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		<title>Satellites weigh California water</title>
		<link>http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/12/satellites-weigh-california-water/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:44:30 +0000</pubDate>
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Image via Wikipedia



Nasa satellites have weighed the water lost by the US State of California&#8217;s heartland since 2003.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins which support the highly productive Central Valley have shed over 30 cubic km of water in that time.
The data comes from the Grace mission which detects changes in gravity caused by [...]


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<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Map_california_central_valley.jpg"><img title="The Central Valley of California" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Map_california_central_valley.jpg" alt="The Central Valley of California" width="300" height="367" /></a></dt>
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<p><strong>Nasa satellites have weighed the water lost by the US State of California&#8217;s heartland since 2003.</strong></p>
<p>The Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins which support the highly productive Central Valley have shed over 30 cubic km of water in that time.</p>
<p>The data comes from the Grace mission which detects changes in gravity caused by water as it cycles between the sea, the atmosphere and the land.</p>
<p>It illustrates the impact of a drought but also excessive irrigation use.</p>
<p><!-- E SF -->&#8220;The numbers we&#8217;re getting out of this analysis point to groundwater use at unsustainable rates,&#8221; said Professor Jay Famiglietti of the University of California, Irvine.</p>
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<p><!-- end of the embedded player component --> <!-- END of Inline Embedded Media -->&#8220;It&#8217;s leading to declining water tables, decreased crop sizes, and continued land subsidence &#8211; something that has been going on in the Central Valley for decades.&#8221;</p>
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</script></div><p>Professor Famiglietti has been describing the California situation here at the American Geophysical Union&#8217;s (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world&#8217;s largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.</p>
<p>It is big issue because of California&#8217;s importance to food production in the US.</p>
<p>Its Central Valley is one of the major agricultural regions in the world.</p>
<p>It grows more than 250 different crops, accounting for a little under a tenth of all the food produced in the US by value. But the Central Valley also accounts for about a sixth of all the irrigated land in the US, making the region the second most pumped aquifer in America.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8414252.stm" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>A Fish Oil Story</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:03:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
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Image via Wikipedia



“WHAT’S the deal with fish oil?&#8221;
If you are someone who catches and eats a lot of fish, as I am, you get adept at answering questions about which fish are safe, which are sustainable and which should be avoided altogether. But when this fish oil question arrived in my inbox recently, I was [...]


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<p>“WHAT’S the deal with fish oil?&#8221;</p>
<p>If you are someone who catches and eats a lot of fish, as I am, you get adept at answering questions about which fish are safe, which are sustainable and which should be avoided altogether. But when this fish oil question arrived in my inbox recently, I was stumped. I knew that concerns about overfishing had prompted many consumers to choose supplements as a guilt-free way of getting their <a class="zem_slink" title="Omega-3 fatty acid" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid">omega-3 fatty acids</a>, which studies show lower triglycerides and the risk of heart attack. But I had never looked into the fish behind the oil and whether it was fit, morally or environmentally speaking, to be consumed.</p>
<p>The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called <a class="zem_slink" title="Menhaden" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhaden">menhaden</a>, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.”</p>
<p>The book’s author, <a class="zem_slink" title="H. Bruce Franklin" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Bruce_Franklin">H. Bruce Franklin</a>, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.” Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain.</p>
<p>Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.</p>
<p>But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/opinion/16greenberg.html?_r=1&amp;th&amp;emc=th" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?</title>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:18:06 +0000</pubDate>
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Dr. Robert Zeigler, an eminent American botanist, flew to Saudi Arabia in March for a series of high-level discussions about the future of the kingdom’s food supply. Saudi leaders were frightened: heavily dependent on imports, they had seen the price of rice and wheat, their dietary staples, fluctuate violently on the world market [...]


