Why These 8 States Could Soon Form the 'Great American Desert'

One of the world's largest underground bodies of fresh water—the Ogallala aquifer—is quickly shrinking, threatening the livelihoods of farmers in eight U.S. states.

Farmers in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and South Dakota are overexploiting the aquifer beneath an American breadbasket, threatening an estimated $35 billion in annual crops. Agricultural wells are pulling out water faster than rainfall can recharge it—federal data shows the aquifer shrank twice as fast in the past six years as compared to the previous 60.

"Now I never know, from one minute to the next, when I turn on a faucet or hydrant, whether there will be water or not. The aquifer is being depleted," Lois Scott, 75, who lives west of Cope, Colorado, told the Denver Post.

In some parts of eastern Colorado the depth at which groundwater can be tapped has dropped by as much 100 feet, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. The USGS has released data on the Ogallala aquifer since 1988. In Colorado alone, farmers pumped water out of 4,000 wells, sucking out as much as 500 gallons per minute to irrigate roughly 580,000 acres. Since 1950 the amount of water used to irrigate farm fields across the eight states equals roughly 70 percent of Lake Erie.

Even if farmers drastically reduce pumping, the aquifer wouldn't refill for centuries, according to the latest research. But the eight states that sit on the Ogallala have no agreement among themselves to try to save the aquifer.

"This will truly become the Great American Desert," Scott said.

The fallout from the aquifer is visible above ground as well. Streams are drying up at a rate of six miles per year.

"We have almost completely changed the species of fish that can survive in those streams, compared with what was there historically. This is really a catastrophic change," Keith Gido, one of the authors of a report on the aquifer, told the Denver Post.

(https://www.ecowatch.com/ogallala-aquifer-depletion-2511600266.html?xrs=RebelMouse_fb&ts=1511357525

AGWA Launches Toolkit for Climate Change Adaptation in Water Resources Management

---

4 September 2014: The Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) and partners have launched a manual for dealing with uncertainty under climate change by applying climate-informed decision-making to water resource management, project design and risk evaluation.

The manual was launched in a seminar held during World Water Week, on 4 September.

‘Beyond Downscaling: A Bottom-Up Approach to Climate Adaptation for Water Resources Management' is the result of two years' work by AGWA, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), US Army Corps of Engineers, University of Massachusetts and RTI International, among others.

It provides practical guidelines for practitioners and project coordinators for risk-based decision making and adaptation of water systems by using a bottom-up approach. The book aims to “provide an alternative approach contributing to improvement in the quality and effectiveness of water resources management planning and project design under climate variability and change uncertainty.”

The manual covers: AGWA's approach to sustainable water management; climate change impacts on water resources; mainstreaming adaptation into water resources management; key tools for supporting climate risk assessment; and approaches to identifying adaptation strategies for water projects. It also makes the case for moving beyond down-scaling global climate models, to a bottom-up approach to climate adaptation in the water sector, and presents a framework for an AGWA-supported adaptation approach.

The approach supported by AGWA, inter alia: recognizes the need to integrate climate adaptation into existing decision-making processes; advocates for bottom-up approaches to vulnerability assessment; supports the use of “systematic decision trees based on existing water resources management approaches”; stresses the importance of creating flexible decision pathways; and emphasizes the integration of flexible governance mechanisms into water resources management.

Speaking at the launch, Marcus Wijnen, Senior Water Resources Management Specialist, World Bank, noted that the book is “work in progress,” and invited stakeholders to provide feedback. More

The 2014 World Water Week took place from 31 August-5 September, in Stockholm, Sweden. [AGWA Publication Webpage] [Publication: Beyond Downscaling: A Bottom-up Approach to Climate Adaptation for Water Resources Management] [Video of Launch]

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2014

California’s New Groundwater Legislation Is Unfair. The Governor Should Sign It Anyway.

In California, the score is now: Drought 1, Farmers 0. After years of shockingly dry conditions, fallow fields, freeloading salmon, and forced livestock sales, the state’s legislature has finally taken action.

On Friday, California lawmakers approved a historic measure that would regulate groundwater for the first time in state history. California was the only Western state without controls on the amount of water taken from wells. Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign the legislation later this month.

