tagged w/ Agriculture
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An inaugural interactive workshop discussing historic and future sea level trends and their implications for Virginia’s Eastern Shore is planned for June.
“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.
Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”
The Coastal Flooding Workshop will take place on June 13 from 6 - 8:30 p.m. at Shore Bank Headquarters, 25020 Shore Parkway in Onley.
The Eastern Shore Climate Adaptation Working Group consisting of representatives of local government staff, state and federal agencies, and private groups involved in coastal management is hosting the workshop as part of its efforts to assist the Eastern Shore in preparing for a changing climate, which includes sea level rise.
Curt Smith, director of planning, Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission, said the group’s activities also include involvement in acquiring the new high-resolution LiDAR elevation data; developing “a rollout campaign” to educate the public and elected officials about the LiDAR data and how it benefits the Shore; and “partnering with the NOAA Coastal Services Center who is using the LiDAR data to produce a series of models that will accurately simulate flooding and impacts to the built and natural environment on the Shore.”
“I think that is going to be very helpful for their planning,” said Smith, about information from the June 13 workshop, saying he hopes to present information to the Accomack and Northampton County Boards of Supervisors and towns about the presentations and the responses they receive from the residents who will be able to actively participate through written surveys and electronic polls in the workshop about what they may be experiencing concerning sea level changes.
More at the linkAn inaugural interactive workshop discussing historic and future sea level trends and... more
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Cameras rolled one day last fall as Ty E. Lawrence led journalists into a room-sized meat locker on the campus of West Texas A&M University, where bloody sides of beef, still covered with a slick layer of ivory-colored fat, hung from steel hooks. Dressed in a white lab coat, a hard hat on his head, Lawrence pointed to the carcass of a Holstein that had been fed a new drug called Zilmax. He noted its larger size compared with the nearby body of a steer never given the drug.
"This is thicker, and it's plumper," said Lawrence, an associate professor of animal science, pointing at the beast's rib-eye. "This animal right here," he said, waving his hand at the pharmaceutically enhanced meat, "doesn't look like a Holstein anymore."
Convincing ranchers that Zilmax will transform their cattle into bovine Schwarzeneggers has been part of Lawrence's work ever since the drug was introduced by Intervet, a subsidiary of Merck, the global pharmaceutical company. The tour he led of the carcasses in his lab was just one of many events where he has helped Intervet sell Zilmax. He's given speeches to ranchers and written an article for a beef-industry magazine to promote the drug. He's repeatedly let Intervet include his comments in news releases, including one in which he said the drug could "revolutionize the beef production system."
Lawrence is hardly alone. Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000 pounds in 1975.
It's been a profitable venture for the drug companies, as well as for the professors and their universities. Agriculture schools increasingly depend on the industry for research grants, a sizable portion of which cover overhead and administrative costs. And many professors now add to their personal bank accounts by working for the companies as consultants and speakers. More than two-thirds of animal scientists reported in a 2005 survey that they had received money from industry in the previous five years.
Yet unlike a growing number of medical schools around the country, where administrators have recently tightened rules to better police their faculty's ties to pharmaceutical companies, the schools of agriculture have largely rejected critics' concerns about industry cash. Administrators have set few limits on how much corporate money agricultural professors can accept. Faculty work with industry is governed by confidentiality rules that veil it from public view.
In certain ways, the close relationship between animal scientists and pharmaceutical companies has never served the public well. Few animal scientists have been interested in looking at what harm the livestock drugs may be causing to the cattle, the environment, or the people eating the meat. They've left most of that work to scientists outside of agriculture, consumer groups, and others who take interest.
But with the introduction of Zilmax, the situation may have reached a tipping point. Critics say some academic animal scientists have become so closely tied to the drug companies that they may be working more in the companies' interests than in those of farmers and ranchers—the very groups that land-grant universities were created to serve.
More at the linkCameras rolled one day last fall as Ty E. Lawrence led journalists into a room-sized... more
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191,000 people are homeless or have have suffered "significant" damage due to flooding in the Amazon region of eastern Peru, reports the Associated Press.