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<p><span>Dr. Robert Zeigler,</span> an eminent American botanist, flew to Saudi Arabia in March for a series of high-level discussions about the future of the kingdom’s food supply. Saudi leaders were frightened: heavily dependent on imports, they had seen the price of rice and wheat, their dietary staples, fluctuate violently on the world market over the previous three years, at one point doubling in just a few months. The Saudis, rich in oil money but poor in <a class="zem_slink" title="Arable land" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land">arable land</a>, were groping for a strategy to ensure that they could continue to meet the appetites of a growing population, and they wanted Zeigler’s expertise.</p>
<p>There are basically two ways to increase the supply of food: find new fields to plant or invent ways to multiply what existing ones yield. Zeigler runs the International Rice Research Institute, which is devoted to the latter course, employing science to expand the size of harvests. During the so-called <a class="zem_slink" title="Green Revolution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution">Green Revolution</a> of the 1960s, the institute’s laboratory developed “miracle rice,” a high-yielding strain that has been credited with saving millions of people from famine. Zeigler went to Saudi Arabia hoping that the wealthy kingdom might offer money for the basic research that leads to such technological breakthroughs. Instead, to his surprise, he discovered that the Saudis wanted to attack the problem from the opposite direction. They were looking for land.</p>
<p>In a series of meetings, Saudi government officials, bankers and agribusiness executives told an institute delegation led by Zeigler that they intended to spend billions of dollars to establish plantations to produce rice and other staple crops in African nations like Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Ethiopia. “They laid out this incredible plan,” Zeigler recalled. He was flabbergasted, not only by the scale of the projects but also by the audacity of their setting. Africa, the world’s most famished continent, can’t currently feed itself, let alone foreign markets.</p>
<p>The American scientist was catching a glimpse of an emerging test of the world’s food resources, one that has begun to take shape over the last year, largely outside the bounds of international scrutiny. A variety of factors — some transitory, like the spike in <a title="More articles about food prices and supply." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_prices/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">food prices</a>, and others intractable, like global population growth and water scarcity — have created a market for farmland, as rich but resource-deprived nations in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere seek to outsource their <a class="zem_slink" title="Agriculture" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture">food production</a> to places where fields are cheap and abundant. Because much of the world’s arable land is already in use — almost 90 percent, according to one estimate, if you take out forests and fragile ecosystems — the search has led to the countries least touched by development, in Africa. According to a recent study by the <a title="More articles about World Bank" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/world_bank/index.html?inline=nyt-org">World Bank</a> and the <a title="More articles about the United Nations." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org">United Nations</a> Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the earth’s last large reserves of underused land is the billion-acre Guinea Savannah zone, a crescent-shaped swath that runs east across Africa all the way to Ethiopia, and southward to Congo and Angola.</p>
<p>Foreign investors — some of them representing governments, some of them private interests — are promising to construct infrastructure, bring new technologies, create jobs and boost the productivity of underused land so that it not only feeds overseas markets but also feeds more Africans. (More than a third of the continent’s population is malnourished.) They’ve found that impoverished governments are often only too welcoming, offering land at giveaway prices. A few transactions have received significant publicity, like Kenya’s deal to lease nearly 100,000 acres to the Qatari government in return for financing a new port, or South Korea’s agreement to develop almost 400 square miles in Tanzania. But many other land deals, of near-unprecedented size, have been sealed with little fanfare.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22land-t.html?_r=1&amp;th&amp;emc=th" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>Growing Skyscrapers: The Rise of Vertical Farms</title>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:47:16 +0000</pubDate>
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Image by swisscan via Flickr



Growing crops in city skyscrapers would use less water and fossil fuel than outdoor farming, eliminate agricultural runoff, and provide fresh food
Key Concepts

Farming is ruining the environment, and not enough arable land remains to feed a projected 9.5 billion people by 2050.
Growing food in glass high-rises could drastically reduce fossil-fuel emissions [...]


