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30 March 2009

Food scare! Would new food-safety legislation 'criminalize organic farming'?


By Tom Philpott from Gristmill

The Internets are abuzz with accounts of a House bill, allegedly sponsored by Monsanto and pushed through Congress by its lackeys, that would "criminalize organic farming" and even backyard gardening. The object of frenzy: H.R. 875, known as the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, a bill that attempts to bolster the broken food-safety system.

Here's how one critic, whose work circulates widely on sustainable-food listservs, characterizes it:

The bill is monstrous on level after level -- the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international "industrial" standards to independent farms -- the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.

Wait, did she just say "the planned elimination of farmers"?

I've been reading hysterical missives about H.R. 875 for weeks. I could never square them with the text of the bill, which is admittedly vague. For example, the bill seeks to regulate any "food production facility" which it defines as "any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation."

But then again, the USDA already regulates farms. And "24 hours GPS tracking of ... animals"? Not in there. "Warrentless government entry" to farms? Can't find it.

More recently, reading around the web, I found more reasoned takes on H.R. 875. The bill may not be worth supporting -- and from what I hear, it has little chance of passing. But it hardly represents the "end of farming," much less the end of organic farming. The Organic Consumers Association, an energetic food-industry watchdog, recently called the paranoia around H.R. 875 the "Internet rumor of the week."

The Organic Consumers Association has this to say:

The Organic Consumers Association is not taking a position for or against this bill, but encouraging its members to write to Congress to urge it to enact food safety legislation that addresses the inherent dangers of our industrialized food system without burdening certified organic and farm-to-consumer operations.

Quite sensibly, the OCA wants Congress to avoid "one-size-fits-all legislation." Regulations that make sense for a 1000-acre spinach farm could push a diversified operation that includes spinach in its crop mix out of business. Sustainable-food advocates should oppose H.R. 875 until it adds scale-appropriate language.

But effective opposition does not mean indulging in fictional rants about it. There's no evidence that the bill aims to end farming; insisting that it does destroys credibility.

Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch, a group that does generally excellent work, has issued a statement debunking myths around H.R. 875. Anyone who's been lashed into a frenzy by doomsday accounts of this bill should read the F&WW statement.


23 March 2009

Breathing Queasy: Improving Indoor Air

by Laura Sevier, from the Ecologist

So much for home sweet home. When it comes to air quality, chances are you’re better off wandering the fume-filled streets of any major city than sitting at home in front of the television.

Take your favorite sofa, for instance. Particles of the fabric can abrade and be taken up by your nose, mouth, and lungs. These particles are likely to contain “mutagenic materials, heavy metals, dangerous chemicals, and dyes that are often labeled as hazardous by regulators—except when they are presented and sold to a customer,” write German chemist Michael Braungart and American architect William McDonough in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

Braungart has performed experiments on everyday products to analyze their gaseous emissions. Some of the worst offenders include vinyl wallpaper and flooring, laser printers and photocopy machines (the toner dust can easily be inhaled), glues, paints, and household appliances. He’s concluded that indoor air is, generally, much worse than outdoor air. “Inside, you have chemicals in a sealed building,” he says.

It’s a view supported by a growing body of scientific evidence. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first blew the whistle on poor indoor air quality in 1987; the U.K.’s Building Research Establishment published devastating findings in 1996. And yet, while there are standards for pollutants in outdoor air, still there are none for indoor air.

Most indoor air pollution comes from sources inside the building. Nearly everything we use sheds particles or gives off gases, particularly when it’s new. The stuff and staples of daily life—carpets, upholstery, manufactured wood products, electronic devices, cleaning supplies—emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are liquid or solid substances that turn into or emit gases at room temperature (a process known as off-gassing). They are the most common type of gases found indoors. Adverse health effects can include eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, loss of coordination, nausea, and damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system. Some are known or suspected carcinogens.

We spend 90 percent of our time indoors, according to the EPA. In homes, offices, schools, or shops. Awake with our families, friends, and coworkers, or sleeping in our beds. Everything in the air ends up in our bodies, so good-quality air is of vital importance.

In a sentence: We are what we breathe.

The good news is there’s plenty you can do to improve the quality of your indoor air.

Freshen up the air—naturally. Unless you live next to a highway, the cheapest and most effective way to allow fresh air in and toxic air out is to open a window. Ban air “fresheners,” a source of VOCs, and use natural odor eaters such as a bowl of baking soda or naturally fragranced alternatives. Avoid using perfumes, deodorants, and products containing parfum, a catchall term that hides the identities of dozens of potentially persistent or allergenic chemicals.

Clear out cleaning chemicals. Recent studies have linked cleaning sprays with a new surge of asthma in adults, and have tied use of cleaning products by pregnant women to their children’s persistent wheezing in early childhood. Use products made from natural plant ingredients or experiment with simple cleaning solutions made from lemons, vinegar, and baking soda.

Suppress breathable particles. Dust is just dust, right? Wrong. A 2002 Greenpeace U.K. analysis of house-dust samples vacuumed from 100 homes showed that hazardous chemicals such as phthalates, brominated flame retardants, and alkylphenols were widespread contaminants. Regular cleaning can help keep down levels of breathable particles along with dust mites, pollen, and other allergy-causing agents. Keep humidity to a minimum, too, to discourage the growth of mold—which has the potential to cause allergic reactions when it is inhaled.

Plug into plant power. Living green plants can remove toxic chemicals including formaldehyde, benzene, and carbon monoxide from the air, according to a two-year study by NASA scientists. [Check out “Leafy Clean” on p. 73 for suggestions on the best plants to cleanse indoor air and how to care for them.]

Control contaminated carpet. A 2001 Greenpeace U.K. report, “Poisons Underfoot,” found that new carpets contain significant levels of flame retardant chemicals, pesticides, and formaldehyde. Carpets also are reservoirs for dust. Choose carpets and rugs made from natural fibers like organic wool or cotton, coir, or jute, but check to make sure they haven’t been treated with unnecessary chemicals or glues. Avoid toxic cleaners; use a steam cleaner instead. And always take off your shoes at the door to keep dirt and bacteria from the streets at bay.

Know what not to paint with. Conventional paints can include polyurethane, polyvinyl chloride, and VOCs. Choose natural and nontoxic water-based or clay-based paints instead. [Utne Reader illuminated ecofriendly paints in its July-Aug. 2006 issue. Read “A Cleaner Coat” online at www.utne.com/Paint.]

Place electronics carefully. Ban electrical appliances from the bedroom. A computer, for instance, contains toxic gases, metals, acids, plastics, and chlorinated and brominated substances. The dust from some printer toner cartridges contains harmful substances such as nickel and mercury. Greenpeace’s online “Guide to Greener Electronics” ranks the top manufacturers.

Protect babies and children. Expecting a child? Go easy when you’re creating a nursery. Often people paint walls and put in new carpets and curtains—so when the baby arrives it ends up in a room full of off-gassing substances and products. Instead of plastic playthings, consider handcrafted natural wooden toys in water-based colors, finished with natural oil blends.

Choose better bedding. Traditional mattresses and pillows are often packed with synthetic chemical batting and made from equally toxic fabric. Cut down on off-gassing where you sleep by choosing chemical-free natural latex, coir, or wool mattresses and organic cotton bedding.

Excerpted from the Ecologist(Nov. 2008), a London-based publication of environmental news and issues; www.theecologist.org.

15 March 2009

The Little Things That Run the World

By Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton (from SF Chronicle, April 2, 2008)

Here's another opportunity to do your bit for science without leaving your yard.

San Francisco State University biologist Gretchen LeBuhn wants you to grow a sunflower - not just any old sunflower, but the North American native species Helianthus annuus - and monitor the bee traffic once it blooms. It's called the Great Sunflower Project, and with it LeBuhn hopes to connect the ecosystem services of bees with issues of food security.

LeBuhn started out as a botanist but became fascinated with bees. When teaching a bee-identification course at the Southwest Research Center in Arizona, she realized how little most people know about this diverse (1,500 species exist in California, 500 in the Bay Area) and ecologically vital group.

Honeybees are declining

"There's very good data that honeybees seem to be declining, and spotty data that native bees aren't doing well," she said. Several researchers, including Gordon Frankie at UC Berkeley, have been studying urban bee communities. But no one had attempted a continentwide survey of the state of the bees.

LeBuhn, who provides the seeds, wants Great Sunflower Project participants to use a specific kind of sunflower so their observations can be standardized. H. annuus is "a classic bee plant." Its long blooming season - potentially May to September - should attract a broad range of native bees that fly at different times of the year.

"Sunflowers are easy to grow, easy to watch bees on, and bees love them," she added. Schools, including San Francisco's Willie Brown Academy, and community gardens will have their own patches.

Bee watchers will be asked to spend half an hour - early in the day, before the pollen is depleted - on two Saturdays each month taking note of what kinds of bees visit their sunflowers and how long it takes for the first five to arrive. The identification part has been field-tested.

"We're comfortable that people can identify bumblebees," LeBuhn said, "and honeybees possibly." Other possibilities are large, solitary, shiny black carpenter bees and green "metallic" bees. Reporting "just bees" is fine, though. The time the bees spend at the sunflowers indicates how much pollination service the flower is getting.

That's where the food-security connection comes in.

"Worldwide, community gardens provide up to 15 to 20 percent of food," explains LeBuhn. "For the urban poor in some countries, 60 to 80 percent of their food is what they raise. It's often the only material contribution women can make to the household economy. I'm interested in whether community gardens are getting enough pollinator services in urban settings."

Although it may not be the norm in the Bay Area, she said, community gardens in other countries can have high pesticide use - and beneficial insects like bees are not immune to pesticides. If funding is available, she'd like to take the Great Sunflower Project international.

Population problems

Honeybees beset by the mysterious colony collapse disorder have been in the headlines, but LeBuhn notes that some of North America's bumblebees are also in trouble. UC Davis Professor Emeritus Robbin Thorp said at least one species, the Franklin's bumblebee (Bombus franklini) of Northern California and southern Oregon, may already be extinct.

Thorp spends his summers searching for B. franklini in its narrow zone of distribution between the Coast Range and the Cascades-Sierra. Last year, he found none; in 2006, a single worker at Mount Ashland in Oregon. Franklin's bumblebee is a generalist, gathering pollen from lupines and poppies and nectaring at mints. The plants are still there, but the bee has gone missing before it could be listed as endangered.

"The western bumblebee, a close relative of Franklin's, was once common from Monterey County to southern British Columbia," Thorp said. "They are virtually undetectable in those areas now." Some eastern bumblebees are also declining.

Victims of success?

North American bumblebees may be victims of their success as pollinators; for certain crops, they're better than honeybees. The bumblebee's secret is the ability to vibrate its body by using its wing muscles, causing pollen release through pores in a flower's stamens.

"Buzz pollination" is crucial for hothouse tomatoes and peppers. Cranberries, strawberries and blueberries are also bumblebee-pollinated - all told, said Thorp, 15 percent of our food crops, valued at $3 billion.

Unlike honeybees' hives, bumblebee colonies die off annually, leaving newly mated queens to overwinter and start the cycle again in spring. The bumblebee trade has gone global, with North American queens shipped to Europe to rear colonies. "When the colonies were shipped back to us, I suspect they may have picked up diseases from European bumblebees," Thorp said. The main suspect is the microorganism nosema, present in commercial Western bumblebee stocks since 1998.

It's sobering to realize just how dependent we all are on pollinating insects, native and otherwise. LeBuhn's Great Sunflower Project might start to fill large gaps in our knowledge of what Edward O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world."

Resources:

-- The Great Sunflower Project: www.greatsunflower.org. Includes a bee identification guide, to be published soon in book form.

-- Urban Bee Gardens: nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens. Gordon Frankie's site.

-- Xerces Society Red List of Pollinator Insects: links.sfgate.com/ZCWD. The Xerces Society supports conservation of insects and other invertebrates. Its Red List identifies pollinators at risk.

-- "The Forgotten Pollinators" by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan (Island Press; 1996; $30, paperback).

09 March 2009

Ten Tips for Budding Young Conservationists

Written by Sanjayan from Cool Green Science

“What skills do I need to get a job in conservation”?

I visit dozens of states and speak to literally thousands of people each year, often students. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the one question I get over and over again revolves around preparations for a job in conservation. Unfortunately, my answers are not always timely enough for those on the verge of graduation.

I think about my own preparation for a life in conservation and it’s a minor miracle that I actually managed to pick up some useful skills for my role as the lead scientist for one of the world’s largest international conservation organizations. It certainly was not premediated. And even though I went to good schools, and studied fairly hard, my selection of classes was based on archaic academia-driven criteria at best — and random at worst.

I sometimes teach in the College of Forestry and Conservancy at the University of Montana. The program is considered to be one of the best programs in the United States for big animal conservation.

Recently, senior students in a mandatory upper-division wildlife ecology class asked me to give them some tips of preparing for a career working in international conservation. So, seizing the chance of proactively guiding the development of our next generation of conservation leaders, this is what I told them — my “top 10” most important skills to pick up in school (undergrad or graduate school) for a successful career in conservation.

In no particular order:

1. Basic Ecology. Basic knowledge is fine here. If you know what island biogeography is, you are fine. True, our ranks are filled with business types and lawyers, but still, the majority of our staff have some training in ecology.

2. Economics & Sociology. Conservation is as much about people as it is about wildlife. Understanding economics or business through some basic intro classes is crucial.

3. Natural History. Know one group well. It could be birds, plants, mushrooms — which one is not really important, but having a passion for one is. It allows you to see the natural world from a different perspective.

4. Story Telling. Be a strong communicator — develop good writing and speaking skills. Things like Toastmasters, being a TA in class and writing fiction really help.

5. GIS Skills. So much of what we do is spatial, and being able to create and navigate around spatial data is a valuable and employable skill.

6. Foreign Language Proficiency. Any language gives you a feel for working in other cultures, but the most useful language is Spanish. Asian languages have numbers on their side, but English is spreading in Asia fast.

7. Managing People. Lead a field crew or be the team lead in a lab project — but know how to motivate and lead people. You will be doing it a lot in the real world.

8. Be Web Smart. Create a Facebook/MySpace page, blog, and use Twitter — know what social marketing is and how to network on the web. You might hate it, but the web — or rather, the many webs of social networks and different Internet vehicles — is the way huge numbers of people are communicating.

9. Basic Statistics. Statistics is the way the world is described. Take at least two statistics classes as an undergrad. If you have a choice, drop calculus for statistics. Most people never actually USE calculus — but you see statistics every day all around you, from polls to the stock market. Everyone (not just biologists) should take a stats class.

10. Community Engagement. Learn how to work with local communities (ranchers to school kids) by doing one simple thing that engages a local community — being a community organizer can have all sorts of advantages.

After going over this list with my class. I asked who felt they had these skills — indicated by a show of hands. Unsurprisingly, basic ecology and basic natural history were common to all. This is a group of wildlife students, after all.

Surprisingly, many people felt they had good communicating skills (10 of 15), but I suspect this is simply wistful thinking — I find most US college students barely able to write and with no ability to give talks or speeches. Why? Because they never get a chance to do so in college.

About one-half had GIS and statistics skills and one-third of the students knew another language. Unsurprisingly, only one-third of the students had taken an economics course, despite the economy being the biggest factor influencing conservation.

What truly shocked me is that only five out of the 15 students had ever blogged, been on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Many scoffed or laughed when I expressed shock. To them it was a matter of pride that they avoided such “trivial” forums.

When I reminded them that Barack Obama has 275,000 followers on Twitter and that Lance Armstrong, in the midst of racing in California still has time, from his motel room, to send out “tweets” including reporting on his recently stolen and then-recovered bike (recovered thanks in part to Twitter), I could see, perhaps, a glimmer of interest in their eyes.

We are currently developing our next generation of leaders for the conservation movement. Most of them will not work in academia, but rather for government institutions, the private sector and conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy. But the skills they are learning in school is poor preparation for what the real world has to offer.

Though potentially well grounded in sciences, their ability to translate that science into something meaningful to the lay public is entirely missing. Without this, they will once again be preaching to the choir.

02 March 2009

Birds of America - Canaries in the Climate Change Coal Mine?

By Dave Mehlman from Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

My colleagues at National Audubon have just released a detailed analysis of the response of birds in North America to climate change you can read the full report here.

A lot of my past research has been in the field of biogeography and changes in avian distribution, so I find this work very exciting and compelling.

The Audubon team analyzed 40 years of data from the Christmas Bird Count to look at changes in bird distribution over this time period. There’s almost too much in this report to summarize succinctly, but here are some of the highlights:

  • Over half of the 305 species studied showed significant northward movement in their winter distributions.
  • These species moved an average of 35 miles north, while many moved over 100 miles north.
  • Significant shifts in distribution inland, away from coastal areas, were also found.
  • When landbirds are broken out by broad habitat types, woodland birds moved farther north than shrubland birds and generalists.
  • Grassland birds did not show a significant northward shift.
  • The authors report several pieces of evidence consistent with these changes being caused by global warming, including a correlation of annual movements with annual temperatures, more species moving north than south, and birds found only in southern states increasing in numbers.

What does this work tell us?

It provides more clear evidence of the effects of global warming on the distribution of biodiversity (in this case, wintering birds) the canaries seem to be doing their job.

It begins to call into question the effectiveness of our current network of refuges, parks and other protected areas for birds — they might not be in the right places, if bird distributions continue to change.

The fact that certain groups, such as grassland birds, did not respond indicates that there is concern for the future impacts on some species.

However, this should not be viewed as completely negative. Many regions will see an increase in overall species diversity and some species formerly rare in some states will become more common.

Climate change is an urgent matter that we must all understand. As the work from Audubon indicates, the changes are occurring in our own states, towns and backyards you can study this yourself by keeping good records of what is in and around your neighborhood.

For some other suggestions on climate change and what to do about it, check here.

(Image: Canary. Source: Jessi Bryan via Creative Commons.)

The Forecast from The Keswick Theater on 3/7/09 from Phrequency.com: