tagged w/ Sustainable Agriculture
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Agroecology is the science behind sustainable agriculture, from the ground up.
It combines scientific inquiry with place-based knowledge and experimentation, emphasizing technology and innovations that are knowledge-intensive, low cost, ecologically sound and practical. By listening to farmers, and using the most up-to-date science, agroecology provides a modern framework for thinking broadly about agriculture in terms of its four key systems properties: productivity, resilience, equity and sustainability.
At PAN, we document and publicize the contribution of the agroecological sciences to climate-friendly, sustainable development, profile the successes of local organic farmers and provide technical support on alternatives to our campaign partners.
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Africa :: The push-pull system (PDF) of ecological pest management is transforming small farms in Africa. It illustrates agroecology's ingenuity, as well as the many economic, food security, health and environmental benefits of this approach.
Kenyan maize farmers have tripled their yields by intercropping maize with plants that repel pests, support natural pest predators and suppress weeds. One of the plants, desmodium, is a nitrogen-fixing legume that is also used as fodder for animals. The inclusion of these plants in the farming system reduces synthetic pesticide use and augments livestock feed, providing families with additional milk and meat for consumption or sale. Additional benefits include reduced run-off and soil erosion, enhanced soil fertility, improved food security and family nutrition, and increased household income. More than 12,000 farmers across eastern Africa have adopted the technology, with another 100,000 expected to do so over the next three years.
More stories at the linkAgroecology is the science behind sustainable agriculture, from the ground up.
It... more
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In this extract from his book, To Cook A Continent, Nnimmo Bassey argues that climate negotiations, from Durban in late 2011 onwards, will increasingly confront the issue of climate justice.
The atmosphere is a common space, a global commons. Industrialised nations pumped a disproportionate amount of emissions into the atmosphere and they have cornered a disproportionate amount of global resources, largely by exploiting nations that are on the other side of the coin. Climate impacts are already being felt in a severe way in Africa as well as in other regions of the global South. Centuries of exploitation have weakened the resilience of these regions and in tackling climate change these historical facts must be addressed. One way of addressing this is by the payment of climate debt to make the needed financial and technological resources available to these vulnerable regions.
The Conference of Parties at Copenhagen and the following one at Cancun did not generate outcomes consistent with scientific warnings that the world faces a severe climate crisis. Copenhagen ended with an accord spearheaded by President Barack Obama of the United States with the backing of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) concocted in a 'Green Room' dreamed up by Denmark's conservative ruling party. In that room, Patrick Bond recalled, were 26 countries 'cherry-picked to represent the world. When even that small group deadlocked, allegedly due to Chinese intransigence and the overall weak parameters set by the US, the five leaders (Obama, Lula da Silva, Jacob Zuma, Manmohan Singh, and Wen Jiabao) attempted a face-saving last gasp at planetary hygiene.'12
The demand of climate justice is that those who created the climate problem must be the ones to mitigate it, and in the process must transform their economies and societies.13 There are two ways to go about making this happen. First, rich nations must reduce rapacious consumption patterns and address the climate crisis with real solutions and not ones that have been seen to be false. Second, the rich nations have to support the poor nations who are being forced to adapt to a situation they did not create. One practical way of making that happen is through support for sustainable, green development paths.
Among governments, the Bolivians have made the clearest call for climate justice while India and China have used related arguments to defend their growth paths. At a time when the world has been calling for a curtailment of polluting industrial establishments, China has been building new coal-fired power plants at a prodigious rate.14 It is interesting to note that while China is massively expanding its coal-powered plants, it is also quickly assuming leadership in the utilisation of wind power. The discourse on how much both China and India must do in tackling global warming must not overlook the fact that vast numbers of people in both India and China still require electricity supply and that meeting that gap requires huge financial outlays.
Following the catastrophic outcome of the United Nations climate negotiations held in Copenhagen in December 2009, President Evo Morales of Bolivia announced that the world would meet in Bolivia for a thorough and inclusive discussion on this vital issue.
