- Food Security

US Company Plans to Ship Fresh Water From Alaska to India

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:39:10 -0600

Source: The Guardian

Imagine an oil tanker plowing through the ocean, hauling valuable cargo from resource-rich nations of the world to the countries that need it: but instead of oil, the tanker holds millions of gallons of fresh water.

It's not a vision from some futuristic film or doomsday novel, but the present-day intention of companies trying to launch the bulk water export business. The idea has been around since the 1990's, yet no one has succeeded in making it a practical reality.

But last July, the US company S2C Global Systems, Inc. became the latest bulk water wanna-be by announcing it would begin shipping water from Alaska to India within the next six to eight months. Using large class vessels that can hold 50 million gallons at a time, S2C plans to sell the water for both manufacturing and drinking purposes to countries around the Arabian Sea.

"I think it's a dream," said Peter Gleick, a scientist and international water expert, in an interview with SolveClimate News. Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. "I don't think bulk water transfers of any significant volume are ever going to happen, because the cost of moving water, especially across the ocean, is so high."

Rod Bartlett, managing partner of Alaska Resource Management (a partnership between S2C and True Alaska Bottling), told SolveClimate News that S2C is finalizing legal issues and logistics for a "World Water Hub" on the western coast of India. Once it's built, the hub will be a distribution point from which the company plans to deliver water to target destinations in the Middle East and northern Africa.

"Every nation within a four-day target of the hub is a potential customer or client that will need fresh water," said Bartlett. Without revealing specific details, Bartlett added that S2C has received both spoken and "written expressions of interest."

The water S2C plans to export will come from Alaska's Blue Lake near the city of Sitka, about 90 miles southwest of Juneau. Since 1999, Sitka has promoted itself as a source for bulk water exports; True Alaska Bottling owns the water rights to 8 million gallons per day from Blue Lake.

As to why humans would want to move water around the world, Bartlett explained: "(You move the water) because you can't move the population." Most of the world's freshwater is found near the Poles, while most people live closer to the equator.

Population growth, urbanization and irrigation place are creating increasing demand for water. But climate change is exacerbating the problem of supply, most notably in the Himalayan region, often referred to as Asia's water tower.

According to a report from King's College in London, about two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, and decreased runoff will affect water levels in ten major rivers. All together, the rivers' drainage basins are home to 1.3 billion people—close to one-fifth of the world's population.

Many of them live in India. S2C originally chose to build their hub there because they couldn't find an appropriate port in the Middle East. But now, said Bartlett, "as you continue to look at the potential in India, it's going to be a natural place to sell water soon, no question about it."

Desalinated Water 18 Times Cheaper
The idea of moving vast quantities of water is hardly new. The Romans did it with aqueducts; today, California pipes the Colorado River's water hundreds of miles into its cities and farms. But when you ship water more than 1000 or 1500 miles, said Gleick, "the diesel costs kill you."

International water shipments do occur on small geographic scales. In 1997, Greece began shipping water to the island of Aegina, 13 miles from the Greek coast. Singapore currently imports freshwater from Malaysia but vowed to build desalination plants for increased water security. A plan for Turkey to sell water to Israel was recently suspended due to political tension between the two nations.

What S2C has proposed—moving water halfway around the world, 50 million gallons at a time—is on a scale that dwarfs existing bulk water transfer efforts.

The biggest problem, said Gleick, is that S2C will be competing with desalination plants, which are very popular in the Middle East. "Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are almost completely dependent on desalinated (sea)water."

Water from desalination plants costs about $1/cubic meter (this price includes the cost of building and running the plant), said Gleick. According to Bartlett, it will cost S2C $18/cubic meter to move the water from Alaska to India.

From The Gulf Stream To The Bloodstream

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:16:53 -0600

Homegrown Revolution

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:45:34 -0600

Has The North Atlantic Current Been Compromised?

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:02:29 -0600

Source: Europe Blogspot

The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet's heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.

This 'river' of warm water that moves through the Atlantic Ocean is called, in various places, the South Atlantic Current, the North Brazil Current, the Caribbean Current, the Yucatan Current, the Loop Current, the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current (or North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current.

It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean.

The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has helped to effectively hide much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster. However, there is no current way to effectively 'clean up' the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil.

...

