BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living

Monsanto’s Fortunes Turn Sour, YEAH!

Source: New York Times Written By: ANDREW POLLACK     Posted By: Elizabeth Fiend

As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.

Monsanto, the giant of agricultural biotechnology, has been buffeted by setbacks this year that have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak from creating ever more expensive genetically engineered crops is coming to an end.

The company’s stock, which rose steadily over several years to peak at around $145 a share in mid-2008, closed Monday at $47.77, having fallen about 42 percent since the beginning of the year. Its earnings for the fiscal year that ended in August, which will be announced Wednesday, are expected to be well below projections made at the beginning of the year, and the company has abandoned its profit goal for 2012 as well.

The latest blow came last week, when early returns from this year’s harvest showed that Monsanto’s newest product, SmartStax corn, which contains an unprecedented eight inserted genes, was providing yields no higher than the company’s less expensive corn that contains only three foreign genes.

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Earth Needs ‘Bailout Plan’ For Species Loss

Posted By: Elizabeth Fiend Source: BreitBart.com

Facing what many scientists say is the sixth mass extinction in half-a-billion years, our planet urgently needs a “bailout plan” to protect its biodiversity, a top conservation group said Thursday.

Failure to stem the loss of animal and plant species will have dire consequences on human well-being, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned.

“The gap between the pressure on our natural resources and governments’ response to the deterioration is widening,” said Bill Jackson, the group’s deputy director, calling for a 10-year strategy to reverse current trends.

“By ignoring the urgent need for action we stand to pay a much higher price in the long term than the world can afford,” he said in a statement.

A fifth of mammals, 30 percent of amphibians, 12 percent of known birds, and more than a quarter of reef-building corals — the livelihood cornerstone for 500 million people in coastal areas — face extinction, according to the IUCN’s benchmark Red List of Threatened Species.

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Farmers Cope (or more to the point CAN’T cope) With Roundup-Resistant Weeds

Source: New York Times      Written By WILLIAM NEUMAN and ANDREW POLLACK

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.

But not this year.

On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

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Hello my Philly Peeps, GREAT NEWS:

Philly now recycles ALL plastic containers!

FIRST OF ALL, TRY NOT TO USE PLASTIC. BUT IF YOU MUST, RECYCLE IT.

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

STARTING AUGUST in Philly Recycle All Plastic Containers!

You’ve been recycling plastic containers marked:
#1: Soda, water bottles
#2: Milk jugs, detergents, shampoo bottles

Now you can add:
#3: Rigid plastic containers and juice bottles
#4: Plastic tubs and lids from butter, margarine or similar products
#5: Yogurt containers and deli trays
#6: Plastic cups, plates and to-go containers
#7: Many mixed plastic containers and plastic products

These are just some examples of what you can recycle, so look for the number to make sure.

What Else You Can Recycle in Philadelphia

Metal:
Tin and aluminum cans, empty aerosol cans, empty paint cans

Glass:
Jars and bottles

Mixed Paper:
Newspaper, magazines, mail (junk and personal), phone books, food boxes (remove plastic liner), computer paper, flyers, wrapping paper (no foil or plastic wrap), soda and beer cartons (no food-soiled paper, please!)

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BUY LOCAL, or BUY ORGANIC?
Article written by: ELIZABETH FIEND

Get out to your local farmers market RIGHT NOW while you still have time.  

Photos by Rob Kates of : Greensgrow farmer Mary Seton Corboy and the author Elizabeth Fiend.

Our food system has gotten out of whack due to the industrialization of farming (AKA agribusiness) and the globalization of food. Currently there are basically three types of places that grow our produce: big agribusiness factory-type farms, organic farms and recently, a growing movement of small local farms. It used to be a no brainer that if you wanted the best, most healthful food, and could afford it, buy organic. But since the initial burst of organic farms in the 60s and 70s, things have changed and what was a given is suddenly up in the air.

Certainly, buying organic food seems like the way to go since using pesticides is strictly a no-no in organic farming. Organic practices are kinder to the land, they promote good soil development, as opposed to agribusiness techniques which deplete the soil — and hence your food — of vital nutrients. Organic practices don’t pollute the water, the air or the workers on the farm through exposure to toxic chemicals the way agribusiness practices do, either. And a fundamental part of the organic philosophy is to treat workers fairly and pay a living wage.

But there’s a crisis in the organics world, and it’s called big business. Too much of a good thing has gone haywire. Organic food is so much in demand that there just isn’t enough to go around. The only solution has been to change farming methods, to outsource, and to go global to get the desired goods. What was once an industry of small family farms has mushroomed into a new kind of agribusiness, one doing business with Wal-Mart, Kraft, Kellogg and General Mills; one that outsources the growing of organic food to places with little regulation, like China.

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As Patent Ends, a Nasty Seed’s Use Will Survive

Source: New York Times   Written By: ANDREW POLLACK   Posted By: Elizabeth Fiend

Facing antitrust scrutiny over its practices in the biotechnology seed business, Monsanto has said it will not stand in the way of farmers eventually using lower cost alternatives to its genetically modified soybeans.

In letters to seed companies and farm groups this week, Monsanto said that it would allow farmers to continue to grow its hugely popular Roundup Ready 1 soybeans even after the patent protecting the technology expires in 2014.

The letter countered a widespread impression in the agriculture business that Monsanto planned to force farmers and seed companies to migrate to a successor product called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, which will remain under patent and is more expensive.

The issue has potentially broad implications for the agriculture industry because Roundup Ready soybeans will be the first widely grown biotechnology crop to lose patent protection since gene splicing became a mainstay of crop science in the 1990s.

Because farmers and seed companies would no longer have to pay royalties to Monsanto on the gene after 2014, Roundup Ready soybeans would become agricultural biotechnology’s equivalent of a generic drug.

Monsanto’s statement comes as the Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust concerns in the seed business, looking in particular at Monsanto, which dominates the business of supplying crop traits developed through genetic engineering. Critics, including some competitors, say that Monsanto has great leverage over the seed business and growers through restrictive contracts that must be signed to use Monsanto’s genes or to grow the genetically modified crops.

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SHOPPER’S GUIDE TO PESTICIDES

There are some changes in this years list.  Blueberries make an appearance in the ‘dirty’ list for the first time. Sad.

DIRTY DOZEN – These 12 foods typically contain the most pesticide residue.  Buy these organic when you can.

Most pesticides of any food (drum roll please):

Number One is: Celery, followed by Peaches, Strawberries, Apples, Blueberries, Nectarines, Bell Peppers, Spinach, Kale, Cherries, Potatoes, Grapes (Imported).

And now the good news:

CLEAN 15 – Lowest in Pesticides: Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn, Pineapple, Mangos, Sweet Peas, Asparagus, Kiwi, Cabbage, Eggplant, Cantaloupe, Watermelon, Grapefruit, Sweet Potato, Honeydew, Melon.

Why Should You Care About Pesticides?
The growing consensus among scientists is that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can cause lasting damage to human health, especially during fetal development and early childhood.Scientists now know enough about the long-term consequences of ingesting these powerful chemicals to advise that we minimize our consumption of pesticides.

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BiG TeA PaRtY Member Volunteers
at Local Park Cleanup & Plant Tending Day
(and learns about sustainable approaches to storm water management)
by Valerie Keller

	Here I am with some of the organizers standing in the ‘retention basin’ – I’m 2nd from right

I live near a few city parks, but this one is something special.

Last year this public playground was transformed from what had been a cement playground with outdated equipment, very little grass or other vegetation, and a traditional cement basketball court in the Pennsport section of South Philadelphia.

The old playground and pool was converted to a state-of-the-art green project, now called Herron Playground, that is a model site to demonstrate the broader plans for the greening of Philadelphia. It employs porous paving for sidewalks and basketball court, recycled material as playground surface, drainage beds and pipes to carry excess water into a retention basin full of native plant species, and islands of vegetation for retaining water and slowing runoff.

