Global Warming To Cause Future Food Shortages
Roger Coppock
The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
by the title, “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
Before 1975, the phrase commonly used by scientists was “inadvertent
climate modification”, referring to a particular condition in which an
average increase in the temperature of the Earth is observed. Global
warming has many deleterious effects and is mainly caused by increased
concentrations of green house gases, smokestacks, vehicles, and
burning forests.
Many harmful effects have been directly related to the rise in
temperature, with many of the incidents in the past few decades acting
as an alarm about global warming. The occurrence of natural hazards
like floods, typhoons and earthquakes has tremendously increased all
over the world.
Lesser summer stream flows, the outburst of various epidemics, the
extinction of many genes in organisms, and the increased spread of
mosquitoes and other harmful insects and pests are also related to the
ill effects of rising temperatures.
Marine life is very sensitive to rising temperatures; many species of
fish and other marine life will die as the water temperature changes.
Perhaps the most disturbing change is expected in the coral reefs
which are expected to die off completely due to the effects of global
warming.
One of the major events of Global Warming will be a food shortage.
Researchers from the University of Leeds, the Met Office and the
University of Exeter said the wheat crisis in Russia and reduced crop
production in Pakistan, India, and Indonesia due to the current floods
brought on by climate changes will push food prices up.
Besides producing physical damage to the crops, rising temperatures
also have been creating an early maturity of crops, which could reduce
their yield. Intense monsoon rains and severe droughts could be very
frequent and also prove very harmful for the crops, as suggested by
the researchers in a Journal for Environmental Research.
The main author of the study, Dr Andy Challinor from the University of
Leeds, said, “Due to the significance of international trade, crop
failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just
those in crop-growing regions.”
[ . . . ]
http://www.starcitynews.com/global-warming-anticipated-to-cause-future-food-shortages/1629
$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto
it. Shortages of vegetable matter for human consumption and shortage
of feedstocks for animals.
Benj
Oh how wonderful! Someone thought up the phrase "global warming"!
Clap! Clap! clap! clap! Of course the article is filled with lies.
For example: "Global warming has many deleterious effects and is
mainly caused by increased
> concentrations of green house gases, smokestacks, vehicles, and burning forests".
Sorry total propaganda and bullshit! Even if this assertion were true
(and it's not) the portion of CO2 created by smokestacks, vehicles and
other "human" causes is miniscule. IF we TOTALLY destroyed
civilization stopped all vehicles, closed all power plants, killed all
the cattle etc. the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would hardly be
affected! Certainly not enough to dramatically change the climate.
Your LIFE however WOULD be dramatically changed.
The 6th grade understanding of "Roger Coppock" asserts that the only
solution to any food shortage is to slap a huge tax on all energy use
(payable to him and his pals I suppose). No tractors. No farm
machinery. No chemical fertilizers. Only tax, tax, tax. to "save" the
world! And while we are at it, just to be "green" why don't we just
burn food instead of oil? Yeah that ought to do it! That will give
everyone enough to eat!
Just how stooopid does "Roger" and his co-conspirators in the media
think you are? 6th grade like he is? This wacko can safely be ignored.
And he can be listened to at the peril of the planet. One thing we can
be SURE of. No matter what happens, no matter how the weather changes,
no matter what disaster befalls the planet, ROGER and the MAJOR MEDIA
will be there to offer the "easy way out"! They are there to "SAVE"
the planet. The solution? Easy. Just give them lots of your money.
bB oO nN zZ oO
"Roger Coppock" <rcop...@adnc.com> wrote in message
news:fab7ed4d-21c3-4bcc...@a4g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
Reported by: Wijdan, in the StarCityNews
The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
by the title, �Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?�
Before 1975, the phrase commonly used by scientists was �inadvertent
climate modification�, referring to a particular condition in which an
average increase in the temperature of the Earth is observed. Global
warming has many deleterious effects and is mainly caused by increased
concentrations of green house gases, smokestacks, vehicles, and
burning forests.
Many harmful effects have been directly related to the rise in
temperature, with many of the incidents in the past few decades acting
as an alarm about global warming. The occurrence of natural hazards
like floods, typhoons and earthquakes has tremendously increased all
over the world.
Lesser summer stream flows, the outburst of various epidemics, the
extinction of many genes in organisms, and the increased spread of
mosquitoes and other harmful insects and pests are also related to the
ill effects of rising temperatures.
the researchers in a Journal for Environmental Research.
The main author of the study, Dr Andy Challinor from the University of
Leeds, said, �Due to the significance of international trade, crop
failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just
======================================
Now where have I heard this sort of stuff before .....?
Oh, I know!
Extract From �Welcome To Apocaholics Anonymous�
In Paul Ehrlich�s �The Population Bomb� (1968), he opened famously by
saying, �The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s,
hundreds of millions of people will starve to death, in spite of any crash
programs embarked upon now.�
Writing in Ramparts magazine, he went even further, �Hundreds of millions of
people will soon perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles�the
oceans will die of DDT poisoning by 1979�the US life expectancy will drop to
42 years by 1980, due to cancer epidemics.�
Hepatitis and dysentery would sweep America by 1980 and nearly all of us
would wear gas masks.
Over 65 million Americans would starve in the 1980s, leaving only 22.6
million starved Americans alive in 1990.
In 1990, he incredibly justified his claims as being right � a trait common
to Doomsday prophets.
======================================
Paul Ehrlich, Foundation Member Of The Church Of Latter Day Alarmists!
Here are some quotable quotes ... hee hee hee ...
"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo
famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in
spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the
only answer."
"a minimum of ten million people, most of them
children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a
mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of
the century"
"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce
the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people."
He added that by 1980 the US would see its life expectancy drop to 42
because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6
million. In the seventies, Ehrlich envisioned the President dissolving
Congress "during the food riots of the 1980s," followed by the US suffering
a nuclear attack for its mass use of insecticides.
"Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote
effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home,
hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if
voluntary methods fail."
"luxury taxes could be placed on layettes, cribs, diapers, diaper services,
and expensive toys..." and suggested giving "responsibility prizes" to
couples who went at least five years without having children or to men who
got vasectomies. He called for setting up a federal Bureau of Population and
Environment to oversee reducing US population growth.
Paul Ehrlich is the modern version of Thomas Malthus -- the most visible and
persistent predictor of mass famine and economic catastrophe.
Unlike Malthus, though, Ehrlich doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes;
when one of his predictions of disaster fails to come true, Ehrlich simply
moves on
and makes other predictions of disaster, constantly pushing back the
timetable for massive world famine, perhaps in the desperate hope that if he
keeps predicting the same thing, eventually pure chance will fulfill the
conditions he requires.
�The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo
famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in
spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the
only answer�
Paul Ehrlich The Population Bomb 1968
�I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000�
Paul Ehrlich 1969
�In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large
areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of thestench of dead
fish�
Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
Warmest Regards
B0nz0
"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct
from natural variation."
Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
"It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you
have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your
side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is
wrong. Period."
Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"A core problem is that science has given way to ideology. The scientific
method has been dispensed with, or abused, to serve the myth of man-made
global warming."
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Computer models are built in an almost backwards fashion: The goal is to
show evidence of AGW, and the "scientists" go to work to produce such a
result. When even these models fail to show what advocates want, the data
and interpretations are "fudged" to bring about the desired result"
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the
environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm: another try
at condemning fossil fuels!"
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/threat-ocean-acidification-greatly-exaggerated
Before attacking hypothetical problems, let us first solve the real problems
that threaten humanity. One single water pump at an equivalent cost of a
couple of solar panels can indeed spare hundreds of Sahel women the daily
journey to the spring and spare many infections and lives.
Martin De Vlieghere, philosopher
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that
it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of
mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
Bertrand Russell
�Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which
the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion�
Paul Ehrlich in 1976.
1azzzz
bB oO nN zZ oO
"Roger Coppock" <rcop...@adnc.com> wrote in message
news:fab7ed4d-21c3-4bcc...@a4g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
by the title, �Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?�
Before 1975, the phrase commonly used by scientists was �inadvertent
climate modification�, referring to a particular condition in which an
average increase in the temperature of the Earth is observed. Global
warming has many deleterious effects and is mainly caused by increased
concentrations of green house gases, smokestacks, vehicles, and
burning forests.
Many harmful effects have been directly related to the rise in
temperature, with many of the incidents in the past few decades acting
as an alarm about global warming. The occurrence of natural hazards
like floods, typhoons and earthquakes has tremendously increased all
over the world.
Lesser summer stream flows, the outburst of various epidemics, the
extinction of many genes in organisms, and the increased spread of
mosquitoes and other harmful insects and pests are also related to the
ill effects of rising temperatures.
the researchers in a Journal for Environmental Research.
The main author of the study, Dr Andy Challinor from the University of
Leeds, said, �Due to the significance of international trade, crop
failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just
Dawlish
Alarmist Roger. The "Researchers from the University of Leeds, the Met
Office and the University of Exeter said the wheat crisis in Russia
and reduced crop production in Pakistan, India, and Indonesia due to
the current floods brought on by climate changes..........."
They said nothing of the sort. There were some implications in this
research that recent floods and droughts could, and possibly are, the
result of underlying GW, but they did *not* attribute these events to
GW, or AGW. The writer of your cut and paste has spun it towards
alarmism for a purpose and twisted their words.
Much of your posting is highly credible, but this kind of alarmism -
and another discussion you've started, does not help you. However, the
denier reaction is entirely stupid and is why they sit in and shout
from, the stupid seats.
matt_sykes
OK, so since 1975 its got warmer OK? And in the same period what has
crop produciton done? Gone up 100% or so?
Which means?...
Dawlish
>
> - Show quoted text -
...............that the technology involved in food production has
improved no end. Stupid denier. Do you really think that the increases
in global temperatures over the last 35 years could possibly have
produced 100% increases in food production? Get your arguments sorted,
for goodness sake, if you are going to try to play on here please,
because that kind of idiocy just marks you out as low IQ.
Catoni
Isn't that something........
And I thought it was Global Cooling like in the Little Ice Age that
caused food shortages....
You know....... early freeze from early winter... and late
Spring... freezing temps hangin around longer... shorter growing
season and failed harvests....
But what do I know.... I only study history among other
subjects....
Yes the IPCC claims we have warmed about 0.8 or 0.9 degrees in the
last 160 years.... you know... since the end of the Little Ice Age....
and that is a disaster so they claim....
Yeah.... let's go back to the Little Ice Age.... that's the
ticket...
Dawlish
>
> - Show quoted text -
You don't study climate science though, and yet you post on a GW
newsgroup. Odd?
Show me where the IPCC has ever claimed that warming since the last
ice age has been a "disaster".
Catoni
>
> - Show quoted text
Dawlish posted:
>" Do you really think that the increases
> in global temperatures over the last 35 years could possibly have
> produced 100% increases in food production?"
No of course not. Not 100%. But it HAS helped some.. and in
certain cases it has helped a lot. There are farmers now in parts of
the world that can get in two harvests instead of one. Due to a longer
growing season. There are places where crops can now be grown where it
was impossible to do so before back in the 1800's.
There are people in Greenland now going into some farming that
was impossible before...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=cff56e4b-5273-456c-9f31-5d3081e9aa3a
Global Warming will not be good for every region... there will be
areas that suffer..... but on the other hand, there will be areas that
suffer now that will benefit greatly from a rise of a couple
degrees..
Something you never hear the Alarmists talk about, is how the Earth
can benefit from being warmer. All they shout is "DOOM, & GLOOM"
....when in fact.... there are also good things about a warmer
world.
The so-called dark cloud indeed has a bright silver lining.
matt_sykes
>
> - Show quoted text -
Fuck me you are so stupid. Where did I say it was due to AGW? Of
course you want to think that because you are a prick who likes to
imaging arguments.
Its mostly due to technology, but in part due to GW and CO2 (in the
same way US forestry growth has been), and no I am not going to quote,
you can go fuck yourself.
tunderbar
> Reported by: Wijdan, in the StarCityNews
>
> The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
> on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
> by the title, “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
>
> Before 1975, the phrase commonly used by scientists was “inadvertent
> climate modification”, referring to a particular condition in which an
> average increase in the temperature of the Earth is observed. Global
> warming has many deleterious effects and is mainly caused by increased
> concentrations of green house gases, smokestacks, vehicles, and
> burning forests.
>
> Many harmful effects have been directly related to the rise in
> temperature, with many of the incidents in the past few decades acting
> as an alarm about global warming. The occurrence of natural hazards
> like floods, typhoons and earthquakes has tremendously increased all
> over the world.
Ohhhhh... so weather IS clamate. Thanks for clearly that up.
>
> Lesser summer stream flows, the outburst of various epidemics, the
> extinction of many genes in organisms, and the increased spread of
> mosquitoes and other harmful insects and pests are also related to the
> ill effects of rising temperatures.
None of which are happening any more than at any time in the past. And
the mosquitos thing is especially bogus. The northern prairies and
siberia are places that are notorious for mosquitoes and happen to
also have some of the coldest yearly average temperatures.
Roger, when you bring up such silliness, you make a mockery of your
advanced degree.
>
> Marine life is very sensitive to rising temperatures; many species of
> fish and other marine life will die as the water temperature changes.
> Perhaps the most disturbing change is expected in the coral reefs
> which are expected to die off completely due to the effects of global
> warming.
That was debunked years ago. The big coral reef die-off, a few years
ago, that was being trumpetted about by agwers as positive proof of
agw, has pretty much disappeared. Either it wasn't caused by agw or
agw has stopped.
>
> One of the major events of Global Warming will be a food shortage.
>
> Researchers from the University of Leeds, the Met Office and the
> University of Exeter said the wheat crisis in Russia and reduced crop
> production in Pakistan, India, and Indonesia due to the current floods
> brought on by climate changes will push food prices up.
It may be flods, or it may be drought, or it may be excess moisture.
But world wide wheat and grain stocks go up and they go down. nd every
once in a while it will do so drastically. Climate and weather
changes. That is what it does.
>
> Besides producing physical damage to the crops, rising temperatures
> also have been creating an early maturity of crops, which could reduce
> their yield. Intense monsoon rains and severe droughts could be very
> frequent and also prove very harmful for the crops, as suggested by
> the researchers in a Journal for Environmental Research.
Early maturation of crops occur when heat and lack of moisture co-
incide. Rising temps, by itself, is what plants, and especially food
crops, love. In fact they need heat. The more the better. The longer
the season the better as well.
Intense monsoons and droughts happen. There is absolutely no
statistical evidence that monsoons and droughts are historically more
intense or more common. And crops have been susceptible to weather
since the first guy stuck a seed into the ground. To suggest that
there is more risk to day is silly.
I'd be more concerned with the risk inherent in our dependance on
monoculture of crops and the overuse of fertilizers and GMO crops.
>
> The main author of the study, Dr Andy Challinor from the University of
> Leeds, said, “Due to the significance of international trade, crop
> failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just
> those in crop-growing regions.”
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> http://www.starcitynews.com/global-warming-anticipated-to-cause-futur...
Hey moron. Crop failure in various parts of the globe is always an
issue. It is no more an issue now than it was during the dust bowl
era.
I'm more concerned about an inordinate amount of grain corn going to
the production of fuel alcohol and pushing grain prices up to the
point where people are starving by the millions.
T. Keating
Given the large number of cattle in the world,est1.3 Billion
And the relatively low efficiency they convert consumed food into meat
energy.. ~15 to 1 ratio..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
Short term.. We could probably cut that number by 80% and feed the
world's population yet again..
Probably a similar number for pork (billion +).. Net food energy loss
~8 to 1.
Verses Chicken/Turkey, 2-3 to 1.
But cutting all that wasteful consumption won't help in the later
stages of this extinction level event mankind is triggering. Since
available food supplies are expected to shrink by 99.999% or more.
P.S. Things didn't grow very fast in Acidic, Hot, Dry desert climates
that dominated during the P.T.E, (large plants & trees extinct, oceans
mostly anoxic/dead).
leona...@gmail.com
>
> But cutting all that wasteful consumption won't help in the later
> stages of this extinction level event mankind is triggering. Since
> available food supplies are expected to shrink by 99.999% or more.
ø Total hogwash.
ø Nothing that all mankind might do
can/will have any effect on the climate,
Roger and Keating notwithstanding.
Have they just appointed themselves God?
— —
| In real science the burden of proof is always
| on the proposer, never on the skeptics. So far
| neither IPCC nor anyone else has provided one
| iota of valid data for global warming nor have
| they provided data that climate change is being
| effected by commerce and industry, and not by
| natural causes.
leona...@gmail.com
> On Oct 20, 12:03�pm, T. Keating <tkuse...@ktcnslt.com> wrote:
>>
>> �But cutting all that wasteful consumption won't help in the later
>> stages of this extinction level event mankind is triggering. � Since
>> available food supplies are expected to shrink by 99.999% or more. �
>
>
> � Total hogwash.
| In real science the burden of proof is always
| on the proposer, never on myself because I never
| provide evidence, just my insane opinions based
| on my abject ignorance, senility and stupidity.
| So far the scientists of the world have failed
| to convince me, a senile old science illiterate
| with no education and nothing to do all day but
| spout incoherent gibberish to satisfy my attention
| starved inferiority complex. I've never studied
| science, I never graduated high school. I'm simply
| a mentally ill, mentally dificient know nothing and
| a kook who eats my own shit because I can't afford
| food because I'm on government pension.
-----
There are three types of people that you can not talk into behaving well.
The stupid, the rightist religious fanatic, and the evil rightist.
1-The right wing stupid aren't smart enough to follow the logic of what
you say. You have to tell them what is right in very simple terms. If they
don't agree, then you'll never be able to change their mind.
2- the right wing religious fanatic If what you say goes against their
religious belief, they will cling to that religious belief even if it
means their death."
3- There is no way to reform evil Not in a million years. There is no way
to convince the right wing terrorists, anti-science anthropogenic global
warming deniers, serial killers, right wing paedophiles, and predators to
change their evil ways. They knew what they were doing was wrong, but that
knowledge didn't stop them. It only made them more careful in how they
went about performing their evil acts.
James
news:fab7ed4d-21c3-4bcc...@a4g2000prm.googlegroups.com
>
> The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
> on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
>
> Before 1975, the phrase commonly used by scientists was �inadvertent
> climate modification�, referring to a particular condition in which an
> failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> http://www.starcitynews.com/global-warming-anticipated-to-cause-future-food-shortages/1629
Somebody has been breaking their pills in half.
ro...@kymhorsell.com
[The regime has heightened anger by blocking mobile phones and
Internet "until further notice"].
Jan 28, 2011
AP
Record food prices might fan social unrest and fuel inflation beyond North
Africa, delegates at the World Economic Forum said yesterday, after 1000s
took to the streets of Cairo to denounce President Hosni Mubarak.
"This protest won't end in North Africa; it will spread in many countries
because of high unemployment and increasing food prices," Hamza al-Kholi, the
chairman and chief executive of Saudi Alkholi Group, a holding company
investing in industrials and real estate, said in Davos.
Risks of global instability were rising as governments facing budget crunches
cut subsidies that help the poor cope with surging food and fuel costs, the
head of the UN World Food Program said 2 days ago.
World food costs rose to a record in Dec on higher costs for sugar, grain
and oilseeds, the UN reported on Jan 4, contributing to the uprising that
ousted Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 24 years as president. Protests
have spread to Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Yemen.
An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organisation gained for a 6th month to 214.7 points, above the previous high
of 213.5 in June 2008.
Higher commodity prices were "leading to riots, demonstrations and political
instability", said New York University economics professor Nouriel
Roubini. "It's really something that can topple regimes."
In Egypt, 3 people set themselves on fire and 1000s protested against
President Hosni Mubarak's government. Authorities banned protests and
tightened security to prevent demonstrators from repeating Tuesday's rally.
In Algeria, 3 were killed and 420 injured at rallies against high food
prices and a lack of public housing. Jordanian opposition groups have held
peaceful protests against the government, and in Yemen yesterday 1000s
gathered outside the main university in the capital Sana'a demanding that
President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down.
Rising food and energy prices were fuelling inflation across emerging markets
and posed one of the biggest threats to the recovery, Roubini said.
India and China would be forced to raise interest rates, threatening to choke
the growth that was driving global expansion, International Monetary Fund
special adviser Min Zhu said.
---
It takes more than warmth to grow crops; otherwise the Sahara would be green!
--
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [79 nyms and counting], 21 Jan 2011 11:16 +1100
SPierce
<ro...@kymhorsell.com> wrote in message
news:4d42e85d$0$16495$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
(snipped)
> "This protest won't end in North Africa; it will spread in many countries
> because of high unemployment and increasing food prices,"
# Nope. it's because there are millions of well fed but bored 'youths' in a
Muslim country who want the same things as they see on American tv but can
see no future for themselves. Nothing to do with food.
To think there are highly paid officials who believe the rubbish they spout.
Fear I guess.
ro...@kymhorsell.com
...
> "SPierce" <ecr...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> <ro...@kymhorsell.com> wrote in message
> news:4d42e85d$0$16495$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> (snipped)
> Muslim country who want the same things as they see on American tv but can
> see no future for themselves. Nothing to do with food.
> To think there are highly paid officials who believe the rubbish they spout.
> Fear I guess.
JORDAN: Thousands of demonstrators protest food prices, denounce government
Alexandra Sandels in Beirut
Jan 15, 2011
LA Times
In an unprecedented development in Jordan, protests similar to those that have
rocked Tunisia and Algeria in recent wk erupted in the Arab kingdom Friday.
Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Amman, and several
other cities to protest rising food prices and unemployment, media reports
say.
Aside from complaints, they also pointed rare and stinging criticism toward
the Jordanian government, headed by Prime Minister Samir Rifai.
"Down with Rifai's government," protestors chanted as they marched through
Amman's city center, according to Agence France-Presse. "Unify yourselves
because the government wants to eat your flesh. Raise fuel prices to fill
their pockets with millions."
Similar protest marches were held in the cities of Maan, Karak, Slat and
Irbid, where demonstrators shouted that Jordan was "too big" for Rifai, the
report added. All in all, around 8,000 people turned out for the marches --
despite previous measures by the Jordanian government to create more jobs and
control rising commodity prices.
According to a report by Egypt's state-run Al Ahram news agency, tanks
surrounded the Arab kingdom's major cities and checkpoints and barriers had
been set up.
The report, headlined "Jordan fears another Tunisia", claimed that Jordan's
King Abdullah II had set up a special task force in his palace that included
military and intelligence officials to try to prevent the unrest from
escalating further.
It said the country's main opposition group -- the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood
-- had not participated in Friday's demonstrations, but the group will
reportedly join a sit-in outside parliament Sunday, along with the the
country's 14 trade unions, a move that would probably increase the pressure on
the Jordanian authorities.
---
So you really, really believe that our universe just came about by
sheer chance? I prersonally, find that extremely hard to accept.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [79 nyms and counting], 11 Jan 2011 15:02 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Protesting high food prices
CAIRO, Jan 17 (UPI) -- A 49-y-old man set himself on fire Mon in front of
the building housing the Egyptian Parliament in protest of food subsidies,
police officials said.
Police in Cairo said a man identified as Abdou Abdel Moneim set himself on
fire to protest the government's refusal to give him his share of subsidized
bread for a restaurant he owns, reports Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm.
Security forces were on scene to extinguish the blaze and took the man to a
local hospital.
A Mauritanian and at least 4 Algerians reportedly set themselves on fire Mon.
Algerians were protesting high food prices and unemployment, similar to
grievances aired by demonstrators in Tunisia.
The events across Africa were reminiscent of the self-immolation that sparked
anti-government protests in Tunisia. Demonstrations in Tunisia gained strength
in December after the death of an unemployed man who set himself on fire to
protest the lack of jobs in the country.
President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power in Tunisia for 23 y,
fled Friday to Saudi Arabia as violence escalated across the country. Police
used water cannons Mon to disperse protesters calling for the
Constitutional Democratic Rally, the party of the ousted president, to
relinquish its power.
The British Foreign Office urged Britons "to leave Tunisia unless they have a
pressing need to remain."
---
So you really, really believe that our universe just came about by
sheer chance? I prersonally, find that extremely hard to accept.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [82 nyms and counting], 11 Jan 2011 15:02 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
28 Jan 2011
JAKARTA (AFP/jl): Indonesia has suspended import duties on wheat, soybeans,
fertiliser and other food-related items for the rest of the y as it battles
inflation, an official said Fri.
The govt escalated its fight against rising food prices that have
increased pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates in Southeast
Asia's biggest economy, a concern felt around the region.
The finance ministry said it decided to suspend the duties until Dec 31
in a bid to anticipate a shortage in supply that would hike food prices.
"The policy is also to help curb inflation," said Bambang Brodjonegoro, acting
fiscal policy head at the finance ministry.
The govt had scrapped import duties for rice products last y, which
remains in place until Mar.
Extreme weather has disrupted crop production and distribution, pushing 2010
annual inflation to near 7%, above the govt and central bank's target of
4.0 to 6.0%.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Thu at the World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland, that soaring food prices could lead to more unrest and
food security should be a key priority for the G20.
"High food prices impact on inflation but also poverty and hunger which could
lead to social and political unrest," the president told members of the world
political and economic elite.
In spring 2008, 10s of 1000s of Indonesians took to the streets of the
capital Jakarta to protest against soaring food prices -- particularly rice,
cooking oil and soybeans -- and the prospect of sharply higher fuel bills.
---
[A]s a Conservative, I have no tolerance for ambiguity.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [82 nyms and counting], 14 Jan 2011 14:46 +1100
Sfinx
many exotic and unusual birds into Britain's back gardens on a weekend
when more than half a million people are taking part in the world's
biggest wildlife survey.
ro...@kymhorsell.com
[News out of China today says the govt there is censoring info about
protests in Egypt].
Doug Saunders
29 Jan 2011
The Globe and Mail
From Sat's Globe and Mail
Ottawa -- Inside a secure compound at Canadian Security Intelligence
Service headquarters this wk, I had the rather odd experience of
talking to spies about farming.
The spooks at CSIS, like their counterparts in other countries, have
recently become obsessed with such loamy topics as marginal crop
yields, soil salinity, Indonesian rice futures and dairy-supply
bottlenecks. This wk, they played host to scores of agrarians, crop
economists, agricultural-threat analysts and farm specialists from a
dozen countries in an urgent summit on food security, a meeting in
which crop-irrigation ratios were treated with the sort of gravity
that, a few y ago, would have been reserved for jetliner
flight-training facilities in Florida.
And little wonder. As the intelligence officials listened to analyses
of Indian irrigation policies and some rather silly talk about Islamist
"agroterrorism threats," the world outside was blowing up over food.
The uprising inflaming Egypt on Fri began, let us not forget, with
crowds marching in Cairo on Tuesday to chants of "Bread and freedom!"
The Tunisian revolution began in December as a bread-price
protest. Neither event was ultimately about food, but its increasing
share of the household budget became a catalyst for larger tensions.
Food prices have spiked this y, far less than they did in 2008, but
ominously. This time, weather-driven crop failures caused by the
Pacific La Nina current are playing a big part. But the underlying
trend is one of insufficient supply: The world is now producing less
than enough food when demand is rising.
Unfortunately, too many govts look at this situation of inadequate
market supply and apply the label "food security." This is dangerous:
To treat food as a "strategic asset," as something to be hoarded or
kept from export, is to gravely misunderstand the nature of food. An
increase in food production, anywhere in the world, increases the
supply and lowers the prices everywhere. The challenge is not to
provide your own country's food needs from within; it's to ensure that
everyone in the world is growing plenty of food, so the question of
domestic versus imported food is irrelevant.
When food consumers outnumber producers, high prices are
dangerous. But a temporary spike in prices, as Nick Cullather
suggested in The Globe this wk, should have the considerable advantage
of attracting large-scale investment in agriculture. And make no
mistake: This food crisis is caused by underinvestment.
The world has a huge surplus of farmland that is either unused or underfarmed.
Consider sub-Saharan Africa, which, according to a new study by
Harvard's Calestous Juma and his team of researchers and colleagues,
could easily be one of the world's largest food exporters, producing
more food than all Africans consume within a generation. The necessary
investments are obvious: Only 4% of African cropland is irrigated.
Fertilizers, pesticides and high-quality seeds and machinery are unavailable.
Bad roads make food spoil before it gets to market. Another new study, by
the World Bank, finds that, in rice farming alone, Africa could outproduce
SE Asia but for such impediments.
India, with the world's 2nd-largest supply of arable land, is
capable of making up for all the world's current food shortages. But
it falls far short. Just to sustain the food needs of its own people,
India's food supply needs to grow by 4% pa; it's now growing little
more than 1%. There is huge potential: Indian wheat farms, for
example, produce less than 3.5 tonnes of wheat a hectare in good y,
whereas European and North American farms produce seven tonnes or
more. India's output could at least double with simple, cheap
investments, but the barriers are all political.
The potential breadbaskets of Africa, India, S America and the
former Soviet countries could bring the world back to a food-surplus
position in a few y, with minimal investments. This is a strictly
temporary and unnecessary crisis. Countries resist outside investments
(or "land grabs," as they're falsely called), seeing them as security
threats. They view "food self-sufficiency" as a noble goal, when, in
fact, it's destructive.
If you make a farm productive, it makes food cheaper and more
plentiful. To make the world peaceful, we need to make bread more
plentiful. It's the stuff of life, not a strategic asset.
---
[Before the flood:]
The recent Murray Darling run-off since the floods would have provided
enought irrigation water to last at least 15 years.
Instead it has all run out to sea!
Crazy anti-dam greenies!
-- "BONZO"@27.32.240.172 [82 nyms and counting], 12 Nov 2010 14:05 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Jan 17, 2011
Colombo (AFP) - 100s of flood victims in Sri Lanka besieged a district
office in the eastern town of Kathankudi complaining about unfair distribution
of emergency food aid, police said Tue.
Local media reports said 3 civil servants were hospitalised after being
attacked by the furious crowd, but police said they were unable to confirm any
injuries during Mon's protests.
"Officers were called in and we managed to bring the situation under control,"
police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said. "A decision was then taken to
distribute aid through cooperative stores rather than govt offices."
More than 1 mn people were temporarily displaced last wk after heavy
monsoon rains that claimed the lives of at least 43 people.
UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Catherine Bragg was due in
Sri Lanka on Wed to launch an international appeal for funding and to
supervise relief operations.
The govt's disaster management centre in Colombo said the number of
people in state-run relief camps had dropped to 17,900 by Tue morning.
Water levels have fallen across the island's flooded E and N-central regions,
but the weather office said monsoon conditions would last until mid-Feb.
---
It takes more than warmth to grow crops; otherwise the Sahara would be green!
--
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [82 nyms and counting], 21 Jan 2011 11:16 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
UN Says Pakistan still in emergency 6 m after floods.
VOA News Jan 26, 2011
The UN says 100s of 1000s of Pakistani children [about 1 child in 4 in
Sindh] are suffering from malnutrition 6 m after severe flooding in
the country.
A spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund in Pakistan told VOA
Wednesday children in SE Sindh province are experiencing malnutrition
levels similar to those in sub-Saharan Africa.
Kristen Elsby said a new report reveals the full extent to which the
floods worsened the problem of poor nutrition among children aged six
m to 5 y old.
The Sindh provincial government is expected to release a full report
Fri that details the severity of malnutrition in the region, and a
stronger response plan. Sindh officials conducted a survey in the
province in coordination with U.N. officials, the World Health
Organization and other non-governmental groups.
The head of Oxfam Pakistan said Wednesday flood relief efforts in
Pakistan have only "scratched the surface of human need," as hundreds
of thousands of people remain living in temporary camps.
The Britain-based agency said the United Nations has received about
half of its $2 billion appeal for aid, and warned the situation could
further deteriorate before it improves.
Oxfam is urging the Pakistani government to extend the emergency
period, set to end on Jan 31.
More than 1,700 people were killed and nearly 20 million others
affected last year when floodwaters triggered by monsoon rains
submerged one-fifth of the country.
ro...@kymhorsell.com
TNN, Jan 30, 2011, 06.03am IST
The Times of India
M S Swaminathan, father of India's green revolution, has repeatedly warned
against the effects of climate change on crop productivity in S Asia. He
tells Atul Sethi why India needs to go into battle mode on the climate front.
How has climate change affected India's staple crops, such as rice and wheat?
The impact is quite profound and measurable. For instance , a small increase
in temperature reduces the maturity period of wheat and affects the crop yield
drastically . According to a report by the United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organization, a 1C rise in mean temperature
translates into wheat yield losses of around 6 mn tonnes pa in
India. At current prices, this works out to roughly $ 1.5 bn. The
cumulative loss of income for farmers is much more - almost $ 20 bn, if
we take into account other crops as well.
Are other countries affected on a similar scale?