The legislation, which is really three separate bills, intends to limit overpumping by directing local agencies to construct their own "groundwater sustainability plans," with fines for violations. There are also provisions for the state to usurp local plans if they continue to result in groundwater depletions after 2025. A $7.5 billion water bond, another major effort at expanding the state’s already vast water storage and delivery infrastructure, was previously agreed upon and will be placed in front of voters on the November ballot.

The measures were passed hours before the legislative session came to a close, drawing the ire of state agricultural interests, which will likely be most affected by the new rules. The contentious final votes came not along Republican-Democratic lines but a rural-urban divide, with a bipartisan contingent from the agriculturally rich Central Valley staunchly opposed. In California, farmers use more than 80 percent of the state’s water. They’re also the most productive in the nation, leading the way in growing everythingfrom asparagus to walnuts. Farmers there deserve to get the majority of the state’s water, a resource they’ve molded into a multibillion dollar industry that feeds each of us every day. The problem is, there’s currently no real incentive to save dwindling aquifers there, as huge subsidies continue to tempt big agriculture into water-intensive crop choices. Last week’s actions by the state legislature are an attempt to change that.

Despite what essentially amounts to an unjust loss of water rights for Central Valley landowners, the bill should be celebrated. Without a legislative step of this magnitude, it’s only a matter of time before agriculture in its current form becomes impossible in California. Farmers must adapt to a future with less water, and there’s no time like the present.

Earlier this year, I wrote extensively about California water issues in a Slate series called the Thirsty West. On my drought-themed road trip, I met rancher and Tulare County Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Gavin Iacono and Central Valley almond farmer Benina Montes. This week, I spoke with both of them again by phone to gauge their initial reaction to the new regulations.

Iacono says the Central Valley has turned into an arms race of drilling for water. "It’s amazing in just my commute each day, how many well rigs I see out and around. It’s a one- to two-year wait to get a well crew in. I know people that are on a waiting list for four or five different well companies."

According to Montes, the new rules may help make things fairer. As it is currently, he says, "If you’ve got more money, you can go deeper. It’s like, ‘Great, you win.’ "

The drought has hit Iacono hard. This year, he sold his cattle herd because there was no hay left to feed them. Friends are starting to talk about leaving. "More and more, we’ve thought of it, too," he says.

He’s worried—with good reason—that the drought in California may just be getting started. New research led by Cornell University calculated up to a 50 percent chance of a 35-year megadrought later this century. Lead author Toby Ault told the university’s press office that "with ongoing climate change, [the current drought in the West] is a glimpse of things to come. It’s a preview of our future."

Said Iacono, "If that’s true, none of us will survive out here."

Still, Iacono says he has mixed feelings on the new rules. "If they limit how much [groundwater] you can use, that will dictate what crops you can grow. It’s going to lower your property value, and potentially your ability to use the land." He continued, "When you’re legislated out of something that’s been in your family for generations, it’s hard to stomach when you have other people telling you what you can and can’t do."

In the meantime, farmers like Montes are flying a bit blind. Montes pumps vast quantities of water each year for her family’s almond orchard, but has taken steps to try to be as efficient as possible, using drip irrigation and organic management methods. The new legislation should help encourage more farmers to adopt water-saving practices like these.

Montes repeated a groundwater analogy she overheard at a recent Farm Bureau meeting: "Right now we have a bank account, but you don’t really know how much is there. We can’t keep making withdrawals forever." She continued, "It’s hard, because nobody likes being told what to do, but we gotta protect it." More

 

 

 

 

© 2014

China Experiment in Permaculture Offers World Hope

China is the most populous and possibly one of the most diverse nations on the planet, with a population of over 1.3 billion people and 56 ethnic groups.

What each one of those people shares with the rest of the world, regardless of political, linguistic, economic, and existential differences, is the complete and utter dependence on the ability to find food. In China’s Loess Plateau, sustained generational farming had depleted the soil, leaving in its wake a textured landscape of dust. When winds came, the dust blew into cities, compromising air quality. In the rains, it washed down the valley, depositing more of the silt that gives the Yellow River its name. In 1995, scientists and engineers surveyed the land of the Loess Plateau in an attempt to determine what was causing the once fertile belt to be a thorn in the country’s. The results of their study led to an experiment in permaculture in China that offers hope to the world.

