May 31, 2011
Oxfam launches global GROW campaign to tackle causes of hunger
Ben Grossman-Cohen, Economic Justice Press Officer
Washington, D.C- The price of staple foods such as corn, already at an all time high, could more than double in the next 20 years according to a new report released today by international humanitarian organization Oxfam. Up to half of this rise is due to climate change and the world’s poorest people, who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food, will be hardest hit.
The new report, ‘Growing a Better Future’, was released as part of Oxfam’s new global GROW campaign launching on June 1st, to address the increasing pressures on our food system, including extremely volatile food prices, which have pushed an estimated 44 million people into poverty in the last year. The report warns that spiraling prices and endless cycles of regional food crises will create millions more hungry people unless we transform the way we grow and sell food.
“We are fighting both sides of the war on hunger,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “US policies are making it more difficult for the small farmers, who grow much of the world’s food, to have enough to feed their own families. With sensible reforms to increase productivity and resilience of small farmers around the world, we can GROW a better future that holds greater economic prosperity, national security, and a more stable food supply for everyone for generations to come.”
Oxfam’s GROW campaign is backed by high profile supporters including former President Lula of Brazil and Archbishop Emeritus Tutu.
"We can't wait anymore,” said Former President Lula of Brazil. “Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. If the political will is there no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger.
The new report catalogs the symptoms of today’s broken food system, including growing hunger, flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water and rising food prices. It warns we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.
Eight million people, a great majority women and girls, face chronic food shortages in East Africa today, while local and regional crises could see demand for food aid double in the next 10 years. Oxfam estimates that by 2050 demand for food will rise 70 percent yet our capacity to increase food production is declining. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one percent in the next decade.
Oxfam’s GROW campaign seeks to expose the failed policies that are propping up the broken food system and fight for common sense solutions:
CHALLENGES:
Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 percent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.
India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million - more than the population of France - because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.
United States: US policy ensures 15 percent of the world’s corn crop is diverted to engines, even at times of severe food crisis. The grain required to fill the gas tank of an SUV with biofuels is enough to feed one person for a full year.
SOLUTIONS:
Oxfam America released a 5-point plan of urgent actions to address an imminent food crisis. The plan calls for President Obama, the US Congress and the private sector to take immediate steps to reduce the pressure on the US economy, consumers and poor people around the world by:
1. Investing in Small-Scale Food Producers
2. Ending Excessive Speculation in Agricultural Commodities
3. Modernizing Food Aid
4. Stopping Giveaways to the Corn-Ethanol Industry
5. Regulating Land and Water Grabs
“This is an emergency and President Obama and other powerful actors in Congress and the private sector should treat it like one,” said Offenheiser. “We can no longer afford for the priorities of a few lobbyists to trump the interests of the American public and the billions who go hungry. We can end this age of crisis and put our country and the world on track towards a new age of prosperity.”
Oxfam global ambassador Djimon Hounsou said, “I am joining Oxfam’s GROW campaign because we have the power to change our future. Hunger is a man made challenge with practical solutions. If we work together we can build a better world where mothers don’t have to go hungry so their children can eat.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, "Many governments and companies will be resistant to change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us – you and me – to persuade them by choosing food that’s produced fairly and sustainably, by cutting our carbon footprints and by joining with Oxfam and others to demand change.”
Friday, June 3, 2011
EMERGING CLIMATE-INDUCED FOOD INSECURITY
Study Maps Global 'Hotspots' of Climate-Induced Food Insecurity
ScienceDaily (June 2, 2011) — A new study has matched future climate change "hotspots" with regions already suffering chronic food problems to identify highly-vulnerable populations, chiefly in Africa and South Asia, but potentially in China and Latin America as well, where in fewer than 40 years, the prospect of shorter, hotter or drier growing seasons could imperil hundreds of millions of already-impoverished people.
The report, "Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics," was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The work was undertaken by a team of scientists responding to an urgent need to focus climate change adaptation efforts on people and places where the potential for harsher growing conditions poses the gravest threat to food production and food security.
The researchers pinpointed areas of intense vulnerability by examining a variety of climate models and indicators of food problems to create a series of detailed maps. One shows regions around the world at risk of crossing certain "climate thresholds" -- such as temperatures too hot for maize or beans -- that over the next 40 years could diminish food production. Another shows regions that may be sensitive to such climate shifts because in general they have large areas of land devoted to crop and livestock production. And finally, scientists produced maps of regions with a long history of food insecurity.
"When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous," said Polly Ericksen, a senior scientist at the CGIAR's International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya and the study's lead author. "These are areas highly exposed to climate shifts, where survival is strongly linked to the fate of regional crop and livestock yields, and where chronic food problems indicate that farmers are already struggling and they lack the capacity to adapt to new weather patterns."
"This is a very troubling combination," she added.
For example, in large parts of South Asia, including almost all of India, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa -- chiefly West Africa -- there are 369 million food-insecure people living in agriculture-intensive areas that are highly exposed to a potential five percent decrease in the length of the growing period. Such a change over the next 40 years could significantly affect food yields and food access for people -- many of them farmers themselves -- already living on the edge.
Higher temperatures also could exact a heavy toll. Today, there are 56 million food-insecure and crop-dependent people in parts of West Africa, India and China who live in areas where, by the mid-2050s, maximum daily temperatures during the growing season could exceed 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). This is close to the maximum temperature that beans can tolerate, while maize and rice yields may suffer when temperatures exceed this level. For example, a study last year in Nature found that even with optimal amounts of rain, African maize yields could decline by one percent for each day spent above 30ºC.
Regional predictions for shifts in temperatures and precipitation going out to 2050 were developed by analyzing the outputs of climate models rooted in the extensive data amassed by the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers identified populations as chronically food-insecure if more than 40 percent of children under the age of five were "stunted" -- that is, they fall well below the World Health Organization's height-for-age standards.
"We are starting to see much more clearly where the effect of climate change on agriculture could intensify hunger and poverty, but only if we fail to pursue appropriate adaptation strategies," said Patti Kristjanson, a research theme leader at CCAFS. "Farmers already adapt to variable weather patterns by changing their planting schedules or moving animals to different grazing areas. What this study suggests is that the speed of climate shifts and the magnitude of the changes required to adapt could be much greater. In some places, farmers might need to consider entirely new crops or new farming systems."
Crop breeders at CGIAR centers around the world already are focused on developing so-called "climate ready" crop varieties able to produce high yields in more stressful conditions. For some regions, however, that might not be a viable option -- in parts of East and Southern Africa, for example, temperatures may become too hot to maintain maize as the staple crop, requiring a shift to other food crops, such as sorghum or cassava, to meet nutrition needs. In addition, farmers who now focus mainly on crop cultivation might need to integrate livestock and agroforestry as a way to maintain and increase food production.
"International trade in agriculture commodities is also likely to assume even more importance for all regions as climate change intensifies the existing limits of national agriculture systems to satisfy domestic food needs," said Bruce Campbell, director of CCAFS. "We have already seen with the food price spikes of 2008 and 2010 that food security is an international phenomenon and climate change is almost certainly going to intensify that interdependence."
Ericksen and her colleagues note that regions of concern extend beyond those found to be most at risk. For example, in many parts of Latin America, food security is relatively stable at the moment -- suggesting that a certain amount of "coping capacity" could be available to deal with future climate stresses that affect agriculture production. Yet there is cause for concern because millions of people in the region are highly dependent on local agricultural production to meet their food needs and they are living in the very crosshairs of climate change.
The researchers found, for example, that by 2050, prime growing conditions are likely to drop below 120 days per season in intensively-farmed regions of northeast Brazil and Mexico. Growing seasons of at least 120 days are considered critical not only for the maturation of maize and several other staple food crops, but also for vegetation crucial to feeding livestock.
In addition, parts of Latin America are likely to experience temperatures too hot for bean production, a major food staple in the region.
The study also shows that some areas today have a "low sensitivity" to the effects of climate change only because there is not a lot of land devoted to crop and livestock production. But agriculture intensification would render them more vulnerable, adding a wrinkle, for example, to the massive effort underway to rapidly expand crop cultivation in the so-called "bread-basket" areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
"Evidence suggests that these specific regions in the tropics may be severely affected by 2050 in terms of their crop production and livestock capacity. The window of opportunity to develop innovative solutions that can effectively overcome these challenges is limited," said Philip Thornton, a CCAFS research theme leader and one of the paper's co-authors. "Major adaptation efforts are needed now if we are to avoid serious food security and livelihood problems later."
ScienceDaily (June 2, 2011) — A new study has matched future climate change "hotspots" with regions already suffering chronic food problems to identify highly-vulnerable populations, chiefly in Africa and South Asia, but potentially in China and Latin America as well, where in fewer than 40 years, the prospect of shorter, hotter or drier growing seasons could imperil hundreds of millions of already-impoverished people.
The report, "Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics," was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The work was undertaken by a team of scientists responding to an urgent need to focus climate change adaptation efforts on people and places where the potential for harsher growing conditions poses the gravest threat to food production and food security.
The researchers pinpointed areas of intense vulnerability by examining a variety of climate models and indicators of food problems to create a series of detailed maps. One shows regions around the world at risk of crossing certain "climate thresholds" -- such as temperatures too hot for maize or beans -- that over the next 40 years could diminish food production. Another shows regions that may be sensitive to such climate shifts because in general they have large areas of land devoted to crop and livestock production. And finally, scientists produced maps of regions with a long history of food insecurity.
