Tag Archive for: Biodiversity

The Power of… Corn

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[ English | Español ]

Translation by: Eleanor D. Stevens

  • The nixtamalization of corn dough increases its calcium content and the bioavailability of Vitamin B3 and certain proteins.
  • Combining corn with legumes such as beans increases the quality of their proteins.
  •  Blue corn contains anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants that protect our cells.

What is corn?

Corn (zea mays) is a member of the Gramineae family, along with wheat, rice, barley, rye, and oats. However, unlike these other grains, corn is not known to have any direct relatives among wild plants. It is thought that it was developed by domesticating teosintle, another Graminea similar to corn that grows naturally in Mexico and parts of Central America.

Corn is central to all Mesoamerican cultures. The Popul Vuh tell how “Quetzalcóatl went down to Mictlán, the land of the dead, and there he gathered bones from a man and a woman and took them to the goddess Coatlicue. She ground the bones with corn, and from this paste humans were made.”

In industrialized countries, corn is used primarily as feed for animals, raw material for processed foods and, recently, for the production of ethanol. On the other hand, in several Latin American countries and, increasingly, in African countries as well, a high percentage of the corn grown or imported is destined for human consumption.

Currently, corn is cultivated in Mexico in a wide range of climates, altitudes, humidity levels, and soils, using many different technologies. Corn is Mexico’s principal crop, occupying around one third of cultivated land. Every state in the country produces corn, although 64.5% of production is concentrated in Sinaloa, Jalisco, Michoacán, Mexico State, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Veracruz.

What nutrients does corn provide?

Corn, as a cereal, consists primarily of starches. When its hull is not removed, it is also an important source of fiber in our diet.

Its nutritional properties vary depending on its degree of maturity. For this reason, we will first discuss the nutrients in fresh corn and then those in corn dough.

Fresh corn

Fresh corn is considered a vegetable because of its higher water content in comparison to the dry kernel, which is ground into corn dough.

Fresh corn is rich in potassium and folic acid, and yellow corn in particular contains vitamin A.

Corn dough

Corn dough is typically prepared from dried corn kernels soaked in lime water and then ground. This process, known as nixtamalización, or nixtamalization (from the Náhuatl nixtli, ashes, and tamalli, dough) is indispensable for making tortillas and other dough-based products.

Nixtamalization softens the dough and simultaneously improves its nutritional value, adding calcium and facilitating digestion of essential amino acids which make up the corn’s protein. Tortillas are, therefore, a good source of calcium, in addition to the calcium we get from dairy products and some vegetables.

Blue corn has a particular advantage in nutritional terms because it contains anthocyanins, flavonoid compounds with antioxidant properties which protect our cells from oxidation and DNA mutations.

Many people associate tortillas with weight gain. However, it’s important to remember that tortillas only contribute to weight gain if they are consumed in excess.

A typical tortilla from a tortillería (neighborhood tortilla shop) weighs around 30 grams and provides some 65 kilocalories. If we eat two tortillas during a meal, along with a main dish and a side of vegetables, we will probably maintain energetic equilibrium. However, if we consume up to ten tortillas, equivalent to 650 kilocalories, we will probably exceed our daily calorie requirement, since this is a third of the recommended daily calorie intake for a young adult male.

Unlike flour tortillas, corn tortillas contain very little fat, unless they are fried.

How much does corn cost?

According to the Sistema Nacional de Información e Integración de Mercados (National Market Information and Integration System), one kilo of tortillas from a tortillería costs between 10 and 18 pesos, depending on the state in which it is purchased.

As a general rule, corn dough costs slightly less than tortillas.

What’s the best way to eat corn?

In Mexico there exist at least 600 ways to prepare corn for consumption, including: tortillas, tamales, corundas, sopes, huaraches, memelas, peneques, picadas, salbutes, panuchos, molotes, quesadillas, tostadas, tacos, tlacoyos, and other snacks.

