GUEST POST: Declining Bee Populations Present a Catch-22 Situation (via http://greenbuildingelements.com)

Though many of us have an instinctual fear of them, bees have been playing a vital role in human civilization since ancient times. Even today bees are an absolutely crucial part of our agricultural practices. Flower pollination is essential to maintaining the high crop yields needed to ensure that…

]]> http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2012/05/guest-post-declining-bee-populations-present-a-catch-22-situation/feed/ 0 http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2011/08/guest-post-food-labels-and-meal-planning/ http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/2011/08/guest-post-food-labels-and-meal-planning/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:11:01 +0000 grmeyers http://ourgreenstreetsblog.com/wordpress/?p=1321

Food labels are often cumbersome or confusing.

James Kim

Interpreting food labels can seem like an overwhelming undertaking. To make your meal planning a little less confusing, check out this list of some of the most common food terms:

• “Local” should mean grown within 100 miles from where the food is sold.  However, there are not any government agencies reinforcing this term.  The best chance of getting something local is buying it from a farmer or farmer’s market.

• “Natural” is defined by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as “foods that are minimally processed and free of synthetic preservatives; artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors and other artificial additives; growth hormones; antibiotics; hydrogenated oils; stabilizers; and emulsifies.” However, the FDA explains, “Most foods labeled natural are not subject to government controls beyond the regulations and health codes that apply to all foods.” Determine for yourself if something is natural by reading the list of ingredients on the back of the package.

• “Certified” is a nebulous term. The Food Safety and Inspection Service defines this term as a product that was evaluated based upon a set of “quality characteristics.” A lot of butchers use this term and it is a better idea to buy a piece of meat that is certified or of higher quality than one that is not.

• “Fair Trade” is governed by a company named FLO-CERT, which defines itself as, “an independent International Certification company” that “assist(s) in the socio-economic Development of producers in the Global South and help(s) to foster long-term relationships and good practice with traders of Certified Fair Trade products.”  This helps to ensure that everyone who helped develop the product is offered a fair wage, including small farmers who live in countries with a lot of poverty.  It is a good idea; but as a label, it doesn’t speak to the quality of the product.

• “Organic” is described as food produced without the use of “most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.” A government-approved certifier must inspect and approve of the farm and food processing/handling companies also.  There are many different labels for organic.  One is “100 percent organic” and another is “organic” (95 percent).  Yet another is, “made with organic ingredients (70 percent or more) and “contains organic ingredients” (70 percent or less).

Keep these labels in mind when doing grocery shopping for meal planning.  Hopefully, this information has made these labels more useful for you to help plan those healthy meals!

James Kim is a writer for foodonthetable.com.  Food on the Table is a company that provides online budget meal planning services.  Their goal is to help families eat better and save money.

PHOTO: European Parliament

Photo source: http://vegfamily.com

What is arguably the easiest and cheapest way for each of us to help the environment?

The answer has nothing to do with a Prius or with buying an Energy Star-approved appliance.  All you have to do is replace one carnivorous meal a week with vegetables, legumes, and grains.  The Daily Green says that this would result in CO2 reduction equal to the removal of 500,000 cars from American roads alone

Although the people behind EarthSave would have all Americans entertain the idea of vegetarianism, the likelihood of this plan’s fruition is—let’s be honest—slim.  Even if it’s making 34 percent of us aged 20 and over obese and another 34 percent of us overweight but not obese, we love the Big Mac too much.  This might change if we knew the steps involved—and how much the earth suffered—in bringing said Big Mac from a single grain of corn to the neighborhood fast food joint.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that cows and other livestock across the world are accountable for 18% of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some of the causes for this 18 percent figure include:

• Deforestation of land for grazing
• Deforestation of land for farming to produce grain to feed animals
• Raising grains for feed
• Using fossil fuel fertilizers
• Using fossil fuels to harvest and transport grain and animals
• The burping (and, ahem, other emissions) of cows which release methane (a significantly more potent GHG than CO2)
• GHG-emitting manure produced by animals (3 tons for every American)

In fact, the calories fed to animals to produce one calorie of their meat leaves us—the consumers—in the red.  It takes 7, 4, and 2 kg of feed to produce just 1 kg of beef, pork, and chicken, respectively.  Calorie for calorie, humans are better off eating things that don’t bleed.

If we must indulge in meat—most of us do from time to time—try buying pasture-raised organic meat directly from farmers at farmers’ market.  Compare it to a store-bought steak and you will taste the delicious difference.

