Biodiversity for Resilience Against Natural Disasters

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Author: Rocco Pallin | Published: January 2018

Climate change is increasingly putting pressure on farmers and the global food systems, according to researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the transdisciplinary International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES). These groups and others are highlighting the importance of resilience—an ecosystem’s capacity to resist or recover from stress, shocks, and disturbances—for the security and productivity of the world’s food and farming systems in the face of climate change.

Resilience matters most for feeding the world’s growing population as the climate changes, according to these leading food security and agriculture groups, and agricultural biodiversity can be key to building it.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines agricultural biodiversity as the diversity among plants, animals, and microorganisms directly or indirectly used for agriculture and food production.

Agricultural biodiversity exists at three levels, all of which are important for climate adaptation. On a regional level, agricultural biodiversity involves farms in proximity to one another growing and supporting a range of different crops and species. At the farm level, crop diversity can mean farmers employ sustainability measures like crop rotation to maintain soil health, or agroforestry, or intercropping. Farmers utilize genetic diversity of crops when they grow several different species of a crop rather than one variety.

Research from CGIAR, FAO, and others over last two decades has concluded thatbiodiversity significantly contributes to resilience, and furthermore that a combination of biodiversity-increasing strategies often yields the greatest results.

For example, in the Central American hillsides in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch, researchers who surveyed farms and agricultural damage concluded that farmers engaged in diversification “such as cover crops, intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less damage than their conventional monoculture neighbors.”

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How To Be a Better, Smarter, Happier Meat Eater

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Author: Mark Bittman | Published: January 18, 2018

Sure, you’ve heard that red meat is cruel and unsustainable, and that it’ll destroy the environment if it doesn’t give us all heart attacks first. But it’s so delicious! Which is why we begged Mark Bittman to reconcile our principles with our appetites—and teach us the new rules of red meat.

1. Start Beefing with (Most) Beef

Under natural conditions, cattle are an almost perfectly beneficial part of a regenerative agricultural system. Their waste feeds the fields on which they’re pastured; carbon is sequestered in that grass; and their meat, in limited quantities, is good for us, good for the land, and good for the community of farmers, ranchers, butchers, and the variety of small businesses that raise, butcher, and sell it.

Take the cattle off those fields, multiply their numbers by thousands, feed them industrially produced grain encouraged by subsidies, damage some of the world’s best farmland to grow that grain using a destructive assortment of chemicals, pump the cows full of antibiotics (to prevent illness in the unnatural conditions), scale and intensify this process so that almost anyone in the world can afford to eat meat daily, and…that’s not good for us. Or the farmland. Or the planet. Or, needless to say, the cattle. And yet beef raised this way is what almost everyone in this country has eaten exclusively for the past 50 years.

Fortunately, a growing cadre of ethical ranchers and butchers have started turning this system around. They’re pasture-raising cows on grass and mother’s milk—which gives the meat a wonderfully complex flavor, pleasantly minerally and deliciously beefy—and they’re using whole animals, minimizing waste and expanding our palates. Here’s how to find, buy, and order beef that’s not only better for the planet but tastes better, too.

2. Expand Your Vocabulary

Just about anything is better than the industrially produced grain-fed feedlot beef. The best alternative, and I’m being very specific here, is “grass-fed, pasture-raised,” especially if it’s raised locally (to reduce the carbon footprint) and organically (to prevent the widespread use of pesticides that harm the environment). There are other good alternatives that play with those variables, but the bottom line is that most of what you find for sale isn’t cutting it.

3. Open Your Wallet

The price for pasture-raised beef does vary, but it’s expensive. Beef finished in a feedlot should be somewhat cheaper, but it’s still going to be steep. Ground beef—which constitutes about a third of the yield from every animal—should be $5 to $10 a pound; less is suspect, and more is, well, high. The premium cuts, like rib eye and filet mignon, are likely to be around $30 a pound; more is common.

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Let’s Wrench Power Back from the Billionaires

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If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Author: Bernie Sanders | Published: January 14, 2018

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.

In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

Let's Wrench Power Back from the Billionaires

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If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Author: Bernie Sanders | Published: January 14, 2018

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.

In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

Solar Greenhouses Generate Electricity and Grow Healthy Crops

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Magenta panes also help plants save water

Published: November 3, 2017

The first crops of tomatoes and cucumbers grown inside electricity-generating solar greenhouses were as healthy as those raised in conventional greenhouses, signaling that “smart” greenhouses hold great promise for dual-use farming and renewable electricity production.

“We have demonstrated that ‘smart greenhouses’ can capture solar energy for electricity without reducing plant growth, which is pretty exciting,” said Michael Loik, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author on a paper that appears in the current issue of the American Geophysical Union’s journal Earth’s Future.

Electricity-generating solar greenhouses utilize Wavelength-Selective Photovoltaic Systems (WSPVs), a novel technology that generates electricity more efficiently and at less cost than traditional photovoltaic systems. These greenhouses are outfitted with transparent roof panels embedded with a bright magenta luminescent dye that absorbs light and transfers energy to narrow photovoltaic strips, where electricity is produced. WSPVs absorb some of the blue and green wavelengths of light but let the rest through, allowing the plants to grow. WSPV technology was developed by coauthors Sue Carter and Glenn Alers, both professors of physics at UC Santa Cruz, who founded Soliculture in 2012 to bring the technology to market.

Loik’s team monitored photosynthesis and fruit production across 20 varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons, limes, peppers, strawberries, and basil grown in magenta glasshouses at two locations on campus and one in Watsonville, California.

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Mexico's Prickly Pear Cactus: Energy Source of the Future?