"When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous," said Polly Ericksen, a senior scientist at the CGIAR's International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya and the study's lead author. "These are areas highly exposed to climate shifts, where survival is strongly linked to the fate of regional crop and livestock yields, and where chronic food problems indicate that farmers are already struggling and they lack the capacity to adapt to new weather patterns."
"This is a very troubling combination," she added.
For example, in large parts of South Asia, including almost all of India, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa -- chiefly West Africa -- there are 369 million food-insecure people living in agriculture-intensive areas that are highly exposed to a potential five percent decrease in the length of the growing period. Such a change over the next 40 years could significantly affect food yields and food access for people -- many of them farmers themselves -- already living on the edge.
Higher temperatures also could exact a heavy toll. Today, there are 56 million food-insecure and crop-dependent people in parts of West Africa, India and China who live in areas where, by the mid-2050s, maximum daily temperatures during the growing season could exceed 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). This is close to the maximum temperature that beans can tolerate, while maize and rice yields may suffer when temperatures exceed this level. For example, a study last year in Nature found that even with optimal amounts of rain, African maize yields could decline by one percent for each day spent above 30ºC.
Regional predictions for shifts in temperatures and precipitation going out to 2050 were developed by analyzing the outputs of climate models rooted in the extensive data amassed by the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers identified populations as chronically food-insecure if more than 40 percent of children under the age of five were "stunted" -- that is, they fall well below the World Health Organization's height-for-age standards.
"We are starting to see much more clearly where the effect of climate change on agriculture could intensify hunger and poverty, but only if we fail to pursue appropriate adaptation strategies," said Patti Kristjanson, a research theme leader at CCAFS. "Farmers already adapt to variable weather patterns by changing their planting schedules or moving animals to different grazing areas. What this study suggests is that the speed of climate shifts and the magnitude of the changes required to adapt could be much greater. In some places, farmers might need to consider entirely new crops or new farming systems."
Crop breeders at CGIAR centers around the world already are focused on developing so-called "climate ready" crop varieties able to produce high yields in more stressful conditions. For some regions, however, that might not be a viable option -- in parts of East and Southern Africa, for example, temperatures may become too hot to maintain maize as the staple crop, requiring a shift to other food crops, such as sorghum or cassava, to meet nutrition needs. In addition, farmers who now focus mainly on crop cultivation might need to integrate livestock and agroforestry as a way to maintain and increase food production.
"International trade in agriculture commodities is also likely to assume even more importance for all regions as climate change intensifies the existing limits of national agriculture systems to satisfy domestic food needs," said Bruce Campbell, director of CCAFS. "We have already seen with the food price spikes of 2008 and 2010 that food security is an international phenomenon and climate change is almost certainly going to intensify that interdependence."
Ericksen and her colleagues note that regions of concern extend beyond those found to be most at risk. For example, in many parts of Latin America, food security is relatively stable at the moment -- suggesting that a certain amount of "coping capacity" could be available to deal with future climate stresses that affect agriculture production. Yet there is cause for concern because millions of people in the region are highly dependent on local agricultural production to meet their food needs and they are living in the very crosshairs of climate change.
The researchers found, for example, that by 2050, prime growing conditions are likely to drop below 120 days per season in intensively-farmed regions of northeast Brazil and Mexico. Growing seasons of at least 120 days are considered critical not only for the maturation of maize and several other staple food crops, but also for vegetation crucial to feeding livestock.
In addition, parts of Latin America are likely to experience temperatures too hot for bean production, a major food staple in the region.
The study also shows that some areas today have a "low sensitivity" to the effects of climate change only because there is not a lot of land devoted to crop and livestock production. But agriculture intensification would render them more vulnerable, adding a wrinkle, for example, to the massive effort underway to rapidly expand crop cultivation in the so-called "bread-basket" areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
"Evidence suggests that these specific regions in the tropics may be severely affected by 2050 in terms of their crop production and livestock capacity. The window of opportunity to develop innovative solutions that can effectively overcome these challenges is limited," said Philip Thornton, a CCAFS research theme leader and one of the paper's co-authors. "Major adaptation efforts are needed now if we are to avoid serious food security and livelihood problems later."
Are You Ready for more? FREAK STORMS ARE THE NEW NORMAL
In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. Newsweek's Sharon Begley on why we're unprepared for the harrowing future, and how adapting to the inevitable might be our only option.
Joplin, Missouri, was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes' notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John's Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John's, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.
Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather's extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven't seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.
Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and arid the state's trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water. The picturesque Highway 1, sections of which are already periodically being washed out by storm surges and mudslides, will have to be rerouted inland, possibly through a mountain. These aren't scenes from another deadly weather thriller like The Day After Tomorrow.
They're all changes that California officials believe they need to brace for within the next decade or two. And they aren't alone. Across the U.S., it's just beginning to dawn on civic leaders that they'll need to help their communities brave coming dangers brought by climate change, from disappearing islands in Chesapeake Bay to dust bowls in the Plains and horrific hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet only 14 states are even planning, let alone implementing, climate-change adaptation plans, says Terri Cruce, a climate consultant in California. The other 36 apparently are hoping for a miracle.
The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction. "The Bush administration was a disaster, but the Obama administration has accomplished next to nothing either, in part because a significant part of the Democratic Party is inclined to balk on this issue as well," says economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "We [are] past the tipping point." The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject. Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a "hoax," there was no need to figure out how to adapt. "Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter," says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. "If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn't want to do." In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls "a key adaptation tool," the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them. The legacy of that: State efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent. "There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities," says Arroyo. "They've just been commandeered from other departments."
The rookies will struggle to comprehend the complex impacts of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels has raised atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide by 40 percent above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. The added heat in the atmosphere retains more moisture, ratchets up the energy in the system, and incites more violent and extreme weather. Scientists disagree about whether climate change will bring more intense or frequent tornadoes, but there is wide consensus that the 2 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming of the last century is behind the rise in sea levels, more intense hurricanes, more heat waves, and more droughts and deluges. Even if the world went carbon-neutral tomorrow, we'd be in for more: Because of the CO2 that has already been emitted, we're on track for an additional 5 degrees of warming. Batten down the hatches. "You can no longer say that the climate of the future is going to be like the climate of today, let alone yesterday," says Judi Greenwald, vice president of innovative solutions at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "In all of the plausible climate scenarios, we are going to have to change the way we do things in ways we can't even predict."
Changing temperatures will have a profound effect on the plants and animals among us. Crops that flourished in the old climate regime will have to adapt to the new one, as some pests are already doing. Tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever are reaching temperate regions, and ragweed and poison ivy thrive in the hothouse world. Yet most of us are naive about what climate-change adaptation will entail. At the benign extreme, "adapting" sounds as easy as home gardeners adjusting to their new climate zones—those colorful bands on the back of the package of zinnia seeds. It sounds as pleasant as cities planting more trees, as Chicago, New York, Boston, and scores of others are doing (with species native to the warmer climes: Chicago is subbing heat-loving sweet gum and swamp oak for the traditional white oak). And it sounds as architecturally interesting as changing roofs: New York, which is looking at an average temperature increase of up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2020, is planning to paint 3 million square feet of roofs white, to reflect sunlight and thus reduce urban heat-island effects.
But those steps don't even hint at how disruptive and expensive climate-change adaptation will be. "Ten years ago, when we thought climate change would be slow and linear, you could get away with thinking that 'adaptation' meant putting in permeable pavement" so that storm water would be absorbed rather than cause floods, says Bill McKibben, author of the 2010 book Eaarth. "Now it's clear that's not going to be at all sufficient, as we see already with disruptions in our ability to grow food, an increase in storms, and the accelerated melting of Greenland that could raise sea levels six feet. Adaptation is going to have to be a lot more than changing which trees cities plant."
As tomorrow's climate wreaks havoc on agriculture—this spring's deluges have already kept farmers from getting tractors into fields to plant corn—McKibben foresees tens of thousands more Americans having to work on farms, since human hands can do what machines cannot, like planting seeds in flooded fields. Until now, maximizing yield has been the agricultural imperative, but in the future, stability and resilience will be more important. In much of the Northeast, farmers will be unable to grow popular varieties of apples, blueberries, and cranberries, for instance; in Vermont, maple sugaring will likely go the way of ox-drawn plows.
States and cities will have to make huge investments in infrastructure to handle the encroaching sea and raging rivers. Keene, New Hampshire, for instance, has been a pioneer in climate-change adaptation, says Missy Stults, climate director of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA. The city recently enlarged culverts along its highways so storm runoff would be less likely to wash out roads. In the San Francisco Bay area, planners are considering increasing the height of the seawall on the city's waterfront and the levees at the San Francisco and Oakland airports. In Ventura, California, construction crews moved Surfer's Point 65 feet inland, the state's first experiment in "managed retreat." Because warmer air provides less lift, airport runways the world over will have to be lengthened in order for planes to take off.