The flooding is considered the worst in 30 years, inundating croplands and communities along the Amazon River and its tributaries. Last month the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in Loreto, a region that borders Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil. Now there are reports of a leptospirosis outbreak, which has already killed three people. Hundreds of others have been hospitalized with skin, intestinal, and respiratory problems.
Damage has been exacerbated by new developments in floodplain areas as well as higher than usual rainfall.
Scientists have warned that Peru is likely to experience increased incidence of flooding and drought as a result of climate change. Last week the country adopted a resolution to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions.
"If we don't do something we will have problems with water supplies along the coasts, we know there will be more droughts, more rains ... we are already seeing temperature changes," Mariano Felipe Soldan, head of the government's strategic planning office, told Reuters.
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0502-peru-amazon-flooding.html#ixzz1tmAjDCeI
More at the link:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/-kZe8MuFoyps/T5R-Ru-HV1I/AAAAAAAAGXI/NkqP3AfAHro/image%25255B5%25255D.png?imgmax=800191,000 people are homeless or have have suffered "significant" damage due... more
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MINNETONKA, Minn. and INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - May 17, 2012
Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: Dow), announced today a joint agreement to offer two reduced refuge trait stacks to independent seed companies through Syngenta-owned GreenLeaf Genetics LLC. This agreement will make high-performing trait stacks, beginning with the Agrisure Viptera® 3220 and Agrisure 3122 trait stacks, more widely available to U.S. and Canadian corn growers. Inbreds for hybrid combinations will be offered for sale immediately for production this winter.
"With this opportunity, we further demonstrate our dedication to independent seed companies and commitment to providing them advances in trait technologies," said David Morgan, president of Syngenta Seeds, Inc. "Growers will enjoy greater productivity through reduced refuge and the convenience of purchasing this technology through their local independent seed supplier."
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Great, because I really trust my local seed supplier now.
http://iowagirlonthego.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/img_6737.jpgMINNETONKA, Minn. and INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - May 17, 2012
Syngenta and Dow... more
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The amendment Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced yesterday to demilitarize the FDA failed in the Senate today by a vote of 78-15.
Paul's amendment would have prohibited FDA employees (as well as all other Health and Human Services employees) from carrying weapons and making arrests without warrants.
"We have nearly 40 federal agencies that are armed. I’m not against having police, I’m not against the army, the military, the FBI, but I think bureaucrats don’t need to be carrying weapons and I think what we ought to do, is if there is a need for an armed policeman to be there, the FBI who are trained to do this should do it," Paul said yesterday on the Senate floor. "But I don’t think it’s a good idea to be arming bureaucrats to go on the farm to, with arms, to stop people from selling milk from a cow."
The amendment would also have allowed the makers of prune juice to advertise that their products help relieve constipation.
...And here's the roll call, which features zero Democrats in favor of ending armed raids on American farmers.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/24/rand-paul-amendment-to-demilitarize-theThe amendment Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced yesterday to demilitarize the FDA... more
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I'm doing something very odd this week: speaking at the annual conference of Croplife America, the main trade group for the US agrichemical industry. Croplife members include Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and Syngenta, all massive multinational companies I write about regularly and witheringly. I am astonished that Croplife wants to hear what I have to say—what I think of the group's member companies and their products is a matter of public record—and am curious to hear what they have to say to me.
As I prepared for the conference, a few interesting news items on the industry crossed my desk.
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• As I've written before, Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and seeds of increasing portions of other major crops like soy, have emerged as a likely trigger for colony collapse disorder. Watch this NBC News report from last week linking bee kills in Minnesota to Bayer's highly profitable product.
Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch reports similar bee die-offs in Ohio farm country, with beekeepers there, too, pointing the finger at Bayer.
• One of my biggest complaints about the agrichemical industry it its market dominance. As I say above, more than 90 percent of corn seeds planted today are treated with Bayer's pesticide. What if a farmer wants to opt out, to plant seeds free of neonicotinoids? Good luck. According to a Pesticide Action Network press release I received today, farmers in the midwest are complaining that it's virtually impossible to buy untreated seeds. In other words, farmers there have two choices: either pay up for Bayer's poison, or exit the corn-growing business.
