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Sustainable agriculture in CSIRO newsletter (584-Kb PDF)
Elizabeth Heij (editor), CSIRO Sustainability Network Newsletter
Contents:
Soil fertility management for more sustainable farming systems;
Sustainable agriculture and the challenge to make it pay;
Downsizing product packaging;
Eco burial as an environmental donation;
Jet travel as a “sin”;
Feedback on Nuclear energy.
(14 Sep 2006)
African agriculture: seeds of hope
Christine Gorman, TIME
What do you need to create a green revolution in Africa? Women and fertilizer
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Walk through countless small villages in sub-Saharan Africa, and you will find the same scene repeated again and again: women bent over double, hoeing scrawny plants in dirt packed so hard it’s tough to imagine anything ever growing in it. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent over the past half-century trying to do something about the region’s crushing poverty, but the situation remains desperate. Rural Africa is hollowing out, unable to feed itself, let alone supply food to the continent’s rapidly growing megacities.
In this context, the Gates and Rockefeller foundations announced last week their plan to spend $150 million over the next five years to boost agricultural productivity on the continent. The initial investments will go to developing hardy seed varieties of regionally appropriate crops, creating markets for the distribution of those seeds and educating a new generation of African plant scientists. It’s a back-to-basics approach that avoids gambling on shortcuts. But to be successful the new initiative–dubbed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa–will very soon have to address two equally pressing issues: the need for widespread use of chemical fertilizers to replenish exhausted soil and some sort of system to ensure greater participation of women–who perform the bulk of the work on Africa’s farms.
Action is urgently needed. More than 80% of African soil is seriously degraded, and in many areas it is on the verge of permanent failure. For centuries, farmers survived by clearing new land for each season’s plantings and allowing old fields to lie fallow and replenish their nutrients. But the continent’s fourfold increase in population since the 1950s has forced farmers to grow crop after crop on the same fields, draining them of all nourishment. Do that for a long enough time, and the physical nature of the soil changes. It becomes so tightly compacted that it can’t hold water or let roots spread. “Eventually you get to the point where even weeds won’t grow,” says Gary Toenniessen, director of food security at the Rockefeller Foundation. “Just adding fertilizer back doesn’t help. You actually have to replace the soil.” The loss of productive land has driven farmers to clear ever more marginal areas, including forests and hillsides, for agriculture.
(17 Sep 2006)
Related from Washington Post: Another Green Revolution? A brave attempt to help Africa.
The Green Revolution has probably been the most destructive ecological practice yet inflicted on the planet by our species. Attempting to bring it to Africa, whilst creating small farmers’ reliance on commercial chemical fertilizers, should hardly be greeted with uniform praise. For another approach see instead this series of articles by Sue Edwards for the Institute of Science in Society:
Organic Production for Ethiopia
The success of the Tigray Project will now be consolidated by government policy.
The Tigray Project
Sue Edwards reports on a project that could launch Ethiopia on her way to self-sufficiency
Greening Ethiopia
Sue Edwards reports on the challenges and opportunities facing Ethiopia as steps are taken to reverse the ecological and social damages that have locked the country in poverty
-AF
Study finds chemicals in biosolids
Susan Gordon, Tacoma News Tribune (Washington)
Antidepressants and antihistamines, disinfectants and plasticizers, fire retardants and fragrances. Those are just some of the chemicals you might be applying to your lawn.
In government-sponsored research published Wednesday, scientists found dozens of medicinal, industrial and household compounds in treated sewage sludge, or biosolids, that are often marketed by local governments as lawn-and-garden enhancements.
“No matter what biosolid we looked at, there were some of these compounds in it,” said Chad Kinney, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern Washington University.
Kinney is the lead author of the report published in online editions of the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology. His work was supported by the National Research Council. Six U.S. Geological Survey scientists collaborated on the research.
They analyzed nine biosolid products, representing four preparation methods. The products came from seven states, including Washington, where 81 percent of biosolids are applied to land or distributed as soil amendments.
(18 Sep 2006)
How to keep fires down in California scrub: Chew it
Daniel B. Wood, Christian Science Monitor
BERKELEY, CALIF. – This is a story about man and nature, wilderness and civilization, and the blind ruthlessness of unchecked fire.
It’s about the move to embrace ancient, rural technology to solve a modern urban/suburban problem – and how to get more bang for the buck.
This is a story about goats. Hoofed, horned, don’t-stare-at me-while-I’m-chewing goats.
At the intersection of Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Centennial Drive – adjacent to a public university and a posh suburb – 350 flop-eared, paunch-bellied, teeth-gnashing examples of nature’s least-discriminating epicurean are hard at work.
The “work” is vegetation removal – grass, weeds, manzanita, poison oak – by molar and mandible. While these rented Angoras, Nubian, Spanish, and other goats do what comes naturally – gnaw and bleat – Tom Klatt is saving $800 per day over his alternative: humans armed with noisy weed whackers.
He’s the head of the office of emergency preparedness at the University of California, Berkeley. It uses goats so that one of America’s most fire-prone regions doesn’t have a repeat of the country’s most costly fire that consumed 3,500 homes (one every 11 seconds) in an afternoon in 1991.
(18 Sep 2006)