Traditional pozole, whether green, red, or white is prepared from cacahuazintle corn kernels. Corn dough can also be made into small balls, which are added to soups, beans, and a variety of sauces such as mole de olla and Oaxacan yellow mole. Corn kernels are boiled and then ground to make drinks such as pozol, tejate, and atole. To prepare pinole, the kernels are first baked and then ground. And, when fermented, they are used to make alcoholic drinks like tesgüino.

Currently, many of the dishes made from corn dough are fried. However, Mesoamerican societies never used this culinary technique. We recommend frying as little as possible in order to enjoy the benefits of corn without adding high quantities of fat.

Because of the nutritional advantages it provides, we recommend eating blue corn rather than white or yellow corn whenever possible.

Why shouldn’t we grow genetically modified corn?

Clearly, in Mexico corn is precious.

The campaign “Sin Maíz no hay Paíz” (No Corn, no Country) summarizes briefly why we should not allow the cultivation of genetically modified corn in Mexico:

“Distributed throughout its national territory, Mexico has 59 corn species and thousands of sub-species which will be contaminated if genetically modified corn is sown in Mexico. Corn is Mexico’s inheritance, our sustenance, and the basis of our diet and our economy, and it is recognized as the heart of indigenous and campesino cultures. It is a fundamental staple of agriculture in the face of climate change and socioeconomic instability. It is our right and our obligation to keep corn a common good, free of genetic modifications.”

For her part, Cristina Barros, a specialist in Mexican cuisine, reminds us: “There are only two varieties [of genetically modified corn], one resistant to a plague that is almost nonexistent in Mexico, and the other resistant to herbicides, when in our milpas many of the “weeds” are quelites, squash, beans, chile, and other plants that are staples of our diet.”

Did you know?

Corn is present in the form of tortillas in the great majority of Mexican homes. On average, a family will consume 20 kg of white or yellow corn tortillas each month. It is present in homes of all social classes, although at the lowest socioeconomic level this food may constitute half of all calories consumed and a third of all protein.

_____________________________________

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT CORN:

Sin Maiz No Hay Pais
Biodiversidad
Greenpeace Mexico

VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON EL PODER DEL CONSUMIDOR

We can save individual species — but can we save entire ecosystems?

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Author: Daniel Ackerman

The 1973 Endangered Species Act has rescued numerous individual species from extinction in the United States — think Rocky Mountain wolves or Florida crocodiles, for instance. But as the climate changes and humans continue to modify the landscape in a frenzy of plows, pastures and pavement, single species are not the only things in need of protection from extinction. Entire ecosystems — biological communities created through millions of years of evolutionary interactions between organisms — are at risk as well. Saving single species alone will not restore the intricate tapestry of relationships that shape ecosystems. To protect the habitat that supports those species and preserve services we humans rely on, from cleansing water for our cities and homes to buffering impacts of climate change, we need to save not just species, but also ecosystems, from extinction.

The concept of ecosystem extinction has been recognized for some time in the scientific literature, but is just now beginning to gain widespread application in land management. In fact, the International Union for Conservation of Nature — source of the Red List of Threatened Species, our planet’s premier “high alert” when species start going down the tubes — is developing a red list of endangered ecosystems, similar to its threatened species list.

Thanks largely to agriculture, tallgrass prairie has been reduced by 99 percent.

Among those most threatened are grasslands. Historically, these ecosystems served as valuable habitat for a spectrum of species and provided humans with natural plant- and animal-based foods, as well as wide-open spaces valued for aesthetics and recreation. Today the IUCN calls them “the most altered biome on the planet.” Tallgrass prairie, for example, once covered a Texas-sized swath of North America. From the Canadian Great Plains to the Oklahoman Panhandle, tallgrass prairie supported a diverse array of native plants, pollinating insects and large animals, from grizzlies to bison and elk. Thanks largely to agriculture, tallgrass prairie has been reduced by 99 percent down to a few slivers of road margins and sandy hills throughout the Midwest, now totaling an area smaller than Rhode Island.

KEEP READING ON ENSIA

How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease

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Author: Jim Robbins

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the felling of tropical forests creates optimal conditions for the spread of mosquito-borne scourges, including malaria and dengue. Primates and other animals are also spreading disease from cleared forests to people.

In Borneo, an island shared by Indonesia and Malaysia, some of the world’s oldest tropical forests are being cut down and replaced with oil palm plantations at a breakneck pace. Wiping forests high in biodiversity off the land for monoculture plantations causes numerous environmental problems, from the destruction of wildlife habitat to the rapid release of stored carbon, which contributes to global warming.

But deforestation is having another worrisome effect: an increase in the spread of life-threatening diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. For a host of ecological reasons, the loss of forest can act as an incubator for insect-borne and other infectious diseases that afflict humans. The most recent example came to light this month in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, with researchers documenting a steep rise in human malaria cases in a region of Malaysian Borneo undergoing rapid deforestation.

This form of the disease was once found mainly in primates called macaques, and scientists from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene wondered why there was a sudden spike in human cases. Studying satellite maps of where forest was being cut down and where it was left standing, the researchers compared the patchwork to the locations of recent malaria outbreaks. They realized the primates were concentrating in the remaining fragments of forest habitat, possibly increasing disease transmission among their own populations. Then, as humans worked on the new palm plantations, near the recently created forest edges, mosquitoes that thrived in this new habitat carried the disease from macaques to people.

Keep Reading on Yale Environment 360

Born to Rewild

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Author: Eli Kintisch

In April 2011, Nikita Zimov climbed into a heavy duty truck with six elk in the back and set out from Novosibirsk, a major city in southern Siberia, on a 4000-kilometer trek to the edge of the world. Time was not on his side. He had to reach the Arctic town of Cher-sky, where he and his father, Sergey, run a hardscrabble research outpost called the Northeast Science Station (NESS), before the spring thaw melted the frozen rivers that serve as winter roads in northern Siberia. White wooden crosses marked spots along the winding road where unlucky drivers had perished. Two weeks into his journey, just 40 kilometers from home, Zimov hit a snowbank—his brakes were shot—and the truck tipped over. Unscathed, he phoned his father and spent the next 4 hours, cold and exhausted, leaning against a flimsy tarp hat covered the truck’s roof to keep the elk, also uninjured, from bolting. “I was miserable,” he says. “Almost literally insane.”

Sergey swooped in to rescue Nikita and the elk, and the animals finally reached their destination: Pleistocene Park, a 14,000-hectare reserve near Chersky founded by the elder Zimov 19 years ago. It’s a grand experiment to test whether large herbivores—elk, moose, reindeer, horses, and bison—can, simply by grazing, bring back a grass-dominated ecosystem called the mammoth steppe. That biome dominated the northern reaches of Eurasia and North America for 2 million years, until the end of the last glacial period some 13,000 years ago, when  the landscape turned to mossy tundra and sparsely forested taiga.

If the Zimovs are right, a brighter future for the entire globe may hinge on the experiment’s success. A decade ago, Sergey and colleagues estimated that permafrost encircling the upper Northern Hemisphere contains a whopping 1 trillion tons of carbon—twice earlier estimates—and that this vast pool may be on the brink of leaking into the atmosphere. The finding was a clarion call to climate scientists to take the arctic carbon threat seriously. “This is the most dangerous territory in the world in terms of climate change,” Zimov declares.

Keep Reading in Science Magazine

Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050

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Author: Drew Hansen

Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.

• Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School).

• Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year. That’s 14,826,322 acres, or just less than the entire state of West Virginia (see the 2010 assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN).

• Even in the U.S., 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. For children under the age of 18, that number increases to 20% (see U.S. Census).

• The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 (see United Nations’ projections).

How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?

Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.

