Posted by feww on April 24, 2008
Who said:
- “I think that ethanol is the most popular whipping boy in the agricultural world at the moment”
- “So to say that biofuels are the culprit clearly underestimates the demand and really shows a gross misunderstanding of the world food situation,”
- “We have to grow more food. We have to increase yields”
Hint: To increase yields, farmers are forced to buy lots and lots more fertilizers!
Related links:
Related Reading:
See the tags for the answer!
Posted in Bill Doyle, North America, Potash Corp, agirculture, agriculture, corporate lies, corporate profit, environment, food riots, soil erosion, topsoil, toxic | Tagged: food, rice, corn, wheat, Industrial agriculture, cheap food, monoculture, fertilizers, healthy, nutritious, biofuels, yields, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Egypt and Cambodia, cereal, Bill Doyle | No Comments »
Posted by feww on April 15, 2008
WILD FACTS SERIES
Ice and Snow
Humans are in a great hurry to cancel their life insurance policy with nature, melting ice and snow. Mountain snow and glaciers are melting in the spring resulting in water scarcity during the hotter summer months when water is most needed.
Perito Moreno Glacier, Patagonia, Argentina This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 (Image credit:Luca Galuzzi via wikimedia commons)
“This is just a time bomb,” said hydrologist Wouter Buytaert at a meeting of geoscientists in Vienna.
Areas most at risk from water shortages include the United States, South America, the Middle East, southern Africa, and the Mediterranean.
The most vulnerable places are earth’s sub-tropic zones, where 70 percent of the world’s population live. Report
Posted in Drought, agriculture, flood, freshwater, water shortage | Tagged: glaciers, Ice, Life Insurance, population, snow, sub-tropic zones, time bomb | No Comments »
Posted by feww on February 25, 2008
“Dust fall” in the West in the last 100 years is up to seven times heavier than at any period in history.
Human activities such as settlement, railroad, industry, farming and ranching has caused a huge increase in the dust levels in the air, according to a report by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
A dusty scene near Canyonlands in Utah. Dust in the West has increased by 500 percent since the 1800s. [Photo Credit: Jason C. Neff, University of Colorado at Boulder. NO copy restriction. Source: eurekalert ]
“The chemical composition of the dust is changing. And it’s changing in a way that we actually see the byproducts of both industrial activity and agricultural activities in the dust. We see elevated phosphorous and we see elevated nitrogen in these lake sediments,” said Neff of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who led the study.
According to another study, published in January, human-caused climate change has altered river flows, snow pack and air temperatures.
“The dust we see in these lakes is the same dust that causes earlier spring snowmelt here, so we can now definitively say that humans are in large part responsible for this melt,” said Neff.
Read more …
Posted in Climate Change, Human-induced natural catastrophes, agriculture, cropland, dust bowl, grassland, land use, soil, topsoil | No Comments »
Posted by edro on February 19, 2008
No Good for Farming!
“A [farmer] took up land [in Saskatchewan], dug a cellar and built a frame house on top of it; ploughed up the prairie and grew wheat and oats. After 20 years he decided the country was no good for farming, for eight feet of his soil had gone and he had to climb up into his house.” —Richard St, Barbe Baker, My Life, My Trees [Quoted by John Jeavons in How to Grow More Vegetables]
Land Use and Topsoil
Once A Forest! Photo credit: UNEP
Topsoil
Measuring an average of about 6.6 inches (16.76 centimeters) deep, topsoil is the upper layer of earth’s crust. Topsoil comprises of a mix of humus, mineral and composted materials giving rise to most of the soil’s biological activity and supplying nutrients to plants and therefore to animals. After air and water, topsoil is Earth’s most vital resource.
Topsoil: Wild Facts
Table TS1. Topsoil: Wild Facts
Note: The average bulk density of topsoil is calculated at about 1.4 gcm-3
Source: Topsoil
Posted in Earth, agriculture, erosion, food, land, topsoil | No Comments »