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Author: Yemeli Ortega | Published: August 17, 2017

The prickly pear cactus is such a powerful symbol in Mexico that they put it smack in the middle of the national flag.

It was considered sacred by the ancient Aztecs, and modern-day Mexicans eat it, drink it, and even use it in medicines and shampoos.

Now scientists have come up with a new use for the bright green plant: producing renewable energy.

Instantly recognizable with its jumble of spiny discs—its bright red fruit protruding like fat fingers from each one—the prickly pear cactus is farmed on a massive scale in Mexico.

Its soft inner flesh plays a starring role in a plethora of favorite national dishes: tacos, soups, salads, jams and even candies.

Believed by some to have healing powers, the cactus is also used in blood pressure medications, anti-hair loss shampoos, skin creams and diet juices.

“Since before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, we have eaten prickly pear cactus. It’s our tradition and our culture,” said Israel Vazquez, who has farmed the cactus for the past 20 years on a small plot in Milpa Alta, a neighborhood on Mexico City’s south side.

The cactus’s thick outer layer, with all those spines, has always been a waste product—until researchers developed a biogas generator to turn it into electricity.

KEEP READING ON TECHXPLORE

Mexico’s Prickly Pear Cactus: Energy Source of the Future?

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Author: Yemeli Ortega | Published: August 17, 2017

The prickly pear cactus is such a powerful symbol in Mexico that they put it smack in the middle of the national flag.

It was considered sacred by the ancient Aztecs, and modern-day Mexicans eat it, drink it, and even use it in medicines and shampoos.

Now scientists have come up with a new use for the bright green plant: producing renewable energy.

Instantly recognizable with its jumble of spiny discs—its bright red fruit protruding like fat fingers from each one—the prickly pear cactus is farmed on a massive scale in Mexico.

Its soft inner flesh plays a starring role in a plethora of favorite national dishes: tacos, soups, salads, jams and even candies.

Believed by some to have healing powers, the cactus is also used in blood pressure medications, anti-hair loss shampoos, skin creams and diet juices.

“Since before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, we have eaten prickly pear cactus. It’s our tradition and our culture,” said Israel Vazquez, who has farmed the cactus for the past 20 years on a small plot in Milpa Alta, a neighborhood on Mexico City’s south side.

The cactus’s thick outer layer, with all those spines, has always been a waste product—until researchers developed a biogas generator to turn it into electricity.

KEEP READING ON TECHXPLORE

Expertos recomiendan que los gobiernos alienten la agricultura campesina

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  Publicado: 18 de enero 2018

Los campesinos, indígenas y agricultores familiares producen el 70 por ciento de los alimentos del mundo, a pesar de contar con sólo el 25 por ciento de la tierra. En contraposición, las empresas del agronegocio cuentan con el 75 por ciento de la tierra pero sólo producen el 25 de la comida. Así lo revela una investigación de la ONG internacional Grupo ETC, que desarma los mitos de la agricultura industrial y transgénica. El estudio asegura que si los gobiernos quieren acabar con el hambre y frenar el cambio climático, deben aplicar políticas públicas para impulsar la agricultura campesina.

“¿Quién nos alimentará? ¿La red campesina alimentaria o la cadena agroindustrial?”, es el nombre de la investigación del Grupo ETC (Grupo de Acción sobre Erosión, Tecnología y Concentración) que, en base a 24 preguntas, aporta pruebas de las consecuencias de la agricultura industrial y de la necesidad de otro modelo.

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Video: Soil Organic Carbon: Keystone to Sustainability in a Changing World

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Published: January 6, 2018

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Changing Paradigms in Food and Farming — Part 1

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Author: Jack Lazor | Published: January 14, 2018

Our world is in a bit of an uproar these days. Never before have we seen so many challenges come to the fore simultaneously. Here in Vermont, we are very fortunate to live in a rather civil society, especially when we consider the toxic political environment that we see on the national level. We still have plenty to worry about right here in our own state, however. Hardly a day goes by without some mention of water quality and environmental pollution in the news. This past August we saw some of the worst-ever blue green algae blooms in lakes Champlain, Carmi and Memphremagog. Fingers were pointed, and the usual blame game transpired. In the last month, the Department of Agriculture has come under fire for lax enforcement of water quality regulations. Some legislators want to know why farmers are exempt from Act 250 jurisdiction. The question of who and how we will pay for Lake Champlain cleanup looms large.

The state’s dairy farmers, both organic and conventional are in the poorhouse. Vermont’s iconic dairy industry has been in an economic pinch for some time. The prices farmers are paid for the milk they produce are well below the costs of production. Until recently, organic dairy production has been an economic lifeline for many producers, but for the first time ever, organic prices have dropped as much as $6 per hundredweight in the last few months. Quotas have been imposed on organic milk production, further lessening farmers’ income potential. Stress levels on dairy farms continue to increase as farmers find they cannot pay their bills.

Meanwhile, retail outlets that sell dairy products are in a war for market share. Something as nurturing as food becomes a “sale item” like a television set or some other consumer good. Food prices are lower than ever while the cost of production back on the farm continues to rise. Why is it that cheap food is standard fare here in America? This madness all began in the years following World War II. After the lean years of the 1930s and food rationing during the war, Americans were ready to eat. At the same time, chemicals like nitrates and phosphates that had been used in the making of munitions were repurposed as agricultural fertilizers and pesticides. By 1950, a new industrial agricultural revolution was in full swing. Crop yields climbed, farms consolidated, and meat consumption increased. Tractors completely replaced horses for motive power. As agriculture became more mechanized, people began to leave their farms and rural communities for more opportunities in urban and suburban areas. If one is looking for the beginning of the long decline in rural America, look no farther than the 1950s. The green revolution was underway.

KEEP READING ON VT DIGGER