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Fertilizer 
Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 12:28:42 PM PST
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At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, in December, the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Jacques Diouf, emphasized the need to promote what he called "climate smart" agriculture for food security and climate change adaptation. "By climate smart," he said, "we mean agriculture that sustainably increases productivity and resilience to environmental pressures, while at the same time reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or removes them from the atmosphere, because we cannot ignore the fact that agriculture is itself a large emitter of greenhouse gases."
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Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 07:20:39 AM PDT
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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
Between the years of 1975 - 1976, the Cambodian farmer, Name Name, like most farmers in the country during that time, grew vegetables and rice to feed the soldiers of the Lon Nol regime.
Using his bare hands, Name mixed the chemicals DDT, Folidol, Phostrin and Kontrin in order to keep the pests away from his crops. As a result, he suffered from strange and uncomfortable physical symptoms. Sometimes he was unable to move or feel his hands and lower arms, and he experienced pain in his lungs and heart. His short term memory was also affected. All of these symptoms often persisted for up to six months after exposure to the chemicals.
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Wed Jul 28, 2010 at 12:35:21 PM PDT
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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
It might feel counterintuitive, but the more varieties of vegetables, plants, and insects that are included in a garden, the less vulnerable any single crop becomes. Mans Lanting of ETC Foundation India wrote in LEISA Magazine in 2007 that the best method of approaching pest control is to learn to live in harmony with pests instead of trying to fight them. By harnessing the natural state of vegetation and pests, a farmer can create "a system in which no component can easily dominate" and in which soil and crop quality is greatly improved.
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Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:59:08 AM PST
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Via Science Daily I ran across a news release from the African NGO International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) about bananas and fertilizer that illustrates the complexity of the agricultural system in the developing world. IITA calls themselves "Africa's leading research partner in finding solutions for hunger and poverty" and is involved in many activities, including improving agricultural biodiversity, building or supplying seed banks, and investigating biological controls for pests. They receive funding from a wide variety of NGOs and governments, including the Gates Foundation, various national governments, U.S. AID, Rockefeller Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 12:36:39 PM PST
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I just finished reading The War on Bugs by Will Allen (not the Will Allen of Growing Power - a different Will Allen) and I can't recommend it highly enough! This was a book that Allen was uniquely qualified to write. He grew up on a farm, and then went into the Marines where he was an atomic, biological, and chemical warfare paramedic. Following his years in the Marines, he went to college and - as part of his education - did research in the tropical forests of Peru, living among forest farmers. He says, "The ability of these [Peruvian] farmers to produce surpluses without chemicals in an environment ravaged by pests started me thinking that maybe the miracle chemicals that the sales men pushed were not so necessary after all." After college, Allen went back to farming. Upon taking a pesticide and fertilizer applicator's course at a local college, he found out that the chemicals commonly sprayed on farms were "modified versions of the nerve poisons and antipersonnel weapons that I learned about when studying chemical warfare in the Marine Corps."
So - with his firsthand observations of food grown without chemicals and his knowledge of the toxicity of common farm chemicals - Allen went to work finding out where our dependence and trust of pesticides came from in the first place. His findings actually surprised me. I knew part of the picture, which I wrote about in my own book. I don't think my book was inaccurate, but Allen fills in a lot of details and really makes it clear what happened and how.
More below.
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Sun Mar 01, 2009 at 20:59:01 PM PST
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- Natasha Chart writes about a really innovative online CSA program. If I lived near this farm, I would SO sign up!
- Civil Eats talks to a few urban hen owners. Are they pets or food? Well, if I owned some they would be egg-laying pets. But my friend Jamie? His are food. He told me as a kid he'd own turkeys and name them "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas"... you can guess why he chose those names.
- Civil Eats also says that supporting farms is everyone's business. I quite agree.
- Obama Foodorama takes on the anti-Obama Tea Parties (Here's a 2nd write-up on them, also by ObFo. This one tells how the tea parties were planned - and planned to look spontaneous.). Ugh, why does the right wing even exist (other than for me to laugh at)?
- Marion Nestle takes on osteoblast milk, a new stupid food industry idea to make a kind of super-milk. They add "OMP" (osteoblast milk protein, whatever that is) to make milk extra-milky. Or something.
- Tom Laskawy wonders if the USDA fudged the numbers in the 2007 Ag Census. Remember all the excitement over the growth of small farms? Well... for the past several years, the USDA has been padding its numbers to account for farms who didn't respond to the census survey.
- Organic Consumers provides a write-up of Brooklyn's new culinary movement, which appeared to be alive and well when I visited last October.
- The USDA is tightening oversight of organic fertilizer. I assume this is in response to an incident in California in the past year in which organic farms were sold fertilizer that was labeled as organic but actually prohibited by organic standards.
- A new blog called Organic on the Green helps college cafeterias move to a more sustainable system.
- Check out this video on the National Animal ID System and why it should be rejected. We may be in the clear on some issues now that the Dems are in power, but NAIS is something several Dems actually support.
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Thu Jan 01, 2009 at 19:15:39 PM PST
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From Organic Consumers:
- Former Kansas Governor: Factory Farms are a Danger to Us All - Amen to that! Quite frankly I do not see why factory farms are still legal (other than the fact that Bush has about 20 days left in office, and intends to use each of them to screw the American people and all sentient beings on this planet).
- More U.S. Land Devoted to Organic Cotton - This is GREAT news, considering that cotton is such an environmentally harmful crop when grown using pesticides AND considering how much of our growing demand for organics is being satisfied by imports. It's good to know that more of our own land is being used for organic cotton!
From Grist: Tom Philpott recommends Vandana Shiva's Soil Not Oil. I heartily second his recommendation, even though I'm only halfway through the book!
From The Ethicurean: A fantastic news digest including details on a breaking scandal! Apparently a large California fertilizer company secretly included non-organic ingredients and then sold its fertilizer as organic to farms.
From Yale Sustainable Food Project: Wendell Berry calls for civil disobedience to protest coal! Mr. Berry, I am with you. Tell me where to show up and I'll bring the protest signs and bail money!
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Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 00:27:06 AM PST
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I am cross posting this diary from DailyKos.com, where it was written in response to another diary posted on there. I'm adapting it here to stand on its own. The original diary drew a link between our ability to fertilize the soil, our ability to grow food, and hunger.
I attended the Community Food Security Coalition conference last month and learned some fascinating things on these subjects which I'd like to share with you. Most surprising to me was the idea that hunger went UP as food production went UP. Therefore, when people say less food equals more hunger, I call bullshit. We have so much food right now we are feeding our cars with it in the form of ethanol and yet we're seeing horrific increases in demand at food banks at the same time.
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