7 Essential Foods for Your Gut

Your gut is like a forest, full of diverse life that—if kept in check—helps your whole natural system flourish. The problem is, food isn’t as simple as it used to be, and modern cuisine, even modern medicine like antibiotics, can do a real number on the biodiversity in your digestive tract—your beneficial bacteria. In fact, too many meds and eating too much sugar and processed foods can actually suppress this protective gastrointestinal army, so it’s important to bring balance and stability back to your gut for optimal health to avoid diarrhea and diseases. In fact, many of these probiotic-rich foods will actually help you glow on the outside, too. Studies have found probiotics help combat skin problems.

For better gut health, these 7 foods will help!

Kefir

The Benefit: Kind of like a drinkable yogurt, kefir is a fermented dairy product that contains oligosaccharides, complex carbs, that feed beneficial bacteria. And keeping those tiny microorganisms content will help supercharge your immune system.

Healthy Tip: Keep your kefir cold—the live and active cultures are sensitive to heat—and be sure to avoid kefir with sky-high sugar content. Too much sugar damages your healthy intestinal flora.

Photo: (cc) Miss Yasmina/Flickr

Greek Yogurt

The Benefit: Like kefir, Greek yogurt also serves as a potent diary-based probiotic, and also boasts 15 to 20 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving and amino acids that will jump-start your metabolism.

Healthy Tip: Some companies market “Greek style” yogurt products that are nothing more than regular yogurt containing additives like gelatin and milk solids to thicken the consistency. For true Greek yogurt, check the ingredients list. It should only read: Milk and cultures.

Learn more: 9 Foods that Boost the Immune System.

Photo: (cc) Janine/Flickr

Real Sauerkraut

The Benefit: Sauerkraut is really fermented cabbage, a preservation technique that far precedes modern-day refrigeration.

Healthy Tip: For true probiotic muscle, avoid canned sauerkraut, because it’s pasteurized, meaning the healthy bacteria is mostly killed off. Instead, make your own in a crock.

Dig Deeper: How to Make Sauerkraut

Photo: (cc) Manray3/Flickr

Kimchi

The Benefit: A standby for centuries in Korean culture, this spicy fermented cabbage dish acts like a tonic for your gastrointestinal tract. A 2005 Seoul National University study found it’s so beneficial to the immune system that it helped speed recovery in chickens stricken with the virulent avian flu.

Healthy Tip: Add kimchi to organic mashed potatoes, rice, or salads if the distinctly sour, fizzy fare isn’t appetizing to you on its own.
Try Edward Lee's Lettuce Kimchi.

Photo: (cc) Craig Nagy/Flickr

Artichokes

The Benefit: Artichokes are potent prebiotics, meaning they contain undigestible nutrients that help feed the beneficial bacteria growth within your digestive system. Think of them like a healthy meal for the helpful bacteria in your gut.

Healthy Tip: If artichokes don’t delight your taste buds, try other potent prebiotics like bananas, lentils, and asparagus.
Video Tip: How to Trim an Artichoke.

Kombucha

The Benefit: With its naturally fizzy profile, this fermented tea serves as a healthy replacement for carbonated drinks like soda. Mildly tart and effervescent, kombucha is teeming with beneficial bacteria to coat your digestive tract. The fermentation process also creates healthy B vitamins that can activate energy.

Healthy Tip: This ancient, nourishing tonic has boosted immune systems for centuries; however, if you have certain digestive-tract diseases or candida, kombucha may aggravate symptoms because it’s considered a wild ferment and could contain irritating yeasts for susceptible individuals.
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Photo: (cc) Miss Bossy/Flickr

Miso Soup

The Benefit: While there’s debate surrounding the health benefits of soy, the truth is fermented soybeans contain an abundance of beneficial bacteria and isoflavones, which can protect against cancer and possibly halt the production of fat cells.

Healthy Tip: Look for organic miso soup to avoid harmful additives and genetically engineered soy, which has never been tested for long-term impact on human health.

Keep Reading: 11 Foods that Make You Smarter.

Photo: (cc) Jeremy Keith/Flickr
Source URL: http://www.organicgardening.com/living/7-essential-foods-for-your-gut


Links:
[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss_yasmina/5676681372/
[2] http://www.organicgardening.com/living/9-foods-boost-immune-system
[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/geishabot/4579250516/
[4] http://www.organicgardening.com/cook/how-to-make-sauerkraut
[5] http://www.flickr.com/photos/manray3/3808261641/
[6] http://www.organicgardening.com/quickkimchi
[7] http://www.flickr.com/photos/nagy/23219340/
[8] http://www.organicgardening.com/cook/how-to-trim-an-artichoke
[9] http://www.organicgardening.com/free-organic-gardening-newsletters-sign
[10] http://www.flickr.com/photos/missbossy/6933791485/
[11] http://www.organicgardening.com/cook/11-foods-that-make-you-smarter
[12] http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/66448363/
7 Essential Foods for Your Gut

THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE FARM BILL!!! --- The Ed Show: The good and the bad of the Farm Bill

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

OUTSTANDING PRESENTATION OF FARM BILL!!!!   Monte Hines

The Ed Show: The good and the bad of the Farm Bill

Industrial Agriculture - Dont Lose your Shirt to Nitrogen Deficiency

Published: June 13, 2013

Over 16 inches of rain have fallen since April 1 in cross-hatched areas. These areas have likely lost enough N to result in N deficiency in many fields that received all N before planting, especially on well-drained soils. Diagonally-shaded areas are on track to get 16 inches of rain from April 1 to June 30, and are likely to develop N deficiency if that occurs.

Plan. Watch. Act.

Those are my key recommendations to avoid losing your shirt to nitrogen deficiency in this year’s corn crop.
The Situation

Drenching rains since April 1 have endangered fertilizer nitrogen applied before that time, as well as nitrogen contributed by the soil. Over 58 million acres in the midwest received more than 16 inches of rain from April 1 to June 9. Iowa and Missouri lead the charge, with more than 15 million acres each, with Illinois close behind at 12 million acres. These areas are shown in cross-hatch in the map on the left.

Snow and rain in February and March also contributed greatly to re-wetting dry soil and beginning the processes leading to N loss.

In Missouri, more fall anhydrous ammonia was applied last fall than in any of the five previous years. This N has now been in the field for about 7 months. I would say that much of it has already been lost, or is in serious danger of being lost in coming weeks. N-Serve will not provide adequate protection to many of these fields.

I am also guessing that more N has been lost from well-drained soils than from poorly-drained soils to date. This is, if I’m correct (and I’m far from sure that I am), unusual. I’ve seen many more acres of yellow corn in areas with poorly-drained soils than in areas with well-drained soils over the years. But this year’s heaviest rains were in April, when well-drained soils are vulnerable to loss and poorly-drained soils are less vulnerable.
Plan

I believe that every farmer who applied all of their N before planting should have a plan for how they will apply more N fertilizer to the growing corn crop if it appears to need it. Further, every fertilizer retailer should have a plan for how they will help customers apply N to their growing corn. Tractor-drawn injection equipment, tractor-drawn dry N buggies, sprayers equipped with drop nozzles, high-clearance self-propelled spinners, airplanes....all are excellent options for how to apply more N if needed. Now is the time to develop a plan for how to apply more N, if you don’t already have one. Developing a backup plan as well would be even better. Fertilizer source should be planned and verified along with application equipment.

You may not need this plan. But if you don’t have one, your odds of getting more N applied if you need it are greatly reduced.
Watch

Watching the crop is the most reliable way to tell whether it needs more N or not. If the corn is lighter green than it should be, it probably needs more N, especially if it stays light once the soil is no longer waterlogged. This is reliable mainly for corn that is at least a foot tall.

Watching many fields from ground level is difficult and not very accurate. Getting up in an airplane with a camera is much better. Many local airfields have a pilot who can be hired.

I can predict how much yield will be lost from a straight-down aerial photo of corn that is at least hip-high. If you’re interested in trying this, call me. We can process a limited number of fields this year. Obviously the problem with this is that a limited number of machines are available that can apply N to corn this tall. The corn itself won’t mind at all.