• Speaking of market dominance, Monsanto essentially owns the market in genetically modified seed traits—a highly lucrative position, given the way GMOs have taken over massive crops like corn, soy, and cotton. And like any well-run company out to maximize earnings for its shareholders, Monsanto invests some of its profit hoard in protecting its market from pesky regulators who might place the public interest over Monsanto's. From the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics:
According to OpenSecrets.org data, in the first three months of this year, Monsanto spent $1.4 million lobbying Washington—and spent about $6.3 million total last year, more than any other agribusiness firm except the tobacco company Altria.
Last year's investment seemed to pay off for the company. Even as Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology faltered under a blitz of resistant "superweeds," the USDA unconditionally approved Roundup Ready alfalfa, after hinting strongly it would place limitations on the crop. The USDA also approved Roundup Ready sugar beets, defying a court order that it delay approval pending an environmental review.
When a company dominates markets and can buy lobbying power in Washington, its products don't actually have to work, I suppose.
More at the linkI'm doing something very odd this week: speaking at the annual conference of... more
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Spain has faced the driest winter ever recorded. It has raised red flags in Spain, where farmers face the threat of extreme drought. Grain crops in Spain are suffering after an unusually dry autumn and winter. The amount of rainfall has been just half of normal in key grain producing regions.
The map of the impact of the drought on plants throughout the country made with Normalized Vegetation Difference Index (NDVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) instrument on the Terra satellite. It compares plant growth between April 6 and April 21, 2012, with average conditions for the same period. Brown indicates areas where plants are growing less vigorously than usual for this time of year. Gray indicates areas where data were not available. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data provided by Inbal Reshef, Global Agricultural Monitoring Project. Caption by Adam Voiland.)
In an analysis released on May 10, 2012, the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, projected Spain’s wheat production would drop by 20 percent, oats by 18 percent, and barley by 14 percent in comparison to last year. Overall, the USDA expects Spain will need to import 11 million metric tons of grain from other European countries because of the drought.
In late April, increasing rainfall has started to improve the situation, particularly in the northern half of the country. If rain continues to fall regularly throughout May, there’s a chance that barley and wheat yields could rebound.
A closer view of Andalucía, a region in southern Spain that produces almost all of the country’s durum wheat. Only about half the normal amount of rainfall fell in Andalucía between January and April. In the other key wheat producing states of Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, and Aragón, rainfall has been low as well. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data provided by Inbal Reshef, Global Agricultural Monitoring Project. Caption by Adam Voiland.)
Spain is not the only European country grappling with a weak wheat crop. Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and other countries will likely see reduced yields as well due to dry weather. A cold spell at the end of February in Poland and Germany has also harmed crops. (EarthObservatory)
More at the linkSpain has faced the driest winter ever recorded. It has raised red flags in Spain,... more
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Two former teachers are on a journey to aquire a more sustainable living arrangement. Mike and Karen Sliwa have been living on different homesteads throughout the US and Europe. Their immediate goals are to learn how to grow food, secure water, build natural structures, live without money, and find a community to share this life with.
Currently they contribute to Transition Voice online magazine and speak about their experiences to different institutions via presentations and TEDx Talks. You can learn more about them at http://www.cactusnewsonline.com/carrotchasing/Two former teachers are on a journey to aquire a more sustainable living arrangement.... more
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Millions of people are locked in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Poverty means parents can't feed their families enough nutritious food, leaving children malnourished. Malnutrition leads to irreversibly stunted development and shorter, less productive lives. Less productive lives mean no escape from poverty. We have to break this cycle.
That's why we're urgently calling on the G8 to break the cycle of hunger and poverty, tackling their root causes. No child should have to go to bed hungry tonight. And if we achieve our goals by 2015, we could see 15 million fewer children chronically malnourished and 50 million people lifted out of extreme poverty.
Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi consistently cut effective aid to Africa since he personally promised to support the fight against poverty in 2005. Those cuts can cost real lives around the world.
