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Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow
Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times
KAYAR, Senegal – Ale Nodye, the son and grandson of fishermen in this northern Senegalese village, said that for the past six years he netted barely enough fish to buy fuel for his boat. So he jumped at the chance for a new beginning. He volunteered to captain a wooden canoe full of 87 Africans to the Canary Islands in the hopes of making their way illegally to Europe.
The 2006 voyage ended badly. He and his passengers were arrested and deported. His cousin died on a similar mission not long afterward.
Nonetheless, Mr. Nodye, 27, said he intended to try again.
“I could be a fisherman there,” he said. “Life is better there. There are no fish in the sea here anymore.”
Many scientists agree. A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.
That has crippled coastal economies and added to the surge of illegal migrants who brave the high seas in wooden pirogues hoping to reach Europe
(14 January 2008)
Roadkill and Sustainability
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
We’ve written a lot about getting your food in cities in, well, unconventional manners: forget urban farming, we’re talking about engaging in urban foraging and guerrilla gardening, harvesting free fruit or taking up the 100 yard diet.
For me, the value of these ideas is less that they offer practical tools for filling dietary needs (though local food is, by and large, a good idea), than that they offer provocative insight into the cultural distances we’ve created between ourselves and the sources of our sustenance.
But a couple friends of mine have kept ribbing me about meat: where’s the protein in the diet of urban omnivores?
So, for their sake, I offer two pieces full of insight, from right here in Seattle and up the road in Vancouver:
A car isn’t a particularly good hunting weapon, but the highway is like a blind machine gunner in the woods… “The reason I opt for roadkill as opposed to hunting — which I’m also down with,” says Comeau, “is because there’s so much roadkill. I feel like it’s sort of ridiculous for me to start hunting, say, deer, when I can get so much deer on the side of the road.”
(17 January 2008)
There’s a whole sub-culture devoted the subject. Meat has traditionally been scarce in most agricultural civilizations, and wasting it would have been unthinkable. -BA
Should we be eating insects?
Tim Dowling, Guardian
Eighty per cent of the people on the planet regularly consume insects from a range of over 2,000 species. They eat sago grubs in Papua New Guinea, grasshoppers in Mexico and dragonflies in Bali. In Western Europe, however, our aversion to ingesting bugs has a long tradition. Even the Romans, whom few of us would regard as fussy eaters, frowned on the eastern practice of cooking locusts.
Generally speaking, insects are high in protein and essential fatty acids and low in cholesterol. Despite our cultural distaste for entomophagy, in recent years the idea that we should eat bugs has been gaining currency. A 2004 UN report promoted insects as an environmentally friendly food source: low impact, consuming very little in the way of feed, easy to harvest, with no special measures required for their husbandry.
(17 January 2008)
Organic farmer Jay Martin on community supported agriculture (audio)
Brian Magee, Global Public Media
Jay Martin of Provident Organic Farm in Maryland talks to GPM volunteer Brian Magee about the nuts and bolts of practically implemented community supported agriculture (CSA). Martin also consults for LESSON, Lower Eastern Shore Sustainable/Organic Network.
(17 January 2008)
Food, Health and Survival (PDF)
Pat Murphy, Community Solution
During the industrial era, our diet has shifted dramatically to highly manufactured foods and meat products. The application of fossil fuels to our food system has been disastrous, affecting not only how we grow food but what we grow. Our major grain and oil crops, along with hay, are thus transformed by complex factory processes into foods high in fat and artificial sweeteners and low in nutrients.
The fresh, diverse fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole wheat and other whole grains that were the basis of our pre-industrial diet, provided valuable nutrients that are missing in today’s highly processed foods. It is, therefore, vital to understand the negative effects of the American diet on health and to analyze the wide variety of plant food crops that are available as options to the foods made from corn, hay, white flour and soybeans.
The relation between the acreage of food and feed harvests and the food eaten was discussed in New Solutions #13. This report looks at what we eat, the consequences to our health and our environment, who’s to blame for this situation and what to do about it. Transitioning to a lowenergy diet could be the most important way to save the planet and to save ourselves.
14 Steps You Can Take to Change Your Lifestyle
1. Garden
2. Learn about Food Production
3. Study Nutrition
4. Develop and Use Food Energy Return on Fuel Energy Invested (FEROFEI) Knowledge
5. Eat Less
6. Eat Differently
7. Eat Seasonably
8. Don’t Eat Grain-fed Animals
9. Don’t Eat Manufactured Groceries
10. Don’t Imbibe ”Refreshments”
11. Prepare Your Own Food
12. Start Canning and Eat Less Frozen Foods
13. Eat Locally Grown Food
14. Use Pressure Cookers
(November 2007)
A 12-page PDF. Missed this when it first came out. -BA