Watching the corn is the most reliable indicator of whether additional N is needed, but requires waiting. Plans to get N applied may require quicker action on at least some fields to accomodate equipment limitations. Watching weather may need to be the basis for at least some decisions. The map above comes from my Nitrogen Watch page, which is based on cumulative precipitation maps and is updated weekly. You can find these maps at: http://plantsci.missouri.edu/nutrientmanagement/nitrogen/Nitrogen%20watch%202013/nitrogen%20watch%202013.htm
Act

This is the most important part. If you need to act and don’t, you will lose a lot of yield and a lot of money.

I think that most producers in the cross-hatched area of the map who applied all their N before planting will profit from applying additional N even if it is not targeted. This is especially true for fields fertilized in the fall.

Fields that received anhydrous ammonia this spring, or that received the bulk of their N after planting, are least likely to need additional N.

Watching fields and targeting additional N to those fields that need it most, or putting higher rates on the fields that need it most, will increase the odds of profitability.

Targeting N within fields would be even better. My research shows the best return on rescue N applications in the areas with the greatest N stress. And my observations show that there is usually a wide range of N stress in fields that have lost N. You can see this in the N loss aerial photo galleries on my website: http://plantsci.missouri.edu/nutrientmanagement/nitrogen/loss.htm

Crop canopy sensors are the most widely available way to target N applications within fields, applying higher rates to more stressed corn and lower rates to less stressed corn. However, not all sensor interpretations follow this logic so look for those that do.


MU | IPM | IPCM | Dont Lose your Shirt to Nitrogen Deficiency

How to Make Homemade Deer Repellent | eHow

Things You'll Need
Drill
Bar soap
String
Instructions
Simple Deer Repellent
1 Drill a hole in bars of deodorant or citrus-scented soap and hang them on plants at feeding height or every 3 feet to establish a perimeter around the yard.
2 Wrap human hair in pieces of old nylons and tie the bundles directly to shrubs and trees. It will be easier to replenish this homemade deer repellent when the scent wears off if you work in a hair salon or know someone who does.
3 Combine a dozen eggs (without the shells) and 5 gallons of water in a garden sprayer and apply the mixture to the ground. The odor of the rotting eggs repels the deer but should not be detectable by humans.
Spicy Homemade Deer Repellent
4 Mix 2 tablespoons of hot pepper sauce, 1 teaspoon of garlic powder or juice, 1 tablespoon of liquid dish soap and 1 gallon of water. Pour the mixture into a garden sprayer and apply to plants weekly or after rainfall.
5 Combine 5 tablespoons of powdered hot pepper, 5 cloves of fresh garlic and 1 cup of chopped onions with 2 cups of water, cover the container and let it stand for 24 hours. Mix with 1 gallon of water and apply with a garden sprayer.  

6 Bring 1 cup of vinegar to a boil in a saucepan, add 4 tablespoons of cayenne and boil for one minute. Strain it through a coffee filter into a bowl. Puree ½ cup of peeled garlic with 2 cups of water in a blender. Strain it through a coffee filter into the same bowl. Pour into a garden sprayer with 1 cup of ammonia, 1 cup of Murphy's oil soap and 3 gallons of water and apply.

Tips & Warnings

Homemade deer repellents are more effective when they are applied as soon as the deer-feeding problem becomes apparent, and the deer have not established a feeding pattern.

Read more: How to Make Homemade Deer Repellent | eHow http://www.ehow.com/how_5371351_make-homemade-deer-repellent.html#ixzz2WUkNDLRJ

How to Make Homemade Deer Repellent | eHow

Frogs feminized, but atrazine's effects on people uncertain. — Environmental Health News

Upsetting!   Monte

==========

Atrazine, one of the most widely used farm pesticides in the United States, has feminized male frogs and other animals in some scientific studies. But research examining potential effects in people is relatively sparse. A few studies have found possible connections between atrazine and higher rates of some birth defects and poor semen quality in men. Yet scientists say more human research is needed to reach any conclusions. “All of the human studies I know of have some issues,” said Suzanne Fenton of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “The hard part about atrazine work is that it has a really short half-life in humans/animals. Hard to measure accurately.” Dr. Paul Winchester said his research “certainly doesn’t prove that atrazine causes birth defects…but we simply can’t rule it out as a cause.” “We’re not looking for a fight [with Syngenta],” he said. “We’re just looking for answers.”



University of Georgia

By Brian Bienkowski and Marla Cone
Environmental Health News

June 17, 2013

Atrazine, one of the most widely used farm pesticides in the United States, has feminized male frogs and other animals in some scientific studies. But research examining potential effects in people is relatively sparse.

A few studies have found possible connections between atrazine and higher rates of some birth defects and poor semen quality in men. Yet scientists say more human research is needed to reach any conclusions. “It pales in comparison to the animal research,” said Dr. Paul Winchester, an Indiana University professor of clinical pediatrics who studies the pesticide.

For more than half a century, U.S. farmers have used large volumes of atrazine to kill weeds, particularly in cornfields. The herbicide has been found in waterways and aquifers that supply drinking water. Syngenta, its manufacturer, says that the chemical is safe for both humans and wildlife at levels found in the environment.

OMAFRA
Atrazine is used on most U.S. corn. Runoff from fields contaminates water supplies.

But about a decade ago, researchers at University of California, Berkeley, found that low concentrations – the amount expected near farms – caused male tadpoles to turn into female frogs.

Follow-up studies in the wild found that atrazine either turned male tadpoles into females or “demasculinized” them, causing eggs to grow in their testes and rendering them unable to reproduce, said Tyrone Hayes, a UC Berkeley professor of biology who led the research.

The chemical can disrupt hormones and alter male reproductive tissues when an animal is exposed during development. Other impacts include a reduction in size at birth, according to 2005 and 2008 studies of amphibians and fish by University of Texas researchers.

And it’s not just frogs that might be at risk of being feminized – recent research has found that atrazine has similar hormonal effects on salmon, caimans and lab rats.

In addition, “it’s been shown to cause erratic behavior, like weird swimming patterns,” Hayes said. “Fish and frogs start swimming improperly, which has consequences – they can’t escape predators, they can’t find food.”

“It [atrazine] has been shown to cause erratic behavior, like weird swimming patterns. Fish and frogs start swimming improperly, which has consequences – they can’t escape predators, they can’t find food.” -Tyrone Hayes, UC Berkeley Syngenta disputes all these findings. The Swiss-based company particularly took issue with Hayes’ research, and cited follow-up studies that could not replicate his work and reported no feminizing effects on frogs. Peer-reviewed and published, the industry studies were conducted at two labs, and were funded by Syngenta after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked the company in 2003 to perform more frog tests.

Hayes in 2004 wrote a paper slamming Syngenta's studies, saying there were errors, such as high mortality of frogs and inappropriate measurements of hormone levels. He said due to those factors, their research cannot be compared with his. "All of the studies that say [atrazine] doesn’t have any effect come from industry. We're all finding reproductive effects, except those who are getting paid [by Syngenta],” he said.

Oregon State University
Tyrone Hayes has reported that frogs exposed to atrazine in his lab were feminized.

The field studies of frogs that couldn’t replicate Hayes’ findings used different, less-accurate methods, said Krista McCoy, a professor of biology at East Carolina University and co-author of a 2010 analysis of atrazine and wildlife research.

McCoy said the studies that didn’t find a link assumed that some ponds were clean and could be used as a reference site. When the researchers found similar abnormalities in frogs from the so-called “clean” site and polluted site, they reported no link to atrazine.

But “there’s no such thing as a clean control site where there’s no manmade chemicals,” McCoy said. “If you collect samples from a pond in an agricultural area and then go across the street to someone’s yard, well, the animals [in the non-agricultural pond] are probably exposed to the same chemicals due to runoff.”

McCoy’s analysis of previous research concluded that atrazine consistently affected reproductive development of male frogs in studies. But it’s unclear whether any animal populations are dropping due to possible effects from the herbicide.