In just weeks some of the world's most powerful political leaders will meet at Camp David in the United States to discuss their vision for the future. We need to make sure agriculture, world hunger, the vital fight against extreme poverty around the globe are a part of that discussion, and ensure they don't follow Berlusconi's devastating example and actually stick to the promises they make!Millions of people are locked in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Poverty means... more
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The effects of global warming are making it more difficult for reservoir managers to control floods and manage flows for irrigation, recreation and fisheries.
Two days of record high temperatures and two days of record rainfall the same week in late April sent 26,000 cubic feet per second surging into the Boise River dam system, forcing federal river managers to increase flows to more than 8,100 cfs — the highest flow out of Lucky Peak Dam since 1998 and just the second time it has hit 8,100 in 30 years.
“If the reservoir had been full, we would have had a big problem,” said Patrick McGrane, manager of river operations for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Pacific Northwest Region, which operates the Boise River reservoirs in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As late as the middle of January, this looked as if it was going to be a dry year across southern Idaho, especially in the Boise Basin, where Bogus Basin ski area had its latest opening in history.
But then the snows finally came. And in March, much of the precipitation fell as rain, causing the Payette and Weiser rivers to threaten flooding, said Ron Abramovich, a water-supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Boise.
The April warm spell and rains are examples of the higher variability that experts such as Abramovich say we can expect because of global warming. That’s making it harder to predict how reservoirs will fill — and what the flows will be in rivers with and without dams.
Despite better modern equipment, he said, “Our forecasts were more accurate in the ’60s through the ’70s than they are now.”
The more variability in the climate, the harder it is for the two federal dam-managing agencies to balance their competing tasks of preventing floods while filling the reservoirs to provide water for various uses.
100 YEARS OF DATA
The evidence that the runoff timing has changed is based on streamflow gauges maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey. One of the oldest is the gauge on the Middle Fork of the Boise River, installed near Twin Springs above Arrowrock Dam in 1912.
It shows that runoff that used to begin in early April now starts in late March. That flow used to peak in late May or June, but now peaks in early May.
Droughts and wet years have come and gone over the past century on the Boise River, said USGS hydrologist Greg Clark. But the past 30 years have generally been drier. With the snowpack melting earlier, that leaves flows even lower in the late summer and fall in the tributaries above reservoirs and in rivers without dams.
That affects things besides farmers’ irrigation water. It affects fish, for instance, especially since the water is getting warmer, said Clark, associate director for the Idaho Water Science Center in Boise.
It also affects recreation. On the Boise River, the longer period of high flows through town through the spring to prevent flooding delays floating season. On rivers such as the Middle Fork of the Salmon, low flows late in the season limit the number of days for whitewater rafting.
Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/05/08/2107406/climate-change-accelerating-complicating.html#storylink=cpy
More at the linkThe effects of global warming are making it more difficult for reservoir managers to... more
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In California, May typically marks the beginning of a warm and dry summer season. This year, however, things are different. Not only has it been warm and dry for the past couple weeks; it’s been warm and dry for months. So dry, in fact, that officials are warning the risk of wildfires across much of the state is going to be much worse than usual, for several months to come.
According to their most recent outlook, the National Interagency Fire Center predicts that large parts of southern and central California, along with forests throughout the Sierra Nevada, are likely to see more wildfires than normal, particularly later this summer.
Three firefighters watch as a wildfire approaches Carbon Canyon road near Brea, Calif., in 2008. Credit: Mike Blake/Reuters
“A big chunk of the state is looking at above-average wildfire risk,” said Rob Krohn, a meteorologist with the U.S. Forestry Service’s Predictive Services Branch in Riverside. According to Krohn, the exceptionally dry conditions in California during most of this winter have left many areas parched and vulnerable to ignition from both human and natural causes.
This summer’s increased threat of wildfires is something Californians can expect to see more often in coming decades. Climate researchers predict that over the next 75 years, a combination of warmer winters, reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelts, and hotter, drier summers will lead to more wildfires in forested parts of the state. Year-to-year variations in the weather will still heavily influence fire risk in the future, as it has this year, but just how devastating this year’s wildfires are in California will be a warning of the forests’ vulnerability to the developing warmer, drier climate.
The past few years have been relatively quiet for wildfires in California, following two devastatingly dry years in 2007 and 2008, when more than 800,000 acres burned.
During a May 9 press conference, California State Climatologist Mike Anderson described the unusual weather in California this past winter.
“December [2011] was the second driest December in over a hundred years,” Anderson said. Several areas of the state received only 5-to-10 percent of their usual rainfall in December and heading into mid-January, it appeared California might have its driest winter on record.
A few days of heavy rain in late January brought a spot of relief. Then, a wetter than usual March boosted total winter precipitation. Nevertheless, all but the most northern parts of California still registered well below average total rain and snowfall, Anderson said.
And in terms of wildfire risk, Krohn said the wet weather in March and early April came too late. By then the damage was done. While the rain may have helped prevent spring wildfires from starting — to date this year only about 1,000 acres have burned in California, well below normal — plants and trees rely heavily on the rain that falls early in the season to help them stay moist and healthy throughout the dry summer season. Without moisture from early rain, the plants simply haven’t been taking up water that fell later in the spring.
Despite the arid winter, California water supplies are in generally good condition leading into summer. Thanks to record wet conditions last year, most groundwater basins and reservoirs are still high, and the California Department of Water Resources says most people — and farmers — won’t suffer from this winter’s drier than normal conditions.
Unfortunately, these reservoirs have little influence on the wildfire risk, And more often that not in California, Krohn said, predictions for bad wildfire years tend to come true.
More at the linkIn California, May typically marks the beginning of a warm and dry summer season. This... more
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A new movie highlighting the importance of water to our lives and the global crisis we face with ways to address it. It is good to see movies like this being made especially regarding water. We use too much of it (particularly regarding agriculture and energy,) we take it too much for granted and our misconceptions about its availability are being challenged. We are using much more than we can replenish and that exacerbates physical scarcity and non physical scarcity in the form of pollution that makes water unsuitable and unhealthy for human use.
In this age of climate change as well (when we are now seeing the human affect on the hydrologic cycle in connection with extreme weather events such as droughts and floods becoming more frequent and severe) we see moral will colliding with the forces of greed taking advantage of our apathy. We can no longer be secure in thinking we will never be without it and thinking it is a far away obscure crisis. It is here, it is now, and it is about all of us.A new movie highlighting the importance of water to our lives and the global crisis we... more
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Loss of biodiversity appears to affect ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to results of a new study by an international research team.
The study is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the effects of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes.
The results, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, highlight the need for stronger local, national and international efforts to protect biodiversity and the benefits it provides, according to the researchers, who are based at nine institutions in the United States, Canada and Sweden.
"This analysis establishes that reduced biodiversity affects ecosystems at levels comparable to those of global warming and air pollution," said Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research directly and through the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
"Some people have assumed that biodiversity effects are relatively minor compared to other environmental stressors," said biologist David Hooper of Western Washington University, the lead author of the paper.
"Our results show that future loss of species has the potential to reduce plant production just as much as global warming and pollution."
Studies over the last two decades demonstrated that more biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive.
As a result, there has been growing concern that the very high rates of modern extinctions--due to habitat loss, overharvesting and other human-caused environmental changes--could reduce nature's ability to provide goods and services such as food, clean water and a stable climate.
Until now, it's been unclear how biodiversity losses stack up against other human-caused environmental changes that affect ecosystem health and productivity.
"Loss of biological diversity due to species extinctions is going to have major effects on our planet, and we need to prepare ourselves to deal with them," said ecologist Bradley Cardinale of the University of Michigan, one of the paper's co-authors. "These extinctions may well rank as one of the top five drivers of global change."
More at the linkLoss of biodiversity appears to affect ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution... more
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Every five years, the federal farm bill sets our nation's food policies -- it's the single biggest factor in determining what ends up on your plate.
Right now Congress is only providing minimal support for healthy, local and organic foods while expanding wasteful subsidies and giveaways that support the wealthiest agribusinesses -- at the expense of family farmers. This year's bill could be even worse.
The Senate Agriculture Committee just released a draft version of the 2012 Farm Bill which preserves these handouts while cutting vital conservation programs. The House version of the bill be even worse.2
It's incredibly important that Congress get this right -- so CREDO Action is teaming up with Environmental Working Group to stop the giveaway to Big Ag and support food and farm policies that protect our environment and expand access to healthy food.
Tell the Senate: Stop the giveaway to Big Ag. Pass a Farm Bill that supports local, healthy and organic food.
The Farm Bill affects everything from the food you eat to conservation and nutrition programs. And right now, vital nutrition programs that help feed low-income children and decades-old conservation programs that protect wetlands, grasslands and soil health could be on the chopping block.2
Meanwhile, Big Ag is working hard to keep open the spigot that sends billions of dollars a year in subsidies to growers of commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton. More than 74 percent of that money goes to wealthy agribusinesses, not to small-scale family farmers who need them.
The bill that emerges from the Senate Agriculture Committee will likely be the best version we can hope for right now -- as it will only get more unbalanced in negotiations with the House. It's vital that the committee members hear from you now.
Tell the Senate: Stop the giveaway to Big Ag. Pass a Farm Bill that supports local, healthy and organic food.
Thanks for supporting a healthy food system.Every five years, the federal farm bill sets our nation's food policies --... more
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This Food Revolution is about saving America's health by changing the way people eat. It's not just a TV show; it's a movement for you, your family and your community. If you care about your kids and their future, take this revolution and make it your own. Educate yourself about food and cooking.
http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/homeThis Food Revolution is about saving America's health by changing the way people... more
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Moscow sweltered in unseasonable heat on Sunday, with temperatures of nearly 29 degrees Celsius (84.2 Fahrenheit), a record for April since data collection began 130 years ago, authorities said.
"At 4:00 p.m. (1200 GMT), the temperature reached 28.6 degrees Celsius, an absolute record for the month of April," an official from the Russian capital's weather service told the Interfax news agency.
"The previous record for the month goes back to April 24, 1950, with 28 degrees," he added.
The mercury had already climbed to 26.3 degrees on Saturday.
Several central and eastern European countries recorded unseasonably high temperatures on Saturday, with a record 32 degrees recorded in northern Austria.Moscow sweltered in unseasonable heat on Sunday, with temperatures of nearly 29... more
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Climate scientists have been saying for years that one of the many downsides of a warming planet is that both droughts and torrential rains are both likely to get worse. That’s what climate models predict, and that’s what observers have noted, most recently in the IPCC’s report on extreme weather, released last month. It makes physical sense, too. A warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor, and what goes up must come down — and thanks to prevailing winds, it won’t come down in the same place.
The idea of changes to the so-called hydrologic cycle, in short, hangs together pretty well. According to a new paper just published in Science, however, the picture is flawed in one important and disturbing way. Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it’s happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.
More than 3,000 robotic profiling floats provide crucial information on upper layers of the world's ocean currents. Credit: Alicia Navidad/CSIRO.
The reason for this disconnect between expectation and reality is that the easiest place to collect rainfall data is on land, where scientists and rain gauges are located. About 71 percent of the world is covered in ocean, however. “Most of the action, however, takes place over the sea,” lead author Paul Durack, a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a telephone interview. In order to get a more comprehensive look at how water is exchanged between the surface and the atmosphere, that’s where Durack and his colleagues went to look.
Nobody has rainfall data from the ocean, so Durack and his collaborators looked instead at salinity — that is, saltiness — in ocean waters. The reasoning is straightforward enough. When water evaporates from the surface of the ocean, it leaves the salt behind. That makes increased saltiness a good proxy for drought. When fresh water rains back down on the ocean, it dilutes the seawater, so decreased saltiness is the equivalent of a land-based flood.
Fortunately, as the scientists make clear, research ships have been taking salinity measurements for decades in most of the planet’s ocean basins, so it’s possible to see where and how fast salinity has been changing. And it turns out that the saltiness has been increasing, especially in the waters surrounding Australia, southern Africa and western South America — all places where drought has increased as well.
The climate models weren’t really wrong, Durack hastened to add. “They’re accurately capturing the spatial patterns in hydrologic changes, and they’ve got the basic physics right. They’re just providing very conservative estimates of how big the changes are, and now we’re starting to understand that.”
More at the linkClimate scientists have been saying for years that one of the many downsides of a... more
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A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.
The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.
Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”
“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”
The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.
Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.
“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.
“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”
In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field — literally on a tractor — when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis’s regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.
“What would be more of a blow,” he said, “is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.”
The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average age of the American farmer is now over 50.
“Losing that work-ethic — it’s so hard to pick this up later in life,” Clark said. “There’s other ways to learn how to farm, but it’s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you’re 12, 13, 14 years old.”
John Weber, 19, understands this. The Minneapolis native grew up in suburbia and learned the livestock business working summers on his relatives’ farm.
He’s now a college Agriculture major.
“I started working on my grandparent’s and uncle’s farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12,” Weber told TheDC. “I started spending full summers there when I was 13.”
“The work ethic is a huge part of it. It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life. If they do this it will prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16 year-old interested in farming than a 12 year old.”
Weber is also a small businessman. In high school, he said, he took out a loan and bought a few steers to raise for income. “Under these regulations,” he explained, “I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t49M0000A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores... more
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JohnA
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Indigenous communities around the world are highly vulnerable to climate change but instead of seeing them as victims, policy-makers should tap into their centuries-old knowledge of adapting to extreme weather patterns, aid workers say.
In Iran, which has some 700 nomadic tribes, pastoralists have been successfully adapting to climate fluctuations for 12,000 years, development expert Catherine Razavi told an international conference on climate change.
In recent years they have adjusted their migration patterns and switched to more drought resistant strains of livestock, said Razavi who is executive director of Iran’s Center for Sustainable Development (CENESTA).
In central Iran, where much pastureland has been destroyed by drought, she said pastoralists were now planting drought tolerant crops on previous grazing land. These crops include pistachios and fodder barley which can be used to feed livestock.
The story of Iran’s nomads was highlighted during the sixth International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change, hosted in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
Indigenous communities are vulnerable to climate change partly because they are marginalised and poor and have little access to information and services.
But far from watching passively as their ancestral lands and traditions are threatened by climate-related hazards, many such communities are actively adapting to new conditions, the conference heard.
In Bac Kan province, a few hours north of Hanoi, nearly 80 percent of the inhabitants are ethnic minorities. They are now cultivating drought resistant rice, banana and green bean varieties as well as cold resistant potato.
They have also adapted their farming techniques, for example, intercropping banana and local ginger, said Tran Van Dien from Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry.
Intercropping improves a farmer's chances of getting at least one good crop and can improve soil quality.
In parts of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, indigenous farmers have introduced both upland rice and lowland rice at the same time to reduce the risk of crop failure from drought or floods, according to Nasiri Sabiah of the Malaysian community organisation PACOS Trust. Lowland rice is generally grown in flooded paddies. Upland rice is more drought tolerant.
CENTURIES OF KNOWLEDGE
"Climatic changes are now taking place on a scale, severity and frequency beyond living memory," said CENESTA’s Razavi, showing a photo of a mountain with almost no snow cover. “We’ve never, never seen (this) mountain without snow before these (last) few years,” she told AlertNet during the conference which finished on Sunday.
Another picture showed a dried, cracked waterbed. It used to be the biggest river in Iran, she said, before climate change and ill-conceived dams and agricultural projects severely reduced ground and surface water.
Razavi said indigenous communities had inherited techniques from their ancestors for predicting weather patterns and hazards and were well-versed in monitoring and assessing how many livestock their pasturelands could support in a given year.
“We believe and we work really hard to explain to the government that some of the indigenous practices are applicable (to other places) and are worth learning (from),” she said, adding that CENESTA has been observing the practices of pastoralists for three decades.
More at the linkIndigenous communities around the world are highly vulnerable to climate change but... more
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The City of Vancouver is pursuing changes to bylaws and regulations that will rescue commercial urban agriculture from its legal limbo.The City of Vancouver is pursuing changes to bylaws and regulations that will rescue... more
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