Almost a month ago, we broke the story that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico had effectively died. We quoted Dr. Gianluizi Zangari, who first discovered the damage to the Thermohaline Circulation System:

"As displayed by both by the sea surface maps and the sea surface height maps, the Loop Current broke down for the first time around May 18th and generated a clock wise eddy, which is still active. As of today the situation has deteriorated up to the point in which the eddy has detached itself completely from the main stream therefore destroying completely the Loop Current. .."
"It is reasonable to foresee the threat that the breaking of [such] a crucial warm stream as the Loop Current may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and instabilities due to strong non-linearities which may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate." —Dr. Gianluigi Zangari,

The Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico ceased to exist a month ago, the latest satellite data clearly shows that the North Atlantic Current is now GONE and the Gulf Stream begins to break apart approximately 250 miles from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Thermohaline Circulatory System, where the warm water current flows through a much cooler, much larger, ocean, effects the upper atmosphere above the current as much as seven miles high. The lack of this normal effect in the eastern North Atlantic has disrupted the normal flow of the atmospheric Jet Stream this summer, causing unheard of high temperatures in Moscow (104F) and drought, and flooding in Central Europe, with high temperatures in much of Asia and massive flooding in China, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia.

Canada's Potash Corp. Rejects Bid by Miner BHP

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:04:32 -0600

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton made an unsolicited $38.6 billion offer for the world's largest fertilizer producer, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., in an aggressive wager that developing economies will drive up demand for the world's food supply.

Potash is an important nutrient that replenishes soil and increases farmland's crop yield. Global potash supplies are relatively limited, and Potash Corp., based in the prairies of central Canada, controls approximately 20% of the supply.

The offer is likely to set off a long struggle for the fate of the Canadian company, a crown jewel of the country's natural-resources-based economy.

Potash's board rejected the BHP offer of $130 a share in cash, a 16% premium to Potash's Monday closing price, calling it "grossly inadequate."

In trading Tuesday, the fertilizer company's shares soared far above the offer, a sign traders expect BHP to raise its bid or other suitors to emerge. Potash shares closed at $143.17, up $31.02, or 27.7%.

The company's chief executive, Bill Doyle, said the board wasn't opposed to a sale, "we just don't expect someone to come steal the company."

People familiar with the matter said BHP would decide in the next few days whether to take its offer directly to Potash shareholders, a move that would officially make BHP's unsolicited offer a hostile one.

Potash adopted a shareholder-rights plan on Tuesday that puts a 20% ceiling on any single stakeholder.

Such a "poison pill" may be less effective in Canada than in the U.S. because a hostile bidder can lobby Canadian securities regulators to have the target company eliminate its plan and allow a tender offer to shareholders.

BHP's shares closed Tuesday at $70.21, down $1.73, or 2.4%, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Wednesday morning in Australia, shares fell 3.7%.

Analysts speculated that mining rivals Vale SA of Brazil, and the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto PLC could consider counteroffers. Vale, which not long ago made a $3.8 billion purchase of fertilizer assets, declined to comment. Rio Tinto didn't immediately return a call.

Mr. Doyle of Potash declined to say what might be a suitable offer. People close to the company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, said an offer would need to factor in Potash's record high of nearly $240 in mid-2008. The offer from BHP was made in a letter Aug. 12 that Potash disclosed on Tuesday.

Looming over any merger negotiations is a national debate in Canada about open markets and foreign takeovers.

Over the past decade, the country has seen most of its big natural-resources companies and many industrial ones taken over by buyers from the U.S., Europe and South America.

The deals included the sales of aluminum and nickel mines to Brazil's Vale and Switzerland's Xtrata, the purchase of Canada's biggest steel producer by U.S. Steel Corp., and the piecemeal sale of struggling tech giant Nortel Networks Corp. to buyers from the U.S. and Europe.

While demand for commodities has fueled Canada's economic growth, there is lingering worry among some that the country is losing its corporate mettle.

In 2009, Canada amended its foreign-takeover code, raising the size of deals that require scrutiny but allowing the government explicit power to veto deals thought to pose a danger to national security.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the government would review any transaction but otherwise declined to comment.

As the world's largest mining company, BHP has remained unbowed by a costly and ultimately unsuccessful attempt in 2008 to take over Rio Tinto, its big Anglo-Australian rival.

For BHP's chief executive, South African Marius Kloppers, a play for Potash fits into a broader theme of economic development, particularly in China and India.

"World GDP and GDP development is being driven by...new people entering the modern industrial age...by massive urbanization processes," Mr. Kloppers said in an interview in 2008. This, he said, is "having a huge knock-on effect in demand for our products."

A deal for Potash would represent a shift for BHP, which specializes in minerals and metals and has limited experience with customers who buy fertilizer. Potash is the common name for fertilizer derived from potassium, and includes potassium carbonate and other salts. It is one of the common fertilizers farmers use, along with nitrogen and phosphate.

There are plenty of reasons to expect rising demand for fertilizer. The world is projected to add an average of 57 million people a year between 2000 and 2050, leading to a population of 8.9 billion in 2050, according to United Nations projections. Rising incomes in growing economies will also push up demand for diverse diets, and fertilizer is a sure way to increase food production.