Keep Reading in Forbes

Carta abierta a Su Santidad el Papa Francisco con motivo de su visita a México

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[ English | Español ]

16 de febrero de 2016

Contact:

Ercilia Sahores, ercilia@organicconsumers.org, +52 (55) 6257 7901

Suscrita por grupos religiosos, indígenas, ambientalistas, de salud, de justicia, de consumidores y agricultores

Por la presente le damos la bienvenida a nuestro país, y damos también la bienvenida a su mensaje de “clima como bien común”. Creemos que es importante que aquellos encargados de la toma de decisiones, como así también los ciudadanos en general, honremos su llamado a una “solidaridad nueva universal” que aborde la crisis ética, económica y ambiental que aqueja a la humanidad.

En México, centro de origen del maíz, se encuentran en peligro de extinción aproximadamente 60 razas y cientos de familias del grano básico, que han sido desarrolladas y cuidadas a lo largo de los siglos por los habitantes originarios de la región y aquellos que aman esta tierra. Están amenazadas por grandes corporaciones que pretenden sembrar el país con maíz genéticamente modificado. La población ha reaccionado interponiendo en 2013 una demanda civil encabezada por 53 personas de la comunidad científica, campesina, indígena, consumidora, artística, medioambientalista y 20 organizaciones civiles.

En esta región del mundo, el maíz se siembra en un sistema holístico llamado milpa, que integra diversas variedades de granos y verduras y constituye la base de una dieta saludable, posee la habilidad de reconstruir la fertilidad del suelo y apoya la agrobiodiversidad. Le pedimos respetuosamente que continúe apoyando y protegiendo este tipo de sistemas de agricultura orgánica regenerativa, y el derecho de todo campesino de “poseer un lote racional de tierra donde pueda establecer su hogar, trabajar para la subsistencia de su familia y tener seguridad existencial.”

Para proteger a los pequeños campesinos, debemos en primer lugar ser conscientes de la conexión existente entre alimentos, agricultura y cambio climático. Dado que es el mayor emisor de gases de efecto invernadero a nivel global, es necesario que cambiemos la forma de cultivar que plantea la la agricultura industrial si es que queremos solucionar esta crisis climática[1]. De acuerdo a la ONU, una transición global de una agricultura de tipo industrial a una agricultura ecológica es nuestra mejor y quizás única opción de mitigar los impactos del cambio climático sobre la seguridad alimentaria[2]. Como lo expresara usted tan acertadamente, “el cambio climático es un tema moral.” También le sugerimos que la agricultura como fuente mayor de emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y la principal fuente para alimentar el mundo, es también un problema moral de igual importancia.

En este país, tal como en muchos otros, la introducción de la agricultura industrial y su dependencia de fertilizantes en base a petróleo, agrotóxicos y transgénicos ha destruido la salud, la biodiversidad y la sagrada belleza de este mundo. Un ejemplo claro de esta devastación puede observarse en el estado de Michoacán, el santuario de invierno de la mariposas monarca. En las últimas dos décadas, la población de mariposas monarca ha disminuido un 90 por ciento, principalmente debido al aumento del uso en los Estados Unidos del herbicida con glifosato Roundup Ready,los cultivos transgénicos, la tala ilegal y pérdida de hábitat[3].

Las pocas mariposas monarca que quedan ahora se enfrentan a un desafío mayor ya que los científicos indican que el aumento de las temperaturas por el cambio climático amenaza con destruir más del 70 por ciento de lo que queda del hábitat invernal de las monarca para finales de este siglo[4]. Afortunadamente hay investigaciones que demuestran que al implementar sistemas regenerativos orgánicos podemos revertir el aumento de las temperaturas al capturar mas del 100 por ciento de las emisiones de CO2 anuales de vuelta en el suelo, restaurando a su vez la agrobiodiversidad. (Rodale,2014)[5]

Compartimos vuestra convicción de que todo en el mundo está conectado, y que “buscar sólo un remedio técnico a cada problema ambiental que surja es aislar cosas que en la realidad están entrelazadas y esconder los verdaderos y más profundos problemas del sistema mundial.”

