Loss of wild flowers across Britain matches pollinator decline
The first ever Britain-wide assessment of the value of wild flowers as food for pollinators shows that decreasing floral resources mirror the decline of pollinating insects, providing new evidence to support the link between plant and pollinator decline.
In recent years, there have been considerable concerns over threats to wild bees and other insect pollinators which are vital to the success of important food crops and wild flowers.
Amongst the many pressures facing pollinators, a key factor is likely to be decreasing floral resources in Britain.
The study, published in Nature combines vegetation survey data recorded over the last 80 years with modern day measurements of nectar to provide the most comprehensive assessment ever published.
First study showing pesticide exposure can affect crop pollination by bees
For the first time an international team of researchers have shown that pesticides impair the pollination services provided by bumblebees.
Bees play a vital role in pollinating some of the most important food crops globally and have been declining in recent years. Until now research on pesticide effects has been limited to their impact on bees, rather than the pollination services they provide.
The study discovered that bumblebees exposed to a realistic level of neonicotinoid pesticides found in agricultural environments collected pollen from apple trees less often and visited flowers less frequently.
The findings of this study have important implications for both society and the economy, as insect pollination services to crops are worth at least $361Bn worldwide every year, and are vital to the functioning of natural ecosystem.
Partial root drying allows some crops – everything from tomatoes to grapes – to be grown using up to half as much water, while producing about the same amount of fruit.
Of all the fresh water people use, more than two thirds is used for agriculture. Increasingly, water is in short supply in many important food-producing regions of the world and, as pressure on water use rises, so can the price of food. This is particularly important in drought-prone countries like China.
Partial root drying, developed by Professor Bill Davies and his team at the University of Lancaster, works like this: When one side of a plant’s roots are starved of water, signals are sent to the leaves to slow their growth, reducing water use. These signals also tell the plant to close leaf pores called stomata, reducing water loss.
Although the growth rate of the leaves declines, because the other side of the plant is being watered, it doesn’t wilt and carries on producing fruit. Alternating which side of the plant receives water prevents roots from dying in very dry soil.
In the area around Wuwei City in China, between 30,000 and 40,000 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of irrigation water is being saved each year by using this and other similar techniques.
Tomato season is finally upon us. You have no idea how giddy this makes me. Yesterday I pulled off two Sungold cherries, two Jaune Flamme saladettes and who knows what the other red variety was. I’ve lost track. And my peppers are not far behind. It’s time to start thinking about salsa!
You can grow your own gherkin pickles and more with this pest-proof mini cuke/squash from Africa. Try growing burr gherkins to make delicious pickles and a spicy Brazillian stir-fry.
Being a farmer and an entrepreneur is never dull. There is always a vast array of things to do and that need to be done. Throughout the day I literally ‘change my hat’ many times. This suits me fine. I may be tired at the end of the day, but always content and never bored. The summer months are particularly very busy; the vegetables are ripening and calling to be picked and preserved, maturing lambs are ready to go to market, and goat milking is at its prime, bags of wool require spinning. With all these jobs other chores tend to appear, like fencing, egg collecting….I could go on, but you get the idea. Add to this the fact that we live in a rural area that is quickly becoming a prime tourist destination. Running my farm market alone keeps me hopping. [Keep reading…]
The Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) is seeking nominations for the “2015 MOSES Organic Farmer of the Year” award, which will be presented at the 26th annual MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wis., Feb. 26 to 28, 2015.
The award recognizes an organic farmer or farm family with a history of outstanding land management, resource conservation, and farming innovation. These exemplary farmers also are committed to spreading the organic message in their communities. This is the 13th year for the award program, which comes with a prize package that includes full admission to the 2015 MOSES Conference.
North Dakota seed and grain farmers, David, Ginger, Dan and Theresa Podoll of Prairie Road Organic Farm and Seed in Fullerton, ND, received the 2014 MOSES Organic Farmers of the Year award. Their farm story and other recipients’ stories are online at the MOSES website under the “Projects” tab.
