Outlawing Organic Farming

In response to the proposed Food Safety Bill (see first article in last week's newsletter) the Organic Consumers Association takes a non-alarmist stand which makes sense (see under Congress to Pass Bill Outlawing Organic Farming?). As they state the Bill is a limited-vision attempt by moderate Democrats and Republicans to craft food safety legislation to address the out-of-control filth and contamination that are inherent in our industrialized, now globalized, "profit-at-any-cost" food system. They are calling for an overhaul by getting back to organic farming practices.

This summary provides an illustration of what the Bill is attempting to enforce: "Imagine Joel Salatin's wonderful organic farm under the direction of the USDA, with detailed instructions on what he must feed and when, how he must medically "treat" his animals and with what, what he must "spray" and when, ... you get the picture."

Low Phosphorus Farming Systems

More from Crop and Pasture Science Vol. 60 No. 2:

A conceptual framework for improving the P efficiency of organic farming without inputs of soluble P fertiliser -  P availability to agricultural plants can be met by  (1) applying traditional (manure, compost) and novel (biosuper) sources; (2) modifying or selecting plants for their root architecture, phytase activity, carboxylate excretion, and P translocation inefficiency; (3) encouraging rhizosphere conditions which favour phytase and carboxylase activity; (4) developing symbioses with mycorrhiza and Penicillium species; (5) developing exoenzyme products which release inositol P; (6) adjusting soil pH to 6-7 for maximum availability of native mineral P sources or lowering pH for maximum availability of reactive rock P; (7) developing rotations which maximise organic P cycling.

TwinN Updates

There are lots of updates coming through from Mapleton Agri Biotec about TwinN. Trial data is coming in from around the world and Australia which continue to support the claim that TwinN can cut your nitrogen bill in half. The reason goes beyond just it's capacity to fix nitrogen, but includes its ability to stimulate plant growth via plant growth factors (e.g. auxin mimics) to increase root mass and ultimately leaf area.

There are also application instruction updates on 'how-to' activate these living organisms but more importantly gives hints for prolonging the storage and survival of the microbes, and now includes soil application guidelines.

Please feel free to forward on any of your own stories about Twin-N. We have already seen some impressive results in pasture (see under TwinN Benefits.

Reduce the Size of the Murray!

How extraordinary - the suggestion is to disconnect the Murray from hundreds of lakes, wetlands and other environmental assets as part of a radical shrinking and reconfiguration of the waterway. The assumption is these experts know the sole cause of the problem...drought....but is that the whole story. If the engineers keep tampering we will have one hell of an efficient drain across our country. I particularly like the first comment below this article. And couldn't climate change also be connected to mass landscape changes, e.g. less trees, less cloud seeding, less rain etc?

Soil Carbon Conundrum

The atmosphere carries too much carbon, our farming soils too little, which leads to a pregnant question: how do we get carbon from air to soil, and keep it there? The Federal Government has just thrown $20 million at this issue but depending on the questions asked, that $20 million could throw up very different answers.

Bioasis

This is similar to a product I looked into many years ago, that also came out from China and had Bacillus species in it. I loved the idea, but never really heard much more afterwards. I was then recently alerted to Bioasis with their Bactivate product - basically coal granules inoculated with a specific range of Bacillus. Perhaps we will hear more about them over time, but thought it might be something others would be interested in.  Bactivate 18/03/2009,20:05 115.70 Kb

India's Organic Women Farmers

From little things big things grow... a collective of 5,000 women spread across 75 villages in the arid, interior part of southern India is now offering a chemical-free, non-irrigated, organic agriculture. I am not sure why climate change has been linked to the story - I am sure feeding themselves in a degraded landscape was a bigger motivator...but it's beautiful to hear that the women are swamped with orders.

African Landgrab for Ethanol

Western ways are not changing - exploiting resources for profit, but dressing it up as benefits to the poor. This one project promises to spend some $500 million, employ at least 2,000 people, and use nearly 75,000 acres of native woodland and savanna to grow sugarcane and produce ethanol for the growing global biofuel market in Mozambique. Some projects have asked the Mozambique government-which legally owns all land here-for entire districts.

No Independent Research into GM

I have already posted up an article about this problem from America (see under GM Research Stifled), but interestingly the story has been aired in The Land. The problem is restricted access to GM seed to be able to conduct independent research. Unlike other inputs such as pesticides or conventional seeds, scientists cannot go through regular commercial channels to purchase a bag of biotech seed and do independent research. And in addition, GM companies are refusing to approve data found in trials for publication and threatening lawsuits if a scientist wants to publish without company approval. Which surely puts a big question mark over what results are coming out of GM research to date...

Permission to Enter GM Farms?

Montana's Senate Agriculture Committee, in the US, is considering a bill that would require biotech firms to secure permission before sampling farmers' crops to determine whether they are illegally using patented seeds.

GM Conclusion

This is a wonderful quote by Andrew Kimbrell, lawyer and executive director of the Center for Food Safety (USA). "As far as genetic engineering for food, that is the great experiment that has failed. They literally have the entire world market against them...They are basically chemical companies selling more chemicals..."

Safety Evaluation of a New GM Food

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) invite individuals and organisations with an interest in the regulation of food to provide information and comment on an application seeking approval for food derived from a genetically modified soybean. Submissions should reach FSANZ by Friday 1 May 2009.

Herbicide Resistance

This is interesting information coming from Syngenta - "We are dealing with glyphosate-resistant giant ragweed more and more every year." Since 2001, Syngenta has fought on the front lines in the battle against glyphosate resistance, advising that over reliance on glyphosate herbicides would lead to resistance - and it clearly has. Wow, what does that say about GM crops designed for ongoing glyphosate sprays? Note that the genetic explanation of resistance uses the outdated Mendelian model (like GM companies do too) - I suspect epigenetic theories would have a lot more to offer on what is happening.

What's Happening to Our Food?

We once lived with a diverse robust system of growing food, but the last few decades in particular have seen that converted into a vulnerable monoculture propped up with chemicals and genetic manipulation. Visual images are so powerful for conveying and summarising concepts and this is a neat summary of the movie - The Future of Food. A must for farmers and consumers alike. 

Stressed Foods Can be Healthier

Stressing plants to induce their natural defenses could lead to a new range of functional food enriched with a plant's natural defensive compounds, phytoalexins. While it is acknowledged that organic plants tend to already produce these, some clever humans are interested in using biotic and abiotic elicitors - substances that elicit the production of the phytoalexins - as well as other stress-inducing techniques... I disagree that growing organically is necessarily always stressful - you get a more robust plant as perhaps the way it should be naturally.

Cheap Food

As the Recession hits the food industry is scrambling to cheapen their ingredients further. In this case manufacturers can use less expensive dairy products, such as cream or butter and substitute with mouthfeel enhancers made with natural flavourings, milk proteins and other dairy solids. In other words, deconstruct real food to make processed food cheap...

Pigs By Number

What's the link between our food, pigs in this case, and our health? In a word, antibiotics. They have allowed us to use practices that maximize profits and minimize consumer costs by crowding more animals into smaller, controlled spaces. For example the approximate number of pigs per acre of U.S. farm in 1997: 4.3. in 2007: 8.7.

Global Soil Map

A consortium has formed that aims to make a new digital soil map of the world using state-of-the-art and emerging technologies for soil mapping and predicting soil properties at fine resolution. This new global soil map will be supplemented by interpretation and functionality options that aim to assist better decisions in a range of global issues like food production and hunger eradication, climate change, and environmental degradation.

Silent Tractors

Just imagine!  The only sound made by the new hydrogen tractor is the electric motor working, which is a bit like the noise a large radio-controlled tractor makes. And when it's stationary there is no noise at all, as it doesn't need to idle.

Farm Day 2009

More farmers are needed to host city families on their farm for the weekend of May 30-31 to help Farm Day succeed again this year in its aim of bridging the urban-rural divide. Demand was so significant from the city that there were not enough farmers to host all city families who wanted to take part last year.

Holistic Management Course

The next Holistic Management Course will be run in Cowra starting 1-2 April. The Lachlan CMA is offering generous subsidies. "...in terms of our climate situation Holistic Management is going to be one of the key tools we have at our disposal." Tim Flannery

Health

Why Vitamin D is the Key to Health

What a simple descriptive explanation - basically cells don't have all of their tools on hand all of the time. When something is required, they go to their DNA library to get instructions for production, but first they need a key to get to that library - and that key is Vitamin D. No wonder Vitamin D is being linked to such a myriad of health related issues!

Black Foods

Black foods have been popular for some time in Asian countries such as Japan, where they are associated with high levels of antioxidants. A new collection called Black is Back, seizes on European interest in the black food trend. On the savoury side, the collection includes chargrill, black olive and dark soy sauce; on the sweet side, offerings include black cherry, dandelion and burdock, licorice, treacle and black bean.

Statin Drugs Affect The Brain

It all seems so obvious, yet the consequences are worrying - cholesterol reducing drugs that inhibit the liver from making cholesterol may also keep the brain from making cholesterol, which is vital to efficient brain function. "If you deprive cholesterol from the brain, then you directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters affect the data-processing and memory functions. In other words -- how smart you are and how well you remember things."

Toxic Bath Products

Many children's bath products contain chemicals that may cause cancer and skin allergies with 23 of 28 products tested containing formaldehyde, considered a probable carcinogen by the EPA. It is released as preservatives break down over time in a container. Thirty-two of 48 products contained 1,4-dioxan, also considered a probable human carcinogen and is a byproduct of a chemical processing techniques used to make petroleum-based ingredients gentler to the skin.

Homebirth to Go Underground?

Hundreds of Australian women each year who choose to give birth in their homes are likely to face greater medical danger for themselves and their babies with the introduction of regulations that could force the practice underground. "It's ridiculous to effectively make homebirth illegal, when other countries like Britain have publicly funded homebirth programs."

The Million Women Study

The results are still coming in. It was the biggest survey ever conducted into the health and habits of Britain's females and highlighted the dangers of HRT, amongst many other things. Interestingly almost all of the criticism of the study has been from the HRT (hormone replacement therapy) lobby - usually gynaecologists and GPs who prescribe the drugs.

Why Grey Hair?

Gray hair, according to new findings, is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear on hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, your hair's natural pigment.

Turning Back to Sugar

High fructose corn syrup in several major-brand soft drinks is being replaced with old-fashioned sugar. It is claimed to be all in the name of taste, but given current consumer attitudes to HFCS, it seems possible that this is being used as a trial run for a wider move back to sugar.

The Sordid MMR Vaccine History

Legal letters have been sent to websites requesting that they take down Martin Walker's last essay - Urabe Farrago. It is a biography about the triple MMR vaccine, two brands of which containing Urabe mumps vaccine that have had no clinical trials but was said to offer 'life-long protection with a single jab'. During its launch in Britain in the 1980s the Canadian government withdraw all MMR vaccines containing the Urabe strain of mumps virus due to unreasonable adverse reactions; and within six months the first post vaccine cases of aseptic meningitis were reported to the Japanese Public Health Council. Both countries withdraw the vaccines. SmithKline Beecham eventually issued an urgent letter to all practitioners in New Zealand in the 1990s advising them to stop using the Pluserix vaccine immediately. Britain held on and defended the vaccine until it was eventually, and secretly, withdraw. The vaccines have since been palmed off to developing countries...what a story of corruption and covert dealings!

BPA OK in Australia

While Bisphenol A is being withdrawn from products worldwide and looks like being banned in other countries such as Canada and the US, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) recently announced that BPA is safe. The best twist in this story is that FSANZ used US FDA data to determine their conclusions - and now a US packaging industry rep is wanting to use FSANZ's conclusions to change the FDA's conclusions...

Miscellaneous

The public is increasingly seeking its news not from mainstream television networks or ink-on-dead-trees but from grazing online. When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about, but are we only selecting information that confirms our prejudices? Like subscribing and reading this newsletter?

Events

For all March events

For all April events

* Holistic Management Course - Cowra NSW 1st - 2nd April 2009.

* Holistic Grazing Planning Course - Cowra NSW 5th - 7th May 2009.

* Farm Day 2009 - Australia 30th - 31st May 2009.

* Holistic Financial and Land Planning - Cowra NSW 9th - 10th June 2009.

Postscript

Ever get the impression that things are speeding up? Check these facts out - we really are living in an exponential world!