Mandatarios y representantes de todo el mundo se preparan para reunirse en México en el mes de diciembre para participar de la COP13, la Convención sobre Diversidad Biológica. En este espíritu, lo instamos a que continúe informando acerca del rol que la agricultura industrial ha tenido en la destrucción de nuestro suelo y agua y ha fallado en su falsa promesa de aliviar el hambre del mundo.

Existe una solución a este problema de inseguridad alimentaria, cambio climático y pérdida de biodiversidad. Debemos optar por la agricultura regenerativa orgánica. La urgencia de este problema implica aunar esfuerzos y voluntades para lograr este cambio. Le damos gracias por su coraje y su compromiso hacia los más pobres y aceptamos su desafío de acercarnos a esta compleja crisis del calentamiento global buscando soluciones que no solo protejan la naturaleza sino que también combatan la pobreza y devuelvan la dignidad a aquellos excluidos del sistema.

Respetuosamente,

La Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos

Lista de firmantes

Agua para la Vida, México
Agua para Tod@s, México
Anec, México
Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty (APNFS), Philippines
Becket Films, USA
Beyond GM, United Kingdom
Beyond Pesticides Network Canada, Canada
Biodentistry, México
Biodiversity for a Liveable Climate, USA
Bosque Sustentable AC, México
Carnaval del Maíz, México
Cedar Circle Farm, USA
Center for Sustainable Medicine, USA
Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria, México
Centro de la Tierra, México
CILAS, México
Circle Squared Foundation, The Netherlands
COBOSPO, México
Colectivo Zacahitzco, México
Colectivo Zócalo, México
Comunidades Campesinas y Urbanas, México
Cool Planet, USA
Dr. Pablo Jaramillo López, Ph.D. UNAM, (National Autonomous University of Mexico), México
FAT, México
Favianna Rodriguez Artist, USA
FIAN, México
Fundación Semillas de Vida AC, México
GEA, México
GMO Inside, USA
Greenpeace Mexico, México
Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda IAP, México
Grupo Vicente Gutierrez, Tlaxcala, México
Guereni Vendie, México
Kids Right to Know, Canada
Kiss the Ground, USA
LATINDADD, México
MAELA México, México
MaOGM, México
Milliones Against Monsanto, USA
Millones Contra Monsanto, México
NTC-SME, México
Nutiva, USA
Organic Consumers Association, USA
Pasticultores del Desierto, AC, México
People’s Lobby, USA
Programa Ambiental de la Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, México
Rainman Landcare Foundation, South Africa
RASA, México
Red Nacional de Género y Economía, México
Reg Maíz, México
Regeneration International, USA
RMALC, México
Shumei International, Japan
Sin Maíz No Hay País, México
SME, México
Spiral Farm House, Nepal
STUNAM, México
SUEUM, Michoacán, México
The Hummingbird Project, USA
The Rules, USA
UCCS, México
Valhalla Movement, Canada
Vía Orgánica AC, México
Viva Sierra Gorda, México
El Maíz Más Pequeño AC, México
Caminos de Agua AC, Mexico

 

[1] https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=16702

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141010-monarch-butterfly-migration-threatened-plan/

[4] https://e360.yale.edu/feature/to_protect_monarch_butterfly_a_plan_to_save_the_sacred_firs/2942/

[5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/RegenOrgAgricultureAndClimateChange_20140418.pdf

 

An Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Francis, on the Occasion of His Visit to Michoacán, Mexico, Winter Sanctuary of the Monarch Butterfly

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[ English | Español ]

February 16, 2016

Contact:

Ercilia Sahores, ercilia@organicconsumers.org, +52 (55) 6257 7901

Endorsed by Bipartisan Faith-Based, Indigenous, Environmental, Natural Health, Justice, Consumer and Farming Groups.

We welcome you and your message of “climate as the common good” to our country. We urge world leaders and ordinary citizens to honor your call to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” And to heed your advice to “adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers” in order to address the ethical, economic, and environmental crises confronting humanity.