Such long-term global trends have turned Potash Corp. into a highflying stock that has soared since 2005.

BHP is also counting on China and other rapidly growing nations placing a premium on producing more food, to be independent from foreign suppliers.

Meeting such a basic need is critical, as vividly demonstrated in 2008, when a sharp rise in the cost of food kicked off riots in some parts of the world. This summer's scare over wheat supplies amid a Russian drought provided another reminder.

"It's just a bet that food is going to continue to be precious, and become more precious," said Emerson Nafziger, a professor of agronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It's a bet that the whole world is going to need to replace nutrients in the soil as crops are removed."

China produces only about roughly half as much corn as the U.S. on a given amount of farmland. U.S. farmers generate more than 10 metric tons per hectare (2.47 acres), while China produces just over five and India just over two.

While there are various reasons for such gaps in production, including water and use of genetically modified seeds, fertilizer use is one of the factors.

USDA forecasts released last week show the world will likely consume more grain through next year than farmers are able to produce, which will inevitably shrink the globe's grain reserves again.

Judge Imposes GM Sugar-Beet Restrictions

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:47:52 -0600

Source: The Wall Street Journal

A federal judge's decision Friday to undo the government's five-year-old approval of genetically modified sugar beets, from which roughly half of U.S. sugar is derived, won't disrupt supplies for at least a year, but could pose headaches for food companies after that.

The order by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White—who had concluded in September 2009 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture hadn't lived up to its obligation to fully consider whether the weedkiller-tolerant sugar beets might harm the environment—effectively blocks farmers from planting the seed next spring, but leaves alone the crop already in the ground, which can be harvested this fall, processed and sold as sugar.

"In the short term, at least, we're aren't going to see any disruption in the marketing of this year's crop," said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group.

However food companies that depend on a steady supply of U.S. sugar face uncertainty over where they will source their sugar beets after next year.

It is far from clear how soon U.S. sugar-beet farmers can return to planting the seeds, which are genetically modified the same way as the vast majority of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the U.S. The plants are genetically modified with Monsanto Co. genes that give them immunity to glyphosate-based herbicide, which the St. Louis biotechnology company sells as Roundup weedkiller.

The Roundup-resistant trait is popular with many farmers—it is present in 95% of the sugar-beet plants grown in the U.S.—because it enables them to chemically weed their fields without harming their crops, saving time and the expense of mechanical cultivation.

Monsanto licenses several sugar-beet seed companies to use its herbicide-tolerance gene in their breeding programs. The business isn't big enough to be material to the company's financial results.

The lawsuit against the USDA was filed by activist groups including the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club, among others. Biotechnology critics worry that the transplanted gene could spread to conventional sugar-beet plants through cross-pollination, and that the herbicide-tolerance trait permits a heavy enough use of Roundup to spur the evolution of weeds that can survive glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller.

Glyphosate-tolerant weeds are already appearing in southeast U.S. farm fields where farmers have long grown Roundup-tolerant cotton and soybeans.

Sugar-beet industry officials say it would be difficult for U.S. farmers to quickly switch back to non-genetically modified seed. Some farmers have already sold off their cultivation equipment—which kills weeds by digging into the dirt—and it isn't clear how much conventional seed is available anymore.

Genetically modified sugar-beet seed won't be legal to plant again until the Agriculture Department repeats its regulatory review process. Sugar-industry officials widely expect the USDA's biotechnology regulators—who are charged with protecting U.S. agriculture from plant pests—to come to the same conclusion and eventually re-clear the seed for planting. But getting there again will include the time-consuming process of writing the environmental-impact statement ordered by Judge White, who sits in San Francisco.

The draft environmental-impact statement that the USDA published in December on Roundup–tolerant alfalfa, for example, ran to about 1,500 pages. The USDA has estimated that completing an environmental-impact statement on Roundup-tolerant sugar beets could easily take until April 2012.

Sugar-industry officials say they believe the USDA has the authority to implement interim measures to permit some planting of the genetically modified sugar beets. A USDA spokesman said the agency was "reviewing the judge's order in order to determine appropriate next steps."

Food Rots as Poor Starve Across India

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 23:44:28 -0600

A QUARTER of Russian Crops Lost in Drought

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:28:17 -0600

Source: CNN

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- A quarter of Russian crops have been lost in the recent drought, leaving many farms on the brink of bankruptcy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

The government should prevent increases in the price of grain and fodder, which will eventually affect the prices of food products like flour, bread, meat, and milk, Medvedev said at a government agriculture meeting in the southern Russian region of Rostov.