The summit, held in Cochabamba in April 2010, attracted 35,000 participants from 140 countries. The summit stood in sharp contrast to the Copenhagen event in many ways. First, this was an assembly of governments and peoples. In Copenhagen no effort was spared in keeping civil society out of the conference: the conference was marked by lockouts of civil society, detentions of climate activists and outright brutality towards non-violent protesters on the streets. In Cochabamba the police were offering assistance and were also participants. Whereas Copenhagen showed a disdain for the voices of the people, Cochabamba was about raising the voices of the people. The only similarity between the events is that they were both held in cities whose names start with letter 'C' followed by nine letters.
The key outcome of the Cochabamba conference was the People's Agreement. This agreement demanded that countries cut their emissions by at least 50 per cent at source in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013–17), without recourse to offsets and other carbon trading schemes. In terms of finance, the People's Agreement demands that developed countries commit 6 per cent of their GDP to finance adaptation and mitigation needs. The financial suggestions of the Copenhagen Accord are a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to secure vulnerable peoples and nations. The peoples of the world also affirmed that there is a climate debt that must be recognised and paid. The payment is not all about finance but principally about decolonising the atmospheric space and redistributing the meagre space left. Developed countries already occupy 80 per cent of the space.
The climate debt is also about taking actions needed to restore the natural cycles of Mother Earth and one clear way of achieving this will be through the proclamation of a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, with clear obligations for humans. Bolivia is in the forefront of promoting the adoption of this declaration at the United Nations. The People's Agreement recognises that the causes of climate change are systemic and that systemic changes are needed to tackle them. On this note, the model of civilisation that is hinged on uncontrolled development can only compound the crisis. The world needs to move towards living well and not continue on the path of domination of others and of conspicuous and wasteful consumption.
An area glossed over in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations is the role of industrial agriculture in climate change. The People's Conference debated this key sector and reached the agreement that the way to a sustainable future is through the enthronement of food sovereignty based on agro-ecological agricultural systems. The issue of access to water being a human right was also affirmed by the people and later on in the year by the United Nations.
In all, the People's Agreement recognises that real strategies to tackle climate change must be based on the principles of equity and justice in dealing with the structural causes. Without climate justice it will also clearly be impossible to achieve the much talked about Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Cochabamba resonated with calls for urgently securing the rights of Mother Earth as a means of reconfiguring our relationship with the earth and with each other – in a way that respects the past, today and the future. All these will be a pipe dream unless peoples' sovereignty is supported, restored or built across the world. Cochabamba was a turning point in the march to transform our world from the path of conflict, competition, exploitation and domination to a path of solidarity and dignity. It held a ray of hope for Africa.
More at the link
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I posted this excerpt from this article because it hits the nail on the head about the mechanisms involved in the schemes being put forth by industrialized nations, the World Bank and corporations (industrial agriculture especially) looking to use this planetary emergency as a way to profit from it without really doing anything to address it. And that includes our seeds and water. Our voices now can make a dfference and they must be heard.In this extract from his book, To Cook A Continent, Nnimmo Bassey argues that climate... more
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Hans Herren, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scientist specializing in sustainable agriculture. He is president of the Millennium Institute, a non-profit development research and service organization dedicated to sustainable development. Dr. Herren co-chaired the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology (IAASTD), an initiative sponsored by the World Bank and United Nations in partnership with the World Health Organization that assessed global agriculture and recommended agroecological solutions to world hunger.
Dr. Herren has earned numerous awards that recognize his research achievements. These include the 2002 Brandenberger Preis for improving the living standards of Africa's rural population, the 2003 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the 1995 World Food Prize for his work developing a successful biological control program that saved the African cassava crop, and averted Africa’s worst-ever food crisis.
Dr. Herren’s work in agroecology in Africa has been credited with saving millions of lives by enabling African people to produce the food they need. He developed the “push-pull” system that uses simple but powerful bio-control strategies to effectively manage corn pests, resulting in large increases in yields.
There is much discussion today about the need to “feed the world” because of the growing global population. What do you think needs to be done in order to ensure there is adequate food for everyone in the world?