Anyone can nominate a farmer for this award. Nomination forms are available on the MOSES website, or by calling the MOSES office at 715-778-5775. Nominations are due by Sept. 15, 2014.
This prestigious award comes with a number of prizes including a cash award, lodging, a bookstore gift certificate and full admission to the Organic Farming Conference, the nation’s largest gathering of organic farmers.
There are reasons growing carrots organically is challenging. Carrots germinate slowly. Weeds germinate fast. What if you could plant the carrots into the weed-free soil after they are already germinated with green tops? They would be weeks ahead of the weeds yet to germinate. It’d be like a five mile head start in a marathon.
Carrots are delicate. Their foliage is delicate, and early on it is barely discernible from the weeds. By the time the tiny lacy greenery is substantial enough to see, the weeds are taller and bigger. Weeding them is painstaking. [Keep reading….]
Learn how to choose and use inexpensive cuts of grass-fed beef, free-range chicken and pastured pork for better nutrition and out-of-this-world flavor.
Joan Salmonowicz tells readers what to feed chickens, how to mix your own chicken feed, including buying mixed ration feed in bulk, feed ratios, and common supplements.
Broken bottles so thick you couldn’t walk – that’s how he remembers the lot that’s now a thriving farm in south Dallas.
Q is giving us a tour of Bonton Farm-Works, or at least of the life-packed 2 acre portion of it where the organization first bloomed (…excuse the pun).
People didn’t want to come to this area, and now look, he says, gesturing to our small group. This is how the community should’ve been all along; people of all races and walks of life enjoying a place. He touches his chest when he talks about his youth in the area.
He lived the struggle, he says.
Now he’s grateful to have a different trajectory, but in the same location, a place that’s dear to him. Home.
This community is being transformed by a little farm, a green space, a place to grow food and connect with the earth and with other humans.
Even as I grappled with my stroller, pushing it over mulch and through the chicken yard, the goat pen, and rows and rows of produce — Even in the June heat and humidity as I sought shade under short fruit trees or against fences — Despite these distractions, I noticed how green, how beautiful, how happy a little space can be. A few acres and a few simple ideas, put to the right use, can bring life to a community and change individual lives.
Transformations. Q said it was so inspiring – nothing like it in the world – to plant a few seeds and in a few weeks or a few seasons see so much progress, so much change.
That inspires me. How would I feel if I gardened regularly? How much would my kids learn if they planted seeds and saw the results? (My oldest is only 2, but I still think lots of the lessons are available to him.) How would the world be different if more people saw that kind of positive change and knew they were able to be part of the change?
On the way home, we drove through neighborhoods that are actively being bulldozed to make way for more expensive housing – housing the current residents won’t be able to afford.
Is the handwriting on the wall for urban centers in the crosshairs of gentrification? Would more urban farms and tighter communities help turn the tide against further disenfranchising the poor? I don’t know.
I do know a little more farming, a little more outdoor time, a little more connection with nature and each other, and the realization you can make a positive change can’t hurt.
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Below are a few photos from my visit. I especially liked that the goats get exercise and enrichment during a “goat walk”, which I didn’t get to participate in but enjoyed watching. Check out Bonton Farms here.
Field Notes Friday: Bonton Farms Broken bottles so thick you couldn’t walk - that’s how he remembers the lot that’s now a thriving farm in south Dallas.
Industrial scale production of animal meat is intense in its use of resources. One third of croplands worldwide are used to produce animal feed. 80% of antibiotics are fed to animals and livestock is the single biggest factor for climate change. Livestock feed is one of the most important key factors for the environmental impact of meat production. Elaborate research into this topic revealed opportunity for a more independent, decentralized way of farming protein.
