Celebrating UN World Water Day - 22 March 2013 : caring about our food, our water, our soil

March 22, 2013 is the 20th anniversary of World Water Day. In honor of this important anniversary, this week we are highlighting 7 Strategies for Reducing Water Waste. Please visit the Food Tank website each day over the next week for posts focused on innovations around water.  Although the earth has 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water, only 0.001 percent of that is accessible for human consumption and use. And 70 percent of water is used for agricultural purposes. In 2012, the United States experienced the most severe drought in at least 25 years which, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), affected 80 percent of agricultural land in the country. Couple that with recent droughts in other parts of the world, most notably in the African Sahel, and the urgency for action to safeguard water resources is clear. As water supplies face mounting pressures from growing populations, climate change, and an already troubled food system, analyses of “water wealth” and “water security” are laying the groundwork for future cooperation and stability. In order to meet all municipal, agricultural, and ecological needs for water, it is crucial to develop innovative water saving systems for the future of food production. Here are seven strategies for reducing water waste in the food system: 1. Eating Less Meat According to Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project, it takes roughly 3,000 liters of water to meet one person’s daily dietary needs, or approximately 1 liter per calorie. The amount of water needed to produce one kilogram of red meat can range from 13,000 to 43,000 liters of water; poultry requires about 3,500 liters of water; and pork needs about 6,000 liters. Eating more meatless meals, even one or two days a week, can help conserve water resources.  2. Using intercropping, agroforestry, and cover crops Soil health is critical to water conservation. Diversifying farms by including cover crops, planting trees on farms, and intercropping can help keep nutrients and water in the soil, protecting plants from drought and making sure that every drop of water delivered by rainfall or irrigation can be utilized. 3. Implementing micro-irrigation Approximately 60 percent of water used for irrigation is wasted. Drip irrigation methods can be more expensive to install, but can also be 33 percent to 40 percent more efficient, carrying water or fertilizers directly to plants’ roots.  4. Improving Rainwater Harvesting Since the 1980s, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, farmers in Burkina Faso have been modifying traditional planting pits known as zai, making them deeper and wider and adding organic materials. As a result, the pits retain rainwater longer, helping farmers to increase yields even in years of low rainfall. 5. Using mobile technology to save water Santosh Ostwal is an innovator and entrepreneur in India who has developed a system that allows farmers to use mobile phones to turn their irrigation systems on and off remotely. This helps reduce the amount of water and electricity wasted on watering fields that are already saturated. 6. Planting perennial crops Perennial crops protect the soil for a greater length of time than annual crops, which reduces water loss from runoff. According to a report from the Land Institute, "annual grain crops can lose five times as much water and 35 times as much nitrate as perennial crops." 7. Practicing Soil Conservation Soil conservation techniques, including no-till farming, can help farmers to better utilize the water they have available. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), studies have shown that no-till techniques improve water-retention capacity and improve water use efficiency in crops. Be sure to visit the official World Water Day website for more details about the day’s events, including activities in your community and tips for reducing your water footprint. You can also learn more about water issues from the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, the Global Water Policy Project, Food and Water Watch, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). What do YOU think? What are the best ideas, studies, and on-the-ground innovations helping to conserve water?  Check out some of our newsletter articles below, reply to this email or call me, and please join the conversation on our website, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Pinterest, on Google+, and on YouTube All the Best, Danielle Nierenberg Co-Founder, Food Tank: The Food Think Tank www.FoodTank.org Please connect with us on Facebook,  Twitter, and Pinterest

Non-stunning slaughter - Animals are counting on you to be their voice

As you know, a big decision will be made this week when primary industries ministers from around the country meet in Melbourne to decide whether to close the loophole on non-stunned slaughter in Australia.

I'm writing to invite you to an important rallyorganised by Animals Australia on Thursday evening at the MCG, where the ministers are due to discuss their decision on this issue. Already 14,000 Animals Australia supporters have written to these ministers imploring them to show mercy and remove the exemptions that are allowing some abattoirs in Victoria and South Australia to cut the throats of fully conscious sheep. We need your help to send one last and all-important reminder as the ministers arrive for their dinner meeting, that caring Australians are depending on them to make the right decision.

• Where: Gate 2, Melbourne Cricket Ground
• When: 5:45pm, Thursday, 27th October (finishing 7pm)
• What to bring: Just yourself, we will have plenty of posters for people to hold
• More information: Call the Animals Australia office on 1800 888 584

Miss, of all the cruelty I have seen inside abattoirs, non-stunned slaughter of animals represents the single greatest cause of distress, pain and suffering I have born witness to.

Fortunately we understand that several ministers are already of the opinion that non-stunned slaughter is unacceptable, which means there is real hope to end this brutal practice in Australia. This rally may be the tipping point that gets the others over the line.

Please join our experienced campaigners for a peaceful gathering on Thursday evening and help us ensure that all animals in this country are extended this most basic legal protection.

I hope you can join us, Lyn White Campaign Director

P.S. You may be aware that the official meeting of the primary industries ministers will be held on Friday morning. We are rallying at their Thursday evening dinner meeting as it is expected that their position will be determined at this time. I hope you can attend, but even if you can't, you can have your say on our website right now.

Victoria, the food chain, & the coming chemical kill-off of locusts....wildlife & other insects

Eris O'Brien

Further to my post below on Eris O'Brien and the locusts, Eris was part of a segment on the locusts on Victoria's Stateline to-night. Eris uses the term locust migration instead of locust plague.  He also speaks of other options.  He spoke of the experience of long-ago farmers in the Wimmera district who used repellent methods other than chemicals to deal with the periodic extremes of numbers of locusts.

I find amazing some omissions from the public information.

Firstly, we are not told exactly how organic farmers - agricultural and horticultural - are managing or what their views are.  Organic food production is on the rise.  There is an increasing demand for it from consumers.  I would like to know what organic food producers are planning to do in their part of the food cycle.  It is said there is not ready availability of organically suitable pesticides.  Is this correct?  Will these types of insecticides be in widespread or limited use?  What assurances do we have to their safety both for humans, for wildlife and beneficial insects?

Secondly, I have not heard from any food activists (ones that you hear from in regard to genetic modification of food or in  discussion about ethical consumerism) of their views on the chemicals about to enter our food chain.


Nitrothion 1000 appears to be the chemical of choice for killing the locusts and I have above published a document which can be downloaded in this regard. Go here to follow up on a document relating to Nitrothion and locusts. On Statewide, all sorts of assurances were given:  there will be buffer zones; no spraying near waterways, beehive sites, and environmentally sensitive areas - so we are told. The manner of conveying this information was brief and offhand.


Where Eris O'Brien is clear and detailed in explaining the situation from his viewpoint, the proponents and deliverers of death by insecticide to locusts and, I believe, other wildlife were not trying to convince anyone really.


Their words were placed - as far as I could assess - as an afterthought and merely as a matter of form.


There was little or no attempt to explain, convince and assure.  And the whole Stateline segment appeared to have the imprimatur of John Brumby, Premier of Victoria, who participated in the beginning of the segment.  He did the reassuring with a well spoken version of  "she'll be right - we have the sprays" attitude.


The only one who put forward a point of view based on reason, experience, and science was Eris O'Brien.  He was convincing.  A pity the dominant view couldn't be bothered.  The dominant view clearly doesn't believe it has to convince anyone - and that everyone will just fall in behind their point of view and their execution of what is required to do a chemical kill-off of the locusts.  I would advise them to think again. I for one am not convinced.


I am new to Eris O'Brien's arguments - and, at the moment, I find his argument convincing.  Most convincing indeed!

Heritage, Food and the Future

Picture from here

Isn't this the most gorgeous vegie patch you ever did see?

I love to wander over to Casaubon's Book, the blog belonging to Sharon Astyk.  She has fled the farm and is off to this vegie patch at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to do something useful -  like low-energy food preservation, complete with tastings.  She will also be speaking about Jefferson's idea of a nation of farmers under the title of A Nation of Farmers: coming home to our land.  Here follows an abstract of her talk.  Her abstract and that of others can be found here.

Our present agricultural system depends on heavy inputs of increasingly expensive and scarce fossil fuels, and is exacerbating our current world food crisis. It warms the planet and depletes soil and water and contributes to every major problem we face. Meanwhile, 100 million people have joined the starving and one in every 10 Americans requires food stamps to sustain them. But that doesn’t have to be the case – agriculture could help us regenerate our society. We explore the possibility – and urgent necessity of creating a truly sustainable food system.

Now I'm sure the patch is not maintained by part-time gardeners.  It displays investment of labour, knowledge and dollars.  In many ways, it is a garden that is not easily replicated.

 And I have to confess.

I love the lushness of the jumble of things growing together -

be it ever such a humble and ill-informed project.

Coal v Food v Water - on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales

Fiona Simson

From Pauline Roberts of the Caroona Coal Action Group, via Networker Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson:

Dear All

We were delighted to welcome Lee Rhiannon MLC and Tony Windsor MP to our 1 Year Blockade Anniversary Thanksgiving Party today. Yes, we have kept this community-based blockade on the Duddy's property "Rossmar Park" going for one year preventing access for further damaging coal "exploration" on Prime Agricultural Land.

We held a multi-denominational service of thanksgiving today in the glorious sunshine, thankful for our productive land, our critical above-ground and aquifer supplies and our strong and resilient community. 130 people attended this great day with an open fire, enjoying mulled wine, hearty stew and damper and sticky date pudding laid on by the SOS Liverpool Plains girls. We were very pleased to find Graham Brown and Lance Batey in our midst and are grateful for the pledges of support from other similarly affected communities on the Darling Downs, like Felton.

Whilst we wait for a proper Water Study to begin, we are as committed as ever to preventing coal and gas mining on Australia's scarce Prime Agricultural Land, so this Blockade continues.

