“The survey results demonstrate a tremendous commitment to innovation in the Canadian agriculture and agri-products sector,” said CSTA President Dorothy Murrell. “And the commitment to the future is even stronger.” CSTA members report that by 2012, they plan to be investing $106.4 million in research and development.

The CSTA survey indicates that canola tops company investment in 2007, accounting for 74% of total investment. It is followed by corn at 9% and soybeans at 7%. In 2012 companies expect to invest 75% of their total research dollars in canola research and development; 12% in soybean research and 9% in corn. While CSTA member companies will invest 3.3 million (6% of the total) in cereal research in 2007, that is projected to fall to 2.7 million or 2% of total investments in five years.

“Seed driven innovation is the past, present and future of the Canadian agriculture and agri-products sector,” said Murrell. “Continued and expanded research improves productivity and helps overcome environmental challenges for farmers. It contributes to the health of the environment through the development of crops that make better use of water, fertilizer and that require fewer crop protection products. Seed driven innovation delivers the specific qualities and traits required by end users and processors, and brings health benefits to consumers. CSTA’s members are proud of their accomplishments in the past and are fully committed to the future.”

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Truth, beauty, and goodness are qualities of divinity. At the same time, they are qualities that we can live. They infuse the nitty-gritty of our everyday existence. Living these values does not turn us into God, but they represent what we can comprehend of God. Everyone, whether religious or not, has tasted supreme truth, beauty, and goodness at one time or another.

Consider the alternatives. Who would not prefer a life based on truth? Sensitive to beauty? Dominated by goodness? To cultivate that takes a philosophy of living. How does character grow? It is not particularly a self-conscious and deliberate affair. Why does love grow as we pursue truth, beauty, and goodness?

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Ask nine out of ten people what the purpose of art is, and they will say, “to express yourself.” In fact, art has many purposes, and self-expression is one of the least important. No one could mistake “The Star-Spangled Banner” or “Ave Maria” for expressions of self.

When we look out upon the world, we see two apparently contradictory principles at work: on the one hand, we see a bewildering welter of events seemingly without rhyme or reason; on the other hand, we see beauty, order, and the obedience of nature to laws systematically related to one another in a unity beyond the creations of painter or pianist. A work of art makes sense of its confusing and chaotic materials and gives us hope that the confusion and chaos so distressingly prevalent in the world ultimately make sense. The unity of a work of art reflects the unity of God.

A work of art, like any genuine intellectual activity, is a reflection of God. It is a participation in God. It derives its being from God.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

THE True, the Beautiful, the Good — through all the ages of man’s conscious evolution these words have expressed three great ideals: ideals which have instinctively been recognized as representing the sublime nature and lofty goal of all human endeavour. In epochs earlier than our own there was a deeper knowledge of man’s being and his connection with the universe, when Truth, Beauty and Goodness had more concrete reality than they have in our age of abstraction. Anthroposophy, or Spiritual Science, is able once again to indicate the concrete reality of such ideals, although in so doing it does not always meet with the approval of the times. For in our age men love to be vague and nebulous whenever it is a question of getting beyond the facts of everyday life.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Rainwater is a valuable natural resource that can be collected for use around the home. With water restrictions in place in many areas, more homeowners are using rainwater to keep their gardens green, wash the car and for other uses around the house.

Did you know?
A rainwater tank can save up to 100,000 litres of water each year, in an average home.

Can I install a rainwater tank?
Yes, anyone can install a rainwater tank if it is for outdoor use such as gardening. However, if you want to use rainwater inside the home (flushing the toilet, cold water for the washing machine etc) you may need approval. Building approval may also be required for large rainwater tanks.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

When Marin Soljacic first presented the principle, it was unproved. All he could show were his calculations. “I expected that some people would think I was a crackpot,” says Soljacic, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “This was pretty far out.”
A year and a half later, a bulb lit up in an MIT lab—unplugged. Soljacic and his collaborators had demonstrated a new way of coaxing magnetic fields into transferring power over a distance of several meters without dispersing as electromagnetic waves. The demonstration ushered in a technology that might eventually become as pervasive as the gadgets it could power. Laptops, cell phones, iPods, and digital cameras might someday recharge without power cords. With the proliferation of wireless electronics, perhaps it was just a matter of time before power transmission would go wireless, too.
Technologies such as lasers and parabolic antennas can confine the energy of electromagnetic waves in tight beams, that can transfer power. But beams have disadvantages. One problem is that anything that happens to cross a beam’s path may get fried. Soljacic’s wireless power system harnesses oscillating electric and magnetic fields in a novel way. Although it doesn’t radiate energy as a radio antenna does, it transmits power across greater distances than a conventional transformer can.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Additional Source

The subject of food and nutrition security is a complex one. According to FAO (2000), Food Security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This heavily loaded definition presupposes that such food is adequate in terms of both quantity and quality. Four important elements which must exist for food security to prevail are availability, access, use/utilization and stability/sustainability.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

Organic food, taken over by big business, has become an assembly-line product marketed as yuppie chow for the privileged, a Canadian researcher says.
Multinational food-processing giants such as ConAgra Foods, Cargill, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo now own most organic brands, Irena Knezevic of Toronto’s York University said in advance of a presentation she will make to social science scholars.
We expect any day now that our consumers will ask for organic Twinkies — individually wrapped, of course, she added.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

In developed nations, factory farms have expanded rapidly since their origins in the early 20th Century. So much so that in the U.S. only 3% of farms now generate an astonishing 62% of that nation’s agricultural output! In fact, they have so consolidated the agricultural sector that only five food retailers (Kroger, Albertson’s, Wal-Mart, Safeway and Ahold USA) account for a whopping 42% of all retail food sales in the U.S. And because they are able to produce food cheaper, factory farms are forcing several smaller farms out of business (according to Natural Agricultural Statistics Service, 330 farmers leave their land every week). Typically, they control all aspects of production, including animal rearing, feeding, slaughtering, packaging and distribution—a process known as “vertical integration.”
AEVIA Reveals the Source

The imposed compulsion to spend the attractive food aid packages on American produce is ensuring handsome rewards for farmers in Iowa and Wyoming with an additional boon for American shipping: it has begun to spell doom for indigenous African farmers. In addition there is evidence that some of the ‘in kind’ donation being sent to many African countries, is being delivered for sale at market prices to US based NGOs like Save the Children and World Vision, to generate cash to support the work of the organizations themselves.
AEVIA Reveals the Source