It is Our Responsibility To Know What We Eat

We as consumers enjoy our freedom to spend our money as we see fit. We would like to believe that the market at large provides us with safe and healthy product and that they generally have our best interests at heart. We would also like to believe that an organization with the lofty title The Center For Consumer Freedom is looking after our best interest. Don’t you believe it.

There is truth in their title. They are interested in our ability to consume freely. However, they are not interested in consumer protectionism. Most of their funding comes from the restaurant, food and gaming industry, including Coca-Cola, Wendy’s and Outback Steakhouse. And also Monsanto, which might have something to do with why it thinks that groups against genetic engineering are “anti-choice nannies”.

Basically, restaurants want you to think that eating their crap without knowing what's in it is just awesome, and they know that using a nonprofit group as a front is more effective than getting a guy in a burger costume to crash Congress.

If we want to live a healthy lifestyle, it is up to us to research verifiable studies and to question the motives for ‘consumer groups’. They always have an agenda and at the top of that list is invariably money.

Don’t take the easy way out of research when it comes to your health by believing what this or that group says. Read different sources, use common sense based in solid scientific studies and always, always learn who is behind every claim.

Produce Prices Expected to Skyrocket

The recent freeze in Northern Mexico and Southwestern U.S. is going to cost everyone at the supermarket. It is being called the worst freeze in 60 years, and it wiped out entire crops.

Peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, asparagus, the entire asparagus crop has been wiped out. Roma tomatoes have more than doubled in price since Thursday and very soon they may not be available at all.

Next week, lettuce and spinach prices are expected to rise.  Normal prices likely won't return until new crops in Mexico start producing again in late March and early April.

Does the soil cleanse wastewater well enough to use on food crops?

Using waste water on food crops in developed nations is something very few people do. Besides the ‘ick’ factor and prospect of poisoning ourselves with viral diseases, the smell is usually enough to keep us from doing it. Our government does do a fairly good job of treating our waste water so that contaminated food does not end up in supermarkets, farmers markets, etc. It’s the handling of food after treatment is where the issue of food safety is problematic.

But in developing nations, recent findings by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) found that 85% of cities discharged the water without any appropriate treatment. The root of the problem is pretty basic, cities are growing faster than waste water treatment plants can be built. In the conversion from a farming based society to an urban one, More and more farms are going to be needed to feed those people who don’t raise their own food. Since the flow of water is being directed more and more towards cities, those people who remain on farmland are being faced with waste water as their only water source.

A study, based on case studies from 53 cities in developing nations, examined where waste water was being generated, how much was being used in urban agriculture, and to what degree the water was being treated. "We know that there is an informal sector within many cities that is using [waste water] to grow vegetables, but there has been no data on how much of this water was being used or what the risks were," explained IWMI director general Colin Chartres.

The study’s authors highlighted a number of benefits of using wastewater to irrigate crops such as allowing food production in places where there was a lack of water, or where no alternative clean water sources were available, it also recycles nutrients, meaning that farmers did not have to buy expensive fertilizers.

The environmental benefit is that if the water just went straight into a river, it would cause a lot more eutrophication problems further downstream by increasing plant growth in lakes and streams that then die off and depletes the oxygen supply leading to the death of fish and other aquatic life. See ‘Dead Zones’ for an extreme example of this.

The real issue here is whether or not pouring waste water onto the soil surrounding food crops is healthy. Does the soil act as an effective filter to keep harmful human-based, disease-causing organism out of the food supply?

Allowing waste water to settle in a pond is a good sound alternative to chemically treating waste water and can therefore produce usable water. It still may not be clean enough to drink but for food crops I would say go for it. When the crop is harvested it stills needs to be washed with fresh, clean water. But if you don’t have access to fresh, clean water what are you to do?

 settle in a pond

Currently, farmers in developing nations conduct a smell test or a taste test and if the water tastes too foul or smells too bad, then they won't use it to irrigate their crops. Relying on smell and taste is not good enough.

IWMI is focusing on wetlands and pipelines to turn the tide on waste water usage in developing nations.

Lab-Grown Meat

A South Carolina scientist has been working for a decade to grow meat in a lab, hoping it help solve the global food crisis.

Vladimir Mironov, 56, a developmental biologist and tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina has been working for years to make meat in a lab and claims to be within hailing distance of a significant breakthrough.

Food Security roundup

Taco Bell responds to “Ground Beef” claims. Taco Bell has been accused, in a lawsuit, of serving Ground Beef in their tacos that does not contain enough 'real beef' to legally be called "Ground Beef." Taco Bell's President has now responded.

Global food prices rose to a fresh high in December, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

The current dioxin crisis in Germany has initiated calls for action across the EU. One possible dioxin control being discussed is a tracer such as a coloring in the oil mixed with animal feed that would enable immediate detection of tainted produce,” said Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout.

African Union (AU) announced a plan to make African food secure in the next five years. The plan, detailed in a document entitled The African Food Basket, “Requires countries to allocate a substantial portion of their budget to agriculture, provide farming input subsidies, and make available affordable information and communications technology.”

USDA – What are you really telling us

Marion Nestle, of Nestle Chocolate, tells us how the food industry hijacked nutrition.

It would seem that organizations such as the USDA should have a mandate to improve the health of the country. But there appears to be a built-in conflict of interest.

“The Department of Agriculture is full of contradictions,” said Nestle. “First, while it subsidizes corn and soybeans, it is also responsible for dietary advice to the public that tells people to eat more fruits and vegetables. But fruits and vegetables aren’t subsidized.

“The subsidies for corn and soybeans mean that corn sweeteners and corn oil and soy oil are cheaper than they would be if the true cost of producing those foods were factored in. That has encouraged processed-food makers to use a lot of soy oil and high-fructose corn syrup, because they’re cheap.”

Is dietary advice motivated by a real concern for public health or by driving profits for food companies? Despite the fact that many consumers already have figured out the true motivation of food companies is profit, the USDA is slow to catch on. Or are they just playing dumb in order to ‘play nice’ with food companies?

Go to the article and make up your own mind. “If you don’t act, nothing will happen,” Nestle said. “Not doing anything is a decision to allow the system to proceed as it has been proceeding. If you want to take action, there are plenty of ways. Individuals have made a big difference in lots of different ways. Some of it is legislative; some of it is on a local level.”

An Additional 934 German farms close on fresh dioxin discovery

These type of reports seriously shake my faith in humanity. It’s one thing not know that the food products you sell on the open market is tainted with dioxins, or with anything harmful to your fellow humans, but to knowingly hold back information like this from people you sell to, well, it’s criminal as well as unethical.

The 934 pig and poultry farms that were closed over the weekend are in addition to 4,000 farms closed at the end of December when it was revealed that Schleswig Holstein firm Harles and Jentzsch had mixed dioxin-tainted industrial fatty oils into animal feed. Dioxin-contaminated liquid eggs are known to have entered the food chains in the UK and Denmark.

The fact that this firm - Harles and Jentzsch - places its financial bottom line above the very health of others just sickens me. No pun intended.

Farms in Lower Saxony as well as in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Brandenburg were all shut and banned from selling eggs and pork. But federal authorities stressed the levels of dioxin presented no immediate threat to human health.

Another disturbing statement that concerns me is “federal authorities stressed the levels of dioxin presented no immediate threat to human health”. We have been told for ages and it is a verified fact that dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, and can also cause cancer. But time and again, whenever the public learns of dioxins found in our food stream we are fed this standard industry-wide statement.

Dioxins are environmental pollutants. They have the dubious distinction of belonging to the “dirty dozen” - a group of dangerous chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants.

Saturday’s development came just 24 hours after federal ministry released an anti-dioxin action plan calling for the tightening up of rules on animal feed and food manufacturers and as it confirmed that the majority of affected farms had been re-opened.

The plan would compel manufacturers to have “strict separation of production flows” for materials for industrial and feed/food uses. It also proposes introducing a licensing system for oil and fat producers as well as extending legal requirements for the inspection and subsequent reporting on animal feed products.

Question: If this new plan will require “separation of production flows” between animal feed and the food we eat – given the fact that we eat food (chickens and pork) that is fed that animal feed, how is this expected to keep dioxins out of the food chain?

I’m just saying. Case in point: Proposals for stricter dioxin controls, Germany discovers tainted pork

Endangered Oceans

West Africa’s coastal dead zone continues to expand. Rising water temperatures, along with the runoff of chemical fertilizers, create large areas of water with low-level oxygen making the area inhospitable to marine life. As fish leave these areas in search of oxygen they are moving into areas with greater fisheries activity where oxygen is more abundant.

There are about 400 of these “hypoxic” regions throughout the world, many caused by human activities. The most notorious dead zone is in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River where oxygen-depleting algae is growing unchecked. Another dead zone was discovered in 2007 off the coast of Texas, where the Brazos river empties into the Gulf.

Three major dead zones are known to have been caused by climate change: one off the coast of Chile and Peru, one off the east coast of Africa, and another off of Africa's west coast. A new dead zone was reported off the US west coast in 2002. It occurs seasonally and is believed to be part of a continuum of South America's dead zone.

The hypoxic zone off West Africa covers virtually all the equatorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean and is roughly the size of the continental United States. The zone is growing every year further reducing the available habitat for fish. Fish that are already experiencing a decline in population due pressures from fisheries are escaping into smaller areas making it appear to fisheries that the population is experiencing a growth spurt when actually they are just being concentrated in a smaller area. This is going to lead to a probable crash in fish harvest.

The only way this die-off of population can be prevented is to stop the practice of polluting our oceans while reversing the trend of climate change. It doesn’t seem either of these possibilities is going to take place. We may very well soon see the end of ocean fish sales.

Obama gives biofuels the big thumbs up

clipped from www.whitehouse.gov President Obama announced steps to further his Administration’s commitment to advance biofuels research and commercialization a Biofuels Interagency Working Group, to be co-chaired by the Secretaries of Agriculture and Energy and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency This Working Group will work with the National Science and Technology Council's Biomass Research and Development Board in undertaking its work Develop the nation’s first comprehensive biofuel market development program The President also announced that $786.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be provided to accelerate advanced biofuels research and development and expand commercialization by providing additional funding for commercial biorefineries The new categories include: Cellulosic biofuels; Biomass-based diesel; Advanced biofuels; and Total renewable fuel.

On the surface this may seem like a good idea, but the mandate to, by 2022, have up to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol counted toward the 36 billion gallon biofuel production level will only worsen its effect on food production. We’re at 6-9 billion gallons of corn ethanol now and with all the havoc that has wreaked on agriculture worldwide, the concept of almost tripling that amount over the next 20-odd years is terrifying. What may yet save us is the fact that it will likely prove a simply impossible standard to meet.

And the fact that the administration’s rationale for expanding the use of biofuels continues to be the misplaced desire “to reduce our dependence on foreign oil” is just ludicrous. Addressing climate change WILL reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But simply reducing dependence on foreign oil won’t save the planet—only zeroing out our carbon emissions will do that. So energy policy in this country must be seen through that one, single lens.

Eat Less, Enjoy Life More

It seems, despite Barack Obama’s best intentions, the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. This means we may have to all tighten our belts a little tighter. But the up side is that we should all come through this a little healthier.

The reason I feel so upbeat about this is that we have to admit we have collectively been eating just a little too much these past few years and eating less is going to have several benefits for us humans as well as for the planet. It might even put people in a frame of mind to find more ways in which we can be a little more considerate of our planet’s needs.

One of the best things we can do for ourselves that always translates to better health for Earth is to eat smaller portions. Not only will you see a decrease in your grocery bill, your body will reward you with better health and you will find that we are throwing less food away. The latest studies confirm that it's not carbs or proteins so much as the number of calories we consume that influences our waist lines most. Slimming down and keeping the weight off relieves all kinds of stress on vital organs, prolonging life.

Eating processed and refined foods also adds not only extra calories but unnecessary chemical additives and industrialized oils that are used for various non-nutrient purposes such as to color foods, making it taste better, and adding shelf life. These extras are not needed by the human body so why consume them? The extras I refer to are corn oil, soybean oil and too much sodium, which all contribute to high blood pressure. Refined grains raise glycemic levels, a cause of diabetes. Despite these health consequences, corporations such as General Mills and Pepsi think of all kinds of ways to persuade you to buy their products. Not because they are such staunch supporters of a healthier life style, but because the extra money you pay for them earns profits for their shareholders.

If at all possible, buy whatever you can in bulk. If you shun processed foods you will already be on your way to lessening the impact that packaging has on the planet. Many processed foods come in individual, or at least smaller, servings. Think about it, how much packaging does it take to wrap individual items to feed ten people as opposed to the amount of packaging required for one package that feeds those same ten people? Also, much of the packaging is made from plastic or plastic coated paper which comes from petroleum, and it all ends up in the landfill. Even if you are one of the conscientious few who recycle everything, it's far more environmentally friendly to purchase foods that don't have any packaging at all. Plus, you pay extra for the packaging.

Another way that will greatly help our physical health as well as financial health is to buy whole foods. The produce section provides the best source of nutrition in any grocery store and yet it is the most expensive. Many people don’t stop to think about how much the federal government subsidizes (with our tax dollars) the growing of corn and soybeans. These two items provide the lease amount of nutrition for the bulk they provide and they are the cheapest. What this means is that we may spend less but we are not getting any real nutrition for our dollar which leads to higher medical costs. Tomatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, asparagus, cabbage, carrots and parsnips are all loaded with good nutrition. So are of kinds of whole grains and dried beans. If you can afford it, start buying your produce from the local farmers market. Not only will you know exactly where your food is coming from, you will be helping to support your local agricultural economy, not some giant agribusiness a thousand miles away that uses far too much fuel and time to get your so called ‘fresh’ produce to you.

Anyone who has visited this site regularly knows, this next topic is a favorite rant of mine. I promise I won’t rant this time, but we really do need to eat less meat. The biggest reason is that feeding beef cows, pigs and chickens is expensive, both financially and to the environment. Corn is one of the major sources of food for cows and they are not even built for it. Corn is used because it is more profitable for farmers to grow rather than the grass that cows naturally eat. Corn requires an extremely high amount of nitrogen fertilizer and this comes from chemicals which is based in petroleum. Simply because we have used so much chemically based fertilizers in the past, the natural state of our soils in the Midwest is depleted. Excess nitrogen fertilizer gets washed into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River and is killing off a large portion of the sea life.

In addition to the dangers of using petroleum-based chemical fertilizers to raise the food for these animals, most animals for consumption are now raised on huge feedlots that produce tons of pollution that ends up in our waters and in our air. They and all the fuels used to feed and transport them contribute mightily to global warming.

Hopefully, that rant wasn’t too bad. Trust me, I could go on for pages.

The bottom line is to try to get more of your protein from eggs and beans. Search out eggs produced on pastures instead of giant hen houses. Eggs are still a nutritional bargain, even when they're $4.75 a dozen at the farmers market. Also work more dried beans and whole grains into your diet. Together they make a complete protein and they are much cheaper than meat. The next step up would be chicken. Chickens (look for "pasture raised") are much more efficient producers of protein than cows or pigs.

Fish, while being one my favorite foods, is becoming more and more expensive because there are fewer and fewer fish to be caught. Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans. If you must buy wild-caught fish, check first with a reputable rating agency such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch program to make sure you are buying only fish that has been sustainably harvested. Otherwise, look for fish raised on farms in the U.S., such as catfish, tilapia, striped bass or shrimp. These have the further advantage of being cheaper than most wild-caught fish. Another excellent protein source is farmed shell fish such as clams, oyster and mussels. If you are pregnant, breast feeding or otherwise concerned about having enough Omega 3 in your diet, be assured that there are other sources besides fish.

Bottled water, this is a touchy subject too. If you are fortunate to live in an area of the country where tap water tastes good and is thoroughly tested then by all means don’t buy bottled water. For those of us whose city tap water does not taste good, sorry, but we are going to buy bottled water. End of story. It is true that bottled water is outrageously expensive and Americans throw away something on the order of 80 million plastic water bottles every day, to say nothing of all the fuel being used to make the bottles and transport them from factory to store. But I need water and my tap water is salty.

Stop drinking soft drinks. These drinks, Coca Cola, Pepsi, etc, are loaded with sugar that rots teeth and helps make people (especially children) fat. Americans consume way too much soda. Plus, sodas are a major contributor to our plastic bottle and aluminum can nightmare. Diet sodas are only marginally better, in that you eliminate the sugar. But in the process you consume industrialized chemicals posing as sweeteners. Learn to like water again and watch how everyday foods begin to taste better and your weight begins to drop. I have been there and I know.

Eat out less. Restaurants may not want to hear this but they are a contributing factor to our weight problem. Their portions are way too big. Plus, food from restaurants and especially fast food joints is not particularly good for you. If you are using whole ingredients and healthy oils such as extra-virgin olive oil or canola oil, just about anything you make at home is bound to be more nutritious and likely cheaper than what you get eating out. Making food at home and sitting down to a meal at the dinner table also teaches valuable lessons to children and helps strengthen the family unit. Get your kids out from in front of the TV and into the kitchen helping you make dinner.

The final topic of our discussion today is gardening. There is a rise in the number of people starting their own gardens. At first is was attributed to higher gasoline prices of last summer which lead to higher food prices. Now that we are entering our second year of the economic downturn, your garden should be ready to start producing, provided you added plenty of composted kitchen scraps, animal manure and no chemical fertilizers last year. But it is never too late to get started. Keep feeding the soil and your plants will reward you with a much healthier diet than what you have been eating.

A kitchen garden will solve many of your budget and nutritional issues. Most vegetable seed packets cost less than $3 and typically contains more seeds than the typical home gardener will ever use. There is very little in the produce section or at the farmers market that you cannot grow yourself, including all your most expensive favorites: strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes. Some of these items will not grow as well in some parts of the country as in others. You need to learn things such as ‘Last Frost Date’, ‘First Frost Date’, your soil type, etc. All of these and many other questions that arise can be answered by following several of the myriad of gardening blogs on the internet. There are many passionate gardeners who are will to answer any question you may have.

It is amazingly easy to grow your own potatoes, beans, peas, and tomatoes. You can fill your pantry and your freezer with enough food for the whole year provided you have the space for enough plants. But even if you can’t grow enough to get through the winter you will have at least added healthful foods to your diet and you will have learned how to grow your own. If you don’t have room to grow anything, there are community gardens in almost any city. And if not in yours, then start one. You will be sure to find neighbors who are just waiting for someone to bring up the possibility.

Food Safety Program Needs Restructuring, Not Another Agency

In the wake of the recent salmonella outbreak that killed 9 people and sickened over 600 others, food safety concerns have become a pressing issue.

The Food and Drug Administration takes the brunt of the responsibility and is the most pressured to find the cause and correct it.

However, at least 15 agencies are involved in making sure food is safe under at least 30 different laws, some of which date back to the early 1900s. it doesn’t matter how old a law is as long as it works. And if those 30 laws work then they should remain in place. However, it seems there needs to be some re-thinking as to how often food gets inspected and by whom.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have been proposing an overhaul of the nation's food safety structure for more than a decade. Food safety advocates agree.

I don’t believe we need another bureaucratic agency to add to the convoluted maze, just shore up practices already in place. The system will work if given enough inspectors with the proper guidelines and abilities.

The Department of Agriculture should inspect anything grown or raised on a farm, domestic and imported. The FDA should cover everything else that enters the human body (drugs, etc), domestic and imported. They need to agree on a schedule of inspections and they both need the ability to shutdown operations if a threat is discovered.

Obviously, an alert system needs to be in place to notify the general public of a possible contamination of food, possible source(s), and where the product was shipped. And this alert needs to take place within days of the discovery not months as is currently the case.

It seems reasonable that if any manufacturer has to face the possibility of a shutdown (cutting into their profits) then it would be in their best interest to ensure their product is safe.

Raw food inspections covered by USDA, this covers growers. Processed foods covered by FDA, this covers processors.

An additional safety net would be provided by the health department to inspect facilities and ensure workers are following safe food-handling procedures.

This means that some foods will be inspected more than once. The bottom line is that all possible sources of contamination needs to be inspected, as the source of all tainted food has come from mis-handling of food and/or contamination of facilities.

Food Safety: How Serious Are We?

Part of being green involves how our food is grown. Agricultural practices are being increasingly scrutinized. How food is processed, what additional ingredients are involved for preserving and coloring are of great concern. Also, the marketing of food, especially to children, has come under fire.

The single most powerful force to express consumers concern over these matters comes from consumers themselves.

The Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture are tasked with protecting Americas food supply through inspections but are over burdened with the sheer amount of food to be inspected. There simply are not enough inspectors to do an adequate job. So, when salmonella or E. Coli are discovered it is usually by hospital personnel after the consumer has been sickened and widespread notifications typically only reach the nation’s consumers after deaths have been reported.

This mode of operation may be acceptable to bureaucrats who don’t want to budget money for more inspectors but it is not acceptable to the families of those people who died because some product inspections fell through the cracks of an overburdened system.

It is problematic to have food producers inspect themselves. One would think that reputation alone would be enough to prevent these companies from selling tainted products. But, as evidenced in the recent Peanut Corporation of America case, some companies appear to be more concerned with protecting their near-term bottom-line than the safety of the customers or the future of their business. This fact alone should disqualify them from having the final say as to whether or not their own processes and products are safe for the consumer.

Our current inspection system in America is broken and not enough is being done to correct it. Having a complex set of laws to govern food safety, as with everything else, is just ridiculously burdensome. But, since conscience is obviously not a powerful enough incentive for some corporate heads to protect consumers, we are forced to spend even more tax payer dollars to regulate and inspect them.

The problem is not limited to American grown and processed food. More than130 countries ship food to the United States. According to the FDA, the volume of food imports has been growing steadily – about 15 percent on average per year since 1991. Imported food now makes up more than 10 percent of the food Americans consume, according to the USDA.

The FDA was able to inspect only 0.7 percent of all imported food products in 2007, down from 1.1 percent the previous year. In 2006, that means the FDA inspected just 20,662 shipments out of more than 8.9 million that arrived in US ports – employing about 1,750 food inspectors for ports and domestic food-production plants.

The Safe Food Act, reintroduced by Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D) of Connecticut and Sen. Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois, calls for a single food safety agency and standardized procedures to govern American food safety. The bill requests $650 million more in appropriations for the FDA's food inspection program.

The bottom line is that we can continue to write laws, but all that does is make Congress feel they are needed. What the consumer needs is for corporate America to give a damn about the health of the very people who keep them in business, the consumer. Short of placing the full attention to and protection of food safety above profit we need more inspectors. Inspectors with the ability to immediately shutdown production, inspectors that will not be paid off for favorable reports, inspectors with the integrity and attention to their duties in order to regain consumers faith in the food that we buy.

Do we need something on the scale of an “amber alert system” for food warnings? If more food could be inspected then we would not need to rely on hospital staff or mass media to warn the general public of food contamination.

A new national food safety and labeling poll conducted by Consumer Reports National Research Center reveals that, by a huge margin, consumers are concerned about food safety, and they want the government to inspect the food supply more frequently and to publicly disclose where food safety problems arise.

While 73% polled currently regard the overall food supply as safe, nearly half (48%) said their confidence in the safety of the nation’s food supply has decreased. A bare majority of Americans feel the government is doing all it can to ensure food safety (54%). Eighty-three percent of respondents are concerned with harmful bacteria or chemicals in food and 81% are concerned with the safety of imported food.

It is clear, something needs to change. We cannot force people to adopt healthier eating habits, and short of forcing people to stay abreast of current events we cannot warn people quickly enough about tainted food to prevent more illnesses and death. We can however beef up our inspection system.

Our very lives could depend on it.

Further Reading:
Food Safety.gov
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Preparing food safely in your home
Food Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts

Danger in the Nursery

Just found this article in Bird Life International and thought it would be interesting to pass along.

The author informs us about strip-mining for tar sands in Canada’s boreal forest. Canada is a part of the northern boreal ecoregion which accounts for about one third of this planet's total forest area. It is comprised of a broad circumpolar band which runs through most of Canada, Russia, Scandinavia and parts of Northern Scotland. Compared to much of the world, this ecoregion enjoys a sparse population and thus one would think, few threats to its immense and majestic beauty. However the reality is quite different.

The search for new oil reserves in tar-sand, a source of low-grade oil, is damaging forest and wetland habitats to the extent that over the next 30 to 50 years up to 300,000 hectares of forest and wetland could be directly affected, while habitat fragmentation, pollution and hydrological changes would affect a much larger area.

The area of north eastern Alberta supports at least 292 species of breeding birds. The only wild, migratory population of Whooping Crane Grus americana (Endangered) nests at Wood Buffalo National Park to the north, and migrates over the tar sands region, occasionally stopping over at boreal wetlands.

Many of the most abundant songbirds and waterbirds of the Americas also breed in the "bird nursery" of the boreal forest, and are already suffering declines because of logging, and degradation of their migration staging sites.

"Canada's boreal forest is an incredibly important area for many breeding neotropical migrant birds, and contains numerous Important Bird Areas", said John Cecil, national IBA program director for Audubon (BirdLife in the USA). "The report details impacts to at least five IBAs, among numerous other impacts".

Site preparation for strip mining requires draining lakes and wetlands, diverting streams and rivers, clear-cutting forests, and removing all vegetation. Hydraulic shovels and trucks are used to dig as deep as 100 meters into the earth. Despite commitments by the oil and mining companies, there is no evidence that lost ecosystems can be restored.

And even they are restored, how long will it take, and will it be in time to halt a devastating loss of wildlife?

How many links in the food chain can we live without? Birds are more than just something to look at and listen to. They eat insects whose numbers could devastate food crops if not kept in check.

Loss of habitat reduces a number of various mammals, reptiles, fish, etc, and each loss brings us closer to our own demise.

But, hey, as long as oil companies keep making money, as long as governments keep making tax money on it and we get to ride around in our personal vehicles, who cares right?

Being green means more than just using alternative energy sources, it also means protecting the planet and all of its inhabitants.

Living a green lifestyle means we don’t destroy any part of our environment to improve our lifestyle, because it does not improve our lifestyle.

Every time one more species is obliterated from this planet, we get one step closer to our own destruction.

Not all of us may not give a hang for birds, or spiders, or ants, or elephants, but without each and every one of them everyone's quality of life is diminished.

Permaculture: A Revolution in Food Security

A new term has entered our lexicon, peak oil. What the everyday consumer is supposed to envision upon hearing this term is that the world has already extracted half of the planet’s natural oil resources and from this moment on the rate of production has entered a terminal decline. What this means to us of course is that the price of oil will only go higher due to its increasing scarcity and our ever increasing population size and our continued dependence on fossil-fuel-burning industry. British Petroleum (BP) claims we have not reached this ‘peak’ point while other oil companies say we have. And the debate continues without any clear way of knowing if we have reached peak oil because no one knows exactly how much oil is available under the planets surface.

Personally, I don’t know who to believe because I am not an expert, so I, like the rest of us, am at the mercy of those who are, or claim to be, experts. I do, however, believe we should aggressively research alternative energy sources no matter how much oil remains to be extracted. The longer we wait to actually adopt an alternative energy source(s) the more money we are throwing at big oil who clearly have no real interest in pursuing an alternative to using their product and the more environmental damage we are doing to the planets surface, air and water.

In the meantime, while we watch our government drag its feet in setting token and ineffective attempts at environmental policy while agribusiness and oil executives suck every dollar out of our pockets, there is a movement underway that has, unwittingly, been developing for years by individuals covering a wide spectrum of people who call themselves home gardeners, urban farmers, weekend garden ‘hobbyists’, and lately, locavores.

Permaculture and the increasing desire to become self-sufficient and sustainable is a lifestyle whose time has returned. Farming communities survived quite well for many, many years before we became industrialized and traded our independence for the convenience of having such things as: out-of-season fruits and vegetables every day of the year, and someone else to grow and can our foods.

With the emergence of recent issues concerning food safety, food and gas prices, genetically modified food, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation of food over great distances, and food freshness and quality, more and more people are becoming painfully aware of the dangerously vulnerable position we are being forced into. The continued reliance on agribusiness, government, big oil and even financial organizations to provide for our daily necessities is in jeopardy.

I am convinced that communities everywhere need to create local, sustainable, community gardens to supplement each individuals home gardens for the purpose of creating community food surplus in case of national emergency. I realize I may sound alarmist, but our nations cupboard is bare.

I recently discovered a group based in Nevada City, California, called Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy. APPLE is a grassroots group striving for a more self-reliant, sustainable local economy (as opposed to global economy that the world’s money changers are pushing for). They produce locally what they consume locally, as much as possible. It is an intuitive idea that I believe many people have been craving as an answer to our need for food safety and community activism. It is a means of re-establishing our own control over what we eat and how it is grown.

They have produced over 100 videos, they call them conversations, featuring everyday individuals who adopted permaculture and have taken the step towards sustainability in their own yards. Be sure to watch #51 “An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability” and #100 “Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg”.

One such video, entitled “How Much Food Can You Grow in Your Yard?”, shows an urban lot, measuring 75’ by 125’, in Port Townsend, Washington. The home owner, Judy Alexander, takes us through her self-sustained property re-educating us on how it is possible to grow enough food to sustain your family and have excess for neighbors, friends, or community storage.

Whether you agree or disagree with the narrators assessment that we have reached a peak of human innovation, information, wealth and health, check out the many other videos for some very educational insight to what it can be like to regain our independence and get back the satisfaction that being in touch with land brings.

There are of course many other groups out there creating their own sustainable Eden. One of my personal favorite experiments in permaculture is taking place at the “Little Homestead in the City”. They call themselves eco-pioneers living a homegrown revolution on a sustainable, real-life original urban homestead. They have set an excellent example of how anyone can create an environment that reaches out to the community at large and can therefore inspire others fulfill their own need for independence. It truly is a revolution.

Our dependence on oil is becoming more and more expensive in terms of cost of extraction and production which gets passed on to the consumer, and in the cost of damage to the environment in terms of exploration, extraction and burning of oil which is felt by everyone. We are being forced to accept higher food prices as the result of short-sighted use of food crops for the production of bio-fuels instead of using non-food crops. In our rush to sever ties to foreign oil we are made to believe that the only immediate answer is to damage the environment further by increasing the number of offshore oil wells.

Through the use of the internet and our increased access to each others gardens and skills, through blogs and websites as educational tools, we are all becoming more empowered to take the course of our future into our own hands, to grow our own food, and share the excess with neighbors in an attempt to get this food revolution off the ground.





Further reading:
Instant Permaculture for the Suburbs

Are we running out of oil?

Why peak oil is probably about now

Permaculture Institute

Homesteading Today

Higher Food Prices and Biofuel Production, There is a Connection

As everyone without the power to do anything about it already knows, the push for biofuels is the leading factor in the increase in worldwide food prices.

Despite what our government has been trying to push off as fact, a new study has proven they are lying to us. And here is why.

Biofuels is a new market with the potential of huge profit for corporate America therefore the American government is doing everything it can to ensure its success, even at the risk of causing millions of world citizens to go deeper into poverty or to die of starvation, even at the risk of costing millions of Americans more money at the supermarket, even at the risk of alienating American voters. Money talks louder than any group of protesters and any group of people writing blogs trying to get the truth out to fellow Americans who refuse to take the time to educate themselves to what is really going on.

The World Bank reports that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% while our government holds fast to its claims that biofuel production’s effect is only 3%. Any thinking person can look at how much corn has been diverted from food production to biofuel production (over one third) and can reasonably conclude that food prices are going to suffer.

This report was completed in April 2008 and has yet to be published because the World Bank is worried about embarrassing an America President who has attained the lowest approval rating of any past President.

Also, the British government has withheld its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report, which states that plant based fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing food prices up to record levels.

Does anyone out there have any doubt remaining about where the loyalties of the powers that be lie? Those loyalties are certainly not with the voters who put them into office.

The U.S. government doesn’t want the everyday Joe to know that ethanol can be made cheaper from other non-edible substances because if a significant number of Americans know this then the government would look foolish over giving so much in subsidies to corn farmers. But then again the Bush administration has already shown that it doesn’t give a damn about what Americans want, it’s all about how much money corporations can make.

Bush continues his charade of the causation of higher food prices by placing the blame on higher demand from China and India. But the World Bank study disputes that "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact. But sugarcane for biofuel production does not create a large enough market as does corn for biofuel and therefore American corporations would not stand to make as much money from using it.

Producing and using ethanol would help ease global warming, to some extent, but why do we have to pay for this in higher food prices and more deaths?

Sustainable Agriculture Can Feed the World

After reading a fascinating post by Kate of Hills and Plains Seedsavers, my curiosity began me on a quest to learn as much as I could about sustainable agriculture. We both, as well as many others, have written our thoughts on one form or another of organic agriculture for some time now and I was wondering if we could actually produce enough food to feed the world without using pesticides or other synthetic, non-natural fertilizers that purport to boost food crop output.

In my research I discovered a web site entitled Food First. They published results of a study that was done by the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology that shows that not only can we feed the current world’s population without the help of chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, we can by converting to a sustainable organic food production system support a population of up to 10-11 billion by the year 2100! Which will be the world’s expected population by that time.

The original Green Revolution of the 1940’s (Victory Gardens) was credited with averting widespread hunger by drastically increasing agricultural production during World War II. When our soldiers came home after the war, it was felt that the need for these gardens was over and so they fell out of favor. The post-war economic boom saw many people leave the farms and home gardens to experience the conveniences that our new found prosperity brought to us. Farm yields were increased through the science of plant genetics and chemical fertilizers. Food production was improved by the ability to mass produce canned and frozen foods that greatly cut down on food preparation time. This allowed people to enjoy more of the new leisure time that everyone craved.

Years later, after seeing the damage caused by chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the fact that hunger is still a major problem, sustainable organic alternatives are once again receiving the attention they deserve.

The study was published in the June 2007 issue of the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. I won’t go into great detail of the trials, but they compared alternative and conventional agriculture from 91 studies and were able to demonstrate that current scientific knowledge implies that organic agriculture could actually increase global food production by as much as 50% (to 4,381 kilocalories/person/day).

The problems of hunger and food security in the world are not presently associated with not enough food, but with poverty and the lack of ability to acquire food. Whether sufficient food is produced organically or conventionally, the problems of fair distribution and acknowledgment of the right to food will still need to be resolved, and no amount of food production alone will change the political system that leaves those without money to live without sufficient food.

Currently, the world produces enough food to feed everyone, if we would stop artificially fattening up cattle with grain that could go to feed humans. Cows stomachs are not designed to process grain, their natural food is grass, but ranchers receive more profit by feeding their cattle grain. This mis-direction of human food leaves over 800 million people who cannot acquire enough food for their basic needs, according to Food First. They go on to say that if we are to address world hunger, we cannot avoid food sovereignty: people's right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, no matter how much is produced. This implies the democratization of our food systems—not their further industrialization.

DOE is Finally Getting the Idea

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the issuance of a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for up to $7 million in federal funding over two years (FY 2008 - 2009) for advanced research and development in converting non-food based biomass to advanced biofuels. Combined with a requirement for private minimum funding of at least 20%, approximately $8.5 million would be invested in this research effort.

Last month, DOE announced two Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA), valued up to $14 million, to better integrate the United States’ universities into DOE’s nuclear research and development (R&D) programs; and contribute to assuring a new generation of engineers and scientists necessary for pursuing nuclear power - a safe, reliable, affordable and emissions-free source of energy. These FOAs support the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) University Readiness and the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative for Consortia (NERI-C). These new awards will bring total Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 funding to universities that support nuclear energy programs to over $54 million.

Last May, DOE announced funding for companies to develop storage solutions, manufacturing approaches, and new system concepts for large-scale concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in hopes of reaching a target of 5-7 ¢/kWh by 2020. This would result in a savings of 36-80 million tons of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere each year relative to coal plants of similar capacity.

Clearly, the United States is not sitting on its laurels waiting for someone else to come up with clean, safe alternative energy sources for our future.

Once the path has been made clear and the door has been opened to a reliable source of renewable energy to wean us off of foreign oil then all of the other pieces of natural energy, i.e., wind power, solar power, wave power, etc, will all fall into place.

In the meantime, DOE is still pursuing exploration and production of domestic resources of natural gas and oil. It is hopeful that very soon a major break-through in alternative research will occur which will alleviate the need for further extraction of gas and oil from geographically challenging areas in such places as offshore deepwater locations and within our national parks.

Now, if only they would halt the misguided and inappropriate use of food crops for biofuel while we research other sources maybe our food prices will come back down.

Greed hurts us all again

The rush to make money has once again worsened an existing problem.
The U.N., and others, is warning the world that water resources, already strained by over population, will become even more scarce from the increased production of corn and other crops for biofuels.

Also, since more corn is being sold to biofuel producers, diverting it away from food producers, the price of corn for food is increasing. The price of every other crop that is being diverted away from traditional uses to biofuel production is going up as well.

Winners and losers? In the short term, the winners are the farmers who convert their lands to grow more palm trees, more sugar cane, more of anything that biofuel producers will buy. In the long term, the losers are those very same farmers, along with anyone else who requires food. It may sound like a bit of an over-simplification and melodramatic, but it is true.

These problems and others, such as increased pollution from the increased use of synthetic fertilizers to support the additional crops and the conversion of forests into agricultural lands, have been discussed in length by ecologists, scientists, farmers, food producers, environmentalists and bloggers who can see beyond the need to make an extra buck, for quite some time now.

I don’t mean to get down on those poor countries who are struggling to make more money. They need to eat too. But their shortsightedness is going to affect everyone else. Using more land that hastens the shortage of one of our most limited resources and polluting it even more borders on lunacy.

The use of biofuels is a double-edged sword. It is better for the environment than fossil fuels and it increases energy security for many countries. The pitfalls affect social as well as environmental issues.

New studies from scientists, private agencies and governments are saying biofuels could do more harm than good. Instead of helping the environment, deforestation to grow more energy crops is increasing the threat of global warming.

Converting more land to agricultural use will prevent an ever increasing population from finding land to build homes on.

Pollution from synthetic fertilizers creates the need for more water purification systems which takes up more land.

There needs to be controls put in place to decrease the competition of agricultural lands in order to maintain a percentage of land for food production only. Developing countries will benefit most from this.

We need to look at long term solutions and not jump on the first immediate answer. How many times have individuals been burned in their personal lives by doing exactly this? When are we going to learn from our mistakes. This mistake is global and will have global consequences.

Are we about to witness first synthetic life?

Scientists have built the first synthetic genome by stringing together 147 pages of letters representing the building blocks of DNA.

This is scary stuff from the realms of science fiction. But researches say that within months we can see custom designed organisms, referred to as biological robots. The proposed use is to produce ethanol for biofuel use as well as producing other chemicals in applications we haven’t thought of yet.

Producing biofuels is an immediate and important application because one of the downsides of using food crops as biofuel production is that it drives up food prices.

The technical process involves using yeast to stitch together four long strands of DNA into the genome of a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. They said it's more than an order of magnitude longer than any previous synthetic DNA creation. The actual building blocks of DNA: Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine and Guanine, are rearranged and linked together to create never-before-seen organisms that will do their bidding.

The next step is to inject this synthetic strand into a cell, sit back and let it multiply.

Just a few years ago this process of synthesizing and linking together these building blocks was impossible. Now, the possibilities seem endless. By linking together millions of base pairs, biomedical scientists can create much more complex organisms.

Some ideas I would like to see this science used for is to create organisms that would eat petroleum to clean up oil spills, another could attack rogue human cells to control cancer and other diseases if not stop them completely, organisms to break down waste products in our water systems to purify our drinking water, organisms to neutralize or eliminate the E. coli bacterium plaguing our food supply, organisms to repair human tissue, the applications are almost endless.

The scary part of this new field is how future scientists handle this knowledge. There always seems to be some ill-intentioned person or even well-meaning person whose experiments go awry and will create something monstrous. Regulation and security is of the utmost importance. Already synthetic biologists are planning to scale up from the simplest organisms to the most complex: human beings. This thinking, in my opinion is a bit premature, but it is better to have rules in place before it happens.

Currently, synthetic biologists follow the National Institutes of Health's recombinant DNA guidelines, which were penned in 1974 for the first experiments in genetic manipulation. Accepted by NIH and industry scientists alike, the rules instruct researchers on how to safely handle engineered organisms in the lab. If they want to release a synthetic organism into the environment, it would be evaluated for safety by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Manmade biological forms can do unexpected things so we need to create a safeguard, perhaps an army of synthetic robots whose purpose is to destroy the offending organism.

New terms are entering into our language, and to help explain these terms here is a Scientific American article on synthetic biology, and a Live Science article on biological robots.

The full implications of creating synthetic life are as yet unknown for the future of mankind, but rest assured Hollywood will continue to come up with creative ways to exploit any fear surrounding it.

I think we should view this latest development as a step forward in helping us clean up after ourselves and keep our environment as healthy as possible.

It will be interesting to hear viewpoints from religious leaders.