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<li><a href='http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/05/food-web-meet-interweb-networked/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Food Web, Meet Interweb: The Networked Future of Farms'>Food Web, Meet Interweb: The Networked Future of Farms</a></li>
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<p><strong>Growing crops in city skyscrapers would use less water and fossil fuel than outdoor farming, eliminate agricultural runoff, and provide fresh food</strong></p>
<h3>Key Concepts</h3>
<ul>
<li>Farming is ruining the environment, and not enough arable land remains to feed a projected 9.5 billion people by 2050.</li>
<li>Growing food in glass high-rises could drastically reduce fossil-fuel emissions and recycle city wastewater that now pollutes waterways.</li>
<li>A one-square-block farm 30 stories high could yield as much food as 2,400 outdoor acres, with less subsequent spoilage.</li>
<li>Existing hydroponic greenhouses provide a basis for prototype vertical farms now being considered by urban planners in cities worldwide.</li>
</ul>
<p>Together the world’s 6.8 billion people use land equal in size to South America to grow food and raise livestock—an astounding agricultural footprint. And demographers predict the planet will host 9.5 billion people by 2050. Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist. To quote the great American humorist Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.”</p>
<p>Agriculture also uses 70 percent of the world’s available freshwater for irrigation, rendering it unusable for drinking as a result of contamination with fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and silt. If current trends continue, safe drinking <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=water">water</a> will be impossible to come by in certain densely populated regions. Farming involves huge quantities of <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=fossil-fuels">fossil fuels</a>, too—20 percent of all the gasoline and diesel fuel consumed in the U.S. The resulting greenhouse gas emissions are of course a major concern, but so is the price of food as it becomes linked to the price of fuel, a mechanism that roughly doubled the cost of eating in most places worldwide between 2005 and 2008.</p>
<p>Some agronomists believe that the solution lies in even more intensive industrial farming, carried out by an ever decreasing number of highly mechanized farming consortia that grow crops having higher yields—a result of genetic modification and more powerful agrochemicals. Even if this solution were to be implemented, it is a short-term remedy at best, because the rapid shift in climate continues to rearrange the agricultural landscape, foiling even the most sophisticated strategies. Shortly after the Obama administration took office, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu warned the public that climate change could wipe out farming in California by the end of the century.</p>
<p>What is more, if we continue wholesale deforestation just to generate new farmland, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=global-warming-and-climate-change">global warming</a> will accelerate at an even more catastrophic rate. And far greater volumes of agricultural runoff could well create enough aquatic “dead zones” to turn most estuaries and even parts of the oceans into barren wastelands.</p>
<p>As if all that were not enough to worry about, foodborne illnesses account for a significant number of deaths worldwide—salmonella, cholera, <em>Escherichia coli</em> and shigella, to name just a few. Even more of a problem are life-threatening parasitic infections, such as <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=malaria">malaria</a> and schistosomiasis. Furthermore, the common practice of using human feces as a fertilizer in most of Southeast Asia, many parts of Africa, and Central and South America (commercial fertilizers are too expensive) facilitates the spread of parasitic worm infections that afflict 2.5 billion people.</p>
<p>Clearly, radical change is needed. One strategic shift would do away with almost every ill just noted: grow crops indoors, under rigorously controlled conditions, in vertical farms. <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=plants">Plants</a> grown in high-rise buildings erected on now vacant city lots and in large, multistory rooftop greenhouses could produce food year-round using significantly less water, producing little waste, with less risk of infectious diseases, and no need for fossil-fueled machinery or trans­port from distant rural farms. Vertical farming could revolutionize how we feed ourselves and the rising population to come. Our meals would taste better, too; “locally grown” would become the norm.</p>
<p>The working description I am about to explain might sound outrageous at first. But engineers, urban planners and agronomists who have scrutinized the necessary technologies are convinced that vertical farming is not only feasible but should be tried.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-rise-of-vertical-farms&amp;sc=WR_20091119" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>Inexpensive &#8216;Dipstick&#8217; Test For Pesticides In Foods</title>
		<link>http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/11/inexpensive-dipstick-pesticides/</link>
		<comments>http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/11/inexpensive-dipstick-pesticides/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:16:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
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Image by summerrunner2009 via Flickr



Scientists in Canada are reporting the development of a fast, inexpensive &#8220;dipstick&#8221; test to identify small amounts of pesticides that may exist in foods and beverages. Their paper-strip test is more practical than conventional pesticide tests, producing results in minutes rather than hours by means of an easy-to-read color-change, they say.
The [...]


