Perpetual Innovation

Category: food

  • World Bee Day, May 20

     It’s World Bee Day, May 20th. 

    There are lots of people worried about bees, and rightly so. To mix a metaphor, bees are the canaries in the coal mine. When bee colonies get wiped out (like colony collapse), it indicates that things are not right in the environment.&nbsp (When your canary dies in the coal mine, the methane levels are high enough to cut off oxygen, and to explode with any spark.)

    Pollinators like bees are necessary for 90% of the world’s wild flowers pollination and about 75% of the world’s crops. Bees and other pollinators have a triple whammy because they are exposed to: pesticides, herbicides, and diversity (flowers) loss. Think of the monarch butterfly where the demise of milkweed (Monarch’s host plant) have devastated the Monarchs. 
    The UN has designated May 20th as a single day to contemplate, respect, and even to protect our tiny furry friends. (Well, hairs, not really fur.)
    Cool article about 5-facts about bees, and tips for helping bees and other pollinators at Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. 
    Will all the attention that honey bees have received over the last 10-20 years many people have concentrated on growing/maintaining honey bees. (See our discussion of Colony Collapse Disorder.) However, the artificial emphasis on honey bees pushes out other, often more efficient, pollinators. When the honey bees push out other pollinators, they can jeopardize entire ecosystems associated with them.
    #Honey #Pollinators #Ag #AgricutlureEconomics #Polution #Pesticides #MonarchButterfly #Diversity #BioDiversity

  • Composting Week & Food Waste

    Compost Week 2021

    Question: What Percentage of food goes to waste?

    This question is appropriate because this is International Composting Week, May 2-8, 2021, with a theme: Grow, Eat…COMPOST…Repeat.

    Some
    foods don’t make it out of the fields. Potatoes, corn, and tomatoes that are
    too small, or too ugly, may be left behind in the fields. In some cased, the
    farmers announce that the edible, but ugly, food is available for gleaning – all you have to do
    is drive over and gather it.

    In other cases, the food makes the long travel to
    restaurants and homes, but it is not consumed, so it goes to the municipal solid
    waste (MSW) system, i.e., to the landfill. Non-government organizations like EndHunger.org (Society of St. Andrew with a
    CharityNavigator score of 89.39) work to divert food from the waste stream to feed
    the poor and hungry people. There are several wonderful non-profit organizations — many have “misfit” or “ugly” in their names — and a growing number of for-profits that redirect food that would be totally wasted.

    About
    31% of food goes to waste after it has been packed and shipped to the end market.
    Overall, about 30%-40% worldwide goes to waste. In the US, food waste represents
    the largest amount of MSW by weight! Most of the wasted food is not composted
    or processed into energy (incinerated or natural gas recovery). Diverting food
    waste from the landfill is critical; food in landfills is derived of oxygen so
    it produces methane, a strong greenhouse gas.

    Rich Compost. 1 Month in Tumbler,

    Food waste (excluding meat,
    dairy, and such) can be composted. Yard waste is almost all compostable. Other
    things can be composted as well, including paper, newspaper, etc. Compost becomes
    a wonderful, rich soil (fertilizer) for your crops.

    There are several ways to
    compost. With a little open ground, you can create a composting mound. A compost
    tumbler might be a good approach for a homeowner.  Using earthworms to process waste into worm
    castings is sometimes an option (Vermicomposting or the
    raising of worms, Vermiculture).

    Two-Compartment Compost Tumbler.

    Also see:

    International Composting
    Week     is May 2-8, 2021, with a theme: Grow,
    Eat…COMPOST…Repeat    .

    World Soil Day
    is December 5. Mark your calendars every year to get the dirt on dirt.     International Union of
    Soil Sciences (IUSS)     is an international source.

    #Soil, #compost, #fertilizer, #food, #hunger, #sustainability, #Organic

  • Corn that fertilizes itself with Nitrogen Fixing bacteria.

    This is a cool article in Science by Ed Young about a giant corn varietal in Sierra Mixe Mexico that grows in very poor soil, but actually fertilizes itself. There’s a bacteria that grows around the roots that absorbs nitrogen from the air and provides it to the corn. The team of researchers led by Alan Bennett from UC Davis referred to this a “Nitrogen Fixing” which works just like roots absorbing nitrogen from the soil.
    In this case, the soil is very poor quality, so the corn actually gathers nitrogen from the air (78% nitrogen for dry air).
    One major disadvantage of this corn is that it takes 8 months to mature.
    The benefits are many. In a linear world of farming, row crops are raise on big farms and the crop shipped off to marked (cities), which deplete the soil. So fertilizers are needed to replenish the soil to grow the next crop. The fertilizers (mainly phosphate and nitrogen) end up running off into the water ways and result in massive ecological damage such as algae blooms and red tide.
    Because fertilizers are expensive to buy, and expensive to apply, farmers continue to do a better job with fertilizers. (Other factors like urbanization, turf grass and golf course are taking over lead positions in pollution generation.)   However, linear systems in farming are non-sustainable, broken systems, compared to Regenerative Farming approaches that use non-til and corp rotations to restore the quality of the soil.
    To commercialize this “nitrogen fixing” cereal crop requires some improvements, new varietals (sexual reproduction) or genetically engineered (GMO crops). The intellectual Property (IP) of such crops will be important. Profits and the capitalist system at work, availability to the people and countries that need it, and the property rights protections that make IP work are just a few important ingredients in the dissemination of new technology — in this case, new crops.

  • World Soil Day the down-and-dirty on Ag

    When you eat, and as you eat today, give thanks to the soil that made it all possible.
    USDA on Soil Day. December 5th.

    Today is World Soil Day, and the the truth is in the soil. Neglect the soil long enough and all you have is depleted crops. AND no, it does not come in the usual 6-6-6 fertilizers that concentrate on only 3 components in the fertilizer while neglecting how the soil got depleted in the first place.

    It has to do with cycles. Farms were never meant to have all the crops hauled away to the cities, with no mechanism to return the nutrients. We experienced this during dust bowl of the great depression, where top soil had been depleted and the ag practices tilled the land so the remaining topsoil was readily blown away.

    We all need to think more about closed-loop ag systems. All crops begin with the nutrients and the soil. We neglect and deplete them at our own demise.

    Eat well today, and think about fertile soil and healthy food systems.

    Bon Appetite.

  • To Eat or Knot to eat Knot Weed – WSJ

    Pittsburgh Tries to Eat Its Way Through a Savage Weed – WSJ:

    What do you do, with Kudzu?

    Invasives like kudzu and Japanese Knotweed, can take over square miles. They really go wild in strip mines and disturbed areas, and completely take over. Once started, the weed pushes out anything and everything in the surrounding areas — an ugly mono-culture that disrupts entire ecosystems much like Melaleuca has done in Southern Florida.

    Melaleuca trees transplanted to Florida to attempt to dry up the Everglades is not the same type that is found in herbs, incense  and oils. Ours tree apparently burn toxic, so firewood is out. One of the best uses of it is to make mulch… A rather cool business model where there’s an endless supply, and land owners will typically pay you to take it. Getting paid twice for the same job, land owners and customers, while doing a good turn for the environment and society, has got to feel both good and green.

    One of the best uses of kudzu, that invasive vine that has taken over the South (all the way down through Georgia), is to feed it to goats. Goats will eat anything. Once they eat all the kudzu in a field, they simply have to rest a while while it grows back.

    Eating Knotweed is an interesting idea. It tastes a little like chicken, oops, no, that’s an invasive animal. It apparently tastes somewhat like rhubarb. There is a limit to how much garnish people are willing to eat, however. I’m not sure that we could get everyone in the US to eat a couple helpings of rhubarb each day. Knotweed might require three helpings a day.

    Unfortunately, knotweed often grows in disturbed soils like river banks and spent strip mines where the quality of the soil is not only poor, but often semi-polluted. Metals and heavy metals from coal dust/mines will make many knotweed harvests non-nutritious, at best. Modestly toxic at worst.

    One of the best uses of knotweed would probably be biomass uses that go directly to incinerate, or are processed into ethanol. But, yet another kick in the pants: transporting knotweed  to the refinery/incinerator when in bloom, will spread the seed of invasion into fresh new virgin territories.

    The weed is easily propagated from “cuttings” so 4-wheelers or trucks can readily spread the weed to places where it is not.

    As with most (all?) invasives, this is a gift that keeps on giving.

    ‘via Blog this’