HH: The issue is less on how to feed the world than how to nourish the poor and hungry. Today we produce 4600 calories per person per day, so there is enough food to feed twice the present population. The problem is that we produce mostly cheap commodities rather than quality food. These cheap products, in addition to being of low nutritional value, are based on a few crops that carry a large ecological, social, and economic footprint. What is needed is to support farmers in developing countries to grow their own healthy food by providing information, know-how, financial support for inputs, and support for them to access markets, among others.
Food security is achieved when availability, access, stability, and utilization are assured equally for all. There is also a need for new and participatory research into sustainable agricultural practices, based on the principles of agroecology and organic farming, which would free farmers from dependence on external inputs such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Some agricultural “experts” are calling for another Green Revolution. What are your thoughts on this?
HH: What we need least is another Green Revolution. What is needed now is to move forward with the lessons learned from the Green Revolution, taking forward what has worked and leave behind most of it, since the Green Revolution has left agriculture dependent on external inputs that are non-sustainable and becoming more and more expensive since they are based on oil, a finite resource, and also synthetic fertilizers, also based on finite natural resources.
The way forward is to understand and work with the system in a holistic and integrated manner. Silver bullets, reductionism as often promoted by the agri-chemical industry are not solutions.
More at the linkHans Herren, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scientist specializing in... more
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*Gates plan spends 40% of R&D funding on risky "silver bullet" GM projects with DFID help
As the world population reaches 7 billion GM Freeze says in a new report published today [1] that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s policy on agricultural development to tackle hunger is "swimming against a tide of informed opinion".
The report reveals the Gates Foundation has allocated over 40% of its committed research expenditure from 2005 to 2011 on projects involving risky “silver bullet” GM technology.
The collaboration between the Gates Foundation and DFID, announced in February 2011, includes a commitment to carry out GM research into altering the photosynthesis of rice to make it more tolerant of drought. [2] This theoretical switching of rice metabolism has been described as "high risk" by many, including the Royal Society, because of the complex changes required to make it work and the high chance of failure. [3]
In contrast GM Freeze reveals that the Gates Foundation has only allocated some US$20 million (4% of the total budget of US$521 million) to all soil research despite acknowledging the poor state of some African soils. However the Gates Foundation has pledged nearly US$214 million to research involving GM techniques from 2005 to the present – ten times the budget for soil research.
The group's report says the Gates Foundation and DFID are ignoring the recommendations of key research, including the unprecedented IAASTD report in 2008, endorsed by the UK Government, which recommended agroecological approaches to farming to restore natural resources, such as the soils, biodiversity and water and a switch away from fossil-fuel based artificial fertilisers and pesticides. [4]
GM Freeze also reveals the Gates Foundation funding of the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) to distribute artificial fertilisers to small farmers. AGRA plan to deliver 187,000 tons of fertilizer "to small farmers through wholesale and retail networks by December 2012" at a overall cost of US$164 million to the Gates Foundation – eight times their allocated expenditure on soil research.
The Gates Foundation collaborate closely with agri-biotechnology companies including Monsanto, BASF, Du Pont, Dow and the Syngenta Foundation in projects to develop GM seeds and promote fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid seeds to small African farmers through bodies such as African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and projects like Harvest Plus – both also funded by DFID.
Pete Riley of GM Freeze said:
"The Gates Foundation approach to agricultural development is swimming against of tide of informed opinion if it is serious about tackling hunger.
"Instead of promoting proven, low-cost solutions, the Foundation is mimicking discredited high input farming that has cost millions in Northern countries due to pollution, soil erosion and disastrous impacts on biodiversity above and below the soil. DFID is meekly following this lead despite expert analysis showing that in a world with eroded natural resources, climate change and rising demand and costs of energy and fertilisers, a switch to agroecological approaches is urgently needed.
"Offering small and family farmers GM technology will only lock them into expensive and failing intensive farming approaches that benefit big business.
More at the link*Gates plan spends 40% of R&D funding on risky "silver bullet" GM... more
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The team from Terreform1 suggests ways in which vehicles and urban homes can be deigned to maximize energy efficiency and minimize environmental impact. Access to local food is another major concern for urban communities as transportation raises food costs. To combat these rising costs urban communities are growing their own produce and livestock in a new sustainable living revolution.