In Norfolk, Virginia, where the combination of global sea-level rise and local-land subsidence has brought water levels 13.5 inches higher since 1930, the city has fought a battle to stay ahead of the tide by elevating one often-flooded roadway by 18 inches. But the neighborhood may have to be abandoned—and residents may not be much happier in neighboring parts of Maryland. An expected sea-level rise there of twice the global average means that 371 miles of highway are at risk of looking more like canals, while 2,500 historic and archeological sites could become real-life versions of Atlantis. Thousands of septic systems—5,200 in a single county near Chesapeake Bay—are in flood zones, says Zoe Johnson, who directs the climate-change adaptation program at the Department of Natural Resources.
Already, 13 islands in the bay are submerged, 400,000 acres on the Eastern Shore are on the way to joining them, and 580 acres of shoreline are lost every year as intense storms erode beaches and wetlands. Homeowners can no longer automatically get a permit to "harden" their beaches by erecting bulkheads and sea walls; they must instead plant vegetation, which may not do the trick. "It's inevitable that some of our low-lying communities will need to be relocated or abandoned," says Johnson.
Maryland is not the only place that will have to decide which communities it can afford to protect and which will have to be sacrificed. Environmental scientist Thomas Wilbanks of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who chaired a 2011 panel of the National Research Council on adapting to climate change, says: "We'll identify places with iconic value and protect them whatever the cost, even if that means Miami and New Orleans become islands" as surrounding communities are sacrificed. Given that Manhattan is already an island, architects asked to imagine its future have gone a step further: designing Venice-like canals for the southern tip.
In Alaska, six indigenous villages on the coast, including Newtok and Shishmaref, are likely to get swamped as seas rise and storm surges intensify, says Gary Kofinas of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They also sit on permafrost, which isn't "perma" anymore. As the ground melts beneath the villages, the state is figuring out how and where to relocate them. Around the world, nearly 1 billion people live in low-lying river deltas, from Guangzhou to New Orleans, that will be reclaimed by the sea, forcing tens of millions of people to migrate. It threatens to be a trail of human misery that will make the exodus after Hurricane Katrina look like a weekend getaway.
The U.S. could take some advice from other countries like the Netherlands, which has more than a little experience keeping the ocean at bay. The Dutch seem to understand just how radically different life will be. As part of a 200-year plan, the country has launched a €1.5 billion project to broaden river channels so they aren't overwhelmed as a result of the higher flows, says Pier Vellinga, professor of climate change at Wageningen University. Rotterdam raised by two feet a storm gate at the port that holds back the (rising) North Sea, and elevated the ground the new 1,700-acre port sits on by a foot and a half to keep it from being submerged, all at a cost of some €50 million. The country is also adding millions of cubic yards of sand to dunes that hold back the North Sea. All told, it will soon be spending some €4 billion a year to cope with what's coming down the pike. Britain, too, is taking adaptation seriously, planning to raise the height of the floodgates protecting central London from the Thames by 12 inches.
So what lies behind America's resistance to action? Economist Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change's impact. "The country is two decades behind in taking action because both parties are in thrall to Big Oil and Big Coal," says Sachs. "The airwaves are filled with corporate-financed climate misinformation." But the vanguard of action isn't waiting any longer. This week, representatives from an estimated 100 cities are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change. The theme is "Resilient Cities." As Joplin, Missouri, learned in the most tragic way possible, against some impacts of climate change, man's puny efforts are futile. But time is getting short, and the stakes are high. Says Daniel Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University: "Not to adapt is to consign millions of people to death and disruption."
Sharon Begley is the science columnist and science editor of Newsweek. She is the co-author of the 2002 book, The Mind and the Brain, and the author of the 2007 book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.
Joplin, Missouri, was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes' notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John's Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John's, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.
Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather's extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven't seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.
Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and arid the state's trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water. The picturesque Highway 1, sections of which are already periodically being washed out by storm surges and mudslides, will have to be rerouted inland, possibly through a mountain. These aren't scenes from another deadly weather thriller like The Day After Tomorrow.
They're all changes that California officials believe they need to brace for within the next decade or two. And they aren't alone. Across the U.S., it's just beginning to dawn on civic leaders that they'll need to help their communities brave coming dangers brought by climate change, from disappearing islands in Chesapeake Bay to dust bowls in the Plains and horrific hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet only 14 states are even planning, let alone implementing, climate-change adaptation plans, says Terri Cruce, a climate consultant in California. The other 36 apparently are hoping for a miracle.
The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction. "The Bush administration was a disaster, but the Obama administration has accomplished next to nothing either, in part because a significant part of the Democratic Party is inclined to balk on this issue as well," says economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "We [are] past the tipping point." The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject. Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a "hoax," there was no need to figure out how to adapt. "Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter," says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. "If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn't want to do." In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls "a key adaptation tool," the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them. The legacy of that: State efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent. "There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities," says Arroyo. "They've just been commandeered from other departments."
The rookies will struggle to comprehend the complex impacts of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels has raised atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide by 40 percent above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. The added heat in the atmosphere retains more moisture, ratchets up the energy in the system, and incites more violent and extreme weather. Scientists disagree about whether climate change will bring more intense or frequent tornadoes, but there is wide consensus that the 2 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming of the last century is behind the rise in sea levels, more intense hurricanes, more heat waves, and more droughts and deluges. Even if the world went carbon-neutral tomorrow, we'd be in for more: Because of the CO2 that has already been emitted, we're on track for an additional 5 degrees of warming. Batten down the hatches. "You can no longer say that the climate of the future is going to be like the climate of today, let alone yesterday," says Judi Greenwald, vice president of innovative solutions at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "In all of the plausible climate scenarios, we are going to have to change the way we do things in ways we can't even predict."
Changing temperatures will have a profound effect on the plants and animals among us. Crops that flourished in the old climate regime will have to adapt to the new one, as some pests are already doing. Tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever are reaching temperate regions, and ragweed and poison ivy thrive in the hothouse world. Yet most of us are naive about what climate-change adaptation will entail. At the benign extreme, "adapting" sounds as easy as home gardeners adjusting to their new climate zones—those colorful bands on the back of the package of zinnia seeds. It sounds as pleasant as cities planting more trees, as Chicago, New York, Boston, and scores of others are doing (with species native to the warmer climes: Chicago is subbing heat-loving sweet gum and swamp oak for the traditional white oak). And it sounds as architecturally interesting as changing roofs: New York, which is looking at an average temperature increase of up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2020, is planning to paint 3 million square feet of roofs white, to reflect sunlight and thus reduce urban heat-island effects.
But those steps don't even hint at how disruptive and expensive climate-change adaptation will be. "Ten years ago, when we thought climate change would be slow and linear, you could get away with thinking that 'adaptation' meant putting in permeable pavement" so that storm water would be absorbed rather than cause floods, says Bill McKibben, author of the 2010 book Eaarth. "Now it's clear that's not going to be at all sufficient, as we see already with disruptions in our ability to grow food, an increase in storms, and the accelerated melting of Greenland that could raise sea levels six feet. Adaptation is going to have to be a lot more than changing which trees cities plant."
As tomorrow's climate wreaks havoc on agriculture—this spring's deluges have already kept farmers from getting tractors into fields to plant corn—McKibben foresees tens of thousands more Americans having to work on farms, since human hands can do what machines cannot, like planting seeds in flooded fields. Until now, maximizing yield has been the agricultural imperative, but in the future, stability and resilience will be more important. In much of the Northeast, farmers will be unable to grow popular varieties of apples, blueberries, and cranberries, for instance; in Vermont, maple sugaring will likely go the way of ox-drawn plows.
States and cities will have to make huge investments in infrastructure to handle the encroaching sea and raging rivers. Keene, New Hampshire, for instance, has been a pioneer in climate-change adaptation, says Missy Stults, climate director of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA. The city recently enlarged culverts along its highways so storm runoff would be less likely to wash out roads. In the San Francisco Bay area, planners are considering increasing the height of the seawall on the city's waterfront and the levees at the San Francisco and Oakland airports. In Ventura, California, construction crews moved Surfer's Point 65 feet inland, the state's first experiment in "managed retreat." Because warmer air provides less lift, airport runways the world over will have to be lengthened in order for planes to take off.
In Norfolk, Virginia, where the combination of global sea-level rise and local-land subsidence has brought water levels 13.5 inches higher since 1930, the city has fought a battle to stay ahead of the tide by elevating one often-flooded roadway by 18 inches. But the neighborhood may have to be abandoned—and residents may not be much happier in neighboring parts of Maryland. An expected sea-level rise there of twice the global average means that 371 miles of highway are at risk of looking more like canals, while 2,500 historic and archeological sites could become real-life versions of Atlantis. Thousands of septic systems—5,200 in a single county near Chesapeake Bay—are in flood zones, says Zoe Johnson, who directs the climate-change adaptation program at the Department of Natural Resources.
Already, 13 islands in the bay are submerged, 400,000 acres on the Eastern Shore are on the way to joining them, and 580 acres of shoreline are lost every year as intense storms erode beaches and wetlands. Homeowners can no longer automatically get a permit to "harden" their beaches by erecting bulkheads and sea walls; they must instead plant vegetation, which may not do the trick. "It's inevitable that some of our low-lying communities will need to be relocated or abandoned," says Johnson.