John D. Liu, Chinese American ecologist and documentary film-maker, documented the project in an award-winning film called Hope in a Changing Climate. In the film that Liu narrates, he reports that the first thing that the scientists discovered was a causal relationship between ecosystem destruction and human poverty. Where environmental degradation is severe, the population becomes trapped in a downward spiral. Because they needed to eat to survive, generational subsistence farming had stripped the land bare in the Loess Plateau. In search of food for themselves and their flocks, farmers and their families continued to deplete the fertility of the surrounding ecosystem, further impoverishing themselves.

When scientists developed the plan to restore the ecosystem in China’s Loess Plateau, generational farmers had to be convinced that not farming was critical for their families’ long-term survival. To get buy in from the locals who did not understand how their families would eat if they were not allowed to farm, the government subsidized them and taught them how to do the work that would restore their land from a scarce dirt pit to a thriving ecosystem.

Around the world, populations are living a scarce subsistence lifestyle similar to the one that the citizens of China’s Loess Plateau used to live. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) states that besides fleeing for personal safety, the basic need for food and shelter is the primary motivation for people leaving their homes and becoming displaced. If there were a stable food supply and supportive ecosystem, then the motivation for the world’s most vulnerable populations to move, would decrease. The UNHCR reports that competition for scarce resources triggers violence. If there were a way to restore resources so that people had food and a sense of power in their lives, the fuel for much of the world’s violence would be spent.

The permaculture experiment in China indeed offers hope to the world. Working with scientists, the local population terraced slopes, they planted trees, and they penned their herds so that the trees could grow without being eaten. Soon they found that their hillsides were green. Instead of letting the rains sheet off the mountains, the terraces collected the water and fed the delicate new roots systems, transforming the arid land into a booming garden. Liu reports that since he first visited the area in 1995, the people have seen a threefold increase in income and a profound sense of hope and empowerment. More

 

© 2014

Widespread impacts of neonicotinoids 'impossible to deny'

Neonicotinoid pesticides are causing significant damage to a wide range of beneficial species and are a key factor in the decline of bees, say scientists.

Researchers, who have carried out a four-year review of the literature, say the evidence of damage is now "conclusive".

The scientists say the threat to nature is the same as that once posed by the notorious chemical DDT.

Manufacturers say the pesticides are not harming bees or other species.

Neonicotinoids were introduced in the early 1990s as a replacement for older, more damaging chemicals.

They are a systemic insecticide, meaning that they are absorbed into every cell in a plant, making all parts poisonous to pests.

But some scientists have been concerned about their impact, almost since the moment they were introduced.

Much of the worry has surrounded their effects on bees.

There's been a well documented, global decline in these critical pollinators.

Many researchers believe that exposure to neonicotinoids has been an important destabilising factor for the species.

'Worldwide impacts'

In 2011, environmental campaigners, the IUCN, established an international scientific taskforce on systemic pesticides to look into the impacts of these chemicals.

The members have reviewed over 800 peer reviewed papers that have been published in the past 20 years.

Their assessment of the global impact says the threat posed goes far beyond bees.

In their report, to be published next month, they argue that neonicotinoids and another chemical called fipronil are poisoning the earth, the air and the water.

The pesticides accumulate in the soil and leach into water, and pose a significant problem for earthworms, freshwater snails, butterflies and birds.

The researchers say that the classic measurements used to assess the toxicity of a pesticide are not effective for these systemic varieties and conceal their true impact.

They point to one of the studies in the review carried out in the Netherlands.

It found that higher levels of neonicotinoids in water reduced the levels of aquatic invertebrates, which are the main prey for a whole range of species including wading birds, trout and salmon.

"There is so much evidence, going far beyond bees," Prof Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex told BBC News.

"They accumulate in soils, they are commonly turning up in waterways at levels that exceed the lethal dose for things that live in streams.

"It is impossible to deny that these things are having major environmental impacts."

DDT comparison

The scientists are very worried about the prophylactic use of neonicotinoids, where seeds are coated in the chemicals and the plant grows up with the ability to destroy pests already built in.

"It is a bit like taking antibiotics to avoid getting ill," said Prof Goulson, one of a team of 29 scientists involved in the research.

"The more they are used, the stronger the selective pressure you place on pest insects to become resistant to them. Using them as prophylactics is absolute madness in that sense."

The task force argues that with neonicotinoids and fipronil making up around a third of the world market in insecticides, farmers are over-relying on them in the same way as they once became over reliant on chemicals like DDT.

"We have forgotten those lessons and we're back to where we were in the 1960s," said Prof Goulson.

