Small-Scale Sustainable Farming Key To Global Food Security, Poverty Reduction: UN

from TreeHugger.com
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY

A United Nations report has once again stressed that the key to increasing food production so that the world's coming nine billion people can be fed without increasing climate change and further reducing biodiversity, is small-scale sustainable agriculture. Doing so will also increase global food security, essential to poverty reduction.

The report, from economists at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, says:

Evidence has shown that for most crops the optimal farm is small in scale and that it is at this level that the most gain in terms of both sustainable productivity increases and rural poverty reduction can be achieved.

... read more story at TreeHugger.com

Begging Bear to Return in Fall

GUELPH, Ontario July 7, 2011 - University of Guelph Press Release - Those of you who have been missing the Begging Bear sculpture normally standing outside the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (MSAC) at the University of Guelph will be happy to learn the campus celebrity will soon return.

The bronze sculpture, which was knocked over in March and had to be removed for repairs, will be officially welcomed back to its rightful spot in a reinstallation ceremony October 1, 2011. The ceremony will be the highlight of events celebrating Culture Day at the MSAC.

“The unveiling will be impressive,” said Judith Nasby, MSAC director and curator. “The sculpture suffered deep scratches and bruising of the bronze, but it will emerge looking refreshed.”

Created by Carl Skelton and installed in 1999, the Canadiana/Begging Bear, posed with one inviting arm outstretched, is an artistic metaphor for our native animals’ need for protection and our encroachment on the environment, said Nasby.

The 7 ½-foot-tall sculpture has also become a beloved icon to Guelph residents. The bear can often be found decorated or dressed up, making it a must-see for passers-by on Gordon Street.
The bear was missed as soon as it was removed for repairs, said Aidan Ware, MSAC co-ordinator of education and development.

“It’s a testament to his value in the community,” said Ware. “People cared enough to write to local papers and email us asking after the bear. A suggestion was made that the bear be moved to a less accessible position, but it’s wonderful to keep him where he was, where he can continue to engage with the public.”

Artcast Inc. in Georgetown, Ontario, is using steel pins to stabilize the bear, which weighs some 350 pounds. Rather than appearing to stand on tiptoe in the grass, the bear will stand on a two-inch-high bronze platform atop a four-foot-deep concrete base buried in the ground.

Besides the unveiling, Culture Day will include the creation and photographing of Guelph’s first “human quilt,” and a late-night lantern tour of the MSAC sculpture park and grounds.

MSAC has launched a special fundraising effort, "Share Your Care For Our Bear," to help pay for the repairs. For more information or to make a donation, email msac@uoguelph.ca

Take Action: Ontario's Proposed Mega-Quarry Could Contaminate Drinking Water for A Million People

Image: Rabble.ca. Proposed mega-quarry deeper than Niagara Falls

from TreeHugger.com
by Kimberley Mok, Montreal, Canada

As Lloyd detailed in an earlier post on the enormous ecological footprint of concrete, a US-owned hedge fund is proposing a mega-quarry in Melancthon, about an hour and a half away from Toronto. It's an area best known for its excellent agricultural land and favourable micro-climate, but if the project goes ahead, thousands of acres will be dug up for limestone aggregate, creating Canada's largest open-pit mine, and second largest in North America. To give you a better frame of reference, the quarry would be greater in height than Niagara Falls.

The Highland Companies also plans to pump 600 millions of litres of water used in the quarry floors back into recharge wells, raising concerns that this could contaminate drinking water supplies of over a million Ontarians further south with blasting residue and diesel fuels. More information in this video:



Apparently, in the last several years Highlands has allegedly engaged in duplicitous maneuvers to obtain the lands for the quarry. According to the Toronto Star and the Council of Canadians website:

The Highlands company started buying farmland in Melancthon several years ago saying they wanted to become the province's largest potato growing operation -- which made sense to local farmers as the area is well known for its particularly high quality soil and micro-climate. After many local farmers had sold their farms -- some of which had been in the family for generations -- the real motives of the company became apparent. Under that rich and rare soil is a fortune in high quality limestone worth upwards of eight billion dollars.

However, it's clear that the environmental impact of the proposed quarry is mind-boggling. Not only would it destroy agricultural land, increase heavy traffic on country roads, it would also affect the Nottawasaga, Credit, Grand River, Pine, Humber, Noisy, Boyne, Mad and Saugeen Rivers, which all have their source in this watershed area north of Toronto.

Highland is currently in the process of applying for a permit from the Ontario government, but locals and many other concerned citizens are organizing to stop the quarry. There's an online petition, plus the deadline to register opposition ( online here) with the Ontario Environmental Registry is July 11, 2011. There is also a rally planned for July 21, 2011 at noon at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (77 Wellesley Street West, Toronto).

For more background details, you can read more in the Toronto Star, water activist Maude Barlow's - letter to Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources, and on how to reduce our need for aggregate.

... read more story at TreeHugger.com

Uninhabited Island Bought on Craigslist to Become a Haven for Artists (Video)

Photo via Andrew Ranville

from TreeHugger.com
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California


One of the greatest places to be inspired for art is smack in the middle of nature, with no other evidence of human habitation. Rob Gorski found a listing for the 91-acre island on Craigslist last year and bought the untamed island (not something you get to do every day!). He and artist Andrew Ranville want to keep the island in its natural state, but still allow for artists to spend time on the island getting inspired and working on projects. So, they've launched a very unusual project.

The island is Rabbit Island, and sits 3 miles off the beach of Lake Superior. It has remained untouched, except for a fishing family that lived there in the late 1800s. But, it will be home to artists hoping to soak in the unscarred beauty of the forested shores.

The team states,

"Ecological concerns are a growing influence within the consciousness of society and the creative practices of many people. Visual artists, writers, designers, architects, farmers and creative researches of all types are doing some amazing things and we want develop an amazing space for those practices to flourish and be challenged. This artist residency presents some really unique constraints: It is off-the-grid, it is nature in its purist form, it's an experiment, a laboratory. It is isolated from all centralized forms of transportation, energy production, food industry, and, the world of art. Rabbit Island represents a chance to creatively explore ideas related to the absence of civilization in a well-preserved microcosm. This is why we want to establish an artist residency on Rabbit Island."

It sounds like heaven on Earth.

The duo needs your help, however. They need $12,500 in funds to get everything ready, and have just 9 days to raise just about $6,500. When you donate, you can receive as a thank you anything from a cotton tote bag to a trip to the island. You can check out their Kickstarter campaign to learn more.



... read more story at TreeHugger.com

Can Agroforestry and Perennial Farming Solve Drought?

from TreeHugger.com
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA

From greening the deserts of Jordan to planting nut trees for community food security, permaculturists put a lot of faith in perennial agriculture and agroforestry as a means to alleviate drought and maintain food production in a changing climate. Rob Hopkins of Transition Culture has a great interview with agroforestry and forest gardening pioneer Martin Crawford on why a move away from annual cereal crops could be crucial in our near future:

In terms of looking at the future - if we're going to grow more of our own food as a country and as a region, this is going to have a significant impact. And on a larger, world-wide scale, it's actually quite bizarre in some ways. If you look at it in an ecological way, it's quite bizarre we've based almost our whole agriculture on annual plants because if you look in nature, annual plants are rare. You only get them if there's been a soil disturbance, and then for a short time because they've been taken over by perennials. So in a sense our whole agriculture is quite unnatural, based on annual plants, and very prone to any kind of climate extremes - whether it's drought or water-logging from extreme events or whatever.

Check out these posts on perennial fodder crops and permaculture design tips for perennial polycultures for more on this fascinating subject... read more story at TreeHugger.com

Eggzy Builds Online Roost For Backyard Chickens

Image: Sharleen Smith via Eggzy Flickr pool

from TreeHugger.com
by Jeff Nield, Vancouver, British Columbia

It's been six short years since backyard chickens have gone from weird eco-habit to a bastion of local food self-reliance. Chickens are companionable, relatively easy to care for, and keeping them in your back yard ensures that your morning omelette isn't sourced from inhumanely confined hens.

And now, thanks to the brains at Eggzy there is a slick online tool to manage your flock and rustle up customers through your virtual egg stand.

Eggzy co-founder Mark D. Thompson started his flock in 2008. He explains the beginnings of the site:

To a man with a hammer, everything's a nail and so, being a web developer by trade, I built a small web app to keep track of our flock's egg production. That early version was also plugged into Twitter; since our hens produce more eggs than we can convert to frittatas every week, we share the extras with friends. Unfortunately, having the digital persona of one of our roosters crow tweet every time a hen laid an egg didn't have the desired effect. There had to be a better way, and thus Eggzy was born.

At its core Eggzy connects consumers to local backyard and small scale egg producers that have a surplus of eggs to share or sell, where legal. Still in beta, Eggzy has 400 active users. Just over 60% of those user have flocks, of which 65 have public egg stands.

Thompson explains how the site works in an interview with Food+Tech:

Essentially, Eggzy's a marketplace where backyard chicken keepers can keep track of their flock and egg production, and people who are looking for local eggs can find them. Flock owners enter their chickens and expenses into the system, and then, each time they collect eggs, enter those into the system as well. Eggzy automatically calculates production rates and breakeven, simplifying pricing decisions. Flock owners can also create their own online Egg Stand, where they can tell their story in words, stats and pictures, and let friends and family know when and how many eggs they have available. Consumers can go to the Egg Stand listings and sort by zip code to find Egg Stands near them. They can also subscribe to their favorite Egg Stands to be notified whenever extra eggs are available.

...read more story at TreeHugger.com

Canada Seeks to Breed Stronger Honeybees

from TreeHugger.com
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA

From tough love beekeeping to reviving the native black honeybee, there are many folks who believe that the answer to saving the bees lies in either breeding for better genetics and/or encouraging nature and evolution to do the same. One program in Canada is setting out to actively breed better, more resilient bees—and it is enlisting the help of its local beekeepers to do so.

Physorg.com reports that researchers from the University of Manitoba and the University of Guelph are seeking to breed better bees, with the hope of building up resistance to disease and mites. The program is also looking at ways to better manage bee colonies, and to screen new products for disease and mite control.

With Global losses of bee colonies ranging from 10 to 30 percent in Europe, 30 percent in the United States, and up to 85 percent in Middle East, there is good reason for researchers to be pushing hard for a breakthrough. While no magic bullet has yet been found, Rob Currie, entomology professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, revealed that they had cut losses of bees that were deliberately exposed to diseases in tests from 75 percent to about 40 percent.

But this is far from purely an academic lab exercise—Ottawa has agreed to provide $244,000 to the Ontario Beekeepers' Association to experiment with different methods of caring for bees, including varying the kinds and amounts of food bees are given, as well as looking at how bees are transported for pollination...read more story at TreeHugger.com