Community gardens are a green oasis in a concrete landscape. They provide locally grown produce and, as many community gardens are organic or pesticide free, they limit the amount of toxins and free radicals released into the environment. If a community garden isn't your thing you can still plant your own urban garden on a rooftop, windowsill or on your front stoop. Check out Urban Gardens for ideas on building your own sustainable urban garden complete with birdhouse designs and links to websites by other urban gardeners.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
Do you belong to a community garden or have your own urban windowsill garden? If so, what do you grow?
The team from Terreform1 suggests ways in which vehicles and urban homes can be... more
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The town of Hardwick, Vt., has been celebrated as the scene of a local food revival. In recent years, lots of small farms have started up nearby.
Tom Stearns, president of a local organic seed company called High Mowing Seeds, says there are more organic farms per capita within 10 miles of Hardwick than anywhere else in the world. There's also a thriving local grocery co-op; a busy farmer's market; even a classy restaurant — Claire's — where almost anything you eat grew or grazed on land nearby.
But it was Ben Hewitt, as much as anyone, who really put Hardwick and its local food scene on the map. He's a writer and a back-to-the-land activist himself. He lives on 40 acres near Cabot, down the road from Hardwick, with his wife, their two home-schooled children, and an assortment of pigs, cows and a very friendly dog named Daisy.
Hewitt saw what was happening in Hardwick, and it struck him as unusual, even odd. "Here's this town: Unemployment rate 40 percent higher than the Vermont state average; median income 25 percent lower; and then there was this thing happening around so-called sustainable ag and local food!" Hewitt says. So Hewitt wrote a book about Hardwick: The Town That Food Saved.
More at the linkThe town of Hardwick, Vt., has been celebrated as the scene of a local food revival.... more
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In an effort to maintain the original vision of Current and to also be a vocal advocate for environmental issues and information we need to know, I am going to be launching a program to be uploaded to the Current Earth Care Community within the next week. Biorhythms is a term usually associated with the physical, intellectual and emotional cycles of humans. I will attempt to extend this term to cover the cycles of Earth and human impacts on them from pollution to climate change (biodistress) and their affects on quality of life.
A healthy environment is crucial to a healthy economy and healthy humans. We are nothing without it and well, I simply believe that to know about the Earth is to learn to respect her and that hopefully leads to actions to preserve her.
I hope for the program to be bi-weekly and will be discussing pressing environmental issues as well as disseminating information we aren't seeing on the MSM and trying to connect the dots we need connected. And I won't pull any punches in placing accountability where it belongs. This will not be a politically partisan program, but make no mistake, politics will be challenged when it threatens this Earth regardless of party.
Our environment is under attack from all angles by interests that care not for the destruction they bring. Therefore, my programs will have a set schedule. A discussion of one pressing environmental issue followed by a commentary. Then a few mintues of news you need to know, any inspirational stories I come across and they are out here, any action items I can find and finally a question for thought and discussion that you can participate in by typing your response or posting a video. I also hope to select a few members of the Current Community who would be willing to give contributions, interviews, etc. and maybe a couple of surprises.
And to end, I don't want the program to be a downer. I want you to walk away with truth and with also realizing that as a species we have great potential and the capacity to live in harmony with Earth. But only in knowing the reality of what we are doing to our only home can we begin to heal her and ourselves.
More information will be coming and I hope you will check out Biorhythms.
Thanks,
JanIn an effort to maintain the original vision of Current and to also be a vocal... more
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Industrial-style farming, often known as the "green revolution," has been widely credited with saving perhaps 1 billion people from starvation by boosting the yield of grain crops in India, China, Pakistan, Mexico and other countries.
But the green revolution, which relies on intensive use of water, fertilizer, pesticides and energy, has come at a cost, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says. The FAO tally of such costs include anemic soils, depleted water supplies, diminished biodiversity, resilient pests, super weeds and polluted air, water and soil.
Now the U.N. agency, tasked with solving world hunger, has thrown its support behind wider use of "sustainable agriculture" in the developing world. It has issued a new primer, "Save and Grow," specifically targeting the 2.5 billion people who scratch out a living on small farms throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The big idea? That humanity cannot just rely on intensified ag practices that require ever more powerful pesticides, fertilizers and genetically designed seeds to feed the world's burgeoning population. Experts predict farmers will need to double production to feed a global population that will add more than 2 billion more people by midcentury.
"In order to grow, agriculture must learn to save," the FAO reports. That means preserving soil's natural fertility by minimizing ploughing, and recycling crop waste to enrich the earth. It means smarter, integrated way of managing pests, rotating crops, and greater precision in the use of fertilizer and drip irrigation, the book authors say.
Some studies show that farmers can get bumper crops if they follow these practices and, at the same time, save water, energy and other costs.
To be sure, the developing world's farmers get mixed messages about how to coax more from their small plots of land. It remains to be seen how far the FAO's new advice can reach into the most remote places.
More at the linkIndustrial-style farming, often known as the "green revolution," has been... more
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World Fair Trade Day is May 14. How does food connect us to the global community? Author Anna Lappé and chef Bryant Terry discuss how choosing Fair Trade products helps farmers around the world. Learn more at http://www.nourishlife.org/blog/video-fair-trade/World Fair Trade Day is May 14. How does food connect us to the global community?... more
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Food Supply. Health. Economic Security. Malnutrition. Obesity. Local Agriculture. Sustainability.
What’s in common to link all these words? Sustainable Agriculture.
His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales addressed participants last week at a Sustainable Food Conference hosted by Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he said, “Creating sustainable food systems will become paramount in the future.”
Venturing into sustainable agriculture and fearing for a food-insecurity, the Prince, with a leading voice sketched out that the rate of food production is now less than the rate of population growth. Add in threats to food crop yields, now declining with climate change, and the cost of food production as being so reliant on the rising cost of oil for transport and production, well, it all sums to an expensive forecast. He identified additional facts and pressures that you may like to know:
Global population is heading toward 9 billion people — creating greater demands for food
On average in the developed world, people throw away 40% of the food purchased
Soil is the primary source of health for all plants and people — and soil erosion in the United States is washed away 10 times faster than the Earth can replenish it
23 thousand square miles of arable land is turning into desert yearly
2 billion acres (1/4 of the world’s farm land) is degraded
One-fifth of all U.S. grain production is dependent on water with 1.3 trillion gallons used faster than rainfall can replenish it
By 2030 it is estimated the world’s farmers will need 35% more water than today
Of all the water in the world, 5% is fresh and excluding the most voluminous fresh water lake in the world, Lake Baikal in Siberia, the fresh water sources remaining are three-quarters used in agriculture
The impact of sizeable pressures and forecasts such as these mean more people could go hungry.
Post Continues: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/sustainable-agriculture-prince-of-wales/Food Supply. Health. Economic Security. Malnutrition. Obesity. Local Agriculture.... more
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Imagine a world in which cows milk themselves with the help of robots, where manure generates electricity instead of greenhouse gases, where if your cows are itchy they can ease up to a motorized back scratcher for relief. Bill Vanderkooi imagined such a world and made it real.Imagine a world in which cows milk themselves with the help of robots, where manure... more
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From the blog post by Alex Muse (CEO of ShopSavvy, Inc., the creators of ShopSavvy)
"More and more produce items are sporting scan-able barcodes and we thought it might be cool if consumers could figure out where a particular fruit was grown. Did you know that 27% of produce is grown by family farms? We decided to partner with Top 10 Produce to help ShopSavvy users ‘Know Your Farmer’. The program is brand new, but over the coming months hundreds of farms will be added to the system. ShopSavvy users who scan produce will find pictures, maps, Facebook Pages, Twitter feeds related to the farmer who grew the fruit or vegetable."
http://shopsavvy.mobi/2011/03/08/food-traceability-on-shopsavvy/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.Top10produce.comFrom the blog post by Alex Muse (CEO of ShopSavvy, Inc., the creators of ShopSavvy)... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The negative impacts of climate change are coming on more quickly than anyone expected. According to a new NASA study, ocean waters are creeping steadily upwards, at rates faster than predicted, Maureen Nandini Mitra reports at Earth Island Journal:
“That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising – they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers,” Eirc Rignot, the report’s lead author said in a statement emailed by NASA yesterday. “What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening.”
This is just the latest warning sign that climate change is happening and that its negative effects will occur more quickly than anyone has prepared for. This will happen despite Republicans’ insistence that there is no hard scientific proof of climate change, and that “just because you might be in the minority doesn’t always mean you’re wrong,” as Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) put it this week at a House subcommittee hearing on climate science.
Dealing with it
This problem is not going to go away. The economist and blogger Tyler Cowen wrote this week that left-wing economists have a “reluctance to admit how hard the climate change problem will be to solve, for fear of wrecking any emerging political consensus on taking action.” In response, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum comments, “Actually, liberals spend a ton of time talking about how hard climate change is. Still, there’s something to this. As hard as we say it is, it’s probably even harder than that.”
How hard? On Democracy Now!, Naomi Klein argued this week that progressive environmental groups have been pussy-footing around the scope of the issue entirely. She said:
What I see is that the green groups, a lot of the big green groups, are also in a kind of denial, because they want to pretend that this isn’t about politics and economics, and say, “Well, you can just change your light bulb. And no, it won’t really disrupt. You can have green capitalism.” And they’re not really wrestling with the fact that this is about economic growth. This is about an economic model that needs constant and infinite growth on a finite planet. So we really are talking about some deep transformations of our economy if we’re going to deal with climate change. And we need to talk about it.
That’s a tall order for green groups, however, when they’re having a hard time convincing conservatives that climate change even exists. As Klein says, refusing to believe in climate change has become one way that conservatives define themselves, politically, and the pull of ideological identification outweighs any rational attitude toward the science in question.
The example of agriculture
In many cases, solutions to the problems of climate change are clear. Only habit and political intransigence keep them from being put into action.
Agriculture is a great example of this tangle. Industrial farming pollutes earth, water, and air, while sustainable methods of farming promote global health. What’s more, they create as much, if not more, product than industrial farming techniques. This week the United Nations confirmed these benefits in a report on “eco-farming,” what Americans generally call sustainable agriculture. Inter Press Service reports:
“An urgent transformation to ‘eco-farming’ is the only way to end hunger and face the challenges of climate change and rural poverty,” said Olivier De Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food. … Yields went up 214 percent in 44 projects in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa using agro-ecological farming techniques over a period of 3 to 10 years… far more than any GM [genetically modified] crop has ever done.
Despite this sort of success, the argument that agribusiness is necessary to feed the world is still running rampant. At Grist, Tom Philpott has been picking apart a series of articles from The Economist that explains, as Philpott puts it “how industrial agriculture is the true and only way to feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit the world by 2050.”
But as Philpott notes, sustainable farming can feed the global population and is better for the planet as well. The United Nations, he writes, has:
found that ‘ecological agriculture’ could ‘assist farmers in adapting to climate change’ by making farm fields more resilient to stress. So why isn’t eco-agriculture catching on? The report cites a bevy of obstacles, none of them technological:
“[L]ack of policy support at local, national, regional and international levels, resource and capacity constraints, and a lack of awareness and inadequate information, training and research on ecological agriculture at all levels.”
Obvious solutions
Indeed, it can be incredible how simple solutions to seemingly intractable problems can be. For instance, IPS reports, yet another UN report has found one solution to mitigating global hunger: Push back against gender inequality. IPS’s Alan Bojanic and Gustavo Anriquez write:
The UN agency’s report estimates that if women had the same access to agricultural assets, inputs, and services as men they could increase yields on their farms, and this increase could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by roughly 2.5 to 4 percent.
Moreover, such a growth in agricultural production could in turn bring 100 to 150 million people out of hunger – that is about 12 to 17 percent of the 925 million undernourished people that exist in the world according to FAO’s latest estimates.
Dealing with the problems of climate change might be harder than liberals often admit. But some of the simplest solutions haven’t even been tried yet.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The negative impacts of climate change... more
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OSLO (Reuters) - Many farmers in developing nations can double food production within a decade by shifting to ecological agriculture from use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, a U.N. report showed on Tuesday.
Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and Bangladesh's use of ducks to eat weeds in rice paddies are among examples of steps taken to increase food for a world population that the United Nations says will be 7 billion this year and 9 billion by 2050.
"Agriculture is at a crossroads," according to the study by Olivier de Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming.
"Agroecology" could also make farms more resilient to the projected impact of climate change including floods, droughts and a rise in sea levels that the report said was already making fresh water near some coasts too salty for use in irrigation.
So far, eco-farming projects in 57 nations had shown average crop yield gains of 80 percent by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests, it said.
Recent projects in 20 African countries had resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years. Those lessons could be widely mimicked elsewhere, it said.
"Sound ecological farming can significantly boost production and in the long term be more effective than conventional farming," De Schutter told Reuters of steps such as more use of natural compost or high-canopy trees to shade coffee groves.
AFRICA
Benefits would be greatest in "regions where too few efforts have been put in to agriculture, particularly sub-Saharan Africa," he said. "There are also a number of very promising experiences in parts of Latin America and parts of Asia."
"The cost of food production has been very closely following the cost of oil," he said. Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia have been partly linked to discontent at soaring food prices. Oil prices were around $115 a barrel on Wednesday.
"If food prices are not kept under control and populations are unable to feed themselves...we will have increasingly states being disrupted and failed states developing," De Schutter said.
Among examples, thousands of Kenyan farmers were planting insect-repelling desmodium or tick clover, used as animal fodder, within corn fields to keep damaging insects away and sowed small plots of napier grass nearby that excretes a sticky gum to trap pests.
Better research, training and use of local knowledge were also needed. "Farmer field schools" by rice growers in Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh had led to cuts in insecticide use of between 35 and 92 percent, the study said.
De Schutter also called for a push to diversify global farm output from reliance on rice, wheat and maize in diets.
Developed nations, however, would be unable to make a quick shift to agroecology because of what he called an "addiction" to an industrial, oil-based model of farming. Still, a global long-term effort to shift to agroecology was needed.
Cuba had shown that such a change was possible after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 cut off supplies of cheap pesticides and fertilizers. Yields had risen after a downturn in the 1990s as farmers adopted more eco-friendly methods.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/08/us-food-idUSTRE7272FN20110308OSLO (Reuters) - Many farmers in developing nations can double food production within... more
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If you eat organic foods, there's a good chance it started here, at High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, Vermont. OneDegreeTV visits Tom Stearns to discuss the process of cultivating, selecting and breeding better organic seeds, and how he and others in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom are helping to change the way we eat.If you eat organic foods, there's a good chance it started here, at High Mowing... more
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Is organic food really more expensive than non-organic? Not if you factor in associated costs of the industrial food complex (health care costs related to poor diet, cost of fossil fuels for massive distribution networks...). OneDegreeTV visits Tom Stearns to discuss the "real cost of better foods."
If you're eating organic food in the U.S., there's a good chance it started here, at High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, Vermont.Is organic food really more expensive than non-organic? Not if you factor in... more
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If you're eating organic food in the U.S., there's a good chance it started here, at High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, Vermont. OneDegreeTV visits Tom Stearns to find out how his company is helping to change the way we eat.If you're eating organic food in the U.S., there's a good chance it started... more
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How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. At TEDSalon in London, Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.
Michael Pawlyn takes cues from nature to make new, sustainable architectural environments.How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature.... more
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Creation of sustainable regional food systems requires participation of multiple levels of government, community organizations, planners, developers, landscape architects, food-oriented business, and academics. Property development can play an important role in contributing to sustainable regional food systems, by helping to integrate food into the community fabric and creating more vibrant, livable spaces.
http://www.agriculturalurbanism.com/surfs.phpCreation of sustainable regional food systems requires participation of multiple... more
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