"Right now, everybody is of course thinking about it -- farmers as well as officials responsible for agriculture," Medvedev said in comments broadcast on Russian state television. "But we also understand that regular people, too, are thinking about what will happen after this extremely tough summer, how it will affect the prices on staples food."

He said government authorities should closely monitor food prices on a daily basis, "otherwise there will always be someone who would want to capitalize on this situation. There are such cases already."

Large parts of Russia have suffered this summer from excessive heat, drought, and a spate of wildfires that have also created stifling smoke and smog. Hundreds have died in the combined disasters.

Alexander Frolov, who heads the Russian meteorological service Roshydromet, said this week that virtually no rain is forecast in Russia this month.

The situation is so bad in some regions that there is "no reason" to start planting winter crops, Frolov said.

Roshydromet forecasts a 30 percent drop in Russia's harvests due to the drought, he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has already announced a ban on grain exports that will begin August 15 and could last until December 31, based on uncertainty over this year's farm production.

Some regions won't be sowing winter grain at all this year, he said.

GM Plants 'Established in the Wild'

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:55:10 -0600

Source: BBC

Researchers in the US have found new evidence that genetically modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for decades.

A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for canola. Transgenes were present in 80% of the wild canola plants they found.

They suggest GM traits may help the plants survive weedkillers in the wild.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Pittsburgh.

"We just drew 11 lines that crossed the state [of North Dakota] - highways and other roads," related research team leader Cindy Sagers.

"We drove along them, we made 604 stops in a total distance of over 3,000 miles (5,000km). We found canola in 46% of the locations; and 80% of them contained at least one transgene."

In some places, the plants were packed as closely together as they are in farmers' fields.

"We found herbicide resistant canola in roadsides, waste places, ball parks, grocery stores, gas stations and cemeteries," they related in their Ecological Society presentation.

The majority of canola grown in North Dakota has been genetically modified to make it resistant to proprietary herbicides, with Monsanto's RoundUp Ready and Bayer's LibertyLink the favoured varieties. These accounted for most of the plants found in the wild.

Two of the plants analysed contained both transgenes, indicating that they had cross-pollinated.

This is thought to be the first time that communities of GM plants have been identified growing in the wild in the US.

Similar findings have been made in Canada, while in Japan, a study in 2008 found substantial amounts of transgenic rape - a close relative of canola - around port areas where GM varieties had been imported.

State-wide

What surprised the Arkansas team was how ubiquitous the GM varieties were in the wild.

"We found the highest densities of plants near agricultural fields and along major freeways," Professor Sagers told BBC News.

"But we were also finding plants in the middle of nowhere - and there's a lot of nowhere in North Dakota."
Canola seeds The GM seeds seem to be competitive, allowing a plant community to survive

Canola seeds are especially prone to dispersal, through blowing in the wind or through falling from trucks, as the seeds weigh just a few thousandths of a gram.

Why Water IS More Valuable Than Oil

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:54:41 -0600

Source: oilprice.com

If you think that the upcoming energy shortage is going to be bad, it will pale in comparison to the next water crisis....

One theory about the endless wars in the Middle East since 1918 is that they have really been over water rights. Although Earth is often referred to as the water planet, only 2.5% is fresh, and three quarters of that is locked up in ice at the North and South poles.

In places like China, with a quarter of the world’s population, up to 90% of the fresh water is already polluted, some irretrievably so.

Some 18% of the world population lacks access to potable water, and demand is expected to rise by 40% in the next 20 years.

Aquifers in the US, which took nature millennia to create, are approaching exhaustion. While membrane osmosis technologies exist to convert sea water into fresh, they use ten times more energy than current treatment processes, a real problem if you don’t have any, and will easily double the end cost to consumers.

While it may take 16 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef, it takes a staggering 2,416 gallons of water to do the same.

Heat Wave and Drought Shrivel Harvests Across Europe

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:29:19 -0600

A woman digs out potatoes Tuesday in her former garden, ravaged by wildfires that also burned her house, in Verkhnyaya Vereya village, Russia.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The scorching temperatures and dry skies threatening Russia's wheat harvests have also been beating down on Western Europe, which is forecasting lower output of crops from French wheat to Italian tomatoes.

Russia's Agriculture Ministry Tuesday cut its forecast for the country's 2010 grain output to between 70 million and 75 million metric tons, down from earlier estimates of as much as 90 million tons.

Weather forecasts don't see any imminent relief from record Russian temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The weather has prompted wildfires that so far have claimed 40 lives, authorities say.

Western Europeans also expect their own markedly dry summer to cut a swath through the production of grain, fruit and vegetables this year. Economists forecast a boost in seasonal food prices, with the German government reporting a 12% to 15% rise in July.