In addition to going meatless on Mondays, we can petition and push for action on various fronts.  The FAO recommends a range of measures, listed here:

• On Land degradation: Restore damaged land through soil conservation, silvopastorialism (combining forestry and grazing of domesticated animals in mutually beneficial ways), better management of grazing systems and protection of sensitive areas.
• On greenhouse gas emissions: Sustainable intensification of livestock and feed crop production to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation and pasture degradation, improved animal nutrition and manure management to cut methane and nitrogen emissions.
• On water pollution: Better management of animal waste in industrial production units, better diets to improve nutrient absorption, improved manure management and better use of processed manure on croplands.
• On biodiversity loss: As well as implementing the measures above, improve protection of wild areas, maintain connectivity among protected areas, and integrate livestock production and producers into landscape management.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching volleyball scholarships as well as wildlife science scholarships. Whenever she gets some free time, she enjoys watching a funny movie or curling up with a good book.

Mike Yohay is the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms. Photo: Cityscape Farms

While a city may be dense with population, it is generally regarded as sparse with agricultural space, unless you hear Mike Yohay, the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms, which specializes in creating urban farms wherever there happens to be growing space, from vacant lots to rooftops.

These smart solutions come from entrepreneurial sustainability companies like Cityscape Farms, which  provide urban greenhouse systems for agricultural production with low water use.

“By growing fresh food within just a few miles of where it will be eaten, we will have healthier, better tasting produce and make our cities cleaner and more self-sufficient,” says Yohay.

Important for city farming, the system for growing food has no soil because it uses an aquaponics system. Aquaponics is a method combining aquaculture (fish cultivation) with hydroponics. This approach to growing uses natural fertilizer from filtered fish effluent, creating a closed-loop, pesticide-free organic system:

Yohay says the aquaponics process works this way:

• Water containing natural fish waste gets filtered to become organic nutrient feed for the plants
• Plants absorb the nutrients and the cleansed water is recycled back to the fish tank

One perspective of rooftop farming from Cityscape Farms. Sourcwe: Cityscape

Yohay says he also offers a program to owners of commercial rooftops to monetize their roof by leasing it to Cityscape Farms. A Cityscape team of architects and engineers will develop “site-specific greenhouse systems that are consistent with local building codes and zoning laws. We address every liability concern to assure a safe, structurally sound installation that will earn you income that didn’t exist before.”

Other benefits: helping the environment and the local food economy. The systems that are used created their own nutrients for plant growth and require less water.

On his website, Yohay cites two influences in the development of Cityscape Farms:

“Attending college in Iowa, where I witnessed topsoil depletion and environmental pollution from large-scale corn, soy, and livestock agribusiness. The second was living in La Amistad rainforest in Costa Rica, where for a year I managed an eco-lodge and participated in low impact organic farming that supported our local community.

“Looking critically at these two extremes, I became determined to find a happy medium: a modern way to feed people on a large scale without spoiling the land, air and water.”

Steven Apfelbaum, founder of AES Photo: AES

Mitchell writes, “For more than three decades, Steve, and the AES team have developed land-use solutions to help farmers, companies, landowners, and communities around the world strike a balance between cost and ecology. From transforming dismal landfills and dusty iron mines into pristine preserves and prairies, Steve continues to show how ecosystem services result in healthy wild, rural, and urban landscapes while boosting the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”

She included an article for Green Streets to share that Mr. Apfelbaum recently wrote concerning the Gulf of Mexico and its unhealthy status even before the oil drilling disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident. What he proposes here should be seriously considered by all communities, landowners, businesses and farmers wanting to help turn overwhelming problems into solutions. And while this post is longer than usual, it is very much worth reading and sharing.

Apfelbaum’s article follows (our emphasis marks provided):

Apfebaum offers solid land-use solutions. Photo: AES

“The Gulf of Mexico is sick, but, in fact, it’s been ill for a long time, and it needs a bigger fix. Now is the time to look at the broader picture, which includes water, soil, energy and climate—more broadly, the health of our nation’s natural resources. A National Carbon Reserve would concretely address the source of the Gulf’s maladies and offer myriad side benefits, such as carbon sequestration.

“Before the spill, there was a dead zone in the Gulf that has reached the size of the state of Massachusetts. It is the consequence of eutrophication, the accumulation of the nitrogen and phosphorus common in fertilizers, which creates algal blooms, which, in turn, die, and deplete the oxygen in the water. In these so-called anoxic conditions, marine creatures simply can’t breathe.

