Jul 11, 2014
DVIDS - Video - Rock Island District Value to the Nation
Nice video of RID proud history and service to the nation. I am proud to have worked 33 years for Rock Island District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was my pleasure to have worked alongside many talented and hard working Corps employees.
DVIDS - Video - Rock Island District Value to the Nation
Monsanto's Herbicide Linked to Fatal Kidney Disease Epidemic: Could It Topple the Company?
Thursday, 10 July 2014 By Jeff Ritterman, M.D., Truthout | News Analysis
(Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer)
Also see: Dahr Jamail | Salvadoran Farmers Successfully Oppose the Use of Monsanto Seeds
Monsanto's herbicide Roundup has been linked to a mysterious fatal kidney disease epidemic that has appeared in Central America, Sri Lanka and India.
For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic that has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The disease occurs in poor peasant farmers who do hard physical work in hot climes. In each instance, the farmers have been exposed to herbicides and to heavy metals. The disease is known as CKDu, for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology. The "u" differentiates this illness from other chronic kidney diseases where the cause is known. Very few Western medical practitioners are even aware of CKDu, despite the terrible toll it has taken on poor farmers from El Salvador to South Asia.
Dr. Catharina Wesseling, the regional director for the Program on Work and Health (SALTRA) in Central America, which pioneered the initial studies of the region's unsolved outbreak, put it this way, "Nephrologists and public health professionals from wealthy countries are mostly either unfamiliar with the problem or skeptical whether it even exists."
Dr. Wesseling was being diplomatic. At a 2011 health summit in Mexico City, the United States beat back a proposal by Central American nations that would have listed CKDu as a top priority for the Americas.
David McQueen, a US delegate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has since retired from the agency, explained the US position.
"The idea was to keep the focus on the key big risk factors that we could control and the major causes of death: heart disease, cancer and diabetes. And we felt, the position we were taking, that CKD was included."
The United States was wrong. The delegates from Central America were correct. CKDu is a new form of illness. This kidney ailment does not stem from diabetes, hypertension or other diet-related risk factors. Unlike the kidney disease found in diabetes or hypertension, the kidney tubules are a major site of injury in CKDu, suggesting a toxic etiology.
Also see: Dahr Jamail | Salvadoran Farmers Successfully Oppose the Use of Monsanto Seeds
Monsanto's herbicide Roundup has been linked to a mysterious fatal kidney disease epidemic that has appeared in Central America, Sri Lanka and India.
For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic that has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The disease occurs in poor peasant farmers who do hard physical work in hot climes. In each instance, the farmers have been exposed to herbicides and to heavy metals. The disease is known as CKDu, for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology. The "u" differentiates this illness from other chronic kidney diseases where the cause is known. Very few Western medical practitioners are even aware of CKDu, despite the terrible toll it has taken on poor farmers from El Salvador to South Asia.
Dr. Catharina Wesseling, the regional director for the Program on Work and Health (SALTRA) in Central America, which pioneered the initial studies of the region's unsolved outbreak, put it this way, "Nephrologists and public health professionals from wealthy countries are mostly either unfamiliar with the problem or skeptical whether it even exists."
Dr. Wesseling was being diplomatic. At a 2011 health summit in Mexico City, the United States beat back a proposal by Central American nations that would have listed CKDu as a top priority for the Americas.
David McQueen, a US delegate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has since retired from the agency, explained the US position.
"The idea was to keep the focus on the key big risk factors that we could control and the major causes of death: heart disease, cancer and diabetes. And we felt, the position we were taking, that CKD was included."
The United States was wrong. The delegates from Central America were correct. CKDu is a new form of illness. This kidney ailment does not stem from diabetes, hypertension or other diet-related risk factors. Unlike the kidney disease found in diabetes or hypertension, the kidney tubules are a major site of injury in CKDu, suggesting a toxic etiology.
Salvadoran farmer returning from the fields, Palo Grande, El Salvador. Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer.CKDu is now the second leading cause of mortality among men in El Salvador. This small, densely populated Central American country now has the highest overall mortality rate from kidney disease in the world. Neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua also have extremely high rates of kidney disease mortality. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, more men are dying from CKDu than from HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and leukemia combined. In one patch of rural Nicaragua, so many men have died that the community is called "The Island of the Widows."
In addition to Central America, India and Sri Lanka have been hit hard by the epidemic. In Sri Lanka, over 20,000 people have died from CKDu in the past two decades. In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, more than 1,500 have been treated for the ailment since 2007. Given the rarity of dialysis and kidney transplantation in these regions, most who suffer from CKDu will die from their kidney disease.
In addition to Central America, India and Sri Lanka have been hit hard by the epidemic. In Sri Lanka, over 20,000 people have died from CKDu in the past two decades. In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, more than 1,500 have been treated for the ailment since 2007. Given the rarity of dialysis and kidney transplantation in these regions, most who suffer from CKDu will die from their kidney disease.
Mural celebrating traditional agrarian life, Juayua, El Salvador. Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer.
In an investigation worthy of the great Sherlock Holmes, a scientific sleuth from Sri Lanka, Dr. Channa Jayasumana, and his two colleagues, Dr. Sarath Gunatilake and Dr. Priyantha Senanayake, have put forward a unifying hypothesis that could explain the origin of the disease. They reasoned that the offending agent had to have been introduced into Sri Lanka within the last 30 years, since the first cases appeared in the mid-1990s. The chemical also needed to be able to form stable complexes with the metals in hard water and to act as a shield, protecting those metals from metabolism by the liver. The compound would also need to act as a carrier and be able to deliver the metals to the kidney.
We know that political changes in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s led to the introduction of agrochemicals, especially in rice farming. The researchers looked for likely suspects. Everything pointed to glyphosate. This herbicide is used in abundance in Sri Lanka. Earlier studies had shown that once glyphosate binds with metals, the glyphosate-metal complex can last for decades in the soil.
Glyphosate was not originally designed for use as an herbicide. Patented by the Stauffer Chemical Company in 1964, it was introduced as a chelating agent. It avidly binds to metals. Glyphosate was first used as a descaling agent to clean out mineral deposits from the pipes in boilers and other hot water systems.
It is this chelating property that allows glyphosate to form complexes with the arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals found in the groundwater and soil in Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex can enter the human body in a variety of ways. The complex can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Glyphosate acts like a Trojan horse, allowing the bound heavy metal to avoid detection by the liver, since the glyphosate occupies the binding sites that the liver would normally latch onto. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex reaches the kidney tubules, where the high acidity allows the metal to break free of the glyphosate. The cadmium or arsenic then damages the kidney tubules and other parts of the kidneys, ultimately resulting in kidney failure and, most often, death.
At this point, this elegant theory advanced by Dr. Jayasumana and colleagues can only be considered hypothesis-generating. Further scientific studies will need to confirm the hypothesis that CKDu is indeed due to glyphosate-heavy metal toxicity to the kidney tubules. For the present, this may be the best explanation for the epidemic.
Another explanation is that heat stress may be the cause, or a combination of heat stress and chemical toxicity. Monsanto, of course, is standing behind glyphosate and disputing the claim that it plays any role whatsoever in the genesis of CKDu.
While the exact cause of CKDu has not been proven conclusively, both Sri Lanka and El Salvador have invoked the precautionary principle. El Salvador banned glyphosate in September 2013 and is currently looking for safer alternatives. Sri Lanka banned glyphosate in March of this year because of concerns about CKDu.
In an investigation worthy of the great Sherlock Holmes, a scientific sleuth from Sri Lanka, Dr. Channa Jayasumana, and his two colleagues, Dr. Sarath Gunatilake and Dr. Priyantha Senanayake, have put forward a unifying hypothesis that could explain the origin of the disease. They reasoned that the offending agent had to have been introduced into Sri Lanka within the last 30 years, since the first cases appeared in the mid-1990s. The chemical also needed to be able to form stable complexes with the metals in hard water and to act as a shield, protecting those metals from metabolism by the liver. The compound would also need to act as a carrier and be able to deliver the metals to the kidney.
We know that political changes in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s led to the introduction of agrochemicals, especially in rice farming. The researchers looked for likely suspects. Everything pointed to glyphosate. This herbicide is used in abundance in Sri Lanka. Earlier studies had shown that once glyphosate binds with metals, the glyphosate-metal complex can last for decades in the soil.
Glyphosate was not originally designed for use as an herbicide. Patented by the Stauffer Chemical Company in 1964, it was introduced as a chelating agent. It avidly binds to metals. Glyphosate was first used as a descaling agent to clean out mineral deposits from the pipes in boilers and other hot water systems.
It is this chelating property that allows glyphosate to form complexes with the arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals found in the groundwater and soil in Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex can enter the human body in a variety of ways. The complex can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Glyphosate acts like a Trojan horse, allowing the bound heavy metal to avoid detection by the liver, since the glyphosate occupies the binding sites that the liver would normally latch onto. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex reaches the kidney tubules, where the high acidity allows the metal to break free of the glyphosate. The cadmium or arsenic then damages the kidney tubules and other parts of the kidneys, ultimately resulting in kidney failure and, most often, death.
At this point, this elegant theory advanced by Dr. Jayasumana and colleagues can only be considered hypothesis-generating. Further scientific studies will need to confirm the hypothesis that CKDu is indeed due to glyphosate-heavy metal toxicity to the kidney tubules. For the present, this may be the best explanation for the epidemic.
Another explanation is that heat stress may be the cause, or a combination of heat stress and chemical toxicity. Monsanto, of course, is standing behind glyphosate and disputing the claim that it plays any role whatsoever in the genesis of CKDu.
While the exact cause of CKDu has not been proven conclusively, both Sri Lanka and El Salvador have invoked the precautionary principle. El Salvador banned glyphosate in September 2013 and is currently looking for safer alternatives. Sri Lanka banned glyphosate in March of this year because of concerns about CKDu.
Mural celebrating traditional agrarian life, Palo Grande, El Salvador. Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer.
Glyphosate has had an interesting history. After its initial use as a descaling agent by Stauffer Chemical, scientists at Monsanto discovered its herbicidal qualities. Monsanto patented glyphosate as an herbicide in the 1970s, and has marketed it as "Roundup" since 1974. Monsanto retained exclusive rights until 2000, when the patent expired. By 2005, Monsanto's glyphosate products were registered in more than 130 countries for use in more than 100 crops. As of 2013, glyphosate was the world's largest selling herbicide.
Glyphosate's popularity has been due, in part, to the perception that it is extremely safe. The Monsanto website claims:
Glyphosate binds tightly to most types of soil so it is not available for uptake by roots of nearby plants. It works by disrupting a plant enzyme involved in the production of amino acids that are essential to plant growth. The enzyme, EPSP synthase, is not present in humans or animals, contributing to the low risk to human health from the use of glyphosate according to label directions.