Ben Lloyd-Hughes, a climate scientist at the University of Reading's Walker Institute in England, says pockets of Western Europe also are being affected by drought, but that Southwest Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are hardest hit.

"It is the lowest rainfall and the highest temperatures that the area has seen in the last 30 years or more," he said. "Droughts at this time of year in that region tend to reinforce themselves because the soil dries out, which subsequently makes the drought worse. The weather forecast for the next week is for more sun."

Russia's expected wheat shortfall has sent world prices of the grain soaring. France, Western Europe's biggest wheat producer, also could take a big hit.

...

Dutch water authorities have increased inspection of the lowland country's system of dikes, which can sustain damage if they become too dry.

In the U.K., a 60-mile stretch of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal was closed because of low water levels, prohibiting boat traffic.

In the Lincolnshire region of England's East Midlands, farmer Tim Elwess is worried about his crop of beans, wheat and barley. With hay and grazing grass in short supply, sheep breeders are selling their flocks early, he said.

"It's certainly very dry, although not as dry as Suffolk: A friend I have there is pulling his hair out," Mr. Elwess said. "Sugar beets and maize have been badly hit, their winter barley has been ready a month earlier than normal, light land wheat is visually dead; and ungerminated maize seeds are not uncommon."

The unrelenting high-pressure fronts that settled over Northwest Europe in most of June and July have all but killed off production of wind power in Germany. Of the 26,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity in Germany, there was less than 1,000 megawatts being produced at times, according to an RWE Power spokesman.

While European consumers face higher grocery bills, the global impact of the European heat wave will come through the wheat market. The major source of uncertainty is the supply, or lack of it, from the Black Sea region, especially from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday declared a state emergency in seven regions, including around Moscow. Some 300 to 400 new blazes are starting every day, said Vladimir Stepanov, head of the Emergency Situations Ministry's crisis center.

A forest fire in the Moscow region has engulfed a navy depot, burning up planes and aviation equipment, according to the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor's office.

"As far as weather conditions go, unfortunately there won't be any positive dynamics, and this type of weather will persist to the end of the week, leading to a worsening of conditions on the ground," Mr. Stepanov said.

India: Train Carrying 260 Metric Tonnes of Rice Disappears

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:07:16 -0600

Source: Ground Reality Blog

The train was carrying 26,000 quintals (or 260 metric tonnes) of rice, stacked in 40 coaches. The rice stocks belonged to the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which had loaded the grain on May 23, 2010 at Dhamora (Rampur), and the food stock was to be delivered at Jorhat in Assam. Over two months have passed, and the FCI is unable to locate the goods train.

...

I am sure you must be equally baffled at such disappearance acts. Only a month back, nearly 500,000 tonnes of iron ore valued at Rs 200-crore, and seized by the Karnataka forest department and Lok Ayukta, had disappeared from Bellikeri Port in Karnataka. I sometimes wonder how can such a huge quantity of metal simply disappear? It certainly would require a massive operation, involving hundreds of people and officials, and it shouldn't be difficult to pin down the culprits.

But such is the indifference that we have become accustomed to that we don't even raise an eyebrow. We no longer question, and make any effort to force the authorities to bring the crooks to book. We have simply accepted such frauds (and this one probably defies any visible logic) as nothing unusual. As a nation we have become immune to frauds, the size and scale does not matter any more.

Peak Food - A Manufactured Reality

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:48:09 -0600

The author of the piece below seems to walk a tight rope of contradiction, while to their benefit they provide some meaningful perspectives, they fail miserably in connecting their own dots, whether by the action of intellectual blindness, or of ideological complicity. If one looks clearly at the 'life sciences' companies such as Dupont and Monsanto, the outlines of an industry wide attempt to commandeer the profits of the entire planets agricultural output is not difficult to see. The thing is, it takes a leap into the realm of the distastefully sinister to even entertain such a thought, a leap that the intellectually branded academic crowd cannot bring themselves to make, for various reasons.

When taken in context, as a whole, organs such as the Rockefeller Foundation reveal themselves as complex instruments of social engineering - Norman Dodd, the head researcher for the Reece Committee, uncovered the fact of educational subversion in the United States a half century ago, where his investigations proved without a doubt that tax exempt foundations were intentionally manipulating mass perception through the apparatus of state education. It is these same organs that have made it their goal to alienate societies from their agricultural roots, upending cultures and erecting a cosmopolitan/industrial worldview.

The 'quick fix' called the Green Revolution was little more than a hugely successful attempt at the dissemination of global food dependency, wherein the dependents would be completely and utterly reliant on the chemical companies for their fundamental nourishment. The quick fix was more like an anesthetic, injected to discourage the development of a more sustainable food cropping system when it would have best served humanity, just in time. The 70's came and went however, and the rest is history, we now sit atop a population of six plus billion, a dwindling oil supply, eroded top soils, and depleted aquifers.