Jason Rohr, a biology professor at the University of South Florida and co-author of that analysis, has some concerns about all of the atrazine research. “There are problems with some of Tyrone’s [Hayes] work, some of it is fantastic,” Rohr said. He wondered whether any variables were introduced in the Syngenta-funded studies that may skew the results.

Europe banned atrazine in 2003 because of its widespread discovery in water supplies. But the EPA concluded that water containing atrazine at 3 parts per billion is safe to drink. The agency, however, has initiated another review of data collected since 2007 on both human and wildlife health.In a 2007 review of the chemical, the EPA agreed with Syngenta and renewed the registration of atrazine, concluding that it was not harming frogs and other wildlife at levels found in the environment. “Based on the negative results of these studies, the Agency concludes that it is reasonable to reject the hypothesis…that atrazine exposure can affect amphibian gonadal development,” the EPA said in its review.

Under federal law, “a pesticide must be found not to cause unreasonable risks to people or the environment” in order for the EPA to allow continued use. But the law also allows the EPA to take into “account the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of the use of the pesticide” when assessing “unreasonable risks.” Pesticides are reviewed every 15 years.

Europe banned atrazine in 2003 because of its widespread discovery in water supplies. But the EPA concluded that water containing atrazine at 3 parts per billion is safe to drink. The agency, however, has initiated another review of data collected since 2007 on both human and wildlife health.

Ho-Wen Chen/flickr
Zebrafish embryos exposed to atrazine exhibited changes in how some genes related to reproduction functioned.

One recent study offers clues to the mechanisms through which atrazine can harm animals and possibly humans.

Purdue University researchers found that zebrafish embryos exposed to atrazine at environmental levels showed changes in their genes. “The genes that were altered were associated with neuroendocrine, reproductive function in the fish,” said Jennifer Freeman, a toxicology professor at Purdue University who was the study’s senior author.

While the study didn’t examine whether these gene changes led to health problems, Freeman said it’s plausible that they could be behind some developmental and reproductive effects seen in wildlife. She said these genes work in similar ways in fish and humans.

The strongest evidence of a possible human effect is a study comparing men in a rural area of Missouri to men in three urban areas. The Missouri men with higher atrazine exposures were more likely to have poor semen quality, perhaps due to the chemical’s ability to alter sex hormones, according to the study published a decade ago. Similar effects were reported on the sperm of lab animals.

Another large study, conducted in France, showed babies exposed in the womb to atrazine are born weighing slightly less, by an average of five ounces.

The herbicide also has been linked to changes in breast tissue and birth defects in exposed lab rats, which are used to determine if the chemicals are a danger to humans.

The strongest evidence of a possible human effect is a study comparing men in a rural area of Missouri to men in three urban areas. The Missouri men with higher atrazine exposures were more likely to have poor semen quality.Toxicologist Suzanne Fenton, a leading atrazine researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said when mother rats are exposed to high doses of atrazine, their pups have developmental delays in mammary glands, which may increase susceptibility to breast cancer.

But the International Agency for Research on Cancer has concluded that there is “inadequate evidence” to say that atrazine causes cancer in humans, and the EPA reported in 2006 that it is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

“All of the human studies I know of have some issues,” Fenton said. “The hard part about atrazine work is that it has a really short half-life in humans/animals. Hard to measure accurately.”

Similar to rat studies, atrazine has been linked to some birth defects in humans. A study published this year that reviewed birth defect records in Texas found “modest, but consistent, associations” between boys’ genital defects and mothers who live near areas with atrazine. A 2007 study in Indiana found an increased rate of abdominal defects in children born in areas with higher atrazine levels in surface waters. Also, U.S. babies conceived in April through August, when farm chemicals including atrazine were at their highest amounts in water, had more birth defects, according to research by Winchester and colleagues.

However, all three of these birth defect studies had to estimate atrazine exposure, making it questionable whether the health impact was from the chemical and not from some other factor. For example, the scientists don’t know how much atrazine the mothers were actually exposed to; they just know they lived in areas where it was found in streams. Also, the study in France that did measure atrazine in mothers found no increase in birth defects in their children.

Winchester said his research linking agricultural months to birth defects “certainly doesn’t prove that atrazine causes birth defects…but we simply can’t rule it out as a cause.”

“We’re not looking for a fight [with Syngenta],” he said. “We’re just looking for answers.”
Frogs feminized, but atrazine's effects on people uncertain. — Environmental Health News

Fracking fuels water fights in nation's dry spots - SFGate

Full Story: Fracking fuels water fights in nation's dry spots - SFGate

Water Wars: Who Controls The Flow? : NPR

by NPR STAFF
June 15, 2013
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Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, says the tribes have not been able to fish for suckerfish for the past 27 years. "The condition of our fish is just so dire," he says.Amelia Templeton for NPR

So often, we take water for granted. We turn on the faucet and there it is. We assume it's our right in America to have water. And yet, water is a resource. It's not always where we need it, or there when we need it.

Rivers don't follow political boundaries — they flow through states and over international borders. And there are endless demands for water: for agriculture, drinking, plumbing, manufacturing, to name just a few. And then there's the ecosystem that depends on water getting downstream.

So what are our legal rights when it comes to water? And who decides?

There are two doctrines that govern surface water rights in the U.S. — one for the West and one for the East.

'A Reasonable Right'

The riparian doctrine covers the East. "[Under] the riparian doctrine, if you live close to the river or to that water body [or] lake, you have reasonable rights to use that water," says Venki Uddameri, a professor and the director of water resources at Texas Tech University.

The Western U.S. uses the prior appropriation doctrine. "As people started exploring the West and started looking for water for agriculture and mining, there was a need to move water away from the rivers," Uddameri tells Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

People wanted a claim to water but often lived too far away from a river for the riparian doctrine to make any sense. So the prior appropriation doctrine was devised.

Uddameri explains: "It allocates rights based on who started using the water first. So if you are first in time, you are first in rights. And historically, it was based on a permitting process where you go and say you asked for the permit first, so you became the first user.

"But then there's been a shift saying not first use strictly based on who asked for the permit first, but who was actually there first," he says. "So the Indian tribes who were there first may not have asked for a permit, but there's recognition now that they were the first users of water, so they get that first appropriation."

Two rivers on opposite sides of the country — the Klamath and the Chattahoochee — may provide lessons for the inevitable and growing dispute over how we manage our most precious natural resource.

Conflict Over The Klamath

Prior appropriation has sparked controversy in Oregon. This week, water regulators ordered ranchers near the headwaters of the Klamath River in southern Oregon to shut down their irrigation pumps.

Cattle stand in a heavily irrigated pasture in Oregon's Upper Klamath Basin. The state has ordered ranchers in the region to shut down irrigation. The move is aimed at protecting the rights of Indian tribes who live downstream.Amelia Templeton for NPR

The state says it was necessary to protect treaty rights of Indian tribes who live downstream. But the water shut-off jeopardizes a multimillion-dollar cattle ranching industry, reports Amelia Templeton from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The Sycan River is one of dozens of tributaries that join to form a massive lake in Southern Oregon's Klamath Basin, which in turn feeds the Klamath River. Tributaries like the Sycan provide water for salmon and suckerfish all along this river system.

The Sycan is also where rancher Becky Hyde gets her water. "We irrigate out of the Sycan River, and water makes things magical wherever you end up putting it," she says.

Hyde's ranch is a square of bright green that stands out in the dry juniper and sagebrush. She has a water right — a permit from the state to take water from the river every summer for her 500-acre ranch. Hyde uses the water to grow grass to feed beef cattle.

Until last week, a giant pivoting sprinkler was irrigating a pasture where she's raising about 80 young cows. Now, Hyde is trying to figure out somewhere else to move the cattle. She's one of many ranchers along the upper tributaries of the Klamath River whom the state ordered to stop irrigating.

The move came after the Klamath Indian Tribes, just downstream, said they needed more water left in tributaries to protect their fishery. Hyde is upset, but she also respects the tribes' right to the water.