Herron Playground is a fantastic example of trying to mimic nature’s methods of dealing with excessive storm water in an urban environment where for generations most land has been paved over with impervious surfaces (cement or asphalt or other paving materials which water cannot penetrate), causing major problems when there is a heavy rainfall and water has nowhere to go, so it just sheets off into the street and rushes into the nearest storm drain, overloading the city’s sewer system often just from the first inch of rain of a typical rainstorm. 

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Disturbing Story of Fallujah’s Birth Defects.

xxxxxxx                             WAR IS TOXIC                        xxxxxxx

Written By: John Simpson
Source: BBC News, Fallujah
Posted By: Elizabeth Fiend

Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town.

Fallujah is less than 40 miles (65km) from Baghdad, but it can still be dangerous to get to. As a result, there has been no authoritative medical investigation, certainly by any Western team, into the allegations that the weapons used by the Americans are still causing serious problems.

The Iraqi government line is that there are only one or two extra cases of birth defects per year in Fallujah, compared with the national average.

‘Daily cases’

But in the impressive new Fallujah General Hospital, built with American aid, we found a paediatric specialist, Dr Samira al-Ani, who told us that she saw two or three new cases every day. Most of them, she said, exhibited cardiac problems. “ I have nothing documented. But I can tell you that year by year the number [is] increasing ”

When asked what the cause was, she said: “I am a doctor. I have to be scientific in my talk. I have nothing documented. But I can tell you that year by year, the number [is] increasing.”

The specialist, like other medical staff at the hospital, seemed nervous about talking too openly about the problem. They were well aware that what they said went against the government version, and we were told privately that the Iraqi authorities are anxious not to embarrass the Americans over the issue.

There are no official figures for the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah.

The US military authorities are absolutely correct when they say they are not aware of any official reports indicating an increase in birth defects in Fallujah – no official reports exist.

Mothers Warned

But it is impossible, as a visitor, not to be struck by the terrible number of cases of birth defects there.

We heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious birth defects.

One photograph I saw showed a newborn baby with three heads.

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Henry David Thoreau, Your Own Back Yard, and Global Warming

[Photo By: Elizabeth Fiend. Baby cardinal taking first flight, in my own backyard!]

Article Written By ELIZABETH FIEND

I’ve been reading Wild Fruits, an unfinished, recently published manuscript by American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The book is a combination of diary and essay, chronicling the ways Thoreau spent his days and what he learned during the final years of his brief life. With each page I get more jealous, wishing I too could spend my day stalking a bee to find its hive and to learn what type of flower the bee drinks nectar from and how that affects the flavor of the honey.

Of all the things I love to do (and I love to do a LOT of things) observing nature is on the top of my list. Fantasizing how I could manage to spend my days doing what Thoreau did, I realized my main stumbling block is that I’m just not as big of a mooch as Thoreau. Sure, he worked some in his family’s pencil factory (in fact, he “invented” the modern clay-and-graphite pencil). But he also spent quite a lot of time not working, crashing at his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house and living on, and off of, Emerson’s land.

I work full time at a library, not some of the time at a pencil factory. But still, I manage to spend quite a lot of time observing nature, especially the ecology of my South Philly back yard. There’s a lot going on outside, even in the midst of a large city. I actually start my observing while I’m still lying in bed each morning — If you listen to the sounds of the outdoors you can learn quite a lot, especially about the birds. In fact, I think I know more about what the birds in my ‘hood are up to than my human neighbors, whom I never see and don’t particularly want to hear.

Phenology — derived from the Greek word phainomai, to appear or come into view — is the study of the seasonal timing of life-cycle events. As the seasons change, so do the actions and characteristics of living things. Phenology is mostly concerned with firsts: the first day the maple trees bud-out in spring, or the first day they begin to show fall color. It is a very, very old science, older than the word science.

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