Source: Counter Currents

Assigned during World War II to Dupont, where he helped to develop DDT as part of the war effort, Borlaug was offered the sky, but given the choice between Dupont and sub-subsistence science for sub-subsistence Mexican farmers, he chose the latter, working with the Rockefeller Foundation, in a project to stave off a looming food crisis in overpopulated Mexico.

The project goal was to breed strains of wheat that could withstand adverse climates, survive wheat's fungal diseases, and produce prodigiously on dwarf plants, then convince tradition-bound farmers to adopt forthwith the new hybrids and the technology that accompanied them. It was a race against time, and an extraordinarily demanding task in the pre-DNA era. Borlaug set up field operations in two locations with disparate climates and growing seasons so he could have plants accustomed to multiple climates, and could grow two generations of seedlings each year.

Borlaug shortly achieved his goal, and Mexico's food crisis was over in a decade. On to Asia, where the same thing was happening: overpopulation. India was home to some of the poorest people in the world. Famine was widely forecast for the mid-seventies. It was the era of Ehrlich's Population Bomb. Stanford professor Ehrlich was an icon for the rising environmental movement, but overnight, stubborn farm boy Borlaug appeared to prove him wrong. In a few short years, the Green Revolution turned a land of undernourished millions into the second largest wheat producer in the world. Borlaug became the hero of millions of peasants, and also of those who spoke for unlimited growth, and in the next twenty years The Population Bomb disappeared from the environmentalist lexicon, leaving the population boom unquestioned.

The Green Revolution, which was to go on producing wonder strains for other crops and other countries, had three central parts. The other two were irrigation and chemical fertilizer. These changed agriculture fundamentally, from a primarily solar-energy craft dependent upon local weather and soil conditions, to a fossil-fuel technology designed to force the land to produce mightily regardless of its natural limitations. Borlaug, summarizing in his Nobel lecture, warned that the new hybrids had not resulted in major yield improvements without both irrigation and "a strong responsiveness and high efficiency in the use of heavy doses of fertilizers. "Plentiful water, plentiful chemical fertilizer - that's the secret to how in the last half century India - and California - turned arid lands almost instantly into wildly productive garden baskets. It may not be a sustainable solution, but at the time, the world needed a quick fix."

In his Nobel lecture, Borlaug talked proudly about how the new practices had given near-starving subsistence farmers surpluses they could sell, the money to buy oil-driven water pumps and tractors, and the influence to insist upon doors opening to the broader world. If you'll permit me a broad brush, the Green Revolution had doubled and tripled grain production for multi-millions who had been on the brink of starvation, but turned locally self-sustaining agriculture into hydroponics. And it turned subsistence farmers, dependent on the whims of the soil, sun and rain, into small-time contractors dependent on the whims of the discount rate, the commodities markets and the petrochemical industry.

It weakened their umbilical cord to Mother Earth, and eased a process in which millions would find themselves drawn to seek their fortunes in the cities, providing cheap labor to run the Indochinese economic machine. But those were events far in the future when Borlaug performed his magic, and it's hard to quibble when several hundred million people are about to die of starvation.

...

The Green Revolution doubled the world's irrigated acreage from 346 million acres to 690 million acres, and increased by a factor of nearly five its consumption of chemical fertilizer. Where does all the irrigation water come from? Wells, largely; as the World Bank has pointed out, groundwater comprises 97% of the world's accessible freshwater reserves.

Wells are a classic case of Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" - if the aquifer is shared by multiple individuals or multiple villages and there are no rules on how much anyone can use, then the users are individually, although not collectively, better off if they use as much as they want until the wells all run dry. So unless everyone follows the Golden Rule or there is an elaborate legal "groundwater management plan," controlling how much everyone gets, the wells DO run dry.

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So when the aquifers run dry, a return to the days when agriculture was limited to natural precipitation, is inevitable. This means, on top of the present inability of yield increases to keep up with population increases, a relatively abrupt loss of at least 10% of production.

What about the fertilizer? That comes from mining operations, too. That is literally true of phosphorus, although it wasn't before we came along. There are more phosphorus-rich bones walking the face of the earth than ever before in geological history; humanity is hoofing it around with 5 billion kg or 11 billion pounds of phosphorus, which comes from mines, - NONE of it recycled. This has happened only since half of us moved to the cities, taking our personal wastes with us; petrochemical fertilizers replaced natural ones; and community sewers were invented. Mama Nature can't afford this kind of progress for long.