"This is a tragedy for this community and for our family personally," she says. "But it is also a wake-up call to say people besides agriculture have a water right."

'You Don't Own The Water'

Water rights attorney Bill Ganong says, "When all of this country was developing, no one was really thinking about fish or wildlife."

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For decades, the government encouraged draining marshland and converting it to farms. As a result, Ganong says, the state of Oregon handed out lots of water rights.

"You don't own the water," he says. "Your water right is the right to use it; it's a right of use."

In an arid place like the Klamath Basin, there often isn't enough water available for everyone who has a right to use it. And the person with the oldest water right gets all the water they are entitled to first.

For 38 years, groups in the Klamath Basin have contested who holds the senior water rights on tributaries like the Sycan River. The state finally reached a decision this year. The date of the tribe's right? Time immemorial.

Every spring, the Klamath Tribes hold a ceremony to celebrate the return of the suckerfish. The now endangered suckerfish were once the staple food of this tribe.

They look a little like miniature sharks with a vacuum cleaner for a mouth. Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, says the tribes have not been able to fish for suckerfish for the past 27 years.

"The condition of our fish is just so dire," he says. "They're on the brink of extinction. And I believe that those fish are an indicator of the health of the watershed."

The tribes are in negotiations with ranchers to come up with a better plan to share water in dry years. Gentry says even though it's an uncomfortable situation, the Klamath Tribes have a responsibility to ensure that suckerfish — and the river ecosystem itself — survive.

'The Fluid Of This Century'

Water management may seem like it would be more of a problem in the arid West, but it's a national issue.

"Oil was probably the fluid of last century where there was a lot of turmoil, and I think water is the fluid of this century," says Michael Walsh, a major general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"The Corps of Engineers operates hundreds of reservoirs across the nation," he tells Lyden, "and we impound trillions of gallons of water, regulating the flows of multi-state river systems, but all of them have [been] put into effect by congressional mandates. We did a lot of the construction in the 1920s through the 1940s."

Since those dams were constructed, demands on the water stored behind them in reservoirs has changed.

Chattahoochee Tug-Of-War

That's the case for the Chattahoochee River. It flows from the Georgia mountains through metropolitan Atlanta, down Alabama, through Florida and then into the Gulf of Mexico.

As metro Atlanta expands, the city sucks more water out of the Lake Lanier reservoir, on the Chattahoochee, which means people living downstream, in Alabama and Florida, have less.

And since the Army Corps of Engineers operates the four federal dams on this river, the Corps is right in the middle of the conflict.

Operation orders come from Congress, which decides what the Corps should do based on compacts worked out between the three states.

But, Walsh says, "in this case, the Congress did put a compact together and they did work for, I think, 5 to 8 years to see if they [could] work through that. The states couldn't and have been bringing lawsuits against the Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies to prevent us from updating the water control plan until they come to some agreement."

A Lengthy Court Battle

Gil Rogers is an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who has been following the Chattahoochee water wars. "This is an issue that's been going on for literally decades," he says.

"It really began when the Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams that control the lakes above Atlanta, started to think about revising how it was going to manage those dams," Rogers tells Lyden. "And of course that means there's going to be a difference in how much water goes downstream."

"And so Georgia's neighboring states, Alabama and Florida, were paying very close attention and ultimately all of that ended up in court," Rogers says. The court battle went on more than 22 years, he says.

Interstate compacts were created to try to resolve the conflict, and the issue went all the way to the Supreme Court.

"These river basins are not following political boundaries," Rogers says. "They flow from one state to another and from one community to another, and there's a lot of tension over how much water is going to be available for everybody to do all the things that we need to do with these rivers."

Rogers says the Corps of Engineers has the next move: "They're revising their protocol for operating their dams, and we expect that to take another few years. They're going through an environmental impact review process now ... we'll have to see what they come up with in terms of how much water they're going to be releasing from these dams."

A Focus On Conservation

What needs to happen to reach an acceptable resolution?

"We've got to continue emphasizing water conservation and water efficiency, particularly in metro Atlanta but going all the way down the system — and that's for all water users," Rogers says. "The Flint River is a companion river to the Chattahoochee and it's basically been put in a permanent state of man-made drought because of all the water withdrawals that happen from that river. It's just not a sustainable pattern."

Are there any lessons from this, nationally?

"We've seen a lot of these conflicts play out in the West," Rogers says. "I think we really need to start thinking about how we're growing, where we're growing, and whether there's enough water available to sustain that growth."

"And that's not what we have been used to doing in the past," he says. "It's been much more opportunistic and the water supply issue has been more of an afterthought than a forethought. And so I think one lesson is just to put good management policies in place on the front end, so that you're not trying to play catch-up. [That] is something that will ultimately guarantee good, sustainable economic growth as well as better environmental health for these river systems."

Water Wars: Who Controls The Flow? : NPR

New Clear Vision | Sins of Omission

June 11, 2013
by David Swanson

Of course, old people should know these things too, and some small percentage does know them, but energy seems better invested in trying to teach them to young people who have less to unlearn in the process…

1. Obedience is extremely dangerous.

This seems like it must be either wrong or misleadingly incomplete. And that would be true if we were talking about children. If a two-year-old is about to run in front of a car, please do yell “stop!” and hope for as much obedience as possible. But I’m talking to young people, not children.

When you grow up, your obedience should always be conditional. If a master chef appears to be instructing you to prepare a revoltingly bad dinner but wants you to obey his or her instructions on faith, you might very well choose to do so, considering the risk to be tolerable. If, however, the chef tells you to chop off your little finger, and you do it, that will be a sure sign that you’ve got an obedience problem.

This is not a trivial or comical danger. The majority of volunteers in experiments are willing to inflict severe pain or death on other human beings when a scientist tells them to do so for the good of science. Watch this video of such an experiment.

Had the actor in this experiment who pretended to be a scientist told the participants to cut off their little fingers, I bet they wouldn’t have done it. But they were willing to do far worse to someone else. The good old Golden Rule is a counter to this deficiency, but so is resistance to blind obedience. Most suffering in the world is not created by independent individuals, but by large numbers of people obeying when they should be resisting.

Here’s a story in the news right now about a man deeply upset that he sat at a desk and obeyed orders and killed over 1,600 people. This was not an experiment, but tragically real. (Watch this video.)

We should think about how not to put ourselves in positions in which we are expected to blindly obey. It is possible to find jobs that don’t include that unhealthy expectation. And we should prepare ourselves to refuse immoral instructions whenever we receive them. As we’ll see below, we all do receive them all the time.

2. People in power manipulate us into acceptance

Several years ago a lot of people were protesting the U.S. war in Iraq. The president and most of Congress and most of the big media outlets were busy giving out the impression that such protests were ignored or even counter-productive. But former president George W. Bush’s memoirs recall the Republican Senate Majority Leader secretly telling him the pressure was becoming too great and they’d need to end the war. Bush signed an agreement with the government of Iraq to leave in three years.

In 1961 the USSR was withdrawing from a moratorium on nuclear testing. A protest at the White House urged President Kennedy not to follow suit. Posters read “Kennedy, Don’t Mimic the Russians!” One protester recalled their action for decades as having been pointless and futile, until he found an oral history interview with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Fisher said that Kennedy had delayed resuming testing because of the protest.

A delay in a policy we oppose is not as good as a permanent ban, but if those protesters had known they were being listened to they would have come back day after day and brought their friends and possibly achieved that permanent ban. That they imagined they weren’t being listened to appears ridiculous if you read enough history. People are always listened to, but those in power go to great lengths to give the impression of not paying any serious attention.

Lawrence Wittner interviewed Robert “Bud” McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan’s former national security advisor, asking him whether the White House had paid much attention to protests demanding a “freeze” in nuclear weapons building. “Other administration officials had claimed that they had barely noticed the nuclear freeze movement,” Wittner said. “But when I asked McFarlane about it, he lit up and began outlining a massive administration campaign to counter and discredit the freeze — one that he had directed . . . . A month later, I interviewed Edwin Meese, a top White House staffer and U.S. attorney general during the Reagan administration. When I asked him about the administration’s response to the freeze campaign, he followed the usual line by saying that there was little official notice taken of it. In response, I recounted what McFarlane had revealed. A sheepish grin now spread across this former government official’s face, and I knew that I had caught him. ‘If Bud says that,’ he remarked tactfully, ‘it must be true.’”

It’s funny: even when protesting government lies or government secrecy, people tend to fall for the lie that the government is ignoring you. Yet, in 2011, when a relatively tiny movement began to take to the streets under the banner of “Occupy,” the government rolled out a massive effort of infiltration, eavesdropping, harassment, brutality, and propaganda — while, of course, claiming to have noticed nothing and done nothing about something so unworthy of notice.

Those in power don’t restrict themselves to directing you toward inaction. They also work on moving you toward doing lots of things that seem effective but aren’t. The way to keep the nation safe, they say, is to go shopping! Or lobby for this watered-down pathetic piece of legislation! Or devote all your activist energy to election campaigning, and then go home and collapse in exhaustion as soon as the election is over — exactly when you should be gearing up to demand actions out of whoever won the election. These activities that have little impact are depicted as serious and effective, while activities that historically have had tremendous real impact (organizing, educating, demonstrating, protesting, lobbying, heckling, shaming, nonviolently resisting, producing art and entertainment, creating alternative structures) are depicted as disreputable and ineffective and lacking in seriousness.

Of course, being active is much more fun than not. Of course, the influence you have is always possible even if undetected (you might inspire a child who goes on to do great things years later, or slightly win over an opponent who takes a few more years to see the light). Of course, we have a moral duty to do everything we can regardless of the ease of success. But I’m convinced we’d see a lot more activism if people knew how much they are listened to. So tell them! And let’s remember to keep telling ourselves.

3. Doing nothing is obeying a deadly order

Imagine writing a story about a village that faces possible destruction, and for the most part the people don’t do anything to prevent it.

That’s not how stories are written.

That’s the world we live in and fail to recognize.

We are being instructed to sit at a desk and zap the earth to death, and we’re compliantly zapping away. Only the zapping doesn’t look like zapping, it looks like living. We work and eat and sleep and play and garden and buy junk at the store and watch movies and go to baseball games and read books and make love, and we don’t imagine we can possibly be destroying a planet. What are we, the Death Star?

But a sin of omission is morally and effectively equivalent to a sin of commission. We need to be saving the earth and we’re not doing so. We’re allowing global warming and other major environmental destruction to roll ahead. We’re allowing militarization and warmaking to advance. We’re watching the concentration of wealth. We see the division of society into castes. We know we’re building prisons and drones and highways and pipelines while closing schools and condemning our grandparents to poverty. We are aware that we’re funding multi-billionaires with our hard work while fueling mass suffering, bitterness, rage, frustration, and violence.

We see these worsening cycles and we sit still.

Don’t sit still.

Sitting still is mass-murder.

Don’t obey anyone who tells you to sit still.

Don’t search for a leader.

Don’t sell your conscience to a group or a slogan or a political party.

Don’t listen to me unless something I say makes sense.

David Swanson is the author of War Is a Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He blogs at davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org, works as Campaign Coordinator for the online activist organization rootsaction.org, and hosts Talk Nation Radio. Among his many publishing venues, Swanson is a Contributing Author for New Clear Vision.

- See more at: http://www.newclearvision.com/2013/06/11/sins-of-omission/#more-2346
New Clear Vision | Sins of Omission

This is what your supermarket would look like if all the bees died off | Grist

By Holly Richmond

From bee-killing companies pretending to love bees to researchersfrantically trying to create a disease-resistant superbee, it’s been kind of a rough week for bees, who have already been having a rough couple of years due to dying off left and right. But why should you care? It’s not like bees are delivering your mail or making you dinner or sewing your clothes, Cinderella-style.

But bees DO pollinate a bunch of shit that you probably like to eat. Need a visual? Check out these before and after pics from Whole Foods that illustrate the amount of produce that would vanish if all the bees died off:

Whole Foods Market
According to Whole Foods:
One of every three bites of food comes from plants pollinated by honeybees and other pollinators. Yet, major declines in bee populations threaten the availability of many fresh ingredients consumers rely on for their dinner tables.

To raise awareness of just how crucial pollinators are to our food system, the University Heights Whole Foods Market store temporarily removed all produce that comes from plants dependent on pollinators. They pulled from shelves 237 of 453 products – 52 percent of the department’s normal product mix.

Freaky, right? At least we’ll still have chili-cheese Fritos.

Source -- This is what your grocery store looks like without bees, Whole Foods

Holly Richmond (hollyrichmond.com) writes and edits things for fun and money. She worked for Grist in the 1890s. Please follow her on Twitterbecause that is the entire basis of her self-esteem.
This is what your supermarket would look like if all the bees died off | Grist

Local, self-sufficient, optimistic: are Transition Towns the way forward? | Environment | The Guardian

John-Paul Flintoff
The Guardian, Friday 14 June 2013

'There is no cavalry coming to the rescue' … Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition network, which promotes local, self-sufficient economic development. Photograph: Jim Wileman/PA

Late last year, Rob Hopkins went to a conference. Most of the delegates were chief executive officers at local authorities, but it was not a public event. Speaking in confidence, three-quarters of these officials admitted that – despite what they say publicly – they could not foresee a return to growth in the near future. --- Full Story:
Local, self-sufficient, optimistic: are Transition Towns the way forward? | Environment | The Guardian

For Snowden, a Life of Ambition, Despite the Drifting - NYTimes.com

By JOHN M. BRODER and SCOTT SHANE

Published: June 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — In 2006, when Edward J. Snowden joined the thousands of computer virtuosos going to work for America’s spy agencies, there were no recent examples of insiders going public as dissidents. But as his doubts about his work for the Central Intelligence Agency and then for the National Security Agency grew, the Obama administration’s campaign against leaks served up one case after another of disillusioned employees refashioning themselves as heroic whistle-blowers. - Full Story: For Snowden, a Life of Ambition, Despite the Drifting - NYTimes.com

The New Meat Label that Could Save Your Life | Rodale News

Keep your eyes peeled for beef with this new label to keep E. coli out of your kitchen.
BY EMILY MAIN

The flame will sear off any bacteria on the outside of your steak, but it won't kill bugs that were driven in by tenderization.

The meat industry has a lot of dirty little secrets. Chicken producers add the carcinogenic heavy metal arsenic to chicken feed to speed growth. Poultry producers "enhance" their meats with brines that keep the meat moist when cooking but expose you to so much potassium that doctors are worried it could be raising rates of kidney failure. And beef producers routinely use a process called mechanical tenderization that increases the likelihood that you'll be exposed to dangerous E. coli bacteria.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just proposed a new rule that could eliminate some of the risk of that last one. The agency has decided that any cuts of beef that have been mechanically tenderized need to be labeled so consumers can treat them carefully. The rule would also require beef producers to provide instructions on how to cook such beef so that any and all bacteria would be killed. 9 Appalling Facts about Meat

Mechanical tenderization is a risky process, born out of a dirty, unsustainable beef production system. The heavy use of antibiotics and the reliance on corn and other grains as feed produce tough meat, Sarah Klein, a senior attorney in the food-safety program at Centers for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), told Rodale News earlier this year. So before that meat is sold, it's pierced with needles or blades that help cut tough muscle fibers. However, in doing so, she says, those needles or blades drive any bacteria that may be living on the exterior of a piece of meat farther into the flesh. So when that filet or T-bone reaches the restaurant and you order it medium-rare, the bacteria on the outside—usually E. coli—will be killed when the steak is seared, but any E. coli that was driven into the flesh of the meat by needles or blades will continue to thrive.

The new labeling requirements will, at the very least, alert you to cuts of beef that have been tenderized so you (or the chef at your favorite restaurant) will know that those cuts need special handling. According to CSPI, you should cook mechanically tenderized beef until the internal temperature is at least 145ºF (160ºF is safest) and then let it rest for 3 minutes to let the heat destroy any lingering bacteria.How Dirty is the Meat You Eat?

That simple difference in handling could save your life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked five separate E. coli outbreaks back to mechanically tenderized beef in the last 10 years, and in its own independent evaluations, CSPI has determined that half of the 82 outbreaks attributable to steak were caused by E. coli, the bacteria most likely to worm its way inside a mechanically tenderized cut of beef.

The new labels are currently undergoing a 60-day comment period, after which the USDA will determine when they should go into effect.

Until that happens, stick with grass-fed beef, which is raised with neither antibiotics nor corn and therefore, doesn't need to be mechanically tenderized. Buy from farmers certified by the American Grassfed Association.

Source Link:
The New Meat Label that Could Save Your Life | Rodale News

The Case for No GMO Patents

14 June 2013 11:49By Tony Pereira

(Photo: CT Senate Democrats / Flickr)The June 13, 2013 Supreme Court decision that human genes are not patentable should logically be the first step in reversing three decades of decisions that flouted the previously general understanding that Section 101 of Title 35 U.S.C. prohibited patenting of living organisms.

In the case of genetically modified seeds, strands of DNA from flowers, fish and animals and/or a virus are loaded into a gene gun - sort of a specialized pellet gun - and literally shot into the new seed to be modified in hopes that the inserted DNA will be incorporated by it without further intervention, mix with the seed and take hold, and the "new" plant that will grow from this new seed will replicate and reproduce the new DNA in the new seeds after harvesting.
Full article: The Case for No GMO Patents

Toby Hemenway Permaculture Research Institute - Permaculture Forums, Courses, Information & News

The Permaculture Flower, modified from David Holmgren. The petals represent
the basic human needs, and we work to meet them sustainably on the personal,
local, and regional levels.

Full Text Link: Toby Hemenway Permaculture Research Institute - Permaculture Forums, Courses, Information & News

Study questions feeding GM food to farm animals - ABC Rural - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Updated Thu Jun 13, 2013 4:03pm AEST

PHOTO: A study suggests feeding pigs genetically modified crops can lead to health problems. (Denis Balibouse, file photo: Reuters)

PHOTO: Stomach of Pig fed genetically modified corn and soy (Supplied)

PHOTO: Stomach of a pig fed on non-genetically modified corn and soy. (Supplied)

AUDIO: GM safety concerns (ABC Rural)
MAP: Melbourne 3000

A joint Australian-US study has raised concerns about the safety of genetically modified crops fed to farm animals.

The study, conducted by researchers in South Australia and Iowa, showed pigs fed GM soy and corn crops had more stomach inflammation and heavier uteri than those fed non-GM feed.

"We found there was an increase in severe stomach inflammation in the GM-fed pigs - 2.6 times higher overall," said Lead researcher, Associate Professor Judy Carman,

Dr Carman says the study shows a clear need for further research into the health impacts of GM crops.

"The thing about pigs is that they have a digestive system that's very similar to humans," she said.

"Since we've got these major findings, some significant health related findings here in these pigs, I think it's important to consider that this might be happening in humans as well.

"We need to do further follow up studies to see if it is happening in people as well."

But the methodology and statistical significance of the study has been questioned.

Professor Rick Roush, from the University of Melbourne, says the fact that the study examined multiple variables without a specific hypothesis makes it open to 'procedure wise error'.

"If you test 20-30 things you'll expect to find at least one or maybe two that do appear to be unusual, but that doesn't make them statistically significant," he said.

A specific hypothesis isn't mentioned in the study and Dr Carman admits the researchers weren't expecting to find any difference in the weights of the uteri.

But she says there was an objective of studying inflammation in the pigs' stomach.

"We actually went there with a specific purpose in mind and we tested those," she said.

When you do that approach it doesn't really matter what other sort of things you might be measured on the side."

The research has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Organic Systems. But Professor Roush says that doesn't guarantee its scientific credibility.

"If Dr Carman and her colleagues wanted to make a strong case about this, they would have managed to get this published in a journal that was actually focussed on toxicology," he said.

Dr Carmen insists the study is scientifically rigorous. But other scientists have also raised concerns about its methodology.

The study classified stomach inflammation into 'moderate' and 'severe'. While 31 per cent of the GM-fed pigs demonstrated severe inflammation (as opposed to 12 per cent of the non-GM fed pigs) only 25 per cent of the GM-fed pigs were classified as having 'moderate' inflammation, as opposed to 29 per cent of the non-GM fed pigs.

Professor Frank Dunshae from Melbourne University says when both moderate and severe inflammation are considered, the GM-fed pigs don't show a statistically significant incidence of inflammation.

"One could argue about what the significance is between moderate and severe," he said.

"It's all qualitative [in terms of] how you separate out mild, moderate and severe."

Professor Dunshae said the study is interesting and worth repeating. But he said the lack of difference in overall mortality and growth rates of the pigs means there is little cause for alarm from the findings.

"The fact that the animals grew at a similar rate indicates to me that the animals were of similar health in both groups," he said.

Dr Carman insists the findings are relevant and scientifically sound.

"There are a lot of ill people who walk around that are not dead," she said.

"These pigs were obviously not very well, but they weren't unwell enough to actually die from it.

"The GM fed pigs have actually moved from the moderate inflammation to the more severe category."

You can follow Flint Duxfield on twitter @Flintdux

Study questions feeding GM food to farm animals - ABC Rural - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Why Is Corn That Color?

Photo by R.L. Croissant, Bugwood.org

Why Is Corn That Color?

by Emerson Nafziger June 13, 2013

The corn crop that was planted in May is up and growing in most fields, but there have been numerous reports of fields with uneven plant sizes and colors, including purple and yellow plants. Many are wondering if this will decrease potential yields.

Based on past experience many people expect to see purple corn when soils are cool and dry during early plant growth stages, or in that rare field with low soil test phosphorus levels. The purple color is from a pigment that forms when there is more sugar in the leaves than the plant can utilize. Low phosphorus inhibits sugar movement out of leaves, and cool, dry soils reduce root growth and sugar movement to the roots. Both of these increase sugars in the plant and can make the tissue turn purple.

Soils are not cool and dry in Illinois now, but surface soils are drying out in many fields, and it’s likely that roots growth up to now has been restricted some by having soils too wet and in some cases also compacted by tillage and planting operations. In fields where the plants have taken up enough nitrogen and water to grow well but roots remain constricted, purpling might be common now, especially in those hybrids that have a tendency to form the purple pigment.

We expect the problem of purple corn to correct itself as root growth continues. It will help if wet soils continue to dry out, but in fields with dry surface soils, root growth might benefit from some rainfall. The high sugar content that leads to purpling means that the plant is producing sugars through photosynthesis, which is a good sign. There is no evidence that temporary purpling affects yield of the crop, though factors such as soil compaction that can lead to purpling might also reduce yields if the weather is dry later in the season.

Other fields are showing the yellow color that characterized nitrogen deficiency. In some cases this diagnosis is strengthened by our being able to see patterns such as N applicator knife tracks where the plants are greener. As is the case with purpling, we tend to see more yellow plants in the lower areas of the field. This is both where soils were wetter at planting time, so are more compacted, and where we would expect more N loss and poor root growth due to wet soils.

Some have already responded to yellow corn by applying a higher rate of sidedress N than had been planned, or by, or applying sidedress N on top of a full rate of N already there. Some may even have applied foliar N or broadcast urea by air to try to get N into plants quickly. If soils are still wet in such fields, plants are continuing to struggle with poor root growth and poor root function, so adding N might not have much immediate effect.

It is likely that the problem of yellow corn is, like that of purple corn, more related to poor root growth than to low level of soil nutrients. Student interns working at the Orr Center in Perry sampled soils the first week of June in a study where different N rates were applied as UAN in the first week of April. That site received some 17 inches of rain in April and May, and we expected that some of the N would have been moved to below the top two feet.

In fact, we found as much or more total N (nitrate plus ammonium) in the top two feet the first week of June than we applied as UAN the first week of April. We recovered about 90 lb. of N where we had applied 60 lb., and just over 240 lb. of N where we had applied 240 lb. So it’s likely that some of the N there now was produced by mineralization, and that some fertilizer N was moved down below two feet deep, but the net amount available to the crop after high-loss conditions certainly has not been drastically reduced.

As soils dry out in most areas of Illinois and temperatures stay warm, it’s likely that many fields with yellow corn plants will improve, in some cases rapidly. Late planting and warm temperatures do tend to favor top growth over root growth, but we expect that as leaves grow and start improve in color and as soil oxygen levels increase as soils dry, sugars will become more available to the roots as well as the tops, and this will further improve root uptake of nutrients.

If crop color remains poor even after a week of drying soils and good growing conditions, then it is possible that N movement to below the rooting depth is affecting the ability of the crop to grow out of this problem. Our soil measurements suggest that in most cases N is likely still present, but a small “booster” shot of N might help the crop revive and reach the N more quickly. The crop has roots extending to the middle of the rows by the time it have 4 or 5 leaves, so injecting N between the rows should work to get it into the plant. Broadcast urea will need some rainfall to reach the roots.

Giant Canadian Geese - Coal Creek and Mississippi River - Near Andalusia. IL. - YouTube

Jun 12, 2013
Mommies, Daddies, and Offspring enjoying the day. Feasting on greens and insects...

Class Action Suit Hits Monsanto Over Wheat GMO | the earthy report

By John Vlahakis


Farmers in Idaho have filed a potentially class action lawsuit against seed giant Monsanto after genetically engineered wheat was found in an eastern Oregon field. 

The farmers, represented by a Boise law firm, filed the federal lawsuit Friday contending that Monsanto’s development of Roundup Ready wheat resulted in increased production costs and lowered prices because the genetically engineered wheat is likely to infiltrate the non-genetically engineered wheat supply. No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for U.S. farming, and the discovery of the Roundup Ready wheat growing in Oregon in May prompted Japan to suspend some wheat imports. Already a handful of lawsuits have been filed in other courts around the country over the same issue. The lawsuit in Boise’s U.S. District Court was filed Friday by Behrend, Behrend & Knittel Farms and CoMa Farms, both in Aberdeen, and County Line Farms in American Falls. The Idaho farmers are asking for class-action status on behalf of thousands farmers of soft white wheat in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and other states. Monsanto began in 1997 to develop a strain of wheat that is resistant to the company’s popular pesticide, Roundup. The result, dubbed Roundup Ready wheat, was field tested in 16 states between 1998 and 2005, including fields owned by CoMa Farms in Aberdeen, according to the lawsuit. At the time Monsanto had applied to USDA for permission to develop the engineered wheat, but the company later pulled its application. The farmers contend that Monsanto failed to take steps to make sure the genetically engineered plants didn’t contaminate regular wheat through cross-pollination, mixing of seeds or other means. Because the wheat industry uses a system that gathers and commingles wheat from thousands of farms for sales and shipping, the farmers contend Monsanto should have known that it would be virtually impossible to prevent the Roundup Ready wheat from infiltrating the non-genetically engineered wheat supply. The farmers say the discovery of the genetically engineered wheat growing in Oregon has diminished prices for all soft white wheat because of the loss of export and domestic markets, and that it has also increased costs for growers who must go through extensive testing to prove the wheat from their fields isn’t contaminated with genetically engineered wheat before they can sell to some buyers. They are asking for compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial, and they want a judge to order Monsanto to decontaminate the farmland and transportation and harvesting equipment of all affected farmers.

Class Action Suit Hits Monsanto Over Wheat GMO | the earthy report

Why America's Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think - Forbes

Eras come and go. Oil derricks at Burkburnett, Texas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

America’s oil producers are nervous. They’ve had a great run the past few years. Domestic oil production is up 43% since 2008 to 6.5 million barrels per day, the highest level in decades. The majority of that 2 million bpd jump comes out of the two most successful new oil fields, the Bakken and the Eagle Ford. To develop these and all the other fields nationwide, the top 50 operators invested $186 billion in 2012, according to Ernst & Young. That was a record level of spending, up 20% over 2011.

You’d think that with drillers getting better, honing techniques and driving down costs, that a 20% increase in investment would bring about a more than commensurate increase in oil and gas production volumes, right? And yet according to Ernst & Young, total U.S. oil and gas production was up “just” 13% on the year.

Full Story: Why America's Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think - Forbes

Satellite Data Shows U.S. Water ‘Hotspots’ | Circle of Blue WaterNews

THURSDAY, 13 JUNE 2013

Scientists who use the GRACE satellite say they need more resources to maximize its usefulness – for predicting floods and droughts.

Graphic © J. S. Famiglietti and M. Rodell, Water in the Balance, Science, 340, 1300 (2013). Figure appears as Figure S1 in Supplementary Online Materials. Prepared by Caroline de Linage, UC Irvine and Preston Huey, Science Magazine.

Drought and agriculture have depleted water reserves across the southern United States in the last decade, as measured by the GRACE satellite mission. Meanwhile, water storage has increased in the flood-prone Upper Missouri River basin. The six regions are ‘hotspots’ where water losses or gains are more pronounced. Click to see an enlarged image.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

New data from a pair of satellites that have changed the practice of water measurement show significant fluctuations since 2003 in the water reserves of six areas of the United States.

These “hotspots” include some of the fastest growing regions of the U.S., some of its most important farmland, and some areas not typically considered water-scarce.

Water reserves declined in the metropolitan areas of East Texas and the farm-dense plains of the Texas Panhandle. Alabama, the mid-Atlantic states, and California’s Central Valley also showed notable drops in water storage.

“I don’t think there’s a realization in the Southeast that it’s this bad,” lead author Jay Famiglietti told Circle of Blue. Famiglietti is a professor director of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling.

The Upper Missouri River Basin, by contrast, swelled. The region has seen severe flooding in two of the last three years.
“These results are fitting right into the climate change picture.”

–Jay Famiglietti,
Director, University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling

Though only 10 years of GRACE data are available, the pattern of a drier southern U.S. and a wetter northern tier reflects the rule of thumb for climate change: that dry regions will get drier and wet regions wetter.

“These results are fitting right into the climate change picture,” Famiglietti said.

Famiglietti and co-author Matthew Rodell, chief of the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, included the hotspot map in an opinion piece to be published Friday, June 14 in Science. They argue that the U.S. government should consider a national water policy and should spend more money on the satellite program, in order to maximize its potential for flood and drought prediction.

“Money has to be made available,” Famiglietti said. “Ultimately it has to come from Congress. We need to devote more resources to getting this data out quickly so that we can use it for seasonal prediction.”

The GRACE satellites detect changes in the Earth’s gravity field caused by shifts in water storage. By extrapolating from other data sets, scientists can pinpoint changes in water volumes between snowpack, lakes and rivers, soils, and aquifers for the entire globe. The satellites do not measure absolute volumes, just the relative change.

Right now GRACE data are available to researchers between two and six months after collection, Famiglietti said. The raw numbers need to be downloaded, corrected for errors, and processed.

Famiglietti estimated that tens of millions of dollars would be needed to accelerate the data-processing.

“It’s a manpower issue,” he said.

Coupled with short-term climate forecasts, quicker access to GRACE data could improve drought and flood prediction.

“GRACE tells you how full the bucket is,” Famiglietti said.

The twin satellites were launched in 2002. Since then they have provided hydrologists an eye in the sky to track monthly changes to water reserves around the globe. The satellites have revealed massive groundwater declines in the Middle East, in the breadbaskets of India and China, as well as in essential aquifer systems in the U.S., such as the Ogallala, which spreads across eight states in the Great Plains.

“What makes GRACE so important is its ability to sense changes in water below the land surface, including groundwater, which previously could only be measured by digging a well and monitoring the water level,” Rodell wrote in an email to Circle of Blue. “In most of the world, GRACE provides the only information we have on groundwater depletion.”

A new pair of satellites that can zoom in for a closer look, called GRACE Follow On, will be launched in 2017 to replace the current duo.

Satellite Data Shows U.S. Water ‘Hotspots’ | Circle of Blue WaterNews

"The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know." — Noam Chomsky

Must watch! http://bit.ly/113NDWU

BBC Interview with Prof Noam Chomsky from 2003
Noam Chomsky's biography
"The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know." —Noam Chomsky

Verified quote: book- 'How the World Works' Author: Noam Chomsky, Publisher: Soft Skull Press, source: http://bit.ly/PHAf5z

"As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome." —Noam Chomsky -->source: http://bit.ly/gim3so

Artist credit/thanks to: Nurmi Hussein Husa -D

Sunset from on Hines Farm Overlooking Mississippi River, near Andalusia, IL. - Wednesday, 8:30 PM, 6-12-2013

Larger Photo
Sunset from on Hines Farm 
Overlooking Mississippi River, near Andalusia, IL.
Wednesday, 8:30 PM, 6-12-2013

Monsanto Named 2013's 'Most Evil Corporation' In New Poll

By Connor Adams Sheets | June 10 2013
It's official: Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON) has been deemed the "most evil corporation" of 2013 in a new poll that has the biotech giant beating out rivals like McDonald's and the Federal Reserve by a wide margin.

Photo: ReutersA protester holds up a poster during a March Against Monsanto -- and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs -- in New York last month.

The company, which has weathered a seemingly endless litany of bad publicity over the past year, got a whopping 51 percent of the vote in the nonscientific poll by the website NaturalNews, which asked participants to identify what they believed was the "most evil corporation" in the world this year.

The Federal Reserve -- which is a unique public/private entity, not really a corporation but also not a government agency -- came in second place in the survey, garnering 20 percent of the vote.

Here's the vote breakdown:
Monsanto 51%
Federal Reserve 20%
British Petroleum 9%
Halliburton 5%
McDonald's 3%
Pfizer 2%
Merck 2%
Wal-Mart 2%
Nestle 1%
Other 7%

It's a collection of corporate behemoths, a number of which have been widely hated for years. But Monsanto, headquartered in Creve Coeur, Mo., has them all beat.

The survey, which saw 16,000 readers cast their votes for the worst of the worst in the corporate world, represents a group of self-selected participants, many of whom are already militantly opposed to companies like Monsanto that are producing genetically modified organisms and other controversial endeavors.

But it is striking to note the singular, if not surprising, extent to which Monsanto is held to account for its GMO activities, as many other companies like DuPont, Syngeta AG andthe Dow Chemical Company also create and sell genetically modified and genetically engineered products, some of which end up in the food supply.

The difference is that Monsanto has become the hated public face of the GMO industry. Ever since the 2008 documentary "Food Inc." chose to focus on Monsanto as the central antagonist in a war on food, there has been little love for Monsanto from educated eaters, health-conscious citizens, environmentalists and food advocates.

As NaturalNews editor Mike Adams wrote, Monsanto's high showing in the poll, released Monday, is largely a reflection of its bad image among the populace.

"The answer, I suspect, is that Monsanto behaves like an evil corporation that pretends to be angelic," Adams wrote. "The Monsanto website is an orgy of touchy-feely corporate spin that tries to position the company as the savior of life on planet Earth."

The past few months have been particularly traumatic for the brand. March brought the massive backlash over the so-called "Monsanto Protection Act," a measure written in cooperation with Monsanto lobbyists and slipped into a continuing resolution passed byCongress in order to keep the government funded that limits the options of federal regulators if new health concerns about GMOs come to light.

Then came an amendment to the 2013 Farm Bill that many food advocates and other observers believe was inserted last month for the express purpose of blocking states' abilities to pass their own GMO-labeling laws. Monsanto vehemently opposes GMO labeling and has spent millions of dollars to stop such bills from being passed in states including California, where the company lobbied successfully to defeat such a proposal.

In what may have been the biggest public shame in the company's recent history, in late May as many as 2 million people around the world took to the streets in the "March Against Monsanto," in an attempt to discredit the company and draw attention to some of its most controversial practices.

And at the end of May, Japan and South Korea stopped importing American wheat after unapproved Monsanto GMO wheat was found growing on an Oregon farm, adding more fuel to the anti-Monsanto campaign.

That brings us to Monday, when Monsanto was named the "most evil corporation" in the world in a NaturalNews poll. It's no wonder the company earned that dubious distinction given the year it's had so far.


Monsanto Named 2013's 'Most Evil Corporation' In New Poll

Six Reasons Why Every American Should Hate the House Farm Bill – EcoWatch: Cutting Edge Environmental News Service

By Scott Faber

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The budget-busting farm bill headed to the House floor next week is bad news for taxpayers. Here’s why this bill, officiallyH.R. 1947, shouldn’t pass.

This bill would:

Send crop insurance subsidies soaring to nearly $100 billion over the next decade. Right now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) covers, on average, two-thirds of a farmer’s premium. The bill proposes to increase revenue guarantees to 90 percent of a farm’s income, provide 80 percent of a cotton farmer’s premium subsidy and create a new peanut insurance program tied to the price of peanuts in Rotterdam.

Fail to limit insurance subsidies so the largest farm businesses would continue to collect the lion’s share. Under current law, some farmers reap more than $1 million in premium support, and roughly 10,000 farmers receive more than $100,000 in premium support. While the top one percent of farmers annually receives, on average, more than $200,000, the bottom 80 percent collects just $5,000.

Increases price guarantees so close to market prices that even a small decline in crop prices would trigger billions of dollars in government spending, erasing any savings from eliminating long-discredited “direct payments” for corn, soybeans, wheat and rice. This so-called “price loss” program would boost already sky-high price guarantees for cotton and peanuts by 30 and 80 percent, respectively. The bill would even create a new price guarantee for sushi rice.

Extend direct payments for cotton farmers for two more years at a cost of nearly $1 billion. Direct payments would continue to be paid to cotton farmers regardless of need—or even whether a farmer harvested a crop. Other farmers would have to limp by unlimited insurance subsidies and eye-popping price guarantees.

Conceal names of subsidy recipients, among them, members of Congress. Recipients of direct payments, conservation payments and other farm programs are made public but the House Agriculture Committee has refused to divulge the identities of those who receive crop insurance subsidies that now comprise two-thirds of the farm safety net.

Weaken the conservation compact. Since 1985, farmers have agreed to adopt basic environmental protections in exchange for nearly $300 billion in farm subsidies. But, unlike the Senate farm bill, H.R. 1947 would not require that farmers receiving generous insurance premium subsidies protect wetlandsor reduce soil erosion.

Reasonable reforms would provide farmers a robust safety net but at far less cost to the taxpayer than H.R. 1947. A bipartisan group of House members hopes to improve the bill via amendments to limit crop insurance subsidies to $50,000 per farmer, subject crop insurance subsidies to means testing, end windfall profits and require USDA to disclose the names of subsidy recipients. When combined with other reforms, these amendments could save the taxpayers more than enough to spare conservation and nutrition programs from proposed cuts and meet deficit reduction targets.

Visit EcoWatch’s FOOD and FARM BILL pages for more related news on this topic.

Six Reasons Why Every American Should Hate the House Farm Bill – EcoWatch: Cutting Edge Environmental News Service

One of The Best Arguments For Sustainable Agriculture Evere Given! -->Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras - YouTube

At the Taste3 conference, chef Dan Barber tells the story of a small farm in Spain that has found a humane way to produce foie gras. Raising his geese in a natural environment, farmer Eduardo Sousa embodies the kind of food production Barber believes in.

One of The Best Arguments For Sustainable Agriculture Evere Given!  Wonderful Story...  Monte

Blue Hill Restaurant website - http://www.bluehillfarm.com/food/overview/team/dan-barber

Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras - YouTube