Managing Landscapes

These photos from Alan Lauder (author of Carbon Grazing) tells such an interesting story. They are shots of enclosures put into the Idalia National Park (central Queensland) to exclude kangaroos.

Below is in 2000. Kangaroos have overgrazed outside the enclosure. Inside, when the grazing pressure is removed, the groundcover begins to heal quite nicely.

Nine years later another enclosure (not the same one as above) is peaking in groundcover, but will begin to enter maturity and eventual groundcover decline.

But when the grasses are left ungrazed for too long, it actually starts to degrade (this is the same enclosure as the top 9 years later) - exactly as holistic management and RCS practitioners already know. We need well managed livestock keeping our grasslands productive. Outside the enclosure is all burr (no, its not grass) - its a first succession pioneering plant trying to maintain the carbon cycle.

It was thought that perhaps the provision of artificial waterpoints were promoting heavy kangaroo densities/distributions that were resulting in overstocking, but this CSIRO paper seems to sugest otherwise, though assumptions made in this paper are seriously questioned by others.  Fencing Waterpoints 17/11/2009,20:50 490.47 Kb

Farm Animals Essential for Planet

Dr Tim Flannery, believes large animals like cattle and sheep are essential to restoring the health of the planet and reducing greenhouse gas levels. There was general agreement with Professor Flannery that large farm animals helped retain fertility in the land and recycled carbon but also that they had to be better managed and bred to maximise their environmental benefit while reducing methane gas emissions.

The Grass Fed Revolution

In the past five years, more than 1,000 U.S. ranchers have switched herds to an all-grass diet. Pure pasture-raised beef still represents less than 1% of the US's supply, but sales reached some $120 million last year and are expected to increase more than 20% a year over the next decade. Biologically, cattle are ruminants, exquisitely evolved to graze grass, and researchers have found that a grain diet raises the acidity in steers' guts. This breeds an acid-resistant form of E. coli that can spread from feces-contaminated carcasses to meat. [see next story below]

Dirty Feedlots

Cattle hides are more likely to be contaminated with E. coli at the feedlot than at the slaughterhouse and transport and lairage do not increase the number or isolation rate of E. coli O157 according to a recent study. Understanding exactly where hides pick up E. coli in the beef production chain is important because the most common cause of carcass contamination is cross-contamination with hides during slaughter and processing, and there is often a greater prevalence of the pathogen on hides than in cattle feces.

The affects of E.coli in food can be devastating as in this story of eating a hamburger, the lax rules for testing for E.coli in processing plants, and the ceaseless drive for bigger profits (not good for healthy food). [Oh the glory of globalised factory food]

Wolves, Moose and Soil

Carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in "hot spots" of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area. Scientists found that soils at carcass sites had 100 - 600% more inorganic nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than soil from surrounding control sites. "This study demonstrates an unforeseen link between the hunting behavior of a top predator -- the wolf -- and biochemical hot spots on the landscape."

Trees Won't Do It - What About Soil?

After planting 100,000 trees on their New England grazing property "Blaxland" since 1990 - and still planting - the Street family expected to be well in the black on greenhouse gas accounting. But despite carbon sequestration by trees, it is still 872 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year (CO2-e/y) in the red, according to a life-cycle analysis overseen by CSIRO. As graziers they comment: "We really need to take a closer look at how we can do it through grass and soil - that's far more in keeping with our farming system."

Suppression of Carbon Neutral Livestock

A new report which shows that Queensland's cattle grazing industry is already all but carbon neutral and could provide a solution in addressing the State's overall carbon liability has been buried by the Bligh (Queensland) Government. It is understood the report has been derailed by Greg Withers, the Director-General of the Queensland Government's Department of Climate Change and Premier Anna Bligh's husband.

Farms Dependency on Oil

According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel. Unless farmers can change the way it's grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world's people.

Why Bees Vanish

The Vanishing of the Bees is the cinematic equivalent of "Watch with Mother" about the importance to the planet of the honeybee. It patiently unravels the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) implicated in the mass disappearance of honeybees from their hives across the world. Bees have one of the most important jobs in nature. Without their busy pollination of plants and flowers we would lose one in every three bites of the food that we eat.

Monsanto Found Guilty

France's highest court has ruled that U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. The court confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the soil clean."

Narrowing Down the Big Picture

This article bemoans the lack of science and the need for whole system approaches to selecting 'carbon efficient' food - ie local foods are not the best choice and hormone pumped meat is... What stands out in this so-called scientific approach is the actual lack of holistic thinking. Firstly it only makes judgments on carbon footprints (a typical scientific approach of eliminating other parameters), and takes no account of benefits of livestock on pasture, the fact that local growers make trips to markets as part of their personal trips to town anyway, the humane aspects of grass fed livestock and the quality of end product.

Soil Carbon Conference 2009 Summary

Bart Davidson of Bionutrient Solutions has put together a brief summary of the talks presented in Orange recently. "The two days was information rich and diverse, with a mix of pure science from the likes of CSIRO leaders discussing Carbon, its measurement and variability, sequestration and humus production and future trading, through to exceptionally successful farmers detailing how they have achieved stronger farm enterprises through carbon farming practices." [Some great things happening, and minds changing]

Behind the IPCC

The supposed menace of global warming - and the political response to it - has become one of the overwhelmingly urgent issues of our time.  More than ever, it is a matter of the highest priority that we should know whether or not the assumptions on which the politicians base their proposals are founded on properly sound science. A newly published book  called The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with climate change turning out to be the most costly scientific delusion in history?  tells the whole tangled story of how the debate over the threat of climate change has evolved over the past 30 years, interweaving the science with the politicians' response to it.

In Defence of Questioning Climate Change

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd attacked so-called climate change deniers and prompted this retort from a scientist that points out, among other things, that banks are the ones with a vested interest - they want us to trade in carbon. The IPCC were set up and funded to find a link, any link between carbon and the climate: they are not audited, elected or accountable to the Australian people. Ratings agencies repacked junk securities into "AAA rated" investments and triggered the credit crunch. The IPCC has repackaged "junk science" and created an "expert triple A rated", full gloss quasi prospectus called a "Synthesis Report". The Australian government is buying their unaudited package hook, line and stinker. [A fun, yet wonderfully serious, read]

Sea Level Rises Are a Fraud

Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He is certainly a world authority on the topic. Apparently the IPCC chose Hong Kong to measure sea level rises, yet every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area; it is the only record which you shouldn't use. Dr Morner was the expert reviewer for the IPCC in 2000 and 2006 and discovered none of the authors were seal-level experts. "The meteorological community work with computers; we geologists work with observations, and the observations do not fit with these scenarios. So what should you change? We cannot change observations, so we have to change the scenarios!" And the story gets better, with data manipulations etc [Wow, this is great and vindicates my idea that many things going wrong can be directly blamed on human actions, not climate change per say]

E-Mail Exchange of Climate Scientists

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change. In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

The Injustice of Carbon Offsets

Carbon Offset schemes are more about privatising the atmosphere than about preventing climate change. Carbon trading uses the resources of poorer people and poorer regions as "offsets" for richer countries: it is between 50 and 200 times cheaper to plant trees in poor countries to absorb CO2 than it is to reduce emissions at source. When global firms outsource to China or India, they need to be responsible for the pollution they carry overseas. We face a stark choice: we can destroy the conditions for human life on the planet by clinging to "free-market" fundamentalism, or we can secure our future by bringing commerce within the laws of ecological sustainability and social justice.

International Land Grabs

It may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today's global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. So much attention has been focused on the involvement of states, like Saudi Arabia, China or South Korea. But the reality is that while governments are facilitating the deals, private companies are the ones getting control of the land. And their interests are simply not the same as those of governments. Private investors are not turning to agriculture to solve world hunger or eliminate rural poverty. They want profit, pure and simple.

A Green Revolution using GM

Bill Gates has called for a second Green Revolution focused on African farmers. It won't just be in new crop varieties and higher yields but also in farmer training and infrastructure - and, perhaps most controversially, will be genetically modified. "The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first...It must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment. The last thing anyone should do is create short-term gains for poor farmers that have long-term costs for their children." [I'm not sure the GM companies are thinking along these lines... and gosh, compare this thinking to the report (Who Will Feed Us?) on peasant farming last week...]

Consumers Don't Want GM

Australians are deeply divided over genetically modified crops, with almost a third believing they are risky and another quarter unsure of their safety. ''It is perhaps significant that those in support were predominantly moderate supporters, suggesting the strong feelings were likely to be generated in opposition to the new technology.'' Respondents also overwhelmingly believed farming was crucial for the country's future, with 85% saying that was the case. Another 13% thought it was fairly important, and only 1% believed it was not very important.

It's Hard Studying GM Food

Dr. Judy Carman, senior scientist working in the field of epidemiology in Australia and awarded a government grant to study the safety of GM feed, has been subjected to a sustained campaign of vilification by individuals associated with the biotech industry, with the clear intention of preventing her from carrying out the research. Political pressure is now being brought to bear on her research by the current Agriculture and Food Minister of Western Australia.

Golden Rice Back into the Debate

Multinational crop technology company Syngenta argues that GM crops must be part of the mix. The comment was made in their broad effort to open Asian government doors that have so far remained closed to genetically modified food crops. Golden Rice is also being used to back this push, and the hope for production traits like water and nitrogen use efficiency, and tolerance to salinity and flooding are being offered. Syngenta is not working on specific rice products, but rather on understanding general traits that protect plants from stress. [Why focus on the plant instead of the environment the plants depend on - fix the landscape and you will address water, nitrogen and salt problems...]

Lawsuit Against GM Beets

Virtually the entire sugar beet crop in the United States is genetically engineered to protect it from herbicides. Now, a lawsuit claiming the biotech beets pose a risk to other varieties could threaten sugar production. Says one organic grower: "If biotech traits show up in my seeds, then my seeds are worthless. If my traits show up in conventional or biotech seeds, it's not a big deal to them, it does not destroy their value. It's an asymmetrical relationship we have here."

