threaten human health by creating antibiotic resistant bacteria, and consume vast natural resources, such as land and water.
Consumers, companies, and regulators are already making changes to the market, leading to reductions in reducing antibiotic use and the phasing out gestation crates for sows and battery cages for hens. But he believes investors have been slower to consider the consequences of factory-style farming as part of a responsible investment strategy. “There is a huge knowledge gap for investors,” Coller says. “What we are trying to do is start this network to fill this knowledge gap.”
Author: Cole Mellino
A new documentary from Kikim Media based on Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, In Defense of Food, helps consumers navigate a food system complicated by globalization and industrialization.
“I’ve been writing about the food system for a very long time,” Pollan said in the trailer for the new film. “But what I kept hearing from readers was ‘yeah yeah yeah, you told me where the food comes from and how the animals live and everything, but what I want to know is what should I eat.’”
In the film, Pollan attempts to answer that very question: What should I eat to be healthy? He addresses what he has called the “American paradox: the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.”
We’re consuming “edible food-like substances” rather than actual food, Pollan said. By actual food, he means the food people ate for thousands of years before we became dependent on processed foods.
“You don’t have to be a scientist to know how to eat,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. “Just go around the outside of the supermarket and pick up fruits, vegetables and meat, and stay out of the processed foods, because they’re fun to eat once in a while, but they shouldn’t be daily fare.”
“Vida em Sintropia” é o novo curta do Agenda Gotsch. Uma edição feita especialmente para ser apresentada em eventos na COP21 em Paris, com um compilado de experiências expressivas em Agricultura Sintrópica. Imagens e entrevistas inéditas.
“Life in Syntropy” is the new short film from Agenda Gotsch made specially to be presented at COP21 – Paris. This film put together some of the most remarkable experiences in Syntropic Agriculture, with brand new images and interviews.
“It’s possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems.” Environmental film maker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally.