Wednesday, December 30, 2009

30 Dec - Greenblogging

Organic Consumers Association

The "Slow Money" Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food
http://www.alternet.org/story/144721
About five years ago, veteran financial manager Woody Tasch and his colleagues at the Investors' Circle began discussing how an intentional and organized influx of investment into localized sustainable food systems could be paired with a general increasing philosophical commitment to slow food principles.
The result is the Slow Money movement, shepherded by the Slow Money Alliance, of which Tasch is executive director. Now 750 members, including individual investors and sustainable farms and food-related businesses, are members of the alliance, and 450 people attended a Slow Money conference in Santa Fe in September.
The goals and structure of the alliance and the movement are fairly amorphous -- cynics might say squishy -- more on the philosophical than pragmatic level for the time being. Tasch’s recent book "Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered" (Chelsea Green) aims to spark and incubate investment at all levels in local or regional food systems. This means not only organic farms, dairies and ranches, but food processing facilities, food artisans (makers of jelly, cheese, etc.) and retail or distribution networks, restaurants and stores.

Lawyers target pig, dairy farms
http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20091223/NEWS01/912230336
WINCHESTER -- Neighbors who are fed up living next door to factory farms have found three high-powered trial lawyers who vow to make Randolph County "ground zero" in a courtroom food fight over how Indiana produces pork and milk.
Highly aggressive flies, harmful odors, stacks of dead animals and mismanagement of millions of gallons of manure are among the complaints of neighbors suing pork and dairy producers.

The trial lawyers are bringing multiple lawsuits challenging Indiana's industrial or factory model of producing milk and pork in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) promoted by Gov. Mitch Daniels' agriculture department.

Taken from EPA website (http://www.epa.gov/reg...

Image via Wikipedia

It's a system that produces odors so intense that neighbors are suffering skin irritations, nausea, headaches, breathing difficulties, tightness of the chest, sinus infection, stress, burningeyes, noses and throats and other ailments
( Grist, Bluebloggin and Berry Street Beacon all had articles on CAFO's in the past - tying them to groundwater pollution. )

Grist - a beacon in the smog

Rain o'er me

Documentary examines geoengineering and the checkered history of weather modification

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-12-22-owning-the-weather-documentary-geoengineering

Geoengineering had its coming out party earlier this year when White House science adviser John Holdren told reporters that he had mentioned it to President Obama as a possible, admittedly desperate, option to combat climate change. Before then, the idea of hacking the planet was largely outside the realm of public discussion, which is why few people know that when Lyndon Johnson became the first president to be warned about global warming, his science advisers offered up geoengineering as the only possible solution.
Owning the Weather documentary

Watch the movie trailer at the bottom of this article.4th Row FilmsThis insistence upon the manipulation of nature as the answer to the climate problem is the subject of a new documentary called Owning the Weather, which chronicles attempts over the last century to unlock the planet’s most mysterious and intricate of systems for both personal and societal gain. Director Robert Greene makes the case that the large-scale, biosphere-altering effects of geoengineering can’t be understood without examining smaller scale weather modification, such as cloud seeding to produce rain.

EPA announces plan to require disclosure of secret pesticide ingredients
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/inert-ingredients-in-pesticides
Reversing a decade-old decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it plans to require pesticide manufacturers to disclose to the public the inert ingredients in their products. An inert ingredient is anything added to a pesticide that does not kill or control a pest. In some cases, those ingredients are toxic, but companies do not identify them on pesticide labels. For 11 years, EPA denied petitions seeking disclosure of the chemicals but now the new administration says it plans to draft a rule that will increase transparency and encourage companies to replace toxic substances. Manufacturers worry about revealing trade secrets.
In some cases, those ingredients are toxic compounds, but companies do not identify them on pesticide labels.

Nearly 4,000 inerts - including several hundred that are considered hazardous under other federal rules - are used in agricultural and residential pesticides.

Image via Wikipedia

The EPA’s announcement that it will initiate the rulemaking comes 11 years after it had first been petitioned by environmental groups and state officials seeking public disclosure of the ingredients. In 2001, the agency denied those petitions filed by ten state attorney generals and an environmental coalition, and its decision was upheld by a federal judge in 2004.

Now, under a new administration, the EPA decided that drafting a new regulation will “increase transparency” and help protect public health.

“EPA believes disclosure of inert ingredients on product labels is important to consumers who want to be aware of all potentially toxic chemicals, both active and inert ingredients, in pesticide products,” according to the agency’s website.

SANITATION-ZAMBIA:
Turning Urine Into Gold
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49822
LUSAKA, Dec 26 (IPS) - When he ordered his colleagues at the Water and Sanitation Association of Zambia to save all their urine in a plastic bottle in the office toilet, they thought he was mad. But German sanitation specialist Christopher Kellner wanted to demonstrate why he calls urine "liquid gold".

"(Urine) contains the three most important plant nutrients which farmers buy as artificial fertiliser. These are nitrogen, phosphorus) and potassium - but it also contains all eight micronutrients plants need for growth," Kellner explains.

Seconded to the Water and Sanitation Association of Zambia (WASAZA) by the Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) and the Centre for International Migration and Development of Germany, Kellner wasted no time setting up a urine-fertilised vegetable garden on the grounds of the WASAZA offices in Luskaka.

Workers' pee is collected and used in the garden on Great East Road, across the road from the University of Zambia campus, and vegetables given to the urine donors to illustrate the valuable commodity that's usually pissed away.

Kellner and his team at WASAZA are busy pushing on with developing and popularising a latrine that will separate human waste into two components - urine and solid matter, so they can be processed into two different forms of manure.

Liquid goldUrine - at least when it's fresh - is virtually sterile, and mixed with water in a 1:3 ratio, is an effective and odor-free nutrient.

In a nod to consumer sensibilities, a watering can without a shower/shower head is used to apply the liquid fertiliser to the roots of the plants not the leaves which will be eaten.

One person's average urine output is enough for a farmer to fertilise a garden of 280 square metres - easily enough to supply vegetables to a Zambian farmer's household with some left over to sell.

Kellner is piloting a system called a "fertiliser-producing toilet" which focuses on re-use of solid waste. Such a toilet, once integrated into gardening, will never fill up.

When a user sits on one of the new toilets, the urine will go one way to a storage tank fitted with a compressor and a valve, from where it can be collected for direct use as liquid fertiliser after dilution.

The solid waste will fall into a shallow pit where it will be covered with soil and compacted; it will dry it out and neutralise it before it is ready for use as fertiliser. Any smell is vented out through a pipe.

CUBA-US: Stuck at a Standstill