"We are relying almost exclusively on these insecticides, calendar spraying 20 times or more onto a single field, it's a completely bonkers way."

While neonicotinoids don't accumulate in human or animal tissue in the way that DDT once did, the modern pesticides are more lethal, about 6,000 times as toxic compared to the older spray.

Representatives of manufacturers say that there is nothing new in the task force study.

"There is very little credible evidence that these things are causing untoward damage because we would have seen them over 20 years of use," said Dr Julian Little from Bayer, one of the manufacturers of neonicotinoids.

"If you look at the tree bumblebee, it is eating the same food as the other bees, and is being exposed to the same pesticide load and weather conditions and yet it is flourishing, whereas some other bees are not.

"If it were pesticides causing the mass destruction of our fauna, surely you would see effects on all bees?"

The European Crop Protection Association said the task force was being selective in their evidence, pointing to recent studies carried out by industry showing that the declines in bee populations have been overstated.

"We respect the scientists who have produced this research, but it appears that they are part of a movement that brings together some academics and NGOs whose only objective is to restrict or ban the use of neonicotinoid technology regardless of what the evidence may show," a spokesperson said.

Europe already has a two-year moratorium in place meaning that neonicotinoids can't be used on flowering crops such as oilseed rape.

Last week, President Obama announced the creation of a pollinator health task force to look at the impact of pesticide exposure on bees and other insects.

Prof Goulson says that he isn't in favour of a ban.

"We have been using these things for 20 years and there's not a single study that shows they increase yield," he said.

"I'm not personally in favour of an outright ban but I think we should use them much more judiciously - if they don't benefit yield we should stop using them." More

 

© 2014

Can GM and organic farms coexist?

Writing for the Guardian, Australian Research Council future fellow Matthew Rimmer said the ruling raised the prospect of "biotrespass" laws to protect organic farmers.

The decision in Marsh v Baxterwill no doubt reignite the debate over GM crop liability. A number of scholars have argued that there is a need to revise liability regimes in respect of biotechnology. Professor Jeremy de Beerfrom the University of Ottawa has argued that there is a need to adapt the legal principles of trespass to accommodate recent developments in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. He has called for the creation of a cause of action for "biotrespass".

No doubt the agricultural biotechnology industry would resist such efforts at law reform. From their perspective, GM crops should be subject to the same liability regimes as other forms of farming and agriculture.

At an international level, there will be further debate over the position of GM crops in the sweeping regional agreements under negotiation – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is an intense struggle between organic farmers and the biotechnology industry at a number of levels in these international agreements.

The Marsh's lawyer, Mark Walter, said the case would have ramifications for Australia's organic industry and raised the possibility of appeal:

"This is a disappointing result for Mr Marsh and leaves Australia’s non-genetically modified food farmers with no legal protection against contamination from nearby properties ... We will closely examine the judgement of this complex and unique case and advise our client of his legal options, including his right to appeal."

The Safe Food Foundation, which helped bankroll Marsh's case, said the future for organic food in Australia was now "uncertain". The Foundation said the judge had erred by criticising Australia's organic food regulators for stripping Marsh's organic status.

The court in its judgment stated the decision by NASAA (National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia) to decertify Steve was erroneous. Given the extent of the contamination of Steve’s farm we fail to see how NASAA could have taken any other decision. Certainly 100% of organic consumers would support the NASAA decision.

Because the court did not recognise the NASAA decertification the court did not recognise the economic loss Steve suffered, and dismissed the case that Steve had brought for negligence and nuisance.

Foundation director, Scott Kinnear, said:

“This is a huge setback for organic and Non GM farmers and their choice to remain GM Free. This has been an important test case, of interest to many parties, locally and globally.

“We also call on our legislators to work on finding a solution to this vexed issue. State and Federal governments have continuously stated that the solution to any GM contamination events is common law. This has clearly failed today and demonstrates that the law has not kept up with new technologies such as GM.”

NASAA general manager Ben Copeman said the decision highlighted the need for legislative change for the sector and that it had opened up a "Pandora box" of conflict between the GM and organic farming sectors.

“We found GM canola growing on organically certified land. The court found that there was no risk of GM contamination. While tolerance thresholds for GM contamination are governed by the Federal Government under the National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce, it is not a legislated standard and is not recognised by the courts." More

 

© 2014

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos.Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world.

© 2014

Permaculture PDC in Palestine in September

Marda Permaculture Certification Course, Register Now!

Join us in SEPTEMBER for an exquisite opportunity to learn about permaculture principles and techniques whilst experiencing the culture, food and traditions of beautiful Palestine! And much more! Check out: Permaculture Design Course, 25 September – 10 October 2014

For more information click here

 

© 2014

Geoff Lawton's Permaculture Design Course (Online)

For Those Who May Be Interested

If you are interested in growing your own food and if you have a farm this course is excellent.

Last year saw the launch Geoff Lawton's first online Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course, with the hope of exponentially increasing our educational reach. It was a 'scary' undertaking, in that, being the first course, we were not sure what to expect.

But we are proud to share that the course brought an overwhelmingly positive response. I've been looking around the inner 'halls' of the course system and reading comment after positive comment, and I've seen many of the amazing designs the students submitted at the end of their training. The best news is that this course is reaching people who would otherwise never get to take a PDC course, due to remote locations, family and work commitments, health constraints, cost, etc. Doctors, lawyers, housewives, politicians, activists, nurses, rural farmers, urbanites, pilots, industrialists, even experienced Permaculture teachers - the list goes on - all are coming together in the same system to learn, share, network and cause ripples of influence we may never be able to measure.

This last weekend Geoff's second online PDC was opened for registrations - for the new and even more expansive 2014 course (we keep adding material!). This course is run only once per year, and the door for registrations closes this Sunday, April 6th, 2014. If you want to get onto this course, or if you know someone who should, there's only three days left before the door shuts until next year, and the course begins. More

If you're unsure of the value of this life-altering course, please take a few minutes to scan the many comments below this post: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/10/28/geoff-lawtons-online-permaculture-design-course-worth/

 

© 2014

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

World agriculture is now facing challenges unlike any before. Producing enough grain to make it to the next harvest has challenged farmers ever since agriculture began, but now the challenge is deepening as new trends—falling water tables, plateauing grain yields, and rising temperatures—join soil erosion to make it difficult to expand production fast enough.

As a result, world grain carryover stocks have dropped from an average of 107 days of consumption a decade or so ago to 74 days in recent years.

World food prices have more than doubled over the last decade. Those who live in the United States, where 9 percent of income goes for food, are largely insulated from these price shifts. But how do those who live on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder cope? They were already spending 50–70 percent of their income on food. Many were down to one meal a day before the price rises. Now millions of families routinely schedule one or more days each week when they will not eat at all.

What happens with the next price surge? Belt tightening has worked for some of the poorest people so far, but this cannot go much further. Spreading food unrest will likely lead to political instability. We could see a breakdown of political systems. Some governments may fall.

As food supplies have tightened, a new geopolitics of food has emerged—a world in which the global competition for land and water is intensifying and each country is fending for itself. We cannot claim that we are unaware of the trends that are undermining our food supply and thus our civilization. We know what we need to do.

There was a time when if we got into trouble on the food front, ministries of agriculture would offer farmers more financial incentives, like higher price supports, and things would soon return to normal. But responding to the tightening of food supplies today is a far more complex undertaking. It involves the ministries of energy, water resources, transportation, and health and family planning, among others. Because of the looming specter of climate change that is threatening to disrupt agriculture, we may find that energy policies will have an even greater effect on future food security than agricultural policies do. In short, avoiding a breakdown in the food system requires the mobilization of our entire society.

On the demand side of the food equation, there are four pressing needs—to stabilize world population, eradicate poverty, reduce excessive meat consumption, and reverse biofuels policies that encourage the use of food, land, or water that could otherwise be used to feed people. We need to press forward on all four fronts at the same time.

The first two goals are closely related. Indeed, stabilizing population depends on eliminating poverty. Even a cursory look at population growth rates shows that the countries where population size has stabilized are virtually all high-income countries. On the other side of the coin, nearly all countries with high population growth rates are on the low end of the global economic ladder.

The world needs to focus on filling the gap in reproductive health care and family planning while working to eradicate poverty. Progress on one will reinforce progress on the other. Two cornerstones of eradicating poverty are making sure that all children—both boys and girls—get at least an elementary school education and rudimentary health care. And the poorest countries need a school lunch program, one that will encourage families to send children to school and that will enable them to learn once they get there.

Shifting to smaller families has many benefits. For one, there will be fewer people at the dinner table. It comes as no surprise that a disproportionate share of malnutrition is found in larger families.