Maryland is not the only place that will have to decide which communities it can afford to protect and which will have to be sacrificed. Environmental scientist Thomas Wilbanks of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who chaired a 2011 panel of the National Research Council on adapting to climate change, says: "We'll identify places with iconic value and protect them whatever the cost, even if that means Miami and New Orleans become islands" as surrounding communities are sacrificed. Given that Manhattan is already an island, architects asked to imagine its future have gone a step further: designing Venice-like canals for the southern tip.
In Alaska, six indigenous villages on the coast, including Newtok and Shishmaref, are likely to get swamped as seas rise and storm surges intensify, says Gary Kofinas of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They also sit on permafrost, which isn't "perma" anymore. As the ground melts beneath the villages, the state is figuring out how and where to relocate them. Around the world, nearly 1 billion people live in low-lying river deltas, from Guangzhou to New Orleans, that will be reclaimed by the sea, forcing tens of millions of people to migrate. It threatens to be a trail of human misery that will make the exodus after Hurricane Katrina look like a weekend getaway.
The U.S. could take some advice from other countries like the Netherlands, which has more than a little experience keeping the ocean at bay. The Dutch seem to understand just how radically different life will be. As part of a 200-year plan, the country has launched a €1.5 billion project to broaden river channels so they aren't overwhelmed as a result of the higher flows, says Pier Vellinga, professor of climate change at Wageningen University. Rotterdam raised by two feet a storm gate at the port that holds back the (rising) North Sea, and elevated the ground the new 1,700-acre port sits on by a foot and a half to keep it from being submerged, all at a cost of some €50 million. The country is also adding millions of cubic yards of sand to dunes that hold back the North Sea. All told, it will soon be spending some €4 billion a year to cope with what's coming down the pike. Britain, too, is taking adaptation seriously, planning to raise the height of the floodgates protecting central London from the Thames by 12 inches.
So what lies behind America's resistance to action? Economist Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change's impact. "The country is two decades behind in taking action because both parties are in thrall to Big Oil and Big Coal," says Sachs. "The airwaves are filled with corporate-financed climate misinformation." But the vanguard of action isn't waiting any longer. This week, representatives from an estimated 100 cities are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change. The theme is "Resilient Cities." As Joplin, Missouri, learned in the most tragic way possible, against some impacts of climate change, man's puny efforts are futile. But time is getting short, and the stakes are high. Says Daniel Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University: "Not to adapt is to consign millions of people to death and disruption."
Sharon Begley is the science columnist and science editor of Newsweek. She is the co-author of the 2002 book, The Mind and the Brain, and the author of the 2007 book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.
DEAD ZONE IN THE GULF IS EXPANDING
Reprinted from The New York Times
BY LESLIE KAUFMAN
As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year — given record flooding — is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.
Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.
For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states &that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.
The lack of formal action upstream has long been maddening to the downstream states most affected by the pollution, and the extreme flooding this year has only increased the tensions.
“Considering the current circumstances, it is extremely frustrating not seeing E.P.A. take more direct action,” said Matt Rota, director of science and water policy for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental advocacy group in New Orleans that has renewed its calls for federally enforced targets. “We have tried solely voluntary mechanisms to reduce this pollution for a decade and have only seen the dead zone get bigger.”
Environmental Protection Agency officials said they had no immediate plans to force the issue, but farmers in the Mississippi Basin are worried. That is because only six months ago, the agency stepped in at the Chesapeake Bay, another watershed with similar runoff issues, and set total maximum daily loads for those same pollutants in nearby waterways. If the states do not reduce enough pollution over time, the agency could penalize them in a variety of ways, including increasing federal oversight of state programs or denying new wastewater permitting rights, which could hamper development. The agency says it is too soon to evaluate their progress in reducing pollution.
Don Parish, senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group, says behind that policy is the faulty assumption that farmers fertilize too much or too casually. Since 1980, he said, farmers have increased corn yields by 80 percent while at the same time reducing their nitrate use by 4 percent through precision farming.
“We are on the razor’s edge,” Mr. Parish said. “When you get to the point where you are taking more from the soil than you are putting in, then you have to worry about productivity.”
Dead zones are areas of the ocean where low oxygen levels can stress or kill bottom-dwelling organisms that cannot escape and cause fish to leave the area. Excess nutrients transported to the gulf each year during spring floods promote algal growth. As the algae die and decompose, oxygen is consumed, creating the dead zone. The largest dead zone was measured in 2002 at about 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. Shrimp fishermen complain of being hurt the most by the dead zones as shrimp are less able to relocate — but the precise impacts on species are still being studied.
The United States Geological Survey has found that nine states along the Mississippi contribute 75 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus. The survey found that corn and soybean crops were the largest contributors to the nitrogen in the runoff, and manure was a large contributor to the amount of phosphorus.
There are many other factors, of course, that determine what elements make it from crops into river water, for example, whether watersheds are protected by wetlands or buffer strips of land.
John Downing, a biogeochemist and limnologist at Iowa State University, said structural issues were also to blame. Many farms in Iowa, he said, are built on former wetlands and have drains right under the crop roots that whisk water away before soils can absorb and hold on to at least some of the fertilizer.
Still, overapplication of fertilizers remains a key contributor, he said. “For farmers, the consequences of applying too little is much riskier than putting too much on.”
Hemmed in by the antiregulatory mood of Congress and high food costs, the Obama administration has looked to combat Mississippi River pollution through an incentive program introduced in 2009 by the Department of Agriculture that encourages a variety of grass-roots solutions, from wetlands creation to educating farmers on just-in-time application.
The Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative provides $320 million in grant money, which has so far been spread among 700 projects in 12 states, projects proposed by farmers, environmental groups and local governments. So far, the department says the results are quite promising. Phosphorus and nitrogen found in surface runoff from 150,000 acres enrolled in the program have decreased by nearly 50 percent.
That amount of land is just a drop in the bucket for the vast Mississippi watershed, but Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thought it was promising enough to invite the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, to visit one of the farms in the program.
“There is fear, real fear, in Iowa that we’ll take what we’re doing in Chesapeake Bay and transfer it here without regard to what’s already happening on the ground,” she said during her trip in April, adding she appreciated the opportunity “to ensure that isn’t our approach.”
Mr. Vilsack said that farmers had come a long way toward understanding their effect on ecosystems downstream and that what they needed were government incentives and creation of private markets — where, for example, farmers who do a lot of conservation could receive payments from farmers who do not — to help them improve environmental safeguards while they also keep food production high.
“A lot of folks are basing criticism and concerns on the way agriculture was, not the way it is now,” Mr. Vilsack said in a phone interview. “We as a nation have an expansive appetite for inexpensive food. To produce more, you have to turn to strategies like chemicals and pesticides.”
That stance infuriates Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now!, an Iowa nonprofit that advocates for smaller organic farms. He argues that voluntary programs are a subterfuge.
“As is standard in Iowa and other states, voluntary regulation by the polluters and the industry themselves is the preferred method of getting around any serious environmental enforcement,” he said.
Even some farmers do not disagree. Chris Petersen, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, which represents small farmers, said the country’s policy were not working. “We’ve been trying to do this for years, and we are just not turning the corner.”
BY LESLIE KAUFMAN
As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year — given record flooding — is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.
Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.
For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states &that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.
The lack of formal action upstream has long been maddening to the downstream states most affected by the pollution, and the extreme flooding this year has only increased the tensions.
“Considering the current circumstances, it is extremely frustrating not seeing E.P.A. take more direct action,” said Matt Rota, director of science and water policy for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental advocacy group in New Orleans that has renewed its calls for federally enforced targets. “We have tried solely voluntary mechanisms to reduce this pollution for a decade and have only seen the dead zone get bigger.”
Environmental Protection Agency officials said they had no immediate plans to force the issue, but farmers in the Mississippi Basin are worried. That is because only six months ago, the agency stepped in at the Chesapeake Bay, another watershed with similar runoff issues, and set total maximum daily loads for those same pollutants in nearby waterways. If the states do not reduce enough pollution over time, the agency could penalize them in a variety of ways, including increasing federal oversight of state programs or denying new wastewater permitting rights, which could hamper development. The agency says it is too soon to evaluate their progress in reducing pollution.
Don Parish, senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group, says behind that policy is the faulty assumption that farmers fertilize too much or too casually. Since 1980, he said, farmers have increased corn yields by 80 percent while at the same time reducing their nitrate use by 4 percent through precision farming.
“We are on the razor’s edge,” Mr. Parish said. “When you get to the point where you are taking more from the soil than you are putting in, then you have to worry about productivity.”
Dead zones are areas of the ocean where low oxygen levels can stress or kill bottom-dwelling organisms that cannot escape and cause fish to leave the area. Excess nutrients transported to the gulf each year during spring floods promote algal growth. As the algae die and decompose, oxygen is consumed, creating the dead zone. The largest dead zone was measured in 2002 at about 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. Shrimp fishermen complain of being hurt the most by the dead zones as shrimp are less able to relocate — but the precise impacts on species are still being studied.
The United States Geological Survey has found that nine states along the Mississippi contribute 75 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus. The survey found that corn and soybean crops were the largest contributors to the nitrogen in the runoff, and manure was a large contributor to the amount of phosphorus.
There are many other factors, of course, that determine what elements make it from crops into river water, for example, whether watersheds are protected by wetlands or buffer strips of land.