Climate change has a differentiated impact. The changes are felt much more by
countries that have low coping capacity , which means that developing
countries are the worst hit. Climate agreements like the Kyoto Protocol of
1997 and the Bali Plan of Action in 2007 have taken into account common and
differentiated responsibilities. This is with the aim of meeting the special
needs of developing countries. For example , in the future, Andaman and
Nicobar, as well as Sunderbans in West Bengal, Kuttanad in Kerala and many
locations along the coast face the prospect of submergence. Floods may become
more serious and frequent in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Drought-induced food
and water scarcity will become more acute. In contrast, countries in the
northern latitudes will benefit due to longer growing seasons and higher yields.
This means that climate change may actually be beneficial for some?
Yes, but the scope is limited. Countries like Canada may benefit because
increase in temperature will allow them to grow more crops. But, areas in
India - like UP, Punjab and Haryana, which are the granaries of the country -
will suffer. That is why we urgently need to plan for compensatory production
of crops in accordance with changing climate patterns. China, for instance,
has already built strong defences against the adverse impact of climate
change. Last year, it produced over 500 mn tonnes of food grains in a
cultivated area similar to that of India. It helps that Chinese farm land is
mostly irrigated, unlike us, where 60% of the area still remains rain-fed .
Doesn't it reflect skewed planning that we haven't been able to put in place a
comprehensive irrigation system and still remain dependent on seasonal
rainfall?
Yes, it's high time we did a re-think of our agricultural strategy - more so
to account for factors like rising temperature , precipitation and climatic
disasters like tsunami . Today, farming is the riskiest profession in the
country . If there is a hailstorm in Punjab, it wipes away the entire wheat
crop. Farming is in distress and that's why farmers are in distress and there
are suicides happening.
Is there an action plan farmers can follow?
I firmly believe that people at the grassroots should know how to manage and
check-mate climatic aberrations. We haven't utilized our panchayati raj system
effectively. At least one woman and one male member of every panchayat should
be trained to become Climate Risk Mgt . A biogas plant and a farm pond in
every farm is essential to reduce emission and ensure energy and water
security . In addition, we need to classify our crops into those which are
climate resilient and those which are climate sensitive . For example, wheat
is a climate sensitive crop, while rice shows a wide range of adaptation in
terms of growing conditions . A search for new genes conferring climate
resilience is an urgent need. For a long term solution, we have to build gene
banks for a warming India.
7
> Farming -- India's riskiest profession
>
> TNN, Jan 30, 2011, 06.03am IST
> The Times of India
>
> M S Swaminathan, father of India's green revolution, has repeatedly warned
> against the effects of climate change on crop productivity in S Asia. He
> tells Atul Sethi why India needs to go into battle mode on the climate
> front.
>
> How has climate change affected India's staple crops, such as rice and
> wheat?
Proof that climate change is real and not from fakers and sensation seeking
alarmist believers will be offered at 10.00pm by a Himalayan Yeti.
His close relative, Big Foot, will also be present to supply
a proper peer reviewed second opinion.
The difference between believers and deniers
--------------------------------------------
Global warming is now a religion funded by wind farms.
Wind farms make one dollar every 20 turns of the wind turbine
so its natural for them to spew all that money across
global warming religious nuts who go around accusing
everyone of being non-believers and deniers.
So what is the difference between believers and deniers?
It is 0.05% CO2.
The believers of global warming religion will now take
a jar of air, add 0.05% CO2 and prove global warming hasn't been faked.
Christopher
and other countries that import large amounts of grains to feed poor
populations who spend the majority of their income on food. Turning
food into fuel reduces global food supplies directly, and as it takes
massive amounts of fertilizer to produce biofuels, the cost of
fertilizer and all foods that require fertilizer to grow have been
rising rapidly. Nothing has done more to increase greenhouse gas
release, erode topsoil, cause deforestation and water pollution than
global biofuel production, so there are no positive environmental
arguments for producing them. Biofuels do nothing to reduce our
dependence on fossil fuels, because it takes so much oil, natural gas,
and coal to produce them that they are simply not worth the effort.
Please see:
The Renewable Energy Disaster
If we have fancy boutique priced energy, we will have fancy boutique
priced food!
On the Internet with resource links at: http://renewable.50webs.com/
It is a mathematically provable fact that you cannot replace oil,
coal, and natural gas with windmills, solar panels, and biofuels.
Hobbits may be able to live poetically, generating energy from the
wind, the sun, and the soil. Real human beings living in an
industrialized civilization need highly concentrated nonrenewable
energy sources to survive. Renewable energy schemes other than
traditional hydroelectric power are resource hogs that take up huge
amounts of space while providing very little usable energy in return.
Contrary to popular belief, solar, wind, wave energy, and biofuel
schemes are not "energy efficient," and their ultra-high cost is an
accurate measurement of that inherent inefficiency. If they were
efficient, they would cost less than using fossil fuels, not
dramatically more than using fossil fuels.
EXAMPLE: To satisfy 100% of New York City's electricity needs with
wind power would require impossible around-the-clock winds within a
limited speed range, and a wind farm the size of the entire state of
Connecticut. Solar photovoltaic cells are so inefficient that it
would take about 60 square miles of expensive solar panels to generate
just one gigawatt of electricity. [Statistical source - Scientist
Jesse H. Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment,
and author of Renewable and nuclear heresies] Fortunately, there is
an affordable, carbon free energy solution, which is described in
detail near the bottom of this web page. But first, let's analyze the
energy solutions that don't work, and which cause much more harm than
good.
Biofuels
Ethanol (vodka minus H2O) and biodiesel (cooking oil) are made
from food or inedible crops which displace normal agricultural
activity. Biofuel crops include corn, soybeans, rapeseed (canola
oil), sugarcane, and palm trees (palm oil). The majority of the
world's corn is grown in the United States, and an ever increasing
percentage of that crop is ending up in gas tanks instead of
stomachs. Increasing amounts of soybean and rapeseed are being
diverted to biodiesel production, and world supplies of cooking oil
are now low. Corn and soybeans are the foundation of America's food
supply, because they feed our farm animals which give us dairy
products, eggs, and meat. When the cost of animal feed is pushed up
by biofuel production, the price American families pay for essential
high protein foods also rises.
Biofuels require large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers to
produce, and the price of fertilizer rose by more than 200% in 2007
alone. Nitrogen fertilizers are largely made from natural gas, which
experienced no significant price gain in 2007, so the main driving
force of fertilizer price hyperinflation is undeniably biofuel
production. Biofuels are pushing up the cost of all foods that
require fertilizers, including rice, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes,
lettuce, and broccoli. Corn and most food products remain at
historically high price levels despite the drop in oil prices, so the
biofuel advocates claim that only the price of oil is a significant
factor in food cost inflation is profoundly incorrect. To make
matters worse, the world is gradually running out of economically
obtainable phosphates, a prime ingredient in fertilizers. If we use
up our supplies of phosphates growing fuel instead of food, we bring
closer the global collapse of the human food supply, which will likely
happen sometime in the second half of this century.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization, global food prices rose an incredible 40% in 2007. The
World Bank states that the cost of staple foods rose by 83% during the
3 year period from 2005 to 2008. The International Food Policy
Research Institute states that biofuels are responsible for rapid
grain price inflation, and a detailed analysis by Don Mitchell, an
internationally respected economist at the World Bank, stated that
biofuels have forced global staple food prices up by 75%.
The United Nations states that its charity programs can no longer
afford to feed the starving peoples of the world because of the high
cost of staple foods. Mr. Jean Ziegler, the former United Nations
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, repeatedly denounced biofuels
as "a crime against humanity." The new UN food envoy, Mr. Olivier De
Schuster, has called for United States and European Union biofuel
targets to be abandoned, and said the world food crisis is "a silent
tsunami affecting 100 million people." Oil price increases have not
shrunk the human food supply, but biofuel production has. The more
biofuels we produce, the less food we have to eat, because we grow
biofuel crops using the same land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment,
and labor we use to grow food.
Ten reasons to oppose biofuels
1) Starvation - Any force, such as worldwide biofuel production or
oil price hikes, that significantly raises food prices also raises the
number of human deaths due to malnutrition. It is difficult for us to
control the price of oil, but it is easy for us to control our own
biofuel production; we just stop doing it! The one-two punch of
biofuels crowding out food production and high oil prices raising the
cost of almost everything is a deadly blow to the poor on a planetary
scale.
No one knows exactly how many millions of people biofuel
production has killed. We do know that biofuels are a global disaster
worse than Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” five year plan, which
is estimated to have killed between 14 and 40 million Chinese through
starvation and related illness. Mao’s Great Leap Forward idea killed
that many people through relatively modest decreases in food
production in China alone. Mao banned private farms in 1958 in his
shift to communes and greater industrial output at the expense of
agriculture. This led to a 15% drop in grain production in China in
1959, and another 10% reduction in 1960. The biofuel disaster is a
vastly larger event that has displaced food production in the U.S.A.,
Canada, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Australia, and in many
small island nations. Biofuels have been produced for many years, and
the diversion of agricultural resources to feeding cars instead of
people has been enormous and is ongoing.
2) Higher cost - Biofuels increase our federal budget deficit because
they depend on large subsidies just to exist. Without government
subsidies and mandates, there would be no significant free market
demand for biofuels in the United States. Subsidies for ethanol were
more than 60 times those for gasoline in the year 2006. Ethanol
contains 33% less energy than gasoline, so it takes 15 gallons of pure
ethanol to travel the same number of miles that could be traveled
using just 10 gallons of regular unleaded gasoline. Our politicians
have effectively mandated that we all get lower gas mileage at a time
we are paying record high prices at the pump. Ethanol fuel always
contains small amounts of water and absorbs even more water from the
atmosphere unless stored in tightly sealed containers. This means
ethanol cannot be pumped through existing gasoline pipelines due to
rust and corrosion problems. Ethanol is destructive to the fuel
systems of boats and corrodes fiberglass gas tanks. Both ethanol and
biodiesel increase engine maintenance costs and lower engine
reliability, a particularly significant issue for light aircraft
owners.
William Jaeger, an Oregon State University agricultural
economist, found that to achieve a given improvement in energy
independence using ethanol from corn, biodiesel from rapeseed (canola
oil), and ethanol from wood-based cellulose at maximum estimated
scales of production in Oregon would lead to a net energy gain of just
two-thirds of one percent of Oregon’s annual energy use. None of the
biofuels were found to be marketable without large taxpayer subsidies,
and the much hyped cellulosic ethanol was found to be the most
expensive of all the biofuels to produce. [See Biofuel Potential in
Oregon] Jaeger stated that "Given currently available technologies,
it is difficult to see the net contribution of biofuels rising above
1% of our current fossil fuel energy consumption – for either Oregon
or the U.S." - From Biofuels in Oregon from an Economic and Policy
Perspective
To calculate the true cost of biofuels, you must add together all
of their negatives: the high direct cost of producing the fuel,
increased cost of food worldwide, loss of water used for irrigation,
mechanical damage done to vehicles that use biofuels, and damage done
to the environment itself. Judged in total, biofuels are tremendously
more expensive than using gasoline and diesel fuel made from oil.
Economist Ronald Cooke estimated that production and food penalty
costs of ethanol totaled about $6.89 a gallon back in February, 2007,
before recent spectacular corn price rises. Global biofuel production
has also raised the cost of farmland all over the world, which has
increased pressure on food prices everywhere.
3) Environmental damage - When you try to grow both fuel and food at
the same time, you greatly increase the rate of topsoil erosion,
because disturbing the land by tilling and harvesting makes soils
vulnerable to wind and rain. Globally, topsoil is being lost ten
times faster than it is being replenished, and 30% of the world's
arable land has become unproductive in the past 40 years due to
erosion. The human race would quickly starve to death without
topsoil, and the USA is in serious jeopardy of losing adequate food
growing capacity within 100 years or less due to erosion. Biofuel
production is helping clog the Mississippi and other rivers with
topsoil from our prime growing areas. In 1850, Iowa prairie soils had
about 12-16 inches of topsoil, but now have only about 6-8 inches. We
are continuing to lose Iowa topsoil at a rate of approximately 30 tons
of topsoil per hectare (10,000 square meters) per year. As it takes
nature hundreds of years to replace just 1 inch of lost topsoil, ask
biofuel advocates if helping to destroy the ability of future
generations to grow food is a worthy environmental goal.
Biofuel production also harms the environment by encouraging the
destruction of forests, which are needed to soak up excess carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major
greenhouse gas that is blamed for global warming, and the two great
sponges of carbon dioxide are the oceans and the forests. The oceans
are losing their ability to absorb CO2 as they are becoming
increasingly acidic due to pollution, so if we also destroy our
forests greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere will increase. If the
global warming theory is true, use of biofuels will dramatically speed
up global warming because the entire biofuel production process, from
beginning to end, releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere while destroying native forests which naturally clean and
rejuvenate the air we breathe.
Biofuel production transports carbon into the atmosphere that was
previously sequestered (trapped) in soils and native vegetation. In
gaseous form these carbon based molecules, such as carbon dioxide and
methane, act as an automobile windshield and hold in heat gained from
solar radiation. It has been reported that in 2009 Indonesia became
the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, in large part due
to deforestation caused by ever expanding biofuel farming. The
journal SCIENCE published the Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels
Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change,
which states that the production of biofuels from grains or
switchgrass greatly increases the release of greenhouse gases and is
far worse for the environment than using gasoline. The authors found
that "Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from
land use change, corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20%
savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and
increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass,
if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%."
Scientists point out that nitrogen fertilizers, which are made
from natural gas, coal, and mined minerals, react with soil to unleash
large amounts of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas estimated to be
296 times more effective at trapping the earth's heat than CO2.
According to the study, N2O release from agro-biofuel production,
rapeseed biodiesel and corn-ethanol production unleashes more
greenhouse gas than using fossil fuels. "Biodiesel from rapeseed and
bioethanol from corn, depending on N fertilizer uptake efficiency by
the plants, can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O
emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings." Dr. Dave Reay, of the
University of Edinburgh, used the findings to estimate that U.S. plans
to expand corn-ethanol production through the year 2022 will increase
greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 6%, not including the
large additional greenhouse gas release due to land use changes.
Farming contributes more to global warming each year than all land,
sea, and air transportation combined, so growing vast amounts of
biofuel crops will heat up the earth's atmosphere faster than if we
only used imported oil.
Biofuel advocates ignore the fact that when we pump up grain
prices through biofuel production, we raise grain prices all over the
world, which gives other countries a strong financial incentive to
burn down more rainforests in order to plant more food. United States
corn-ethanol production is a major driving force in the rapid
destruction of the Amazon basin. A recent Stanford University study
confirms biofuel production speeds destruction of tropical forests.
"We can't find a way that it makes greenhouse gas sense to grow
ethanol in the United States," says Holly Gibbs of Stanford's Woods
Institute for the Environment.
A 2008 study found that corn-ethanol biofuel production will
cause a 10 to 34% increase in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi
and Atchafalaya rivers due to fertilizer run-off, thus increasing the
size of the DEAD ZONE in the Gulf of Mexico. Biofuels production also
dramatically increases the use of fossil fuel derived insecticides,
which are blamed for killing frogs and bees, and causing neurological
damage in humans. A growing number of scientists claim insecticides
are causing the feminization of male fish, reptiles, and human beings
exposed to an ever increasing load of endocrine system distorting
insecticides.
4) Water shortages - Biofuel crop production causes water shortages
because irrigation water is taken away from our shrinking supplies of
safe drinking and agricultural water. There is not enough salt free
water in the world to grow biofuel crops and still provide essential
utility water for our homes, and to grow sufficient food for humans to
survive. It takes 9,000 gallons of water to produce just 1 gallon of
biodiesel made from soybeans, so we need to save our very limited
supplies of ground water to grow food, not fuel. Even without biofuel
production we are turning vast areas of land into desert every year
through loss of topsoil due to farming for essential food.
5) It's a lie - The Barack Obama "biofuel energy independence plan"
is a scientific hoax and an economic fraud because current United
States biofuel production methods use so much energy to create
biofuels that they are simply not worth the effort. Biofuel advocates
often distort energy efficiency calculations by leaving out essential
energy inputs required to make fuel. The average American does not
understand that when you pour nitrogen fertilizers on crops, you are
literally pouring on fossil fuel energy. Nitrogen fertilizers are so
full of chemical energy potential that they are used to make
explosives, so when you grow biofuels only part of the plant's energy
accumulation comes from sunlight, and the rest comes from the fossil
energy we feed them. Rather than use natural gas to make fertilizer
to grow biofuel crops, it would be more efficient to alter our cars to
run on the natural gas directly.
"The following are the major energy inputs to industrial corn
farming: nitrogen fertilizer (all fossil energy), phosphate, potash
and lime (mostly fossil energy), herbicides and insecticides (all
fossil energy), fossil fuels used = diesel, gasoline, liquefied
petroleum gas and natural gas, electricity (almost all fossil energy),
transportation (all fossil energy), corn seeds and irrigation (mostly
fossil energy), infrastructure (mostly fossil energy), labor (mostly
fossil energy). Corn produced at a large expense of fossil energy is
then transformed, with even more fossil energy, into pure ethanol." -
Tad W. Patzek, Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle
Politicians hope that second generation biofuel crops will
generate more energy at greater efficiency, but those schemes have yet
to be proven in the real world. See the dismal energy efficiency
calculations for cellulosic ethanol. Professor David Pimentel states
that "Cellulosic ethanol is touted as the replacement for corn
ethanol. Unfortunately, cellulosic biomass contains less than 1/3rd
the amount of starches and sugars in corn and requires major fossil
energy inputs to release the tightly bound starches and sugars for
ethanol conversion. About 170% more energy (oil and gas) is required
to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass than the ethanol
produced."
Biofuel advocates falsely claim that ethanol is a "clean fuel"
that will reduce air pollution. Ethanol blended fuels burn cleaner on
a per gallon basis, but not on a miles traveled basis because ethanol
contains 33% less energy than gasoline. Ethanol blended fuels
actually emit more CO2 per miles driven than ordinary gasoline in
addition to emitting more CO2 during their manufacture. According to
the Environmental Protection Agency, ethanol increases the production
of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 4 to
7% over gasoline, and emits acetaldehyde, a probable carcinogen.
6) It's politics and greed, not science. The biofuel hoax was
created by domestic American politics and corporate greed. Ambitious
young biofuel entrepreneurs and giant agricultural corporations
smelled the money to be made, and lobbied Congress in hopes of turning
the farm belt into the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, even if the
energy they supply comes at the cost of human starvation and
accelerated environmental damage. Both the Democratic and Republican
parties desire the farm vote, and farm belt politician Barack Obama
was flown around the country during the 2008 presidential campaign on
corporate jets owned by the giant corn-ethanol corporation, Archer
Daniels Midland (ADM). During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama
went on NBC’s "Meet the Press" and admitted to the late Tim Russert
that biofuels were causing rapid food price inflation. Obama then
stated that he would "rethink" his own energy policy. A week later
Obama toured a biodiesel factory with Joe Biden and declared it a
great success. Obama was repeatedly warned about the destructive
nature of biofuels by his own advisers, yet he continued to promote a
disastrous energy policy in order to win the Iowa Caucus and the
general election. Obama won the 2008 presidential election by
exploiting farm belt greed for his own personal political gain.
Albert Gore's ethanol confession:
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.)
first generation ethanol."
"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy
conversion ratios are at best very small."
"It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the
lobbies that keep it going."
"The size, the percentage of corn particularly, which is now being
(used for) first generation ethanol definitely has an impact on food
prices." "The competition with food prices is real."
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular
attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a
certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was
about to run for president."
Translation - Albert Gore ignored numerous warnings by responsible
scientists that ethanol production harms the environment and raises
food prices because he wanted to win the Iowa Caucus. According to
Goldman Sachs analysts, the United States used 41% of its corn crop in
2010 to make ethanol.
7) The outlook for biofuels is dismal - All present and future
biofuels have the same problems. Biofuel crops are all too low in
energy, too light in weight, and thus too bulky and expensive to
transport to be of any real value. Biofuels require too much land,
water, and fertilizer resources to be beneficial. By contrast, dirty
old coal, which we need to replace as an energy source, has been
historically successful as a fuel because it is very heavy and
compact, high in energy content, and thus makes energy sense to
transport. Coal already exists in the ground so you don't have to
plant it, water it, and fertilize it. All biofuel schemes, planned or
imagined, will never amount to a hill of beans because of the basic
limitations of their solar based production process. A requirement
for vast amounts of sunlight will always equal a requirement for vast
amounts of land area to collect that sunlight, thus solar power
schemes can never replace the massive concentrated energy reservoir of
fossil fuels.
Growing switchgrass to produce ethanol from lignocellulose has
most of the same drawbacks as making ethanol from corn. We will use
land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment, and labor to grow switchgrass
that will be diverted from food production, with soaring food prices
the result. If we grow switchgrass on land currently used to graze
cattle, we will reduce beef and milk production. If we grow
switchgrass on unused "marginal" prairie lands, we will soon turn
those marginal lands into a new dust bowl, which they may turn into
anyway due to global warming. Computer models for the progression of
global warming show the America Midwest and Southwest getting hotter
and dryer, with much of our farm and grazing land turning into
desert. We know that biofuel production will speed up greenhouse gas
release, so if the global warming theory is true, we soon won't be
able to produce enough biofuels to run our cars, or enough food to
fill our bellies.
Switchgrass and other biofuel weeds will be grown by ordinary,
profit motive driven farmers, not by environmentally trained
scientists. Farmers will grow switchgrass on land that could be used
to grow corn, wheat, or soybeans, and farmers will want to maximize
yield so they will use lots of fertilizer to increase output. The
plans biofuel idealists are trying to sell the American public will
never produce the kind of "green," food friendly energy resource they
promise. The next great scandal will be how to get rid of all the
millions of acres of invasive, deep rooted biofuel weeds once society
inevitably realizes that even growing second generation biofuel crops
is a tragic mistake.
In practical terms, there is not enough usable land area to grow
a sufficient quantity of biofuel plants to meet the world's energy
demands. According to professors James Jordan and James Powell,
"Allowing a net positive energy output of 30,000 British thermal units
(Btu) per gallon, it would still take four gallons of ethanol from
corn to equal one gallon of gasoline. The United States has 73
million acres of corn cropland. At 350 gallons per acre, the entire
U.S. corn crop would make 25.5 billion gallons, equivalent to about
6.3 billion gallons of gasoline. The United States consumes 170
billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. Thus the entire
U.S. corn crop would supply only 3.7% of our auto and truck transport
demands. Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for corn-
based ethanol production would meet about 15% of the demand." [See
The False Hope of Biofuels]
Growing algae to make biodiesel is being touted as a cure-all for
all our biofuel problems, but we are still stuck with the fact that
algae need solar energy to turn carbon dioxide into fuel. To make
biodiesel, algae are used as organic solar panels which output oil
instead of electricity. Researchers brag that algae can produce 15
times more fuel per acre of land than growing corn for ethanol, but
that still means we would need an impossibly large number of acres
(about 133 million acres) of concrete lined open-air algae ponds to
meet our highway energy demands. Those schemes that grow algae in
closed reactor vessels, without sunlight, necessitate the algae being
fed sugars or starches as a source of chemical energy. The sugars or
starches must then be made from corn, wheat, beets, or other crop, so
you are simply trading ethanol potential to make oil instead of
vodka. If we construct genetically engineered super-algae that are
capable of out-competing native algae strains that contaminate open
air algae ponds, the new gene-modified algae will be immediately
carried to lakes, reservoirs, and oceans all over the world in the
feathers of migrating birds, with unknown and possibly catastrophic
results.
If we try to guard algae from contamination by growing them in
sealed containers under glass or in plastic tubes, the construction
costs for building large enough areas to collect sufficient sunlight
would be prohibitive. Even then the containers are still subject to
contamination over time, and must be periodically flushed and rinsed
with chlorine or other caustic agent. The current cost of biodiesel
made from algae is about $14.00 a gallon.
Using "agricultural waste" to make biofuels has its own
problems. [See soil report] Removing unused portions of plants that
are normally plowed under increases the need for nitrogen fertilizers,
which release the most potent greenhouse gas of all, nitrous oxide.
Residual post-harvest crop biomass must be returned to the soil to
maintain topsoil integrity, otherwise the rate of topsoil erosion
increases dramatically. If we mine our topsoil for energy we will end
up committing slow agricultural suicide like the Mayan Empire. [See
Food Versus Biofuels: Environmental and Economic Costs, by Professor
David Pimentel]
Using wood chips to make ethanol or biodiesel sounds like a good
idea until you remember that we currently use wood chips to make fuel
pellets for stoves, paper, particle board, and a thousand and one
building products. The idea of sending teams of manual laborers into
forests to salvage underbrush for fuel would be prohibitively
expensive. Our forests are already stressed just producing lumber
without tasking them with producing liquid biofuels for automobiles.
Such schemes would inevitably drive up the price of everything made
from wood, creating yet another resource crisis. Making fuel from
true garbage, such as used cooking oil and winery waste, is
environmentally harmless, but is it really worth the large
infrastructure and vehicle maintenance costs required to sell ethanol
and biodiesel as fuels? Our usable true waste resources are very
limited in quantity, and not a major energy solution for a nation that
uses over 8 billion barrels of crude oil every year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid
fuel. These strategies are not sustainable." - David Pimentel,
Professor of Ecology and Agriculture at Cornell University
On biofuel advocates: “You have money and media access, and now
everybody believes that two plus two equals twenty-two.” - Tad W.
Patzek, professor of geoengineering at the University of Texas in
Austin, and formerly of UC Berkeley
"Every day more than 16,000* children die from hunger-related causes
-- one child every five seconds. The situation will only get worse.
It would be morally wrong to divert cropland needed for human food
supply to powering automobiles. It would also deplete soil fertility
and the long-term capability to maintain food production. We would
destroy the farmland that our grandchildren and their grandchildren
will need to live." - Professors James Jordan and James Powell, Maglev
Research Center at Polytechnic University of New York [*2009
statistics estimate approximately 20,000 children die from hunger-
related causes every day]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8) Political instability and illegal immigration - Dramatic food
price inflation created by biofuel production is causing political
instability around the globe, because food products are sold in a
worldwide marketplace just like oil. There have been food riots in 37
countries, including relatively wealthy Italy. Barack Obama imagines
the United States growing more than 60 million acres of corn and
biofuel weeds to make ethanol, and the low paying agricultural jobs
needed for this work will undoubtedly come from an expansion of
illegal immigration. Unlike the smaller number of high paying skilled
jobs required for nuclear energy, geothermal energy, and shale to oil
conversion, corn and switchgrass production is mainly a labor
intensive, low paying endeavor which will be an unstoppable magnet for
illegal immigrants. The more we starve the rest of the world, the
more the rest of the world will want to come here. The great call of
ordinary people around the world is for FOOD SUPPLY SECURITY, not for
biofuels, yet Barack Obama continues to push his incredibly
destructive idea that "We should use our farmland to produce both food
and fuel."
9) It's a strategic national security disaster - In the years before
biofuel production, the United States had large food reserves kept in
storage due to the excess bounty created by modern agricultural
technology. Those days are long gone, and global food reserves are
now at historic lows. In earth's history there have always been great
natural disasters that periodically cause poor crop harvests, such as
crop diseases, insect plagues, droughts, floods, impacts of asteroids
and comets, and volcanic eruptions that throw up so much dust and
noxious gas into the atmosphere that sunlight is reduced for a year or
longer. The eruption of the island of Krakatau in 1883 produced a 1.2
degree Celsius global temperature decline that did not return to
normal until 1888, and caused poor crop harvests all over the world.
There are mammoth volcanoes all over the world, from Iceland, to
Asia, to South America, to Yellowstone Park, which are capable of
having devastating effects on our atmosphere and thus our food
production. By using agriculture to produce energy for both
transportation and human caloric intake, we have eliminated our
strategic cushion of food reserves. When global disaster inevitably
strikes again, starvation will set in quickly because of government
biofuel mandates. If we use nonagricultural energy sources for
producing fuel for transportation, specifically nuclear and geothermal
energy, we will not suffer the double systemic insult of food and fuel
shortages. Large scale biofuel production, which depends on normal
climactic conditions to grow crops, is a severe threat to our national
security.
10) It's a mathematical impossibility - It has been estimated that
every year the human race burns the fossilized remnants of
approximately 400 years worth of total planetary vegetation in the
condensed form of fossil fuels: coal, oil, natural gas, etc. "The
fossil fuels burned in 1997 were created from organic matter
containing 44 × 1018 g C, which is >400 times the net primary
productivity (NPP) of the planet’s current biota." This quote comes
from Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar
Energy, by Professor Jeffrey S. Dukes of the Department of Forestry
and Natural Resources at Purdue University. His figures makes sense
if you remember that the earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion
years old, and you consider the rapid rate at which human beings are
burning up fossil fuels. Dukes estimated that it would take
approximately 22% of all current above ground plant growth on land to
replace fossil fuels for the year 1997 in terms of raw energy
potential, a number that is now out of date due to increased fossil
fuel use. The old 22% estimate also does not account for the
tremendous energy expenditures required to transform food derived and
cellulose derived biomass into usable liquid fuel. As the United
States uses a disproportionally large percentage of the world's fossil
fuels every year, the amount of U.S. land biomass we would have to
convert to ethanol would be impossibly high. No park or backyard
would be safe from the biofuel harvesters.
It “takes a huge amount of land to produce a modest amount of
energy.” Even if we used “every piece of wood on the planet, every
piece of grass eaten by livestock, and all food crops, that much
biomass could only provide about 30 percent of the world’s total
energy needs.” - Dr. Timothy Searchinger, Princeton University
"All sources of renewable liquid energy are inadequate when set
against the net energy density that is achieved from extracting oil
from wells, which we estimate as being the equivalent of capturing all
10,000 parts in 10,000 of insolation (incident solar radiation), or
even from producing synthetic gasoline from coal — equivalent to
capturing 2200 parts in 10,000 of insolation. 3 parts per 10,000 is a
pale shadow of the fossil fuel net energy densities which have been
the sine qua non of the 4400 million population growth in the last
century." - Andrew R.B. Ferguson, editor Optimum Population Trust
Journal [
Solar Power
Simple passive solar design features for home construction and
passive solar hot water heating are sound investments, but solar power
is a wasteful and counterproductive investment for large scale energy
production.
1) You don't get any solar energy at night; you get less on cloudy
days, less in the morning, and less in the late afternoon. That makes
large scale solar power schemes horribly inefficient no matter how
high we can pump up the theoretical peak output of solar panels. The
cost of energy storage systems, batteries and other complex systems on
top of high panel costs makes solar impossibly expensive for large
scale use. We need synthetic liquid fuels to run farm equipment,
cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, etc., and to make synthetic
fertilizers. We can manufacture these fuels with solar power, but at
many times the cost of using nuclear power. You have to run synthetic
fuel plants 24 hours a day to be economically viable. If you must use
fossil fuel or nuclear reactor backup power at night to keep a
synthetic fuel plant running, then why bother to have solar power at
all? Duplication of energy resources is a needless expense. Any
power plant must output power 24-7 to be economically valuable for
large scale use.
2) Solar power advocates have suggested that we could satisfy 69% of
United States electricity needs for the year 2050 by covering 34,000
square miles of our Southwestern desert with solar panels. The
project would require building long transmission lines and storing
excess daytime energy overnight as compressed gas. The cost per
kilowatt hour would be orbital, not just stratospheric, and
necessitate massive government subsidies. When used for large scale
energy production, solar power schemes have an extremely large
ecological footprint.
3) Solar panels will always be exposed to the weather, and their
lifespan is short, about 25 years. Unlike other power systems, solar
panels cannot be repaired and upgraded to extend their useful life
beyond their limited lifespan. This fact dramatically increases their
cost per kilowatt hour compared to other more affordable
alternatives. Who will guard solar panel installations covering
millions of acres? Solar panel theft is a big problem in California
right now. Giant solar ovens using mirrors are less likely to be
targets of theft and are less expensive on a BTU/watts collected
basis, but the land area required to produce significant amounts of
energy makes them a joke. Solar power is great for running pocket
calculators, remote vacation cabins, and other small scale HIGH COST
per watt uses, but solar power is inherently the wrong choice for
large scale power grid use.
4) As William Tucker points out in Food Riots Made in the USA, solar
power is an extraterrestrial nuclear power system where the nuclear
reactor is located 93 million miles away from us in outer space,...the
sun. We need terrestrial nuclear reactors right here on earth so we
can affordably capture their HIGHLY CONCENTRATED energy without taking
up huge amounts of land space. Our extraterrestrial nuclear power
source is great for growing crops, but its output is far too diffuse
and intermittent for practical large scale electricity production.