“The Gulf Dead Zone’s main artery is the Mississippi River, which dumps its high-nutrient, but deadly, fertilizer runoff some 100 miles south of New Orleans. The problem is that the Mississippi’s vast watershed (covering 43 percent of the entire lower 48 United States) and much of America’s agricultural heartland are sick as well.

“The problems are well understood: years of poor planning for public and private land use; degraded habitat and agricultural tillage of farm fields that contributes to soil erosion and greenhouse gases; excessive dependence on industrial fertilizers on farmlands; dams clogged with sediment that never reaches the Gulf to sustain its wetlands.

“The solutions are clear as well. We need a healthy land ethic that focuses on regrowing soil and replenishing clean water in ways that are more efficient and less costly.

“Fortunately, farmers can improve their soil and increase its carbon content through such techniques as “no-till” farming, in which farm-seeding equipment inserts seeds into small cuts in the earth. Traditional tillage farming, or plowing, on the other hand, releases carbon into the atmosphere.  No-till agriculture can cut costs in as little as two years and can even increase crop yields by up to 10 percent. It leaves leftover plant matter on the land, building the soil, and that added healthy soil acts as a sponge to lessen water runoff and prevents nutrients from entering rivers and lakes (which is what creates dead zones).

“Responsible ecological conservation and restoration of non-farmland is crucial as well. Replanting native grasslands (see recent article on bamboo in America) and restoring drained wetlands, forests, and savannas can also reduce water runoff and erosion of soils, and conserve and store carbon. Land-use policies must change at the national level. Not only has poor land use resulted in habitat degradation, erosion, and the poisoning of our waters, it is a significant contributor to global warming. Yet in discussing measures to curb pollution and GHG emissions, the focus is invariably on the iconic symbols of fossil fuel technology–smoking coal plants, gas-guzzling cars, and, obviously, offshore drilling.

“Think again. From 2000 to 2005, 53 percent of existing GHG emissions were mitigated and stored in the surface soils and vegetation of our planet at no cost to us. This is one of the wonderful things that the right plants planted in the right location and way do for a living.

“The National Carbon Reserve would combine the best of American ecological and conservation thought and practice with classic public-private market values and incentives, creating a model of carbon management tied to land protection and restoration and more productive agricultural management. Here are some specific strategies:

• Use a smart ecosystem service planning process to develop a policy roll-up of private and public conservation and agricultural lands (nearly all of which are already mapped and known) to guide soil rebuilding around simple principles to allow plants to do the work they do so well. This alone could provide profound cost savings by reducing irrigation water and fertilizer needs, improving crop yields and, oh, by the way, encouraging some of the most efficient carbon sequestration benefits imaginable.

• Create an incentivized, voluntary initiative in which participants can sell the value of improvements in soil carbon on the open market. The program’s goals would be to rebuild soil carbon and organic matter in agricultural production and ranchlands and other lands, and to reduce storm water runoff and erosion and increase water infiltration, replenishing declining potable ground water supplies in many areas of the U.S.

• Decouple the politics and economics of food from energy by encouraging more locally produced, healthy food grown with sustainable practices to balance our food supplies and reduce time and mileage in its travel from farm to table.

“The Reserve’s system of land-use planning to improve soil and water and to manage carbon would start mitigating GHG emissions quickly, while our economic, financial and policy systems move toward more sustainable energy sources. Progress on many of the issues raised here is being made at the local, state and federal levels and should be encouraged, but a national program remains critical.

“This plan would, in the long term, help heal the Gulf, the Mississippi, and our other rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Ultimately, it could mitigate climate change—healing earth, water and sky.”

We are glad to pass these words along, Mr. Apfelbaum.

“Steven Apfelbaum is founder, chairman, and senior ecologist of the firm Applied Ecological Services, Inc., based in Brodhead, Wisconsin. He is also the author of Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm and the co-author, with Alan Haney, of Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land. For more than three decades, Steve and his dynamic team have contributed scientific expertise to more than 1,500 projects around the world.” – Maxine Mitchell

IDE's water technologies have had an important impact on poor rural farmers in developing countries. Photo: IDE

In Denver, an important art exhibition from developing countries opens in Denver, along with another feature concerning sustainability and affordable water technologies. The exhibition, titled, The Art of Dirt, has been organized by Denver-based IDE The exhibition takes place at the EventGallery 910 Arts and will run through September 25.

According to IDE, The Art of Dirt allows visitors to learn how simple, affordable technology design has improved the incomes and lives of the millions of people at the base of the economic pyramid. The exhibition includes photographs, videos and a tomato garden growing in the gallery that has been irrigated using IDE water technology.