IDEA:
Farm 432 enables people to become independent from the system of current meat production by growing their own protein source at home. After 432 hours, 1 gram of black soldier fly eggs turn into 2.4 kilogram of larvae protein, larvae that self-harvest and fall clean and ready to eat into a harvest bucket. Black soldier fly adults don´t eat, therefore they don´t have any mouth parts and do not transmit any disease. The larvae can be fed on bio waste, therefore the production almost costs no water or CO2. Black soldier fly larvae are one of the most efficient protein converters in insects, containing up to 42% of protein (dried), a lot of calcium and amino acids.
Or people could go vegan? Like, are people seriously more willing to eat bugs than beans?
Depends on how sustainable beans are - certainly better than livestock farming, no arguments there, but vegetables still need an investment of land, water, biomass and time. I’d be interested to see how insect protein compares to vegetable protein in terms of resources needed per gram of protein produced.
Either way this thing’s interesting because it’s something people can run in their own homes and feed with kitchen scraps. Decentralised protein!
Industrial scale production of animal meat is intense in its use of resources. One third of croplands worldwide are used to produce animal feed. 80% of antibiotics are fed to animals and livestock is the single biggest factor for climate change. Livestock feed is one of the most important key factors for the environmental impact of meat production. Elaborate research into this topic revealed opportunity for a more independent, decentralized way of farming protein.
IDEA:
Farm 432 enables people to become independent from the system of current meat production by growing their own protein source at home. After 432 hours, 1 gram of black soldier fly eggs turn into 2.4 kilogram of larvae protein, larvae that self-harvest and fall clean and ready to eat into a harvest bucket. Black soldier fly adults don´t eat, therefore they don´t have any mouth parts and do not transmit any disease. The larvae can be fed on bio waste, therefore the production almost costs no water or CO2. Black soldier fly larvae are one of the most efficient protein converters in insects, containing up to 42% of protein (dried), a lot of calcium and amino acids.
Want to join the food revolution? Build yourself a flatpack urban farm
Forget flatpack furniture. Also forget traditional agriculture. Coming soon to a city near you – it’s the flatpack farm. At least, that’s the ambition of Mikkel Kjaer and Ronnie Markussen, a pair of young entrepreneurs who run Human Habitat, a Danish “urban design lab”.
“We wanted to make urban farming even smarter,” says Markussen over a coffee in central Copenhagen. The duo’s aim, he says, was to design a unit that would increase food security in cities, lower the ecological footprint of food production, create jobs and easily adapt to changes in the urban landscape.
What they came up with was the so-called Impact Farm – though it’s much more fun to describe it as a flatpack farm. That’s because it’s built using an assembly-kit of ready-made components that arrive in a saved-from-scrap shipping container. Put them together and you’ve got a two-storey vertical hydroponic(or soil-free) farm, which certainly beats a Billy bookcase.
Designed to be self-sufficient in water, heat and electricity, the farm requires a footprint of just 430 sq ft – though once the shipping container has been unpacked and the farm installed, the production area stretches to 538 sq ft. Crops include greens, herbs and fruiting plants.Human Habitat was born when childhood friends Kjaer and Markussen discovered they shared a similar goal. “We wanted to reconnect people to food by giving them a green space that brings nature back into our cities,” says Kjaer. As a student of development economics at Roskilde University, Kjaer had become interested in “small-scale solutions to the most fundamental of problems – providing food”. Markussen, meanwhile, had trained as a carpenter and worked on ambitious projects such Upcycle House, which was constructed using recycled and upcycled building materials.
Feeding the world (and saving nature) in this populous century, Jane Langdale began, depends entirely on agricultural efficiency — the ability to turn a given amount of land and sunlight into ever more food. And that depends on three forms of efficiency in each crop plant: 1) interception efficiency (collecting sunlight); 2) conversion efficiency (turning sunlight into sugars and starch); and 3) partitioning efficiency (maximizing the edible part). Of these, after centuries of plant breeding, only conversion efficiency is far short of the theoretical maximum. Most photosynthesis (called “C3“) is low-grade, poisoning its own process by reacting with oxygen instead of carbon dioxide when environmental conditions are hot and dry.
At Imperial Restaurant in Portland, Oregon, diners are getting a taste of the latest superfood to hit the market: dulse, a crimson seaweed that’s packed with nutrients and, when fried, offers up an umami flavor similar to bacon. “It disappears in your mouth,” says chef and owner Vitaly Paley.
Wild dulse, which is sold as a specialty item at places like Whole Foods, grows primarily on the shores of Ireland and the north Atlantic coast and is notoriously difficult to harvest: It’s plucked by hand and can deteriorate quickly. But the dulse that Paley sprinkles atop his tuna poke doesn’t come from the ocean—it’s farmed in 6,000-liter tanks at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. Marine biologist Chris Langdon began cultivating this strain of dulse as a food for abalone in the mid-1990s, but it wasn’t until his colleague Chuck Toombs, from the OSU College of Business, toured the lab in 2014 that Langdon considered serving it to humans.
I met Aleya Fasier hunched over sweet potatoes growing stubbornly in hard-packed earth under a sky that held history. There weren’t many words exchanged that day–mostly just weeding–or that fall–just digging, weighting and sighing. What I did pick up on was that Aleya was a person who did everything with intention. Since that day, Aleya has poured her heart into that same soil, left her mark on the historical record under that same sky and the results have been remarkable. And that is where we’ll start.
Prepare yourself and give thanks for the words of black, queer, womanist, futurist, ecologist, artist, educator, farmer Aleya Frasier–co-founder of Black Dirt Farm and a revolutionary warrior for black food security.
GSF: Who are you and what is your superpower?
AF: I am one of many queer, biologically active, radical molecules of melanin chilling on your amygdala guiding your primal instincts. And our superpower is activating your superpower. This is done through hormonal and vibrational synchronicity with other radical melanated molecules. I was formed under libra skies so by definition my vibration brings balance to different sides of the equation and works to bring organic and inorganic reactions to equilibrium. Our superpowers activate at the intersection of entropy and equilibrium which is pretty much at all times and space continuums, but they are strongest when connected to the land as space and now as the time. When people step foot on the farm the serotonin in the soil mixed with the ancestors in the air and UV ray excitation of my electrons and my subtle vibrations in their cells allows caverns in the mind to open that have been previously filtered and neurons to connect in ways that they haven’t before. Mitochondrial dna is stirred awake and its knowledge from your uterine having ancestors that has been passed down since the beginning of her story is realized. Through black dirt under fingernails, melanated work under the sun and calloused hands peoples superpowers and ancient rhythms are germinated approximately 3 weeks after the last frost. so you see all with melanin possess this ability at varying frequencies. and then we do it again.
AF: Afroecology is a form of art, movement, practice and process of social and ecological transformation that involves the re-evaluation of our sacred relationships with land, water, air, seeds and food; (re)recognizes humans as co-creators that are an aspect of the planet’s life support systems; values the Afro-Indigenous experience of reality and ways of knowing; cherishes ancestral and communal forms of knowledge, experience and lifeways that began in Africa and continue throughout the Diaspora; and is rooted in the agrarian traditions, legacies and struggles of the Black experience in the Americas.The nature of the Black Experience in America, and in the Americas, has always been and will be, intimately, tied to the land and our agrarian identity. As said by Harry Haywood in Negro Liberation in 1948, “The Negro Question in the United States is Agrarian in Origin.” To draw upon this agrarian legacy, we, at the Black Dirt Farm Collective, felt it was important to introduce the concept of Afroecology – not as a definition but as a place to stimulate discussions on the intimate connection between us as people and the land. Far too often, people of color and Black Folk succumb to using words, theories and concepts that do not directly speak our language nor speak to our experience of reality. All the while, these very concepts, like organic farming, permaculture, etc. come from and stem from our ancestry, and current practices as people of the land and our organizing legacies. As part of the liberation struggle, we recognize the need to create political ideologies, and cultural theories, concepts and practices to help clarify certain aspects of reality, so as to transformation the material and social conditions of reality. We present Afroecology as part of that process. Afroecology is a call back to the land that is awaiting our return. It is a living breathing process of decolonization that is built upon the black experience of the indigenous (africans) becoming indigenized(diasporic africans). Our indigenous reality cannot be recreated but it can also not be forgotten because WE as indigenized peoples have the unique ability to create and determine our reality using our wildest imaginations and ancestral knowledge as fuel. Afroecology is above all else a process of reclaiming our identity as communal beings connected to every aspect of our ecosystem and about reclaiming knowledge from the base!As a practice, afroecology builds from agroecology in its way of teaching how to work in harmony with nature to feed people. On the farm, we try our best to recycle nutrients, biomass and raw materials to achieve a balance in the flow of inputs and outputs. We promote diverse microcosmic and macrocosmic relationships from soil bacteria and fungi to the people who visit the farm and we ultimately treat the farm as an extension of our beings ,nurturing its recovery and decolonization much as we do our own, through natural inputs, spiritual practices, art and balance.
GSF: Describe a mythical seed variety that you would cultivate if you could.
AF: I like to think that every seed variety is mythical in the magical sense and I play out their magical path in my daydreams. If you truly tell the story of a single seed from its origin to your farm, the story would be as colorful as any spiritual text. I will share about a seed variety that to me epitomizes myth and magic and the power of mitochondria. Sorghum is a grain indigenous to Northeastern Africa with earliest known records from the Egypt/Sudan border region from 8000 BC. It is a BEAUTIFUL monocot; its got strappy leaves, a bamboo like shoot and parallel veins; with as many powers as your imagination can handle imagining. Its seed pops sizzles and cracks in your cast iron and its cane can be pressed for sweet juice. Its seed can be threshed pounded and kneaded into nourishment for your baby or boiled and baked into your favorite recipe. It body has the powers to convert sunlight into energy in unique efficient ways and its roots go deep to ensure it survives in drought too. It’s powers allow it to serve as money in the common market place, more valuable than cattle at times for the women selling their beers made with sorghum strains specific to their mitochondrial lineage. Strains that have in a way co evolved with the women and families who cultivate them, the people who bear its callouses, the people who could not part with it when captured and stripped away from their own gardens. Strains that survived in afros across the middle passage that were planted and transplanted and harvested and sowed and reaped and seeded and then again and again until yesterday, today and tomorrow when I harvest our sorghum from seed given to us by friends. 10 seeds now 1000 to share with them. Sounds mythical, right?
GSF: Magical, indeed! So tell me, what’s the dirt on Black Dirt Farm? How can people support? Winter plans?
The dirt is not even black on Black Dirt Farm haha we are frontin! We have this kind of cool light brown sandy loam texture that grows amazing root crops but turns into cement when baked under the hot sun. But on the flip side, a farm is very rarely the effort of solely one or two people.Thus, Black Dirt Farm is collectively cared for by a strong network of farmers, friends and families.A core group manages the day to day operations of the farm, the distribution and marketing as well as coordinating and participating in trainings and events around agroecology, food sovereignty and regenerative economics with black and brown folks from all over the diaspora. We LOVE to gather with folks on the farm and to share black agrarian images and voices and to learn from our elders who are supporting the journey!
People can support by eating their veggies and by supporting our friends like you at Community Farming Alliance and Chris Bradshaw with Dreaming out Loud and Xavier Brown with the Green Scheme and Natasha Bowens author of The Color of Food and the list goes on! We will be hunkering down this winter and hopefully going to some warm places to collectively energize and create our vision for the next few seasons. A wish list of support would be a website designer, a logo designer, a farm truck or station wagon, and a yurt to serve as an agrarian library, but thats all haha.
Ya’ll heard that? If you’re feeling in a do-gooding mood, do something for a farmer. They’ll make sure you eat good.