Because of glyphosate's reputation for both safety and effectiveness, John Franz, who discovered glyphosate's usefulness as a herbicide, received the National Medal of Technology in 1987. Franz also received the American Chemical Society's Carothers Award in 1989, and the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry's Perkins Medal in 1990. In 2007, he was inducted into the United States' Inventor's Hall of Fame for his work on the herbicide. Roundup was named one of the "Top 10 Products That Changed the Face of Agriculture" by the magazine Farm Chemicals in 1994.
Not everyone agrees with this perception of glyphosate's safety. The first "Roundup resistant" GMO crops, soybeans, were introduced by Monsanto in 1996. The same year, the first glyphosate resistant weeds began to emerge. Farmers responded by using increasingly toxic herbicides to deal with the new super weeds that had developed glyphosate resistance.
In addition to the concern about the emergence of super weeds, a study in rats demonstrated that low levels of glyphosate induced severe hormone-dependent mammary, hepatic, and kidney disturbances. Recently two activist groups, Moms Across America and Thinking Moms Revolution, asked the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to recall Monsanto's Roundup, citing a host of adverse health impacts in their children from the herbicide, including failure to thrive, leaky gut syndrome, autism and food allergies.
Glyphosate is no ordinary herbicide. Besides being the most used herbicide on earth, it is also the central pillar of Monsanto's temple. Most of Monsanto's seeds, including soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, sugar beets and sorghum, are glyphosate resistant. As of 2009, Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate) products, which include its GMO seeds, represented about half of Monsanto's yearly revenue. This reliance on glyphosate products makes Monsanto extremely vulnerable to research challenging the herbicide's safety.
Glyphosate-resistant seeds are engineered to allow the farmer to drench his fields in the herbicide to kill off all of the weeds. The glyphosate resistant crop can then be harvested. But if the combination of glyphosate and the heavy metals found in the groundwater or the soil destroys the farmer's kidneys in the process, the whole house of cards falls apart. This may be what is happening now.
An ugly confrontation has been unfolding in El Salvador. The US government has been pressuring El Salvador to buy GMO seeds from Monsanto rather than indigenous seeds from their own farmers. The US has threatened to withhold almost $300 million in aid unless El Salvador purchases Monsanto's GMO seeds. The GMO seeds are more expensive. They are not adapted to the Salvadoran climate or soil.
The only "advantage" of Monsanto's GMO seeds is their glyphosate resistance. Now that glyphosate has been shown to be a possible, and perhaps likely, cause of CKDu, that "advantage" no longer exists.
Glyphosate has had an interesting history. After its initial use as a descaling agent by Stauffer Chemical, scientists at Monsanto discovered its herbicidal qualities. Monsanto patented glyphosate as an herbicide in the 1970s, and has marketed it as "Roundup" since 1974. Monsanto retained exclusive rights until 2000, when the patent expired. By 2005, Monsanto's glyphosate products were registered in more than 130 countries for use in more than 100 crops. As of 2013, glyphosate was the world's largest selling herbicide.
Glyphosate's popularity has been due, in part, to the perception that it is extremely safe. The Monsanto website claims:
Glyphosate binds tightly to most types of soil so it is not available for uptake by roots of nearby plants. It works by disrupting a plant enzyme involved in the production of amino acids that are essential to plant growth. The enzyme, EPSP synthase, is not present in humans or animals, contributing to the low risk to human health from the use of glyphosate according to label directions.
Because of glyphosate's reputation for both safety and effectiveness, John Franz, who discovered glyphosate's usefulness as a herbicide, received the National Medal of Technology in 1987. Franz also received the American Chemical Society's Carothers Award in 1989, and the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry's Perkins Medal in 1990. In 2007, he was inducted into the United States' Inventor's Hall of Fame for his work on the herbicide. Roundup was named one of the "Top 10 Products That Changed the Face of Agriculture" by the magazine Farm Chemicals in 1994.
Not everyone agrees with this perception of glyphosate's safety. The first "Roundup resistant" GMO crops, soybeans, were introduced by Monsanto in 1996. The same year, the first glyphosate resistant weeds began to emerge. Farmers responded by using increasingly toxic herbicides to deal with the new super weeds that had developed glyphosate resistance.
In addition to the concern about the emergence of super weeds, a study in rats demonstrated that low levels of glyphosate induced severe hormone-dependent mammary, hepatic, and kidney disturbances. Recently two activist groups, Moms Across America and Thinking Moms Revolution, asked the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to recall Monsanto's Roundup, citing a host of adverse health impacts in their children from the herbicide, including failure to thrive, leaky gut syndrome, autism and food allergies.
Glyphosate is no ordinary herbicide. Besides being the most used herbicide on earth, it is also the central pillar of Monsanto's temple. Most of Monsanto's seeds, including soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, sugar beets and sorghum, are glyphosate resistant. As of 2009, Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate) products, which include its GMO seeds, represented about half of Monsanto's yearly revenue. This reliance on glyphosate products makes Monsanto extremely vulnerable to research challenging the herbicide's safety.
Glyphosate-resistant seeds are engineered to allow the farmer to drench his fields in the herbicide to kill off all of the weeds. The glyphosate resistant crop can then be harvested. But if the combination of glyphosate and the heavy metals found in the groundwater or the soil destroys the farmer's kidneys in the process, the whole house of cards falls apart. This may be what is happening now.
An ugly confrontation has been unfolding in El Salvador. The US government has been pressuring El Salvador to buy GMO seeds from Monsanto rather than indigenous seeds from their own farmers. The US has threatened to withhold almost $300 million in aid unless El Salvador purchases Monsanto's GMO seeds. The GMO seeds are more expensive. They are not adapted to the Salvadoran climate or soil.
The only "advantage" of Monsanto's GMO seeds is their glyphosate resistance. Now that glyphosate has been shown to be a possible, and perhaps likely, cause of CKDu, that "advantage" no longer exists.
Mural, Concepcion de Ataco, El Salvador. Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer.
What is the message from the United States to El Salvador exactly? Perhaps the kindest explanation is that the United States is unaware that glyphosate may be the cause of the fatal kidney disease epidemic in El Salvador and that the government sincerely believes that the GMO seeds will provide a better yield. If so, a sad mixture of ignorance and arrogance is at the heart of this foreign policy blunder. A less kind interpretation would suggest that the government puts Monsanto's profits above concerns about the economy, environment and health of the Salvadorans. This view would suggest that a tragic mix of greed and callous disregard for the Salvadorans is behind US policy.
Unfortunately, there is evidence to support the latter view. The United States seems to be completely behind Monsanto, regardless of any science questioning the safety of its products. Cables released by WikiLeaks show that US diplomats around the world are pushing GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. The cables also reveal instructions to punish any foreign countries trying to ban GMO crops.
Whatever the explanation, pressuring El Salvador, or any country, to buy GMO seeds from Monsanto is a tragic mistake. It is foreign policy not worthy of America. Let's change it. Let's base our foreign and domestic policies on human rights, environmental stewardship, health and equity.
Post script: After articles about the seed dispute appeared in the media, The New York Times reported that the United States has reversed its position and will stop pressuring El Salvador to buy Monsanto's seeds. Thus far, the aid money has not been released.
What is the message from the United States to El Salvador exactly? Perhaps the kindest explanation is that the United States is unaware that glyphosate may be the cause of the fatal kidney disease epidemic in El Salvador and that the government sincerely believes that the GMO seeds will provide a better yield. If so, a sad mixture of ignorance and arrogance is at the heart of this foreign policy blunder. A less kind interpretation would suggest that the government puts Monsanto's profits above concerns about the economy, environment and health of the Salvadorans. This view would suggest that a tragic mix of greed and callous disregard for the Salvadorans is behind US policy.
Unfortunately, there is evidence to support the latter view. The United States seems to be completely behind Monsanto, regardless of any science questioning the safety of its products. Cables released by WikiLeaks show that US diplomats around the world are pushing GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. The cables also reveal instructions to punish any foreign countries trying to ban GMO crops.
Whatever the explanation, pressuring El Salvador, or any country, to buy GMO seeds from Monsanto is a tragic mistake. It is foreign policy not worthy of America. Let's change it. Let's base our foreign and domestic policies on human rights, environmental stewardship, health and equity.
Post script: After articles about the seed dispute appeared in the media, The New York Times reported that the United States has reversed its position and will stop pressuring El Salvador to buy Monsanto's seeds. Thus far, the aid money has not been released.
FULL ARTICLE LINK:
Jul 3, 2014
Wendell Berry | Agriculture for a Small Planet Symposium July 1, 1974 - YouTube
Wendell Berry | Agriculture for a Small Planet Symposium July 1, 1974-YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1tioiBrZRE -YouTube
Hines Farm Blog (http://hines.blogspot.com/) --> http://hines.blogspot.com/2014/07/wendell-berry-agriculture-for-small.html
WOW! Wendell Barry wisdom on culture and farming was and is amazing... Monte Hines
Published on Jul 1, 2014
Today marks the 40th Anniversary of Wendell Berry's speech about the culture of agriculture that was delivered at the "Agriculture for a Small Planet" Symposium in Spokane, Washington. The first few lines of this speech, written on a yellow legal pad in route to the symposium, inspired his book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture published in 1977. Berry's speech was also a catalyst for the launch of the Tilth Movement in the Pacific Northwest.
"Your symposium, as well as a lot of other meetings I've been to in other parts of the country, proves the literature of a thoughtful and even known constituency for a better kind of agriculture," wrote Berry in a letter to Gigi Coe and Bob Stilger following the Symposium (July 4, 1974).
Related:
Dec 20, 2013
Called at times the “prophet of rural America” and the “modern-day Thoreau,” Berry—poet, farmer, author and activist—has been writing about farming and our relationship to the land for more than four decades. In the process ...
Oct 05, 2013
Wendell Berry, a quiet and humble man, has become an outspoken advocate for revolution. He urges immediate action as he mourns how America has turned its back on the land and rejected Jeffersonian principles of ...
Dec 01, 2013
October 3, 2013 by John Collins This post first appeared in In These Times. Image courtesy of the Berry Center. Everything we eat has a story behind it. The bread aisle (at the store with the massive parking lot) is a thrill ride.
May 16, 2014
Dr. Don Huber: GMOs and Glyphosate and Their Threat to Humanity
FLL ARTICLE at PermacultureNews.org: Link -->Dr. Don Huber: GMOs and Glyphosate and Their Threat to Humanity
Dr. Don Huber is an award-winning, international scientist and professor emeritus of plant pathology at Purdue University. Today he spoke with Food Integrity about the dangers of GMOs and Glyphosate (Roundup). Dr. Huber’s 50+ years of research and expertise in the area of plant pathology with a focus on epidemiology and control of soil-borne pathogens... Read more »
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
Dr. Huber discussed the alarming information about the recent finding of Glyphosate in human breast milk. He talked about the need for immediate research in this area — as the levels were much higher than the levels found in urine. His concern for future generations on the under-researched and flawed science of genetic engineering is fact-based and comprehensive. He stated:
We’ve pretty much sacrificed an entire generation of children. The longer we go, the more damage that is going to accumulate.
We’ve pretty much sacrificed an entire generation of children. The longer we go, the more damage that is going to accumulate.
May 10, 2014
The Woes of Industrial Agriculture
FULL ARTICLE AND LINKS AT PermacultureNews.org: http://permaculturenews.org/2014/05/10/woes-industrial-agriculture/
Posted May 10, 2014 by Ibraheem Naqeeb
Our relationship with the earth changed fundamentally when we began practicing agriculture some ten thousand years ago. The transition from nomadic to settler life allowed for the evolution of great civilizations, and the growth of human cultures. Agriculture also made possible the increased rise in population, which in turn created the need for more agriculture, and the cyclical relationship between the two put a greater and greater strain on the environment. Civilizations fell when they exceeded the carrying capacity of their locale, or depleted their resource base, and others emerged elsewhere in their stead. However, for the most part the growth continued unhampered as human beings mined millions of years of energy storage. Then came the industrial revolution, followed a century or so later by the green revolution, allowing for greater exploitation of the earth’s resources.
In just these last two centuries the world population has taken a gigantic leap from one billion to over seven billion today. Mechanization, the use of fossil fuels, and technological advancement have brought radical change in how human beings organize their lives, creating novel social and economic structures unprecedented in human history. The agrarian lifestyle was abandoned for the urban lifestyle and today, for the first time in human history, there are more people living in cities than rural areas. These changes have led to the displacement of food production at the individual, local, and community level; food production has now been outsourced to multi-national corporations and large agribusinesses. The bulk of human population today are consumers rather than producers, and utterly dependent on the global market economy for their daily bread. This detachment has created a crisis of awareness about how and from where our food comes to us, and the true cost of eating. There have been serious concerns about our farming practices for some time now, but it is only very recently that these concerns have become a topic of any serious discourse in the public sphere. There is a growing argument that the green revolution was in fact, anything but green, and that the industrial model of agriculture is not only not sustainable, but is truly one of the greatest threats to human survival. The proponents of industrial agriculture have responded equally fiercely claiming that theirs is the best, most efficient method, and the only hope of feeding an exponentially growing population in a changing world. In this article I will take a closer look at the main arguments they put forward and attempt to show how flawed the case for industrial agriculture really is.
The primary argument for the application of industrial agriculture is that mass production is needed to support an increasing world population, and this can only be achieved through broad acre monocultures, increased mechanization, the use of heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, and a broad spectrum of biocides, combined with novel scientific innovations such as bioengineering. The predominant view is that the employment of these conventional methods is the most efficient way to produce food and make it available to the public at large at a cheap cost. Alternative methods are regularly vilified as economically inefficient and ineffective, if not downright implausible. There is an underlying assumption that things are working well, and since they have worked in the past there is no reason to suspect that they should not continue to do so in the future. Whenever any concerns arise about the soundness of this assumption, they are generally swept under the rug with promises of greater technological fixes and scientific miracles. It is a popular — almost religious — belief that science can and will solve all of humanity’s problems.
While monocultures may seem impressive to the sight in terms of the size and scale of the operation, it is an ecological aberration that cannot sustain and support itself as a system and is totally dependent on external sources of energy. Natural systems prefer, and in fact, are dependent on diversity to function as an integrated self supporting whole. If we look at a natural forest, or any other intact ecosystem for that matter, we will not find single species of flora and fauna dominating over large areas. Diversity is one of the primary indicators of a healthy ecosystem, and by that standard a monoculture could be compared to a patient on life support. Unlike conventional agricultural systems, which are supported by artificial and external inputs of energy, sound ecosystems are completely self-sufficient. Furthermore, the creation of monocultures requires a large area of space, which is created by cutting down forests, leveling hills, and otherwise encroaching on natural ecosystems that provide vital services to all life forms.
The management of broad acre monoculture farms is inherently inefficient. Every stage of the operation, from ground preparation for planting to harvesting the crop, requires the use of energy intensive heavy machinery, which also damages and degrades the soil. The practice of plowing, especially deep plowing with heavy machinery, leads to rapid soil loss, and declining fertility. The problem of erosion is further compounded by irrigation, farming on slopes, and leaving a clear field after harvest, which opens it up to wind and water erosion. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a result of such poor farming practices, and resulted in hundreds of tons of soil loss — not to mention the great human devastation it caused. Soil is the basis of agriculture, and any system that does not value it as such, cannot be described as anything but self-destructive. It is no coincidence then that the industrial model of agriculture developed largely in the temperate climates, which are rich with deep top soils, which made it possible for years of exploitative farming. However, a look at the rate of topsoil loss as a result of agriculture in comparison with the rate at which topsoil is replenished naturally, reveals the mathematical unsustainability of the project. Scientists estimate that topsoil is built “at about 2-4 t/ha per year as uncompacted topsoil, but which we remove at a rate of from 40-500 t/year in cropping and soil tillage. Even the most ideal tillage just keeps pace with the most ideal conditions of soil formation, and in the worst cases we can remove 2000 years of soil in a single erosion season, or one sequence of flood or strong wind over cultivated soils..” (1)
Industrial agriculture is also heavily reliant on fossil fuel based chemical fertilizers, which gives rise to a number of serious concerns. The use of fossil fuels in the manufacturing of these fertilizers adds to the total energy embodied in the final product, and the overall inefficiency of the process. According to a study published by the New York University it takes about ten calories of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of edible food. Aside from the concerns about the looming energy crisis, and the unsustainability of fossil fuels, the environmental consequences of using synthetic fertilizers is cause for legitimate and immediate concern. Synthetic fertilizers are water soluble, and they leech into the ground water with every irrigation and rain event, polluting our water supplies, which poses a significant threat to human health. The damage is far greater, and obvious, to river and marine biology, as the fertilizers travel through the ground, to the rivers, and ultimately to the oceans, leaving behind a toxic trail of death and destruction. Of course, the pollution does not really end there, and keeps returning to the source — us — as the toxicity is biologically accumulated up the food chain to our dinner tables. Chemical fertilizers also destroy the natural fertility of the soil by killing the soil biology that makes nutrients available to plants, requiring heavier and heavier application of fertilizers. As the soil life collapses, so does the soil structure, creating adverse conditions for beneficial microorganisms. The gaps left behind are quickly taken over by the bad guys: plant pests; and this leads me to the next topic of biocides.
The disturbance of soil life and structure fosters an environment for weeds and plant pests to thrive. The chemically fertilized plants, due to a lack of proper nutrition, become increasingly susceptible to pest attacks. The problem is compounded in monocultures, which are nothing less than ‘all you can eat’ buffets for pests. There is nothing inherently bad about pests or weeds; both are nature’s mechanisms for creating equilibrium and repairing degraded landscapes. Instead of recognizing the source of these problems, farmers — grossly encouraged by chemical companies — see them as enemies, and react by applying herbicides and pesticides. Fighting with nature is a lost cause as these weeds and pests evolve quickly to become resistant to the biocides, creating super weeds and super pests, requiring more powerful and more toxic poisons. This creates a violent cycle of abuse, where nature is not allowed to repair itself, and the problem is exacerbated by the continual and increasing application of poisons. The effects of these biocides, moreover, are not limited to their target species, and have far reaching effects on other life forms; the crisis of the collapsing bee population, now widely recognized in the scientific community to be primarily the result of pesticide use, is but one example. The danger posed to human health is a thorny subject, and it is enough to say that poisoning our food is not a recipe for sound human health. Additionally, the biocides, like the fertilizers, cannot be contained to the area of use, and end up polluting our water systems.
The problems with industrial agriculture are compounded by climate change, water scarcity, and desertification. The industry has responded to these challenges with promises of a bright future shaped by bioengineering and genetic modification, instead of recognizing these issues as what they are — nature’s feedback to human activity. Despite the novelty of these technologies, there is no substantial evidence as to their safety and effectiveness. On the contrary, most scientists agree that these technologies are too new, and not understood well enough to be allowed to be released into the environment. In fact, many scientists, though their voices are not often heard in the mainstream media, strongly caution against these technologies, and believe that the potential harm far outweighs any perceived benefits. While we wait for the scientific community to reach a consensus on the matter it is worth examining the nature and scope of the industry, at the helm of which is Monsanto.
Monsanto, originally a chemical company, is a multinational corporation with the largest control over the agricultural sector around the globe. The company has a colorful background, from its involvement in the Manhattan Project to its long list of banned past products such as the notorious Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, PCBs, and DDT. It is now public knowledge that Monsanto knew of the adverse effects of many of these products, but suppressed the scientific findings for years. The name Monsanto is synonymous with Roundup, its designer herbicide, which despite being one of their best selling products, is inherently flawed because it does not discriminate between the target species and the desired species. In order to compensate for their bad product, Monsanto began the project of genetic modification to create ‘Roundup Ready’, herbicide resistant crops. Over the past decades Monsanto has purchased numerous small and big seed companies, making themselves the biggest player in the industry. Genetic modification now allows them to patent their seeds, and force farmers to have to buy seeds every season, instead of saving seeds as has been done for the past ten thousand years. This absurd law that allows for the patenting of life is not recognized globally, and in order to bypass the problem of legal enforcement abroad, Monsanto even created ‘Terminator Seeds’ that self-destruct.
At home, Monsanto has been at constant war with small farmers, harassing them with lawsuits, and putting them out of business under the guise of patent violation. The only crime these farmers committed is to be neighbors to farms where Monsanto’s GMO crops are grown, which inevitably cross contaminate surrounding crops, a natural process that the farmers have no control over.
Most alarmingly, Monsanto along with Bill Gates and several other players in the field, have set up a seed vault in the Arctic circle, the ostensible purpose of which is to protect all plant life in case of nuclear war by preserving carefully catalogued sets of seeds from every plant in the world. But the implications of this are frighteningly anti-utopian: control of the entire world’s food supply would be in the hands of a few greedy capitalists. This type of behavior is not unique to Monsanto, and others in the business, such as Syngenta, have been doing much the same. The background and nature of the industry, given its past record and present behavior, is grounds for serious skepticism about their agenda, and it would be nothing short of folly to hand over the future of human sustenance to these companies.
The problem with industrial agriculture is fundamentally a problem of world view. It seeks to dominate nature, seeing it as a giant ATM machine that needs to be cashed out hard and fast. It fails to recognize nature as a living organism that we are all a part of; and that when we hurt nature we inevitably hurt ourselves. Industrial agriculture as a management system is essentially masculine, warlike, and aggressive. Its management solution is to kill life, whether it is through applying biocides, or plowing, or clear-cutting forests. It has little to no consideration for ecological principles, design in relation to landscape and natural features, and so it inevitably falls into the trap of forced functions. In trying to apply a narrow minded and flawed economic paradigm on nature, industrial agriculture destroys its primary resource base, nature itself. The problem of industrial agriculture is not an isolated issue, and is deeply entrenched in the way we think about life itself, and our purpose and place on this earth.
As we head into a future of environmental crises, the question of food will become one of the most important questions of our times, along with the question of water and other basic resources. Industrial agriculture has been a chief culprit in bringing about these problems, and has proven itself to be destructive and unsustainable. In order to create a healthier planet and a more sustainable future we must transition to an ecological model of agriculture that takes a holistic outlook to food production and energy accounting, not merely an economic or expedient one. The way forward is to realign ourselves with nature, and start working with it rather than against it.
References:
Bill Mollison, Permaculture A Designers’ Manual, Tagari Publications. Tasmania. 1988.
GREAT ARTICLE! Monte & Eileen Hines
Our relationship with the earth changed fundamentally when we began practicing agriculture some ten thousand years ago. The transition from nomadic to settler life allowed for the evolution of great civilizations, and the growth of human cultures. Agriculture also made possible the increased rise in population, which in turn created the need for more agriculture, and the cyclical relationship between the two put a greater and greater strain on the environment. Civilizations fell when they exceeded the carrying capacity of their locale, or depleted their resource base, and others emerged elsewhere in their stead. However, for the most part the growth continued unhampered as human beings mined millions of years of energy storage. Then came the industrial revolution, followed a century or so later by the green revolution, allowing for greater exploitation of the earth’s resources.
In just these last two centuries the world population has taken a gigantic leap from one billion to over seven billion today. Mechanization, the use of fossil fuels, and technological advancement have brought radical change in how human beings organize their lives, creating novel social and economic structures unprecedented in human history. The agrarian lifestyle was abandoned for the urban lifestyle and today, for the first time in human history, there are more people living in cities than rural areas. These changes have led to the displacement of food production at the individual, local, and community level; food production has now been outsourced to multi-national corporations and large agribusinesses. The bulk of human population today are consumers rather than producers, and utterly dependent on the global market economy for their daily bread. This detachment has created a crisis of awareness about how and from where our food comes to us, and the true cost of eating. There have been serious concerns about our farming practices for some time now, but it is only very recently that these concerns have become a topic of any serious discourse in the public sphere. There is a growing argument that the green revolution was in fact, anything but green, and that the industrial model of agriculture is not only not sustainable, but is truly one of the greatest threats to human survival. The proponents of industrial agriculture have responded equally fiercely claiming that theirs is the best, most efficient method, and the only hope of feeding an exponentially growing population in a changing world. In this article I will take a closer look at the main arguments they put forward and attempt to show how flawed the case for industrial agriculture really is.
The primary argument for the application of industrial agriculture is that mass production is needed to support an increasing world population, and this can only be achieved through broad acre monocultures, increased mechanization, the use of heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, and a broad spectrum of biocides, combined with novel scientific innovations such as bioengineering. The predominant view is that the employment of these conventional methods is the most efficient way to produce food and make it available to the public at large at a cheap cost. Alternative methods are regularly vilified as economically inefficient and ineffective, if not downright implausible. There is an underlying assumption that things are working well, and since they have worked in the past there is no reason to suspect that they should not continue to do so in the future. Whenever any concerns arise about the soundness of this assumption, they are generally swept under the rug with promises of greater technological fixes and scientific miracles. It is a popular — almost religious — belief that science can and will solve all of humanity’s problems.
While monocultures may seem impressive to the sight in terms of the size and scale of the operation, it is an ecological aberration that cannot sustain and support itself as a system and is totally dependent on external sources of energy. Natural systems prefer, and in fact, are dependent on diversity to function as an integrated self supporting whole. If we look at a natural forest, or any other intact ecosystem for that matter, we will not find single species of flora and fauna dominating over large areas. Diversity is one of the primary indicators of a healthy ecosystem, and by that standard a monoculture could be compared to a patient on life support. Unlike conventional agricultural systems, which are supported by artificial and external inputs of energy, sound ecosystems are completely self-sufficient. Furthermore, the creation of monocultures requires a large area of space, which is created by cutting down forests, leveling hills, and otherwise encroaching on natural ecosystems that provide vital services to all life forms.
The management of broad acre monoculture farms is inherently inefficient. Every stage of the operation, from ground preparation for planting to harvesting the crop, requires the use of energy intensive heavy machinery, which also damages and degrades the soil. The practice of plowing, especially deep plowing with heavy machinery, leads to rapid soil loss, and declining fertility. The problem of erosion is further compounded by irrigation, farming on slopes, and leaving a clear field after harvest, which opens it up to wind and water erosion. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a result of such poor farming practices, and resulted in hundreds of tons of soil loss — not to mention the great human devastation it caused. Soil is the basis of agriculture, and any system that does not value it as such, cannot be described as anything but self-destructive. It is no coincidence then that the industrial model of agriculture developed largely in the temperate climates, which are rich with deep top soils, which made it possible for years of exploitative farming. However, a look at the rate of topsoil loss as a result of agriculture in comparison with the rate at which topsoil is replenished naturally, reveals the mathematical unsustainability of the project. Scientists estimate that topsoil is built “at about 2-4 t/ha per year as uncompacted topsoil, but which we remove at a rate of from 40-500 t/year in cropping and soil tillage. Even the most ideal tillage just keeps pace with the most ideal conditions of soil formation, and in the worst cases we can remove 2000 years of soil in a single erosion season, or one sequence of flood or strong wind over cultivated soils..” (1)
Industrial agriculture is also heavily reliant on fossil fuel based chemical fertilizers, which gives rise to a number of serious concerns. The use of fossil fuels in the manufacturing of these fertilizers adds to the total energy embodied in the final product, and the overall inefficiency of the process. According to a study published by the New York University it takes about ten calories of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of edible food. Aside from the concerns about the looming energy crisis, and the unsustainability of fossil fuels, the environmental consequences of using synthetic fertilizers is cause for legitimate and immediate concern. Synthetic fertilizers are water soluble, and they leech into the ground water with every irrigation and rain event, polluting our water supplies, which poses a significant threat to human health. The damage is far greater, and obvious, to river and marine biology, as the fertilizers travel through the ground, to the rivers, and ultimately to the oceans, leaving behind a toxic trail of death and destruction. Of course, the pollution does not really end there, and keeps returning to the source — us — as the toxicity is biologically accumulated up the food chain to our dinner tables. Chemical fertilizers also destroy the natural fertility of the soil by killing the soil biology that makes nutrients available to plants, requiring heavier and heavier application of fertilizers. As the soil life collapses, so does the soil structure, creating adverse conditions for beneficial microorganisms. The gaps left behind are quickly taken over by the bad guys: plant pests; and this leads me to the next topic of biocides.
The disturbance of soil life and structure fosters an environment for weeds and plant pests to thrive. The chemically fertilized plants, due to a lack of proper nutrition, become increasingly susceptible to pest attacks. The problem is compounded in monocultures, which are nothing less than ‘all you can eat’ buffets for pests. There is nothing inherently bad about pests or weeds; both are nature’s mechanisms for creating equilibrium and repairing degraded landscapes. Instead of recognizing the source of these problems, farmers — grossly encouraged by chemical companies — see them as enemies, and react by applying herbicides and pesticides. Fighting with nature is a lost cause as these weeds and pests evolve quickly to become resistant to the biocides, creating super weeds and super pests, requiring more powerful and more toxic poisons. This creates a violent cycle of abuse, where nature is not allowed to repair itself, and the problem is exacerbated by the continual and increasing application of poisons. The effects of these biocides, moreover, are not limited to their target species, and have far reaching effects on other life forms; the crisis of the collapsing bee population, now widely recognized in the scientific community to be primarily the result of pesticide use, is but one example. The danger posed to human health is a thorny subject, and it is enough to say that poisoning our food is not a recipe for sound human health. Additionally, the biocides, like the fertilizers, cannot be contained to the area of use, and end up polluting our water systems.
The problems with industrial agriculture are compounded by climate change, water scarcity, and desertification. The industry has responded to these challenges with promises of a bright future shaped by bioengineering and genetic modification, instead of recognizing these issues as what they are — nature’s feedback to human activity. Despite the novelty of these technologies, there is no substantial evidence as to their safety and effectiveness. On the contrary, most scientists agree that these technologies are too new, and not understood well enough to be allowed to be released into the environment. In fact, many scientists, though their voices are not often heard in the mainstream media, strongly caution against these technologies, and believe that the potential harm far outweighs any perceived benefits. While we wait for the scientific community to reach a consensus on the matter it is worth examining the nature and scope of the industry, at the helm of which is Monsanto.
Monsanto, originally a chemical company, is a multinational corporation with the largest control over the agricultural sector around the globe. The company has a colorful background, from its involvement in the Manhattan Project to its long list of banned past products such as the notorious Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, PCBs, and DDT. It is now public knowledge that Monsanto knew of the adverse effects of many of these products, but suppressed the scientific findings for years. The name Monsanto is synonymous with Roundup, its designer herbicide, which despite being one of their best selling products, is inherently flawed because it does not discriminate between the target species and the desired species. In order to compensate for their bad product, Monsanto began the project of genetic modification to create ‘Roundup Ready’, herbicide resistant crops. Over the past decades Monsanto has purchased numerous small and big seed companies, making themselves the biggest player in the industry. Genetic modification now allows them to patent their seeds, and force farmers to have to buy seeds every season, instead of saving seeds as has been done for the past ten thousand years. This absurd law that allows for the patenting of life is not recognized globally, and in order to bypass the problem of legal enforcement abroad, Monsanto even created ‘Terminator Seeds’ that self-destruct.
At home, Monsanto has been at constant war with small farmers, harassing them with lawsuits, and putting them out of business under the guise of patent violation. The only crime these farmers committed is to be neighbors to farms where Monsanto’s GMO crops are grown, which inevitably cross contaminate surrounding crops, a natural process that the farmers have no control over.
Most alarmingly, Monsanto along with Bill Gates and several other players in the field, have set up a seed vault in the Arctic circle, the ostensible purpose of which is to protect all plant life in case of nuclear war by preserving carefully catalogued sets of seeds from every plant in the world. But the implications of this are frighteningly anti-utopian: control of the entire world’s food supply would be in the hands of a few greedy capitalists. This type of behavior is not unique to Monsanto, and others in the business, such as Syngenta, have been doing much the same. The background and nature of the industry, given its past record and present behavior, is grounds for serious skepticism about their agenda, and it would be nothing short of folly to hand over the future of human sustenance to these companies.
The problem with industrial agriculture is fundamentally a problem of world view. It seeks to dominate nature, seeing it as a giant ATM machine that needs to be cashed out hard and fast. It fails to recognize nature as a living organism that we are all a part of; and that when we hurt nature we inevitably hurt ourselves. Industrial agriculture as a management system is essentially masculine, warlike, and aggressive. Its management solution is to kill life, whether it is through applying biocides, or plowing, or clear-cutting forests. It has little to no consideration for ecological principles, design in relation to landscape and natural features, and so it inevitably falls into the trap of forced functions. In trying to apply a narrow minded and flawed economic paradigm on nature, industrial agriculture destroys its primary resource base, nature itself. The problem of industrial agriculture is not an isolated issue, and is deeply entrenched in the way we think about life itself, and our purpose and place on this earth.
As we head into a future of environmental crises, the question of food will become one of the most important questions of our times, along with the question of water and other basic resources. Industrial agriculture has been a chief culprit in bringing about these problems, and has proven itself to be destructive and unsustainable. In order to create a healthier planet and a more sustainable future we must transition to an ecological model of agriculture that takes a holistic outlook to food production and energy accounting, not merely an economic or expedient one. The way forward is to realign ourselves with nature, and start working with it rather than against it.
References:
Bill Mollison, Permaculture A Designers’ Manual, Tagari Publications. Tasmania. 1988.
Apr 28, 2014
Hines Farm Harbor Freight Sawmill - Beginning Setup, Modifications, and Milling
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"First Log Milled"
Hines Farm Setup included modification to have a 22' log bed in lieu of 12' standard.
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Hines Farm Setup also included removal of hand crank so a "Power Up & Down feature" could be implemented.
April 27, 2014, I converted my Harbor Freight Sawmill to "Power Up and Down". Remove hand crank by driving the retaining pin out. Replaced the crank with a 3/4" nut with threads drilled out and a .2" hole drilled through the perpendicular axis so the retaining pin can be driven through it and the screw drive shaft. To power the sawmill up and down I use an 18 Volt battery, reversible powered drill with a 3/4" socket attached. Works great and is a lot easier and quicker than hand cranking at a height above your shoulder. If you modify yours, follow safe procedures and do at your own risk.
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"First Log Milled"
First 8'+ x 12" x 14" Log Cant
"First Log Milled"
4th Log Milled --- 18+ Foot - 20+ Inch Diameter Log
Loading 18 Foot Log - Larger Image
18 Foot Log - Larger Image
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18 Foot Cant - Larger Image
18 Foot Cant Storage - Larger Image
Stickers For Lumber Stacking & Drying - Larger Image
Storing Large Cants - Larger Image
10' Ash Log - Larger Image
2" Thick Ash Slabs
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Milling 10 foot 2 x 8's - Larger Image
10' 8 x 8 Cant - Larger Image
Great sawmill, well built, with many great features! Monte & Eileen Hines
Links:
http://www.harborfreight.com/http-www-harborfreight-com-saw-mill-with-280cc-gas-engine-61712-html.html
Apr 11, 2014
Years of Living Dangerously Premiere Full Episode - YouTube
Years of Living Dangerously Premiere Full Episode - YouTube
Published on Apr 6, 2014
Hollywood celebrities and respected journalists span the globe to explore the issues of climate change and cover intimate stories of human triumph and tragedy. Watch new episodes Sundays at 10PM ET/PT, only on SHOWTIME.
Subscribe to the Years of Living Dangerously channel for more:http://s.sho.com/YearsYouTube
Official site: http://www.sho.com/yearsoflivingdange...
The Years Project: http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/
Follow: https://twitter.com/YEARSofLIVING
Like: https://www.facebook.com/YearsOfLiving
Watch on Showtime Anytime: http://s.sho.com/1hoirn4
Don't Have Showtime? Order Now: http://s.sho.com/P0DCVU
It's the biggest story of our time. Hollywood's brightest stars and today's most respected journalists explore the issues of climate change and bring you intimate accounts of triumph and tragedy. YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY takes you directly to the heart of the matter in this awe-inspiring and cinematic documentary series event from Executive Producers James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mar 30, 2014
135 lbs. Blue Catfish was caught and released at John H. Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island Lake), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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Check this out! This 135 lbs. Blue Catfish was caught and released at John H. Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island Lake), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The large catfish is only a few pounds shy of the 143 lbs. world record caught on Kerr a few years ago. Corps of Engineers Wilmington District operates this 50,000 acre reservoir and an additional 50,000 acres of surrounding land. Visit one of our beautiful USACE lakes!
Mar 26, 2014
Are We Becoming China's Factory Farm? | Mother Jones
US hog operations are feeding more than a billion people's growing appetite for pork.
—By Tom Philpott
Illustration: Michael Klein
China is in the midst of a love affair with pork. Its consumption of the stuff has nearly doubled since 1993 and just keeps rising. The Chinese currently eat 88 pounds per capita each year—far more than Americans' relatively measly 60 pounds. To meet the growing demand, China's hog farms have grown and multiplied, and more than half of the globe's pigs are now raised there. But even so, its production can't keep up with the pork craze.
So where is China looking to supply its demand for chops, ribs, loins, butts, and bellies? Not Southeast Asia or Africa—more like Iowa and North Carolina. US pork exports to China surged from about 57,000 metric tons in 2003 to more than 430,000 metric tons in 2012, about a fifth of all such exports. And that was before a Chinese company announced its intention to buy US pork giant Smithfield Foods in 2013. The way things are going, the United States is poised to become China's very own factory hog farm. Here are a few reasons why:
- It's now cheaper to produce pork in the US than in China. You read that right: Our meat industry churns out hogs for about $0.57 per pound, according to the US Department of Agriculture, versus $0.68 per pound in China's new, factory-scale hog farms. The main difference is feed costs. US pig producers spend about 25 percent less on feed than their Chinese counterparts, the USDA found, because the "United States has more abundant land, water, and grain resources."
- Americans are not as fond of "the other white meat" as we once were. You wouldn't know it from the menus in trendy restaurants, but US consumers' appetite for pork hit a peak in 1999 and has declined ever since. Yet industry, beholden to shareholders demanding growth, keeps churning out more. According to its latest projections, the USDA expects US pork exports to rise by another 0.9 metric tons by 2022—a 33 percent jump from 2012 levels.
- Much of China's arable land is polluted. Fully 40 percent has been degraded by erosion, salinization, or acidification—and nearly 20 percent is tainted by industrial effluent, sewage, excessive farm chemicals, or mining runoff. The pollution makes soil less productive, and dangerous elements like cadmium have turned up in rice crops.
- Chinese rivers have been vanishing since the 1990s as demand from farms and factories has helped suck them dry. Of the ones that remain, 75 percent are severely polluted, and more than a third of those are so toxic they can't be used to irrigate farms, according to a 2008 report by the Chinese government. According to the World Bank, China's average annual water resources are less than 2,200 cubic meters per capita. The United States, by contrast, boasts almost 9,400 cubic meters of water per person.
- Chinese consumers are losing trust in the nation's food supply—and will pay for alternatives. A spate of food-related scandals over the past half decade has made food safety the Chinese public's No. 1 concern, a 2013 study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University found. Judith Shapiro, author of the 2012 book China's Environmental Challenges and director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development program at American University, says she expects Smithfield pork to command "quite a premium" in China, because it's perceived as safer and better than the domestic stuff. Already, "US pork is particularly popular and commands premium prices, as it is viewed as higher quality due to our strict food safety laws," a Bloomberg Businessweek columnist reported last July.
But what's good for pork exporters may not be good for the United States: More mass-produced pork also means more pollution to air and water from toxic manure, more dangerous and low-wage work, and more antibiotic-resistant pathogens. And that's just the beginning. In addition to ramping up foreign meat purchases, China is also rapidly transforming its domestic meat industry along the US industrial model—and importing enormous amounts of feed to do so. The Chinese and their hogs, chickens, and cows gobble up a jaw-dropping 60 percent of the global trade in soybeans, and the government may soon also ramp up corn imports—because while Beijing currently limits foreign corn purchases, meat producers are clamoring for more. And where does a third of the globe's corn come from? You guessed it: The good old USA.
Are We Becoming China's Factory Farm? | Mother Jones
—By Tom Philpott
Illustration: Michael Klein
China is in the midst of a love affair with pork. Its consumption of the stuff has nearly doubled since 1993 and just keeps rising. The Chinese currently eat 88 pounds per capita each year—far more than Americans' relatively measly 60 pounds. To meet the growing demand, China's hog farms have grown and multiplied, and more than half of the globe's pigs are now raised there. But even so, its production can't keep up with the pork craze.
So where is China looking to supply its demand for chops, ribs, loins, butts, and bellies? Not Southeast Asia or Africa—more like Iowa and North Carolina. US pork exports to China surged from about 57,000 metric tons in 2003 to more than 430,000 metric tons in 2012, about a fifth of all such exports. And that was before a Chinese company announced its intention to buy US pork giant Smithfield Foods in 2013. The way things are going, the United States is poised to become China's very own factory hog farm. Here are a few reasons why:
- It's now cheaper to produce pork in the US than in China. You read that right: Our meat industry churns out hogs for about $0.57 per pound, according to the US Department of Agriculture, versus $0.68 per pound in China's new, factory-scale hog farms. The main difference is feed costs. US pig producers spend about 25 percent less on feed than their Chinese counterparts, the USDA found, because the "United States has more abundant land, water, and grain resources."
- Americans are not as fond of "the other white meat" as we once were. You wouldn't know it from the menus in trendy restaurants, but US consumers' appetite for pork hit a peak in 1999 and has declined ever since. Yet industry, beholden to shareholders demanding growth, keeps churning out more. According to its latest projections, the USDA expects US pork exports to rise by another 0.9 metric tons by 2022—a 33 percent jump from 2012 levels.
- Much of China's arable land is polluted. Fully 40 percent has been degraded by erosion, salinization, or acidification—and nearly 20 percent is tainted by industrial effluent, sewage, excessive farm chemicals, or mining runoff. The pollution makes soil less productive, and dangerous elements like cadmium have turned up in rice crops.
- Chinese rivers have been vanishing since the 1990s as demand from farms and factories has helped suck them dry. Of the ones that remain, 75 percent are severely polluted, and more than a third of those are so toxic they can't be used to irrigate farms, according to a 2008 report by the Chinese government. According to the World Bank, China's average annual water resources are less than 2,200 cubic meters per capita. The United States, by contrast, boasts almost 9,400 cubic meters of water per person.
- Chinese consumers are losing trust in the nation's food supply—and will pay for alternatives. A spate of food-related scandals over the past half decade has made food safety the Chinese public's No. 1 concern, a 2013 study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University found. Judith Shapiro, author of the 2012 book China's Environmental Challenges and director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development program at American University, says she expects Smithfield pork to command "quite a premium" in China, because it's perceived as safer and better than the domestic stuff. Already, "US pork is particularly popular and commands premium prices, as it is viewed as higher quality due to our strict food safety laws," a Bloomberg Businessweek columnist reported last July.
But what's good for pork exporters may not be good for the United States: More mass-produced pork also means more pollution to air and water from toxic manure, more dangerous and low-wage work, and more antibiotic-resistant pathogens. And that's just the beginning. In addition to ramping up foreign meat purchases, China is also rapidly transforming its domestic meat industry along the US industrial model—and importing enormous amounts of feed to do so. The Chinese and their hogs, chickens, and cows gobble up a jaw-dropping 60 percent of the global trade in soybeans, and the government may soon also ramp up corn imports—because while Beijing currently limits foreign corn purchases, meat producers are clamoring for more. And where does a third of the globe's corn come from? You guessed it: The good old USA.
Are We Becoming China's Factory Farm? | Mother Jones
The transformation of timberland ownership and markets in North America | Forest Business Network
BY CRAIG RAWLINGS - FOREST BUSINESS NETWORK
IMAGE BY DAVE THOMAS / FLICKR.COM
It’s not every day I get to hear one of America’s top forest industry CEOs speak on the global state of our industry. Mike Covey, CEO of Potlatch Corporation, recently spent the day in Missoula meeting with University of Montana College of Forestry and business students, faculty, and community members, then concluded his day with an hour-long lecture to over 200 folks on “The Transformation of Timberland Ownership and Markets in North America.”
In his presentation, Mike addresses why timber companies are becoming real estate investment trusts and how a global economy affects the U.S. lumber, timber, and log markets. While the U.S. will probably build some 5-7 million homes over the next five years, China has mandated close to 35 million. Where will they get their building products? A lot of it will come from North America. (By the way, companies looking to diversify their markets through exports will certainly benefit from presentations at the SmallWood Conferencethis June.)
The University of Montana’s video staff did a great job of filming Mike’s speech and I think you will enjoy watching his one-hour presentation and Q&A from the audience.
WATCH THE PRESENTATION
The transformation of timberland ownership and markets in North America | Forest Business Network
In his presentation, Mike addresses why timber companies are becoming real estate investment trusts and how a global economy affects the U.S. lumber, timber, and log markets. While the U.S. will probably build some 5-7 million homes over the next five years, China has mandated close to 35 million. Where will they get their building products? A lot of it will come from North America. (By the way, companies looking to diversify their markets through exports will certainly benefit from presentations at the SmallWood Conferencethis June.)
The University of Montana’s video staff did a great job of filming Mike’s speech and I think you will enjoy watching his one-hour presentation and Q&A from the audience.
WATCH THE PRESENTATION
The transformation of timberland ownership and markets in North America | Forest Business Network
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 17, 2014
A Primal Diet for Modern Times, part 2 - YouTube
Published on Mar 17, 2014
Is our ancestors' hunter-gatherer diet the best for optimal health and longevity, in our stress- and pollution-filled world? Not entirely, says Nora Gedgaudas, author of Primal Body, Primal Mind. She advocates a ketogenic diet, where fats are the primary fuel source rather than carbohydrates — moderate protein (from grass-fed or wild caught animals), very low starch and natural sugars, plentiful fibrous green vegetables, generous natural fats, and no vegetable oils. "Once [our ancestors] adopted ketones as a primary source of fuel, our cerebral blood flow and oxygenation increased by over 39% in normal human brains." Returning to a ketogenic diet improves brain function and can help treat or even prevent diabetes and Alzheimers
A Primal Diet for Modern Times, part 2 - YouTube
Mar 13, 2014
Joel Salatin responds to New York Times’ ‘Myth of Sustainable Meat’ | Grist
By Joel Salatin
The following post originally appeared on the Polyface Farms Facebook page.
The following post originally appeared on the Polyface Farms Facebook page.
Cows at Polyface Farm. Photo by Amber Karnes.
The recent editorial by James McWilliams, titled “The Myth of Sustainable Meat,” contains enough factual errors and skewed assumptions to fill a book, and normally I would dismiss this out of hand as too much nonsense to merit a response. But since it specifically mentionedPolyface, a rebuttal is appropriate. For a more comprehensive rebuttal, read the book Folks, This Ain’t Normal.
Let’s go point by point. First, that grass-grazing cows emit more methane than grain-fed ones. This is factually false. Actually, the amount of methane emitted by fermentation is the same whether it occurs in the cow or outside. Whether the feed is eaten by an herbivore or left to rot on its own, the methane generated is identical. Wetlands emit some 95 percent of all methane in the world; herbivores are insignificant enough to not even merit consideration. Anyone who really wants to stop methane needs to start draining wetlands. Quick, or we’ll all perish. I assume he’s figuring that since it takes longer to grow a beef on grass than on grain, the difference in time adds days to the emissions. But grain production carries a host of maladies far worse than methane. This is simply cherry-picking one negative out of many positives to smear the foundation of how soil builds: herbivore pruning, perennial disturbance-rest cycles, solar-grown biomass, and decomposition. This is like demonizing marriage because a good one will include some arguments.
As for his notion that it takes too much land to grass-finish, his figures of 10 acres per animal are assuming the current normal mismanagement of pastures. At Polyface, we call it neanderthal management, because most livestock farmers have not yet joined the 20th century with electric fencing, ponds, piped water, and modern scientific aerobic composting (only as old as chemical fertilization). Hence, while his figures comparing the relative production of grain to grass may sound compelling, they are like comparing the learning opportunities under a terrible teacher versus a magnificent teacher. Many farmers, in many different climates, are now using space-age technology, biomimicry, and close management to get exponential increases in forage production. The rainforest, by the way, is not being cut to graze cattle. It’s being cut to grow transgenic corn and soybeans. North America had twice as many herbivores 500 years ago than it does today due to the pulsing of the predator-prey-pruning cycle on perennial prairie polycultures. And that was without any corn or soybeans at all.
Apparently if you lie often and big enough, some people will believe it: Pastured chicken has a 20 percent greater impact on global warming? Says who? The truth is that those industrial chicken houses are not stand-alone structures. They require square miles of grain to be carted into them, and square miles of land to handle the manure. Of course, many times that land is not enough. To industrial farmers’ relief, more often than not a hurricane comes along just in time to flush the toilet, kill the fish, and send pathogens into the ocean. That’s a nice way to reduce the alleged footprint, but it’s devilish sleight of hand with the data to assume that ecological toxicity compensates for the true land base needed to sustain a factory farm.
While it’s true that at Polyface our omnivores (poultry and pigs) do eat local GMO (genetically modified organism)-free grain in addition to the forage, the land base required to feed and metabolize the manure is no different than that needed to sustain the same animals in a confinement setting. Even if they ate zero pasturage, the land is the same. The only difference is our animals get sunshine, exercise, fresh pasture salad bars, fresh air, and a respectful life. Chickens walking on pasture certainly do not have any more leg sprains than those walking in a confinement facility. To suggest otherwise, as McWilliams does, is sheer nonsense. Walking is walking — and it’s generally considered to be a healthy practice, unless you’re a tyrant.
Interestingly, in a lone concession to compassion, McWilliams decries ranging hogs with rings in their noses to keep them from rooting, lamenting that this is “one of their most basic instincts.” Notice that he does not reconcile this moral imperative with his love affair with confinement hog factories. Nothing much to use their noses for in there. For the record, Polyface never rings hog noses, and in the few cases where we’ve purchased hogs with rings, we take them out. We want them to fully express their pigness. By moving them frequently using modern electric fencing, polyethylene water piping, high-tech float valves, and scientifically designed feed dispensers, we do not create nor suffer the problems encountered by earlier large-scale outdoor hog operations 100 years ago. McWilliams has apparently never had the privilege of visiting a first-rate, modern, highly managed, pastured hog operation. He thinks we’re all stuck in the early 1900s, and that’s a shame because he’d discover the answers to his concerns are already here. I wonder where his paycheck comes from?
Then McWilliams moves on to the argument that economic realities would kick in if pastured livestock became normal, driving farmers to scale up and end up right where we are today. What a clever ploy: justify the horrible by eliminating the alternatives. At Polyface, we certainly do not discourage scaling up — we actually encourage it. We think more pasture-based farms should scale up. Between the current abysmal state of mismanagement, however, and efficient operations, is an astronomical opportunity to enjoy economic and ecological advantages. McWilliams is basing his data and assumptions on the poorest, the average or below. If you want to demonize something, always pick the lowest performers. But if you compare the best the industry has to offer with the best the pasture-based systems have to offer, the factory farms don’t have a prayer. Using portable infrastructure, tight management, and techno-glitzy tools, farmers running pastured hog operations practically eliminate capitalization costs and vet bills.
Finally, McWilliams moves to the knock-out punch in his discussion of nutrient cycling, charging specifically that Polyface is a charade because it depends on grain from industrial farms to maintain soil fertility. First of all, at Polyface we do not assume that all nutrient movement is anti-environmental. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for animals in nature is to move nutrients uphill, against the natural gravitational flow from high ground to low ground. This is why low lands and valleys are fertile and the uplands are less so. Animals are the only mechanism nature has to defy this natural downward flow. Fortunately, predators make the prey animals want to lounge on high ground (where they can see their enemies), which insures that manure will concentrate on high lookout spots rather than in the valleys. Perhaps this is why no ecosystem exists that is devoid of animals. The fact is that nutrient movement is inherently nature-healing.
But, it doesn’t move very far. And herein lies the difference between grain used at Polyface and that used by the industry: We care where ours comes from. It’s not just a commodity. It has an origin and an ending, start to finish, farmer to eater. The closer we can connect the carbon cycles, the more environmentally normal we will become.
Second, herbivores are the exception to the entire negative nutrient flow argument because by pruning back the forage to restart the rapid biomass accumulation photosynthetic engine, the net carbon flow compensates for anything lost through harvest. Herbivores do not require tillage or annuals, and that is why all historically deep soils have been created by them, not by omnivores. It’s fascinating that McWilliams wants to demonize pasture-based livestock for not closing all the nutrient loops, but has no problem, apparently, with the horrendous nutrient toxicity like dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey created by chemical fertilizer runoff to grow grain so that the life of a beef could be shortened. Unbelievable. In addition, this is one reason Polyface continues to fight for relaxing food safety regulations to allow on-farm slaughtering, precisely so we can indeed keep all these nutrients on the farm and not send them the rendering plants. If the greenies who don’t want historically normal farm activities like slaughter to occur on rural acreage could understand how devastating these government regulations actually are to the environmental economy, perhaps McWilliams wouldn’t have this bullet in his arsenal. And yes, human waste should be put back on the land as well, to help close the loop.
Third, at Polyface, we struggle upstream. Historically, omnivores were salvage operations. Hogs ate spoiled milk, whey, acorns, chestnuts, spoiled fruit, and a host of other farmstead products. Ditto for chickens, who dined on kitchen scraps and garden refuse. That today 50 percent of all the human edible food produced in the world goes into landfills or greenie-endorsed composting operations rather than through omnivores is both ecologically and morally reprehensible. At Polyface, we’ve tried for many, many years to get kitchen scraps back from restaurants to feed our poultry, but the logistics are a nightmare. The fact is that in America we have created a segregated food and farming system. In the perfect world, Polyface would not sell eggs. Instead, every kitchen, both domestic and commercial, would have enough chickens proximate to handle all the scraps. This would eliminate the entire egg industry and current heavy grain feeding paradigm. At Polyface, we only purport to be doing the best we can do as we struggle through a deviant, historically abnormal food and farming system. We didn’t create what is and we may not solve it perfectly. But we’re sure a lot farther toward real solutions than McWilliams can imagine. And if society would move where we want to go, and the government regulators would let us move where we need to go, and the industry would not try to criminalize us as we try to go there, we’ll all be a whole lot better off and the earthworms will dance.
Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farm -- which was featured in Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma and the documentary film Food, Inc. He is a third generation family farmer working his land in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley with his wife, Teresa, son Daniel, daughter Rachel, and their families. Polyface Farm, an organic grass-fed farm, services more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs. Salatin writes extensively in magazines such as Stockman Grass Farmer, Acres USA, and American Agriculture.
Joel Salatin responds to New York Times’ ‘Myth of Sustainable Meat’ | Grist
The recent editorial by James McWilliams, titled “The Myth of Sustainable Meat,” contains enough factual errors and skewed assumptions to fill a book, and normally I would dismiss this out of hand as too much nonsense to merit a response. But since it specifically mentionedPolyface, a rebuttal is appropriate. For a more comprehensive rebuttal, read the book Folks, This Ain’t Normal.
Let’s go point by point. First, that grass-grazing cows emit more methane than grain-fed ones. This is factually false. Actually, the amount of methane emitted by fermentation is the same whether it occurs in the cow or outside. Whether the feed is eaten by an herbivore or left to rot on its own, the methane generated is identical. Wetlands emit some 95 percent of all methane in the world; herbivores are insignificant enough to not even merit consideration. Anyone who really wants to stop methane needs to start draining wetlands. Quick, or we’ll all perish. I assume he’s figuring that since it takes longer to grow a beef on grass than on grain, the difference in time adds days to the emissions. But grain production carries a host of maladies far worse than methane. This is simply cherry-picking one negative out of many positives to smear the foundation of how soil builds: herbivore pruning, perennial disturbance-rest cycles, solar-grown biomass, and decomposition. This is like demonizing marriage because a good one will include some arguments.
As for his notion that it takes too much land to grass-finish, his figures of 10 acres per animal are assuming the current normal mismanagement of pastures. At Polyface, we call it neanderthal management, because most livestock farmers have not yet joined the 20th century with electric fencing, ponds, piped water, and modern scientific aerobic composting (only as old as chemical fertilization). Hence, while his figures comparing the relative production of grain to grass may sound compelling, they are like comparing the learning opportunities under a terrible teacher versus a magnificent teacher. Many farmers, in many different climates, are now using space-age technology, biomimicry, and close management to get exponential increases in forage production. The rainforest, by the way, is not being cut to graze cattle. It’s being cut to grow transgenic corn and soybeans. North America had twice as many herbivores 500 years ago than it does today due to the pulsing of the predator-prey-pruning cycle on perennial prairie polycultures. And that was without any corn or soybeans at all.
Apparently if you lie often and big enough, some people will believe it: Pastured chicken has a 20 percent greater impact on global warming? Says who? The truth is that those industrial chicken houses are not stand-alone structures. They require square miles of grain to be carted into them, and square miles of land to handle the manure. Of course, many times that land is not enough. To industrial farmers’ relief, more often than not a hurricane comes along just in time to flush the toilet, kill the fish, and send pathogens into the ocean. That’s a nice way to reduce the alleged footprint, but it’s devilish sleight of hand with the data to assume that ecological toxicity compensates for the true land base needed to sustain a factory farm.
While it’s true that at Polyface our omnivores (poultry and pigs) do eat local GMO (genetically modified organism)-free grain in addition to the forage, the land base required to feed and metabolize the manure is no different than that needed to sustain the same animals in a confinement setting. Even if they ate zero pasturage, the land is the same. The only difference is our animals get sunshine, exercise, fresh pasture salad bars, fresh air, and a respectful life. Chickens walking on pasture certainly do not have any more leg sprains than those walking in a confinement facility. To suggest otherwise, as McWilliams does, is sheer nonsense. Walking is walking — and it’s generally considered to be a healthy practice, unless you’re a tyrant.
Interestingly, in a lone concession to compassion, McWilliams decries ranging hogs with rings in their noses to keep them from rooting, lamenting that this is “one of their most basic instincts.” Notice that he does not reconcile this moral imperative with his love affair with confinement hog factories. Nothing much to use their noses for in there. For the record, Polyface never rings hog noses, and in the few cases where we’ve purchased hogs with rings, we take them out. We want them to fully express their pigness. By moving them frequently using modern electric fencing, polyethylene water piping, high-tech float valves, and scientifically designed feed dispensers, we do not create nor suffer the problems encountered by earlier large-scale outdoor hog operations 100 years ago. McWilliams has apparently never had the privilege of visiting a first-rate, modern, highly managed, pastured hog operation. He thinks we’re all stuck in the early 1900s, and that’s a shame because he’d discover the answers to his concerns are already here. I wonder where his paycheck comes from?
Then McWilliams moves on to the argument that economic realities would kick in if pastured livestock became normal, driving farmers to scale up and end up right where we are today. What a clever ploy: justify the horrible by eliminating the alternatives. At Polyface, we certainly do not discourage scaling up — we actually encourage it. We think more pasture-based farms should scale up. Between the current abysmal state of mismanagement, however, and efficient operations, is an astronomical opportunity to enjoy economic and ecological advantages. McWilliams is basing his data and assumptions on the poorest, the average or below. If you want to demonize something, always pick the lowest performers. But if you compare the best the industry has to offer with the best the pasture-based systems have to offer, the factory farms don’t have a prayer. Using portable infrastructure, tight management, and techno-glitzy tools, farmers running pastured hog operations practically eliminate capitalization costs and vet bills.
Finally, McWilliams moves to the knock-out punch in his discussion of nutrient cycling, charging specifically that Polyface is a charade because it depends on grain from industrial farms to maintain soil fertility. First of all, at Polyface we do not assume that all nutrient movement is anti-environmental. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for animals in nature is to move nutrients uphill, against the natural gravitational flow from high ground to low ground. This is why low lands and valleys are fertile and the uplands are less so. Animals are the only mechanism nature has to defy this natural downward flow. Fortunately, predators make the prey animals want to lounge on high ground (where they can see their enemies), which insures that manure will concentrate on high lookout spots rather than in the valleys. Perhaps this is why no ecosystem exists that is devoid of animals. The fact is that nutrient movement is inherently nature-healing.
But, it doesn’t move very far. And herein lies the difference between grain used at Polyface and that used by the industry: We care where ours comes from. It’s not just a commodity. It has an origin and an ending, start to finish, farmer to eater. The closer we can connect the carbon cycles, the more environmentally normal we will become.
Second, herbivores are the exception to the entire negative nutrient flow argument because by pruning back the forage to restart the rapid biomass accumulation photosynthetic engine, the net carbon flow compensates for anything lost through harvest. Herbivores do not require tillage or annuals, and that is why all historically deep soils have been created by them, not by omnivores. It’s fascinating that McWilliams wants to demonize pasture-based livestock for not closing all the nutrient loops, but has no problem, apparently, with the horrendous nutrient toxicity like dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey created by chemical fertilizer runoff to grow grain so that the life of a beef could be shortened. Unbelievable. In addition, this is one reason Polyface continues to fight for relaxing food safety regulations to allow on-farm slaughtering, precisely so we can indeed keep all these nutrients on the farm and not send them the rendering plants. If the greenies who don’t want historically normal farm activities like slaughter to occur on rural acreage could understand how devastating these government regulations actually are to the environmental economy, perhaps McWilliams wouldn’t have this bullet in his arsenal. And yes, human waste should be put back on the land as well, to help close the loop.
Third, at Polyface, we struggle upstream. Historically, omnivores were salvage operations. Hogs ate spoiled milk, whey, acorns, chestnuts, spoiled fruit, and a host of other farmstead products. Ditto for chickens, who dined on kitchen scraps and garden refuse. That today 50 percent of all the human edible food produced in the world goes into landfills or greenie-endorsed composting operations rather than through omnivores is both ecologically and morally reprehensible. At Polyface, we’ve tried for many, many years to get kitchen scraps back from restaurants to feed our poultry, but the logistics are a nightmare. The fact is that in America we have created a segregated food and farming system. In the perfect world, Polyface would not sell eggs. Instead, every kitchen, both domestic and commercial, would have enough chickens proximate to handle all the scraps. This would eliminate the entire egg industry and current heavy grain feeding paradigm. At Polyface, we only purport to be doing the best we can do as we struggle through a deviant, historically abnormal food and farming system. We didn’t create what is and we may not solve it perfectly. But we’re sure a lot farther toward real solutions than McWilliams can imagine. And if society would move where we want to go, and the government regulators would let us move where we need to go, and the industry would not try to criminalize us as we try to go there, we’ll all be a whole lot better off and the earthworms will dance.
Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farm -- which was featured in Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma and the documentary film Food, Inc. He is a third generation family farmer working his land in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley with his wife, Teresa, son Daniel, daughter Rachel, and their families. Polyface Farm, an organic grass-fed farm, services more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs. Salatin writes extensively in magazines such as Stockman Grass Farmer, Acres USA, and American Agriculture.
Joel Salatin responds to New York Times’ ‘Myth of Sustainable Meat’ | Grist
How to transfer an inkjet photo to wood - YouTube
Published on Mar 12, 2014
Inkjet to wood photo transfer technique. There is not a lot to the process, but this should help. Here's a recent project of demonstrated use: http://youtu.be/bdo64-wo63Q
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How to transfer an inkjet photo to wood - YouTube
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TOLIET PAPER - Simple Garden Tip: Best Seed Tape Ever: Organic Gardening
Best Seed Tape Ever
Planting tiny seeds is easy with this simple gardening trick.
Planting tiny seeds is easy with this simple gardening trick.
It’s difficult to space tiny seeds, such as carrots, in the garden. The best way to solve this problem is to make homemade seed tape. Here’s how to do it:
1. Unroll a strip of toilet paper on a table (double ply works best), mist it with a sprayer, and place the seeds along the center of the strip. Be sure to space the seeds based on the seed packet’s recommendation. Tip: Alternate carrot seeds with radish seeds because when the radishes sprout, they help to mark the row and break the ground.
2. Starting along the strip’s long edge, fold a third of the paper over the seeds, then fold the other third over to cover the seeds completely. Lightly tamp the paper, misting it again to secure the seeds. Make as many of these strips as you need. Then carefully carry them to the garden.
3. Make shallow furrows in the prepared soil, lay the strips down, and cover them. In a jiffy, your small seeds will be planted and perfectly spaced.
Simple Garden Tip: Best Seed Tape Ever: Organic Gardening
1. Unroll a strip of toilet paper on a table (double ply works best), mist it with a sprayer, and place the seeds along the center of the strip. Be sure to space the seeds based on the seed packet’s recommendation. Tip: Alternate carrot seeds with radish seeds because when the radishes sprout, they help to mark the row and break the ground.
2. Starting along the strip’s long edge, fold a third of the paper over the seeds, then fold the other third over to cover the seeds completely. Lightly tamp the paper, misting it again to secure the seeds. Make as many of these strips as you need. Then carefully carry them to the garden.
3. Make shallow furrows in the prepared soil, lay the strips down, and cover them. In a jiffy, your small seeds will be planted and perfectly spaced.
Simple Garden Tip: Best Seed Tape Ever: Organic Gardening
Mar 11, 2014
A Primal Diet for Modern Times, part 1 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eaPlmzz94
Published on Mar 10, 2014
Nora Gedgaudas used to believe a plant-based diet was the healthiest. That belief got turned upside down when she spent a summer studying wolves near the North pole. "We are fundamentally ice-age hunter-gatherers," states the nutritionist and author of Primal Body, Primal Mind. She points out that our genes are 99.9% the same as our ancestors - they haven't yet adapted to the relatively recent agriculturally-based lifestyle based on grains. As a result, our bodies have no need for dietary carbohydrates. By contrast, "Fat, to us means survival.... Dietary fat is the most nutrient-dense thing we can consume, rich in fat-soluble nutrients, and essential for the functioning of our brain and nervous systems." Episode 260. [primalbody-primalmind.com]
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A Primal Diet for Modern Times, part 1 - YouTube
UltraBattery a Boon to Renewable Energy, Grid Storage, and EVs > ENGINEERING.com
Tom Lombardo March 09, 2014
UltraBattery® with its Inventor, Dr. Lan Lam (Image courtesy of CSIRO)
Batteries pack a lot of energy into a small space, but they’re slow to charge, they lose their capacity after several charge-discharge cycles, and many are not environmentally friendly. Supercapacitors (also known as ultracapacitors) can be charged very quickly, can survive a near limitless number of charge-discharge cycles, and are made from relatively benign materials.
Electric and hybrid vehicles (EVs and HEVs) need the benefits of both technologies, and often employ a blend of batteries and supercaps, with the former providing a long driving range and the latter storing energy from regenerative braking and giving quick bursts of energy for rapid acceleration.
Grid-level storage combined with renewable energy has the potential to replace gas fired “peaker plants,” but like the EV, it requires the high energy density of batteries and the quick response time and long life of supercaps.
Using batteries and supercaps together requires control circuitry to move electricity to and from the different storage elements. But what happens if you combine the battery and the supercap in one package? You get the best of both worlds: the UltraBattery®, developed by a team from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and now produced by CSIRO spinoff company Ecoult. The UltraBattery is a lead-acid battery with a built in supercapacitor, as shown here:
Image courtesy of Ecoult
Conventional lead-acid batteries suffer from sulfation, lead sulfate crystals growing on the battery’s plates, causing a decrease in capacity and an increase in internal resistance. Sulfation occurs naturally with age, but it’s made worse by operating the battery at intermediate states of charge (somewhere between full and empty). Since that’s the normal condition for EV batteries and grid-level storage systems, you can see why many of those applications employ more costly NiMH or Li-ion batteries instead of inexpensive lead-acid batteries. According to CSIRO and Ecoult engineers, using a carbon-based supercap in parallel with the battery reduces negative plate sulfation. They don’t explain the chemistry behind that and I’m not a chemist, but independent testing by Sandia National Labs confirmed that the UltraBattery showed very little sulfation compared to standard deep-cycle lead-acid batteries under the same conditions.
Additional tests by Sandia National Labs showed that when subjected to cycles that are typical of grid-level storage applications, the UltraBattery lasted ten times longer than a conventional lead-acid battery. When tested under hybrid EV conditions, the UltraBattery once again outperformed its lead-acid counterpart by a factor of ten, performing at least as well as NiMH batteries but at a significantly lower cost.
UltraBatteries achieved a round-trip efficiency of around 90%, compared to 70% for conventional lead-acid batteries. This occurred under both low-current and high-current charge-discharge cycles. (For more details on the exact testing procedures and results, click the “Read More…” link at the end of this article and download the white paper.)
In addition to its superior electrical characteristics, the UltraBattery is non-flammable and made from materials that are abundant, non-hazardous, and fully recyclable. The UltraBattery is safe, clean, efficient, reliable, and inexpensive. What more can you ask for?
Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are intermittent, sometimes providing more energy than needed while other times not generating enough. Cost effective, efficient grid-level storage is the key to a renewable energy future. Electric vehicles and hybrids demand high capacity, inexpensive, and lightweight batteries. Likewise, storage is the main obstacle standing in the way of universal adoption of EVs. While research into alternative battery chemistry continues, it could be that the good old lead-acid battery, enhanced by a built-in supercapacitor, will satisfy both needs.
[Read More...]
UltraBattery a Boon to Renewable Energy, Grid Storage, and EVs > ENGINEERING.com
UltraBattery® with its Inventor, Dr. Lan Lam (Image courtesy of CSIRO)
Batteries pack a lot of energy into a small space, but they’re slow to charge, they lose their capacity after several charge-discharge cycles, and many are not environmentally friendly. Supercapacitors (also known as ultracapacitors) can be charged very quickly, can survive a near limitless number of charge-discharge cycles, and are made from relatively benign materials.
Electric and hybrid vehicles (EVs and HEVs) need the benefits of both technologies, and often employ a blend of batteries and supercaps, with the former providing a long driving range and the latter storing energy from regenerative braking and giving quick bursts of energy for rapid acceleration.
Grid-level storage combined with renewable energy has the potential to replace gas fired “peaker plants,” but like the EV, it requires the high energy density of batteries and the quick response time and long life of supercaps.
Using batteries and supercaps together requires control circuitry to move electricity to and from the different storage elements. But what happens if you combine the battery and the supercap in one package? You get the best of both worlds: the UltraBattery®, developed by a team from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and now produced by CSIRO spinoff company Ecoult. The UltraBattery is a lead-acid battery with a built in supercapacitor, as shown here:
Image courtesy of Ecoult
Conventional lead-acid batteries suffer from sulfation, lead sulfate crystals growing on the battery’s plates, causing a decrease in capacity and an increase in internal resistance. Sulfation occurs naturally with age, but it’s made worse by operating the battery at intermediate states of charge (somewhere between full and empty). Since that’s the normal condition for EV batteries and grid-level storage systems, you can see why many of those applications employ more costly NiMH or Li-ion batteries instead of inexpensive lead-acid batteries. According to CSIRO and Ecoult engineers, using a carbon-based supercap in parallel with the battery reduces negative plate sulfation. They don’t explain the chemistry behind that and I’m not a chemist, but independent testing by Sandia National Labs confirmed that the UltraBattery showed very little sulfation compared to standard deep-cycle lead-acid batteries under the same conditions.
Additional tests by Sandia National Labs showed that when subjected to cycles that are typical of grid-level storage applications, the UltraBattery lasted ten times longer than a conventional lead-acid battery. When tested under hybrid EV conditions, the UltraBattery once again outperformed its lead-acid counterpart by a factor of ten, performing at least as well as NiMH batteries but at a significantly lower cost.
UltraBatteries achieved a round-trip efficiency of around 90%, compared to 70% for conventional lead-acid batteries. This occurred under both low-current and high-current charge-discharge cycles. (For more details on the exact testing procedures and results, click the “Read More…” link at the end of this article and download the white paper.)
In addition to its superior electrical characteristics, the UltraBattery is non-flammable and made from materials that are abundant, non-hazardous, and fully recyclable. The UltraBattery is safe, clean, efficient, reliable, and inexpensive. What more can you ask for?
Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are intermittent, sometimes providing more energy than needed while other times not generating enough. Cost effective, efficient grid-level storage is the key to a renewable energy future. Electric vehicles and hybrids demand high capacity, inexpensive, and lightweight batteries. Likewise, storage is the main obstacle standing in the way of universal adoption of EVs. While research into alternative battery chemistry continues, it could be that the good old lead-acid battery, enhanced by a built-in supercapacitor, will satisfy both needs.
[Read More...]
UltraBattery a Boon to Renewable Energy, Grid Storage, and EVs > ENGINEERING.com
Enhancing the Mississippi Watershed with Perennial Bioenergy Crops on Vimeo
Today, non-point source pollution is the greatest threat to the nation’s water and the main reason why our waters remain polluted.
The vast majority of these nutrients come from corn and soybeans production in the upper Midwest. These nutrients not only contaminate drinking water wells and local surface waters, but are chiefly responsible for the Gulf’s hypoxic zone, the largest hypoxic region in the U.S. and the second largest in the world.
This CenUSA video, Enhancing The Mississippi River Watershed with Perennial Bioenergy Crops, focuses on the role perennial grass energy crops can play in improving water qualtiy. Compared to row crops, perennial grasses have been shown to reduce runoff, erosion and nutrients by as much as 90%. The video discusses the role perennial grasses can plan in improving the Mississippi River Watershed and the Gulf of Mexico.
It features interviews with and Gulf Hypoxia co-chairs Nancy Stoner (Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at EPA) and Bill Northey (Iowa Secretary of Agriculture) and CenUSA project director Ken Moore. It discusses land use modeling research being conducted by CenUSA co-project directors Cathy Kling (Iowa State University) and Jason Hill (University of Minnesota).
The video also features farmer and bioenergy pioneer Jamie Derr and University of Minnesota scientist Bonnie Keeler.
Enhancing the Mississippi Watershed with Perennial Bioenergy Crops from CenUSA Bioenergy on Vimeo.
Enhancing the Mississippi Watershed with Perennial Bioenergy Crops from CenUSA Bioenergy on Vimeo.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 7, 2014
A Discussion on Ecology Ethics with Joel Salatin -- MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR - YouTube
Bryan Welch, Publisher of Mother Earth News, sat down with Farmer/Philosopher Joel Salatin at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Fair in Seven Springs, PA. Joel has written multiple books including Fields of Farmers, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer and Everything I Want to do is Illegal. He lives and works on his multi-generational farm, Polyface Farms, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, where he and his family raise pastured meats and organic crops.
In this conversation we learn why at the end of the day it's much more satisfying to do physical labor rather than to "blink your existence into cyberspace" and the many ways we can be good stewards of the land.
More on Self-Sufficiency and Sustainable Living from MOTHER EARTH NEWS: Providing high-quality food for your family year-round takes foresight and planning, plus healthy doses of commitment and follow-through. Whether you grow as much of your food as you can or you source it from local producers, the guidelines here will help you decide how much to produce or purchase. The charts linked to in "Plan How Much to Grow" later in this article will also help you estimate how much space you'll need — both in your garden to grow the crops, and in your home and pantry or root cellar to store preserved foods.
The MOTHER EARTH NEWS YouTube channel is your go-to source for videos about sustainable living. Find tutorials on everything from indoor seed starting and knot tying to chicken processing and butter churning. Virtually attend presentations from our popular MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIRs. Get to know our sharp (and fun-loving!) staff. We're proud to be the most popular and longest running magazine on sustainable living in the world, and we hope you enjoy getting to know us. Subscribe to our channel today! (http://www.youtube.com/user/MotherEar...)
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A Discussion on Ecology Ethics with Joel Salatin -- MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR - YouTube
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