IDE drip irrigation system in use. Photo: IDE

IDE, founded in 1982, strives to create income opportunities for poor, rural households in the developing world. This exhibition showcases some simple, pattern-changing technologies, such as IDE’s foot-powered treadle pump, and low-pressure micro-sprinkler and affordable drip irrigation that IDE has made available in developing countries.  This technologies have helped poor, rural families gain control over their water supply and opening up a new world of income-generating possibilities.

Dealing with water technologies like these started when IDE worked in Bangladesh in the 1980s, where the lack of access to water in rural villages was a widespread problem. IDE personnel believed that manually powered irrigation pumps could solve some of the water problem and allow farmers to increase productivity. As a result, IDE increased annual sales of manual irrigation pumps from 14,000 to 75,000 in a five-year period. After that initial success, IDE found a better solution in the treadle pump, which is more efficient and easier to operate than manual pumps. To date, more than 1.5 million treadle pumps have been sold in Bangladesh, creating 1.4 billion dollars in net additional income per year.

Today, IDE uses a market oriented development model to increase the income of the rural poor by improving market access, increasing agricultural production, and creating sustainable local businesses. IDE’s projects are country specific, aimed at increasing income for those living on less than a dollar a day in the most efficient and viable manner possible according to each region’s unique opportunities.

Over the last 28 years we have worked with more than 3.8 million families, increasing their aggregate income by over one billion dollars. Kudos!

Land monitoring

This June the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), founded after the man who made the geodesic dome a household word, awarded its 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize of $110,000 to African-based Operation Hope for its promising work to transform degraded Zimbabwe grasslands and savannas into a sustainable environment.

The grand prize was well deserved. Here’s why: smart land management work like this can foster water and food security for millions of impoverished people that have suffered for years without such living basics.

Operation Hope was launched by the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe (ACHM) and its sister organization, New Mexico-based Savory Institute . The approach of these organizations to land management runs contrary to accepted practice of resting land from animal grazing. Instead, Savory seeks to re-establish the balance between plant growth and the behavior of herding animals. Predicting this outcome: the return of unusable desert to grasslands, restoring biodiversity, bringing water sources back to life, combating global climate change, and increasing crop yields to ensure food security for people. The approach is currently being practiced and producing results on over 30 million acres worldwide, states ACHM.

ACHM enhances food and water security and human livelihoods through training that utilizes livestock to restore degraded watersheds and croplands to health offering training programs targeting community NGOs. ACHM’s Grazing Plan is designed to improve land health, and to ensure livestock (and wildlife) have adequate forage year round. In the growing season livestock moves are timed to ensure maximum plant growth and regrowth, and in the dry season the plan rations out the forage that was grown to ensure it lasts until the next rains. Droughts are planned for each year. In all seasons, livestock moves are planned months ahead to avoid conflict with the needs of wildlife – for food, water, or shelter.

Savory targets the “Green Revolution, based on high input, industrial agriculture (massive inputs of petro-chemicals and herbicides, monoculture cropping, and confinement animal feeding operations), stating it has increased global food production tremendously, but has tended to severely degrade its ecological and socio-cultural capital base in the process.”

The result? “Horrific soil erosion, dead zones at the mouths of rivers, severely depleted levels of biodiversity, impoverished rural communities, soil fertility loss, and oxidation of soil organic matter have been exacerbated by the Green Revolution.”

Savory offers the Brown Revolution as a solution: “based on the regeneration of covered, organically rich, biologically thriving soil, and brought to fruition via millions of human beings returning to the land and the production of food.”

Savory contends that “slight increases in soil organic matter, over these huge extensions of the earth’s land surface area, will result in the permanent, safe, and natural sequestration of many gigatons of carbon.”

For nearly three decades, BFI has served an international network of Fuller-inspired innovators through the maintenance of a comprehensive Information Clearinghouse on R.B Fuller, including a detailed inventory of the practices and principles informing Fuller’s approach to design innovation.

According to the Internationasl Biochar Initiative, sustainable biochar is a “powerfully simple tool fight global warming.”

“Sustainable biochar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. IBI focuses on the need for quality and sustainability standards and assurances in the emerging biochar industry,” the website reports.

South America: students with biochar stoves Source: Biochar Initiative

For those wondering what kind of new invention bichar might be,  it is not new at all. The practice has been around for almost 2,000 years, where it was practiced in South America. The product, called terra preta, or “dark earth” that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer, or fertilizing agent.  But beyond acting as a soil enhancer, proponents claim biochar has the capacity to hold carbon. It is being produced in the United States, South America, and Australia, to name a few producing locations.