John Downing, a biogeochemist and limnologist at Iowa State University, said structural issues were also to blame. Many farms in Iowa, he said, are built on former wetlands and have drains right under the crop roots that whisk water away before soils can absorb and hold on to at least some of the fertilizer.
Still, overapplication of fertilizers remains a key contributor, he said. “For farmers, the consequences of applying too little is much riskier than putting too much on.”
Hemmed in by the antiregulatory mood of Congress and high food costs, the Obama administration has looked to combat Mississippi River pollution through an incentive program introduced in 2009 by the Department of Agriculture that encourages a variety of grass-roots solutions, from wetlands creation to educating farmers on just-in-time application.
The Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative provides $320 million in grant money, which has so far been spread among 700 projects in 12 states, projects proposed by farmers, environmental groups and local governments. So far, the department says the results are quite promising. Phosphorus and nitrogen found in surface runoff from 150,000 acres enrolled in the program have decreased by nearly 50 percent.
That amount of land is just a drop in the bucket for the vast Mississippi watershed, but Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thought it was promising enough to invite the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, to visit one of the farms in the program.
“There is fear, real fear, in Iowa that we’ll take what we’re doing in Chesapeake Bay and transfer it here without regard to what’s already happening on the ground,” she said during her trip in April, adding she appreciated the opportunity “to ensure that isn’t our approach.”
Mr. Vilsack said that farmers had come a long way toward understanding their effect on ecosystems downstream and that what they needed were government incentives and creation of private markets — where, for example, farmers who do a lot of conservation could receive payments from farmers who do not — to help them improve environmental safeguards while they also keep food production high.
“A lot of folks are basing criticism and concerns on the way agriculture was, not the way it is now,” Mr. Vilsack said in a phone interview. “We as a nation have an expansive appetite for inexpensive food. To produce more, you have to turn to strategies like chemicals and pesticides.”
That stance infuriates Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now!, an Iowa nonprofit that advocates for smaller organic farms. He argues that voluntary programs are a subterfuge.
“As is standard in Iowa and other states, voluntary regulation by the polluters and the industry themselves is the preferred method of getting around any serious environmental enforcement,” he said.
Even some farmers do not disagree. Chris Petersen, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, which represents small farmers, said the country’s policy were not working. “We’ve been trying to do this for years, and we are just not turning the corner.”
Thursday, June 2, 2011
E. coli: Russia bans import of EU vegetables
Russia has banned the import of all fresh vegetables from the European Union because of the E. coli outbreak centred on Germany.
The country's chief medical officer said EU-produced vegetables would be seized across Russia.
More than 1,500 people have been infected by enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can cause the deadly haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS).
Seventeen people have died - 16 of them in Germany and one in Sweden.
The World Health Organization says that the E. coli bacterium behind the outbreak is a new, mutant strain.
Earlier suggestions that infected Spanish cucumbers were the source of the outbreak have now been discounted, with German health officials admitting they do not know where this particularly virulent strain of of E.coli has come from.
The EU regarded the Russian ban as "disproportionate" and would be lodging a protest, European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said.
He added that the total value of EU exports of fresh vegetables to Russia was 600m euros a year, a quarter of the total exported. Spain, France, Germany and Poland are the biggest exporters.
Russia banned vegetable imports from Germany and Spain earlier this week.
C
Analysis
Stephen Evans
BBC News, Berlin
At the Turkish market in Berlin, the few stalls that have decided to offer cucumbers have big piles of unsold ones, unsold even with the word "Holland" written all over the labels. And even at half the normal price - 99 cents (£0.86) instead of the usual two euros a kilo.
There are tomatoes too - great big, red ones - piles of them, unsold and squashy.
When I left in the early afternoon, they were already being tipped by the pile into the big waste bins at the entrance by Yorckstrasse S-Bahn station.
The traders do their best, shouting out the bargains in Turkish and German. But you cannot beat fear, and that is what consumers now have.
Germany loses its taste for salad
Consumer protection agency head Gennady Onishchenko announced the the extension of the ban to cover fresh vegetables from anywhere in the European Union.
He said orders to stop all incoming European vegetable shipments had been issued to Russian customs authorities, adding: "I call on people to forgo imported vegetables in favour of domestic products."
He criticised food safety standards in the EU.
"This shows that Europe's lauded health legislation - one which Russia is being urged to adopt - does not work," he said.
Hamburg cluster
The head of the German public health body tackling the E. coli outbreak says it may be months before it stops, depending on whether infected food is still in warehouses and whether the original source is still active.
Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told the BBC "we may never know" the infections' source.
Continue reading the main story below,
HUS cases and deaths, by country
Germany: 470 cases, 16 deaths
Sweden: 15 cases, one death
Denmark: Seven cases
The Netherlands: Three cases
UK: Three cases
Spain: One case
Sources: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Robert Koch Institute, UK Health Protection Agency
At least 365 new E. coli cases were reported on Wednesday, a quarter of them involving HUS, a condition associated with bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure, the Robert Koch Institute said.
Spain is seeking compensation after German authorities initially alleged a link between Spanish vegetables and the deadly strain of bacteria, causing sales to collapse. The loss of earnings for affected farmers in Spain has been estimated at more than 200 million euros ($290 million) per week.
The European Commission lifted its warning over the Spanish cucumbers on Wednesday, saying tests "did not confirm the presence of the specific serotype (O104), which is responsible for the outbreak affecting humans."
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain would "seek reparations before the relevant authorities in Europe".
In an interview with Spanish national radio, he said: "Yesterday, it became clear, with the analyses carried out by the Spanish agency for food safety, that there is not the slightest indication that the origin of the serious infection is any Spanish product.
"Now we have a very ambitious task ahead of us, which is to recover our good reputation as soon as possible and the trade in all Spanish products."
Mr Burger said German authorities had tried to balance risks when they wrongly blamed Spanish farms. He said the authorities had to act quickly - even though the conclusion later turned out to be wrong.
Continue reading below,
Health advice
Wash fruit and vegetables before eating them
Peel or cook fruit and vegetables
Wash hands regularly to prevent person-to-person spread of E. coli strain
Source: UK Health Protection Agency
"We wanted to avoid new infection sources. It's a difficult balance," he said. "You don't want to wait a long time and on the other hand you don't want to cry wolf."
In addition to Germany, cases of EHEC have also been reported in eight other European countries - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Virtually all the sick people either live in Germany or recently travelled there.
Several countries have taken steps to curtail the outbreak, such as banning cucumber imports and removing the vegetables from sale.
Health authorities have also advised people to wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly, to do the same with all cutlery and plates, and to wash their hands before meals.
The country's chief medical officer said EU-produced vegetables would be seized across Russia.
More than 1,500 people have been infected by enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can cause the deadly haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS).
Seventeen people have died - 16 of them in Germany and one in Sweden.
The World Health Organization says that the E. coli bacterium behind the outbreak is a new, mutant strain.
Earlier suggestions that infected Spanish cucumbers were the source of the outbreak have now been discounted, with German health officials admitting they do not know where this particularly virulent strain of of E.coli has come from.
The EU regarded the Russian ban as "disproportionate" and would be lodging a protest, European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said.
He added that the total value of EU exports of fresh vegetables to Russia was 600m euros a year, a quarter of the total exported. Spain, France, Germany and Poland are the biggest exporters.
Russia banned vegetable imports from Germany and Spain earlier this week.
C
Analysis
Stephen Evans
BBC News, Berlin
At the Turkish market in Berlin, the few stalls that have decided to offer cucumbers have big piles of unsold ones, unsold even with the word "Holland" written all over the labels. And even at half the normal price - 99 cents (£0.86) instead of the usual two euros a kilo.
There are tomatoes too - great big, red ones - piles of them, unsold and squashy.
When I left in the early afternoon, they were already being tipped by the pile into the big waste bins at the entrance by Yorckstrasse S-Bahn station.
The traders do their best, shouting out the bargains in Turkish and German. But you cannot beat fear, and that is what consumers now have.
Germany loses its taste for salad
Consumer protection agency head Gennady Onishchenko announced the the extension of the ban to cover fresh vegetables from anywhere in the European Union.
He said orders to stop all incoming European vegetable shipments had been issued to Russian customs authorities, adding: "I call on people to forgo imported vegetables in favour of domestic products."
He criticised food safety standards in the EU.
"This shows that Europe's lauded health legislation - one which Russia is being urged to adopt - does not work," he said.
Hamburg cluster
The head of the German public health body tackling the E. coli outbreak says it may be months before it stops, depending on whether infected food is still in warehouses and whether the original source is still active.
Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told the BBC "we may never know" the infections' source.
Continue reading the main story below,
HUS cases and deaths, by country
Germany: 470 cases, 16 deaths
Sweden: 15 cases, one death
Denmark: Seven cases
The Netherlands: Three cases
UK: Three cases
Spain: One case
Sources: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Robert Koch Institute, UK Health Protection Agency
At least 365 new E. coli cases were reported on Wednesday, a quarter of them involving HUS, a condition associated with bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure, the Robert Koch Institute said.
Spain is seeking compensation after German authorities initially alleged a link between Spanish vegetables and the deadly strain of bacteria, causing sales to collapse. The loss of earnings for affected farmers in Spain has been estimated at more than 200 million euros ($290 million) per week.