Wind Power
Economist Michael J. Trebilcock studied wind power and found that
Wind power is a complete disaster. He points out that the United
States Government subsidizes wind power at a rate of $23.34 per MWh
compared to just $.25 for natural gas, $.44 for coal, $.67 for
hydroelectric power, and $1.59 for nuclear power (2008 EIA
statistics). Trebilcock discovered that Denmark has over 6,000 wind
turbines that supplement its energy grid, but has not been able to
close even a single fossil fuel power plant as a result, because extra
fossil energy is needed when the wind stops blowing. In 2006 carbon
dioxide emissions in Denmark rose by a whopping 36%, showing that
large scale wind power projects do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions
in real-world situations. Because of wind power, Denmark now has the
highest electricity rates in Europe. A recent study of Spain's energy
program found that for every job created by state funded wind power
schemes, 2.2 jobs were lost due to higher energy costs, and each new
wind power job cost almost $2,000,000. in government subsidies. To
meet 100% of United States electricity demand with wind power would
require impossible weather conditions and a wind farm covering an area
larger than Texas and Louisiana combined.
Because of their extremely low power to weight ratio, windmills
require the use of huge amounts of steel in their construction. Wind
turbines are being sold to the public as a carbon neutral product, but
making steel is not a carbon neutral process. Steel is often made
from power generated by burning coal and other fossil fuels. If we
make steel using costly wind or solar power, the price of steel will
skyrocket, thus further increasing the cost of constructing the
windmills themselves. Because of the enormous amount of resources
required for their construction, and their intermittent and unreliable
performance, windmills will not reduce CO2 emissions. Building wind
turbine farms covering vast areas of land will kill large numbers of
birds and bats, and torture animals and humans living nearby with
audible sounds as well as infrasound. Infrasounds are very low
frequencies below 20Hz that travel long distances and can cause
headaches, insomnia, and other serious negative health effects. See
how wind power has been a terrible failure in Texas.
The Thorium Alternative
British scientist James Lovelock, father of the living-earth Gaia
theory, has stated that nuclear power is the only way to have a large
human population on planet earth without causing global warming.
Please read James Lovelock's essay, Nuclear power is the only green
solution. Nuclear power is the only technology that can produce an
extremely high volume of energy using just a tiny amount of land and
at reasonable cost, all without emitting significant amounts of
greenhouse gases. It is a scientifically provable fact that the one
and only energy source large enough and concentrated enough to
practically replace earth's massive fossil energy reservoir is nuclear
power. The mass of an atom is in its nucleus, not in its electrons,
and as E=MC2 the nucleus is where the really BIG energy is stored.
The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) solves all of the
major problems associated with nuclear power. LFTRs transform thorium
into fissionable uranium-233, which then produces heat through
controlled nuclear fission. LFTRs only require input of uranium or
plutonium to kick-start the initial nuclear reaction, and as the
fissionable material can come from either spent fuel rods or old
nuclear warheads, LFTRs will inevitably be used as janitors to clean
up old nuclear waste. Once started, the controlled nuclear reactions
are self-perpetuating as long as the reactor is fed thorium. LFTRs
are highly fuel efficient and burn up 100% of the thorium fed them.
Light water reactors typically burn only about 3% of their loaded
fuel, or about .7% of the fundamental raw uranium which must be
enriched to become fissionable. As LFTR fuel is a molten liquid salt,
it can be cleansed of impurities and refortified with thorium through
elaborate plumbing even while the reactor maintains full power
operation. The cost savings of using a liquid fuel is like the
difference between making soup vs. baking a wedding cake. Soup is
cheap, and you can change ingredients very easily. The reactor works
like a Crock-Pot; you keep the fuel cooking in the pot until it is
over 99% burned, so LFTRs produce less than 1% of the long-lived
radioactive waste of light water reactors, making Yucca Mountain waste
storage unnecessary.
LFTRs produce electric power via a waterless gas turbine system
that can use helium, carbon dioxide, or nitrogen gas. The reactors
are small and air cooled, so they can be installed anywhere, even in a
desert. Robert Hargraves, an LFTR advocate, states that "Liquid
fluoride thorium reactors operate at high temperature for 50% thermal/
electrical conversion efficiency, thus they need only half of the
cooling required by today's coal or nuclear plant cooling towers."
LFTRs with an output capability as high as 100 megawatts can be
manufactured on an assembly line, dramatically lowering costs and
enabling electricity generation at a lower cost than any other new
construction power source. That means lower than new construction
natural gas, coal, geothermal and hydroelectric power, as well as
being vastly more affordable than unreliable wind and solar projects.
Multiple reactors can be installed at one location and connected to a
single control room. With convenient modular design, LFTRs can be
transported in pieces by truck or barge for easy assembly on site.
This allows for swift construction with reliable results, avoiding
delays and cost overruns. Rapid assembly line construction also
allows for easy updating of the design, which will improve over time
like the dramatic evolution of automobiles, airplanes, and computer
chips.
A LFTR can never meltdown because its fuel is already in a molten
state by design. Any terrorists who obtained forceful entry into the
reactor complex could not realistically remove any of the hot molten
fissionable fuel. Coolant in LFTRs is not pressurized as in light
water reactors, and the fuel arrives at the plant pre-burned with
fluorine, a powerful oxidizer. This makes a reactor fire or a coolant
explosion impossible. LFTRs do not require large, cavernous pressure
vessels designed to contain an internal explosion of superheated
steam, so LFTR enclosures are tightly fitting and compact, which makes
them less expensive. The reactors will be installed underground with
a thick reinforced concrete cap, making an attack by a kamikaze
airplane pilot ineffective. Any overheating of a LFTR causes the
molten salt fuel to naturally expand, which pushes fuel molecules so
far apart that nuclear fission can no longer take place. This creates
an inherent controlling negative feedback which keeps core
temperatures stable. Even a total loss of operational reactor control
would not cause disaster. In addition to the fuel's natural safety,
any excess heat in the reactor core would automatically melt built-in
freeze-plugs, causing the liquid fuel to drain via gravity into
underground storage compartments where the fuel would then cool into a
harmless, noncritical mass.
Thorium is more abundant than tin, and the United States alone
has enough rich thorium deposits to last for many thousands of years.
One pound of thorium can produce as much energy as 3 million pounds of
coal. A Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is up to 200 times more fuel
efficient than a traditional Light Water Nuclear Reactor. One 3.5"
diameter ball of thorium, about the size of an extra large apple, can
produce an amount of electricity equivalent to the yearly consumption
of one average American for about 8,000. years.
The fissile uranium-233 produced in LFTRs is unavoidably
contaminated with uranium-232, which would make producing an atomic
weapon with the help of a LFTR very difficult even for a major
superpower. Uranium-232 emits intense gamma rays, which interfere
with electronic devices needed to make atomic bombs detonate. The
presence of gamma rays also makes fabricating bomb components
hazardous without very complex and expensive remote controlled
equipment. Uranium-232 puts out such a strong, easily detectable
signal that any terrorist organization obtaining it would immediately
broadcast their location to the world. Even uncontaminated
uranium-233 is not a good candidate for bomb making, and any small
nation wishing to joining the nuclear club would find it far easier
and cheaper to make bombs using plutonium made in ordinary light water
nuclear reactors.
France's Reactor Physics Group, Russia, Japan (Japanese Molten
Salt Reactor - Fuji MSR pdf), and other countries are currently
conducting LFTR research. If the United States committed a relatively
modest amount of money to develop LFTRs in cooperation with other
nations, a fully operational TOTAL ENERGY SOLUTION could be developed
quickly, because most of the basic research has already been
accomplished and is well proven. Contrary to rumor, the liquid
fluoride salts used in LFTRs are not unusably corrosive, even at very
high temperatures. Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted tests with
a liquid salt reactor and found that the 1" thick metal alloy used in
the reactor vessel corroded at a rate of just one micrometer per year,
an irrelevant amount in a reactor designed to last no more than a
hundred years. As the interior of the reactor vessel in a LFTR
operates at normal atmospheric pressure levels, there are no unusual
mechanical forces applied to its walls other than the ordinary
gravitational load of the fuel. Unfortunately, LFTR research at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory was ended in 1976 despite steady design
progress in favor of funding the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor
(LMFBR). [See Robert Hargraves fascinating Aim High LFTR proposal
with slide presentation on 3.2MB PDF. See chemical engineer K.L.
Johnson's brilliant slide show, Life-Sustaining Energy from Thorium
and The Sustainable Chemistry and Energy of Thorium. Also see Energy
From Thorium, the International Thorium Energy Organization, the Wired
Magazine article on the LFTR and Too Good To Leave on the Shelf.]
We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating an
infrastructure based on thorium power, improved electric car battery
technology, and the use of new technology called Green Freedom. The
Green Freedom process can produce a whole range of liquid fuels made
from atmospheric carbon dioxide and hydrogen extracted from water.
These fuels include sulfur free synthetic gasoline, jet fuel, methanol
as a substitute for gasoline, and dimethyl ether as a substitute for
diesel fuel. [See the Green Freedom process 1.8MB PDF] This energy
scheme is cheaper than using pure hydrogen gas as fuel because it is
more compatible with current vehicles and our existing energy
distribution infrastructure. Green Freedom can also be used to make
urea and ammonia for fertilizers. The process demands very low cost
nuclear energy to work economically, and as the LFTR design can
produce energy at a fraction of the cost of traditional light water
nuclear reactors, we can have an endless supply of liquid fuels
produced on American soil by American labor, and without all the
political and military ramifications of importing oil from other
countries. A less expensive fuel solution is the new Green Freedom
Hybrid process, which makes synthetic gasoline out of natural gas,
water, and atmospheric CO2 for a cost comparable to current gasoline
prices. The original carbon neutral Green Freedom process will be
more expensive, but that cost could be counterbalanced by savings in
military expenditures as a result of no longer needing to protect
foreign supplies of oil. We could use electricity and heat from LFTR
technology to produce tires and plastics from American oil shale rock,
making us independent of foreign oil altogether. If you want the
world to progress to the kind of wealthy, poverty free civilization
portrayed in optimistic science fiction movies, realize that nuclear
power is the only way to get there.
Hyperion Power Module - A Revolutionary Uranium Based Mini-Reactor
Hyperion Power Generation Inc. hopes to manufacture the Hyperion
Power Module (HPM), which is a liquid metal cooled “fast” reactor.
Each HPM-based electric plant generates 25MW of electricity and can be
configured for steam only, co-generation, or electricity only.
Inherent negative feedback keeps the reactor stable and operating at a
constant temperature. HPMs use uranium nitride fuel and a lead
bismuth eutectic coolant. At just 5 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall (1.5
meters by 2 meters), the reactor can be transported to site by ship,
rail or road. The battery like HMP produces power for 8 to 10 years
and is then shipped back to the factory for refurbishing and
reloading. The company claims an estimated cost of 10 cents per
kilowatt hour or less, and suggests the HPM could also power civilian
cargo ships, which would save enormous amounts of diesel fuel and
reduce global CO2 emissions. This very simple design is meltdown
proof and the uranium it contains is not weapons grade.
Other Energy Sources
Traditional hydroelectric power plants are useful for large scale
energy production because they turn the concentrated kinetic energy of
moving water into huge amounts of reliable, continuous electricity.
The amazing Hoover Dam, which spans the Colorado River, has an average
annual net electricity generation of 4.2 billion kilowatt hours, which
is produced at a cost of just .0186 cents per kilowatt hour.
Opportunities to build new hydroelectric projects, such as the Auburn
Dam in California, should not be overlooked.
The United States has significant geothermal energy reserves
which can be efficiently tapped using newly designed modular, lower
temperature geothermal equipment. Like nuclear power plants,
geothermal power is reliable, takes up very little space, and produces
continuous power day and night, independent of weather conditions. A
recent MIT study states that geothermal wells could provide up to 10%
of our nation's energy needs by the year 2050. Geothermal power is
not classified as a renewable energy source, because hot geothermal
wells eventually run cold.
To lower energy costs in the short term, the United States should
tap its large oil and natural gas deposits in the Alaska ANWR oil
reserve. We should open up ANWR's entire 19.6 million acres to oil
and gas exploration, because drilling on dry land is extremely safe
and has none of the major ecological risks associated with drilling
for oil at the bottom of oceans. If we wish to limit ocean drilling
for safety concerns, then we must allow dry land oil extraction to
keep our economy alive until we can replace oil altogether with
synthetic fuels made with the help of nuclear power. The Bakken Oil
Formation holds billions of barrels of recoverable oil which we can
use without driving up the cost of food. Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming
contain far more oil than the entire Middle East in the form of oil
shale deposits, which are suitable for extraction using newly
developed in-ground (in-situ) oil recovery techniques. Shell Oil
physicist Harold Vinegar believes that by the year 2015 oil can be
produced from shale for about $30 per barrel.
What are the costs?
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides
official energy statistics from the United States Government, has
projected the 2016 Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources from the
Annual Energy Outlook 2010. This is the current best estimate of the
cost of electricity from United States power plants of different
varieties that will come into service in the year 2016. These average
levelized costs, expressed in 2008 valued dollars, includes all costs
of construction, financing, fuel, and all other operating and
decommissioning costs. Federal and state government subsidies are not
included in these figures. Additional costs of back-up and/or storage
systems for unreliable energy sources are not included. The
significant costs of long transmission lines for projects that must be
built far away from electricity consumers are also not included in
these projections. These are national average costs, which means
there is variation in cost from state to state and project to project,
depending on local circumstances. The EIA also listed the expected
Capacity Factor (CF) for each power plant type. A power plant with a
CF of 85% generates energy at its rated capacity an average of 85% of
the time during a given year. The ideal power plant would have a CF
of 100%, meaning it could output energy at full power 100% of the
time. As capacity factor drops, electricity grid efficiency drops,
and real-world costs increase. In the comparison below I have
inflated the projected cost of electricity produced by LFTRs from the
engineering estimate of 3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to 6 cents per
kWh in order to allow for the usual unexpected cost overruns.
Natural Gas in Conventional Combined Cycle @ 8.31 cents per kWh (87%
CF) - Not carbon free, high CF, medium ecological footprint, cost
effective and cleanest fossil fuel available.
Natural Gas in Advanced Combined Cycle with Carbon Capture and Storage
@ 11.33 cents per kWh (87% CF) - Not carbon free, high CF, medium
ecological footprint, cost effective and cleanest fossil fuel
available.
Conventional Coal @ 10.04 cents per kWh (85% CF)
Advanced Coal with CCS @ 12.93 cents per kWh (85% CF) - Conventional
coal fired plants are not carbon free, high CF, large ecological
footprint, and cause approximately 24,000 U.S. deaths per year due to
air pollution, which also damages buildings. Judged in total,
traditional coal fired power plants are not cost effective due to the
environmental damage and deaths they create. Will Carbon Capture and
Storage (CCS) techniques make coal an acceptable choice?
3rd Generation Light Water Reactor Nuclear Power @ 11.9 cents per kWh
(90% CF) - Carbon free, very high CF, small ecological footprint, and
cost effective. *Note - These figures are for new construction
projects coming on-line in 2016. Our older legacy light water
reactors currently produce electricity at a cost of about 2 cents per
kWh.
Geothermal @ 11.57 cents per kWh (90% CF) - Carbon free, very high CF,
small ecological footprint and cost effective.
Wind @ 14.93 cents per kWh not including the cost of needed energy
storage and/or back-up systems (34.4% CF)
Wind - Offshore @ 19.11 cents per kWh not including the cost of needed
energy storage and/or back-up systems (39.3% CF) - Carbon free, very
low CF, extremely large ecological footprint, not cost effective due
high construction cost, unreliability, and very low CF. Most wind
turbines shut down when wind speeds drop below 3 to 4 meters per
second or rise above 25 meters per second, greatly reducing their
total average energy output and making their contribution to our
nation's energy grid unpredictable.
Solar Thermal @ 25.66 cents per kWh not including the cost of needed
energy storage and/or back-up systems (31.2% CF) - Carbon free,
extremely low CF, extremely large ecological footprint, not cost
effective due to high construction cost and a CF even lower than wind
power.
Solar Photovoltaic @ 39.61 cents per kWh not including the cost of
needed energy storage and/or back-up systems (21.7% CF) - Carbon free,
extremely low CF, extremely large ecological footprint, very high
construction cost, cannot be upgraded after manufacture, and short
lifespan. Solar photovoltaic panels are absolutely not cost effective
for large scale power production.
Biomass @ 11.11 cents per kWh (83% CF) - Not carbon free, high CF,
large ecological footprint and causes depletion of forest topsoil.
Hydroelectric @ 11.99 cents per kWh (51.4% CF) - Carbon free, medium
CF, large ecological footprint. Our old legacy hydroelectric dams
have been a great investment, and Hoover Dam is still producing
electricity at just .0186 cents per kilowatt hour. New hydroelectric
project have to be judged on a case by case basis. They create large
lakes, which in some areas may be a positive gain, while in other
areas their large physical footprint may cause significant disruption
to people and the environment, such as the case of China's massive
Three Gorges Dam project.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Nuclear Reactor @ 6.0 cents per kWh, which is
double the engineering estimate (over 90% CF) - Carbon free, high CF,
smallest ecological footprint, can be built anywhere resulting in much
lower transmission line costs, high power to weight ratio, highest
cost effectiveness.
Hyperion Power Module @ 10.00 cents per kilowatt hour or less is
claimed by the company (over 90% CF) - Carbon free, small ecological
footprint, can be used anywhere, high power to weight ratio. See
their web site.
Babcock & Wilcox - A Light Water Reactor with compact modular design -
B&W projects a cost of between 4.7 cents and 9.5 cents per kWh for a
power plant composed of 4 B&W nPower modules producing a total of 500
MWe.
NuScale - A Light Water Reactor with compact modular design - no cost
data available
Food equals energy and energy equals food
The appeal of solar, wind, wave energy, and biofuels is largely
about poetry and symbolism, sending a love letter to mother nature
saying that we care. Poetry is fine, but we need huge amounts of
energy to support the 6.75 billion human inhabitants of this planet,
and billions will starve to death if governments try to use these
poetically correct energy sources as a replacement for fossil fuels.
It takes so much energy to plant, fertilize, harvest, process, and
transport crops that any increases in energy prices always results in
increased food prices.
In order to produce large amounts of energy we have to destroy
something. We can destroy our food supply by making biofuels, or we
can destroy our forests by producing biomass to burn in power plants.
We can destroy thousands of square miles of America by covering our
land with solar panels and windmills. More responsibly, we can
destroy the most worthless substance on earth, thorium, to make our
energy. We have enough thorium to supply us with cheap energy for
many thousands of years, and millions of years if we extract thorium
from granite and other less concentrated sources. Thorium power
cannot be classified as "renewable," but it is the best hope we have
for our continued survival.
On the Internet with resource links at: http://renewable.50webs.com/
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Feb 1, 2011 at 4:16 PM
New Delhi, Feb 1 (UPI) -- A number of India's key crops are
experiencing the effects of climate change, experts say.
H Pathak, an investigator with the Indian Agricultural Research
Institute's Climate Change Challenge Program, said global warming isn't
limited to a rise in average temperatures.
"It's a little more complicated than that. There is for example also a
rise in carbon dioxide and a change in rainfall patterns, which could
affect India very severely because much of our agriculture is still
rain-fed," Pathak told The Times of India.
India would be the hardest hit by climate change in terms of food
production, said a study, "The Food Gap -- The Impacts of Climate
Change on Food Production: A 2020 Perspective" released last m by
the Universal Ecological Fund. The report predicts that crop yield in
India would decrease by as much as 30% by the end of the decade.
While some regions of India are getting too much rain, other regions
aren't getting enough, affecting crops ranging from coffee and tea to
grapes and rice.
In the south, erratic rain patterns are causing the coffee crop to
fruit twice and sometimes three times, resulting in inferior beans. The
Coffee Board of India has instituted an insurance program to help
coffee growers in Karnataka deal with the declining yields.
In the Kuttanad region of Kerala in the southwest, considered the
state's Rice Bowl, heavy rains delayed the normal sowing season, which
begins in Oct, until Dec, which triggered an onslaught of pests.
Changing weather patterns are also affecting the cultivation cycles of
the western state of Maharashtra's 444,790 acres of grapes.
Mahendra Sahir, president of the Maharashtra State Grape Growers
Association, says rainfall in November for the last three to 4 y
has delayed pruning and thus harvesting, making it increasingly
difficult to meet deadlines for supplies of grapes sent to the European Union.
D P Maheshwari, president of the Tea Association of India, said
incessant rain, followed by a severe attack of pests, caused a massive
crop loss in 2010.
Maheshwari estimated that some tea plantations throughout the country
suffered losses up to 20 to 30% on the previous y's output.
Of particular concern is the change in the quality of Assam tea, known
for its strong brew. The Assam region, in the northeastern part of the
country, accounts for 52% of India's tea production. Last y
the area saw a drop of 33 mn lb of Assam tea, compared to the
previous y.
Sfinx
If there is drought, Green poofters and Labor idiots conclude: "it is
caused by CO2 emissions";
If there is a flood, Green poofters and Labor idiots conclude: "it is
caused by CO2 emissions";
If there is neither a drought nor a flood, Green poofters and Labor
idiots conclude: "it is caused by CO2 emissions".
Fighting human made idiocy by compulsory stultification of youths in
government funded schools is the greater moral challenge of our time.
axmatt
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Feb 01, 2011
Fresh Fruit Portal
Indonesia's Minister for National Development and Planning has warned that
climate change and extreme weather could `cripple' the country's ag
export industry, according to news site AsiaNews.
Minister Armida Alisjahbana said climate change and its associated extreme
weather conditions have become serious threats to food security in 2011,
including the fruit and vegetable sector, which has suffered declining
harvests, heavy rains and droughts, AsiaNews reported.
According to the `Indonesia Climate Change Sectoral Roadmap' (ICCSR) published
by the Indonesian govt last y, water deficits from drought have the
potential to cut harvests by more than half.
"Loss of fresh fruit bunches may well reach as much as 21% if there is (sic)
200-300 mm water deficit, and 65% if (sic) water deficit is more than 500 mm,"
the report said.
According to Indonesian statistics agency Badan Pusat Statistik, the country
recorded ag exports of US$4.53 bn from Jan to Nov in 2010.
The agency reported that in 2009 Indonesian fruit exports included 6.37
mn t worth of bananas, 2.13 mn t in oranges, 2.24 mn t in mangoes and
1.56 mn t in pineapples.
[30 more news items in the ]
---
[Weather is responsible for climate change:]
And that's the only reason for the heat!
Strong northeast winds being superheated desert air from the inland to the
the southern capitals.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [82 nyms and counting], 31 Jan 2011 13:42 +1100
Raymond
Desertification is greatest threat to planet, expert warnsUN's top
drylands official says people must be paid via global carbon markets
for preserving the soil
• UN Convention to Combat Desertification photo contest 2009
• Soil erosion threatens to leave Earth hungry
Share442 Comments (127) Damian Carrington The Guardian, Thursday 16
December 2010 Article history
Desertification on the outskirts of the town of Annakila, Mali.
Photograph: Madeleine Bunting for the Guardian
Desertification and land degradation is "the greatest environmental
challenge of our time" and "a threat to global wellbeing", according
to the UN's top drylands official, Luc Gnacadja, who says people must
be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. The
executive secretary of UN's Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD), will today launch the UN decade for the fight against
desertification in London.
"The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,"
he told the Guardian. Conflicts and food price crises all stem from
the degradation of land, he added.
Desertification and land degradation is "the greatest environmental
challenge of our time" and "a threat to global wellbeing", according
to the UN's top drylands official, who says people must be paid via
global carbon markets for preserving the soil.
Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of UN's Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD), will today [Monday] launch the UN decade for
the fight against desertification in London. "The top 20cm of soil is
all that stands between us and extinction," he told the Guardian.
Land conflicts in Somalia, dust storms in Asia and the food price
crises of recent years all stem from the degradation of land, he said,
due to overuse by humans and the impacts of global warming. Since the
early 1980s, a quarter of the planet's land has been despoiled and 1%
a year continues to be lost.
The better known issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity are
both rooted in the global loss of fertile soil, said Gnacadja, as the
soil harbours a huge stock of carbon and the health of creatures
living in the soil underpins global food production and forest growth.
The reason desertification has not been a priority is because 90% of
the 2.1 billion people who live in drylands live in developing
countries, he said.
"Even in their own countries, they are the poorest among the poor and
live in remote areas," said Gnacadja. "The world is driven by city
dwellers: political leaders are setting agendas to satisfy people who
live in the cities, we therefore tend to perceive soil as just dust,
or mud, or a dumping place. But if we don't preserve that first 20cm
of soil, where will we get our food and water from?" Half the world's
livestock are raised on drylands and a third of crops, especially
wheat.
The impacts of climate change – rising temperatures and more erratic
rainfall – are here already from Latin America to the Sahel, said
Gnacadja. Adding to the pressure on land is rising global population,
which is expected to pass the 7 billion mark next year and reach 9
billion by 2050. As well as the consequences for food and water,
violent conflicts and migration will also increase, he said, affecting
those living outside drylands.
"Increased aridity is making the drylands the most conflict prone
region of the world," he said. "If you really want to look at the root
causes of the conflicts in Somalia and Darfur, and drylands of Asia,
you will understand that people in their quest to have access to
productive land and water for life, they end up in conflict." He also
cited nothern Nigeria, where increased aridity means lack of fodder is
driving herders south into the areas farmed for corn. "Conflict is
almost inevitable."
Desertification and rising aridity were the ultimate cause of the food
price crisis of 2007-8, Gnacadja said, as it began with a drought in
Australia. This year's price spike started with a drought in Russia.
Another example of desertification's impact was the loss of land
bordering the Gobi desert leading to record dust storms that damage
the health of people in Seoul in South Korea, thousands of kilometres
away.
Gnacadja, a former environment minister in Benin, said combating
desertification and soil degradation requires better land management,
better equipment and new technology to manage water, drought resistant
seeds and payment to communities for preserving the soil. He said he
welcomed the new Green Climate Fund and the Redd deal to tackle
deforestation agreed at the UN's climate change talks in Cancún last
week.
But, he said, people must be able to earn carbon credits that can be
sold on a global market for preserving soil, which contains 75% of all
carbon on land. It was a "win-win-win", he said, as it not only
reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also helped food security and
helped store and clean water.
The UNCCD has already launched a study into the economic costs of
desertification and the benefits of prevention, aiming to emulate the
impact the 2006 Stern review had on the climate change debate, and a
similar report on biodiversity. It is also in the early stages of
founding a global scientific body, like the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, to advise the world's governments. Funding for action
on desertification is now available following a decision in February
by the UN's Global Environment Facility to include land degradation.
Desertification is on the agenda for world leaders attending the next
UN General Assembly in September 2011 in New York, and Gnacadja said
all these initiatives at the start of the UN decade would bring
knowledge of what needs to be done to the decision makers.
----Damian Carrington
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/16/desertification-climate-change
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Anthony Deutsch and Taufan Hidayat in Jakarta
Financial Times
Feb 2 2011 19:24
Indonesia's authorities are being forced to import large quantities of rice as
the country's own production has been hit by heavy rain, heightening fears of
more price inflation.
Paddy fields across the country have suffered almost a y of excessive
flooding, while disease and pests have damaged the rice crop. Domestic rice
prices rose 30% in 2010 and in many major production centres, farmers reported
yield declines of up to 50% in late Dec.
[31 more news items]
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Neil MacFarquhar
NY Times
Feb 4, 2011
UN -- Global food prices are moving ever higher, hitting record levels last m
as a jittery market reacted to unpredictable weather and tight supplies,
according to a UN report released Thu.
It was the seventh consecutive m of food price increases, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which put out the
report. And with some basic food stocks low, prices will probably continue
reaching new heights, at least until the results of the harvest next summer
are known, analysts said.
"Uncertainty itself is a new factor in the market that pushes up prices and
will not push them down," said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist and the grain
expert at FAO. "People don't trust anyone to tell them about the harvest and
the weather, so it has to await harvest time."
Scattered bright sports in the report led experts to suggest that a repeat of
the 2008 food riots stemming from similar sharp price increases might not be
imminent. Rice was slightly cheaper and meat prices stable, they noted. But
the overall uncertainty and inflation could eventually make the situation
worse than 3 y ago, they said.
Riots and demonstrations erupting across the Middle East are not directly
inspired by rising food prices alone, experts noted, but that is one factor
fueling the anger directed toward governments in the region. Egypt was among
more than a dozen countries that experienced food riots in 2008.
The FAO price index, which tracks 55 food commodities for export, rose 3.4% in
Jan, hitting its highest level since tracking began in 1990, the report
said. Countries not dependent on food imports are less affected by global
volatility. Still, food prices are expected to rise 2% to 3% in the United
States this year.
Four main factors are seen as driving prices higher: weather; higher demand;
smaller yields; and crops diverted to biofuels. Volatile weather patterns
often attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc with some
harvests. Heavy rains in Australia damaged wheat to the extent that much of
its usually high-quality crop has been downgraded to feed, experts noted.
Brokers are waiting to see how acreage in the United States will be divided
between soybeans, corn and cotton, with cotton fetching record prices,
Abbassian said.
Sugar prices are also at a 30-year high, he said. Prices for cereals are
rising but still below their April 2008 peak. Oils and fats are up and close
to their 2008 level, and dairy is higher but still below its 2007 peak, the
report said.
[37 more news items]
---
A scientist cites a data point that is consistent with a trend and
says "This data is consistent with the trend; no surprise".
A kook cites a data point inconsistent with the trend and says "Surprise!
The trend is Wrong Wrong Wrong!".
ro...@kymhorsell.com
NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Times Reader
Feb 3, 2011
United Nations -- Global food prices are moving ever higher, hitting
record levels last m as a jittery market reacted to unpredictable weather and
tight supplies, according to a United Nations report released Thu.
Food Export Prices Rise
It was the seventh m in a row of food price increases, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which put out the
report. And with some basic food stocks low, prices will probably continue
reaching new heights, at least until the results of the harvest next summer
are known, analysts said.
"Uncertainty itself is a new factor in the market that pushes up prices and
will not push them down," said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist and the grain
expert at F.A.O. "People don't trust anyone to tell them about the harvest and
the weather, so it has to await harvest time."
Scattered bright spots in the report led experts to suggest that a repeat of
the 2008 food riots stemming from similar sharp price increases might not be
imminent. Rice was slightly cheaper and meat prices stable, they noted. But
the overall uncertainty and inflation could eventually make the situation
worse than 3 y ago, they said.
Riots and demonstrations erupting across the Middle East are not directly
inspired by rising food prices alone, experts noted, but that is one factor
fueling the anger directed toward governments in the region. Egypt was among
more than a dozen countries that experienced food riots in 2008.
The F.A.O. price index, which tracks 55 food commodities for export, rose 3.4%
in Jan, hitting its highest level since tracking began in 1990, the report
said. Countries not dependent on food imports are less affected by global
volatility. Still, food prices are expected to rise 2% to 3% in the United
States this year.
4 main factors are seen as driving prices higher: weather, higher demand,
smaller yields and crops diverted to biofuels. Volatile weather patterns
often attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc with some
harvests. Heavy rains in Australia damaged wheat to the extent that much of
its usually high-quality crop has been downgraded to feed, experts noted.
This has pushed the demand and prices for American wheat much higher, with the
best grades selling at 100% more than they were a year ago, Mr Abbassian
said. The autumn soybean harvest in the United States was poor, so strong
demand means stocks are at their lowest level in 50 years, he said.
Brokers are waiting to see how acreage in the United States will be divided
between soybeans, corn and cotton, with cotton fetching record prices, Mr
Abbassian said.
Sugar prices are also at a 30-year high, he said. Prices for cereals are
rising but still below their April 2008 peak. Oils and fats are up and close
to their 2008 level, and dairy is higher but still below its 2007 peak, the
report said. Even positive news, like good rains in Argentina and a strong
harvest in Africa, has failed to keep prices from rising.
"Food prices are not only rising, but they are also volatile and will continue
this way into the future," said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Bank
managing director.
Changing diets around the world stemming from higher incomes, especially in
places like China and India, mean a greater demand for meat and better
grains. Although it takes time for that to translate into higher prices
globally, it does buoy demand, the experts said.
In 2009, the richest nations pledged more than $20 bn to aid agriculture in
developing countries, including $6 bn for a food security fund housed at the
World Bank. Just $925 mn of those pledges has been paid, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala
noted, because of financial problems in the donor countries. That will bring
consequences, she said, as one bn people already go without sufficient food
daily.
Derek Headey, an economist with the International Food Policy Research
Institute, noted that in 2007 and 2008 many African countries were hit hard by
soaring import bills, as were nations spread across the world, like
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ecuador.
But some of the world's largest and poorest countries experienced rapid
economic growth and only modest food inflation, so the number of people facing
food insecurity in nations like China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam actually
went down at that time, he said.
"This time around there is still strong economic growth in these countries,
but inflation is much more of a problem," he said. "So it is possible that the
impact could be worse in 2011, especially if food prices stay high."
It will take some m for those figures to emerge, he added.
[33 more news items]
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Tom Philpott
12 Jan 2011 3:53 PM
Grist
UN/Sophia ParisFor y -- even decades --
Earth Policy Institute president and Grist contributor Lester
Brown has issued Cassandra-like warnings about the global food system.
His argument goes something like this: Global grain demand keeps
rising, pushed up by population growth and the switch to more
meat-heavy diets; but grain production can only rise so much,
constrained by limited water and other resources. So, a food crisis is
inevitable.
In recent years, 2 factors have added urgency to Brown's warnings: 1)
climate change has given rise to increasingly volatile weather, making
crop failures more likely; and 2) the perverse desire to turn grain
into car fuel has put yet more pressure on global grain supplies.
Brown's central metaphor -- which he's been using at least since the
mid-`90s -- will be familiar to readers who've lived through the
previous decade's dot-com and real-estate meltdowns: the bubble. The
world has entered a "food bubble," he argues; we've puffed up grain
production by burning through unsustainable amounts of 3 finite
resources: water, fossil fuels, and topsoil. At some point, he insists,
the bubble has to burst.
Well, for the second time in 3 years, the globe is lurching toward
a full-on, proper food crisis, especially in places like Haiti that
have de-emphasized domestic farming and turned instead to the global
commodity market for food. In 2008, global food prices spiked to
all-time highs, and hunger riots erupted from Haiti to Morocco. Now
prices are spiking again, and have already surpassed the 2008 peak, The
Sydney Morning Herald reports.
As if on cue, Lester Brown has come out with another of his reports,
this one titled (with that Brownianlight touch), World on the Edge: How
to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse. You can download the
whole thing free here, grab the brief presentation on food
[PDF] lifted from the book, or just read Brown's own post today for
Grist on the topic.
Brown may sound at 1st blush like a neo-Malthusian predicting the
inevitable collapse of human civilization, but he makes important
points that I've never heard policymakers grapple with seriously.
Take the question of irrigation water. As I and others have pointed
out before, India has essentially tapped dry the water table in its
main agricultural regions since embracing industrial agriculture in the
1970s. Brown hastens to add that India, the globe's
second-most-populous nation, is hardly alone in facing an irrigation
crisis. In China, he claims, 130 mn people owe their sustenance to
"grain produced by overpumping groundwater."
Overall, Brown depicts a global food system characterized by severe
fragility. With global grain reserves returning to the all-time lows
reached in 2008, "the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos in
world grain markets," as he writes. Indeed, the main reason for the
current upswing in prices, he states, is the heat wave that gripped
Russia this past summer, which caused a 40% drop in that
nation's grain crop. Brown warns that a similar weather event in the
US corn belt (which produces several times more grain than Russian)
would be calamitous -- it would "likely result in unprecedented food
price inflation and food riots in scores of countries, toppling weaker
governments."
Brown delivered his presentation on the food crisis at a teleconference
Wed, and I listened in. After he finished, he opened the floor
for questions, and I piped up. US policy elites in both parties, when
they can be bothered to comment on the global food situation, revert to
biotech-industry talking points: In order to "feed the world," we'll
need to convert as much food production as possible to patent-protected
genetically modified seeds. What does he think of high-tech seeds'
chances of staving off the crisis? I asked.
Not much, he replied. Brown pointed out that that current-generation
transgenic seeds have not increased yields; and that next-generation
ones -- like corn engineered to tolerate drought, or use nitrogen more
efficiently -- will likely increase yields "only marginally." (The hype
around nitrogen-efficient GMO technology is pretty overblown, as I
showed last year.) Such technologies might have "important
contributions to make," Brown said, but will likely not be "nearly
enough" to feed our growing population.
Coming from a man who's been studying agricultural productivity since
the 1960s, and who was in fact a booster of the original "Green
Revolution" -- the push by US policymakers and foundations to prod
farmers in the global S to use "modern" agriculture technologies
such as hybrid seeds, industrial fertilizers and pesticides, and heavy
irrigation -- this is a significant statement.
Brown is no wild-eyed critic of the biotech industry. He is making a
cold, informed assessment: its products are a distraction from, not a
solution to, the task of averting a global food disaster. And if he's
right, our policymakers aren't taking the problems he describes nearly
seriously enough -- and that's chilling. (Here, for example, is
USDA chief Tom Vilsack babbling about the wonders of biotech for
feeding an expanding global population. Nina Fedoroff, Hillary
Clinton's chief science adviser, toes an even more rigid
GMO-centric line. Then there's the man in charge of directing USDA
research, the GMO-fixated Roger Beachy.)
But there's no reason to plunge into Malthusian anguish about a coming
global food crash. A lot people across the world are thinking hard
about how to grow sufficient food without sucking dry the global water
supplies or burning through fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. For
a bit of hope after imbibing a dose of Brown's bitter truth, check out
WorldWatch's State of the World 2011 report, which surveys
interesting sustainable-agriculture projects across the globe.
[46 more news items]
ro...@kymhorsell.com
[For trends in at least Australian crop protection costs, see
<http://www.kymhorsell.com/graphs/pest.html> ].
Feb 07, 2011 at 10:40
Ludhiana (Commodity Online) -- With the global warming destined to go strong,
India wheat output may be affected by the phenomenon; quantity-wise and
quality-wise.
Vice-Chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University Dr Manjit Singh Kang in his
inaugural address to International Conference on 'Preparing Agriculture for
Climate Change' in Ludhiana on Sun has portrayed a fading image of wheat
crops approaching a sunset era.
According to him, global warming will affect crop cycles of wheat by
lengthening them. Coupled with acute water shortage and temperature rise wheat
output (as well as rice output) will be negatively affected in north-west
India, reported Indian Express.
Crops would be affected by diseases and pests as well.
Also, climate change will have a negative impact on all 4 dimensions of
food security -- food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and
food systems stability, reported Indian Express.
Vector-borne diseases are likely to spread with mosquitoes shifting to new
areas and many diseases thought to be eradicated resurrecting. Meanwhile,
cold weather prevailing in parts of N India is promising for wheat
cultivators, as the weather may support high wheat output this year, say
reports from last week.
The output is expected to match 2010 yields of 81 mn tons of wheat. The
acreage of wheat has also gone up by 8.95 lakh hectares to 291.36 lakh
hectares.
The pests are also restricted by cold weather.
Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are the
prime wheat producing states in India and cold conditions have been prevailing
in these States.
[61 more news items]
---
[A]s a Conservative, I have no tolerance for ambiguity.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 14 Jan 2011 14:46 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel [Wisc]
Feb 7, 2011
Wisconsin's temperatures are expected to increase by an annual average of 6 to
7 degrees Fahrenheit by mid century - a warming trend that is likely to affect
everything from changes in farming practices to the way we fish.
The study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists and others in
state government shows that a temperature rise produces a jumble of different
outcomes.
Plant hardiness will shift, so that northern species such as black spruce,
balsam fir and paper birch will have difficulty growing by the end of the
century.
Also, the American marten, spruce grouse and snowshoe hare may disappear from
the state.
But a warming climate will benefit other species: gray squirrel, white-tailed
deer, European starlings and Canada goose.
Greater warming is expected to spur evaporation. That's likely to push down
lake levels in the N and on the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan could drop 1 foot
by the end of the century, increasing shoreline erosions.
But, paradoxically, warming will spur more heavy rain events, raising the
likelihood of algae blooms when sediment and organic material like manure and
fertilizer wash into waterways.
As for Wisconsin agriculture - which accounts for more than 350k jobs - the
growing season is expected to lengthen, with longer springs and falls. That
should boost crop production, but could be diminished by an increase in soil
erosion.
If farmers don't adapt, key crops such as corn and soybeans could be
harmed. Every increase of 2 degrees Fahrenheit could cut corn yields by 13%
and soybeans by 16%, studies have shown, the UW report says.
The report also says the state could see an impact on another sector of its
economy - tourism - through the effect on the health of its Great Lakes
beaches.
"Increased water temperatures and runoff from intense storms may create an
environment that deposits and supports pathogens on beaches," the study
says. "More pathogens on beaches will most likely lead to more frequent beach
closures."
In a statement, Ned Zuelsdorff, director of the American Birkebeiner Ski
Foundation, said the study "confirms our suspicions about the conditions we've
been working with several years."
The annual ski marathon between Cable and Hayward will be held on Feb 26.
In the past 15 y, Zuelsdorff said there have been more instances where the
race had to be shortened or modified than in the previous 15 y.
The temperature estimates are the work of UW climatologists, who used the same
models as teams of international scientists working on climate change.
The state has already become warmer and wetter over the past 60 y, and the
warming trend is projected to "continue and increase considerably in the
decades ahead," the study said.
The estimate of 6 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit is an average over 14 different
computer models. Individual models predict a range of 4 degrees to 9 degrees
Fahrenheit, largely because different assumptions are used.
The work generally mirrors the outcomes of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, which concluded global changes of 3.1 Fahrenheit degrees to
7.2 degrees by the end of the century.
The UW climatologists fine-tuned the climate panel's work by localizing
temperature data from 1950 to 2006 at spots across the state. That data was
then used to make projections for different parts of the state.
The localized work for Wisconsin reflects the thinking among many climate
scientists that inland continental temperatures in the northern hemisphere are
likely to warm relatively more and have greater temperature extremes.
The work of the international panel of scientists is generally seen as the
most authoritative source for why rising levels of CO2 in the
atmosphere is affect the climate.
But the panel's work is not without its detractors. Critics pointed to several
errors in the 2007 IPCC report, including a projection in the report that
"most Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035."
The criticism prompted several independent reviews, one of which found that
there was no reason to doubt the panel's key climate change findings. Another
review recommended procedural changes aimed at improving the transparency of
the IPCC and its review process. The IPCC last fall agreed to incorporate
those changes as it prepares its next assessment, due out in 2 y.
The 226-page Wisconsin study was produced by the Wisconsin Initiative on
Climate Change Impacts, a project of the Nelson Institute for Environmental
Studies at UW-Madison and the state Department of Natural Resources.
The authors steered clear of making any policy recommendations.
"Our core mission is to help Wisconsin decision makers make plans to help the
state adapt to changes in the natural environment," said Lewis Gilbert,
associate director of the Nelson Institute.
Jack Sullivan, director of the DNR's Bureau of Integrated Science Services,
said the study is designed to "open the agency's eyes, so we know what may
need to change."
For example, "forestry decisions are 100-year decisions," Sullivan said.
He noted the study was not good news for brook trout, which need cold streams
and now live at the southern edge of their range.
The habitat for brook trout could be lost altogether, brown trout could lose
88% of their habitat and northern pike could lose 72%, the study showed.
But the habitat for large mouth bass could increase by 34% and for channel
catfish by 32%.
In a report last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
said 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest y on record, based on global surface
temperature. It was the warmest y in the Northern Hemisphere. It was also the
wettest y on record, and among the busiest y for both hurricanes and
tornadoes, according to NOAA.
The warming predictions vary in different ways - by season, time of the day
and location in the state.
The increases are likely to be the greatest in the winter, followed by spring,
fall and summer.
Summer temperatures are likely to rise 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, with the
greatest warming in the northern part of the state.
Days with temperatures of 90 degrees or warmer will increase, with southern
and western Wisconsin likely to experience 3 or more wk of 90-degree-plus
days while northern Wisconsin is likely to have an increase of 2 wk.
[61 more news items]
---
[Before the flood:]
The recent Murray Darling run-off since the floods would have provided
enought irrigation water to last at least 15 years.
Instead it has all run out to sea!
Crazy anti-dam greenies!
-- "BONZO"@27.32.240.172 [86 nyms and counting], 12 Nov 2010 14:05 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Michelle Draper
SMH/AAP
Feb 8, 2011 - 3:44PM
An Australian farmer will this wk travel to a frozen Arctic "doomsday" vault
to deposit precious seeds as insurance for the world's food supply.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a converted mine 1300km from the N Pole
in the Arctic Circle which holds duplicates of seeds held in seedbanks around
the globe, to guard food supplies against an agricultural, climate or manmade
crisis.
Victorian farmer Tony Gregson will travel with an Australian contingent to
deposit samples from a seedbank in Horsham, Victoria, in the vault, which is
built into the side of a mountain on a remote Norwegian archipelago.
Dr Gregson said the process would protect seeds already held in Australian
seed banks from destruction in the event of a disaster, such as fire or flood.
"We're doing it as an insurance policy, so that this pretty unique germplasm
is actually preserved in a very, very secure place," Dr Gregson told AAP.
"It would be a tragedy if something happened to the Horsham genebank and that
material was lost."
The first-ever Australian deposit of seeds into the bank will include 301
samples of field peas and 42 rare chickpeas, Dr Gregson said.
He said rare seeds were lost elsewhere in the world when seed banks in Iraq
and Afghanistan were destroyed during warfare.
Varieties of rice had also been lost when a typhoon flattened a seed bank in
the Philippines, Dr Gregson said.
Preserving seeds at the Svalbard vault was the key to the world's future food
security, he said.
"Plant breeders have to breed new varieties all the time to thwart evolving
pests and diseases," Dr Gregson said.
"Now with climate change, whatever that means, the environment is certainly
changing, breeders have to breed new varieties to adapt to these new
environmental conditions."
He said new varieties were created by using samples held at seedbanks but, if
those seeds containing the necessary genes were lost, then food security was
at risk.
DrGregson will likely brave temperatures hovering around the minus 30C mark
when the seeds are deposited in the concrete structure on Feb 16.
"It's a really historic occasion, everyone's extremely excited about it," he
said.
"It really is very important from the point of view of global food security
and Australia's contribution to that."
The seeds, from the Horsham Australian Genebank Grains Collection, were
packaged at Horsham last m and have been inspected by Australian quarantine
officers.
Established 3 y ago, the Svalbard seed vault is operated by the Global Crop
Diversity Trust, which Australia supports, the Norwegian government and the
Nordic Genetic Resource Centre in Sweden.
[60 more news items]
---
The claimed consensus views of hundreds of climate change "scientists" are
fundamentally erroneous.
[Bonzo has elsewhere claimed the germ theory of disease is an "erroneous
consensus view"].
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 19 Jan 2011 15:29 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Feb 8 2011
Seoul (AFP) -- S Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called Mon for new strategies
to help secure a stable supply of food amid growing concerns about a global
food crisis.
"The likelihood of a global food crisis is rising due to climate change. We
need to set up national strategies and research to tackle the issue," Lee's
spokesman quoted him as saying during a meeting with senior advisers.
Lee also called for a task force from the government and private sector to be
set up to attract investment in farming, and stressed the need to tackle
rising energy prices also blamed for fanning inflation.
Affected by surging global prices for oil and other commodities and higher
domestic prices of agricultural products, S Korea's consumer prices jumped
4.1% year-on y in Jan.
South Korea has recently intensified efforts to secure stable sources of food
and hedge against price swings.
State-run Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corp said last m it plans with private
companies to buy a US grain trading firm this y to secure new sources of
soybeans and grain.
The United Nations warned last m that millions of people are at risk after
global food prices hit their highest level, amid unexpected shortfalls due to
bad weather and policy responses from some exporting countries.
[71 more news items]
---
[W]omen are easier prey for scams such as The Great Global Warming Hoax!
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 7 Feb 2011 11:28 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Staff Correspondent
The Daily Star
Feb 11, 2011
Bangladesh yesterday sought help from the international community to face the
challenges of food security amid price hike of essentials, population growth
and climate change impact on agriculture.
Addressing the inaugural session of an international conference in Delhi,
Abdur Razzaque, food and disaster management minister, appealed to the
international community to extend support for agricultural research.
The US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) organised
the three-day conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and
Health at Taj Palace Hotel.
Indian PM Manmohan Singh inaugurated the programme. US Foreign Secretary
Hillary Clinton, Indian Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, IFPRI
Director General Shenggen Fan and many food and agriculture experts from
across the globe attended the programme.
Razzaque is leading a three-member delegation including MP Narayan Chanda and
Naser Farid, director general of food planning and monitoring unit, in the
conference.
He said official development assistance for agriculture has been reduced to 4%
in 2006-07 from 19% in the 1980s, according to a statement sent by the food
ministry in Dhaka.
The minister said access to food has improved but still about 25 percent
hardcore poor in Bangladesh are not getting adequate nutritious food.
Rapid population growth, climate change, increasing number of natural
disasters, price hike of essentials make the situation worse, he added.
International aid and grants to agricultural research is important to overcome
the crisis.
Sustainable agricultural growth is necessary as agriculture is the primary
source of all nutrients for humans, the minister noted.
[83 more news items]
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Judith Akolo
Feb 10, 2011
KBC News [Kenya]
Indian PM Dr Manmohan Singh has said climate change poses a major challenge to
global food production increasing the need for countries to produce more food
to feed the people.
He said food security in many developing countries is becoming a major
problem. The PM who spoke at the International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI) organized conference on `Leveraging Agriculture for Improving
Nutrition and Health' on Thu said studies in India show a correlation between
agricultural performance of a State and the nutritional status of its people.
Dr Manmohan Singh said countries that have high agricultural productivity also
have lower malnutrition rates for both adults and children.
"But malnutrition is a complex process in which habits regarding feeding the
new born babies, maternal and child health, and also water quality are at
least equally important," said the Indian Prime Minister.
He noted that over one bn people on the globe currently go without food, while
one in every 4 children under age of 5 is underweight due to malnutrition.
He noted that the current trend in which scientists have coined the word
hidden hunger which is the deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals,
such as iron, Vitamin A and iodine is becoming severe in most developing
countries.
"Nutrition is therefore a serious challenge that has not received the
attention it truly deserves," said the PM and added that "malnutrition is not
only a consequence of poverty it is also a cause of poverty. A malnourished
child is more vulnerable to disease," he said.
He said the rapid growth in gross domestic product - GDP including agriculture
is not sufficient to produce the much needed nutritional and health outcomes
among the socially and economically disadvantaged groups of the community.
He said the Integrated Child Development Services initiated by his government
could help to address the problem of child malnutrition.
The Indian PM called for a change in people dietary behavior to include fruits
and vegetables, milk and milk products, meat and fish, in order to get the
requisite nutrients.
The PM said the conference will help to develop the necessary synergy that
encourages food productivity with the necessary nutrients for better health.
[80 more news items]
---
It takes more than warmth to grow crops; otherwise the Sahara would be green!
--
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 21 Jan 2011 11:16 +1100
ro...@kymhorsell.com
Feb 10, 2011
Times of India
Dharwad: Trained manpower in the field of agriculture is the need of the hour
to combat stress in agricultural production and to face the challenges
emerging due to climate change affecting the food security, said Ronnie
Coffman of Borlaugh Rust Initiative, Cornell University (USA).
Inaugurating the four-day International Group Meeting on Wheat
Productivity Enhancement under Changing Climate at University of Agricultural
Sciences (UAS, Dharwad) on Wed, he said Cornell University is extending
support to work with UAS by way of student, staff exchange and dual degree
programmes.
Sanjay Rajaram, former director (wheat) of CIMMYT (Mexico), said agricultural
productivity, which is reducing at an alarming rate due to fluctuating
climate, has to be addressed with quality research and better policy decisions
by the policy makers. He also stressed that the current rate of agricultural
productivity of 1% has to be increased to 1.25% to match the food requirement
of the growing population.
High-yielding, stress-tolerant wheat cultivators have to be developed with
suitable molecular engineering methods as tools to meet the demand of food
supply apart from developing a strong farm-to-scientist, said Hans J Braun,
CIMMYT director (Wheat). He said CIMMYT is extending support in this direction
to UAS for developing quality wheat.
S Nagarajan, former director of IARI, said scientists have to gear up to the
changing agricultural situation in India and suitable region-wise plans
have to be developed for improving production. S S Singh, project director,
directorate of Wheat Research (Karnal), highlighted the activities of wheat
research in India and said the future perspectives in wheat research would be
on developing rust-resistant, stress-tolerable quality wheat varieties.
On this occasion, books like Wheat Research in Karnataka, 100 y of Wheat
Research in India and Therapeutic dicoccum wheat, a low-glycemic food for
diabetics werer released.
UAS vice-chancellor R R Hanchinal said the varsity is in the fore front in
the development of varieties suitable for stress and disease tolerance.
The deliberations by around 250 delegates from India, USA, France,
Indonesia, Australia during the four-day meet includes wheat productivity
enhancement under changing climate, biotech and genomics applications,
resource optimization for enhanced productivity, emerging biotic stress, value
addition and quality improvement, impact of climate change on sustainable
production.
Wheat breeder Ronnie Coffman speaks at a workshop on wheat organized at the
University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad on Wed.
[84 more news items]
---
>Why is it relevant that the 'chief scientist' is a woman?
Because women are easier prey for scams such as The Great Global Warming Hoax!
Robot
Inland News
(Source: VOA)
Feb 5, 2011
Researchers are working to develop rice varieties which require much less
water, fertilizer and pesticide than modern types of rice demand. Rice feeds
roughly 3 bn people in Asia alone, and is a staple food around the
world. Modern rice plant varieties yield double or triple the amount of grain
possible before the 1960s.
When the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) 1st introduced these
varieties, they were called "miracle rice" because they helped ward off famine
is Asia. But they have some major shortcomings.
"When farmers don't have these fertilizers, they fail them miserably," says
Jauhar Ali, an IRRI senior scientist.
Petrochemical-based fertilizers are costly and becoming more so. The same is
true of the pesticides farmers use to control insects and weeds. Also, the
pollution they cause is ruining aquatic ecosystems in many parts of the
world. In addition, they need to be irrigated. But experts say water supplies
are increasingly challenged by urbanization and climate change.
Sustainability concerns growing
These were secondary concerns as famine loomed in the 1960s, according to
Colorado State Uni rice researcher Jan Leach.
"[Back then, they said], 'OK, we just need more yield. We need to produce more
rice,'" she says. "Now we can step back and say, 'OK, now we know how to get
more rice. Now let's think about how to get more rice and be sustainable.'"
Today, IRRI is working on what it calls Green Super Rice - "green" meaning
environmentally friendly - because it will grow as much or more grain with
fewer inputs; and "super" because it will be better able to tolerate drought,
flooding, salty water, insect pests and more.
"All this will be combined into one," Ali says, "Plus disease resistance
also. And not only that. We will do it in what they like to eat."
[85 more news items]
Robot
Feb 11, 2011
JUBAK
Water shortages threaten 100s of millions of people around the world. Believe
it or not, there is a way to invest in this trend. Hint: Consider ripple effects
.
China, the world's largest wheat producer, is facing a severe drought in areas
of the N China Plain that account for 67% of the country's wheat crop. In the
2010 harvest, China's wheat production fell to 114.5 mn tons from 115.1
mn tons a y earlier. This year's harvest could drop by an additional 4 mn tons.
This is a big deal because China is also the world's largest consumer of wheat
and accounts for about 17% of global wheat consumption.
The govt is working to provide additional irrigation to mitigate the drought.
In Western Australia, across the continent from Australia's worst floods,
drought has put the wheat crop in the country's largest wheat-producing state
in doubt. The impact of the decade-long drought is intensified by a battle for
Western Australia's scarce water supplies between farmers and miners. New
mining projects totaling about $170 bn are on the books for the next 5
years. All those mines need water to help dig out and process ore, to remove
waste rock, and to suppress dust. Mining is already the largest user of water,
taking 27% of the licensed supply, compared with 22% for agriculture. Six
years ago, the proportions were reversed, with farming getting 37% of water
and mining 26%.
I think you can see where I'm going with this, right?
No, no, not more about the increasing global squeeze on food supplies. I've
dealt with that quite enough recently, thank you.
A Difficult Trend to Invest in
This time I want to talk about water scarcity, the trend that everyone sees
but that is so difficult to invest in. I'm going to give you some stocks for
investing in water--but not my usual ten, because, as I said, this is a tricky
trend for investors. And I'm going to suggest how finding investment
opportunities in water can serve as a model for investing in other trends that
are difficult to invest in, such as food.
Let's start with the basic problem. The world, on average, has plenty of
water. But the supply locations, populations, pollution controls, incomes, and
the very local nature of water make that average meaningless. According to the
World Health Organization, in 2009, about 20% of the world's population lived
in countries without enough water for their needs. The World Bank does the
calculations in a different way, saying 80 countries now have water shortages
that are sufficiently dire to threaten health and economic activity.
And the situation is getting worse. Growing populations; rapid urbanization
that concentrates more people in less space and that often eats up farmland;
rising and competing demands from farming and mining; increasing pollution of
water supplies; and climate change that is exacerbating the severity and
frequency of droughts will all stress water supplies even more in the future.
According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, by 2025, 1.8 billion
people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, while
2/3 of the global population will be under what the agency calls
water-stress conditions.
Human beings being what human beings are, all that stress is likely to lead to
conflict. More than a dozen countries--including Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia,
Congo, Gambia, Sudan, and Syria--get most of their water from rivers that flow
across the borders of hostile neighbors.
The biggest potential problem, though, is in Asia. Both China and India face
severe water shortages due to fast economic growth, rapid urbanization, and
pollution. According to the World Bank, China could face a supply shortfall of
201 bn m3 of water by 2030 (that's about 53 trillion gallons).
Many rivers that supply the bulk of water to India, Cambodia, Vietnam, and
other countries in the region have their source in mountainous areas inside
China's borders. China has been rapidly constructing dams on many of those
rivers, and the region does not yet have a mechanism for resolving conflicts
over water supplies.
And, of course, because most of the world's water goes to agriculture--about
70%, according to the United Nations, with 22% to industry and 8% to domestic
use--the current food crunch is going to raise tensions further. Nothing like
being thirsty and hungry to make a country cranky.
[81 more news items]
---
[On knowing your constituents:]
I always thought faremers were a gullible bunch!
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 9 Feb 2011 12:09 +1100
Robot
Sewell Chan
Feb 15, 2011, 5:15 pm
NY Times
A sharp rise in food prices since June has pushed 44 mn people in developing
countries into extreme poverty -- having to live on less than $1.25 a day --
according to a new study by the World Bank.
The bank's price index soared 29% from Jan 2010 to Jan 2011 (15% just from Oct
to Jan). Wheat, maize, sugar and edible oils have seen the sharpest price
increases in the last 6 months, with a relatively smaller increase in
rice. The rising prices have increased the vulnerability of economies,
particularly those that import a high share of their food and have limited
capacity for government borrowing and spending.
"In the immediate term, it is important to ensure that further increases in
poverty are curtailed by taking measures that calm jittery markets and by
scaling up safety net and nutritional programs," the World Bank said in the
report, released Tue. "Investments in raising environmentally sustainable
agricultural productivity, better risk-management tools, less food intensive
biofuel technologies, and climate change adaptation measures are all necessary
over the medium term to mitigate the impact of expected food price volatility
on the most vulnerable."
[96 more news items]
---
[Weather is responsible for climate change:]
And that's the only reason for the heat!
Strong northeast winds being superheated desert air from the inland to the
the southern capitals.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 31 Jan 2011 13:42 +1100
Robot
Jim Harkness
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Feb 15, 2011
When global food prices spiked in 2007-2008, 100 mn people were added to the
ranks of the world's hungry, pushing the total number over 1 bn for the 1st
time in history. Now, just 2 y later, we are seeing another food price hike,
and more famine is likely to follow.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently published its
global food price index for Jan 2011. The agency's index was at its highest
level (both in real and nominal terms) since the FAO started measuring food
prices in 1990. Food riots have already begun in Algeria. As history repeats
itself and the second major global food crisis in 2 y takes shape, it is vital
that we learn the lessons of the 1st crisis, and address fundamental causes.
Food security depends on stable and predictable weather and markets, and
access to resources, all of which have been knocked dangerously off balance in
the past few decades. Since the 1970s, human-caused climate change has brought
more frequent extreme weather events worldwide. Farmers who were used to
dealing with the prospect of a lost harvest once every ten seasons now
experience flood or drought or major pest infestations every second or 3rd
year. In 2010 and early this year, Argentina, Australia, China, Pakistan, and
Russia have all seen extreme weather events disrupt their agricultural
production.
The second source of instability is an increasingly chaotic marketplace. In
the name of free trade, the US government and the World Bank have spent the
past 3 decades forcing open developing country markets to cheap imports, which
undermined local food production. In a cruel irony, poor countries were also
pressured to cut support for their own farm sectors, and even forced to sell
off emergency food reserves, under the rationale that it would be more
efficient to simply buy food on international markets.
By 2006, more than two-thirds of the world's poorest nations were dependent on
food imports. Then came the wave of financial deregulation over the past
decade, unleashing speculators into commodity markets, and creating index
funds that tied together commodity market prices for food, oil, and metals
like never before. But the leveraging, bundling, and "innovative instruments"
that were supposed to reduce risk in these markets have had the opposite
effect. The result has been a wildly volatile global food market, where
factors unrelated to actual supply and demand often drive prices.
This global double whammy of climate and financial instability has not hurt
everyone. Volatility is good for the biggest players. Many agribusiness
companies are experiencing record profits now and did so during the last food
crisis as well. There has been a spike in "land grabbing," in which large
areas of arable land in developing countries are bought up by outside
investors, and converted to non-food crops, including feedstocks for biofuels.
On the other hand, some African countries won't be hit as hard this time
precisely because they insisted on boosting local production instead of
relying on global markets. But for the most part, poor farmers are struggling
in a hostile and volatile climate. No wonder famine has become the new normal.
If we truly consider world hunger to be an abomination, and not merely an
investment opportunity, big changes need to be made. Nearly everyone from the
World Bank to the UN to the G-20 recognizes the need to support small-scale
farmers, particularly women, in countries facing hunger. Globally, 70% of the
world's food is grown on farms less than 2 hectares (4 acres) in size, tended
in large part by women.
Development aid, as well as developing country government policies, should
focus on helping build the productivity and resilience of these
farmers. Instead of leaving small farmers powerless in the face of global
forces, we should build on the wisdom of traditional farming systems which
combine the best of ecological science with on-the-ground farmer knowledge to
encourage practices that reduce costly inputs, produce higher yields, and
increase farm incomes. And food production for meeting domestic needs must
take priority over cash cropping for export.
But there is much more to do. Countries and regions struggling with hunger
need greater policy space at the national level to protect domestic food
production, prevent dumping, and stabilize supplies. Some of their flexibility
has been curtailed by World Trade Organization rules.
Food reserves should be reexamined as a key tool for addressing shortages, as
well as for stabilizing food supplies and prices for farmers and
consumers. Land grabbing must stop, and it is time again to support the
redistribution of arable land to small farmers who will use it to grow
food. Funding to assist developing country farmers in adapting to climate
change is woefully inadequate.
Governments need to get serious about implementing rules to curb excess
speculation. The US financial reform bill known as Dodd-Frank is a good start,
but Wall Street lobbyists are going full force to weaken it during the
rulemaking process.
Destabilization of the global food supply over the past several decades can be
undone. But that won't happen unless we learn from the past and support new
approaches to improve stability and resilience in farming, markets, and food
systems.
[92 more news items]
---
So you really, really believe that our universe just came about by
sheer chance? I prersonally, find that extremely hard to accept.
-- BO...@27-32-240-172.static.tpgi.com.au [86 nyms and counting], 11 Jan 2011 15:02 +1100
Mr Robot
The Irish Times
Feb 17, 2011
In desperation this week, meteorologists fired artillery shells loaded with
cloud-seeding silver iodide into the skies over the parched fields of China's
wheat belt. It produced light falls of snow and rain but not yet enough to
break the grip of a drought that is threatening to devastate the summer
harvest of the world's largest producer.
However, China's wheat crop is only a small piece in the bigger, alarming
story of the spiralling of global food prices for a second time in 3 years. In
Jan a price index compiled by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation,
combining 55 export food commodities, hit its highest level since tracking
began in 1990. The World Bank's food price index had risen 29% in a y to only
3% below its peak of June 2008, the last food crisis when riots exploded in a
number of capitals. This time the inflation has also fanned protests and,
arguably, the revolution in Egypt.
The price of wheat has doubled since last summer, a response to Russia's
export curbs, dry weather in Brazil and flood damage to Australia's crops. It
is already rising again in anticipation of China's likely harvest failure. And
the general rise in food prices, predicted to persist for months, according to
the bank, has pushed 44 mn more people worldwide into extreme
poverty. The number of chronically hungry people is approaching one billion, a
level last seen in 2007-08.
When finance ministers from the G20 countries meet in Paris today it will be
one of the key agenda items and the priority of the group's French
presidency. President Nicolas Sarkozy has loudly pledged action against what
he calls the "extortion" of speculation in food, linking commodity derivatives
trading to volatility in what some have called the "financialisation" of the
food markets. "It is pillaging ...," he told African leaders recently, arguing
that speculators were directly responsible for "the sort of food riots we have
witnessed".
