Climate Food and Agriculture

Pesticide efficacy is decreasing

If you've ever colored Easter eggs -- I mean the old-fashioned way, with food-coloring, not with those plastic wraparounds -- then you know that when you mess up, you have two options: rinse them off with some white vinegar and start over, or forge ahead, layer even more color on top, and hope that something presentable emerges.

Okay, so that metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but that's what came to mind when I read, earlier this week, that scientists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, have engineered a new category of transgenic crops. The new plants -- which include broad-leafed greens such as soybeans, tomatoes, and tobacco -- harbor a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to an herbicide called dicamba.

"But we have Roundup!" you cry. "Why do we need anything else?" Well, because Roundup (active ingredient: a chemical called glyphosate) isn't working as flawlessly as it used to. According to the story in Science (sorry, subscription only), 24 percent of farmers in the northern Midwest and 29 percent in the South say they have glycophate-resistant (GR) weeds. Crop scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia report GR grasses popping up too.

On summer memories and politically correct peanut butter

The cool, sunny mornings this time of year always remind me of setting off to work each day during the first few months that I spent living in Boston. It was the summer between my junior and senior year of college, and I was working for a feminist newspaper located in an old factory near […]

World grain supplies tanking

Once again, a prediction is panning out(PDF):

The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses.

Every six years, we're adding to the world the equivalent of a North American population. We're trying to feed those extra people, feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production can't keep up.

The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer ...

(Another hat tip to KO.)

Interesting juxtaposition of stories

Interesting juxtaposition of stories:

First, an essay on what has become of organics, as it turns into what Fromartz calls "Organic, Inc."

Then, Energy Bulletin links to a story suggesting that some Brits might deny the organic label to food flown in from abroad.

And, of course, there's the post right here on Gristmill about labeling as an attempt to help consumers understand the effect of their purchases.

The issue boils down to the fact that our prices don't help consumers understand anything about food; in our perverse system, the food that has traveled the furthest at the greatest energy expense may often be the cheapest. As a smart man put it:

"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth."

-- Oystein Dahle, former vice president of Esso for Norway and the North Sea

Umbra on returnable bottles

Hi Umbra, I’ve been wondering lately what happened to the returnable bottles that were so common up until some point in the ’70s. Why did the legislation go away? Does reusing bottles use less energy? It seems like it would, but I haven’t found info on advocating for bottle reuse in any of the green […]

Schwarzenegger to California farmers: Considuh this a divorce

There’s a fair amount of debate on Gristmill about how much green cred to give the Governator — that A-list action hero of enlightened Republicanism. I don’t follow California politics closely enough to venture an opinion. But I do know that promoting a policy that will result in yet more suburban sprawl and evict small- […]

On moving to New Orleans, a city defined by water

Wayne Curtis is a freelance writer who’s written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Preservation, and American Heritage, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. He recently traded Maine winters for New Orleans summers. Thursday, 24 May 2007 NEW ORLEANS, […]

Good reading on Mongabay

There is so much good stuff over there I hardly know where to start. You might consider subscribing to the weekly email.

Top of the list is an interview with Luke Hunter (the same biologist I pissed off with my pincushion post). Coincidentally, roughly a fifth of the interview dealt with that topic:

... does conservation of the species require radio-tagging? There are many, many cases where it does not. I often read proposals by graduate students who are wishing to radio-collar cats to address a conservation issue when they could far better achieve their goal by some other means.

Trapping or darting animals does increase their vulnerability, so it is critical to reduce that as much as possible. The great bulk of biologists I've met are very concerned about this and take great care in reducing the risk.

Take a few minutes out of your life (or off your boss's time clock) to sign this petition. This was my message: "Please cosponsor the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act. Your grandchildren will thank you." Dooo it ...

The former: Not good for the latter

How climate change will disproportionately affect the world's poor is a message making the rounds of late, after the publication of the second IPCC report earlier this year. How climate change policies, such as carbon taxes, will either help or hurt the poor is also a topic we've been discussing of late.

Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have assessed the impact of an increased dependence on biofuels on the developing world ... and the outlook isn't good.

In short, conflating food and energy lands us in a quagmire in which corn (and ethanol) prices are still tethered to oil:

We haven’t quite figured it out yet

JMG and I were both too optimistic. We both thought charcoal agriculture was ready to play a limited but real role in controlling global warming. Burn some high carbon biomass, turning it into charcoal that will stay stable for thousands of years; add it to soil, which builds tilth and structure; you have just sequestered some carbon and improved agriculture at the same time.