Earthbytes

Back to the Start: a move we need to make in lots of human endeavors

I totally love this ad from Chipotle that aired during the Grammy's. It speaks most directly to the tragedies of factory farming and our unsustainable food systems, but the idea of getting back to the start -- relating to Earth and each other from heart space, and co-creating our world from there -- is one we need to bring into everything we do on this planet. Enjoy this reflection from Willy and Chipotle...

 

More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths | Common Dreams

Continuing saga of the bees...interesting article:

Bayer-produced imidacloprid harmful to bees even at very low levels

- Common Dreams staff

A new study published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature by a leading bee expert provides damning evidence that a widely used pesticide, even at low levels, is harmful to bees.

The pesticide that the study (pdf) looked at was imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide. It is neonicotinoid insecticide produced by Bayer CropScience.

via www.commondreams.org

The bees of O'Hare

I found this great story about a beekeeping project in a recent American Farmland Trust newsletter. In May, the Chicago Department of Aviation joined efforts with Sweet Beginnings to start a 2,400 square foot apiary at O'Hare International Airport.

Twenty-three beehives were set up on a patch of vacant land on the east side of the airport's property. The unused space at large airports like O'Hare is a resource begging to be used in sustainable, creative ways. What better use of it than the production of urban honey that also provides employment and training for adults who have been incarcerated and need a chance at a new life?

According to the article in The Daily GOOD:

The "airport beekeeping movement" has been growing in Germany since 1999, when scientists realized honeybees could be helpful for monitoring air quality, but O'Hare is the first American airport to get an apiary. In a way, it's a return to the airport's agricultural roots: O'Hare was founded on a former apple orchard, which lives on in the three letter airport code "ORD."

via www.good.is

 

 

 

See another great story on this project:

O'Hare Airport Buzzing over Honey Bees

Food Sovereignty: our rights to a local, sustainable food system

I got an email link today about a little town in Maine that, in March of this year, unanimously adopted a local food and self-governance ordinance to preserve small-scale farming and food processing in their community. I also watched a video on food sovereignty (see below) and got supercharged by the words and the idea.

I was going to focus on blogging about the town until I found information at The Community Environmental Defense Fund (CELDF) website that clarified some of the details of the Sedgwick ordinance (94kb pdf) and several others being pursued in Hancock County at the same time.

CELDF had drafted a food bill of rights ordinance that could be used in Maine. The resolutions actually adopted by the towns in Hancock County, according to CELDF, did not go far enough:

CELDF’s rights based Food Bill of Rights protects local family farm corporations, provides for the humane treatment of livestock, prohibits trespass by Genetically Modified Organisms, mandates formula restaurants and grocery stores to carry food products raised on local farms, denies interference from permits issued to corporations that would violate the local law, denies interference from state or federal agents or agencies that is in violation of the rights of community members secured by the ordinance, and provides for the Rights of Nature.

The Hancock County ordinances, in contrast, are regulatory in nature, as they are narrowly framed on the issues of state regulations and inspections. These ordinances focus on exempting farmers and producers from state and federal food safety regulations when selling directly to end consumers. But the Hancock County ordinances do not address the fundamental problems that have pushed family farmers out of business, eliminated the farmer's relationship with the soil, and severed the connections between farmers and community members that are vital to the resilience of our local food systems.

 

 

According to CELDF, recognizing and asserting these rights is the first step to creating a local, sustainable food system. The need for such a system -- anchored in justice and fairness for all people -- reveals itself more clearly every day.

 

 

This weekend on LinkTV: Seed Warriors

This weekend, LinkTV's ViewChange series will air the documentary Seed Warriors:

In the remote Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, politicians from around the world came to celebrate the opening of the world’s first global seed bank. After years of difficult negotiations and searching for the right spot, this was deemed to be the safest place on earth. Eventually, 4.5 million seed samples will be stored in this "Doomsday Vault" and ensure the continued existence of biodiversity.

via www.linktv.org

 

The page for the Svalbad Global Seed Vault at Wikipedia has more info and some interesting links.

The first of several showings will air at 7pm eastern tomorrow, Friday, July 22nd on DirecTV Channel 375 and DISH Network Channel 9410.

GMOs: It's not nice to fool (with) Mother Nature

I've always had an uneasy feeling about genetically modifed organisms (GMO). Early on this feeling was generated primarily, I think, at the level of intuition. But it also came out of experience and knowledge of other situations in which human beings took a chance meddling with nature only to have the experiment backfire.

The history of Earth -- from records accessible to all of us as well as those that remain hidden, for whatever reason -- is full of examples. But that's a story that would be longer in the telling. The truth of it, though, plays out on a thousand stages every day. If you look at these with a hawk's eye (keen on the details but seen from a distance), the patterns that connect them all begin to be revealed.

My interest in GMOs took a huge leap recently when I heard evolutionary biologist Bruce Lipton talking about new discoveries from genome science (genomics). In the discussion (and in his book, The Biology of Belief) Lipton said that while we have long believed that genes are only shared through reproduction, we now know that genes are shared among members of different species:

This sharing of information is not an accident. It is nature’s method of enhancing the survival of the biosphere. As discussed earlier, genes are physical memories of an organism’s learned experiences. The recently recognized exchange of genes among individuals disperses those memories, thereby influencing the survival of all organisms that make up the community of life. Now that we are aware of this inter- and intra-species gene transfer mechanism, the dangers of genetic engineering become apparent. For example, tinkering with the genes of a tomato may not stop at that tomato, but could alter the entire biosphere in ways that we cannot foresee.

There are many studies accessible online that document negative consequences of GMOs in agriculture and food supplies. As we cast about for ways to dodge results of our indiscretions with energy production and consumption, some are looking to biomass from GM corn and Eucalyptus trees to burn for power generation, sacrificing Mother Nature's choices for what grows where.

The video below -- GM Crops Farmer to Farmer -- brings out some of the downsides, especially those playing out in American agriculture. For me, this film by Michael Hart really tapped the roots of the Kansas farm kid inside me still. Hart, a conventional livestock family farmer who has been farming in Cornwall for nearly thirty years, has actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years. Here he speaks to some American farmers about their experiences with GM crops:

 

 

This video clearly illuminates the fact that GMOs represent a huge environmental justice issue, not only for people but for other species and the Earth itself. And its impacts have spread like a global virus. Not only are companies like Monsanto -- with their paid lobbyists and bought-off politicians -- messing with my country, but they are imposing their exploitive, dangerous business on brothers and sisters around the world. The consequences of that are getting ugly, and may get a lot uglier before we can all stand together as citizens to put a stop to it.

I plan to write more about all of this in future posts, covering other downsides as well as significant resistance to GMOs that is springing up around the planet. In addition, there are significant ethical questions regarding hunger, poverty, and basic rights for people and the Earth itself.

For now, here's a couple of links that I hope will add to your outrage and fuel your willingness to take a stand at home, and stand in solidarity with others around the world who have been, might be or will be hurt by GMOs:

Monsanto and Gates Foundation Push GE Crops on Africa

Monsanto Out to Monopolize African Agriculture

How the World's Population Is Being Forced to Succumb to Genetically Modified Organisms

GE Trees, Cellulosic Biofuels, and Destruction of U.S. and Global Forests (pdf 939KB)

GM maize "has polluted rivers across the United States"

The Corporate Climate Coup (David Noble)

 

How good intentions ended with expensive and dirty corn | The Oil and the Glory

Interesting article on corn ethanol from Steve Levine's The Oil and the Glory blog at Foreign Policy:

In the United States, corn is now officially a fuel crop -- the federal government forecasts that this year, ethanol-makers will for the first time use more corn than poultry and livestock farmers. What's the outcome of this government-subsidized gluttony by fuelmakers?

One is that folks like myself who think corn is the most delicious vegetable out there are paying 90 percent more per ear than we were last year. That includes the Chinese, who are importing much more U.S. corn (picture above). Another is that the U.S. taxpayer is effectively subsidizing exports to Brazil, Europe and elsewhere, which will buy around 1 billion gallons of the fuel. This has also been a windfall for big agricompanies like Archer Daniels Midland, which over the years has been among the most politically influential companies in Washington lobbying.

via oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com

Local food markets can create jobs and healthy living

I have no doubt that my first and perhaps strongest connections to nature were anchored through my earliest years of life on a farm in eastern Kansas. Those experiences are part of what led me to start this blog, and from the first post on I have kept the No Farms, No Food, and Friend of Farmland action campaign badges from American Farmland Trust in the sidebar.

When I got the most recent AFT newsletter I decided to see if there was a story that would make a good update on Earthbytes for the work this organization does. That's when I found a great blog article by Julia Freedgood, the managing director for Farmland and Communities at AFT.

In her post, Reconnecting Farmers and Consumers Makes Dollars and Sense, Freedgood talks about a study on Ohio's food systems by Ken Meter that speak to the potential for localization of food markets to boost local economies:

Food is an important industry in the Buckeye state. Ohioans purchase $29 billion of food per year, and the food industry accounts for 13 percent of the state’s economic activity. According to Meter, state policies that focus on distant markets rather than local consumers are detrimental to the economy—resulting in a $30 billion economic outflow each year, more than four times the $7 billion of total farm production in the state.

Recapturing these dollars would create significant economic opportunities, especially in Ohio where personal income increased 70 percent and food consumption increased 32 percent over the past 40 years. In recent years, direct sales from farmers to consumers rose significantly: 45 percent in Ohio (just shy of the 49 percent national average). The value of those sales rose 70 percent in the state. While the total sales figures remain small, farmer-to-consumer sales are one of the fastest growing sectors of the food economy, offering valuable opportunities to keep farmland in farming, especially in areas where farmers have close access to consumers. Indeed, a report on Northeast Ohio proposes that a 25 percent shift to local products could result in the creation of more than 27,000 jobs!

via blog.farmland.org

Some of the goats just down the lane at A Place of the Heart Farm. You can find Mac and Adrienne at the Market Square Farmer's Market in Knoxville. [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]

Everytime I drive past my neighbors' organic farm on my way out of the holler, I can't help but think what a great example it is of how localization of food markets could work for Tennessee. It's at least one way we could move beyond economies that require tearing down mountains and eliminating productive farmland.

Freedgood's full post has links to at least three full reports on localization of food markets and the economic activity it brings. There were other interesting articles in AFT's July newsletter that is available online.

Here's a short video from AFT, Saving the Land that Sustains Us:

 

GMOs and Peru: The Debate Comes to a Head | Truthout

This is a long article with indepth coverage of an important issue.The problems with GMOs run from biolological and systemic to economic and ethical -- yet another example of impacts imposed by large multinational corporations on citizens and their communities.

The use of transgenic or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is an increasingly prevalent practice throughout the world that has pitted complex policy issues against one another.  On one side of the debate is the ability of GMOs to feed the world’s increasingly large and diverse population and to allow developing countries to economically advance via transgenic crops.  The other side of the dispute focuses on the unknown health and environmental risks posed by GMOs, along with potential monopolistic practices in which large multinational corporations (MNCs) involve themselves.

via www.truth-out.org

What's up with disappearing bumble bees?

According to a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by University of Illinois entomologist Sydney Cameron, bumble bee populations are declining across North America, and individuals in declining populations have higher pathogen prevalence and reduced genetic diversity. (This is a separate issue from the concerns about honeybees and colony collapse disorder.)

While Cameron and her team see these factors as realistic predictors of alarming patterns of decline in North America, a cause and effect relationship remains uncertain:

In an article about her study in the January 6th issue of the News-Gazette, Cameron noted that 'people should be aware of the decline as a loss to nature and to the agricultural industry. Why these significant changes in this country's bumblebee population have occurred is open to speculation. Some factors that Cameron note are climate change (which appears to account for the declines in some bumble bee species in Europe); habitat loss; and the above-mentioned parasite, nosema bombi. 

via www.care2.com

If you're interested in contributing to ongoing observations of bumble bees, check out the National Phenology Network. The NPN brings citizen scientists, government agencies, non-profit groups, educators and students together to monitor the impacts of climate change on plants and animals in the United States.

A couple of bumble bees on an Echinacea flower in my Holler observation plot.

I signed up to be an observer last year and chose bumble bees as one of the animal species I monitor. I picked a small area here in the holler that I walk through almost everyday when I go out with my dogs and cats. I monitor two American beech trees, a redbud, and forsythia as well as jewelweed and dog-tooth violet plants. In addition to bumble bees, I watch for American goldfinches, eastern chipmunks, and whitetail deer.

After selecting the species I wanted to monitor, I used observer training material offered at the website to become familiar with the phenophases -- recurring plant and animal life cycle stages such as leafing and flowering of the plants and trees, feeding behavior of the bees and goldfinches -- so I knew what to look for and how to record it.

"American beech 1" on my NPN observation list is an older tree very close to my house. This was how it looked on October 21, 2010. I occasionally take photos of the species I observe.

Because many of these events are sensitive to variation and changes in climate, notes recorded by citizen observers can help scientists identify and understand environmental trends relative to shifts in climate.

I entered observations into a user-friendly online form linked to my observation plot and species.

This is a photo of "Jewelweed 2" take on October 16th when it was producing seeds:

In some ways, I think because I was closely observing all these plants and creatures on a regular basis, I learned new things about them. I had not really seen the jewelweed seeds before. I was more captivated by the awesome flowers they make and never really stopped by so much after the flowers went away. I was very surprised the first time I put my finger under one of the seeds to get a closer look -- it jumped about a foot or so away from the plant on which it had grown.

It was really fun to participate in the NPN program. With many plant and animal species already responding to climate change, it's very satisfying to be part of a network of so many different people collecting information and paying attention to how things are going.

Professor Cameron noted in the article excerpted above that it would be helpful if people can plant native species that larger species of bees need for habitat.