In Mexico, the center of origin of maize, nearly 60 varieties of this staple grain and hundreds of its subfamilies are at risk of extinction due to profit-driven corporations seeking to cultivate genetically modified (GMO) corn across Mexico. In 2013, the people responded by filing a civil lawsuit headed by 53 individuals from the scientific, farming, indigenous, consumer, artistic and environmental communities, as well as 20 nonprofit organizations.

For centuries, small farmers in Mexico cultivated their maize according to a regenerative agroecological farming system called the milpa. This proven system integrates a diverse variety of grains, pulses and vegetables, providing foundation for a healthy diet while simultaneously building soil fertility and supporting agrobiodiversity. We respectfully ask for your continued support in protecting regenerative organic food systems like the milpa, and the rights of “Every campesino…to possess a reasonable allotment of land where he can establish his home, work for subsistence of his family and a secure life.”

In order to protect small farmers, we must first acknowledge the connections between food, farming and climate change. As the largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the agriculture industry must be reformed in order fix the climate crisis.[1] According to the UN, a global transition from industrial agriculture to local ecological agriculture offers our best chance at mitigating the impacts of climate change on food security.[2] As you so aptly put it, “Climate change is a moral issue.” And we also humbly suggest that a global transition to regenerative agroecological food systems is an equally important moral issue.

In this country, as in so many others, the global spread of industrial agriculture and its use of petroleum-based fertilizers, agrotoxins and GMOs has devastated the health, biodiversity and sacred beauty of the world. A clear example of this devastation can be seen here in the state of Michoacán, winter sanctuary of the monarch butterfly. Over the past two decades, monarch populations have declined by 90 percent due primarily to the use of the herbicide glyphosate in Roundup Ready GMO crops, illegal logging and habitat loss.[3] Tragically, the few monarchs remaining may face an even greater challenge in the future; scientists indicate that rising temperatures due to climate change threaten to damage more than 70 percent of the monarch’s remaining winter habitat by the end of the century.[4] Fortunately, research has shown that regenerative organic systems can help to reverse rising temperatures by sequestering billions of tons of annual CO2 emissions back into the soil, while restoring agrobiodiversity (Rodale, 2014)[5].

We share your conviction that everything in the world is connected, and that to seek “only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.”

As world leaders prepare to gather here in Mexico for the COP13 Convention On Biodiversity in December, we ask you to continue to speak out about the role that industrial agriculture has played in destroying our soil, health and biodiversity, even as it has failed to alleviate world hunger.

There is a solution to food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss. We must opt for regenerative organic agriculture. The urgency of this problem demands that we join forces and work together to achieve change. We thank you for your courage and your commitment to the world’s poorest, and we accept your challenge to approach these complex crises by seeking solutions that not only protect nature, but also combat poverty and restore dignity to the excluded.

Sincerely,

La Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos

Endorsing Groups:

Agua para la Vida, México
Agua para Tod@s, México
Anec, México
Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty (APNFS), Philippines
Becket Films, USA
Beyond GM, United Kingdom
Beyond Pesticides Network Canada, Canada
Biodentistry, México
Biodiversity for a Liveable Climate, USA
Bosque Sustentable AC, México
Carnaval del Maíz, México
Cedar Circle Farm, USA
Center for Sustainable Medicine, USA
Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria, México
Centro de la Tierra, México
CILAS, México
Circle Squared Foundation, The Netherlands
COBOSPO, México
Colectivo Zacahitzco, México
Colectivo Zócalo, México
Comunidades Campesinas y Urbanas, México
Cool Planet, USA
Dr. Pablo Jaramillo López, Ph.D. UNAM, (National Autonomous University of Mexico), México
FAT, México
Favianna Rodriguez Artist, USA
FIAN, México
Fundación Semillas de Vida AC, México
GEA, México
GMO Inside, USA
Greenpeace Mexico, México
Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda IAP, México
Grupo Vicente Gutierrez, Tlaxcala, México
Guereni Vendie, México
Kids Right to Know, Canada
Kiss the Ground, USA
LATINDADD, México
MAELA México, México
MaOGM, México
Milliones Against Monsanto, USA
Millones Contra Monsanto, México
NTC-SME, México
Nutiva, USA
Organic Consumers Association, USA
Pasticultores del Desierto, AC, México
People’s Lobby, USA
Programa Ambiental de la Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, México
Rainman Landcare Foundation, South Africa
RASA, México
Red Nacional de Género y Economía, México
Reg Maíz, México
Regeneration International, USA
RMALC, México
Shumei International, Japan
Sin Maíz No Hay País, México
SME, México
Spiral Farm House, Nepal
STUNAM, México
SUEUM, Michoacán, México
The Hummingbird Project, USA
The Rules, USA
UCCS, México
Valhalla Movement, Canada
Vía Orgánica AC, México
Viva Sierra Gorda, México
El Maíz Más Pequeño AC, México
Caminos de Agua AC, Mexico