GM Corn Losses in South Africa

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds. The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation. "Monsanto says they just made a mistake in the laboratory, however we say that biotechnology is a failure. You cannot make a 'mistake' with three different varieties of corn."

Big Jump in Pesticides and GM Crops

The rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has promoted increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more chemical residues in foods. In addition, biotech corn seed prices in 2010 could be almost three times the cost of conventional seed, while new enhanced biotech soybean seed for 2010 could be 42% more than the original biotech version. The report Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years notes that GE crops are pushing pesticide use upward at a "rapidly accelerating pace".  

Nanosilver Killing Fish

Smaller than a virus and used in more than 200 consumer products, silver nanoparticles can kill and mutate fish embryos, new research shows. Tiny particles of silver - potent anti-microbial agents that can kill bacteria on contact - are becoming increasingly popular in consumer goods, including washing machines, refrigerators, clothing and toys. Many nanoparticles, including nanosilver, wash down drains and are discharged into lakes and rivers, where fish and other aquatic life are exposed.

Dam Triggers Earthquake

It was predicted and it appears that is exactly what happened. Fill a big dam with water and it can trigger an earthquake. A team of researchers suggest that this could well be what happened with the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in China's Sichuan Province in May 2008. The magnitude 8.0 quake left nearly 68,000 people killed, some 374,000 injured, and 18,500 people listed at the time as missing. Some estimates put the disaster's price tag at more than $75 billion.

Coal Health Seminar

SOS Liverpool Plains welcomes UK Health and Pollution Expert Dr Dick van Steenis MBBS, author of the UK Coal Health Study to speak on his research findings. The talk will cover the scientifically-documented effects of coal mining and coal power generation on human and animal health, with special reference to the effects on children, respiratory and immune systems. Caroona NSW 7th December (7pm). Contact Dr Pauline Roberts 0407 011 733.

Farm Soil Carbon Workshop

Soil Carbon is the key to natural farming success. It can reduce your input costs. It can restore your soil structure and reverse the effects of erosion. Put the billions of microbes in the soil to work for you. Join the thousands of land holders who have discovered the excitement of working with a healthy farming system. Learn to use the Soil Carbon Optimising Tool (SCOT) to maximize your carbon uptake so you enjoy the rewards sooner. Developed by the Soil Carbon Institute, SCOT steps you through the decision path, allowing you to mix and match techniques to suit your unique situation. Dubbo 9-10 December and Moree 14-15th December.  Soil Carbon Workshop 23/11/2009,04:13 148.99 Kb

Health

Maker of Flu Vaccine Says Its Ineffective

Dr Laveer was a major Australian scientist involved in the invention of a flu vaccine, in addition to playing a leading scientific role in the discovery of anti-flu drugs. He went on record as saying the vaccine he helped to create was ineffective and [that] natural infection with the flu was safer. "I have never been impressed with its efficacy," said Dr. Laver.

Artificial Sweeteners and Kidney Damage

Individuals who consume a diet high in artificially sweetened drinks are more likely to experience a decline in kidney function. The investigation reported "a significant two-fold increased odds, between two or more servings per day of artificially sweetened soda and faster kidney function decline..." The association persisted even after the study authors accounted for age, caloric intake, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, cigarette smoking, physical activity, and cardiovascular disease.

Backflip on Mammogram  Advice

A US federal medical panel has recommended against routine mammograms for women younger than 50, saying it is not worth subjecting some patients to unnecessary biopsies, radiation and stress, and also recommended against teaching women to do regular self-exams and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to recommend that doctors do exams. [Interestingly there are more and more alarm bells ringing that the procedure causes more harm than good - so this is good news]

Folic Acid Lifts Cancer Risk

UK and Australian food safety officials should pay particular attention to a new study linking folic acid and vitamin B12 supplement s with higher risks of cancer. "The research revealed an increase in all types of cancers (in the group taking the supplement) except colorectal cancer but lung and prostrate cancer were prominent." Australia recently introduced mandatory folic acid fortification of wheat flour for breadmaking. [Note that we are talking about synthetic folic acid in these supplements]

More Swine Flu Facts

Sister Teresa Forcades i Vila, PhD, an Italian Benedictine nun, a trained medical doctor, and the author of Crimes and Abuses of the Pharmaceutical Industry - is yet another voice of reason in the sea of swine flu madness. An interview with her has been translated and transcribed into English.

ThinkTwice

I have been referred to this vaccine information website which looks like a great resource for those wanting to investigate the topic of vaccines further.

Cartoon

Events

The calendar is playing up, so most of the links below are directed back to other websites where possible or to a contact email address. If there are no links, look to the related article above.  

* Coal Health Seminar - Caroona NSW 7th December 2009.

* Farm Soil Carbon Workshop - Dubbo NSW 9th - 10th December 2009.

* Farm Soil Carbon Workshop - Moree NSW 14th - 15th December 2009.

Postscript

The Real Invisible Man

35-year-old Liu Bolin, from Shandong, China, manages to camouflage himself in any surroundings, no matter how difficult they might be. Liu works on a single photo for up to 10 hours at a time, to make sure he gets it just right, but he achieves the right effect: sometimes passers-by don't even realize he is there until he moves.

This is just a sampler: