Use biodiversity to combat climate change!

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Use biodiversity to combat climate change!

The biodiversity loss from which we all suffer is as serious as the more obvious climate problems. Ecosystem services is the new in-phrase, as more and more is discovered about how we benefit from the most obscure ecological connections with ourselves and others. Our continued destruction and degradation of natural habitat, driving extinction, means much less carbon storage and the loss of water from natural systems as well as our own. Our recent story on carbon emissions from tropical forests shows possibly the most prominent example, but Arctic and many other peat bogs must also be regarded as strategic.

Norway itself used to have 10% of its land covered by peat, 2 centuries ago, but like the rest of Europe, ditches and draining have left little of these rich carbon deposits. Professor Dag O. Hessen of the University of Oslo takes these as his example. They are an immense carbon sink, and they also function like a sponge to absorb large amounts of water. Peatlands can prevent flooding, and after the most recent floods it’s easy to understand what an important function that is, he stated at the meeting. Increasing temperatures in Norway are affecting aquatic biodiversity in mighty ways, according to his personal research. Our Red Sea example in the photograph is also liable to warming, with huge loss of habitats.

Of course, peat is not the only land to provide us with goods and services. Forest, both in the cold and coniferous north and in the equatorial heat, can provide magnificent biodiversity and sheltering amelioration of both temperature and humidity. The whole climate naturally depends on this enormous land area covered in trees. Not only animals, humans and plants rely on that service. Equally, the oceans and the freshwaters influence our whole world. Without their diverse species and vast influence on the atmosphere, we landlubbers can only despair of our faltering climate and food supplies.

Each nation, large or small, organizing its science, technology and policies in ways designed to account for climate change and biodiversity? The thought of Norway’s example should be politically useful to many, but meanwhile, our numerous articles on biodiversity are here, while climate change seems to influence most of our work recently, just as the Norwegians were saying.

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Food, Water & Climate dependent on soil biodiversity 

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The unbelievable underworld and its impact on us all!

A new study has pulled together research into the most diverse place on earth to demonstrate how the organisms below-ground could hold the key to understanding how the worlds ecosystems function and how they are responding to climate change.

Published in Nature, the paper by Professor Richard Bardgett from The University of Manchester and Professor Wim van der Putten of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, brings together new knowledge on this previously neglected area. The paper not only highlights the sheer diversity of life that lives below-ground, but also how rapid responses of soil organisms to climate change could have far reaching impacts on future ecosystems. The paper also explores how the below-ground world can be utilized for sustainable land management.

Professor Bardgett explains: “The soil beneath our feet arguably represents the most diverse place on Earth. Soil communities are extremely complex with literally millions of species and billions of individual organisms within a single grassland or forest, ranging from microscopic bacteria and fungi through to larger organisms such as earthworms, ants and moles. Despite this plethora of life the underground world had been largely neglected by research, it certainly used to be a case of out of sight out of mind, although over the last decade we have seen a significant increase in work in this area.”

PESTICIDE exposure – two decade study re: farmer depression

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PESTICIDE exposure – two decade study re: farmer depression

Pesticides could make a farmer 80 to 90% more likely to suffer depression.

Earlier this fall, researchers from the National Institute of Health finished up a landmark 20-year study, a study that hasn’t received the amount of coverage it deserves. About 84,000 farmers and spouses of farmers were interviewed since the mid-1990s to investigate the connection between pesticides and depression, a connection that had been suggested through anecdotal evidence for far longer. We called up Dr. Freya Kamel, the lead researcher on the study, to find out what the team learned and what it all means. Spoiler: nothing good.

“There had been scattered reports in the literature that pesticides were associated with depression,” says Kamel. “We wanted to do a new study because we had more detailed data than most people have access to.” That excessive amount of data includes tens of thousands of farmers, with specific information about which pesticides they were using and whether they had sought treatment for a variety of health problems, from pesticide poisoning to depression. Farmers were surveyed multiple times throughout the 20-year period, which gives the researchers an insight into their health over time that no other study has.

Because the data is so excessive, the researchers have mined it three times so far, the most recent time in a study published just this fall. The first one was concerned with suicide, the second with depression amongst the spouses of farmers (Kamel says “pesticide applicators,” but most of the people applying pesticides are farmers), and the most recent with depression amongst the farmers themselves.

“I don’t think there’s anything surprising about the fact that pesticides would affect neurologic function.”

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Second-hand PESTICIDE exposure – Californians live with Strawberry fields forever

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The transition underscores the modern strawberry industry’s chemical dependence: growers rely on heavy amounts of some of the most dangerous pesticides – a class called fumigants – to deliver the fruit year-round at an affordable price for consumers. Because strawberries like to grow where people like to live, in the perpetual spring of coastal California, growers often use the pesticides near schools, homes and businesses.

The health and environmental problems that come with those pesticides have threatened the foundation of a $2.6bn industry that provides Americans with 9 out of 10 strawberries they eat.

Even as most of the developed world has moved on to other methods of farming, California’s strawberry growers have resisted the methyl bromide ban. Nearly a decade after the pesticide was supposed to be banned, the state’s strawberry growers have staved off the deadline by warning of financial ruin. Today, they use about 90% of all the methyl bromide in the developed world.

Meanwhile, strawberry growers and chemical companies have cycled from one potentially dangerous chemical to another to try to replace methyl bromide.

Strawberry growing can be an unforgiving business. The fruit is fragile and land is expensive, so growers pump the soil with fumigants to wipe out most life below the surface, a sort of insurance policy against future plagues.

We Need a New Food System Paradigm – UN nutrition conference explores

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We Need a New Food System Paradigm – UN nutrition conference explores

By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9 billion – and all will need nutritious diets. Yet despite the intrinsic relationship between the food we grow and the food we eat, the agriculture and nutrition sectors are only just now beginning to overcome decades of mutual isolation. The high rates of malnutrition among farming communities are a stark reminder that the link between agriculture and nutrition is not as it should be.

Today, we are starting to see the divide between agriculture and nutrition begin to close. But it’s fair to say that our food system is broken. All the time, money and effort spent on trying to make it work still doesn’t make the food system deliver everyone an optimal diet. Today, up to 805 million people are hungry and 2 billion are malnourished – and 70 percent of them live in rural areas, with many rapidly moving to already swollen cities.

At the same time, 1.4 billion are overweight and obese, fuelled by Western-style diets that are damaging the planet and our health. Climate change is increasing food insecurity – particularly for rural populations which are most vulnerable to erratic weather patterns and unpredictable planting and harvest cycles. And despite many not having enough to eat, globally we throw away a staggering 1.3 billion tons of food each year.

Obesity costs global economy $2 trillion each year

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Obesity costs global economy $2 trillion each year

A new report by McKinsey estimates that obesity is costing the global economy $2 trillion per year. That makes it nearly as damaging as armed conflict or smoking, according to the consultants.  

More than 2 billion people – or almost 30% of the global population – are currently considered overweight or obese, and the problem is expected to get worse.

Based on current trends, nearly half of the world’s adults will be overweight or obese by 2030.  "Obesity, which should be preventable, is now responsible for about 5% of all deaths worldwide,“ the report stated.

Smoking is considered the most expensive man-made burden on the economy with a cost of $2.1 trillion, followed closely by armed conflict.  The damage caused by obesity mainly comes from lost productivity due to disability and premature death, and higher healthcare costs.

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The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic (not gluten, but chemicals) 

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The bad news is that the problem lies with the manner in which wheat is grown and harvested by conventional wheat farmers.

You’re going to want to sit down for this one.  I’ve had some folks burst into tears in horror when I passed along this information before.

Common wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as the practice allows for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest 

Pre-harvest application of the herbicide Roundup or other herbicides containing the deadly active ingredient glyphosate to wheat and barley as a desiccant was suggested as early as 1980.  It has since become routine over the past 15 years and is used as a drying agent 7-10 days before harvest within the conventional farming community.

According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT who has studied the issue in depth and who I recently saw present on the subject at a nutritional Conference in Indianapolis, desiccating non-organic wheat crops with glyphosate just before harvest came into vogue late in the 1990′s with the result that most of the non-organic wheat in the United States is now contaminated with it.  Seneff explains that when you expose wheat to a toxic chemical like glyphosate, it actually releases more seeds resulting in a slightly greater yield:   “It ‘goes to seed’ as it dies. At its last gasp, it releases the seed” says Dr. Seneff.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, as of 2012, 99% of durum wheat, 97% of spring wheat, and 61% of winter wheat has been treated with herbicides. This is an increase from 88% for durum wheat, 91% for spring wheat and 47% for winter wheat since 1998.

Meat Companies Go Antibiotics-Free as More Consumers Demand It

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Meat Companies Go Antibiotics-Free as More Consumers Demand It

Food producers increasingly offer chicken, beef and pork raised without antibiotics, responding to consumer concerns about resistant bacteria.

HOW WE EAT

A continuing series about how consumer perceptions and corporate strategies shape the national diet.

Competitor Tyson Foods Inc. launched a brand of chicken without antibiotics last year and also markets antibiotic-free beef. Retailers where people now can buy meat raised without antibiotics include Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A Inc. says it is phasing out all chicken raised with antibiotics over five years.

Antibiotic-free beef, pork and chicken account for only around 5% of meat sold in the U.S., by industry estimates, but its share is growing quickly. Sales of such chicken at U.S. retailers rose 34% by value last year, according to market-research firm IRI.