Measures to curb speculation and panic buying will be discussed today although
they are unlikely to win broad support. The evidence that speculation is the
principal factor in price inflation is contested: climate change-induced
production collapses, export curbs, rising demand in an increasingly wealthy
China and demand for biofuels are all among other factors blamed.
Importantly, France will also press for agreement on restrictions on export
bans such as that imposed by Russia last summer which triggered a jump in
wheat prices. Paris is believed too to have wide backing for the harmonisation
and pooling of data on production, consumption and stocks of food commodities,
a database that should help market transparency.
And France is pressing the G20 to increase financial support to agriculture,
broadening the G8 L'Aquila Food Security Initiative which saw EUR15 bn in
pledges in 2009. The welcome move reflected a new investment focus to fighting
global hunger by raising agricultural productivity. It was backed by the US
and Europe, and strongly supported by Ireland, reversing a two-decade policy
based almost exclusively on food aid.
MYREF: 20110218093001 msg2011021821464
---
[I am Luddite!]
You whackos just keep changing your "predictions" to suit reality!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 16 Feb 2011 15:57 +1100
Mr Robot
Preparing for climate change.
Nicholas K Geranios
Feb 18 2011
Spokane, Wash. (AP) -- The federal government has awarded a $20 mn grant
to universities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho that is designed to ensure
that wheat farming in the Pacific Northwest will survive climate change.
The 5-year grant from the US Department of Agriculture will study the
relationship between climate change and cereal crops, primarily winter
wheat. Wheat is the No. 1 export through the Port of Portland, the largest
wheat-export harbor in the United States.
The study will focus on northeastern Oregon, SE Washington and Idaho's
panhandle. The area produces some of the nation's highest yields of winter
wheat, which is worth more than $1 bn per year. The vast majority is exported.
"This research is important because our climate is changing, and agriculture
is probably the sector that is most affected by variations in climate," said
Susan Capalbo, an Oregon State University agricultural economist. Washington
State University, the University of Idaho and the USDA's Agricultural Research
Service are also involved.
Researchers will use computer models to study how different farming techniques
affect yields, water usage, nutrient levels, greenhouse gas emissions and the
removal of CO2 from the air.
Farming can contribute to greenhouse emissions in several ways. Tractors and
combines emit carbon dioxide, as does the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer
and the tillage of soil, which helps decompose organic matter.
Scientists will also ask growers about their management strategies and costs,
to help evaluate the likelihood of farmers adopting new techniques.
Farmers won't be willing to change unless the benefits outweigh the costs,
Capalbo said.
"Agriculture has traditionally been looked at in terms of maximizing net
returns or minimizing costs," she said. "But we need to look at managing the
ecosystem so it's resilient to change and sustainable in the long run."
The region to be studied is made up of different microclimates, but in general
has cold, wet winters and warm-to-hot, dry summers. Scientists predict that
summers will become drier and longer in parts of the region. More
precipitation may fall as rain instead of snow.
The average annual temperature in the Pacific Northwest increased 1.4 degrees
during the 20th century, scientists said. It is expected to increase 3 to 10
degrees by 2100.
MYREF: 20110219143002 msg2011021932288
[115 more news items]
---
[A]ll science is lies and the only thing we can trust is right wing rhetoric.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 14 Jan 2011 14:46 +1100
Mr Robot
Kathy Barnard
Washington State Uni
Feb 18, 2011
Pullman -- Helping one of the largest wheat producing regions in the world
mitigate and successfully adapt to climate change is the focus of research
that scientists from the Washington State Uni, Uni of Idaho and
Oregon State Uni.
Together they will conduct a 5-y study, funded by a $20 mn grant
from the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture. NIFA officials
announced the grant this morning along with 2 other $20 mn awards to the
Uni of Florida and Iowa State Uni. UI is the lead institution
for the Pacific Northwest grant and will receive $8 million. WSU and USDA
Agricultural Research Service scientists, also adjunct faculty at WSU, at
Pullman will receive $8 million. OSU will receive $4 million.
Anticipated temperature change
Although they emphasize that there are more than 60 different agri-ecological
zones within the region, project scientists say, in general, temperatures in
the Pacific Northwests prime grain growing regions are expected to increase by
3.6 degrees by 2050. Winter precipitation is expected to increase by
approximately 5% in that same time frame; summer precipitation, however, is
expected to decrease. They also say a 5% increase is relatively small compared
to the large variations in precipitation throughout the region from y to year.
The challenges that we are facing in agriculture are enormous, said Howard
Grimes, vice president research at WSU. Everybody who has looked for even a
moment at the population increase that is facing our planet, coupled with the
arable land issues, coupled with the water use issue, coupled with the
regional climate change issues understands immediately how grand this
challenge is.
Variety of disciplines
Scientists from a variety of disciplines at the universities will tackle
different aspects of the climate change challenge cropping practices, weed and
disease management and prevention, economics, computer modeling and mapping,
soil science, rural sociology, carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas
emissions, and education and Extension. The team will include 22 principal
investigators, 14 graduate students, 3 post-graduate researchers, and several
technical and administrative staff. They will create a region-wide research,
outreach and education network to address climate change issues.
This project is unique in several important ways, said Dan Bernardo, dean of
the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences. It is
interdisciplinary and inter-institutional, but it is also unique in the sheer
magnitude of funding and scope. This larger, integrated, coordinated effort
truly has the potential to be transformational for wheat and barley producers
in our region.
Thirteen of the nations wheat and 80% of the countrys soft white wheat exports
come from the Pacific Northwest.
More information about the scientists involved and their roles in the project
is available at www.uidaho.edu/reacchpna.
MYREF: 20110220010002 msg2011022029345
[105 more news items]
---
[If I make history stop in 1899 things can not get worse:]
Yes, but [Yasi was] not as bad as the cat 5 Mahina in 1899!
And what about 1918 when Qld had TWO CAT 5 CYCLONES!
The more things change the more they stay the same.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 3 Feb 2011 16:09 +1100
Mr Robot
Megan Rowling
18 Feb 2011
London (AlertNet) - The race is on to develop new crop varieties that will
help farmers in poorer countries keep up yields under pressure from the
impacts of climate change.
A study by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI) warned in Dec that global warming will cause yields of rice and wheat
to fall in all regions of the world by 2050, compared to a future without
climate change.
Scientists who specialise in plant breeding say efforts must be stepped up
dramatically on all fronts, from searching in far-flung corners of the world
for wild varieties that are resilient to climatic extremes, to identifying
useful genetic traits and manipulating them to produce hardier and
higher-yielding seeds.
"With the onset of accelerated climate change, it is going to be important
that farmers can adapt, so researchers need to accelerate progress in making
crops more resilient to droughts and floods," says Lawrence Kent, an
agricultural development officer at the U.S.-based Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. "Plant breeders need to do more and faster, and they need more
resources to do it."
Developing "climate-ready crops", as they are often called, will be essential
to avoid production declines in the face of more extreme weather conditions,
and to feed a growing global population in the coming decades.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 50% of the
increase in crop yields in recent y has come from new seed varieties, while
irrigation and fertiliser account for the rest.
But a major FAO report released in Oct notes that public investment in
crop improvement has declined in many countries since the late 1990s. Efforts
to build public seed production systems in the 1980s and 1990s proved costly,
leading donors to cut their funding. That made way for the private sector to
take over in commercial crops like maize and wheat, the FAO says.
For other crops with fewer profit opportunities, "seed production systems have
essentially collapsed in many countries", though public involvement may be
picking up again in some places, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen,
the report says. Donor agencies and philanthropic organisations have also
increased their funding in recent years, although it can be unpredictable.
PAYBACK TIME
The food price crisis of 2008 highlighted the urgent need to reduce food
insecurity in some of the poorest and most politically volatile parts of the
world. At a 2009 summit in Italy, rich governments promised to channel around
$3 bn a y to strengthen agriculture. But less than 2 y on, with international
food prices heading back toward record levels, not even a tenth of that money
has materialized, Jeffrey Sachs, a leading development economist, told Reuters.
Carlos Sere, director general of the Nairobi-based International Livestock
Research Institute, says the world is suffering the consequences of failing to
fund crop science during the preceding era of low food prices.
"Over the last 20 y or so (up to 2008), we did not have a major food crisis,
and if we look at what has been invested in agricultural research - except in
China, India and Brazil - it is now coming to haunt us," he told AlertNet.
An international report on how to make food and farming globally
sustainable, published by the British government in Jan, calls for
agricultural research to be given a higher priority, with a focus on adapting
farming to climate change and cutting the greenhouse gases it produces.
But the report recognises there is no easy way to achieve high levels of
productivity and recommends "a careful blend of approaches", including
biotechnology.
It endorses collaboration between the public and private sectors to enable
low-income countries to access technologies like genetic modification that
could enhance crop resistance to drought, excessively high and low
temperatures, increased salinity and pests - traits that could help farmers
maintain and even improve yields in the face of global warming.
This "product development partnership" (PDP) model - bringing in companies,
academic researchers, governments and international agencies - has been used
in the health sector to develop treatments for neglected diseases. It is now
being promoted as a way to address the lop-sided nature of plant breeding,
where the bulk of effort is focused on producing new crop varieties for sale
in rich nations.
DROUGHT-TOLERANT MAIZE
One example in the agriculture sector is the Water Efficient Maize for
Africa (WEMA) initiative, which aims to develop and make drought-tolerant
maize available royalty free to small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. It
is managed by the Kenya-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation
(AATF), and part-funded by the Gates Foundation.
As part of the effort, the non-profit International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is providing conventional breeding expertise and
high-yielding maize varieties that are adapted to African conditions, while
the multinational agricultural firm Monsanto is contributing advanced breeding
tools and drought-tolerance gene sequences it has developed with BASF.
National agricultural research systems in Kenya, Mozambique, S Africa,
Tanzania and Uganda, together with farmers' groups and seed companies, will
test, multiply and distribute the seeds.
Field trials of the genetically modified (GM) maize varieties were carried out
in Kenya and Uganda late last year, after the crops received regulatory
approval. But farmers will likely have to wait until 2015-2017 before they can
start planting the new GM, or transgenic, seeds. Other conventional hybrid
varieties also being developed by WEMA are expected to be available in 2013.
WEMA project manager Sylvester Oikeh, an agronomist with AATF, hopes the new
maize plants will yield 25% more on average than existing varieties during
moderate droughts.
"If we can get this dream materialised, (in those conditions), we would be
able to feed 14 mn to 21 mn more people in the countries where we're working,"
he explained.
Kent from the Gates Foundation believes joint projects like this are a "great
idea", because they will allow the world's poorest farmers to benefit from the
cutting-edge biotechnology companies have so far deployed mainly for
commercial markets in industrialised economies.
"We want to help people out of poverty and make them more productive on their
farms. As long as the technologies are effective and safe, we should try
them," he says.
Many farmers WEMA is working with can't wait to get their hands on the new
seeds, according to Oikeh.
`TROJAN HORSE'
But not everyone agrees. In a paper released last month, the African
Centre for Biosafety (ACB), a non-profit organisation based in Johannesburg,
claims the WEMA project's main winner will be Monsanto, "enabling it to bring
a new trait to the market and gain a foothold in Africa for its products".
"WEMA is a Trojan horse to pressurise participating governments to pass weak
biosafety regulations and open the door to the proliferation of GMOs (geneticall
y
modified organisms) that will undermine food sovereignty," warns the briefing.
The paper also casts doubt on whether the WEMA maize varieties will be
effective in varying environments and weather conditions because engineering
drought-resistance in crops is "highly complex".
In response to critics of GM crops, AATF's Oikeh says using only traditional
maize varieties has left Africa's yields stagnant at around one tonne per
hectare while they have risen in other parts of the world over the past 3 decade
s.
"Why don't we get skills and (plant genetic) materials from other people and
make a difference to our lives?" he argues.
For Monsanto, public-private partnerships offer "an innovative approach in
helping developing world farmers to produce more grain and break the complex
cycle of poverty in which they live".
Over the "very long term", as food supplies become more secure, farmers will
look for new products and services that raise productivity - a search that may
include improved hybrid seeds with higher yields than other traditional
varieties, it said in emailed responses to AlertNet's questions.
"And over the same long-term period, as one of the leading seed companies in
the world, Monsanto sees potential for new business in areas that are today
under-served," wrote David Fischhoff, who leads the firm's technology strategy
and development.
ALARM OVER PATENTS
Activists who oppose GM crops have also raised the alarm over corporate
patenting of plant genes that may be used to develop crops adapted to climate ch
ange.
ETC Group, a research and advocacy organisation that keeps a watch on new
technologies that could impact the world's poorest, said last Oct it had
identified over 262 patent families covering 1,663 patent documents published
worldwide - including issued patents and applications - that make specific
claims on environmental stress tolerance in plants, such as resilience to
drought, heat, flooding, cold and salt.
Chemical and agricultural firms DuPont, Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and
their biotech partners account for 77% of those patent families, according to
ETC Group. Just 3 companies - DuPont, BASF and Monsanto - hold over two-thirds
of the total, while public sector researchers own only 10 percent.
"No one should be allowed to claim a chunk of DNA they think could be helpful
around climate change. It is too broad a patent," says ETC's executive
director Pat Mooney.
Monsanto's Fischhoff says corporations need to protect their intellectual
property with patents, because doing so ensures they can recoup the millions
of dollars in upfront investment required to fund biotech research during the
decade or more it takes to get new products to market.
But ETC's Mooney says patenting genetic sequences that could be used in
climate-ready crops violates the spirit of the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. He has been lobbying governments
and industry bodies to tackle the issue at a meeting of its parties in
Indonesia in March.
The 2004 treaty, now ratified by 126 nations, has established a global system
to provide farmers, plant breeders and scientists with access to plant genetic
materials, and calls for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising
from their utilisation for food and agriculture.
It has set up a fund to finance agricultural projects that promote
biodiversity and help farmers adapt to climate change. In Peru, for example, 6
indigenous communities are being supported to re-introduce old native
varieties of potatoes and adapt them to higher-altitude mountain terrain.
The fund aims to raise $116 mn by the end of 2014, with governments and UN
agencies having pledged around $11 mn so far. Companies that use relevant
plant genetic material for commercial purposes are also supposed to pay into it.
DIVERSITY IN DEMAND
Cary Fowler, executive director of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust,
says the test of the treaty will be whether it provides a successful framework
for exchanging dwindling crop diversity.
"If the climate is completely different, a country will need diversity in crop
varieties that it doesn't have today," he explains.
Besides developing new crop varieties, efforts must be stepped up to conserve
those that exist, including a staggering 200k types of wheat and 200k to 300k
types of rice, and make information about them available to plant breeders,
Fowler says.
In Dec, the trust launched the largest-ever global search to find, gather,
catalogue, use and save the wild relatives of essential food crops - including
wheat, rice, beans, potatoes, barley, lentils, and chickpea - in an attempt to
help protect global food supplies against the threat of climate change.
Fowler says that 20 y from now, 4 out of 10 growing seasons in Africa will no
longer be suitable for traditional crops. As the development of new varieties
can take a decade, the world has reached an "all hands on deck moment", he says.
NO `CLIMATE CHANGE' GENE
The plant scientist, who has worked extensively with the United Nations,
cautions that breeding climate-ready crops is difficult because so many traits
are involved. Making maize more tolerant to higher average temperatures, for
example, may not be sufficient unless the varieties can also withstand higher
extremes and higher temperatures at the wrong time in their development.
"A lot of people probably see the problem as being simpler than it actually
is," he says. "There's no such thing as a climate change gene you can put into
crop varieties."
He foresees a scramble among international research centres to produce more
resilient crops, but warns these might not be widely adopted in impoverished,
rural areas. The new varieties will not suit all conditions, and getting them
to farmers will be a challenge because many national and local systems for
disseminating seeds are patchy.
"A lot of the poorest farmers will be left out...so if we are concerned about
poverty, we see something unfolding that will make the situation much worse,"
he says.
Small farmers will save their own seed and naturally select those more suited
to the shifting climate, but they will have a limited pool of genetic material
to work with.
"There will be some progress, but there will be a lot of disruption, migration
and food insecurity," warns Fowler.
MYREF: 20110220113001 msg2011022015776
[105 more news items]
---
Mr Robot
Nicholas K Geranios
Feb 18 2011
AP
Spokane, Wash. (AP) -- The federal government has awarded a $20 mn grant
to universities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho that is designed to ensure
that wheat farming in the Pacific Northwest will survive climate change.
The 5-y grant from the US Department of Agriculture will study the
relationship between climate change and cereal crops, primarily winter
wheat. Wheat is the No. 1 export through the Port of Portland, the largest
wheat-export harbor in the United States.
The study will focus on northeastern Oregon, southeastern Washington and
Idaho's panhandle. The area produces some of the nation's highest yields of
winter wheat, which is worth more than $1 bn per year. The vast majority is
exported.
"This research is important because our climate is changing, and agriculture
is probably the sector that is most affected by variations in climate," said
Susan Capalbo, an Oregon State Uni agricultural economist. Washington
State Uni, the Uni of Idaho and the USDA's Agricultural Research
Service are also involved.
Researchers will use computer models to study how different farming techniques
affect yields, water usage, nutrient levels, greenhouse gas emissions and the
removal of CO2 from the air.
Farming can contribute to greenhouse emissions in several ways. Tractors and
combines emit carbon dioxide, as does the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer
and the tillage of soil, which helps decompose organic matter.
Scientists will also ask growers about their management strategies and costs,
to help evaluate the likelihood of farmers adopting new techniques.
Farmers won't be willing to change unless the benefits outweigh the costs,
Capalbo said.
"Agriculture has traditionally been looked at in terms of maximizing net
returns or minimizing costs," she said. "But we need to look at managing the
ecosystem so it's resilient to change and sustainable in the long run."
The region to be studied is made up of different microclimates, but in general
has cold, wet winters and warm-to-hot, dry summers. Scientists predict that
summers will become drier and longer in parts of the region. More
precipitation may fall as rain instead of snow.
The average annual temperature in the Pacific Northwest increased 1.4 degrees
during the 20th century, scientists said. It is expected to increase 3 to 10
degrees by 2100.
MYREF: 20110221083002 msg2011022118376
[97 more news items]
Mr Robot
Los Angeles, Feb 21 (Xinhua) -- Climate change is already having an effect on
the safety of the world's food supplies, and unless action is taken, it's only
going to get worse, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) reported on Mon.
The warning came from several nationally known experts from the US
Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and
Economic Research Service, the Michigan State University and the University of
California, Los Angeles, according to the release.
The experts warned that food safety is already an issue and will worsen unless
climate change is confronted, the release said.
"Accelerating climate change is inevitable with implications for animal
products and crops," said Ewen Todd, a professor of advertising at Michigan
State University. "At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety
are poorly understood."
However, there are already a number of examples of climate change taking its
toll on the world's food supply, Todd said in remarks published by the AAAS.
One is Vibrio, a pathogen typically found in warm ocean water which is now
becoming more common in the N as water temperatures rise, said Todd, also a
fellow of the AAAS.
"It's been moving further up the coast these past few years," he said. "There
was an outbreak of it near Alaska in 2005 when water temperature reached 15
degrees Celsius."
Todd also said that extreme weather - droughts and heavy rains - is having an
impact on the world's food supply. In some areas crops are being wiped out,
resulting in higher prices and other issues.
Drought and starvation can lead to mycotoxins which pose a health threat to
humans, Todd said.
"Mycotoxins are molds that can sometimes cause illness in humans,and where you
have drought and starvation there can be a mycotoxin problem," he
said. "That's because people will store their meager resources of crops for
longer than they should."
MYREF: 20110222160002 msg2011022215605
[102 more news items]
---
>Why is it relevant that the 'chief scientist' is a woman?
Because women are easier prey for scams such as The Great Global Warming Hoax!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 7 Feb 2011 11:28 +1100
Mr Robot
Droughts in China More Frequent and Intense, Scientists Say
Gerson Lehrman Group
Feb 20, 2011
Gary Drimmer
cadenagramonte.cu
Summary
Climate change has been having a growing impact on crops around the
world. Momentum seems to be picking up. China now facing a drought every year,
instead of every 5 to 10 years.
Analysis
US, Europe, Australia, Pakistan, Russia, China, India, Indonesia, South
Africa, etc. This is a list of countries that have seen 100 y record
drought or flooding (or both) just in the past decade.
China is enduring another major drought in the north, with impacting winter
wheat and the it has the potential to impact spring sowing. As the largest
producer and consumer of most crops, a major crop disaster would have a global
impact. These droughts, which used to occur every 5 to 10 years, are hitting
every year, much as was seen in eastern Australia until the floods began to
hit in Dec.
Some of these dramatic weather events can be tied to an El Niño or a La Niña
related to the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). A large number of prediction
models show the current strong La Niña might turn to a neutral stage by
May-June-July quarter, and yet a large number still show a potetential La Nina
enduring into that time period. A lingering La Nina could lead to a wet spring
is the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley and below average precipitation in most of
the southern states.
Temperatures in the southern states and central US are predicted to be above
normal. It has been 18 y since the US midwest had a major drought, many say we
are overdue.
Pakistan is recovering from the devastating floods last year, but are in
better shape to have a decent crop then Russia after their record drought last
year. Brazil and Argentina on average will have a decent soybean harvest if
weather doesn't take a turn as harvest ramps up.
Corn production in the region will be down due to Argentina's dry regions
earlier in the growing season.
The price incentives are there for farmers around the world to plant (and of
course harvest) a bumper crop. The unknown is will this be a "normal year" or
is normal now one with many weather disasters due to climate change
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or
endorsed by GLG.
MYREF: 20110222223001 msg2011022230535
[101 more news items]
---
[Irony 101:]
[By my count BONZO has called people whacko 137 times; fool 26; idiot
22 times; twit 17 times; moron 14 times in just the past 4 wks. There
is a 10+-year history, however].
Warmist Abuse Shows They're Losing
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 16 Feb 2011 17:15 +1100
Mr Robot
Deliver Consistent Yields
News4us
Feb 23, 2011
Crop simulation modelling has revealed that dry seeding up to 1/2 of a 3000
hectare wheat program in a low rainfall area of Western Australia can deliver
consistent yield benefits and significant increases in profits over time.
But researchers have warned that, despite the findings, growers need to be
aware of the risks of dry seeding including crop failure, inadequate weed
control and wind erosion.
The research was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Forestry (DAFF) and Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) under
the project `Developing climate change resilient cropping and mixed
cropping/grazing businesses in Australia'.
CSIRO researcher Michael Robertson will present the results at this month's
2011 Agribusiness Crop Updates, coordinated by the Grains Industry Association
of Western Australia (GIWA) on behalf of the WA Department of Agriculture and
Food (DAFWA) and the GRDC.
Dr Robertson said the research found that dry seeding up to 50% of a
3000ha wheat program at Mullewa produced average farm wheat yields 0.1 to 0.3
tonnes per hectare better than those achieved from waiting to seed in wet
conditions, in 80% of seasons.
Yield results were achieved by applying the Agricultural Production Systems
Simulator (APSIM) to actual rainfall data for Mullewa from 1971 to 2010.
"These results illustrate that earlier sowing dates through dry seeding of
cereals generally results in higher yields, in the absence of frost," Dr
Robertson said.
"When applied to actual farms, the results would vary according to factors
including seeding capacity and soil erosion risk, but I am confident the
principles of the results would remain the same."
Dr Robertson said the crop simulation modelling work had not yet been applied
to other rainfall zones in WA, but he expected similar results.
"So far we have only looked at low rainfall situations because that is where
growers are dry seeding a lot, but we plan to extend the research into the
medium and high rainfall zones."
Dr Robertson said the research had been conducted to help quantify the yield
effects of dry seeding cereals, which was increasing in WA.
More growers were dry seeding cereals because opening rains were occurring
later and with more variability.
"While it has long been common practice to dry sow lupins and canola before
the seasonal break, dry seeding of cereals has only recently gained prominence
in the Wheatbelt," Dr Robertson said.
"Growers are not completely confident if they are doing the right thing."
Dr Robertson said growers considering dry seeding should:
* Have a robust integrated weed management plan in place to ensure they were
seeding into clean paddocks.
* Carefully select paddocks and crop types carefully - choose those you would
still choose to seed into even in a very late break.
* Keep input costs low, particularly for fertiliser, to reduce break-even
yields.
The dry seeding research was conducted in WA by CSIRO, the Department of
Agriculture and Food Western Australia (DAFWA) and Planfarm.
MYREF: 20110224163002 msg2011022430603
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---
[I am Luddite!]
You whackos just keep changing your "predictions" to suit reality!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 16 Feb 2011 15:57 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
Wheat growers in the Southwest have a better idea about how to adjust to
climate change in the decades ahead, thanks to US Department of Agriculture
(USDA) scientists in Arizona.
Dennis O'Brien
GardenNews.biz
Feb 24,2011
Wheat growers in the Southwest have a better idea about how to adjust to
climate change in the decades ahead, thanks to US Department of Agriculture
(USDA) scientists in Arizona.
Researchers with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) installed
infrared heaters in experimental wheat fields at the agency's Arid-Land
Agricultural Research Center in Maricopa, Ariz., to simulate growing
conditions expected by 2050. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific
research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of responding to
climate change.
Wheat is normally planted in Arizona in mid-winter, harvested in late May and
irrigated throughout its growing season. Temperatures can range from below
freezing in winter to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in May. But increasing
temperatures can drastically reduce yields and increase the threat of drought,
making climate change a major concern.
The scientists planted wheat every 6 wk between March of 2007 and May of 2009
and applied heat to 6 of 15 plantings, warming the crops planted each y in
March, Dec, and September. They measured canopy conditions to ensure daytime
temperatures in the heated plots rose by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and nighttime
temperatures rose by 5 or 6 degrees. The team included Bruce Kimball, a
retired ARS soil scientist who was the project leader; ARS plant physiologists
Gerard Wall and Jeffrey White; and Michael Ottman, an agronomist with the
University of Arizona.
The researchers used infrared (IR) heaters suspended above the plants, using a
system known as a Temperature Free-Air Controlled Enhancement (T-FACE)
apparatus. Developed by Kimball, T-FACE enables scientists to raise the
temperature of experimental crops in open fields. The technology is also used
by ARS researchers elsewhere and by more than a dozen other research groups
around the world.
As expected, the heaters accelerated growth, increased soil temperatures,
reduced soil moisture, induced mild water stress on the crops and had a
nominal effect on photosynthesis.
But effects on yields depended on when the wheat was planted. When heat was
applied to wheat planted in mid-winter, it grew faster, with a growth cycle
that was ahead by a week, but there were no major differences in yield. But
adding heat to wheat planted in September enabled the wheat to survive frosts
between Christmas and New Year's both y with only moderate yield loss. Wheat
planted at the same time in the unheated plots yielded nothing.
The results, published in Global Change Biology, will provide guidance to
growers on how to adjust planting schedules as the climate warms. They also
show the effectiveness of the T-FACE system for investigating climate change
impacts.
MYREF: 20110225210001 msg2011022526055
[127 more news items]
---
[Call me kook:]
>A scientist cites a data point that is consistent with a trend and
>says "This data is consistent with the trend; no surprise".
>A kook cites a data point inconsistent with the trend and says "Surprise!
>The trend is Wrong Wrong Wrong!".
Sorry but 1917 invalidates the trend.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 7 Feb 2011 13:29 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
In the coming decades experts predict difficulties in the ability to produce
food due to processes such as world population growth and climate change.
Zafrir Rinat
Ha'aretz
27.02.11
Israel must prepare for a possible shortage of staple foods in the next two
decades and consider replacing current agricultural crops with wheat, say
experts who will speak this wk at the Agro Mashov 2011 agriculture exhibition.
The world food crisis will be the main focus; agriculture ministers from
countries such as Israel, Brazil and Russia will take part in the event at the
Tel Aviv Trade Fair and Convention Center. supermarket
Competition is low in certain areas of retail. A cartel was exposed in the
bread market.
There is currently enough food to feed the earth's population, but it is
difficult to distribute it in an egalitarian way amid the rise in prices, says
Prof. Haim Rabinovich of Hebrew University's Agriculture Faculty in Rehovot.
"Data from the UN World Food Program show that 700 children die every hour
around the world from hunger or diseases related to food shortages," he says.
In the coming decades experts predict difficulties in the ability to produce
food due to processes such as world population growth and climate change that
will expand arid areas and reduce the available land for agriculture.
"This could lead to a situation in which a country like the United States will
have to choose whether to provide wheat to hungry neighboring countries or to
Israel, and it will probably prefer those close to it," Rabinovich says.
"So Israel must prepare to produce its own supply of grain crops like wheat
.... Israel may have to give up crops like sunflower seeds and cotton in the
Jezreel Valley in favor of wheat. It may have to decide to cut down on food
exports in order to provide food for the large population of Jews and
Palestinians living between the sea and the Jordan River in 2 decades."
Currently, Israel imports all its grain, Rabinovich says. In view of the
climate crisis the Agriculture Ministry will have to consider moves such as
genetic research to develop wheat that is more resistant to dry conditions, he
says.
MYREF: 20110227144816 msg2011022720051
[133 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
onally
"It's not one country. It's not one crop".
Deborah Allard
Herald News
Feb 26, 2011 @ 01:27 PM
"Where's the beef?"
"Got milk?"
"Good to the last drop."
"Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh."
Everyone remembers when those slogans were coined in television commercials by
hopeful companies trying to increase sales.
But, no amount of fancy advertising is going to soften the bite on consumers'
wallets when they pay even higher prices for those everyday staples, and
others.
A lot of it has to do with the weather.
Droughts, floods and excessive rain in several countries mean farmers are
straining to meet the growing worldwide demand for grain and other commodities
that are key ingredients in food products.
Prices are approaching or have surpassed the high of 2008. If there's a repeat
of disappointing crop yields this year, consumers are likely to experience
supermarket sticker shock.
"What you've had is basically a series of less than optimal production. It's
not one country. It's not one crop," said Carl Zulauf, an agriculture
economics professor at Ohio State University. "We will need reasonably good
weather across the Northern Hemisphere this summer in order for prices to declin
e."
Surging
Since Feb 2010, prices for corn and wheat doubled because of crop issues,
driving up the cost of livestock feed and, thus, the wholesale cost of meat.
Prices for raw sugar cane have risen 75% since May, in part because of
less-than-expected sugar yields in Brazil.
That's on top of flooding in Australia hurting its wheat harvest and dry
weather reducing the corn yield in Argentina.
Mexico recently lost much of its corn crop because of a deep freeze. Ground
beef prices were up 10% from Jan 2010, white sugar prices were up 20 percent,
eggs were 12% more, milk prices 15% more and whole-wheat bread cost 7% more.
Consumers are starting to notice.
Maria Salpietro of Swansea after doing some shopping at Price-Rite said she's
noticed that the price of meats and basically "anything healthy" has risen at
the supermarket.
"If you want to eat lousy, it's cheap," Salpietro said.
Sandy Banville, another Swansea resident, was also trying to stretch her bucks
by shopping at the low-price grocer rather than at a big box supermarket.
"I'm trying to get the best deals I can," Banville said. "I have a son at
home. What costs me $31 here would probably cost me $60 there." If prices
continue to go up, she said: "I'm going to be cutting back."
April Cranshaw of Somerset shops in 3 different grocery stores each wk to
maximize her savings and catch the sales.
"I buy just the sale items at the main market," Cranshaw said. "Everything's
going up."
"It's terrible," said Paul Mockas of Somerset. "Nothing is cheap."
Coffee prices are another commodity that seems to continually rise. A can of
Folgers costs nearly $4 at the supermarket, about $1 more for decaffeinated.
Coffee prices are at their highest in about 14 y because of a lackluster
coffee bean harvest in Brazil, heavy rains harming Colombia's coffee crop and,
possibly, investors bidding up commodity prices.
The J.M. Smucker Co. said it would hike prices for most coffee products,
including some under its Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts brands by an average of 10%.
If that's not enough, clothing prices may also increase. The price for cotton
has skyrocketed to a record $1.91 a pound, when it rarely exceeds $1. Blame
growing demand for cotton in China, massive flooding affecting the cotton crop
in Pakistan and export restrictions in India, according to the Financial Times.
Locally, people are turning to off-price retailers and even second hand stores.
Pastor Joe Neronha runs the S Baptist Thrift Store on President Avenue in Fall
River and has no shortage of customers.
"We definitely see people talking about the rising cost of everything,"
Neronha said. "That's the reason they like to come here and offset the price
for the things they need. We're all feeling it."
In turn, any profits from store sales help the S Baptist Church in New Bedford
and also benefit those in severe need in Haiti, where Neronha has visited 4 time
s.
Food retailers
So far, consumers have not seen the brunt of the commodity-price increases in
grocery stores. Restaurants and bakeries will feel it too. "Everything's gone
up, even the fillings for the doughnuts," said Olivia Corga, who owns Leddy's
Bakery in Fall River with her husband Antonio.
A bucket of blueberry filling costs $69, up from about $38 just a couple of y ag
o.
Eggs have gone from 89 cents per dozen to $1.59. And, Leddy's uses some 150
dozen per week, along with about 3k pounds of flour, which has also gone up.
"What are you going to do? If you want to stay in business, you have to pay
it," Corga said.
Food companies and grocery stores have had several options to blunt the effect
of higher supply costs on price-resistant consumers.
Because raw materials are only part of the cost of final products, companies
minimize price increases by cutting the cost of the other components -- labor,
transportation, marketing, packaging -- or by substituting for other
ingredients. But the rising price of oil has added to transportation costs.
Companies can also accept lower profit margins or reduce package quantities.
One way to save is to pass some of the burden onto customers, which Corga
rarely does.
A doughnut or a muffin still costs just 50 cents at Leddy's. "We go up a
little bit sometimes," Corga said. "We're still reasonable."
MYREF: 20110227170002 msg2011022710127
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---
[On knowing your constituents:]
I always thought faremers were a gullible bunch!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 9 Feb 2011 12:09 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
John Ydstie
Vermont Public Radio
02/27/11
Sharp increases in food prices helped spark the political upheaval gripping
northern Africa and the Middle East. Bad weather in key growing regions was
among a confluence of factors driving prices to record levels, a UN analyst
says. But the price spikes are giving US farmers an incentive to boost
production.
Underlying the food inflation is a more than 70% increase in the price of
wheat and corn in the second 1/2 of last year.
Elevated food prices are hitting hardest in poor countries such as Haiti,
Bolivia and Mozambique, where people spend more than 1/2 their income on food.
"People who are already undernourished may have to forgo a meal. It does add
to the number of hungry people," says Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist
for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
He says the situation is alarming, but not yet a food crisis like the one the
world faced 3 y ago.
Demand, Diversion And Drought
He says many factors have contributed to the upward pressure on food
prices. There's demand for more varied diets in emerging economies such as
China. And crops are being diverted for use in biofuels such as ethanol.
But the primary cause of the big spike in fuel prices is last year's bad
weather: Russia's drought; rains in Pakistan, norther Europe and the US;
rains and floods in Australia; and dry conditions in Latin America.
"It looked like Mother Nature picked up the worst m to behave very bad,"
Abbassian says.
Russia's wheat-growing region was hit by the worst drought in 100 years. The
huge wheat exporter halted shipments to foreign customers, including
Egypt. Last wk, Russian officials said they may extend the ban.
The ruined harvest left global wheat stocks very low and pushed prices up
sharply.
Investment Lags
A decade ago, that might not have happened because government crop subsidies
in the US and Europe produced huge stockpiles. But a change in world trade
rules ended those subsidies and the stockpiles disappeared. It was hoped
investment in Third World farmers would take up the slack. But Abbassian says
governments, including the US, have invested just a fraction of what was pledged
.
"In spite of the declarations and statements made, really the investment in
agriculture is lagging behind," he says.
Smaller stockpiles have led to more volatile prices. That volatility has
attracted speculators who profit from rapid price changes. But, so far,
there's little evidence that speculators are significantly boosting overall pric
es.
Bad weather may have set the stage for this spike in grain prices, but Greg
Page, president of the global food giant Cargill, says that while supplies are
tight, prices have risen more than was necessary. He says that's partly
because of instantaneous global communication.
A Hoarding Instinct
"People read stories about food prices going up and/or food being short and
there's a natural hoarding instinct, I think, wired into all of us and people
buy that extra 5-pound bag of flour or 2-liter bottle of vegetable oil," Page sa
ys.
Multiply that by 100 mn households, he says, and concern about a food shortage
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Governments got into the hoarding act,
too, he says.
"The Saudis have made a public announcement about their intention to double
their strategic reserve," he says. "The Algerians have made a similar
statement in the last several weeks."
Other nations are buying up grain stocks, too. All of this has pushed prices
higher. Luckily, Page says, those high prices are a signal for farmers.
An Incentive To Boost Production
Greg Westland produces hard red spring wheat and soybeans on about 5,600 acres
in Cando, N.D. The snow is still deep in N Dakota, but Westland is preparing
for planting, spending days in his shop with his sons, prepping equipment. The
high prices have convinced him to try to boost the number of bushels he
produces per acre.
"We're adding more fertilizer, shooting for a 60-bushel hard red spring wheat
crop up here and a 42-to-45-bushel soybean crop," Westland says.
Those yields would be about 20% above average. Cargill's Page says his
company's brisk fertilizer and seed sales indicate that farmers are
responding.
"If nature gives them any collaboration at all I think we are clearly in a
position to feed the world handsomely and actually to build some stocks this y
based on the number of acres we would predict will be planted," he says.
As long as the weather cooperates. The UN's Abbassian agrees. Both also
acknowledge that climate change adds another level of uncertainty. Another
wild card: the recent run up in the price of oil, which, if it persists, could
boost already high food prices.
MYREF: 20110228163001 msg2011022812868
[132 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
Delta Farm Press
Feb 28, 2011
A wk ago, a giant snowstorm passed through the Mid-South. Today, it's 71
degrees outside. Who knows what next wk will bring. And it's only Feb for gosh
sakes.
All this just reinforces in my mind that some sort of climate change is
occurring. Whether this change is caused by global warming, or whether or not
global warming is caused by man's activities, is irrelevant.
Governments believe they can reverse climate change through carbon credits,
regionalization of economies, wind power, solar panels, etc. But I'm not so
sure. The world's industrial economy is a force not easily reckoned or
tinkered with. For example, what does reducing greenhouse gas emissions here
in the United States accomplish when China is expanding its highway
construction and threatening to surpass the United States in automobile
ownership?
We did not discuss who or what is to blame for climate change, or whether or
not it is possible to reverse its effects. The point of the discussion
centered on how agriculture can adapt and either use climate change to our
advantage, or at least make it possible for agriculture to succeed in spite of
it.
"U.S. agriculture has some unique capabilities that our competitors do not
have," said Kater Hake, vice president of agricultural research, Cotton
Incorporated, who led the discussion. "Understanding those advantages and how
we can maximize them will make us more profitable in the long term."
One of the most interesting concepts was the impact of temperature and carbon
dioxide on crop yield. Hake pointed out that some crops, like cotton, can
handle higher temperatures more efficiently, while others, like corn and grain
sorghum in particular, are very responsive to elevated levels of carbon
dioxide.
Cotton, corn and peanuts seem to handle the combination of higher temperatures
and elevated CO2 better than other crops. Hake noted that some physiologists
have attributed the increase in cotton yields over the last 20 y to the slow,
upward trend in carbon dioxide. "I certainly couldn't disagree with that."
Hake believes that climate disruption will impact agriculture in many ways
over the next 20 to 30 years, and these changes will reverberate across the
globe.
"It's going to do it directly through weather variability - too wet, too dry,
too hot, too cold. This can have a rapid effect on commodity prices and
governmental policies."
Industries that do the best job of adapting to this volatility and variability
will come out on top.
MYREF: 20110301073428 msg2011030122718
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---
[It's not "land" warming -- it's just "ocean" warming!]
QUOTE: Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has
occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather
than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases over land.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 14 Dec 2010 10:35 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
A wheat killer is on the move from Africa to Australia. The Gates Foundation
wants to stop it from wreaking havoc on the world.
Jenara Nerenberg
Fast Company
Feb 28 2011
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced that it is investing $70 mn
into food security initiatives in order to battle one of climate change's
looming threats--catastrophic food shortages. The United Kingdom Department
for International Development (DFID) is also jumping on board with a $32 mn
commitment.
The funds will go toward research on improving crop production, including
examining the rise of certain predators, such as Ug99, a stem rust disease
affecting wheat crops. The Ug99 strand is spreading, adding numbers to the
millions of people who are already fleeing their countries due to
agriculturally unstable environments. The disease was originally identified
in Uganda in 1998 and has now spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran
and variants are now on their way to N and S America, Australia, and S and
Central Asia.
Cornell University's Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project will
receive a nice chunk of this philanthropic largesse--$40 mn to identify
rust-resistant genes in wheat crops and distribute those crops to small
farmers, $15 mn of which will come from DFID.
"Against the backdrop of rising food prices, and wheat in particular,
researchers worldwide will be able to play an increasingly vital role in
protecting wheat fields from dangerous new forms of stem rust, particularly in
countries whose people can ill afford the economic impact of damage to this
vital crop," said Ronnie Coffman, Cornell professor of plant breeding and
genetics and director of DRRW.
Cornell works with a number of partners to achieve identification and
distribution, including the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Syria's International Center for Agricultural
Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and a number of the UN's Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) labs around the world.
"It is important that public and private institutions work together to develop
long-term, sustainable and effective solutions to make life better for the
world in which we live," said David J. Skorton, president of Cornell
University.
MYREF: 20110301133001 msg201103017219
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---
Mr Posting Robot
Source: VIR
1 Mar 2011
World food prices reached a new historic peak in Jan 2011,
exceeding prices reached during the food crisis of 2007-08. A global
food crisis could be looming and local media has discussed a possible
rice price fever scenario in Vietnam as seen in 2008. Following are
expert views on the issue.
Bui Ba Bong, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development:
"Food price hikes on the global market would probably have little
impact on Vietnam's rice prices as the nation still has large rice
supplies for the whole year. Moreover, the 2011 food crisis, despite
being seen as a danger, will not happen like in 2008 as many countries
are better prepared and have measures to prevent food speculation.
In response to the food crisis threat, the ministry this y will hold
fast to food production to ensure rice supply and prepare to cope with
natural disasters, bad weather and diseases. The potential of a food
crisis will remain in coming years, so the ministry will manage
comprehensive agricultural development, boost rice production to ensure
food security and protect rice farming land.
The ministry will continue infrastructure investment and apply
technology to increase output and suggest supporting policies for
farmers. The ministry has submitted to the Government a national rice
land plan until 2020 and a decree on rice land management. The two
important documents will be out this year."
Bui Chi Buu, director of Southern Institute of Agricultural Science and
Technology:
"We see that the world's unhusked rice output in 2010 dropped by 6.5
million tons from 2009 to 697.9 mn tons, or 465.4 mn tons of
rice. Despite serious droughts and floods, Asia still saw output rising
3% to 631.4 mn tons of unhusked rice given recovery of India and
growth of Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Iran, N Korea, the
Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, output fell in S Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan and Thailand
due to adverse weather. Africa gained 24.6 mn tons, up 1% while
Latin America and Caribbean turned out 26.5 mn tons, largely due
to the contribution of Brazil. Bad weather also occurred in Argentina,
Bolivia, Cuba, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Therefore, global rice
stocks have increased by 5% to 136.2 mn tons, the highest level
since 2002.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expected rice
consumption to rise by 2% during 2010 and 2011 while average food per
capita was 56.7 kilos per year, up 1% from 2009.
Vietnam enjoyed a bumper crop and high prices last y with the total
unhusked rice output of 40 mn tons, including 21.5 mn tons
from the Mekong Delta. So the 2008 food price fever might not recur.
Food shortage dangers still remain if corn and wheat growing nations
keep using cereals as bio fuels and crude oil prices keep increasing.
[An escalation in the use cereals as biofuels is unlikely] as soybean
prices rose US$14 a bushel within the past 6 months, cereal and seed
oil surged by 25%.
We are facing the impacts of climate change. Rice and wheat output
cannot keep pace with population growth while farming areas and water
resources are shrinking. The world is facing the biggest food security
danger ever. On the other hand, Vietnam agriculture has continuously
developed despite modest investment conditions. We expect the world's
cereal output this y to maintain its growth rate of 2010 to help
ensure food security and complete the UN millennium goal."
Le Van Banh, rector of the Mekong Delta Rice Institute:
"A report of the Third International Rice Conference held in Hanoi last
year showed that nearly a bn people worldwide are suffering a food
shortage. The problem turns worse when you throw in climate change,
droughts, floods and forest fires.
Political crises in some African countries recently have prompted
densely populated nations like Indonesia and China to build up their
food stocks, decreasing world food supplies. Food prices may fluctuate
in the coming time but the crisis may not happen as most nations have
learnt from their experience in 2008.
As food shortages are a constant fact in this world, governments have
to keep calm and solve the problem together. Vietnam has enjoyed bumper
crops for y on end and now there is a good winter-spring harvest.
However, our agriculture still has to confront the risks of natural
disasters, diseases, drought, salinity intrusion and flood. Vietnam
plays an important role in world food security as it contributes 20% of
the commercial rice volume.
With the lessons learnt in 2008, I believe the agencies involved in
Vietnam will have solutions for the local rice market and export. It is
important that the nation should have a sustainable rice production
plan to ensure food security, balance the profits of producers and
exporters, and support farmers to develop rice cultivation."
MYREF: 20110301193001 msg2011030127452
[143 more news items]
Goering'sDaughter
developed a chemical-based method for extracting undigested grains and
nuts from pig excrement.
Mr Posting Robot
Winile Mavuso
The Swazi Observer
01 March, 2011 11:56:00
Economists have attributed the recent hikes in food prices to global warming
and climate change.
The New York Times reported that global warming and climate change were
disrupting food production and resulted in hikes in food prices around the
globe. The same sentiments were shared by Economist Chris Fakudze.
"This is what we warned about during the heavy floods sometime ago," he said,
adding that this was the time to warn everybody to watch out for skyrocketing
food prices as was the case in the y 2008.
He said people should revise what went into the food basket. "Only life saving
food stuffs should go into the food basket and less luxury foods can keep us
all insulated," he said. "The world finds itself back where it was in mid-2008
when food prices skyrocketed causing untold harm to the vulnerable.
"In the last 6 m there has been a massive increase in prices for most
essential food commodities. Food - and being able to eat properly - is going
to be the single biggest political issue in the next decade," Fakudze noted.
Recently, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) advised
sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean to brace themselves for food price
increases. The organisations said food price volatility was here to stay amid
growing worries that there could be another full-blown food crisis only 3 y
after the last one. The agencies said in some parts of the world,
weather-related supply shocks had pushed up prices and there was a likelihood
of substantial long term increases.
Fakudze said, however, there was an opportunity in this challenge of heavy
rains. He said if the country could produce more vegetables for export it
could benefit a lot in foreign exchange. "If Swaziland can produce vegetables
for export we could harvest twice, thrice as much on the foreign exchange,
which is a benefit," he said.
"There is obviously a shortage of food in the world market. In the Article on
Most Favoured Nation under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), we have our
guaranteed market access. It is only that we have never over-flooded the world
market with commodities.
"Even though the Doha Round is in a stalemate, there are some internal
negotiation processes going on for urgent matters. A mission from S Africa
will be leaving on March 6 to negotiate their bit on agriculture, why don't we
take this advantage?" he wondered.
MYREF: 20110302190002 msg2011030214210
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---
The claimed consensus views of hundreds of climate change "scientists" are
fundamentally erroneous.
[Bonzo has elsewhere claimed the germ theory of disease is an "erroneous
consensus view"].
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 19 Jan 2011 15:29 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
Sid Maher
The Australian
March 02, 2011 12:00AM
Food prices will rise "quite strongly" in the next few decades, presenting a
"historic" opportunity for farmers, if they are able to take advantage of it
through effective climate change mitigation.
The Gillard government's climate change adviser Ross Garnaut says in his
latest update paper, that higher demand for food sparked by economic growth in
big developing countries such as China "would be of historic importance for
the Australian rural economy if we could take advantage of that".
But he warns against introducing the large-scale mandated biofuel schemes that
are operating in the US and Europe, which he says have had "chilling" outcomes
and contributed to rising world food prices. In the US, 25% of the corn crop
was now used to produce biofuel, while in Europe nearly 40% of canola was used
for biofuels.
"According to a recent study, setting a global biofuels target of 10 per cent
of transport fuel would lead to the number of people at risk of hunger rising
by 15 per cent, while only delivering significant emissions benefits after 30
to 50 years," the paper says.
The latest paper identifies enormous opportunities for farmers to be recruited
to bio-sequestration, which could be used to mitigate emissions.
He recommends agriculture eventually be included in a carbon price regime and
linked to an emissions trading scheme, when accounting and measuring
mechanisms allow, arguing this would reap economic and environmental benefits
for the nation.
Polluters would be able to buy offsets from credits produced by sequestration
activities and this could lower the cost of Australia's emissions abatement task
.
"For all the qualifications about uncertainty, the land sectors could make a
large contribution to the reduction in Australian emissions. The CSIRO's
assessment indicates that technical potential is about twice the total level
of current Australian emissions. The realisation of a small percentage of that
potential would make a significant difference," the paper says.
Professor Garnaut praises the government's Carbon Farming initiative and says
sequestration activities could eventually be a major source of income for
farmers.
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Mr Posting Robot
Science Centric
Source: American Institute of Biological Sciences
1 March 2011 17:15 GMT
A survey of how farmers could protect themselves by growing a greater
diversity of crops, published in the March issue of BioScience, has
highlighted economical steps that farmers could take to minimise the threat to
crops from global climate change, including a greater frequency of extreme
climate events.
Adaptation to ongoing climate change is considered a policy priority for
agriculture. The survey, by Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, documents multiple instances
of farmers protecting economically important crops, such as rice and other
cereals, alfalfa, and coffee, from outbreaks of pests and disease, often
associated with climate change, or simply from changed physical
conditions. The farmers succeeded by switching from growing a single variety
of crop to growing a broader range of species or varieties, either at the same
time or in rotation, or by introducing structural variety into uniform fields.
Such techniques work, in general, because they make it harder for pathogens
and pests to spread, and they may modulate climate extremes the crops
experience. Not all attempts at agricultural diversification lead to such
benefits, Lin points out. Yet increasingly, farmers have access to crop
modelling techniques that can evaluate when a given adaptation technique might
provide an economic benefit. Because accurate modelling requires extensive
knowledge of on-the-ground data, such as soil profiles for water and
nutrients, Lin argues for the development of extension and research staff who
can assist farmers in gaining the information they need to use modelling
techniques for adaptation.
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Mr Posting Robot
Wheat Planting Falls to Four-Year Low in Russia Amid Export Ban
China Should Curb Corn-Based Product Output, Exports, Radio Says
Bearish Agriculture Options Bets Surge to Two-Year High
Commodities Rise to Two-Year High as Cotton Jumps to a Record
Consumers Should Get Used to Higher Food Prices, IMF Says
Luzi Ann Javier
Bloomberg
March 06, 2011, 11:36 PM EST
March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Global harvests of corn and wheat may fall short of
demand again if the La Nina weather event persists through July, tightening
global grain supplies, according to forecaster Telvent DTN Inc.
La Nina is forecast to cause heavier rainfall in the northern US plains and
the Canadian prairies, potentially causing a repeat of last year's flooding
that slashed Canada's milling-wheat output and delaying corn planting in parts
of the US, Bryce Anderson, an agricultural meteorologist, said in a phone
interview today. That may contribute to a second consecutive annual shortfall
for wheat and a 3rd yearly deficit for corn.
"There is reason to be concerned about how our grain supply is going to be,"
said Anderson, who last y correctly predicted dry weather would hurt US and
Argentina soybean crops.
Tighter supplies of corn and wheat may sustain gains in food prices, which are
already at a record according to an index tracked by the United Nations Food &
Agriculture Organization. That may push governments in countries facing supply
deficits to boost imports and increase food subsidies to prevent unrest seen
in the Middle E and N Africa.
Corn futures in Chicago surged 94% in the past y as rising demand for
livestock and ethanol in the US pushes the global stocks-to-use ratio to the
lowest in 37 years. Wheat jumped 67% in the same period after drought
last y in Russia and Eastern Europe prompted countries to restrict exports,
while flooding in Canada and Australia curbed supply of milling-grade grains
used for human consumption.
Declining Yields
The food price index may increase further, the FAO said March 3, and consumers
need to get used to paying more for food, the International Monetary Fund said
on the same day.
Corn yields in the US may be as much as 10 bushels-an- acre lower than the
Department of Agriculture's forecast of 162 bushels an acre next season if La
Nina persists through July, delaying planting in the northern corn belt,
Anderson said.
The delay may mean the US crop will go through its pollination and
reproductive phases during the hottest times of summer, putting them at risk
of yield losses, he said.
"The biggest risk as far as losses go, I would have to say at this point, is
corn," Anderson said. "Much of the corn supply is dependent on how the US
performs, and there is concern about how the US situation is going to be
for this season," he said, referring to the next planting.
Drought Easing
The US harvest represents about 39% of the global corn output in the 2010-2011
season, and 55% of world exports, according to USDA data.
The worst may be over for the drought-affected areas in China's wheat-growing
region and there's a "better chance of rainfall" over the next month,
improving soil moisture and preventing losses to the crop, Anderson said.
Still, he said, La Nina may hurt the wheat crop in the US, the world's
largest shipper. That, and the potential for flooding in Canada, may further
curb supply of milling-wheat as Canadian farmers cut acreage, he said.
"We're not guaranteed that the world wheat crop is going to approach the
volume that it needs to be at, in order to start curbing some of the supply
issues," Anderson, 57, said by phone from Nebraska. "That's the big issue
right now."
The Southern Oscillation Index, which tracks fluctuations in air pressure
between Darwin and Tahiti, was at 22.3 in Feb, rising from 19.9 a m earlier,
according to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology. The gauge was at 27.1 in
Dec, the highest since 1973, according to the bureau's data. A reading of 7 or
more indicates La Nina is present.
"The peak is over, but the event does not seem to be really backing off,"
Anderson said. "It's still strong."
Telvent DTN is a market information provider to about 700k clients across N
America.
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Mr Posting Robot
The Guardian Weeklies [Canada]
Charlottetown
March 4, 2011
A food industry official had some encouraging words for Island farmers last wk
when he suggested that PEI could be a leader in food production at a time
when demand for food worldwide is expected to double.
Hopefully government and those with a stake in the agriculture industry were
listening.
Ted Bilyea, former vice-president of Maple Leaf Foods, told the annual
conference of the PEI Soil and Crop Improvement Association in
Charlottetown that the demand for food worldwide is expanding because of
population growth, urbanization,income growth and diet change. At the same
time, arable land is being used too rapidly, resulting in loss of topsoil and
ultimately a reduced ability to produce enough food. As well, climate change
is injecting its own effects, resulting in changing cropping patterns and
harvest times, rising temperatures, all of which affect yields.
But it's what Mr Bilyea had to say about PEI that should alert the ears of
both government and farmers. In his opinion, PEI is "ahead of the curve" in
efforts to maintain sustainable soil: "It was very encouraging to see that
PEI is doing the right things. They are paying attention ...and they're
probably not getting full credit for what they've done."
No doubt there would be some critics within the province who would assert that
soil erosion and use of chemicals in the farming industry threaten the quality
of soil here and the province's food-producing capacity. But we should take
encouragement where we can get it and build on it.
There's little doubt that Prince Edward Island, like other food producing
areas, has felt the pressure to maximize its production to remain
competitive. The diminishing number of farms over the past decades and the
economic struggles of our farmers indicates that many haven't been able to
shoulder those pressures. But overall, how is PEI faring compared with
other areas? According to Mr Bilyea, the province has potential to be a leader
in the knowledge of sustainable soils and farm management plans and offers
"that unique selling proposition that retailers look for."
That suggests exciting prospects for the Island's agriculture industry, if it
plays its cards right. If the above trends -- diminishing farmland, growing
populations and urbanization -- continue we're likely to see more people
looking for more food from those areas best prepared to produce
it. PEI should ensure it remains one of those areas by working even harder
to ensure the province's soil remains healthy and productive. In a province
where agriculture is the number one industry, it falls to any government to
work closely with its farming sector to keep the industry in good shape. Mr
Bilyea's words add extra force to that message.
It all adds up
Canadians are well aware of the need to improve literacy at practically every
level of the population, thanks to the public education efforts of literacy
advocates. But we often forget the need to prize competency in mathematics. A
Grade 7 student at Queen Charlotte junior high school in Charlottetown has
reminded us of this in placing 31st of 1,300 students in a national math
competition last month.
Graeme Zinck, age 12, is taking part in the Caribou Mathematics Competition,
sponsored by Ontario's Brock University and available online on certain
contest days throughout the school year. We wish him luck in the challenge. In
recent years, we've made a point of celebrating those who excel in spelling
bees and other literacy competitions. Here's an opportunity to applaud our
outstanding achievers in math.
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leona...@gmail.com
Reported by: Wijdan, in the StarCityNews
ø Roger the Dodger gets his science news from
that great journal the Star City (ARK) news
The term global warming was used for the first time by Wally Broecker
on August 8, 1975 in a science journal where he published an article
by the title, “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
ø Since this article is 35 years old, we must remind
you that Global Warming does not exist
http://www.starcitynews.com/global-warming-anticipated-to-cause-futur...
— —
ø Roger the Dodger has lost it.
No sense
No brains
No nothing at all
Mr Posting Robot
James Poole & Supunnabul Suwannakij
Bloomberg
Mar 09 05:26:37 GMT 2011
Record food prices are likely to be sustained this y because of high oil costs
and lower harvests, said the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization.
North Korea and Afghanistan face the risk of food shortages and rising prices,
Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO's regional representative in Asia, said in an
interview in Bangkok today.
Global food costs rose to an all-time high in Feb, according to the UN. The
increase has contributed to riots across N Africa and the Middle E that
toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Prices surged as bad weather ruined
crops from Canada to Australia and Russia banned grain exports after its worst
drought in a half-century.
"We will get an increase in production but not sufficient to ease the market,"
said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior FAO economist. "High volatile prices will
continue in 2011 and even in 2012," he said in a video briefing today.
An index of 55 food commodities rose 2.2% to 236 points from 230.7 in Jan, the
UN said March 3. Wheat rose 60% on the Chicago Board of Trade in the past 12
months, corn gained 92% and rice added 5 percent.
Turmoil in oil-producing countries including Libya has pushed crude above $100
a barrel. Higher crude prices make biofuels produced from crops more
competitive while raising the cost of tractor fuel and fertilizer for farmers.
Global food prices probably will rise in the 1st 1/2 of this century because
of an expanding population and higher incomes, slower crop-yield growth and
the effect of climate change, Ross Garnaut, the Australian government's
climate-change adviser, said last wk at a conference in Canberra.
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Mr Posting Robot
Agroecology could move developed nations away from oil-dependent industrial
farming, cut food prices, and increase harvests.
Business Green
09 Mar 2011
Shifting away from artificial fertilisers and pesticides to ecological farming
could double food production within a decade, a UN report has argued.
Released yesterday, the report predicts so-called agroecology techniques, such
as Bangladeshi rice farmers using ducks to eat weeds in paddy fields, could
also make farms more resilient to floods, droughts and rising sea levels
associated with climate change.
The study by Olivier de Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food,
says record food prices and increasing reliance on an oil-dependent model of
industrial farming could be countered by adopting agricultural techniques
pioneered in Cuba, which allowed the island nation to defy the loss of cheap
fertilisers and pesticides following the collapse of its Soviet benefactors
and increase yields during the 1990s.
The report says agricultural projects in 57 nations that use natural methods
to deter pests or high-canopy trees to shade coffee groves have resulted in
crop yields increasing 80 per cent, while 20 African projects saw crop yields
double within 3 to 10 years.
De Schutter said the implications of the report's findings are greatest for
sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America and Asia. "Sound ecological
farming can significantly boost production and, in the long term, be more
effective than conventional farming," he told Reuters at the launch of the
report.
However, he noted that developed nations would find a quick shift to
agroecology methods problematic, because of their "addiction" to an industrial
agricultural model.
De Schutter's work comes a day after a report from UN agency the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated food security was at risk from climate
change-related weather events, increasing demand for biofuels and
protectionist tariffs.
It warned food price volatility is likely to continue, and could destabilise
vulnerable nations as prices continue an upward trend over the next decade.
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Mr Posting Robot
Elisabeth Rosenthal
NYTimes
March 9, 2011
TIMBÍO, Colombia -- Like most of the small landowners in Colombia's lush
mountainous Cauca region, Luis Garzón, 80, and his family have thrived for
decades by supplying shade-grown, rainforest-friendly Arabica coffee for top
foreign brands like Nespresso and Green Mountain. A sign in the center of a
nearby town proclaims, "The coffee of Cauca is No. 1!"
But over the last few years, coffee yields have plummeted here and in many of
Latin America's other premier coffee regions as a result of rising
temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rains, phenomena that many
scientists link partly to global warming.
Coffee plants require the right mix of temperature, rainfall and spells of
dryness for beans to ripen properly and maintain their taste. Coffee pests
thrive in the warmer, wetter weather. Bean production at the Garzóns' farm is
therefore down 70% from 5 y ago, leaving the family short of money to buy
clothing for their toddlers and "thinking twice" about sending older children
to college, said Mr Garzon's 44-year-old son, Albiero, interviewed in a
yellow stucco house decorated with coffee posters and madonnas.
The shortage of high-end Arabica coffee beans is also being felt in New York
supermarkets and Paris cafes, as customers blink at escalating
prices. Purveyors fear that the Arabica coffee supply from Colombia may never
rebound -- that the world might, in effect, hit "peak coffee."
In 2006, Colombia produced more than 12 mn of 132-pound bags of coffee, and
set a goal of 17 mn for 2014. Last y the yield was 9 mn bags.
Brands like Maxwell, Yuban and Folgers have increased the retail prices of
many grinds by 25% or more since the middle of last y in light of tight supply
and higher wholesale prices. Profits of high-end coffee chains like Starbucks
and Green Mountain have been eroded.
Coffee futures of Arabica, the high-end bean that comes predominantly from
Latin America, have risen more than 85% since last June, to $2.94 a pound,
partly over concerns about supply, extreme weather and future quality, said
George Kopp, an analyst at the International Futures Group in Chicago.
Yet as stockpiles of some of the best coffee beans shrink, global demand is
soaring as the rising middle classes of emerging economies like Brazil, India
and China develop the coffee habit.
"Coffee production is under threat from global warming, and the outlook for
Arabica in particular is not good," said Peter Baker, a coffee specialist with
CABI, a research group in Britain that focuses on agriculture and the
environment, noting that climate changes, including heavy rains and droughts,
have harmed crops across many parts of Central and S America.
A leading coffee scientist, Mr Baker has rattled trade forums by warning,
Cassandra-like, of the possibility of "peak coffee," meaning that, like
supplies of oil, coffee supplies might be headed toward an inexorable decline
unless growers make more concerted efforts to expand production globally.
Announcing its annual meeting this spring, the Specialty Coffee Association of
America spoke of "extreme challenges," warning, "It is not too far-fetched to
begin questioning the very existence of specialty coffee."
Two categories of coffee, Arabica and Robusta, account for virtually all
consumption. With its more delicate taste and lower caffeine content, Arabica
is the more popular and more expensive variety, though generally more finicky
in its weather requirements. Robusta production dominates in Asia and Africa.
Colombia is the No. 2 Arabica exporter after Brazil, where production is
centered on larger, more mechanized farms and continues to increase.
Colombian highlands, where some of the most prized Arabica in the world grows
at elevations of more than a mile, residents say that climate-related threats
seem to be coming from all directions.
The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation says that high fertilizer prices have
also dented yields. But it agrees with a 2009 report from the International
Coffee Organization that concluded, "Climatic variability is the main factor
responsible for changes in coffee yields all over the world."
Average temperatures in Colombia's coffee growing regions have risen nearly
one degree in the last 30 years, and in some mountain areas the increase has
been double that, according to Cenicafé, the national coffee research
center. Precipitation in this area was more than 25% above average in
the last few years.
At the new, higher temperatures, the plants' buds abort or their fruit ripens
too quickly for optimum quality. Heat also brings pests like coffee rust, a
devastating fungus that could not survive the previously cool mountain
weather. The heavy rains damage the fragile Arabica blossoms, and the two-week
dry spells that prompt the plant to flower seldom occur.
"Half a degree can make a big difference for coffee -- it is adapted to a very
specific zone," said Néstor Riaño, a specialist in agroclimatology for
Cenicafé. "If temperature rises even a bit, the growth is affected, and the
plagues and diseases rise."
While climate scientists agree that the increase in temperature is a clear
signal of global warming and high ocean temperatures are generally associated
with more frequent storms, scientists are uncertain whether the peculiar
weather patterns in the area are directly related to warming, said Stephen
E Zebiak, director general of the International Research Institute for
Climate and Society at Columbia University.
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Mr Posting Robot
Alister Doyle
Thu Mar 10, 2011
Oslo (Reuters) - Mass deaths of bee colonies in many parts of the world may be
part of a wider, hidden threat to wild insect pollinators vital to human food
supplies, a UN study indicated on Thu.
Declines in flowering plants, a spread of parasites, use of pesticides or air
pollution were among more than a dozen factors behind recent collapses of bee
colonies mainly in N America and Europe, the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) said.
That cocktail of problems -- rather than a single cause killing bees in hives
that might be easier to fix -- may also threaten wild bees and other insects
vital to pollinate crops such as soybeans, potatoes or apple trees.
"It's the tip of the iceberg we're seeing with the honey bees," Peter Neumann,
a lead author of the study of "global honey bee colony disorders and other
threats to insect pollinators," told Reuters.
"There is not an immediate pollination disaster but the writing is on the
wall," said Neumann, of the Swiss Bee Research Center. "We have to do
something to ensure pollination for future generations."
The study said there were also reports of bee colony collapses in China, Egypt
and Latin America.
"There are some indicators that it is becoming a global issue," he said in a
telephone interview.
BIRDS AND THE BEES
Bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles or birds are estimated
to do work worth 153 bn euros ($212.3 billion) a y to the human economy --
about 9.5% of the total value of human food production, it said.
Recent estimates of the contribution by managed species, mainly honey bees,
range up to 57 bn euros. In the United States, over 2 mn bee colonies
are trucked around the nation to help pollination every year.
"Of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of the world's food, over 70 are
pollinated by bees," Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said in a statement.
"Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have
the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the
reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world
of close to 7 bn people," he said.
The report urged a shift toward ecological farming, less dependent on
insecticides and more resilient to threats such as climate change. Food prices
have hit record levels and are one factor behind uprisings in Egypt or
Tunisia.
UNEP said farmers could be given incentives to set aside land to "restore
pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants" as part of a
shift to a "Green Economy."
Neumann also urged more research into insects, noting that charismatic animals
such as polar bears won most attention as victims of global warming. "Insects
are usually not cute but they are the backbone of ecosystems," he said.
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Mr Posting Robot
WSJ
March 10, 2011, 7:01 P.M. ET
London (Dow Jones)--Scientists from across 6 continents hope to succeed where
politicians have failed by creating an international consensus on how to feed
the world in the face of climate change.
Launched Fri, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change
will bring together experts in both natural and social sciences to develop a
clear set of policy recommendations to adapt world agriculture to changing
environmental pressures.
What sets the commission apart from other studies, according to plant genetics
expert Molly Jahn of the University of Wisconsin, is the cross-disciplinary
approach the group will ...
<http://news.google.com.au/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_6_1_aa&usg=AFQjCNH45Z8AN
YfFKuaePlaOXZrMnVQOQQ&did=c4f189bbcc7be77e&sig2=Kus5iSfezZR6p2bZLiig1g&cid=17593
870562812&ei=XLd5TYCFKMSokgXBz6qnAQ&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonlin
e.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FBT-CO-20110310-718190.html>
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---
Mr Posting Robot
Farmers sound off about how their livelihood has been affected by climate
change and rising oil prices.
Farmers at the year-round market at Logan Square say they are feeling the
effects of climate change on their produce.
Climate change affects production of the top 3 crops in the US -- corn,
soybeans and wheat.
Tyler Moss, Jennifer Wholeyand, Lindsey Valich
Medill Reports, Northwestern University
March 10, 2011
"Food is power."
Michigan farmer and livestock producer Nate Robinson has known this for years.
Rising food costs impact every person in every country across the globe,
diminishing the ability of millions of families to meet other essential
needs. Increasing floods and drought due to global warming is expected to push
food prices higher yet--it's happening already.
Robinson is feeling these effects both at his farm in Cassopolis, Mich., and
at the grocery store. He finds himself taking a lower margin, despite the fact
that he is forced to raise prices as food production becomes more expensive.
"Unfortunately, the consumer ultimately will pay for this rising cost.
Everyone has to eat," Robinson said. "We go to the grocery store as a family
and when we do, we're a little bit in sticker-shock."
America is particularly vulnerable to the toll climate change can take on food.
The US is the largest producer of corn in the world, generating more than 10
mn of the world's nearly 23 mn bushels of corn in 2000, the most recent
statistic from the National Corn Growers Association. Experts say our country
must be poised to take on a larger burden of worldwide food supply as crop
yields of rice and corn in the tropics drop by an estimated 20 to 40% due to
climate change.
The issue
Although the causes for rising food prices are numerous, "global climate
destabilization" (as the experts prefer to call it) is playing a significant rol
e.
Many of the world's agricultural hubs have been hit with massive flooding, in
places as far flung as the Midwest and Bangladesh. While some skeptics are
convinced this is just part of the Earth's natural weather cycles, changes
marked over time have convinced many that climate change is responsible for
the erratic weather.
If that is the case, it will only get worse over time as farmers face
unpredictable growing seasons and unexpected weather patterns.
The global ability to feed the growing population is a product of the Green
Revolution, said Lewis Ziska, plant psychologist with the USDA's Agricultural
Research Service in Beltsville, Md. The Green Revolution is a term used to
describe the development of semi-dwarf cereal varieties in the 1950s and 1960s
that could grow with less fertilizer and water.
"The result was a doubling or tripling of cereal production," Ziska
said. "Cereals, particularly corn, wheat and rice, are the foods that feed the
world."
There is no question that weather plays a significant role in food production,
said Jeff Andresen, geologist and researcher of agricultural meteorology and
applied climatology at Michigan State University in E Lansing.
"Weather, and its longer term climate, are the most important, uncontrollable
variables in food production," said Andresen, who is also the state
climatologist for Michigan.
While climate change at present is often thought of in terms of rising global
temperatures, it also encompasses erratic weather patterns.
"There is some suggestion that the frequency and magnitude of extremes might
increase," Andresen said. "It is a major fear because these extremes have a
disproportionately high impact on food production."
Iowa, for instance, has experienced 2 so-called 500-year floods in a period of
15 years--one in 1993 and one in 2008. A 500-year flood is one with a
probability of occurring once every 500 y in any given year.
Developed countries have farms 1000s of acres large, typically of only one or
2 varieties of cereal, Ziska said.
"Essentially these farms are monoculture," he said, "and do not have the
biological diversity to adapt well to extreme events."
Farmers have the ability to adjust to increasing temperatures because it is
something they can anticipate from y to year, Andresen said. Changes in
extreme weather variability, such as flooding, are much more difficult to
handle because major storms are unpredictable. Effects of climate change
cover direct impacts and indirect impacts, he said.
Direct impacts consist of mass flooding, droughts and other extreme weather
events that are directly linked to the changing climate. Indirect impacts are
associated changes that will cause problems further down the line, such as the
prevalence of mold because of moist crop stocks, or insects living y round
because of higher temperatures.
Direct impacts
Carbon dioxide is the thermostat for climate change. As levels rise in the
atmosphere, so do temperatures, a phenomena documented in 100s of 1000s of
y of data from ancient air pockets trapped in ice cores from places such as
Antartica and Greenland. At 390 ppm, CO2 levels are higher now
than they have been in more than 600k years.
As CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to be pumped into the Earth's
atmosphere, erratic weather patterns that disrupt global agriculture are
becoming more and more frequent, said Steve Kolmes, director of environmental
studies at the University of Portland in Oregon. And as the atmosphere
continues to warm, major storms will become even more forceful.
In 2010, Russia banned all exports of grain after millions of acres of their
wheat supply was destroyed in a severe drought. Floods in countries such as
Bangladesh and Australia are current examples sever weather, Kolmes said.
"In the last year, the Bangladeshi floods submerged something like a quarter
of the country," he said. "And the cyclone that just went through Australia
took out much of the banana crop."
Kolmes prefers the term "global climactic destabilization" to global warming.
That is because the term global warming can be misleading, as impacts will
differ in different parts of the world. For instance, in some places sea level
shifts are causing inundation, he said, and even temporary inundation can
damage a crop. In other places, increased temperatures can destroy yields as
soil loses moisture due to evaporation.
"An example is rice," Kolmes said. "The yields of rice plants drop badly when
the nights stay warmer. The projections are that the tropical crops of rice
and corn are going to drop in their yields maybe 20 to 40 percent."
The logical conclusion is that, as weather makes food production more
difficult, prices will rise and global hunger will become an even more serious i
ssue.
"We developed an agriculture based on a very long, stable climate," he
said. "And it appears, at least for the foreseeable future, that we've
disrupted that appreciably."
Indirect impacts
One example of an indirect impact of climate destabilization can be seen in
Michigan's fruit trees.
"Public enemy number one for apple growers is the apple cobbler moth,"
Andresen said. "It lays eggs on apples. When the egg hatches, the larvae eat
through a wormhole in the apple and the apple becomes unsellable."
Apple cobbler moths are cold blooded, Andresen said, meaning their survival is
dependent on temperature. Moths are already surviving through warmer
winters. If temperatures warm as projected, there will be extra generations of
the moths surviving through the growing season, making the insect much more
difficult for farmers to control. The example illustrates how as the planet
continues to heat up, insects will be able to live through the colder seasons,
thus having the potential to damage agriculture.
Another indirect impact of climate change is on food security, said Ewen Todd,
a retailing expert and professor at Michigan State. A study by the European
Environment Agency in Copenhagen in Oct 2008 found a link between increased
global temperature and outbreaks of salmonella in Europe. As temperature went
up, so did the number of cases. Although the specific reason for why this is
occurring is currently unknown, Todd said, the correlation is clear.
The issues pose danger here in the US as well.
One of the major food security concerns is the heating of oceans and other
bodies of water, he said. Vibrio, a type of bacteria responsible for foodborne
illness, grow in warm water.
"Vibrio include cholera, but that's not a major pathogen for N America,"
Todd said. "There is another one called parahaemolyticus that is probably in
the water all over the place, but needs high temperatures to grow into large
numbers."
Another food security issue stemming from climate change is the increased
prevalence of toxic fungi or mycotoxins as a result of mass flooding, he
said. These molds can grow in crops like wheat, cotton and corn.
"The big one is called asatoxin," Todd said. "People can spray for this, but
in some countries that's not feasible."
Small amounts of asatoxin will only make people sick when consumed repeatedly
over many years, he said. Yet countries such as the UK restrict crop imports
with even small traces of the toxin from going into circulation. If flooding
and droughts produce more mold in Africa's poorer nations where farmers cannot
afford to eradicate it, then those farmers will no longer be able to sell
their crops. "It's a trade issue," Todd said. "It means that some of these
African countries can't export, so [the mold] is a barrier."
In some cases, crops in Africa have been stored under moist conditions ideal
for the growth of mold, he said. People who eat these plants get acutely sick,
resulting in future problems such as kidney damage. "You have this extreme
situation where people don't like to eat them," Todd said. "But they're under
starvation conditions and they have to." As the planet heats up and bodies of
water continue to evaporate, more moisture hangs in the air, he said. With
more moisture in the air, mold growth is more extensive. Erratic weather
conditions will stress the plant, making it more susceptible to mold
penetration. Mold spores could start to grow under these moist conditions, and
during metabolism growing would produce the toxin.
"We think mycotoxins are well established in global climate change," Todd
said. "We think they will be a major factor."
GMOs
Making agriculture more efficient and productive is one of the best ways to
combat the food crisis resulting from climate change, Andresen said. Though
they are highly controversial, one of the possible solutions is the continued
proliferation of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms.
"Production efficiency and GMOs - those are 2 issues linked to one another,"
he said. "A lot of the food that is produced never makes it to a table or
plate. It gets lost because of substandard harvest practices or pests. That
could be improved globally if we were able to prevent some of the losses that
regularly occur."
The genes of crops such as corn and wheat could be modified to be less
susceptible to environmental factors like insects, mold or harsh weather
conditions. Robinson uses GM cold tolerant seed at his farm in Michigan to
extend the growing season.
"I've already asked for the cold tolerance seed to come in so I can plant it
when it's a little colder," he said. "It'll sit there and wait 'till the
temperature gets right and not rot."
Despite the misgivings of those on the organic and all-natural bandwagon, many
farmers do not see GMOs as any sort of mad science, Robinson said. To them, it
is just a tool to combat changes in weather.
Biofuel
Perhaps one of the most controversial potential solutions to combate climate
change is biofuel.
While some praise it as the miracle cure to reduce petroleum use--one of the
biggest contributors to global climactic destabilization--others argue that
biofuels are responsible for just as much greenhouse gas, if not more.
Research has shown that biofuels burn cleaner than petroleum. But experts
worry about the carbon footprint of using agricultural land to produce crops
for biofuels. Furthermore, increased production of biofuels means more corn is
grown for ethanol instead of for food.
"As countries are trying to do something about their carbon emissions, they're
going to biofuels a lot, and the biofuels are largely being diverted from food
crops," said Steve Kolmes, professor of biology and environmental studies at
the University of Portland in Oregon.
So while many farmers continue to grow corn, it just never enters the food
chain, Kolmes said. As biofuel use continues and soybeans get turned in
biodiesel, corn gets turned into ethanol, food prices will go up and food
availability will go down.
"One of the basic principals of economics is that when you increase the demand
of something you increase the price," said Tim Searchinger, research scholar
at Princeton University. "It's the growth in demand rather than a shortage in
supply that is the key cause of the food crisis right now."
The US is the world's largest producer of corn, and 80% of corn produced in
the US is used to feed livestock, poultry, and for fish production all over
the world, according to a 2009 report by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The demand for corn and grain has roughly doubled since 2004, according to
Searchinger, who said this is mostly because of an increased demand for biofuels
.
"The biofuels have not quite doubled the rate of growth and that's the single
biggest factor keeping things out of balance," he said. Because biofuel,
unlike weather, is something we can control, Searchinger said we must work to
make biofuel production more efficient.
"It's not that we don't have enough land to produce biofuels--we do," said
Bruce Dale, chemical engineer at Michigan State University. "It's more a
matter of choosing good systems and getting started on those so that over time
those can be more dominant."
There are right ways and wrong ways to produce biofuels, according to
Dale. Double cropping--growing a second crop on the same land after the first
crop is harvested--is one option. This may include planting grasses or legumes
in the winter following the summer harvest of corn and soybeans. These crops
could be used solely for biofuels rather than human food consumption.
"It's more the efficiency with which we use land," Dale said. "If we would
just start growing double crops on our corn land we would impact the quality
of soil, we would reduce green house gases and it would provide a lot of plant
material for production in biofuels."
Another option Dale suggested is making biofuel out of the non-edible parts of
the plant, such as the leaves or the cellulose in corn stalks.
"If we can make biofuel by digesting the cellulose in corn stalks, we could
have both the food and the fuel crop," Kolmes said. "So there are technical
fixes that might make biofuels have a much more neutral impact on the food
supply."
The issue clearly requires more research - and soon.
"We need to invest in agriculture research and infrastructure," Ziska
said. "And we needed to do it yesterday."
The future
Projections by climate modelers in the past generally showed that by 2100,
things are going to be bad, Kolmes said.
The problem is that everything is happening much faster than the models
predicted. Even the most pessimistic of the climate models is being
outstripped by the rate of change.
"It's really hard to get out your crystal ball on this one," he said. While
certain aspects of the issue might be foggy, the ultimate prescription is not:
food shortages will result in higher food prices. If, in fact, climate change
will interfere with global agriculture as predicted, then action needs to be
taken quickly. Research and development must become a priority, Andresen said.
Governments need to put aside their developmental differences and realize this
is a global issue, Todd said. Climate change will affect people
everywhere. Hunger and starvation are tangible concerns. An international
strategy is imperative.
When asked what the future holds for climactic destabilization and rising food
prices, Kolmes laughed sadly.
"I mean, it snowed in San Francisco," Kolmes said, an unusual result of
increasing evaporation of ocean water. "The rules of predictability were
predicated on an atmosphere that we have changed. So instability, I'm afraid,
is the new norm."
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Mr Posting Robot
Arzeena Hamir of the Richmond Food Security Society says high-value crops that
rely heavily on irrigation may be damaged by rising salinity in the Fraser
River.
Matthew Burrows
Straight.com
Feb 10, 2011
A Richmond agrologist believes climate change is affecting salt levels in
Fraser River waters needed to irrigate crops.
"Runoff is concentrating so heavily in the spring now because of climate
change," Arzeena Hamir, coordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society,
told the Georgia Straight. "The melt is happening so early and so fast
that -- come later in the summer, as the river levels are starting to go
down -- what they call a `salt wedge' is starting to come up the Fraser River."
Hamir, a lifelong Richmond resident, is trying to get more farmers growing in
her municipality, mainly through her role on the board of directors of the
nonprofit Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project. She said she started hearing
about higher salinity levels in the river water 2 y ago.
Salinity doesn't affect traditional crops that don't require irrigation, such
as potatoes, she said, but there's a long-term economic implication: a higher
level of salt would restrict the type and variety of crops grown and would hit
the bottom lines of new farmers in the region.
"If we're trying to get young people back into farming, these [non-irrigation
crops] are not the crops that they are interested in, because they are
extremely low-value," Hamir said in a phone interview. "Potatoes are, like,
29 cents a pound, and the same with squash. The return is very low."
Young people want to grow the "high-value salad crops", Hamir said, because
there is a greater return there, especially with the proliferation of farmers ma
rkets.
"And for that, you definitely need irrigation, and so again, the conundrum is
there: if you want young people back in farming, they need access to water
because the type of farming they want to do is fairly highly water-intensive."
In his staff report on salt intrusion into the Fraser River dated July 5,
2010, Richmond's engineering director, John Irving, noted: "The tidal
fluctuations at the mouth of the Fraser River are considered large and have
significant influence on the salt wedge intrusion, particularly during low
flow periods in the Fraser River."
He wrote that only one of 3 Fraser pumping stations that transfer irrigation
water to Richmond ditches is affected by saltwater intrusion at that time, but
that it has a salinity detector that will close water access if the
concentration is too high.
Irving told the Straight by phone that city crews have set the detector at the
No 6 Road pumping station to a salinity level of 500 microsiemens per cm.
"Salt sensitivity in crops starts out at around 700 microsiemens," Irving
said. "We shut it off at 500."
In his report, Irving wrote that "long-term projections of sea level rise" of
between 0.35 m and 1.2 m "will have significant impacts on salt wedge
penetration". He noted that "Richmond permits drinking water to be used for
agricultural purposes but does not offer a discounted water rate for this use."
Robert Gonzalez, general manager of engineering and public works for the City
of Richmond, told the Straight that "climate change and climate-change
adaptation" are topics he and his staff keep at the "forefront". Gonzalez said
the city has invested significantly, starting in 2005, in drainage and
irrigation in E Richmond. He said maintaining long-term viable agriculture is
important for the city.
Veteran city councillor and farmer Harold Steves said he brought the issue of
salt levels to the attention of council after a local farmer, Harry Hogler,
noticed higher salinity in Fraser River water last y.
"We've always had salinity, but we have never had it as bad as this," Steves
told the Straight by phone.
Steves said he has a ranch in Cache Creek, near the Thompson River, a major
tributary of the Fraser. He said the early runoff there reflects that of the
larger river downstream. "We used to have enough drinking water for the house
all y round, but now we don't have a glass of water to drink by the middle of
June, let alone to irrigate our fields."
People are ignoring the impacts of climate change, Steves claimed.
"No matter how much you tell people it's happening, they find a way of putting
the blinkers on," he said. "Well, when the blinkers come off, they're going to
be shocked. That's the problem."
Gonzalez said 40% of Richmond's landmass is used as agricultural land.
"From this perspective, ensuring the long-term viability of our drainage and
irrigation system for agriculture is one of our key priorities, one of our key
initiatives, particularly for keeping farming viable long-term," he explained.
Hamir said a 1st step would entail Richmond city planners sitting down with
the provincial agriculture ministry "to discuss what the potential impacts
might be [of changing salt levels] and how we could go about addressing these".
Agriculture ministry staff did not grant the Straight an interview with
Minister Ben Stewart.
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Mr Posting Robot
EurekAlert
13-Mar-2011
A hidden trove of historical crop yield data from Africa shows that corn long
believed to tolerate hot temperatures is a likely victim of global warming.
Stanford agricultural scientist David Lobell and researchers at the
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) report in the
inaugural issue of Nature Climate Change next wk that a clear negative effect
of warming on maize or corn production was evident in experimental crop trial
data conducted in Africa by the organization and its partners from 1999 to
2007.
Led by Lobell, the researchers combined data from 20k trials in sub-Saharan
Africa with weather data recorded at stations scattered across the
region. They found that a temperature rise of a single degree Celsius would
cause yield losses for 65% of the present maize-growing region in Africa
provided the crops received the optimal amount of rainfall. Under drought
conditions, the entire maize-growing region would suffer yield losses, with
more than 75% of areas predicted to decline by at least 20% for 1 degree
Celsius of warming.
"The pronounced effect of heat on maize was surprising because we assumed
maize to be among the more heat-tolerant crops," said Marianne Banziger,
co-author of the study and deputy director general for research at CIMMYT.
"Essentially, the longer a maize crop is exposed to temperatures above 30 C,
or 86 F, the more the yield declines," she said. "The effect is even larger if
drought and heat come together, which is expected to happen more frequently
with climate change in Africa, Asia or Central America, and will pose an added
challenge to meeting the increasing demand for staple crops on our planet."
Similar sources of information elsewhere in the developing world could improve
crop forecasting for other vast regions where data has been lacking, according
to Lobell, who is lead author of the paper describing the study.
"Projections of climate change impacts on food production have been hampered
by not knowing exactly how crops fair when it gets hot," Lobell said. "This
study helps to clear that issue up, at least for one important crop."
While the crop trials have been run for many y throughout Africa, to identify
promising varieties for release to farmers, nobody had previously examined the
weather at the trial sites and studied the effect of weather on the yields,
said Lobell, who is an assistant professor of environmental Earth system
science.
"These trials were organized for completely different purposes than studying
the effect of climate change on the crops," he said. "They had a much shorter
term goal, which was to get the overall best-performing strains into the hands
of farmers growing maize under a broad range of conditions."
The data recorded at the yield testing sites did not include weather
information. Instead, the researchers used data gathered from weather stations
all over sub-Saharan Africa. Although the stations were operated by different
organizations, all data collection was organized by the World Meteorological
Organization, so the methods used were consistent.
Lobell then took the available weather data and interpolated between recording
stations to infer what the weather would have been like at the test sites. By
merging the weather and crop data, the researchers could examine climate
impacts.
"It was like sending 2 friends on a blind date we weren't sure how it would
go, but they really hit it off," Lobell said.
Previously, most research on climate change impacts on agriculture has had to
rely on crop data from studies in the temperate regions of N America and
Europe, which has been a problem.
"When you take a model that has been developed with data from one kind of
environment, such as a temperate climate, and apply it to the rest of the
world, there are lots of things that can go wrong" Lobell said, noting that
much of the developing world lies in tropical or subtropical climates.
But he said many of the larger countries in the developing world, such as
India, China and Brazil, which encompass a wide range of climates, are running
yield testing programs that could be a source of comparable data. Private
agribusiness companies are also increasingly doing crop testing in the
tropics.
"We're hoping that with this clear demonstration of the value of this kind of
data for assessing climate impacts on crops that others will either share or
take a closer look themselves at their data for various crops," Lobell said.
"I think we may just be scratching the surface of what can be achieved by
combining existing knowledge and data from the climate and agriculture
communities. Hopefully this will help catalyze some more effort in this area."
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Mr Posting Robot
Chetan Chauhan
HindustanTimes
14 Mar 2011
New Delhi -- Indian agriculture needs Rs 1,08000 crore [crore == 10 mn] to
fight climate change in the next 5 y to ensure food for all at a reasonable
price by 2020. To prevent food catastrophe, the agriculture ministry has asked
the funds for implementing National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under
the Prime Mini ster's National Action Plan on Climate Change.
Over 60% of the money will be spent on developing new technologies, crop
varieties and new practices to fight climate change.
"There is a new way to promote use of wheat and rice varieties that consume
30-40% less water than traditional varieties. Farmers also need to be educated
about early harvesting technologies to check impact of rising temperature," a
senior scientist with the Indian Council for Agriculture Research said.
Climate change poses biggest risk to country's food security as Pune-based
Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology has already shown that global
warming was causing erratic monsoon behaviour.
At present, India produces 200 mn tonnes of foodgrain, which is enough to meet
its domestic demand.
But climate change has adversely impact India's chances of feeding all its
people and successfully implementing the National Food Security law.
Climate change experts say India will not be able to meet the annual increase
in demand of 5 to 6% as climate change will either cause the production to
stagnate or fall.
Another major financial component is for creating agriculture infrastructure
around the country to cater to emerging needs of farmers including network of
cold storages and storing capacity to meet emergency situations.
About 6% of the funds to be allocated under the mission will be utilised for
research and development of new climate resilient crop varieties, officials
said.
The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change is expected to take a final
call on the financial allocation shortly.
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Mr Posting Robot
John Shmuel
Financial Post
Mar 14, 2011
With all the focus on the recent spate of unrest in the Middle East, investors
have increasingly turned to oil as part of the commodity allocation in their
portfolios. But one analyst thinks those investors are taking their eye off
the prize.
Pierre Lapointe, global macro strategist for Brockhouse Cooper, said that one
commodity segment that will continue to spike in the face of volatility over
the next few y is agriculture.
And it's not just a burgeoning global population that is putting supply
pressures on agriculture. Mr Lapointe points out that the damage inflicted by
storms and floods has been steadily increasing since 1990, a direct result of
ongoing climate change. More and more, that damage is affecting major
agricultural producing regions of the world -- meaning in today's high-priced
crop market, holding agricultural commodities in your basket is a good bet.
"Speculators ... have massively increased their bets on energy prices," said
Mr Lapointe in a research note, speaking of the recent move to oil in wake of
unrest in Libya.
"Net long speculators' positions on WTI futures have climbed to 275,582
contracts, the highest level on record," he added. "But their renewed interest
in oil also led them to reduce their bets on agricultural
commodities. Considering the increasing trend in climate-related natural
disasters and accelerating global economy, we expect speculators to return to
agricultural commodities in coming weeks."
To put the risk of increasingly unstable weather in perspective, consider
where storms and floods rank in terms of annual damage from natural disasters
like earthquakes. Recently, a spate of serious earthquakes -- last year's
Chilean and Haitian quakes, and Fri's Japanese earthquake -- have wrought
billions of dollars of damage to regional economies. But Mr Lapointe points
out that storms and floods have on average caused more damage than earthquakes
every y since 1990.
While seismic activity has resulted in $19.6-billion of damages on average
since 1990, floods have accounted for $19.8-billion. However those 2 natural
disasters pale in comparison to storms which have, on average, resulted in
$33.8-billion in damages a year.
And unlike earthquakes, weather-based natural disasters are becoming
increasingly more frequent and destructive.
"While large seismic shocks have remained somewhat stable over the past few
years, it is not the case for other natural disasters," he said. "As we wrote
in our Feb 2nd Daily Note, climate change has led to a sharp increase in the
number of climate-related disasters. The number of large storms has increased
significantly since the early 1990s."
He compiled 2 seperate graphs to show how extreme the uptick has been.
The bottom line? Mr Lapointe said that if you don't have agricultural
commodity exposure -- either via direct commodities, or through agrilcutural
stocks -- then it's time to incorporate it into your portfolio.
"The past decade has shown that there is a significant change in weather
patterns that could disrupt crops all over the World," he said in his
report. "In this context, we reiterate our overweight recommendation on
agricultural commodities, but also on stocks in that industry such as
fertilizers, crop protection, farm equipment, etc."
<http://news.google.com.au/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_11_0_t&usg=AFQjCNG2TeecI
EQ6eofO0ZMtx2KQHIP2vw&did=455128cfc53442a4&sig2=8BI09FJvxvCbjrpxHsz1Xg&cid=17593
872047753&ei=g1l_TfGGN8SokgXYpuHIAg&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbusin
ess.financialpost.com%2F2011%2F03%2F14%2F34343%2F>
MYREF: 20110315233001 msg201103158345
[140 more news items]
---
[Weather is responsible for climate change:]
And that's the only reason for the heat!
Strong northeast winds being superheated desert air from the inland to the
the southern capitals.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 31 Jan 2011 13:42 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
A review of crop trial data from 1000s of sites across Africa shows that a
temperature increase of 1 degree C (1.8 F) could cause declines in corn
harvests in two-thirds of the continent's maize-growing regions.
Yale Environment 360
Reuters
Thu Mar 17, 2011 12:14pm EDT
A review of crop trial data from 1000s of sites across Africa shows that a
temperature increase of 1 degree C (1.8 F) could cause declines in corn
harvests in two-thirds of the continent's maize-growing regions. Drawing on
previously unstudied data from 20k trials of corn yields across Africa from
1999 to 2007, an international team of researchers found that the longer corn
crops are exposed to temperatures above 30 degrees C (86 F), the more yields
decline. And under drought conditions, the researchers found that more than 75
percent of corn-growing regions suffered yield declines of at least 20 percent
as temperatures rose 1 degree C.
Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center,
reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change, said the results surprised
them because maize was assumed to be among the more heat-tolerant crops. The
researchers reached their conclusions after gathering data from the 20k trial
sites and then comparing it with temperature and rainfall data. They said the
results show that corn, a staple crop for many Africans, could suffer
significant yield declines if, as predicted, higher temperatures and drought
impact Africa in the future.
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---
Scientists [and kooks] are always changing their story and as a Conservative, I
have no tolerance for ambiguity.
It proves that all science is lies and the only thing we can trust is
right wing rhetoric.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 14 Jan 2011 14:46 +1100
CORRECTION:
True science, (remember that?) can be trusted, but this "science" is ALL LIES!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 19 Feb 2011 14:46 +1100
Last Post
wrote:
> Science To Take Up Food Security Where Politics Disappoints
>
> WSJ
> March 10, 2011, 7:01 P.M. ET
>
> London (Dow Jones)--Scientists from across 6 continents hope to succeed where
> politicians have failed by creating an international consensus on how to feed
> the world in the face of climate change.
ø The problem here is that they are speaking of
"global warming" whiich is unlikely to recur for
100,000 years or more. Those "scientists" are
ignoring the real facts of the changing climate
which has been in a continuous down trend
for 1,600 years or more.
>
> Launched Fri, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change
> will bring together experts in both natural and social sciences to develop a
> clear set of policy recommendations to adapt world agriculture to changing
> environmental pressures.
ø A wasted effort altogether.
— —
• Roger the Dodger has lost it.
Last Post
HEADER CORRECTED
Dawlish
Some people do actually believe that GW does not actually exist.
Some people believe the world is flat too.
Mr Posting Robot
President's Trip Provides the Right Setting for New Collaboration
Jake Caldwell
[Jake Caldwell is the Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade & Energy
at American Progress].
Center for American Progress
SOURCE: AP/Maurilio Cheli
March 18, 2011
President Barack Obama is embarking on a historic trip to Latin America this
wk to strengthen US ties to this vital region and commemorate the 50th
anniversary of President John F Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress." The United
States and Brazil should seize this opportunity to forge a strategic
partnership to confront global food insecurity.
Feeding the hungry throughout the Western Hemisphere was a key priority of the
original Alliance for Progress. President Kennedy declared at the launch of
the alliance in 1961:
For hungry men and women cannot wait for economic discussions or diplomatic
meetings; their need is urgent, and their hunger rests heavily on the
conscience of their fellow men.
This remains a pressing global need today. The UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, or FAO, now estimates that more than 925 mn people
worldwide go to bed each night malnourished and hungry. Making matters worse,
food prices have risen to record levels in the past 8 m in a world
agricultural system that is rapidly changing and under increased strain from a
growing global population, changing diets, tight supplies, rising energy
costs, and climate-change-induced extreme weather events affecting crop yields.
Rising food prices hit the world's poor extremely hard. The World Bank
estimates that the spike in food prices since June has placed 44 million
people into extreme poverty.
The good news is the United States and Brazil are well-positioned to help
reverse these trends. They are the largest economies in the Western Hemisphere
and they are recognized global agricultural superpowers. The United States is
the largest agricultural exporter in the world and Brazil is ranked third. The
2 nations are also ranked number one (United States) and 2 (Brazil) in the
production and export of soybeans, beef, and poultry, and they are major
producers of corn, cotton, and pork. They both share impressive records in
agricultural research and innovation.
Confronting the rise in current food prices and achieving lasting global food
security will require long-term investment in developing countries'
agricultural development. The United States and Brazil will also need to
impart lessons learned--some good, some not-so-good--from their respective
experiences increasing food production. Brazil has made remarkable progress in
agriculture development in the last 40 years. Strengthening US-Brazil links
on food security creates an opportunity to assess and draw on Brazil's efforts
in agricultural production.
Several of the methods and conditions the United States and Brazil have used
are simply not practical elsewhere. Clearly, exclusive reliance on the
large-scale, energy-intensive industrial agriculture model that the United
States and Brazil are frequently associated with will neither be sustainable
nor appropriate for boosting agricultural production in the vast majority of
the world.
Nonetheless, the Brazilian experience--explained in brief in the next
section--can help guide ongoing efforts to boost agricultural development in
the developing world as an essential component of meeting the world's food
security needs. That experience should be combined with an emphasis on meeting
local agriculture needs with local knowledge, sustainable techniques, and less
resource-intensive farming in developing countries.
Brazil's impressive agricultural success
Brazil is in economic overdrive. The economy grew in 2010 at a rate of 7.5
percent, and Brazil is now the seventh-largest economy in the world. Brazil's
growth in the agricultural sector is even more impressive. It made the
successful transition from a net food importer in the 1970s to a net food
exporter powerhouse. The value of Brazil's crops grew 300% in the last 16 y.
Brazil is nearly the physical size of the United States and it is blessed with
substantial land and water resources. But the majority of its agricultural
production gains in recent y have been a result of boosting yields and less a
result of increased land use.
The country is undoubtedly using more land for agriculture. Land under
cultivation has increased by 1/3 and numerous challenges remain to ensure
biodiversity conservation is not overrun by agriculture and deforestation in
the cerrado and Amazon regions. In general, however, agricultural production
is 10 times the level of land use. Grain production in the cerrado increased
129.7% from 1991 to 2007 but the corresponding area cultivated increased by
only 25.9 percent.
Brazil's success increasing yields is less about importing and attempting to
replicate other nations' identical agricultural successes of the past. That
approach rarely works. Brazil's achievements are instead more noteworthy for
blending agricultural research and innovation with actual conditions on the grou
nd.
As Brazil developed its agricultural sector, both the private and public
sector dedicated resources to agricultural research and the United States
provided considerable support. Brazil focused on enhancing soil quality,
low-technology cross-breeding of plant varieties, and a willingness to explore
innovative techniques such as no-till agriculture that results in more
nutrient and carbon-rich soil.
Brazil has also made impressive commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
36% to 39% by 2020 by reducing deforestation by 80% in the Amazon and 40% in
the cerrado savannah.
Brazil can put this knowledge and experience to use in helping the rest of the
developing world enhance its agricultural development.
Ensuring global food security
Today's rising global food prices are a harbinger of things to come. FAO
experts estimate global agricultural productivity must double in 40 y to keep
pace with increased demand and a projected global population of 9.1 bn in
2050.
Climate change's impact on agriculture and development in developing countries
is projected to be particularly acute. More than 1 bn of the world's poor
depend on agriculture for their livelihood and it is predicted that severe
crop losses leading to food shortages in Africa and S Asia will happen in a
much shorter timeframe than previously anticipated.
Agriculture productivity is a fundamental building block of economic
development and poverty reduction in many developing countries. The United
States and developed countries have neglected investment in agricultural
development and small farmers in developing countries for too long. Investment
in agriculture programs has shrunk to 3.5% of all US overseas
development assistance from 18% in 1979. Agricultural productivity growth in
developing countries has dropped below 1 percent.
Greater collaboration on food security between the United States and Brazil
can reverse this dangerous course.
For starters, they will need to rethink the sustainability of exporting
industrial-level, energy-intensive agriculture productivity to developing
countries. This approach is unlikely to meet global food security needs over
the long term in a resource-constrained world. A more diverse strategy is neede
d.
Instead, the United States and Brazil should provide technical assistance,
training, and financial incentives to developing countries to enhance food
security and adapt to the destructive impacts of climate change. The 2 nations
should focus on agricultural production that preserves the soil and water
supply, promotes crop diversification, encourages local agricultural knowledge
and the role of women farmers, and reduces dependence on fossil fuels and
other high-cost inputs. It will be vital for the private and public sector in
the United States and Brazil to fund agricultural research to increase food
production yields, conserve biodiversity, and combat pests and disease in a
safe and transparent manner.
The United States and Brazil are also the global leaders in the production and
export of biofuels. They have a mutual interest in ensuring that future
biofuels production moves forward in a sustainable manner in a world
experiencing growing competition for grain and natural resources. The next
generation of biofuels does have a role to play in diversifying the energy
needs of the United States and Brazil and other countries. But ongoing
progress will require action to ensure biofuels are done smarter and better.
The United States and Brazil should strive to produce advanced biofuels that
deliver measurable lifecycle greenhouse gas reductions, use feedstocks grown
sustainably or nonfood-based feedstocks, and are produced in closed containers
or on semiarable land that minimizes competition with food or feed. The 2
countries should collaborate immediately to leverage funding, increase private
investment, coordinate trade policy, and expedite the deployment of technology
to spur advanced biofuels development in developing countries.
Coming together
The United States and Brazil have an opportunity and a responsibility to lead
the fight against one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: food
security. Making the world more food secure is an urgent but achievable goal,
and the 50th anniversary of the Alliance for Progress is a fitting moment to
strengthen this joint effort.
In the medium term we can expect global food prices to remain high due to
increased demand, low stocks, high oil prices, and increasing vulnerability of
harvests to the impacts of climate change. The world food system must
transform to meet these challenges.
An emboldened strategic partnership on food security between the United States
and Brazil will require an honest assessment of conventional
resource-intensive past practices. Only the best ideas that meet local needs
and contribute to increasing yields and sustainable production should be
deployed in developing countries.
Together, the United States and Brazil can strengthen agricultural investment
and development in developing countries to meet the needs of a growing world
population. Words must be turned into action.
MYREF: 20110320080002 msg201103204176
[142 more news items]
Christopher
right now by turning our food into lousy, engine rotting ethanol fuel
so he can make ADM and corporate farmers rich. Brazil is not
reducing deforestation, but rather radically increasing deforestation
by planting more biofuel crops on the corpses of burned down
rainforests.
Obama is not only the king of war, he is The King of Starvation.
dechucka
"Last Post"
I hope it is
James
news:aec7bb6a-fa0b-4694...@s9g2000yqm.googlegroups.com
>
> Some people believe the world is flat too.
Mr Posting Robot
The Seattle Times
Tue, March 15, 2011
Santa Maria De Dota, Costa Rica -- Near the crest of a hill on a farm named La
Edda for his mother, Francisco Flores bends a knee to touch the curled,
yellowed leaves of a young coffee tree, one of 100s on a windswept ridge where
coffee grew strong 2 decades ago.
"They live, but they don't produce," Flores said. "I have an ache in my
heart. It's very difficult to see coffee businesses that went from generation
to generation to generation, closing."
Yields in Costa Rica have dropped dramatically in the past decade, with farmers
and scientists blaming climate change for a significant portion of the troubles.
Many long-established plantation owners' trees have flowered too early or
withered. Some have given up. Others are trying to outwit changes in temperature
,
wind and rain with new farming techniques and hardier tree varieties.
Like many tropical crops, coffee cannot tolerate extreme high and low
temperatures, and it needs dry and wet seasons. Costa Rica and other
countries, such as Colombia, with sophisticated coffee farms and mills appear
to be noticing the impact of climate change first.
These problems are helping to push up the price of a latte or espresso at
coffee shops everywhere.
Most important, the fate of coffee in Costa Rica could be a bellwether for
food production -- and prices -- globally, as farmers around the world cope
with mudslides, droughts and creeping changes in temperature.
Global warming more accurately called climate change poses "a direct business
threat to our company," Starbucks executive Jim Hanna told an Environmental
Protection Agency panel in 2009 in Seattle.
Experts are trying to help coffee farmers with the problem.
Mostly, they recommend farmers do more of what they have been advising for y
to protect the environment and grow better coffee, such as adding shade trees
and planting in curved and terraced rows to prevent massive water runoff.
"Farmers are scared," said Orlando Mora, an agronomist at Starbucks' farmer
support center in Costa Rica. "They are having to alter their daily routines a
lot."
Roberto Mata, who runs the Coopedota cooperative in Santa Maria that sells to
Starbucks, worries about all of it.
"If coffee falls to 100 cents a pound, we won't survive. We will disappear,"
Mata said. Coffee currently sells on the commodities market for about $2.75
per pound.
"Some people do not know what we are suffering," Mata said. "They can go
shopping and buy a bunch of items and throw them all away, and they can sit in
their cars for 6 hours and think it's not affecting anybody. It's affecting
somebody."
Costa Rica has 25% fewer acres planted in coffee than it did a decade ago,
according to the national coffee agency iCafe. Roughly 10k farmers have quit
coffee, some converting their land to pasture for cattle or dairy businesses.
The remaining coffee farms produce less, with yields down 26% in a decade.
MYREF: 20110322023002 msg2011032210008
[139 more news items]
leona...@gmail.com
>
> WSJ
> March 10, 2011, 7:01 P.M. ET
>
> London (Dow Jones)--Scientists from across 6 continents hope to succeed where
> politicians have failed by creating an international consensus on how to feed
> the world in the face of climate change.
>
> Launched Fri, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change
> will bring together experts in both natural and social sciences to develop a
> clear set of policy recommendations to adapt world agriculture to changing
> environmental pressures.
ø Just another UN fascist boondoggle, worthless at best.
Mr Posting Robot
Clare Leschin-Hoar
Mar 8th 2011 @ 3:00PM
The United Nations released a whopper of a report today. In the midst of
soaring global food and oil prices, the agency let loose a public stunner:
World hunger and climate change cannot be solved with industrial farming. So
much for seed-giant Pioneer Hi-Bred's "We Feed The World" slogan. Yowch.
The UN study makes it clear -- small-scale farmers can double food production
in 10-years by using simple farming methods. According the The Guardian,
insect-trapping plants in Kenya or weed-eating ducks in Bangladesh's rice
paddies may be the way to feed the world's burgeoning population.
"To feed 9 bn people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient
farming techniques available. Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that
agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting
food production in regions where the hungry live," says Olivier De Schutter,
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report.
De Schutter told the Wall Street Journal that promoting natural farming
techniques is the only sustainable way to guard against future food crisis.
"We set up our farming techniques in the 1920s when we thought there would be
a never-ending supply of cheap oil," he said. "Developing farming in a way
which makes it less addicted to fossil energy is much more promising."
The agroecological methods mentioned throughout the report sure sound like
organic farming to us, but ag writer Jill Richards says there are subtle
differences separating the 2 terms. Agroecology increases soil quality,
biodiversity and can make farms more resilient to climate change, but it also
values indigenous farming methods, she says.
"A net global increase in food production alone will not guarantee the end of
hunger (as the poor cannot access food even when it is available), and
increase in productivity for poor farmers will make a dent in global
hunger. Potentially, gains in productivity by smallholder farmers will provide
an income to farmers as well, if they grow a surplus of food that they can
sell," she writes.
So are we on the verge of an agricultural sea change? asks WSJ reporter
Caroline Henshaw.
"As leaders debate how to combat record food prices and producers struggle to
meet rapidly growing demand, the world is looking for a new agricultural
revolution," Henshaw writes.
We think today's UN report might give that revolution the mighty shove it needs.
MYREF: 20110323180002 msg201103236533
[130 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
Steve Karnowski
AP
March 21, 2011, 3:24AM ET
Minneapolis -- The federal government is investing $60 mn in 3 major
studies on the effects of climate change on crops and forests. The
goal is to help farmers and foresters continue producing food and
timber while trying to limit the impact of a changing environment.
The 3 studies are bringing together researchers from a wide variety of
fields and encouraging them to find solutions appropriate to specific
geographic areas. One study will focus on corn in the Midwest corn,
another on wheat in the Northwest and a 3rd on Southern pine forests.
Roger Beachy of the US Department of Agriculture says shifting
weather patterns already have had a big effect on agriculture, and the
country needs to prepare for even greater changes.
Some 2 dozen universities will participate in the research.
MYREF: 20110329170002 msg2011032911829
[127 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
Luzi Ann Javier
Bloomberg
Apr 01 04:18:48 GMT 2011
Wheat crops in China, the world's biggest consumer, and the US, the largest
exporter, face "serious trouble" if La Nina lingers, extending damage to
nations' harvests, British Weather Services said.
The 2 countries will be the last to emerge from the dry conditions linked to
the weather event, which has also caused heavy flooding in Australia and
Canada and drought in Argentina. Dry weather will linger for the next 2
months, parching wheat crops that have already deteriorated in Texas and
Oklahoma, and are preventing much-needed rains from reaching northern China,
British Weather Services and forecaster Telvent DTN Inc. said.
"If it takes another 2 months, we're going to be in serious trouble," Jim
Dale, a senior risk meteorologist at British Weather, said in an
interview. "Time is of the essence. If you lose time, you're losing money,
quantity and quality."
Sustained dry conditions in China and the US may slash the next harvest,
extending global food prices that according to a United Nations index surged
to a record in Feb. About 44 mn people have been pushed into poverty since
June by the "dangerous levels' of food prices, World Bank President Robert
Zoellick said in Feb.
``Weather is going to be key," Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, an analyst at Barclays
Capital, said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. ``Even if we have a
move up in acreage, it doesn't automatically translate to an increase in
production."
Winter-wheat represents 71% of the current US crop, according to the country's
Department of Agriculture. The crop is harvested from June. The variety
accounts for 22% of China's national grain output, Chen Xiwen, the State
Council's deputy director of agricultural affairs, said last month.
Worst Drought
Wheat futures jumped 5% yesterday, even as the US Department of Agriculture
estimated that the area planted by the nation's farmers this y will increase
8.2% from a y earlier to 58 mn acres (23.5 mn hectares). May- delivery
wheat dropped 0.8% to $7.5725 a bushel at 11:24 a.m. Singapore time.
Texas, the second-largest winter-wheat-growing state in the US, is having
its worst drought in 44 years, according to the state climatologist, and the
dry weather is stretching to Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas.
Southeastern Oklahoma into most of central and eastern Texas are having
extreme drought conditions, which could intensify ``if rains don't materialize
soon," according to the weekly Drought Monitor report released by the National
Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska for the wk ended March 29.
`Acreage Abandonment'
The wheat crop in the US southern plains is "likely to be reduced because of
acreage abandonment -- farmers plowing up ground that has virtually nothing
for production -- and yields on the wheat that is harvested will likely be low
as well," Bryce Anderson, an agricultural meteorologist at DTN, said in an
e-mailed response to Bloomberg questions. "The wheat areas of the US and China
are in line to be the last to recover."
China's average wheat yield may decline at least 1% because of the drought,
Michael Ferrari, vice president for applied technology and research at
forecaster Weather Trends International, said Feb. 22.
The country produced about 115.1 mn tons last year, representing 17% of the
global harvest, according to USDA data.
"There is no sign in China yet of prolonged rain that will help with the
drought there for the next 10 days," said Dale, who correctly predicted
Argentina's drought and the UK's coldest Dec on record. "China and the US
are likely to come out of it last," he said, referring to La Nina.
`Going to Sleep'
The weather event, which is caused by a cooling of the Pacific Ocean, may
resurface after 8 months, threatening the next plantings, British Weather's
Dale said.
"We have got to be guarded," Dale said yesterday. "La Nina is not dead. It's
just going to sleep for a time. We're not sure if its nap is going to be
prolonged."
A return of La Nina may derail efforts by farmers to ramp up production of
corn, wheat and other crops, triggering another rally in prices.
Wheat futures in Chicago jumped 62% in the past year, climbing to a 30-month
high in Feb. Corn more than doubled in the same period, while soybeans
advanced 49 percent.
Food Demand
US corn acreage this y will be about 92.178 mn acres, the second-largest
since 1944, as farm profits rise while growing demand for food and biofuel
cuts world stockpiles.
Still, corn futures jumped as much as 5.7% to $7.33 a bushel on the Chicago
Board of Trade today, after surging by the most allowed by the exchange
yesterday.
US corn stockpiles at the beginning of March dropped to 6.52 billion
bushels, the lowest at that time of y since 2007, the USDA said
yesterday. Prices of corn, soybeans, wheat and rice climbed last m to the
highest since 2008, when surging food costs spurred riots from Haiti to Egypt.
It would take "perfect weather this year" just to keep corn stockpiles at
current "tight" levels, said Mark Schultz, the chief analyst at Northstar
Commodity Investment Co. in Minneapolis.
"The new crops are not expected to replenish inventories to any meaningful
extent, keeping prices in the new season high," according to a Rabobank Agri
Commodity Markets Research report e-mailed today.
MYREF: 20110401183002 msg2011040130859
[129 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
Michelle Ho
1Apr2011/308 am EDT/708 GMT
Singapore (Platts)-- The world's largest exporter of ethanol has since Dec
2010, imported unprecedented volumes of the product due to a culmination of
several factors -- a poor 2010 harvest, weak expectations for the 2011
harvest, an extended inter-crop season, high sugar prices and higher domestic
demand.
Industry observers estimate that Brazil imported 80-200 mn liters of anhydrous
ethanol over the 1st quarter of the year, favoring the higher end of that
spectrum. And according to a source at one of the largest sellers of ethanol
in the country, this is only the second time in Brazil's history that the
country has imported the blendstock.
The 1st instance was in 2009 when Brazil's sugarcane harvest took a dive due
to heavy rains, but import volumes at that time were estimated to be 100 mn
liters at best, sources said.
As the sugarcane season in Brazil typically runs over April-Dec, there is a
small uptick in ethanol prices due to shortages in the inter-crop season over
Jan-April. But this year, the country experienced a longer-than-normal
intercrop period, due to poor weather conditions.
ARBITRAGE FROM US SWINGS WIDE OPEN AS DOMESTIC PRICES SPIKE
Market participants said almost all of Brazil's imports were US corn-based
ethanol, as prices were the most competitive.
According to Platts US ethanol assessments on Thu, cargoes loading from
Houston were at 273 cents/gal; New York Harbor Barge cargoes loading over
April-May at 272-272.50 cents/gal; and cargoes loading from Chicago were
priced at 263.05 cents/gal.
Taking an average loading cost of 268 cents/gal plus 25 cents for conversion
for European grade premiums, multiplied by a conversion cost of 2.75 and
adding a few dollars per cubic meter for logistics, anhydrous ethanol would
load from the US at around $805-810/cu m, said a trader who had moved US
cargoes into Brazil. And as freight from US to Brazil was pegged at $40-50/cu
m, therefore US ethanol will land into Brazil at around $845-860/cu m.
Sources familiar with the matter, however, said that gasoline blenders and the
Brazilian producers of ethanol, who were the buyers/importers currently, were
purchasing imports at around $900/cu m, giving the traders working this
arbitrage a good margin.
Margins were even greater for traders who started working the arbitrage
earlier as prices from the US have increased significantly of late. From the
beginning of the year, Houston and New York Harbor Barge prices have increased
11% and Chicago prices gained 10%.
Still, landed prices of ethanol were still a far cry from domestic price
levels. According to data from the Brazilian National Petroleum Agency, or
ANP, hydrous ethanol prices rose to Reais 2.194/liter ($1.32/liter or
$1,320/cu m) from Reais 2.066/liter, up 6% wk on week.
And since Dec, fuel-grade anhydrous ethanol has risen more than 20% at
pumps. In the state of Sao Paulo, where almost 60% of ethanol consumption in
the country takes place, the average price of ethanol was Reais 2.11/liter
($1.27/liter), 11.64% higher than year-ago prices of Reais 1.89/liter during
inter-crop season in March, while gasoline was sold at Reais 2.7/liter during
the same period, ANP said.
"This is the 1st time Brazil is importing in such numbers," said the
trader. "We have been bringing product from the start of the y -- demand has
grown dramatically."
POOR WEATHER AND CROP CONDITIONS FEED SCARCITY
A poor 2009-2010 sugarcane harvest in Brazil sent global sugar prices soaring
to multi-year highs, and current heavy rains are making an early harvest this
y difficult, market sources said.
As of last week, a total of 30 sugar mills in Brazil's center-south cane
production region had begun cane crushing, said the Brazilian sugarcane
industry association UNICA, but sources in Asia said that this is merely a
"handful," not enough to make any impact on shortages there.
"The weather is not great and it is not wise to harvest when it rains because
it affects the total recoverable sugar content [TSR] in the cane," said a
source. "So, when it rains, people do not want to crush too much, its
counter-productive."
Heavy rains in the current season have cast a shadow of doubt over the yield
of this year's harvest as market participants saw how last year's drought
significantly dented sugar output levels.
A scarcity of sugar were also turning on the heat on ethanol producers who
have to compete for the feedstock. Increases in global food prices have pushed
44 mn people below the poverty line since June, World Bank President Robert
Zoellick said in Feb.
"This is the 1st y in 5 that there has been no increase in cane production in
Brazil," said a separate source.
The ICE May sugar futures contract closed overnight at 26.42 cents/lb, a gain
of 48% from a y ago.
MYREF: 20110404170002 msg20110404906
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---
[Call me kook:]
>A scientist cites a data point that is consistent with a trend and
>says "This data is consistent with the trend; no surprise".
>A kook cites a data point inconsistent with the trend and says "Surprise!
>The trend is Wrong Wrong Wrong!".
Sorry but 1917 invalidates the trend.
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 7 Feb 2011 13:29 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
BONZO@27-32-240-172 [numerous nyms] wrote:
>[something]
Crop yields fall as temperatures rise
Michael Marshall
New Scientist
05 May 2011
Global warming is taking its toll on our food, according to the 1st study to
demonstrate a link between global crop yields and climate change. It concludes
that the steep rise in temperatures since 1980 has cut into yields of staple
crops, offsetting gains from improved farming practices - although not all
climate researchers are convinced.
"Yields went up, but they didn't go up as much as they might have," says
Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University in New York City. With David Lobell
and Justin Costa-Roberts of Stanford University in California, he calculated
the annual yields of maize, wheat, rice and soybeans for every country in the
world between 1980 and 2008. Together those crops supply roughly 75% of the
energy in our food.
The team then studied long-term data on the average temperatures and rainfalls
for each agricultural region during the growing season. In 65% of
countries, the growing season has become warmer since 1980 - although trends
in rainfall over the same time frame are less pronounced. For the 20 y before
1980 there were no large-scale trends in either temperature or rainfall.
The researchers then turned to statistical models that predict yield in a
given y based on known factors like local soil quality, farming technology and
weather. The models allowed them to calculate what the yields would have been
for each y since 1980 as farming technology improved - if temperature and
precipitation had remained at 1980 levels.
Maize and wheat down
The real world yields of maize were 5.5% lower and wheat 3.8% lower
than the team's models suggested they should have been if temperature and
precipitation had stayed at 1980 levels. Rice and soybean yields held steady,
because losses in some countries were balanced by gains elsewhere.
"In most places we see temperature trends, and they have significantly reduced
yield growth," Schlenker says.
At least part of the fall in yield can be traced to human activities, says
Andy Challinor of the University of Leeds, UK. "The climate trends are known
to contain a significant anthropogenic signal, so the link to climate change
is clear." He adds that the large dataset is crucial to the study.
But the use of a purely statistical model undermines the result, according to
Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colorado. He says it would have been better to use one based on known changes
to the growth of crops in the face of changing environmental conditions.
Trenberth adds that it is unclear whether temperature alone would have such an
impact on yield. "Hot and dry conditions go together," he says, "so the
effects of temperature cannot be sorted out from the precipitation effects."
Although levels of total rainfall have remained roughly unchanged since 1980,
that might mask trends in the intensity and frequency of rainfall over that
period, he says. "The dry spells are getting longer and the rains more intense
when they do occur," he says. "Changes in total amount of rainfall are
secondary."
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1204531
MYREF: 20110509180002 msg201105091990
[154 more news items]
---
Everyone agrees that the climate is changing, but there are violently
diverging opinions about the causes of change, about the consequences of
change, and about possible remedies.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the
Universe", 2007.
Mr Posting Robot
BONZO@27-32-240-172 [numerous nyms] wrote:
>[something]
More Bad Weather Could See Record Food Prices
CNBC.com
May 17, 2011
With drought threatening food production in the EU, US and China, analysts at
Renaissance Capital believe the next 8-10 wk will be crucial to prices in 2011
and 2012.
"The food price threat for 2011-2012 is very significant, but may disappear in
August. It depends entirely on the weather over May to July," said Renaissance
Capital's Charles Robertson.
"If we do not get the right mix of rain and sun in the coming 8-10 weeks, then
later this y we will see record price levels for the most important cereal in
the world today - corn," he said.
If this were the case, Robertson believes prices for wheat and other cereals
could also see record prices.
"This in turn would cause record price levels for wheat, as well as other
cereals. This would be bad news for everyone, except those lucky farmers in
countries likely to enjoy a relatively good harvest in 2011, which will
include Russia and probably Ukraine," said Robertson.
With a far larger percentage of income spent on food in emerging markets,
record prices would have a disproportionate impact on the world's poorest.
"Already food prices have been a driver of higher global inflation, though
central banks have tried to look through this, arguing that a good 2011
harvest would see food prices fall again," said Robertson.
<http://www.cnbc.com/id/43046947>
MYREF: 20110517220002 msg2011051714515
[190 more news items]
Mr Posting Robot
BONZO@27-32-240-172 [numerous nyms] wrote:
>[coal lobby spin]
Wheat crop could be lowest yield since 1996
Abilene Reflector Chronicle
May 20 2011
Manhattan - 2 recently completed tours of the Kansas wheat crop confirm what
farmers have suspected for some time: the 2011 crop could be one of the worst
in many years.
Earlier this month, more than 70 participants of the Wheat Quality Council's
Hard Wheat Tour pegged the Kansas crop to total 256.7 mn bushels,
averaging about 37 bushels per acre. That is well shy of last year's 334 mn
bushel estimate, despite the fact that farmers planted 800k more acres of
wheat last fall.
On May 11, Kansas Agriculture Statistics released its own forecast of the 2011
wheat crop. It estimates farmers will grow 261.8 mn bushels, down 27%
from last y and the lowest production since 1996. The KAS predicts farmers
will harvest 7.7 mn acres, down 300k acres from last y and the smallest area
harvested since 1957. The agency forecasts an average yield of 34 bushels per
acre, down 11 bushels from last y and the lowest yield since 2007.
Dean Stoskopf, a Hoisington farmer on his 10th Hard Wheat Tour, says this
year's crop is the most difficult to estimate in the last 5 years. "With
ideal weather, the crop could increase dramatically," he says. "However, if
dryness persists, the crop could decrease significantly, too."
Kansas Wheat Chief Executive Officer Justin Gilpin, who participated in the
Wheat Quality Council tour, said this year's tour is notable because of
dramatic differences of crop yield potential within the state. He says areas
of central, N central and eastern Kansas seem to be faring the best at this
point; southwest and W central Kansas farmers are facing difficult harvest prosp
ects.
"I anticipate farmers may abandon as much as 50% of the dryland wheat in
extreme southwest Kansas," Gilpin says. "Statewide, I expect a 20% abandonment
rate."
David Schemm, president of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers from Sharon
Springs, expects to abandon nearly 40% of his wheat crop due to
drought. Insurance adjusters have estimated the yield in those acres at 2 to 3
bushels per acre.
A below-normal Kansas wheat crop exacerbates similar weather difficulties in
key wheat growing regions throughout the world. "Dryness in the wheat crop in
France and Germany is being watched closely by grain traders," Gilpin said.
However, Russia's wheat region - which last y suffered through one of its
worst dry spells in decades - appears to have recovered.
"Russian wheat prospects are expected to improve, and it appears as if the
Russian wheat export ban may go away in August," he said.
The USDA released its estimate for the entire US winter wheat crop on May
11. It is forecast at 1.42 bn bushels from 32 mn acres, down 4% from 2010. The
yield forecast is 44.5 bushels per acre, down 2.3 bushels from last year.
MYREF: 20110531120002 msg2011053127850
[224 more news items]
---
[On knowing your constituents:]
I always thought faremers were a gullible bunch!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [100 nyms and counting], 9 Feb 2011 12:09 +1100
Mr Posting Robot
BONZO@27-32-240-172 [numerous nyms] wrote:
>[coal lobby spin]
Study Links Climate Change to Changes in Crop Yields
VOA
16 May 2011
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
A new study says climate change has reduced the world's wheat and maize
production. The study says rice and soybean yields have also decreased in some
places -- but increased in others. In the words of the researchers: "For
soybeans and rice, winners and losers largely balanced out."
The researchers studied climate trends and global crop production from between
nineteen eighty and 2 thousand eight. They found that climate changes "are
already exerting a considerable drag on yield growth" and may have affected
food prices.
The study used computer models linking crop yields to weather. Yield is the
amount produced for each hectare or acre. The researchers compared the results
to what the yields might have been without climate changes. They found that
corn production decreased by almost four% and wheat production decreased by 5
and a 1/2 percent.
Warming temperatures were reported in almost all of Europe, much of Asia and
some of S America and Africa. During the study period most countries had
greater temperature changes from y to y than they have had historically. But
the study says the United States was an important exception -- at least so far.
Corn and wheat yields in most of N America remained about the same. Russia's
wheat yields decreased the most. The largest loss in corn yields were in China
and Brazil.
The report is in the journal Science.
One of the researchers was economist Wolfram Schlenker at Columbia University
in New York and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He says the report
can serve as a planning tool for policy makers.
WOLFRAM SCHLENKER: "If you are worried about rising food prices, it might be
good to funnel some research into breeding for heat tolerance and maybe even
drought tolerance."
Jeffrey Stark is with a public policy organization called the Foundation for
Environmental Security and Stability. This group is supported by the United
States Agency for International Development. Mr Stark recently described the
effects of climate change on pastoralists in Uganda. They travel with their
cattle to find grasslands and water.
JEFFREY STARK: "We did hear repeatedly that there have been increasing
temperatures, drying wetlands, less frequent but more intense rain, hail
storms and, most significantly, unpredictable shifts in seasonal patterns. The
pastoralists in the cattle corridor have to travel farther in search of
pasture and water."
And that search, he says, can bring them into contact and conflict with
farmers who have problems of their own.
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Mr Posting Robot
BONZO@27-32-240-172 [numerous nyms] wrote:
>[coal lobby spin]
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
Justin Gillis
New York Times
June 4, 2011
Ciudad Obregón, Mexico -- The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P.
Singh's feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun
and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead.
Dr Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump
with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks.
"You're not going to feed the people with that," he said.
But then, over in Plot 88, his eyes settled on a healthier plant, one that had
managed to thrive in spite of the drought, producing plump kernels of
wheat. "This is beautiful!" he shouted as wheat beards rustled in the wind.
Hope in a stalk of grain: It is a hope the world needs these days, for the
great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.
The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed
to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by
population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.
Consumption of the 4 staples that supply most human calories -- wheat, rice,
corn and soybeans -- has outstripped production for much of the past decade,
drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between
supply and demand has resulted in 2 huge spikes in international grain
prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.
Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened
hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores
of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was
ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role
in the recent Arab uprisings.
Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted
factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.
Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather
disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and
blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though
not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global
warming.
Temperatures are rising rapidly during the growing season in some of the most
important agricultural countries, and a paper published several wk ago found
that this had shaved several percentage points off potential yields, adding to
the price gyrations.
For nearly 2 decades, scientists had predicted that climate change would be
relatively manageable for agriculture, suggesting that even under worst-case
assumptions, it would probably take until 2080 for food prices to double.
In part, they were counting on a counterintuitive ace in the hole: that rising
CO2 levels, the primary contributor to global warming, would act as a powerful
plant fertilizer and offset many of the ill effects of climate change.
Until a few y ago, these assumptions went largely unchallenged. But lately,
the destabilization of the food system and the soaring prices have rattled
many leading scientists.
"The success of agriculture has been astounding," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a
researcher at NASA who helped pioneer the study of climate change and
agriculture. "But I think there's starting to be premonitions that it may not
continue forever."
A scramble is on to figure out whether climate science has been too sanguine
about the risks. Some researchers, analyzing computer forecasts that are used
to advise governments on future crop prospects, are pointing out what they
consider to be gaping holes. These include a failure to consider the effects
of extreme weather, like the floods and the heat waves that are increasing as
the earth warms.
A rising unease about the future of the world's food supply came through
during interviews this y with more than 50 agricultural experts working in 9
countries.
These experts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand whatever
climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they
produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it while reducing the
considerable environmental damage caused by the business of agriculture.
Agronomists emphasize that the situation is far from hopeless. Examples are
already available, from the deserts of Mexico to the rice paddies of India, to
show that it may be possible to make agriculture more productive and more
resilient in the face of climate change. Farmers have achieved huge gains in
output in the past, and rising prices are a powerful incentive to do so again.
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---
Earth's atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water
vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers
of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those
gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation - the radiant heat
energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to
solar heating. Mankind's burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal,
petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth's natural
greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the
start of the industrial revolution in the 1800's.
-- Dr Roy W. Spencer, "Global Warming", 2008