[1] https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=16702

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141010-monarch-butterfly-migration-threatened-plan/

[4] https://e360.yale.edu/feature/to_protect_monarch_butterfly_a_plan_to_save_the_sacred_firs/2942/

[5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/RegenOrgAgricultureAndClimateChange_20140418.pdf

How ‘Natural Geoengineering’ Can Help Slow Global Warming

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Author: Oswald J. Schmitz

As natural wonders go, perhaps the most awe-inspiring is the annual migration of 1.2 million wildebeest flowing across East Africa’s vast Serengeti grassland. It would be a tragedy to lose these animals. But we almost did in the mid-20th century when, decimated by disease and poaching, their numbers crashed to 300,000.

The consequences of that collapse were profound. Much of the Serengeti ecosystem remained ungrazed. The accumulating dead and dried grass in turn became fuel for massive wildfires, which annually burned up to 80 percent of the area, making the Serengeti an important regional source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Then, conservation programs to eradicate disease and crack down on poaching led to the recovery of the wildebeest, restoring the grazing system and reversing the extent of the large-scale wildfires. Grazing now causes much of the carbon in grass to be released as animal dung, which is in turn incorporated by insects into soil reservoirs that are not prone to burning. The Serengeti ecosystem has now reverted to a carbon dioxide sink so large that it is estimated to offset all of East Africa’s current annual fossil fuel carbon emissions.

The wildebeest decline and recovery taught a valuable lesson, not only in how easy it is to loose an iconic animal species, but, more importantly, how the loss of a single species can have far-reaching ramifications for ecosystems — and the climate. Mounting evidence from ecological science is showing that one or a few animal species can help determine the amount of carbon that is exchanged between ecosystems and the atmosphere. It’s not that any single animal species by itself has a huge direct effect on the carbon budget. Rather, as the wildebeest case shows, by being an integral part of a larger food chain the species may trigger knock-on effects that grow through the chain to drive significant amounts of carbon into long-term storage on land or in the ocean.

Keep Reading in Yale Environment 360

Stewardship with Vision – Episode 1: Jeff Laszlo

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As a result of the O’Dell Creek restoration, Granger Ranches has documented a 900% increase in waterfowl species and a 600% increase in species diversity. The ranch now hosts at least fifteen species of concern, including the American White Pelican, Clark’s Grebe, Great Blue Heron, White-Faced Ibis, Franklin’s Gull, Caspian Tern, Long-billed Curlew and American Bittern, Baird’s Sparrow, McCown’s Longspur, Sprague’s Pipit, Burrowing Owl, Short-eared Owl, Ferruginous Hawk. Trumpeter Swans, once gravely imperiled, take refuge on the ranch with 20-50 wintering annually. Raptor species increased from four to ten. Up to 5,000 Rocky Mountain Sandhill Cranes now make annual migratory visits. The wetlands are also supporting river otters, moose, deer, and rare and sensitive flowers.

Watch More Videos on Western Landowners Alliance’s Youtube Channel

How Wolves Change Rivers

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When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable “trophic cascade” occurred. What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains in this movie remix.

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