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The story of how we got here is complex - a confluence of population boom, oil boom and bust, the tragedy of the commons, misallocation of resources between rich and poor, the almost-deliberate blindness of America to the consequences of biofuel production (almost!) - the list goes on. There is an ongoing academic argument about whether the plight of the poor is one of inequitable distribution "or" population, but it is quite clear at this point that the answer is "Both." There is also a sociological factor - the separation of people from the land, which has allowed us to "commoditize" land, to block the recycling of phosphorus and nitrogen, to separate sustenance from daily life, to warehouse in China's cities the millions who had recently been attached for millenia to the cycles of sun and rain and soil. Out of sight, out of mind. We will not treat the earth sustainably when we do not see it and feel it in our daily lives and know directly that what surrounds us is what keeps us and our descendants alive and healthy.

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Once again we 6.9 billion people are on our own, without leaders or guidance. But we know what we must do, as individuals and nations: we must avoid gasohol and beef, because we cannot take food from the mouths of the hungry; we must manage and conserve our diminishing water supplies, we must work to eliminate abject poverty so that people can pay for what they eat and we must begin to decrease our numbers by limiting ourselves to one child per family.33 There is no evidence that we can avoid famine otherwise. The Green Revolution was a one shot deal, because we cannot again double irrigated acreage or multipy use of chemical fertilizers by five; and because the Green Revolution was a program of the oil age, which is fast departing. Modest crop-yield increases may keep up with population growth for a while (although they haven't for 25 years), but all indications are that the prices of what food there is will rapidly climb above the budgets of billions of us.

Related Video

Russian Wildfires, Drought Drive Wheat Prices Higher

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:22:20 -0600

Source: Bloomberg

Wildfires raging across central Russia claimed 34 lives and blanketed cities in a smoky haze as drought and record heat cut crop yields, driving wheat prices as much as 19 percent higher last week.

About 156,000 firefighters are battling 693 blazes on more than 120,000 hectares (463 square miles), according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. Since the start of the fire season, 565,737 hectares have been consumed by flames, the ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.

In many regions, including Moscow, July was the hottest month since records began 130 years ago, and the heat wave will last at least through the end of this week, the state Hydrometeorological Center said on its website.

The sweltering summer has hit Russian agriculture, which accounts for 3-4 percent of gross domestic product, according to Aleksandra Evtifyeva, a Moscow-based economist at VTB Capital. Heat and drought have forced the government to declare states of emergency in 27 crop-producing regions.

The drought may reduce Russia’s grain harvest by 23 percent to 75 million metric tons this year, according to the Grain Union. Russian wheat prices increased as much as 19 percent last week, research group SovEcon said.

One Person's Garden Weed is Another's Salad

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:55:19 -0600

Source: LA Times

On an overcast Saturday morning, Christopher Nyerges — the head of Eagle Rock's School of Self-Reliance — gingerly skirts a feral clump of bright green weeds.

"Always watch where you're stepping 'cause you might be stepping on our lunch," he says to the 17 students following him. Resembling troops in an outdoorsy New Age army, the group wanders through Pasadena's Hahamongna Watershed Park, scouring the dirt hills, shallow valleys and parched riverbeds of the land for edible plants as part of a wild food outing that Nyerges regularly teaches.

Nyerges knows what most urbanites don't: that food is in the eye of the beholder. He scans the foliage around him with sharp, knowing eyes, recognizing the shape and veins of a leaf; the texture of bark on a tree; the color of a berry; the gentle slope of a stem crowned with flowers. It's all salad to him.

Those pesky "weeds" that you routinely pull in your backyard might be lambsquarters, greens rich in vitamins A and C that can be eaten just like spinach and are good raw or sautéed. Or maybe they're amaranth, which is also called pigweed. (In Jamaica it is steamed and served with butter and cheese.)

The list of possibilities is lengthy and nutritious. That is, if your palate and stomach enjoy life on the wild side. These plants take getting used to, and if you're not careful you could end up with a belly ache, or worse.

"Wild foods are full potency in terms of vitamins and minerals," says Nyerges, who is the editor of Wilderness Way magazine and has penned a wild food cookbook along with nine other self-reliance titles. "I've had people get sick eating some of them, but not because they're poisonous. We generally eat weak food, and when you eat something that's real, your body might react." (Try telling that to your general practitioner.)

Clad in faded green army pants, a long-sleeved green button-up shirt and a black cowboy hat banded with a patterned kerchief Nyerges, 55, is motion incarnate. As the group walks along a path covered with a blanket of decaying leaves he spots chickweed, which is mild and tender and makes a great salad green. Dropping suddenly to his knees he plucks a leaf and holds it up for all to see.

