Agriculture

Iowa Farmers Union Lobby Day & Press Conference
When: Mon, Mar 17, 22:00 – Tue, Mar 18, 04:00
Where: North Rotunda area of the State Capitol in Des Moines.

Iowa Farmers Union members & supporters will talk with legislators & their staff about top legislative priorities for 2008 including local control, market access, & local ownership of renewable energy projects. For more information contact Leigh Adcock at 515-232-4082 email: leigh_adcock_at_prairienet.net

Sustainable Mini-Farming Workshop, Willits, California.
February 29-March 2

The weekend workshop will consist of lectures, discussion, and demonstration on soil preparation, sustainable soil fertility, fertilization, compost, compost crops, efficient resource use, crops for full nutrition, and crops for income. Contact: Margo Royer-Miller, Ecology Action, margoroyer-miller@growbiointensive.org, (707) 459-0150.

American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy's 2nd National Forum on Energy Efficiency in Agriculture

Food and Energy from the Ground Up: Efficiency's Role in Sustainable Agriculture

Embassy Suites Hotel • Des Moines, Iowa • Februrary 20–22, 2008

Co-Chairs:
Rich Hackner, Wisconsin Focus on Energy and GDS Associates
Mike Morris, National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT)

In the recent national dialogue about biofuels and other renewable energy opportunities for agriculture, efficiency has been a strangely neglected topic. The usual vision or hope is that agricultural lands will produce enough fuel and electricity to meet future energy demands that continue to expand rapidly.

This conference will explore an alternative vision, where increased energy production by agriculture is accompanied by equally significant improvements in energy efficiency throughout our economy. Making these improvements will require rethinking and redesigning many aspects of our interrelated food and energy systems.

Background

In recent years, ACEEE has been active in reinvigorating interest in energy issues in agriculture. We supported the Senate Agriculture Committee in their crafting the energy title (Title IX) of the 2002 Farm Bill, helping to insure that energy efficiency was included. Since the bill's passage, we have worked to provide information on energy efficiency opportunities in the agricultural sector and to identify successful program strategies, becoming a leading source of information the government and the energy efficiency community on energy efficiency in agriculture through our Web site, reports and presentations.

One of the biggest issues of our generation just might be the collapse of the honeybee population (and the populations of several other pollinators). The decline in pollinators threatens one third of our food supply and already has created problems in the honey and almond industries and considerable concern among scientists and farmers who depend on bees. It is a genuine crisis that seems to be getting worse from year to year.

I have written about this crisis and have been in touch with some of the scientists who study this. I need to get around to another diary as soon as I can, but have been distracted by other issues. But for those who want to learn more about it, PBS will be having a program on the decline of the bees on its show Nature.

I haven't watched Nature in some time, but I remember when it first started and I did watch it for many years. It has always been one of the best nature programs on television, from its very first episode (Flight of the Condor with some of the best nature photography ever).

I am sure that they will do a good job with this issue and if you are concerned about the environment and/or our food supply, you probably want to watch it:

Sunday, October 28 at 8pm and November 3, 6:00pm
Nature: "Silence of the Bees"
In Nature's season premiere

No...I am not talking the imported gluten fiasco that is a predictable consequence of the irresponsible Republican attack on government. I am talking about the massive and rapid die off of honeybees, the critter responsible for pollinating about 1/3 of our food supply.

Most of you won't pay much attention to this, unless you are a farmer and then you probably know how important honeybees are to crops. But most people will ignore this crisis until that 1/3 of our food supply fails.

I have been warning about this for over a year now, warning that the loss of the honeybee is a major threat to our food supply, most recently here. Each time I write about it the situation looks worse.

For awhile now honeybees have been declining alarmingly. A mite infestation seemed to be the primary cause of this decline that has worried scientists and agricultural experts alike. But starting last fall, the decline took an alarming turn, with entire colonies suddenly dying en masse in what almost looked like a bee version of AIDS. The few living bees found in hives that had died off were found to have multiple infections as if their immune system had stopped working. According to a recent article in Science, beekeepers in 26 states have lost up to 50% of their colonies this winter to CCD. Again, this is on top of earlier die offs due to mites and other infections in past years. This more recent, more dramatic die off has been called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

UPDATED with more links and info (NOTE: all links to Science magazine are subscription)

This is a topic I have meant to write about for months, but never got around to. But I have been seeing more and more about this recently and things are getting worse.

Roughly one third of our food supply depends on pollination by animals, mostly insects. The primary pollinator in our nation, as well as around the world, is the European honey bee. This single species is responsible for about 80% of pollination in America. Simply put, our food supply largely depends on the bee more than on any other single species...other than ourselves, I guess.

For some years now, the honeybee has been declining. So far there has not been a single clear cause identified for this decline, but the decline has been worrisome and as, of the end of last year, a mite infestation seemed to be one of the primary causes, as well as simple competition with "Africnaized" bees which are not quite as general of pollinators as the "European" variety. (As a side note, as with humans, all commercially important honeybees seem to have originated in Africa, and have spread across the world through three wave of migration out of Africa.)

[Note: Promoted to front page by mole333]

The typical American wage worker hasn't gotten a raise in somewhere around thirty years:

As Tom Kochan and Beth Shulman note, millions of America’s working families fail to have the necessary means for basic self-sufficiency—and it looks no better for the next generation. In their report, “A New Social Contract: Restoring Dignity and Balance to the Economy,” they write:

In 2000, the average high-school educated workers age 25–29 started out earning about $5,000 less real income and could expect slower growth in earnings than those who entered the labor force in 1970. Workers with some college started about $3,500 behind their 1970 counterparts.

Thing is, the typical American farmer or rancher isn't doing much better. (pdf) As the profits of food processors, meat packers and agribusiness firms have soared, farmers and the rural economies that center around them have been methodically and systematically crushed.

One aspect of this economic vise has been the tendency towards consolidation in the meat packing and food processing industries. They carve out what are often non-overlapping territories and no longer have to compete among themselves as frequently to offer growers a fair price.

Most of our modern crops were not selected for based on nutritional content so much as yield, ease of harvesting, appearance, etc. In other words, human agricultural endeavors have always been superficial, ignoring the inner qualities of our crops.

Turns out, modern science may allow us to improve our modern wheat strains to restore some of the nutritional qualities lost when we selected them from natural crops.

An article in the November 24th issue of Science describes the identification of a gene, Gpc-B1, coding for a protein called NAM-B1 which affects wheat grain protein, zinc, and iron content. This gene is mutated in the version of wheat (T. turgidum ssp. durum) that we use for pasta and bread and which accounts for about 20% of all calories consumed by humans worldwide. The mutation reduces the amount of protein, zinc and iron in the wheat grains by as much as 30%, meaning most of the wheat we consume is defective nutritionally compared with its wild ancestor, emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides). Crossing wild wheat with modern wheat crops will hopefully allow an increased protein and mineral content of the wheat we consume without affecting (we hope!) things like yield and taste.