Prices at the supermarket for these products are much higher, rewarding producers for higher production costs, but also imposing an affordability limit on the market.

Meat producers’ growing embrace of the niche draws praise from health advocates worried about a rise in some types of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. They regard the commercial moves as a breakthrough after years of tentative actions by regulators.

“We are seeing companies come to the table because of public pressure in a way they haven’t before,” says Susan Vaughn Grooters, a policy analyst for Keep Antibiotics Working, a coalition of health, animal-welfare and environmental groups. She says that the FDA is “being outpaced by the microbes themselves and by the industry.”

The FDA views its approach of seeking voluntary changes as the most effective way to reduce antibiotic use in animals, arguing that a ban could tie it up in lengthy legal proceedings.

The market shift echoes other industry responses to consumer concerns about the safety or ethics of food production. In the pork business, Cargill Inc. is among companies pledging to phase out cramped “gestation stalls” for pregnant sows. Other companies offer products free of ingredients from bioengineered crops.

Key details:

More than two million Americans a year develop bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics, which kill at least 23,000 annually, according to a report last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public-health leaders call this a crisis for global health, and pin part of the blame on the meat industry’s widespread use of the drugs. “Up to half of antibiotic use in humans and much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe,” the CDC said last year, citing antibiotics use for growth promotion.

The concern is that herds or flocks raised in close confinement and dosed repeatedly with antibiotics create millions of living petri dishes in which harmful bacteria have a chance to mutate to evade the drugs. The bacteria then could be passed to humans if meat wasn’t cooked fully or if traces of manure used to fertilize crops remained on produce.

“It is clear that agricultural use of antibiotics can affect human health,” the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said in September as the White House was unveiling measures to combat the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.

“What is less clear,” the report added, is the farm sector’s relative contribution to the problem, compared with misuse and overuse of antibiotics in human health care.

The meat industry has long maintained that adding antibiotics to livestock feed or water is safe, in part because many of the drugs involved aren’t used with humans.

At the Animal Health Institute, a trade group for makers of veterinary drugs, Richard Carnevale, vice president for regulatory, scientific and international affairs, is doubtful that livestock antibiotics contribute significantly to resistance problems. Dr. Carnevale says the rise of bacteria resistant to antibiotics doesn’t coordinate closely with how heavily those particular antibiotics are used on the farm.

Many consumers have made up their minds. Consumer Reports, in a 2012 survey, found 72% of people were extremely or very concerned about widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed. This year, research firm Midan Marketing surveyed grocery shoppers and found 88% aware of antibiotic use in animals and 60% concerned about it.

Background:  

The FDA approved antibiotic use to stimulate livestock growth in the 1950s, after animal-health researchers found that animals receiving small, regular doses of the bacteria-killers seemed to grow more quickly. The reasons aren’t fully understood, but many scientists think the drugs improve nutrient absorption.

In 2012, America’s roughly eight billion broiler chickens, 66 million pigs, 89 million head of cattle and other livestock consumed 32.2 million pounds of antibiotics, according to the FDA. That was up 8% in a year. It is more than four times the amount of antibiotics sold for human use, though the FDA cautions that the amounts aren’t directly comparable.  About 60% of antibiotic types used on livestock are also used in humans.

Scientists raised concerns many years ago that adding antibiotics to livestock feed could spur drug resistance. Meat and animal-health companies lobbied Congress and the FDA to keep the uses in animals approved. Few restrictions have been imposed, although Congress in 2008 required drug makers to report sales of antibiotics for livestock.

Recommendations the FDA made late last year, although left voluntary, were among the furthest-reaching actions it has taken on the issue. It asked producers of veterinary antibiotics to revise labels to make it effectively illegal for farmers and ranchers to administer the drugs for the purpose of promoting growth. The FDA says all 26 companies that make such drugs have agreed to phase them out for growth promotion by December 2016.

Critics including Robert Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, say the guidelines may have little impact. Among the reasons: The rules still allow putting antibiotics in feed if the purpose is disease prevention—a vague test that could enable meat producers to continue using them widely if they get a veterinarian’s permission.

Iowa hog farmer Howard Hill, who is also a veterinarian, says he long ago stopped using antibiotics for growth acceleration but will continue giving them to pigs aged three to six weeks to prevent sickness during their shift to a solid diet from mother’s milk. “We know if we can keep the animals healthier and not let them get disease, in the long run we’ll produce a healthier, safer product,” says Dr. Hill, who is president of the National Pork Producers Council.

Some public-health advocates say the threat of antibiotic resistance is too great to depend on market forces to curb use in animal feed. But the FDA says imposing mandatory limits on roughly 280 agricultural antibiotic products would take years.

