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The Truth About Organic Farming Here’s the thing: there are a lot of myths out there about organic foods, and a lot of propaganda supporting methods that are rarely understood. It’s like your mother used to say: just because everyone is jumping off a bridge doesn’t mean you should do it, too. Now, before I get yelled at too much, let me state that I’m not trying to say that organic farming is bad – far from it. There are some definite upsides and benefits that come from many organic farming methods. For example, the efforts of organic farmers to move away from monocultures, where crops are farmed in single-species plots, are fantastic; crop rotations and mixed planting are much better for the soil and environment than conventional monocultures. Instead, I only want to point out that not everything is as it seems. So here are some of the myths of organic produce, and the realities behind them. http://nutritionwonderland.com/2009/12/the-truth-about-organic-farming/

GMOs: Does Regulation Ensure Safety? "Let me just share my two cents on this mode of thinking: first off, nothing about our lives is “natural”. We build things out of reinforced steel and other metals that never occur naturally. Houses never form in the wild, nor do clothes. X-ray machines don’t occur spontaneously, nor do heart transplants. So if you’re really dedicated to living naturally, you’ve got to rethink a lot more than GMOs. Secondly, we have been messing with creatures’ genetics and “playing God” for centuries. Over 50 million of us worldwide proudly own the products of this genetic manipulation – you might call them pets. Dogs, for example, have more physical variation within their species than there is in the entire rest of the order of carnivores. In other words, a pug’s skull is more different from a pit bull’s than a mouse’s is from a bear’s. If that’s not some serious genetic manipulation, I don’t know what is. We’ve bred not just different varieties of one spe...

Local Resources for Redwood Highway Willits Willits Chamber Commerce USA National Phenology Network - citizen scientists, government agencies, non-profit groups, educators and students of all ages monitor the impacts of climate change on plants and animals Ukiah Smart Growth Coalition U.S. BIOCHAR INITIATIVE home page - a non-for-profit organization promoting the sustainable production and use of biochar through research, policy, technology and “doing it” The Oil Drum - Discussions about Energy and Our Future The New Economics Institute - Promoting the building of strong local economies that link people, land, and community. The Mendocino Grain Project Sol-Solutions - Solar energy products Rodale Institute -organic farming - For over sixty years, we’ve been researching the best practices of organic agriculture and sharing our findings with farmers and scientists throughout the world, advocating for policies that support farmers, and educating consu...

GM wheat scientists at Rothamsted make plea to protesters  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17906172  1 May 2012 By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News "Rothamsted's wheat contains genes that have been synthesised in the laboratory - an approach that is becoming more commonplace than transferring genes from other organisms, as technology develops. The gene will produce a pheromone called E-beta-farnesene that is normally emitted by aphids when they are threatened by something. When aphids smell it, they fly away. "Also, the natural enemies of aphids - ladybirds, lacewings and a particular parasitic wasp - when they smell this smell, they're attracted," said Prof Huw Junes, one of the study team who signed the open letter. "So it's potentially got an advantage in the UK and other western nations because it'll prevent the need to spray insecticide - and [in the developing world where] farmers don't have access to ...

The Folly of Big Agriculture: Why Nature Always Wins by Verlyn Klinkenborg: Yale Environment 360 To broadleaf weeds, Roundup is not the apocalypse. It is simply a modest, temporal challenge.

In the Future we may be able to engineer our children to be more "earth friendly" According to a paper published by S. Matthew Liao and others ... In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and for the society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed. Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change. One step closer to "Hatching and Conditioning Centres" ala Brave New World?