Biochar is a charcoal produced under high temperatures, using crop waste, animal manure, and other organic waste.

According to Kelsi Bracmort, an analyst in agricultural conservation and natural resources policy, “The combined production and use of biochar is considered a carbon-negative process, meaning that it removes carbon from the atmosphere.”

Take a thorough look, we shall be reporting far more on this product.

Weeds rarely are welcome in the garden soil. Getting rid of them is normally an arduous procedure with more bad sides than good sides, including blisters, aching backs, and time passed, which might have been better spent elsewhere. The one good side from weeding is probably the dead-tired, ‘sweat on your brow’ reward of seeing your garden rid of the unwelcome invasion.

Ghanaian villagers strip bark from invasive weed tree so it can be used for erosion control. Photo: G. Meyers

But if you’re an itinerant farmer in Ghana, living near the Brong Ahafo gold mine of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, one weed features another good side: it is being converted into a cash crop.

This weed, called Broussonetia papyrifera, or York, can consume arable land in a short time, growing 25-meter trees and a system of seeds and shoots that turns food-producing areas into wastelands.  Ghanaians may once have called it Devil’s Teak, now they see it as a raw material that can bring income to the villagers of Techeyre, who operate a micro business making biodegradable matting that is used for erosion control and slope stabilization at the nearby mining operation.

This micro business jute mat operation was conceived by Muhammad Bin Abubakar, an outspoken Newmont nursery manager who has left behind a large trail of good work, including growing a shaded forest where once there were only mining tailings. Bin, as he is known, says he learned of a way to use the tree when he worked at Newmont’s Indonesian operations.  According to Bin, one farmer, Amoafo Darkwah had to abandon his family’s two-acre cassava farm because of York infestation.

Project developer, Bin Abubakar, works with village members. Photo: G. Meyers

In the village of Techeyre, some 800 people, including Darkwah, join in stripping bark from these trees.  Bark stripped, the trees die within two weeks and will stop producing seeds. The dead timber can be used for minor construction needs or for cooking fuel, and much of the sawdust is used for growing at Bin’s nursery.

Then it’s time to treat the moneymaker, the bark. The fibrous material, taken from the bottom part of the tree, measures an average of one meter by five meters. This solid piece is first hammered flat so the fibrous structure can be pulled out, or woven into a continuous net material. The hammering process, where large hand-hewn mallets are used, resonates throughout the village with the sound of drums.

As Bin describes it, “ The mat is then woven into a mesh, just like chicken mesh, thus giving it the ability to trap eroded soil particles during storm periods.”

Beyond the environmental functionality of the jute mats, there is the micro business that has provided income for some 800 people where money or paying work are as scarce as the York is plentiful.

The difficulties posed by the York have been transformed into a solution, says Bin.

“So the jute mats are used for controlling erosion in our mining areas. Which now accounts for 800 people – ladies, men, and students in this area. And they are getting their livelihood from this work.”

We hope more micro businesses such as this one Bin has started begin popping up across Africa and other developing areas of the planet.

Mark Edwards, PhD

For those wanting more information on algae and its low-carbon potential as an alternative fuel source, take a visit to Oilgae , a blog focused on this subject.

Some might even want information on how to grow their own. Below are clips from today’s post:

“Cultivation of Algae in Photobioreactor”

“Algae can also be grown in a photobioreactor (PBR). A PBR is a bioreactor which incorporates some type of light source. Virtually any translucent container could be called a PBR, however the term is more commonly used to define a closed system, as opposed to an open tank or pond.

“It allows more species to be grown, it allows the species that are being grown to stay dominant, and it extends the growing season, only slightly if unheated, and if heated it can produce year round. Because PBR systems are closed, all essential nutrients must be introduced into the system to allow algae to grow and be cultivated.

“A PBR can be operated in “batch mode”, but it is also possible to introduce a continuous stream of sterilized water containing nutrients, air, and carbon dioxide. As the algae grows, excess culture overflows and is harvested.”

The entire article is available at at the Oilgae blog. I happened on this site on the recommendation of a friend who is attempting to link me with Mark Edwards, PhD, professor at the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University, and author of “Green Algae Strategy: End Oil Imports And Engineer Sustainable Food And Fuel.”

I am glad to have visited and think it is important for many of us to learn more about this alternative, sharing our discoveries with plenty of others.

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