"At Whole Foods this costs $15 a pound dried," he says of the chickweed. "Then there's a lookalike that has a white milky sap." He peers about him for a moment, grabs another leaf that looks identical to the chickweed and crushes it between his fingers, revealing a sticky white substance.

"So that's not edible?" a woman asks. Her long gray hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she wears Teva sandals. Nyerges looks at her with a long, serious face.

"It's edible, but you'll vomit," he says. Everybody chuckles, and Nyerges smiles.

Still, the point he's making with the joke is deadly serious: You should only eat what you know. If you don't know it, don't touch it.

Down a grassy hill and past an elegant row of acacia trees, the mud from a recent rainfall cracks in large thirsty gaps and Nyerges stops short. "Look at this," he says, pointing at a grouping of flowered plants with wide flat leaves and tiny pepper-shaped growths.

A woman plucks one of the growths and nibbles on it. "It tastes like a radish," she says thoughtfully.

"It tastes like a radish because it is a radish," Nyerges says. "A wild radish."

Nyerges' eyes narrow, and he swiftly rips a plant from the ground beside a radish plant. It has intricate patterned leaves resembling parsley, only not as thickly bunched.

"Here's one you should all be aware of," he says. "That's poison hemlock. It's enough to kill you."

Unnerved, the group peers suspiciously at the contents of their salad bags. Maybe wild food wasn't as fun as they thought. But, then again, a number of people in attendance, including two men who say they are part of a 9/11 truth group, are not there for fun.

Nyerges, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, says that it isn't uncommon for hard-core survivalists to take his class, as well as people with end-of-the-world-related fears. "There have been individuals who have been seriously upset about things over the years. During Y2K they were petrified; now I get a lot of that with the 2012 baloney," he says, referring to what some believe is the Mayan calendar's end date.

"I tell people that society is not going to change, only the individual can change and that's the source of calm that comes from true self-reliance," he continues. "I'm convinced I will never go hungry, I'll never be homeless, I'll never be broke.

"More and more I'm dealing with average people who are worried about the nutritional content of their food and what to do if there is a supermarket strike or an earthquake," Nyerges adds.

Soon the group passes through a field of slender mustard plants. They wave knee-high in the breeze, their dainty yellow flowers shining in the just-emerging sunlight. "Taste the flowers," Nyerges urges. They are full of heat and spice. "You can eat the leaves too," he adds as a man holding a book by Nyerges titled "Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants" scribbles furiously in its margins.

As the walk plunges deeper into the park, the landscape changes, not in the way it looks, but in the way you look at it. Familiar greenery remains on all sides — however, it is impossible to see it in the same way. It is now filled with hidden secrets to be revealed with each passing step.

Those thick reddish-brown stalks covered in shiny seeds are curly dock. The seeds can be crushed into a powder and mixed with equal parts wheat flour to make hearty pancakes. Those round white flowers are buckwheat flowers — when they mature the plant's brown seeds can be mixed with flour to make biscuits. Nyerges dives into a huge swell of buckwheat and emerges with a fat hunk of white sage.

"You can put a leaf of that in your water bottle for general relaxation," says Jim Robertson, a friend of Nyerges who gives his own wilderness walks.

In fact, you can do something with just about everything if you're not the squeamish type (or if you just want to freak out your friends). Even the shell of white secretion that bugs called psyllids hide beneath on eucalyptus leaves can be plucked off and eaten. Tiny and crisp, they taste sugary and have a slightly waxy finish. "You can use a whole bunch of these as sweetener," Robertson says.

The group takes in this information skeptically.

But a few brave souls — including Bill Hooper and Caitlyn Hayes — lean in for a closer look. Hooper and Hayes, a young couple, both slender and with a strong interest in raw and vegan food, attended the class to learn more about natural foods and medicines. Plus, they really enjoy wandering around the city scavenging for treats together.

"I was walking around Santa Monica near the DMV and I was like, 'Is there any food around here?'" Hooper says. "And I saw something red and tasted it and it was kind of sweet." It turned out to be a natal plum.

"They're everywhere!" Hooper exclaims.

Also everywhere on this trek: mountain lilac buds that lather into soap when mixed with water. And willow bark, the original aspirin. The inside of the bark is slick green, moist and bitter. It can be chewed on to soothe toothaches and headaches. Other finds include horehound, great for a sore throat, and the tubular yellow flowers of the tobacco plant, which can be sucked on for a cheap nicotine rush. (Just don't eat the leaves — they are poisonous.)

By the time the nearly three-hour trek comes to a conclusion at a picnic table by the parking lot, notebooks are full and heads are spinning. Nyerges produces bowls made from the tops of dried gourds and begins washing and chopping the wild salad that has been foraged.