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<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39889286@N02/3863676664"><img title="27 pesticide sign" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3535/3863676664_cc9331799d_m.jpg" alt="27 pesticide sign" /></a></dt>
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<p>Scientists in Canada are reporting the development of a fast, inexpensive &#8220;dipstick&#8221; test to identify small amounts of pesticides that may exist in foods and beverages. Their paper-strip test is more practical than conventional pesticide tests, producing results in minutes rather than hours by means of an easy-to-read color-change, they say.</p>
<p>The study is in the November 1 issue of ACS&#8217; <em>Analytical Chemistry,</em> a semi-monthly journal.</p>
<p>John Brennan and colleagues note in the new study that conventional tests for detecting pesticides tend to use expensive and complex equipment and in some cases can take several hours to produce results. They cite a growing need for cheaper, more convenient, and more eco-friendly tests for pesticides, particularly in the food industry.</p>
<p>The scientists describe the development of a new paper-based test strip that changes color shades depending on the amount of pesticide present.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104122534.htm" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>Artificial satellites are helping farmers boost crop yields</title>
		<link>http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/11/artificial-satellites-helping/</link>
		<comments>http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2009/11/artificial-satellites-helping/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:59:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
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Image via Wikipedia



FOR farmers, working out the optimal amount of seed, fertiliser, pesticide and water to scatter on a field can make, or break, the subsequent harvest. Regular laboratory analyses of soil and plant samples from various parts of the field can help—but such expertise is costly, and often unavailable. A new and cheaper method [...]


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<p>FOR farmers, working out the optimal amount of seed, fertiliser, pesticide and water to scatter on a field can make, or break, the subsequent harvest. Regular laboratory analyses of soil and plant samples from various parts of the field can help—but such expertise is costly, and often unavailable. A new and cheaper method of doing this analysis, though, is now on offer. Precise prescriptions for growing crops can be obtained quickly, and less expensively, by measuring electromagnetic radiation reflected from farmland. The data are collected by orbiting satellites.</p>
<p>The spectrum of this radiation—which can be in the form of either natural sunlight or artificial radar—can reveal, with surprising precision, the properties of the soil, the quantity of crop being grown, and the levels in those crops of chlorophyll, various minerals, moisture and other indicators of their quality. If recent and forecast weather data are added to the mix, detailed maps can be produced indicating exactly how, where and when crops should be grown. The service usually costs less than $15 per hectare for a handful of readings a year, and can increase yields by as much as 10%.</p>
<p>Such precision farming using satellite-based intelligence is in its infancy. Even so, it is catching on quickly. Five times a year, for example, a satellite-surveillance service provided by a cereal-growers’ co-operative called Sevépi (based in Douains, France) e-mails its members a map of their fields, divided into three or four colour-coded zones per hectare. For each zone, one of about 50 fertiliser formulae is recommended. On top of this, if the stems of the wheat are tall and rain is expected, an appropriate dose of growth-regulator is recommended for each zone. (Long, fragile stems snap more easily in downpours.) Farm vehicles equipped with global-positioning-system locaters automatically mix and apply the prescribed dose to each area.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14793411" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>A Natural Obsession</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:49:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
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Organic foods are exploding in popularity. But fears of biotechnology—and a widespread mistrust of science—won’t help efforts to create a truly sustainable agriculture.
When delegates from 192 nations arrive in Copenhagen in December for the UN COP15 summit, they will confront a 181-page draft negotiation text, 2,000 bracketed passages still in [...]


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<p id="dek"><strong>Organic foods</strong> are exploding in popularity. But fears of biotechnology—and a widespread mistrust of science—<strong>won’t help efforts to create a truly sustainable agriculture.</strong></p>
<p>When delegates from 192 nations arrive in Copenhagen in December for the UN <a class="zem_slink" title="United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference_2009">COP15</a> summit, they will confront a 181-page draft negotiation text, 2,000 bracketed passages still in dispute, and just 11 days in which to come to some sort of consensus. To power them through these discussions, Denmark has promised a smorgasbord of ecologically minded fare: All water will be tap (not bottled), tea and coffee will be fair trade, and the food menu will be no less than 65 percent organic.</p>
<p>Though undoubtedly well-intentioned, this last provision is troubling, but not because anyone really cares about the provenance of Ban Ki-Moon’s turnip greens. Rather, it suggests a willful and dangerous ignorance about the tenuous state of global agriculture, and the prospects for feeding 9 billion people while also addressing biodiversity loss, water shortage, and, yes, climate change. Organic foods are enjoying skyrocketing popularity in the US and Europe, as are their ill-defined sidekicks, “natural,” “whole,” and “real” foods. Yet popular notions that these foods—and the agriculture that begets them—are at once better for people and for the planet turn out to be largely devoid of experimental support. Worse still, “organophilia” tends to go hand-in-hand with technophobic skepticism towards the very sorts of scientific approaches most likely to supercharge an ailing food system while leaving our planet intact.</p>
<p>No one can argue with the merits of paying more heed to where our suppers come from. At its best, the organic movement is about reacquainting ourselves with the origins of food—appreciating that chicken is an animal and not just a shrink-wrapped package in the refrigerator case. It’s also a reaction to an industry that has, under the banner of “food science,” swung in a silly direction: Note the rise of squeezable tubes of Go-Gurt; granola bars souped up with soy protein, omega-3’s, vitamin D, and zinc; and perhaps most oddly, Splenda’s new fiber-infused incarnation. At the prices these products command, it’s perhaps not surprising that companies would be so eager to concoct them.</p>
<p>But do we really need to get our roughage in our coffee or all four food groups plus a multivitamin in a snack ostensibly made of honey and oats? <a class="zem_slink" title="Michael Pollan" rel="imdb" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2293679/">Michael Pollan</a>’s response, elaborated in his 2008 book, <em><a class="zem_slink" title="In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" rel="amazon" href="http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto/dp/1594201455%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1594201455">In Defense of Food</a></em>, is a resounding “no.” “Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he offers instead—a simple mantra that simultaneously disqualifies products like Splenda with fiber and obviates the need for them in the first place.</p>
<h3>Farm Fresh Fetish</h3>
<p>Unfortunately, what may have begun as a revolt against fake food or, for many, the horrors of concentrated animal feed lots, has given way to a culture that increasingly fetishizes organic, natural, and whole foods with little agreement on what such terms even mean, outside of an emphatic devotion to what they are not: They aren’t in any way related to industrial-scale farms or big-box grocery chains; chemical herbicides or pesticides; biotechnology or its subgenre, genetic engineering. And by those criteria, they are deemed to be safer, more nutritious, and less damaging to the environment.</p>
<p>Closer scrutiny of these assumptions, however, reveals little to back them up. As Michael Specter points out in his forthcoming book, <em>Denialism</em>, mercury, lead, and asbestos are “natural” too, as are E. coli and salmonella. In 2009, a salmonella outbreak killed nine people, sickened hundreds, and triggered the largest food recall in US history. Meanwhile, genetically engineered products, despite having been on the market for more than 13 years, haven’t sickened anyone, Specter says.</p>
<p>Nutritionally, there is no clear evidence that organic foods trump conventional ones. In one recent study, researchers funded by Denmark’s International Center for Research in Organic Food Systems compared kale, peas, potatoes, and apples grown organically with those grown according to conventional guidelines. They also fed both organic and conventional produce to rats for two years. “Overall, there was no evident trend towards differences in element content of foodstuffs or diets due to the use of different cultivation systems,” they concluded in the <em>Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture</em>. Neither the veggies, nor the rats nourished on them, turned out to be anything other than ordinary.</p>
<p><a href="http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_natural_obsession/" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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		<title>Eat for the ecosystem</title>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:30:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
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A heartening tale of business and the environment
RED lionfish are pretty, but they are also greedy. A single one of them, introduced into a coral reef where the species is not native, can reduce the number of other small fish by 80% in just a few weeks, according to Mark Hixon, a marine [...]


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<p><strong>A heartening tale of business and the environment</strong></p>
<p>RED lionfish are pretty, but they are also greedy. A single one of them, introduced into a coral reef where the species is not native, can reduce the number of other small fish by 80% in just a few weeks, according to Mark Hixon, a marine biologist at Oregon State University. To make matters worse, <a class="zem_slink" title="Lionfish" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionfish">lion fish</a> are top predators. Though their size would make them an easy mouthful for a shark or a grouper, their poisonous spines mean they are more or less invulnerable.</p>
<p>In the lionfish’s native waters, the western Pacific Ocean, the local ecosystem has adjusted to such predatory behaviour. In the Caribbean, though, the lionfish is a novelty—and a destructive one. Anything that damages the biodiversity of the reefs in diving resorts is bad for tourism, so in some countries, such as Mexico and Belize, people have tried introducing bounties payable to divers who catch lionfish. Sadly, there are too many lionfish about, and the bounties have proved too expensive to sustain. But there may be an answer: prove that the lionfish is not in fact a top predator after all, by getting people to eat it.</p>
<p>That is the method proposed by Sean Dimin, one of the owners of a firm called Sea to Table. Mr Dimin’s company works with fishermen who practise sustainable fisheries management, and helps them get their catches into the sort of high-class restaurants frequented by wealthy conservationists. Mr Dimin got his idea from the appearance in some resorts of “lionfish rodeos”, in which holidaymaking divers round the fish up, and which are usually followed by lionfish cook-ups on the beach. He learned from these that the fish, suitably de-spined, are delicious (they taste like snapper). That got him wondering if consumer demand might be a force powerful enough to halt even an invasive species as successful as the lionfish.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14637325" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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Solving climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction and population growth&#8230; at the same time
By 2050, the world will host nine billion people—and that&#8217;s if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would [...]


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<p><strong>Solving climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction and population growth&#8230; at the same time</strong></p>
<p>By 2050, the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-birth-control-the-answer-to-envi-2009-09-23">world will host nine billion people</a>—and that&#8217;s if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read: deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.</p>
<p>The bad news beyond the impacts on people, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=plants">plants</a> and <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=animals">animals</a> of that kind of <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=can-trees-save-us-from-climate-chan-09-04-24">deforestation</a>: There isn&#8217;t that much land available. At most, we might be able to add 100 million hectares to the 4.3 billion already under cultivation worldwide.</p>
<p>&#8220;Agriculture is the main driver of <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-identify-safe-limits-for-human-impacts">most ecological problems</a> on the planet,&#8221; said economist Jeffrey Sachs, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=978"><em>Scientific American</em> columnist</a> and Earth Institute director. &#8220;We are literally eating away the other species on the planet.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sachs made his remarks yesterday at a symposium hosted by the institute on how to improve agriculture to address the mounting challenge of feeding the world while combating climate change and stopping the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sixth-extinction-wipes-out-animals-08-10-09">wholesale loss of biodiversity</a>, among other interrelated issues.</p>
<p>Agriculture—thanks to deforestation, nitrous oxide from fields, methane from cattle and rice paddies—is responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, making emissions from transporting food, known as &#8220;food miles,&#8221; a &#8220;rounding error,&#8221; said ecologist Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. Pasture has become the dominant ecosystem on the planet, he added, and humans directly employ some 40 percent of the surface of the planet. &#8220;Very little of that is urban.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition, agriculture accounts for at least 85 percent of human <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=water">water</a> consumption—a growing concern as <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-india-running-out-of-water">aquifers diminish and hydrology changes</a> in the face of climate change. And, by Sanchez&#8217;s rough calculation, humans now use some 171 million tons of nitrogen as fertilizer every year, much of which ends up polluting lakes, rivers, streams and even the ocean. &#8220;Fifty-four percent of that is fertilizer—the <a class="zem_slink" title="Haber process" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process">Haber-Bosch process</a>; 11 percent is atmospheric deposition—the plus side of pollution; 18 percent is in situ fixation,&#8221; or nitrogen-fixing cover crops, like legumes, Sanchez said.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s not like so-called organic agriculture is helping with that: Nitrate leaching into waterways can come from manure, as in the Netherlands or overuse of fertilizer, as in Iowa. The result is the same: <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oceanic-dead-zones-spread">dead zones</a>.</p>
<p>So how can agriculture be intensified to feed a growing population while addressing environmental concerns? Simply put, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=agricultures-sustainable-future">yields on existing lands must increase</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=growing-population-poses-malthusian-dilemma&amp;sc=WR_20091006" target="_blank">Read more . . .<br />
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		<title>Is saving our atmosphere killing our seas?</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:27:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>innovation2</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dire Warnings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Innovation Needed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seed Magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Food Challenge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agricultural production]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agricultural runoff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agricultural waste]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dead zone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gulf of mexico]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mississippi river]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nitrates and phosphates]]></category>
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Biofuels may stifle global warming, but scientists warn that agricultural runoff causes new problems
Each year in April and May as farmers in the central US fertilize their crops, nearly 450 thousand metric tons of nitrates and phosphates pour down the Mississippi River. When these chemicals reach the Gulf of Mexico, they cause a [...]