The European Commission lifted its warning over the Spanish cucumbers on Wednesday, saying tests "did not confirm the presence of the specific serotype (O104), which is responsible for the outbreak affecting humans."
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain would "seek reparations before the relevant authorities in Europe".
In an interview with Spanish national radio, he said: "Yesterday, it became clear, with the analyses carried out by the Spanish agency for food safety, that there is not the slightest indication that the origin of the serious infection is any Spanish product.
"Now we have a very ambitious task ahead of us, which is to recover our good reputation as soon as possible and the trade in all Spanish products."
Mr Burger said German authorities had tried to balance risks when they wrongly blamed Spanish farms. He said the authorities had to act quickly - even though the conclusion later turned out to be wrong.
Continue reading below,
Health advice
Wash fruit and vegetables before eating them
Peel or cook fruit and vegetables
Wash hands regularly to prevent person-to-person spread of E. coli strain
Source: UK Health Protection Agency
"We wanted to avoid new infection sources. It's a difficult balance," he said. "You don't want to wait a long time and on the other hand you don't want to cry wolf."
In addition to Germany, cases of EHEC have also been reported in eight other European countries - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Virtually all the sick people either live in Germany or recently travelled there.
Several countries have taken steps to curtail the outbreak, such as banning cucumber imports and removing the vegetables from sale.
Health authorities have also advised people to wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly, to do the same with all cutlery and plates, and to wash their hands before meals.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Ocean Acidification Will Likely Reduce Diversity, Resiliency in Coral Reef Ecosystems
ScienceDaily (May 29, 2011) — A new study from University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science scientists Chris Langdon, Remy Okazaki and Nancy Muehllehner and colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany concludes that ocean acidification, along with increased ocean temperatures, will likely severely reduce the diversity and resilience of coral reef ecosystems within this century.
The research team studied three natural volcanic CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea to better understand how ocean acidification will impact coral reefs ecosystem diversity. The study details the effects of long-term exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide and low pH on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, a condition that is projected to occur by the end of the century as increased human-made CO2 emissions alter the current pH level of seawater, turning the oceans acidic.
"These 'champagne reefs' are natural analogs of how coral reefs may look in 100 years if ocean acidification conditions continue to get worse," said Langdon, UM Rosenstiel School professor and co-principal investigator of the study.
The study shows shifts in the composition of coral species and reductions in biodiversity and recruitment on the reef as pH declined from 8.1 to 7.8. The team also reports that reef development would cease at a pH below 7.7. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report estimates that by the end of the century, ocean pH will decline from the current level of 8.1 to 7.8, due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
"The seeps are probably the closest we can come to simulating the effect of human-made CO2 emissions on a coral reef," said Langdon. "They allow us to see the end result of the complex interactions between species under acidic ocean conditions."
The reefs detailed in this study have healthy reefs nearby to supply larvae to replenish the reefs. If pH was low throughout the region -- as projected for year 2100 -- then there would not be any healthy reefs to reseed damaged ones, according to Langdon.
The research was funded by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the University of Miami, and the Max-Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology through the Bioacid Project (03F0608C).
The research team studied three natural volcanic CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea to better understand how ocean acidification will impact coral reefs ecosystem diversity. The study details the effects of long-term exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide and low pH on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, a condition that is projected to occur by the end of the century as increased human-made CO2 emissions alter the current pH level of seawater, turning the oceans acidic.
"These 'champagne reefs' are natural analogs of how coral reefs may look in 100 years if ocean acidification conditions continue to get worse," said Langdon, UM Rosenstiel School professor and co-principal investigator of the study.
The study shows shifts in the composition of coral species and reductions in biodiversity and recruitment on the reef as pH declined from 8.1 to 7.8. The team also reports that reef development would cease at a pH below 7.7. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report estimates that by the end of the century, ocean pH will decline from the current level of 8.1 to 7.8, due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
"The seeps are probably the closest we can come to simulating the effect of human-made CO2 emissions on a coral reef," said Langdon. "They allow us to see the end result of the complex interactions between species under acidic ocean conditions."
The reefs detailed in this study have healthy reefs nearby to supply larvae to replenish the reefs. If pH was low throughout the region -- as projected for year 2100 -- then there would not be any healthy reefs to reseed damaged ones, according to Langdon.
The research was funded by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the University of Miami, and the Max-Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology through the Bioacid Project (03F0608C).
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Farming the future
With every project we bring forth, The Waters Wheel provides fresh, organic foods and enables truly sustainable gardens and farms in places where the ability to grow is limited by poor terrain, infertile soil or lack of soil, lack of space, or shortage of water. Even a busy schedule or lack of farming experience pose no limitation to a system of growing that is self-feeding, self-irrigating, requires no weeding or tilling of soil, is not plagued by earth-burrowing pests, produces more in less space, and grows food faster by magnitudes.
Our most recent installation is atHollygrove Market and Farm, New Orleans LA. This project supports the community in and around the Hollygrove District community of New Orleans and is offering families a chance at self-sustainability where decent, affordable markets are still scarce in the years-long wake following hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, The Waters Wheel is actively supporting the LAUSD School Gardens Project with placement of vertical gardens at Micheltorena School and Thomas Starr King Middle School. We are also actively engaged in bringing relief to victims of flooding and tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, projects that were just beginning to take form when those disasters emerged... at least we're there and able to provide assistance and hope.
Find out how you can get involved... rafael@waterswheel.org ...
You can help, or you can have your own garden, single or multiple Towers.
Why do we focus on children? Because we farm the future and the future is theirs. If we fail to tend that garden, we fail the future. In time, it will be shown, there is nothing more important for concerned people to nurture. As we build a better future, the most critical structural component is a firm foundation... We can no longer afford to leave any child uncared for or forgotten. The future is built on them.
In mid-2009, prior to founding The Waters Wheel, I did a survey of child nutrition in the United States. I focused firstly on Native Americans in the United States, the smallest and least privileged minority among us. I visited several reservations, interviewed social services groups, the people themselves, community agencies, and leaders of tribal government.
In many reservation settings, where fresh foods are scarce, few farming opportunities exist. The authors of original treaties routinely relegated native tribes to unfarmable land, hardscrabble in the best cases. In worst cases, the land was re-visited in modern times by industry under color of government authority, exploited and left wasted or poisonous. Since the Cold War era, the Navajo nation is unable to farm land that was left damaged and radioactive after Oklahoma-based Kerr-McGee Corp. came in to operate uranium mines under U.S. government contracts, removing four million tons of ore that went into making nuclear weapons and fuel. These stories are repeated everywhere, throughout the thorny history of civil rights that we have inherited from our forebears.
As a consequence of these factors, processed foods, low on nutrition and high in unhealthful ingredients, are common in reservation towns. Child obesity and Type 2 Diabetes are common there, for a complex of reasons discussed below.
In southern Louisiana, early in the 20th century and along the Gulf of Mexico, ancestral native lands were crisscrossed without permit by the oil industry. Companies routinely trenched through the wetlands to lay their pipelines. Combined with the effect of levee construction, logging of the cypress forests, and the historic BP failure in 2010, land along the coast is today disappearing at the rate of a football-field's area (cumulative) every 38 minutes.
There, the coastline disintegrates as saltwater infiltrates where trenching creates breaks. Salt parches the grasses, steadily widens the cuts. From the early 1900s through today, originally narrow trenches have exponentially expanded, 2x their width every 10 years. By 2011, the sea has swallowed up vast tracts of Pointe-au Chie and Houma Lands. Agriculture, if it exists today, is rarely productive. The area is remote and people are left to fend for themselves. Typically, they build above water, on stilts, where roads have disappeared and access is by boat. Here, stores and markets are few. The history is raw, painful, in these places, where the land gives in daily to a relentless sea. Nutrition becomes a catch-as-catch-can proposition.
Beyond the reservation, in many American cities, a similar pattern of nutrition takes hold, although in starkly different ways. Although the higher tide of seeming affluence helps to lift urban and suburban neighborhoods, food deserts are common throughout America. Overall, nineteen of the 48 contiguous states are rated by USDA as below average for food security. Everywhere, underprivileged communities have become a prime marketplace for purveyors of cheap, fast-foods, laden with salt, sugar, and fats. These foods are addictive by design, meaning that the satiating of hunger compels the poor toward unhealthful lifestyles and habits.
The character and key trigger to failed and undernourished development in our society is hunger that stands side by side with overeating of low-nutrition, convenience-foods. Health problems result from diets heavy in processed chemicals that are light on fresh, living foods. Eventually, this is what buries people, where no alternative exists. Children are the worst loss. As time passes, child victims become prisoners to a life of indolence, addiction, and despair. Where there is access to nutritious foods, the opposite is true.
There are two "Golden Rules" of declining civilizations: (1) He that has the gold makes the rules and (2) Where inferior foods flood the marketplace, nutritious foods become unaffordable.
