Nearly 500,000 Indian farmers are facing the prospect of famine as a plague of rats that strikes once every 50 years threatens to destroy their crops, rice paddies and village granaries. Efforts to control the rodent plague in the north east Indian state of Mizoram have led the local government to offer a reward of one rupee (1.2 pence) for every rat tail delivered to the authorities. More than 400,000 rats have already been killed, creating piles of tails, which have to be counted by officials before reward money can be disbursed to the catchers.
The rat plague occurs once every 50 years in Mizoram – a tiny state of 900,000 people squeezed between India’s borders with Bangladesh and Burma. It is linked to the flowering of a rare species of bamboo, the Mautam or melocanna baccifera. It flowers all together, dropping millions of protein-rich seeds that are devoured by the rats, causing a population explosion. When the seed supply is exhausted, the rats move to crops and granaries.
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To measure a farmer’s ability to produce “more crop per drop”, agricultural scientists now use the term “water productivity”. Farm water productivity can be as high as 20kg/cubic metre water with cereals, or about 10kg/cubic metre with oilseeds and legumes, but such high efficiencies are obtained only in the best managed crops. Almost any factor that can influence crop yield or vigour will influence water efficiency.

Over the coming decades, rises in global demand for food, fibre, feed and fuel are predicted to cause large increases in the amount of water used by agriculture. Currently, agriculture world-wide uses 6,800 cubic kilometre of water annually (km3/y), but by 2050 global water use in farming will need to rise to dramatically to 12,600km3/y unless substantial improvements occur in the water-use efficiency of farming.
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Tooling Up for Hydroponics

The country is almost self-sufficient now in rice production because of the modernisation of the production system and the use of high yielding variety of seeds as well as chemical fertiliser. For Bangladesh this is all the more important because of the size of population and its rate of growth. During the last four decades wheat and many types of food prepared out of it have beocme popular in the country. There is now a wide scope to use potato as another staple food item. Potato is very wholesome, rich carbohydrate, fat and protein.
Bangladeshis use potato mainly as a vegetable to prepare curry. The country now produces enough potatoes and its price is also affordable to average people. The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) has disclosed that it has targetted to produce 39 lakh tons of potato only in northern districts of the country. Potato is better produced in some central districts of the country including those of greater Dhaka and some parts of greater Comilla.
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An Indian hobbyist has created a purely organic nutrient mixture for growing plants in water.
Although it is still an evolving science, hydroponic agriculture (growing plants in water solution rather than soil) is spreading fast the world over.
The nutritional requirement of the plants in this system of soilless farming is met by the nutrient mixtures, called hydroponics fertiliser mixtures, added to the water in which the plant roots are kept submerged. These mixtures are made of chemical plant nutrients. This plant growth solution has been tested successfully for growing several plants, including common vegetables like tomato and arbi and some high value medicinal plants like Brahmi, Arjun and Cineraria.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

A Ground-breaking ceremony marked the beginning of a mushroom production initiative in Henties Bay, which is said to have a huge potential for lifting the coastal town and the entire Erongo Region out of poverty, providing employment and ensuring food security. Situated on a plot of land right next to the Tulongeni Garden project, the mushroom production project of the University of Namibia is geared towards ensuring sustainable food production for the poor communities of Henties Bay.
The construction of the new mushroom house that will mainly be producing oyster mushrooms further paves the way for the commercialisation of this type of mushroom farming at the town, which is expected to be further expanded to nearby towns of Arandis, Swakopmund and Usakos.
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Organic farms are better for wildlife than those run conventionally, according to a study covering 180 farms from Cornwall to Cumbria.
The organic farms were found to contain 85% more plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds.
Scientists – from Oxford University, the British Trust for Ornithology, and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology – spent five years on the research.
Funded by the government, it was the largest ever survey of organic farming.
“The exclusion of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers from organic is a fundamental difference between systems,” the study says.
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The key question, at least in the near term, is to determine whether increased vitamin C and photosynthesis will result in greater crop yields.
The harmful effects of smog on people and animals—the stinging eyes and decreased lung capacity—are the stuff of well-researched fact. Now, the body of knowledge about air pollution’s effects on plants has grown with University of California, Riverside Biochemistry Professor Daniel Gallie’s discovery of the importance of vitamin C in helping plants defend themselves against the ravages of ozone—smog’s particularly nasty component.
By manipulating dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR), a naturally occurring enzyme that recycles vitamin C, to increase the level of the vitamin in leaves, Gallie has been able to reduce the harmful effects of ozone on plants, apparent as brown spots, stunted size, and lowered crop yields. He and Assistant Research Biochemist Dr. Zhong Chen published their findings in a recent paper titled “Increasing Tolerance to Ozone by Elevating Foliar Ascorbic Acid Confers Greater Protection against Ozone than Increasing Avoidance”, in the journal Plant Physiology.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

A tremendous knowledge of tree crops has been amassed by many at great cost in time and energy . . . but is virtually unknown or unaccepted by contemporary farmers.
There is no better example of this unfortunate situation than exists in a review of the life work of J. Russell Smith, tree-man par excellence. Smith launched his study of commercially useless trees in 1910, with a worldwide quest for new varieties. In 1929 he published TREE CROPS—A PERMANENT AGRICULTURE. His valuable tree discoveries were then intensified with more worldwide travel followed by a revised edition of his book in 1954.
As a loyal tree-man, Smith (who, incidentally was professor of economic geography at Columbia University) spoke vehemently against annual row crops. Crops that must build themselves from scratch for each harvest are victims of the climatic uncertainty of short seasons. Tree crops, on the other hand, are not affected by drought to the same degree . . . deep roots enable a tree to accumulate and store moisture.
Smith was repulsed by the fact that four-fifths of everything raised by the American farmer goes to feed animals. He made a good case for a tree crop diet instead, realizing that meat contains 800 calories as compared to nuts which contain 3,200 calories. If animals are to be raised, Smith maintained that they should be allowed to harvest their own crops. This “hogging down” principle is nowadays a major agricultural innovation . . . as when hogs are permitted to harvest corn, soybeans, peanuts, etc. Smith maintained that tree crops can also be harvested directly by animals . . . mulberry, persimmon, oak, chestnut, honey locust, and carob are all excellent stock-food trees.
Andrew Jackson Downing continues to be the tree-crop giant of them all. One of his major works, FRUITS AND FRUIT TREES OF AMERICA, published in 1845, remains today an essential tree crop reference. Resulting from the publication of a number of his important books, Downing’s influence on American fruit tree culture is apparent to this day. He fully remodeled western European fruit growing practices to fit American site and climatic conditions. One contemporary tree crop author found that fruit trees planted in Massachusetts and Michigan during the height of Downing’s influence (18701890) are still standing and bearing fruit. Yet thousands of trees planted in subsequent years (1890-1920) have broken down or died. There is a refreshing simplicity in Downing’s basic principles:
A judicious pruning to modify the form of our standard trees is nearly all that is required in ordinary practice. Every fruit tree, grown in the open orchard or garden as a common standard, should be allowed to take its natural form, the whole efforts of the pruner going no further than to take out all weak and crowded branches.
The tree-men who have qualified the science of pomology are in unanimous agreement on one important aspect: interplanting is a desirable practice. Interplanting makes good sense to the homesteader from a purely economic standpoint. Where peaches, pears and plums are interplanted in apple orchards, revenue from their yields subsidize the apples to production. Rapidly maturing ‘tree crops (like dwarfed varieties) can be alternated with slowly maturing species. Mulberry trees are an excellent choice to interplant in a nut tree orchard . . . they grow rapidly, bear young and are resistant to shade.
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True costs of industrial food production system
• 1 000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce one tonne of grain
• 10 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our dinner table
• Up to 1 000 energy units are used for every energy unit of processed food
• 17% of the total energy use in the United States goes into food production & distribution, accounting for more than 20% of all transport within the country; this excludes energy used in import and export
• 12.5 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food transported per thousand air-miles
• Current EU and WTO agricultural policies maximise food miles resulting in scandalous “food swaps”
• Up to 25% of CO2, 60% of CH4 and 60% of N2O in the world come from current agriculture
• US$318 billion of taxpayer’s money was spent to subsidize agriculture in OECD countries in 2002, while more than 2 billion subsistence farmers in developing countries tried to survive on $2 a day
• Nearly 90% of the agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big farmers growing food for export; while 500 family farms close down every week in the US
• Subsidized surplus food dumped on developing countries creates poverty, hunger and homelessness on massive scales
Some benefits of sustainable food production systems
• 2- to 7-fold energy saving on switching to low-input/organic agriculture
• 5 to 15% global fossil fuel emissions offset by sequestration of carbon in organically managed soil
• 5.3 to 7.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission disappear with every tonne of nitrogen fertilizer phased out
• Up to 258 tonnes of carbon per hectare can be stored in tropical agro-forests, which in addition, sequester 6 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year
• Biogas digesters provide energy and turn agricultural wastes into rich fertilizers for zero-input, zero-emission farms
• 625 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions prevented each year in Nepal through harvesting biogas from agricultural wastes
• 2- to 3-fold increase in crop yield using compost in Ethiopia, outperforming chemical fertilizers
• Organic farming in the US yields comparable or better than conventional industrial farming [33, 34], especially in times of drought
• Organic farms in Europe support more birds, butterflies, beetles, bats, and wild flowers than conventional farms
• Organic foods contain more vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients, and more antioxidants than conventionally produced foods
• 1 000 or more community-supported farms across US and Canada bring $36m income per year directly to the farms
• £50-78m go directly into the pocket of farmers trading in some 200 established local farmers’ markets in the UK
• Buying food in local farmers’ market generates twice as much for the local economy than buying food in supermarkets chains
• Money spent with a local supplier is worth four times as much as money spent with non-local supplier
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Tooling Up for Hydroponics

How to save $40 or more a year on the family food bill..by growing fresh, succulent salads right on your favorite windowsill!

The “new, improved” hydroponic tank designed and built from odds and ends and a few purchased items. James Dekorne states that this—byfar—has been the most successful of his homebuilt windowsill hydroponic systems. “These four mini-gardens have a combined surface area of 5.1 square feet … which is roughly four square feet smaller than the top of an average-sized card table. And the window we placed them in faces a full seventy-five degrees east of due south . . . which is certainly not the best orientation for growing anything, but was the only orientation we had to work with so we used it.

Despite the small size of our four-sectioned salad plot and despite their less-than-ideal exposure to the sun, during the one-month period between February 19 and March 19, we picked a total of 6.15 pounds of greens from our 5.1-square-foot hydroponic garden. That’s almost 1.2 pounds of edible tissue per square foot of growing space.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics