Also in India, farmers are panicked over a drastic yield decrease where one contributing factor has been pest infestations in insect-resistant Bt cotton, which is engineered to resist only one class of pest: bollworms.
Grist asks if the Obama Administration will be the first to regulate transgenic crops. While the President-elect called for stronger regulation on the campaign trail, we'll see if he's committed to fixing a faulty framework.
Scientific American explains how Hawaii became "a sprawling living nursery" for transgenic corn seed and field trials, and that the debate around biotech taro and coffee in Hawaii -- all biotech crops, really -- will not end anytime soon.
The USA Rice Federation says its 2008 samples of Southern long-grain rice were nearly 100% free of transgenic traits. These findings are important following contamination discovered in 2006, an event that cost the rice industry upwards of $1 billion.
Cod, the once-abundant fish that the Vikings dried and salted, allowing them to set sail and pillage 'round the world, has now been overfished to the point of commercial extinction in some regions of Canada.
So environmental groups and the fishing industry were eager to hear what the European Union and Norway would say about new standards for the North Seafisheries.The biggest arguing point for both fishermen and environmental groups was cod – the fishery has decreased there by 75% in the past thirty years.
After much discussion, the EU and Norway decided to raise the cod quotas for the industry by 30%.And the World Wildlife Fund thinks it’s great – because as part of the deal, the fishing industry will be required to use exclusion nets that young cod and other species can escape from.
Prior to this agreement, up to 90% of each trawler’s catch was discarded, because the fish weren’t big enough, or they were undesirable species.Instead of lowering quotas for cod, the EU and Norway chose to try and protect the young cod and other species.
The EU is now focusing on reducing illegal catches – an estimated $12 billion a year industry.
Although drought-tolerant crops have been the rave among biotech firms lately (including an advertisement in the New Yorker), to date, no transgenic plants on the market tolerate drought any better than conventional varieties.
New research shows some promise, however, for varieties that deal better with a warming planet. Researchers have bred new varieties of high-yielding soybeans and cassava that thrive during periods of drought, with no transferring of genes necessary. And these varieties are much closer to the marketplace than drought-tolerant transgenic crops still in development.
Using traditional breeding methods, USDA bred a soybean that yields four to eight bushels more per acre under drought conditions than current conventional varieties on the market. And a non-profit group focused on agriculture solutions in Africa has bred cassava that is better adapted to arid conditions. This cassava yields six to ten times more than common varieties, and it's disease-resistant, too.
Hopefully these seeds will remain in the public domain, providing farmers more ownership over their seeds and harvests, and, as a result, strengthen food security.
Looking for some easy-to-access, credible information about the importance of ecological farming?
The Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) launched a website and listserv to help people stay connected with educational resources, including upcoming conferences and new studies. SAEA's mission is to advance sustainable agriculture and agroecology in education. Anyone can become a member.
Another useful resource was announced this week, too -- at Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The Center launched a website called the Agriculture & Public Health Gateway. Check out the extensive database. It allows you to search for reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, relevant organizations, and more -- all related to the intersection of public health and agriculture. Whether you're a physician or professor, student or scientist, this research tool is an important clearinghouse of information to guide discussions, research, and policymaking.
And don't forget about the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. This group of professionals constantly develop reports on sustainable agriculture practices and markets, provide up-to-date funding opportunities (especially for farmers), and post news stories and upcoming conferences.
You know the routine. Buy a whole chicken. Cut the plastic off. Drain the juice. Reach inside and grab out the waxy paper bag of giblets. Make a face and discard in the trash. Wait, what are you doing?!
For some reason, the innards of various livestock, also known as offal, have been ditched in favor of strictly muscle meat in many industrialized nations. But in Great Britain, offal is hot. Time reports that sales of offal in the country have jumped 67% in the past five years. Brits are expected to spend $62M this year on kidneys, livers, stomachs, trotters (feet) and intestines.
Whether this surge in interest in offal is some sort of cultural re-awakening, or simply a response to increasing prices for meat, the fact that innards are back on the plate is good. No part of any animal should be wasted, and some of the offal are the most nutritious part of the animal.
A few years ago, famous British chef Fergus Henderson wrote the acclaimed book, Nose-to-Tail-Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, outlining recipes and preparation techniques for the rich variety of parts that a single animal can provide.
Agricultural land management is being challenged throughout the world - climate patterns are shifting, fresh water is increasingly scarce, insect and plant pests are globalized, and soils are salinized from irrigation and fertilizer.
At the same time, food and fuel demands are exploding, and farmers and agricultural giants are in a mad rush to find the "best" biofuel - the one plant that produces the most per acre, so everyone can plant that one plant.
However, a subgroup of researchers and businesses around the world are taking a more bottom-up approach, by planting biofuels that fit their particular region's ecology and climate, even if they are not necessarily native.
In India, four petroleum companies have partnered to plant over 7 million acres of jatropha trees as a biofuel crop. The trees will grow on wasteland, provide consistent soil stability and protection from floods, and provide habitat for other plants and animals. The jatropha plantations provide perennial sources of fuel, as they shed their oily nutberries each year.
Most recently, biofuel researchers have focused on identifying halophytic plants (plants that can handle salty conditions) like Salicomia that could be grown for food or fuel on otherwise unuseable salinized agricultural land
I'll admit that the first time I heard “quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer” it made me think of Doc's DeLorean flux capacitor in Back to the Future. The spectrometer is nothing as spectacular as a time machine, but if you add an atmospheric pressure glow-discharge source you've got something pretty cool. Know what I mean?
The spectrometer can analyze pesticides in foods, but generally that requires extracting the pesticide from the food first. That's fine for lab work, but what if you want to detect pesticides in your food before you eat them? Zurich scientists have found that using the spectrometer and glow-discharge source together allows you to take aim at a surface and detect if there are any pesticides in it.
This is how it works if you were to analyze a piece of fruit: A plasma stream detaches molecules from the surface of the peel. The molecules are transferred directly into the mass spectrometer and the ions are fragmented using a collision gas. The pesticide can then be identified.
So what does this have to do with us, the common person? I don't know if this technology is something individual consumers can use to check their groceries any time soon. And the technology doesn't yet detect how much pesticide is in your food. But certainly scientists have at least created a method to check warehouses or assembly lines of food.
People often ingest pesticides without knowing it. It would be interesting to see if, with the technology to make more informed decisions, consumers might demand even more organic foods than they are now.
Three years of rising food prices have added 75 million people to the ranks of the undernourished, totaling nearly one billion worldwide now.
It's really no time to be wasting food.
And one of New York's four-star Japanese restuarants, Hayashi Ya, agrees. The restaurant has just begun charging patrons an extra 3% for leaving food on their plates. The restaurant offers a $22.95 all-you-can-eat buffet, and management at the restaurant was tired of seeing perfectly good food go in the garbage (who throws sushi away??).
Of course, no one Japanese restaurant is going to make a large dent in the disgusting amount of food that the U.S. wastes (27% of all food purchased in the U.S. is wasted), but it's a creative solution - for the restaurant to keep it's bottom line in check, as well as providing a small reminder to customers that there's no excuse for not cleaning their plates.
Until more places like Boston and Los Angeles begin city-wide composting efforts, creative efforts from individual restaurants and businesses will be critical to cutting food waste.
Some of the most well-known leaders in the sustainable agriculture movement are inviting us to sign a petition to President-elect Obama in support of a democratic food and agriculture system that revitalizes rural economies, protects our food supply and environment, improves public health, rescues the independent farmer, and creates a sustainable renewable energy future.
The original signers have already sent the letter to Obama and now encourage all of us to strengthen their message by signing the petition. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture could be chosen any day now.
A few of the names being floated have made some food and farm advocacy groups uneasy. The petition provides ideal candidates for the next Secretary of (Sustainable) Agriculture, listed after the jump.
It's true what our moms said...we are what we eat. In fact, it's truer than they thought. What I eat doesn't just affect me anymore, it affects all of us.
Unfortunately, the story of food can sometimes be complicated. But envirovores help each other out...which is why this blog will be bringing you news, tips, and information about food and the environment every step of the way.
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