Green Options

A team of Dutch researchers (Verweij and Kema) , reporting in last December’s edition of the medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases suggest that over-use of the farm fungicide may be contributing to the growing resistance of the Aspergillus fungus to the disease-fighting chemicals.

This is car news, and it isn’t. But it is definitely…interesting.

Detroit was once the 4th largest city in America and it held the title of Motor City because most of America’s cars came from there. Flash forward 40 years, and Detroit’s population has dwindled from a high of 2 million people to just over 800,000. The average price for a home in Detroit is $15,000, the lowest in the country. With so many empty spaces, criminals have no shortage of hideouts and drug factories. And with America’s auto industry still reeling from the recession, as well as having outsourced many jobs to other states (or countries), the future looks bleak for Detroit’s long-deferred recovery.

Unless one millionaire gets his way, and turns the city into farms. Yes, farms.

Last month, I wrote about the world’s largest leather exporter leaving the Amazon. This week there is even bigger news. The world’s largest meat exporter is leaving.

The Image above is corn growing in Zimbabwe.

There was a scholarly article published late last year by Dr. Robert Paarlberg entitled “The Ethics of Modern Agriculture.”  I would encourage anyone concerned about both the environment and about feeding people to read it.  It raises some important questions about the ethics of even well intentioned anti-technology activism.

Paarlberg is a professor at Wellesley and also an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.  He has no ties to agricultural interests or technology companies, but he has spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of opposition to technologies that could help feed the poor people of the world.  His book “Starved for Science” is a detailed review of how the precautionary principle thinking of the rich countries (particularly in Europe) has largely kept agricultural technologies out of Africa including ones that would help feed poor people there.

The World Agroforestry Centre has recently released a paper titled ” Trees on Farm: Analysis of Global Extent and Geographical Patterns of Agroforestry.” The researchers used five global geodata sets to estimate the percent tree cover on 22 million square kilometers of agricultural land around the world.  They were surprised to find that nearly half of that land had 10% or more tree cover (which is considered “significant” from an agroforestry point of view).  The area involved is vast - as large as the Amazon basin.

Even for North America, the percentages were surprisingly high (39% over 10% cover, 17% over 30%).  Values in Europe were similar. The highest levels are in central America (98% above 10% cover), South America (81%), and Southeast Asia (82%).  Overall, the lowest tree cover is in the most arid areas, but even there >20% of the farmland has 10% tree cover.

Acacia trees, excellent for Africa’s depleted soil and helpful in counteracting climate change, may be the trees of the future for Africa. A very unique tree, it may help Africa in many other ways as well.

Herbs and spices like thyme, rosemary and mint, usually used to flavor food, can also offer a green alternative to synthetic pesticides.

Research has shown that oils derived from the herbs interfere with insect nervous systems, causing them to spasm haphazardly until they die. Best of all, these all-natural pesticides are inexpensive to produce.

The discovery of ancient human burial site in Niger, Africa last Summer (by Paleontologist Paul Sereno, Univ. of Chicago) with graves possessing numerous artifacts and and even plant fibers and seeds, was indirect confirmation of what scientists have long known: that the Sahara region was once a lush, lake-strewn region hospitable to many early human groups. in addition, many other larger fauna, like hippos, populated the area.

How this transition to a most inhospitable, arid desert (known as desertification) occurred, and [...]

Traditional farmers in the Thai hills are still growing rice the old fashioned way, and they may be single-handedly preserving the crop’s genetic diversity in the process.

Domesticated rice varieties have been selected for their high yield, and though they are necessary in order to feed the world’s growing population, they are genetically static. But a new study demonstrates that the traditional farming methods still practiced in remote areas of Thailand are preserving ancestral varieties of rice by keeping them genetically dynamic.

“No-till” Soybeans Following Wheat

There is a sub-set of farmers who have been practicing a much more sustainable form of agriculture for decades and we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of it’s beginnings.  I want to start writing about this event early because many environmentally-conscious folk are not aware of this hugely significant “revolution” that has occurred in agriculture over the past half century.  No, I’m not talking about “Organic Farming.” That movement is about a decade older in the US and has had a much smaller impact.  I’m talking about “No-till” agriculture and variants that are focused on reducing the amount of “tillage” or “plowing” that are needed to farm.

Much has been said in opposition to the cap and trade climate legislation that is currently on the Senate’s plate. Opponents have argued repeatedly that the legislation will do nothing but increase the cost of energy, which will force companies send jobs over seas, where labor is cheaper, in order to keep up with production demands. Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri) even went as far as to call the Waxman-Markey Bill “a pig in a poke.”