At the other end of the food spectrum, a large segment of the world’s people are consuming animal products at a level that is unhealthy and contributing to obesity and cardiovascular disease. The good news is that when the affluent consume less meat, milk, and eggs, it improves their health. When meat consumption falls in the United States, as it recently has, this frees up grain for direct consumption. Moving down the food chain also lessens pressure on the earth’s land and water resources. In short, it is a win-win-win situation.

Another initiative, one that can quickly lower food prices, is the cancellation of biofuel mandates. There is no social justification for the massive conversion of food into fuel for cars. With plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars coming to market that can run on local wind-generated electricity at a gasoline-equivalent cost of 80¢ per gallon, why keep burning costly fuel at four times the price?

On the supply side of the food equation, we face several challenges, including stabilizing climate, raising water productivity, and conserving soil. Stabilizing climate is not easy, but it can be done if we act quickly. It will take a huge cut in carbon emissions, some 80 percent within a decade, to give us a chance of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. This means a wholesale restructuring of the world energy economy.

The easiest way to do this is to restructure the tax system. The market has many strengths, but it also has some dangerous weaknesses. It readily captures the direct costs of mining coal and delivering it to power plants. But the market does not incorporate the indirect costs of fossil fuels in prices, such as the costs to society of global warming. Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, noted when releasing his landmark study on the costs of climate change that climate change was the product of a massive market failure.

The goal of restructuring taxes is to lower income taxes and raise carbon taxes so that the cost of climate change and other indirect costs of fossil fuel use are incorporated in market prices. If we can get the market to tell the truth, the transition from coal and oil to wind, solar, and geothermal energy will move very fast. If we remove the massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, we will move even faster. 10

Although to some people this energy transition may seem farfetched, it is moving ahead, and at an exciting pace in some countries. For example, four states in northern Germany now get at least 46 percent of their electricity from wind. For Denmark, the figure is 26 percent. In the United States, both Iowa and South Dakota now get one fifth of their electricity from wind farms. Solar power in Europe can now satisfy the electricity needs of some 15 million households. Kenya now gets one fifth of its electricity from geothermal energy. And Indonesia is shooting for 9,500 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity by 2025, which would meet 56 percent of current electricity needs. More

 

© 2014

Peak oil – reached. Peak water – reached. Next on the list? Peak soil

Soil is becoming endangered – this is the reality a meeting between experts in Reykjavik has reached. They explain that this has to receive public awareness if we want to feed 9 billion by 2050.

The main culprit is the one also responsible for global warming: Carbon.

“Keeping and putting carbon in its rightful place needs to be the mantra for humanity if we want to continue to eat, drink and combat global warming, concluded 200 researchers from more than 30 countries”.

Indeed, for all the attention the air and water gets, soil seems to be the forgotten child, just because we don’t eat or drink it. But everything we eat comes from it.

“While soil is invisible to most people it provides an estimated 1.5 to 13 trillion dollars in ecosystem services annually,” Glover said at the Soil Carbon Sequestration conference that ended this week.

It’s practically impossible to calculate the benefits that soil brings us – a mere cup of soil contains some 500.000 species, including worms, ants, fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms. 99% of our food comes from it, directly or indirectly, compared to the only 1% we get from oceans.

Soil cleans water, keeps contaminants out of streams and lakes, and prevents flooding; it can also absord massive quantities of carbon. But as hard as it may seem – it’s really fragile.

“It takes half a millennia to build two centimetres of living soil and only seconds to destroy it,” Glover said.

Plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing all leave soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain, resulting in gradual, often unnoticed erosion of soil. Erosion not only destroys crops, causes landslides and other catastrophes, but also releases carbon into the air.

“Soil can be a safe place where huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere could be sequestered,” said Rattan Lal of Ohio State University.

So we’ve pretty much screwed the atmosphere – unless practically all of science that we do now is wrong, that’s a fact. We’re well into doing the same to the water, as a massive, large scale water shortage seems like a matter of time. Are we going to do the same with soil? Are we going to try to milk the cow until it runs totally dry? We know what should be done, we have the technology, and we also have the money for it.

A Sad Example

About 1000 years ago, when the first settlers arrived there, Iceland was mostly covered by forests, lush meadows and wetlands. By the late 1800s, about 96 percent of all icelandic forrests were gone. Half of the grasslands were destroyed by overgrazing. Humans pushed the land way beyond the limit of sustainability, up to the point where it became barren.