This Monday 20th July at 8.30pm, Four Corners will be running a story about our area: "The Good Earth" [www.abc.net.au/4corners] on ABC1. (It is repeated 11.35pm on Tuesday 21st) We hope you will be able to watch and that it has a positive result for those of us who believe food and water security is important.

Our thanks to Coal Communities for your continued support and good wishes.

Kind regards

Pauline Roberts

www.ccag.org.au

CCAG & SOS Liverpool Plains

~~~~~~~~

There is an excerpt of the transcript on the ABC website here.

~~~~~~~~

If you watched The Good Earth on Four Corners last night, you will have confronted one of the major issues facing us in Australia. What is happening on the Liverpool Plains, as Mrs Duddy so emotively pointed out, goes to the heart of our identity as Australians.

The Liverpool Plains is rich agricultural country - with its own underground aquifers. George Clift pointed out that in his seventy years of farming, he had suffered only one crop failure. On the dryest inhabited continent on earth, that is a boast that can seldom be made.

Under the ground is not only water, but coal which two separate companies, BHP Billiton and Shenua, have exploration rights for which they have spent stratospheric amounts of money to the cash-strapped New South Wales (NSW) government.

The Liverpool Plains is not the only place in Australia or the world in which this is occurring. I recently posted on the situation on that other place of great fertility, the Darling Downs in Queensland.

The essence is that one resource is being played off against another and against another: coal -v- food -v- water. What seems to have been forgotten by both miners and government is that we, in Australia, can survive without coal. We cannot survive without clean water and quality food.

Socially and politically, the protests and blockade on the Liverpool Plains is interesting.

The situation has the landed gentry whose huge agricultural holdings date back several generations and whose traditional political allegiance is to the conservative National Party resourcing the blockade and treating with The Greens as well as the local independent of National Party origins, Tony Windsor.

The Nationals are angry as can well be seen in the persons of Queensland Nationals, Barnaby Joyce (Senate Leader) and Ron Boswell. In fact, the anger, the action and re-action of The Nationals brought back memories of a similar response to the in-roads made into The Nationals vote by Pauline Hanson. It brings a smile, because decades - and a couple of generations of politicians - ago, Jack McEwan, Minister for Trade, did his best to provide an insurance policy for The Nationals who are reliant on a declining agricultural electoral base still by orienting his party to the mining industry.

Now, on Four Corners, is displayed Barnaby & Co on the horns of a dilemma for The Nationals: miners -v- agriculture; Australians -v- Chinese; Australians -v- international conglomerate pretending to be Australian.

So that gives one an idea of the politics and the economics involved. Then there is the personal, the social. Farmers on the blockade are promising not to succumb to financial blandishments from the miners. George Clift says that it won't happen with him. He will go out in a box first, he says. The much younger Chris Howarth has sold to Shenhua.

Chris is not the only one - but he, commendablyl, came to the camera and explained. And who can blame him. This is a man in his middle years with a wife and a young family. Shenhua are offering farmers more than the value of their property. Chris says that if he stayed, the situation of his property in relation to the geography of Shenhua's rights is such that his family would be living next door to an open-cut mine. How could one live with that? Lifestyle gone; livelihood jeopardised; property declining in value and the opportunity to underwrite the family's future. Surely, a no-brainer?

What is needed here is a clear-thinking response from government. Government must break the nexus of the clash of rights and resources. Government must stop behaving like an addict with its hand in the till and prostituting itself for every dollar it can get while selling the birthright of Australians - to food security - for the Biblical mess of pottage.

It is also high time that the electorate became able to see politicians withstanding the "winning ways" of international corporates and high-flying lobbyists, many of whom have long-standing personal and political connections to the government which happens to be in power at the time which means corporations frequently have a choice of political attractive lobbyists depending upon who is in power.

So we wait to hear what happens next?

• Will the agricultural interests of the Liverpool Plains be successful in the latest round of Court proceedings?
• Will the farmers of the Liverpool Plains remain entrenched within the National Party (my own prediction given the disciplined nature of the National Party vote) or defect to The Greens?
• Will the major and far-reaching environmental issues facing Australia transcend political, factional and social boundaries to establish cross-party support for intelligent and sensible policies on resource management?
• Will the miners be checked now that their behaviour has been aired on television?
• Will governments begin to look and act as if they represent the interests of Australians?
• Will governments take a tack away from the cynical and self-serving glad-handing of corporates and lobbyists and desist from forelock-tugging?

Food - glorious food.

Click to enlarge

In the United States of America, what we call Ministers in government are called Secretaries.  So imagine if, in the Land of Oz, we had a Ministry of Food.  Coz in the good ol' US of A Nicholas Kristof is asking for a Secretary of Food.  

Kristof cheerfully points out that in the USA only 2 per cent of Americans are engaged in farming.  Yet 100% of Americans eat.  So let's change the name from Agriculture to Food.  

In Oz, we would change the name from the Department of Primary Industry to the Department of Food. 

Makes so much sense to me.