food or conservation?

In the New York Times, As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program:

Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. They are spurning guaranteed annual payments for a chance to cash in on the boom in wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. Last fall, they took back as many acres as are in Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

Environmental and hunting groups are warning that years of progress could soon be lost, particularly with the native prairie in the Upper Midwest. But a broad coalition of baking, poultry, snack food, ethanol and livestock groups say bigger harvests are a more important priority than habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife. They want the government to ease restrictions on the preserved land, which would encourage many more farmers to think beyond conservation.

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We Feed the World

The 2005 Austrian documentary film We Feed the World has been showing on the Sundance channel in the US recently. (IMDB entry.) It’s incredibly well done.

WE FEED THE WORLD is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow — a film about scarcity amid plenty. With its unforgettable images, the film provides insight into the production of our food and answers the question what world hunger has to do with us.

Interviewed are not only fishermen, farmers, agronomists, biologists and the UN’s Jean Ziegler [the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food], but also the director of production at Pioneer, the world’s largest seed company, as well as Peter Brabeck, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé International, the largest food company in the world.

See the short reviews on this page.

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Living Planet Report 2006

Since 2000, the WWF has issued the Living Planet Report every other year. Read about it in this Mongabay news article.

From the forward:

The Living Planet Report 2006 confirms that we are using the planet’s resources faster than they can be renewed – the latest data available (for 2003) indicate that humanity’s Ecological Footprint, our impact upon the planet, has more than tripled since 1961. Our footprint now exceeds the world’s ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent.

The consequences of our accelerating pressure on Earth’s natural systems are both predictable and dire. The other index in this report, the Living Planet Index, shows a rapid and continuing loss of biodiversity – populations of vertebrate species have declined by about one third since 1970. This confirms previous trends.

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biofuels

Emmett Duffy, Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, at the Natural Patriot has several recent posts on biofuels:

• The promise of biofuels: a lot of hot air?
• Biofuels and sustainability: the pros weigh in
• Amber waves of . . . automotive fuel?

He also points to the collection of Grist articles indexed in Fill ‘er Up: A Grist special series on biofuels.

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UNEP Year Book 2008

The United Nations Environment Programme’s annual report, UNEP Year Book 2008 (PDF, 62 pg, 7 MB), “documents some of the many insights, events, and issues that have emerged during 2007 and, not surprisingly, it is dominated by the theme of climate change.” (See here for translations and individual sections.)

Excerpt:

If average global temperatures increase 3.4° C by 2100, existing climates could disappear over 10-48 per cent of the Earth’s land surface. Some climates, concentrated in tropical mountains and the high latitudes of continents, may disappear altogether. These endangered climates, and the vulnerable ecosystems that have evolved within them, include tropical montane forests—particularly cloud forests in the Andes—the fynbos of South Africa, and some Arctic climates (See Emerging Challenges). During this same timeframe, 12-39 per cent of the Earth’s surface—mostly in the tropics and subtropics—may develop novel climates.

The areas of disappearing climates closely overlay regions identified as critical hotspots of biological diversity and endemism [the ecological state of being unique to a place]….

If global temperatures increase by only 1.8° C then the potential threat would be much reduced: 4-20 per cent of the Earth’s surface would experience loss of existing climates by 2100, with a similar gain for novel climates (Williams and others 2007).

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