The clear, bright line that this dynamic establishes is what causes disparity between rich and poor communities, the uneven access to healthy living. In general, processed food industries see poverty as an opportunity. They resist any attempt to require improvement in the food they sell and lobby hard against any kind of regulation. No surprise to discover obesity and diet-related disease occurring among urban and suburban children. Among those afflicted, a great number are destined for lives limited by health issues. Poorly equipped to participate in a highly competitive society, many of those most closely situated at the precarious edge become the first to fall, homeless or worse, further victimized by their circumstance and those who prey on the desperate. This is the circle that must be broken. Even as we debate Medicare and health insurance in the halls of Congress, these are the factors that work against any solution EVER being successful. Food security is foundational to our health, to the health of our economy, to national security, and the continued success of American democracy. How many generations will continue to ignore that reality? Clearly, the answer is, as many as it takes for us to fail or, conversely, as many as it will take for us to succeed. Much is said about free will... There is no better proof of it than this: We get to choose our future.
In the last twenty years, mechanized food production has consolidated its economic hold over an expanding population of poor people. Slick marketing, catchy jingles and tunes, toys and games offered to children, confusing and misleading labeling by manufacturers are weapons brought to bear by profit-hungry food industries against the hungry. Furthermore, because health problems associated with deficient nutrition take time to emerge, fast-food industries are able to effectively marginalize the production of healthful, organic foods by cynically attracting the purchasing power of the unsuspecting poor. Therefore, demand for quality foods is pushed to the other end of the spectrum, to those who can afford higher priced foods, and, again, the circle is unbroken... only the affluent can afford to eat healthfully. Overpopulation and poverty has served the economic needs of processed food industries (and other processors, as well) hemming producers of healthful foods into a tightly limited marketplace of affluence, where more money is held by fewer people.
Running in parallel, industrial agriculture has become dependent on synthetic (petrochemical) fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives, and genetically modified organisms for production of major food staples needed to supply processed food producers. THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY IS.
By now, It's clear: market forces are developing a permanently handicapped underclass that will be useful only for consumption of low-quality, but cheap, processed foods, useless for little else but very good at keeping high the cost of healthcare. Who set us up to fail so miserably... you have to ask yourself?
Globally, about one billion are hungry and one billion are overweight. Hunger feeds industries that grow by providing low-quality foods to the poorest and most overpopulated societies. And because that deficient fare is distributed only in places where a profit can be made for the effort, the poorest of the poor get no nutrition at all. On down the scale of affluence, the marginally poor tend to be overweight or morbidly obese, the penniless are starving. Which is not to say that rich people don't suffer from obesity, lack of exercise, and poor nutrition; it's just that they enjoy access to alternatives. The poor do not.
How do we achieve a more hopeful future? The answer is teaching children, affluent, middle class, and the poor to grow their own nutritious foods WHERE THEY LIVE and to learn an appreciation for the value of farming practices. Farming is a knowledge that has become all but obliterated in modern times, as we have become too well-trained in leaving food production in the hands of industrial monoliths that, in turn, are unshakeable in their tendency to be self-serving. It's time to return to the garden.
By September, 2011, The Waters Wheel will also pursue placement of Aeroponic Towers at New Orleans public and private schools; also in schools and community gardens in Birmingham and Montgomery AL, and St. Louis MO. We will provide the tools for making a difference.
Who are we, the humans, after all is said and done? Flesh and bone and the blood of ancestors, we are a verb of this Earth and our children extend us to the future. All of us, every man and woman, are fathers and mothers of times to come. More than anything else, who our children are, what they do throughout their lives is the measure of who_we_are and how everything we will have done will be remembered. The character of our actions today is how our story will be told tomorrow.
Our most recent installation is atHollygrove Market and Farm, New Orleans LA. This project supports the community in and around the Hollygrove District community of New Orleans and is offering families a chance at self-sustainability where decent, affordable markets are still scarce in the years-long wake following hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, The Waters Wheel is actively supporting the LAUSD School Gardens Project with placement of vertical gardens at Micheltorena School and Thomas Starr King Middle School. We are also actively engaged in bringing relief to victims of flooding and tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, projects that were just beginning to take form when those disasters emerged... at least we're there and able to provide assistance and hope.
Find out how you can get involved... rafael@waterswheel.org ...
You can help, or you can have your own garden, single or multiple Towers.
Why do we focus on children? Because we farm the future and the future is theirs. If we fail to tend that garden, we fail the future. In time, it will be shown, there is nothing more important for concerned people to nurture. As we build a better future, the most critical structural component is a firm foundation... We can no longer afford to leave any child uncared for or forgotten. The future is built on them.
In mid-2009, prior to founding The Waters Wheel, I did a survey of child nutrition in the United States. I focused firstly on Native Americans in the United States, the smallest and least privileged minority among us. I visited several reservations, interviewed social services groups, the people themselves, community agencies, and leaders of tribal government.
In many reservation settings, where fresh foods are scarce, few farming opportunities exist. The authors of original treaties routinely relegated native tribes to unfarmable land, hardscrabble in the best cases. In worst cases, the land was re-visited in modern times by industry under color of government authority, exploited and left wasted or poisonous. Since the Cold War era, the Navajo nation is unable to farm land that was left damaged and radioactive after Oklahoma-based Kerr-McGee Corp. came in to operate uranium mines under U.S. government contracts, removing four million tons of ore that went into making nuclear weapons and fuel. These stories are repeated everywhere, throughout the thorny history of civil rights that we have inherited from our forebears.
As a consequence of these factors, processed foods, low on nutrition and high in unhealthful ingredients, are common in reservation towns. Child obesity and Type 2 Diabetes are common there, for a complex of reasons discussed below.
In southern Louisiana, early in the 20th century and along the Gulf of Mexico, ancestral native lands were crisscrossed without permit by the oil industry. Companies routinely trenched through the wetlands to lay their pipelines. Combined with the effect of levee construction, logging of the cypress forests, and the historic BP failure in 2010, land along the coast is today disappearing at the rate of a football-field's area (cumulative) every 38 minutes.
There, the coastline disintegrates as saltwater infiltrates where trenching creates breaks. Salt parches the grasses, steadily widens the cuts. From the early 1900s through today, originally narrow trenches have exponentially expanded, 2x their width every 10 years. By 2011, the sea has swallowed up vast tracts of Pointe-au Chie and Houma Lands. Agriculture, if it exists today, is rarely productive. The area is remote and people are left to fend for themselves. Typically, they build above water, on stilts, where roads have disappeared and access is by boat. Here, stores and markets are few. The history is raw, painful, in these places, where the land gives in daily to a relentless sea. Nutrition becomes a catch-as-catch-can proposition.
Beyond the reservation, in many American cities, a similar pattern of nutrition takes hold, although in starkly different ways. Although the higher tide of seeming affluence helps to lift urban and suburban neighborhoods, food deserts are common throughout America. Overall, nineteen of the 48 contiguous states are rated by USDA as below average for food security. Everywhere, underprivileged communities have become a prime marketplace for purveyors of cheap, fast-foods, laden with salt, sugar, and fats. These foods are addictive by design, meaning that the satiating of hunger compels the poor toward unhealthful lifestyles and habits.
The character and key trigger to failed and undernourished development in our society is hunger that stands side by side with overeating of low-nutrition, convenience-foods. Health problems result from diets heavy in processed chemicals that are light on fresh, living foods. Eventually, this is what buries people, where no alternative exists. Children are the worst loss. As time passes, child victims become prisoners to a life of indolence, addiction, and despair. Where there is access to nutritious foods, the opposite is true.
There are two "Golden Rules" of declining civilizations: (1) He that has the gold makes the rules and (2) Where inferior foods flood the marketplace, nutritious foods become unaffordable.
The clear, bright line that this dynamic establishes is what causes disparity between rich and poor communities, the uneven access to healthy living. In general, processed food industries see poverty as an opportunity. They resist any attempt to require improvement in the food they sell and lobby hard against any kind of regulation. No surprise to discover obesity and diet-related disease occurring among urban and suburban children. Among those afflicted, a great number are destined for lives limited by health issues. Poorly equipped to participate in a highly competitive society, many of those most closely situated at the precarious edge become the first to fall, homeless or worse, further victimized by their circumstance and those who prey on the desperate. This is the circle that must be broken. Even as we debate Medicare and health insurance in the halls of Congress, these are the factors that work against any solution EVER being successful. Food security is foundational to our health, to the health of our economy, to national security, and the continued success of American democracy. How many generations will continue to ignore that reality? Clearly, the answer is, as many as it takes for us to fail or, conversely, as many as it will take for us to succeed. Much is said about free will... There is no better proof of it than this: We get to choose our future.
In the last twenty years, mechanized food production has consolidated its economic hold over an expanding population of poor people. Slick marketing, catchy jingles and tunes, toys and games offered to children, confusing and misleading labeling by manufacturers are weapons brought to bear by profit-hungry food industries against the hungry. Furthermore, because health problems associated with deficient nutrition take time to emerge, fast-food industries are able to effectively marginalize the production of healthful, organic foods by cynically attracting the purchasing power of the unsuspecting poor. Therefore, demand for quality foods is pushed to the other end of the spectrum, to those who can afford higher priced foods, and, again, the circle is unbroken... only the affluent can afford to eat healthfully. Overpopulation and poverty has served the economic needs of processed food industries (and other processors, as well) hemming producers of healthful foods into a tightly limited marketplace of affluence, where more money is held by fewer people.
Running in parallel, industrial agriculture has become dependent on synthetic (petrochemical) fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives, and genetically modified organisms for production of major food staples needed to supply processed food producers. THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY IS.
By now, It's clear: market forces are developing a permanently handicapped underclass that will be useful only for consumption of low-quality, but cheap, processed foods, useless for little else but very good at keeping high the cost of healthcare. Who set us up to fail so miserably... you have to ask yourself?
Globally, about one billion are hungry and one billion are overweight. Hunger feeds industries that grow by providing low-quality foods to the poorest and most overpopulated societies. And because that deficient fare is distributed only in places where a profit can be made for the effort, the poorest of the poor get no nutrition at all. On down the scale of affluence, the marginally poor tend to be overweight or morbidly obese, the penniless are starving. Which is not to say that rich people don't suffer from obesity, lack of exercise, and poor nutrition; it's just that they enjoy access to alternatives. The poor do not.
How do we achieve a more hopeful future? The answer is teaching children, affluent, middle class, and the poor to grow their own nutritious foods WHERE THEY LIVE and to learn an appreciation for the value of farming practices. Farming is a knowledge that has become all but obliterated in modern times, as we have become too well-trained in leaving food production in the hands of industrial monoliths that, in turn, are unshakeable in their tendency to be self-serving. It's time to return to the garden.
By September, 2011, The Waters Wheel will also pursue placement of Aeroponic Towers at New Orleans public and private schools; also in schools and community gardens in Birmingham and Montgomery AL, and St. Louis MO. We will provide the tools for making a difference.
Who are we, the humans, after all is said and done? Flesh and bone and the blood of ancestors, we are a verb of this Earth and our children extend us to the future. All of us, every man and woman, are fathers and mothers of times to come. More than anything else, who our children are, what they do throughout their lives is the measure of who_we_are and how everything we will have done will be remembered. The character of our actions today is how our story will be told tomorrow.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Why Industrial Agriculture Is The Nº1 Problem For People and Earth
From the 1800s, the industrial centers became growing cities and populations expanded geometrically. Farming became an industry, too, a business set upon vast tracts of deforested land. Production was removed from the places where people lived and people who lived where production went were removed. Today, increasingly, multinational corporations mass-produce foods in ways that farm the Earth to the absolute limits of its capacity. These faceless entities maximize profits at people's expense, by design and by any means necessary. Intentionally or not, money is more important in this equation than people.
What happens is that when a dollar can’t be turned naturally in the Earth, industrial agriculture does it in other ways. Machines are put to work to plow the dirt, pulverizing top-sol into dust. Whatever work can’t be mechanized is given to low-paid workers, who risk their lives by exposure to sun and poisons, making sure food gets from the fields to our tables. Chemicals, usually petrochemicals, are needed because the land is farmed to near exhaustion. Mismanaged, the unhealthy land attracts pests and disease. To counter these problems, industrial agriculture uses synthetic chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides, often in conjunction with genetically modified organisms designed to survive the poisons applied to ward off pests and disease. It's as vicious a circle as ever was devised by businesses that measure the deaths they cause on a scale of manageable liabilities. Statistics prove they can get away with it.
What happens is that when a dollar can’t be turned naturally in the Earth, industrial agriculture does it in other ways. Machines are put to work to plow the dirt, pulverizing top-sol into dust. Whatever work can’t be mechanized is given to low-paid workers, who risk their lives by exposure to sun and poisons, making sure food gets from the fields to our tables. Chemicals, usually petrochemicals, are needed because the land is farmed to near exhaustion. Mismanaged, the unhealthy land attracts pests and disease. To counter these problems, industrial agriculture uses synthetic chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides, often in conjunction with genetically modified organisms designed to survive the poisons applied to ward off pests and disease. It's as vicious a circle as ever was devised by businesses that measure the deaths they cause on a scale of manageable liabilities. Statistics prove they can get away with it.
Most people don’t know that the food they buy at markets is trucked from hundreds or thousands of miles away, that its enzymes and life-energy are no longer living, that color and preservatives have been applied, gassed, and infused to make them look freshly picked. They also don’t know that industrial agriculture consumes 70% of all freshwater reserves and that it wastes 90% of what it withdraws. People don't know that industrial agriculture floods fields with chemical and poison-laced waters and that this brew floods our streams and rivers, lakes and wetlands, ultimately flowing into the seas, where super-fertilization creates algae that never existed before. This algae is so strong that it sucks the oxygen out of the water, suffocates other plants and fish that swim into its hypoxia zone. Meanwhile, freshwater reserves are running out and the population continues to expand... Earth's resources are being stretched beyond the breaking point.
There is no part of the planet that industrial agriculture does not harm.
It deforests, killing the root networks that once recycled water into underground reserves.
Water sheets on land devoid of forest, runs to streams and rivers.
Turbidity it causes in the streams and rivers blocks light, kills the underwater life, both plant and animal.
Petrochemicals wreak havoc to what little life remains.
In the oceans, it kills off entire species and disrupts the migration patterns with dead zones that have to be avoided.
The transport infrastructure, refrigeration stations, are all heavy carbon sources.
Industrial agriculture is the largest consumer of energy in the southwest, water pumped hundreds of miles through aqueduct
Massive facilities too large to be monitored, are breeding grounds for bacteria, outbreaks of disease.
There is no part of the planet that industrial agriculture does not harm.
It deforests, killing the root networks that once recycled water into underground reserves.
Water sheets on land devoid of forest, runs to streams and rivers.
Turbidity it causes in the streams and rivers blocks light, kills the underwater life, both plant and animal.
Petrochemicals wreak havoc to what little life remains.
In the oceans, it kills off entire species and disrupts the migration patterns with dead zones that have to be avoided.
The transport infrastructure, refrigeration stations, are all heavy carbon sources.
Industrial agriculture is the largest consumer of energy in the southwest, water pumped hundreds of miles through aqueduct
Massive facilities too large to be monitored, are breeding grounds for bacteria, outbreaks of disease.
Friday, May 6, 2011
At Micheltorena School and Community Garden - May 7, 2011
By establishing a garden at Micheltorena Grammar School, the community is restoring farming traditions to an honored status. Children here will grow up with its memory and so will we, the parents. This garden will serve as a daily reminder to us that the earth provides life and that life requires tending. Growing plants calms people and provides pause for reflection.
In a time when slow foods and local farming have all but disappeared from big cities, a return to the garden assures we will grow more civilized. The garden is a strong reinforcement for the bonds that form community because it reinforces the bonds that connect community to beloved Earth-- the one thing we know for sure that ALL people have in common.
The Tower, above, is an aeroponic garden, a vertical grow column without soil, where plants breathe as much as they feed on the nutrients provided. A low-draw (20 watt) electric pump, solar powered or insignificantly juiced by an AC plug, it is one of the best sources for pure foods, bar none. It will be donated today at the Micheltorena School Community Garden. It's intended as a learning opportunity, showing how anyone can have a garden, even without soil.
Aeroponic Towers discharge nothing into the environment besides pure evaporated water and vapor transpired naturally by plants. Yet, it's growth capabilities are enhanced and, up out of the soil, they are not susceptible to soil-burrowing pests. A greenhouse 24-ft. x 125-ft. can grow the equivalent of acres of food, in a pure, clean, non-toxic, easy to tend and harvest operation manned by two to four people. After a century of destructive agricultural industries doing damage to the Earth, this kind of system is the future of farming... able to put farming back where it started, in the places where people live.
This is why Aeroponic Tower farming is beneficial. Not for all foods, because root foods still need to be grown in soil. But if a majority of high-nutrition foods can be grown in Towers using just 5% of the water and organic nutrient needed by soil-farming, in a vertical, space-saving configuration, we begin to address some of the more pressing needs faced by society in the next few decades. Less water needed... No toxic chemicals needed... Harvests done standing upright... Increased yields and faster growth rates.
And growing vertically increases density of plants per square foot by 6 to 10 times. That kind of conservation frees up land-area that can be re-forested and forests help to filter carbon dioxide, smog, and global warming emissions.
This is why Aeroponic Tower farming is beneficial. Not for all foods, because root foods still need to be grown in soil. But if a majority of high-nutrition foods can be grown in Towers using just 5% of the water and organic nutrient needed by soil-farming, in a vertical, space-saving configuration, we begin to address some of the more pressing needs faced by society in the next few decades. Less water needed... No toxic chemicals needed... Harvests done standing upright... Increased yields and faster growth rates.
And growing vertically increases density of plants per square foot by 6 to 10 times. That kind of conservation frees up land-area that can be re-forested and forests help to filter carbon dioxide, smog, and global warming emissions.
It’s too late for our generation to save the planet from the waste we’ve introduced and that we've become accustomed to requiring. The planet will have to be saved by children who are in grammar school today and the children that they will, in turn, bring into the world. The only thing we, the adults today, can do is provide the tools and the direction our children must take to do the job needed for restoring Eden and assuring survival of life as we know it.
That’s what these Towers can help do and it’s in that spirit my foundation, The Waters Wheel, will continue to provide them to schools and community gardens wherever we can. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity at Micheltorena School and Community Garden.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Winter in Echo Park
Still sleeping, seedlings stir below and buds break through brittle flesh revealing supple leafy heads above. A cold earth in constant birth is filled by love.
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