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<li><a href='http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2010/01/algae-worse-biofuels/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Is Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels?'>Is Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels?</a></li>
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<p>Biofuels may stifle global warming, but scientists <strong>warn that agricultural runoff causes new problems</strong></p>
<p>Each year in April and May as farmers in the central US fertilize their crops, nearly 450 thousand metric tons of nitrates and phosphates <a href="http://toxics.usgs.gov/hypoxia/mississippi/oct_jun/graphics.html">pour down</a> the Mississippi River. When these chemicals reach the Gulf of Mexico, they cause a feeding frenzy as photosynthetic algae absorb the nutrients. It’s a boom-and-bust cycle of epic proportions: The algae populations grow explosively, then die and decompose. This process depletes the water of oxygen on a vast scale, creating a suffocating “dead zone” the size of Massachusetts where few, if any, animals can survive.</p>
<p>The EPA has been working to reduce the size of the dead zone, with a goal of shrinking it to about 5,000 square kilometers—a quarter of its current size—by 2015. But a new study in <em>Environmental Science &amp; Technology</em> shows that other efforts to preserve the environment may be exacerbating the dead zone. Kristopher Hite, a graduate student in biochemistry at Colorado State University, <a href="http://www.tompainesghost.com/2009/09/swimming-in-ethanols-effects.html">explains the implications</a> of the study on his blog, <a class="zem_slink" title="Thomas Paine" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine">Tom Paine</a>’s Ghost.</p>
<p>The study examined the implications of a 2007 law that requires the US to annually produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. Barring major biofuel production breakthroughs from sources like algae or microbes, most of this fuel will come from crops grown in the central US; the fertilizers and other agricultural waste they produce will flow straight down the Mississippi and feed the dead zone. Hite says the study, led by Christine Costello, found that meeting this goal will make it impossible for the EPA to reach its target reduction in the size of the dead zone. Even if fertilizer-intensive corn is replaced with more eco-friendly crops like switchgrass, the vast increase in agricultural production will cause the dead zone to grow unless preventive measures are taken.</p>
<p>So what can be done about it? The Society for Conservation Biology <a href="http://journalwatch.conservationmagazine.org/2009/09/19/fish-vs-fuel/">suggests</a> that increasing the size of wetlands or other buffer zones around the source of the pollution—the farms themselves—could help.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, artificial wetlands have their own negative ecological side effects. As this <a href="http://conservationmaven.com/frontpage/2009/9/23/comparing-natural-restored-and-created-wetlands.html">post</a> at Conservation Maven shows, some created wetlands are dominated by invasive species. Apparently, the heavy equipment used to build the sites also compacts the soil in a way that makes it more difficult for native species to flourish.</p>
<p><a href="http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_dead_zone_dilemma/" target="_blank">Read more . . .</a></p>
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