Due to necessity, Iceland pioneered a number of groundbreaking techniques in terms of soil protection, but the results in the past 100 years are moving extremely slowly.

“We’re still fighting overgrazing here,” Halldórsson said.

But the public is living in the urban areas, has forgot these troubles, and is not supporting land restoration anymore.

“The public isn’t supporting land restoration. We’ve forgotten that land is the foundation of life,” Halldórsson said.

More

 

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

More than 600 scientists gathered in the Netherlands for a global food security conference, described as the first of its kind.

The combination of poor harvests
and rising demand has increased
price volatility in global grain markets

Organisers said science could help end uncertainty surrounding efforts to meet the food needs of future generations.

They added that, until now, there were many policy debates on food security but there was no scientific forum for researchers to share knowledge.

The next food security conference will be held in the US in 2015.

"A really key message from the conference for us is that we have got lots of estimates about needs of population growth etc, but at the moment we are so uncertain of the exact numbers - the uncertainty is really very high," said conference co-chairman Ken Giller, professor of plant production systems at Wageningen University.

"We talk about the current population being seven billion, moving to 9.2 billion in 2050 and the estimate is that we need to increase production 70% or more.

"But there are many different ways of addressing that. If we don't know what the problem is then we can't get started in addressing them."

Appetite for change

Prof Giller said there was "unprecedented interest" among the scientific community when details of the conference was first announced.

"We did anticipate about 250-300 people , but we actually ended up with more than 900 abstracts being submitted," he told BBC News.

"The conference was basically sold out - we had 600 people and that was all we could accommodate."

He explained that the conference was designed to create a forum where representatives from the different branches of science could come together and discuss and debate the issues of global food security.

"We pulled together a science committee with the real aim to make the conference broad and to include all the main disciplines," he said.

"We had people on the science committee from economics, nutrition and we had people dealing with food waste, which is a very important topical issue."

Prof Giller said that current estimates suggested that 30-40% of the food produced was wasted and not eaten.

Other themes that were discussed at the conference included:

• Nutritional security,
• Sustainable intensification of food production systems,
• Novel ways of feeding nine billion,
• Agricultural production as feedstock for renewables.

The organisers hope that the outcomes from the four-day event in Noordwijkerhout, South Holland, will help focus the scientific world's contribution to the UN global policy system.

One of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015, which included the target of halving - between 1990 and 2015 - the proportion of people suffering from hunger.

Assessments suggest the target is "within reach". However, a 2013 report on the progress of the MDGs warned that one in eight people remained chronically undernourished.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced that he wants to build on the MDGs, replacing them with a suite of Sustainable Development Goals that will run from 2015-2030.

He said one of his priorities was to "adopt globally agreed goals for food and nutrition security, mobilise all key stakeholders to provide support to smallholder farmers and food processors and bolster the resilience of communities and nations experiencing periodic food crises". More

 

Italy Calls for Food Security to Be U.N. Priority

ROME--Italy wants to shepherd efforts to make food security a priority for global policy makers, Prime Minister Enrico Letta said in his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday.

"We should address the root causes of the ills afflicting our world rather than limit ourselves to the side effects," Mr. Letta said. "The time has come to launch a new global consensus on food," he said.

In 2008, Italy, with limited financial firepower due to chronic fiscal problems, tried to make food security a signature theme at the Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, Italy, prodding the largest economies to pledge as much as $15 billion for the cause. The global financial crisis then commanded vast public resources and attention, even though the serious spike in basic food prices that helped trigger the so-called Arab Spring sparked fear that easy monetary policies in developed economies would trigger runaway inflation in basic staples.

Commodity prices have since stabilized, according to a price-monitoring index set up by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome.

Mr. Letta said that the 2015 Expo, or world's fair, in Milan should be a springboard for global initiatives, floating the idea that a multilateral pact might be reached there.

The Milan Expo, whose slogan is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life," aims to draw 20 million visitors interested in issues linked to sustainability. The event should be seized upon to create a Milan Protocol, modelled on the Kyoto Protocol of the late 1990s that covers environmental issues, with nutritional education, sustainable farming practices and food waste as its cardinal points, according to the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, a think tank backed by Barilla SpA, the pasta maker.

"Italy, with its rich food culture and heritage, is well-placed to show leadership in tackling the world's global food issues," said Danielle Nierenberg, an advisory board member at the Center.

Italy is also home to the U.N.'s main food-related agencies, the World Food Program, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the FAO, which after decades of advising farmers on how to boost yields is beginning to try to influence retail supply chains in an effort to reduce what it says is the waste of one-third of global food production. More

 

Seeing Food As A Commons Opens Up Creative New Possibilities

What would the world look like if we began to re-conceptualize food as a commons? Jose Luis Vivero Pol of the Centre for Philosophy of Law at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium has done just that in a recent essay, “Food as a Commons: Reframing the Narrative of the Food System.”

The piece is impressive for daring to imagine how the world’s estimated 668 million hungry people might eat, and how all of us would become healthier, if we treated more elements of the food production and distribution system as commons. Instead of managing food as a private good that can only be produced and allocated through markets, re-conceptualizing food as a commons helps us imagine “a more sustainable, fairer and farmer-centered food system,” writes Vivero Pol.

One reason that the commons reframing is so useful is that it helps us see the ubiquity of enclosures in the food system. We can begin to see the galloping privatization of farmland, water, energy and seeds. We can see the concentration of various food sectors and the higher prices and loss of consumer sovereignty that comes from oligopoly control.

Enclosure is snatching shared resources from us and preventing us from managing them to maximize access and good nutrition. This is often known these days as “resource grabbing,” as companies and national governments race to seize as many abundant, cheap natural resources as they can on an international scale. This is one reason for the many pernicious enclosures of land commons in Africa and Latin America in recent years. There is a huge exodus from traditional and indigenous lands as China, Saudi Arabia, Korea, hedge funds and others buy up natural resources. These enclosures are moving us “from diversity to uniformity, from complexity to homoegeneity, and from richness to impoverishment,” writes Vivero Pol.

Strangely, “no one has really questioned the nature of food as a private good, produced by private inputs or privately harvested in enclosed areas of the world." Yet asking such a question helps us to see why massive hunger can persist with food abundance. The ethic of “no money, no food” means that only those with sufficient "consumer demand" are entitled to food. And even then, good health is no guarantee because the industrialized food model actively promotes expensive processed foods that are either non-nutritious or actively harmful to our health, but more lucrative to companies.

It helps to remember that many aspects of food are already considered commons, notes Vivero Pol. For example, fish stocks, unpatented genetic resources, wild fruits, recipes, agricultural knowledge and food safety regulations cannot be owned and can be harvested and used by anyone or by bounded commons.

Most cultivated food, however, is generally a private good, which means that food is vulnerable to being traded, hoarded and sold for competing uses (e.g., biofuels, animal feed) if it can fetch more money. In the classic economists’ formulation, food that is privatized and commoditized can be made “excludable” and “rival,” and this in practice tends to override any moral entitlements or human rights claims over food.

This means that private control has enormous public consequences. If people go hungry because they can’t afford food, they suffer diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. Their psychological health suffers. They may die of malnutrition. This of course has diverse economic, political and social effects that an economist would consider an unfortunate but inexorable “externality” for which buyers and sellers have no responsibility. But it is quite obvious that such are the predictable outcomes of the commoditization of food.

So how might we convert privately owned food production into more of a public good? (Vivero Pol uses “public good” and “commons” interchangeably, while acknowledging that the former term is used in economic contexts and the latter in sociological contexts. But I would suggest that the two terms should be emphatically separated to make clear that the commons has generative capacities and social grounding that a "public good" does not.)

First, we should apply the commons template to our food production system and enumerate the harms caused by enclosures. As Vivero Pol writes, these harms include: “excessive commodification of food, with high pricing, laws and private enclosure as main barriers to fully enjoying those vital resources”; irregular private land titling, land grabbing and land evictions…”; “excessive patents of life, biopiracy and patented GMOs”; “the concentration in agri-food chains in a few transnationals”; and enclosure schemes such as “the Carbon Sequestration Initiative,” the REDD+ and the Payment for Environmental Services.”

Once we regard food as a commons, we can begin to see that everybody ought to have a human right to food. “Another implication would be that food should be kept out of trade agreements dealing with pure private goods,” writes Vivero Pol. We would also need to develop an international legal framework to regulate food as a global level, and guarantee everyone a minimum amount of food as a “universal Basic Food Entitlement.” More