Farmer Brandon Glenn of Owensboro, Ky., walks among chickens he raises without antibiotics, which a meat company asks him to do because of consumer demand. RACHEL MUMMEY

Once, it set out to ban an antibiotic in poultry after concluding that its use promoted bacteria resistant to drugs given to humans. One manufacturer fought the move in court. The FDA wasn’t able to get the poultry antibiotic—which was in the same class as the human antibiotic Cipro—off the market until five years later, says Bill Flynn, an official at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.

Economics:

The cost increase for producing chickens without antibiotics is estimated at 10% to 15%. The supermarket selling price can be $2 a pound higher, sometimes even twice the price of other meat. Chicken processors and retailers command higher margins for the products because consumers are willing to pay a premium for them, and such products also often are sold with “natural” or “organic” labels, which typically carry a premium themselves, analysts said.

Some early adopters have greatly expanded their businesses since switching to antibiotic-free products, including restaurant chains Panera Bread Co. , which did so for some menu items in 2004, and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., which began doing so in 1999.

Chick-fil-A’s announcement about nine months ago that it will phase out chicken raised with antibiotics made it one of the largest restaurant chains to make such a pledge. One influence was a food blogger named Vani Hari. In 2011, she began chastising the chain on her website, FoodBabe.com, because its sandwiches contained dozens of ingredients. She dubbed it “Chemical-fil-A.”

The company invited her to its Atlanta headquarters, where one day two years ago she discussed her concerns. On a white board, she listed changes she thought the chain should make, with her priority eliminating antibiotic-fed chickens.

At the time, says David Farmer, Chick-fil-A vice president of product strategy, the company considered any shift to antibiotic-free chicken something “that was down the road.” But a few months later, polling of customers showed 70% said antibiotics use mattered to them. That prompted executives to take a serious look.

Perdue first began reducing antibiotics a dozen years ago. The private Salisbury, Md., company—founded in 1920 by Arthur Perdue and led today by grandson Jim Perdue —says it hasn’t let its chicken raisers use antibiotics for the purpose of speeding growth since 2007.

That year, it rolled out Harvestland, a brand produced without antibiotics used for any purpose. Perdue has eliminated antibiotics use entirely in 35% of the chicken it sells, it says. Executives say they made the moves because microbial resistance was gaining more attention and they kept getting questions from consumers about it.

Birds raised without antibiotics need more vaccines to protect against disease, says Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president for food safety and quality. The company has tinkered with types of feed and found that it helps to add substances called probiotics that provide useful gut bacteria.

Mr. Glenn, the Kentucky farmer, says not long after he converted to antibiotic-free production, a respiratory illness wiped out as much as 2.5% of his flock. “It was trial and error for us, and for Perdue,” he says.

Mr. Glenn, 34 years old, raises about 160,000 chickens in six climate-controlled buildings, each nearly the length of two football fields. He has gone from a skeptic about curbing antibiotics to an enthusiast.

The first time he saw one of the antibiotic-free birds raised on his family’s farm at a grocery store—with his father’s name, Wayne Glenn, on the packaging—he bought one, snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook .

“Everyone wants a healthier lifestyle,” he says. “That is basically what it boils down to.”

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Stunning NASA Visualization reveals Carbon Dioxide teeming

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NASA has released a striking visualization of how carbon dioxide flows around the world. In the simulation, plumes of the greenhouse gas gush into the atmosphere from major industrial centers, swirling from continent to continent on the winds of global weather systems.

The simulation, which took 75 days to create on a supercomputer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, depicts CO2 emissions from May 2005 to June 2007. Its superhigh-resolution mapping—64 times as great as the average climate model—dramatically illustrates two often neglected facts.

The first is that CO2 emissions come almost exclusively from the Northern Hemisphere. The deep red plumes of the normally invisible gas flow from clusters in the United States, Europe, and Asia, eventually pooling over the Arctic region.

The second is that massive amounts of carbon dioxide are absorbed seasonally by forests and other vegetation. As the model moves from late spring into summer, the rivers of red gas begin to fade away—drawn out of the atmosphere by photosynthesizing plants. Then, as the model slips into early winter and vegetation dies or goes dormant, CO2 flows back into the atmosphere.

Humans dump about 36 billion metric tons of extra CO2 into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels. In spring 2013, for the first time in history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations exceeded 400 parts per million. Scientists have warned that CO2 levels above 450 parts per million could result in dangerous disruptions of the climate; some think we may already have passed the danger threshold.

To track CO2 emissions with greater precision, NASA launched a new satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), on July 2. Researchers expect to release data from the satellite in early 2015.

Besides helping scientists measure changes in CO2 emissions and flows, OCO-2 may also yield new insights into the behavior of carbon sinks such as forests and oceans that remove as much as half of all CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. Scientists are worried that such sinks may have reached their limits for absorbing carbon dioxide.