This time of year, most of the Western world is focusing on holiday indulgences: how many presents to buy, how many lights and candles to festoon the home, and how many sweets and feasts to offer family and friends. However, for many people in drought-stricken Africa, food and water will be in perilously short supply this season. So short, in fact, that some people in Ethiopia are already making the grass pea—a cousin of the sweet pea—a dietary staple.

Although that sounds benign, it could be dangerous. Ordinarily, herders plant this legume as forage for their livestock. And in small quantities, the grass peas—the plant’s seeds—are safe ingredients of recipes of cuisines from Afghan to Chinese. As such, the legume serves as a low-cost base for stews, breads, and gruel. However, when eaten to excess—as happens in arid Ethiopia and many other regions of the world when drought persists—grass-pea consumption may lead to permanent paralysis because the seeds contain an unusual neurotoxin.

PracticalSustenance.Net

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

The government of Pakistan is getting ready to lift the ban on Indian wheat import as the country faces a shortfall of one million tons this year. “Islamabad will allow purchase of 0.1 million tons wheat from India to meet the country’s requirements and offset the adverse impact of anticipated crisis due to less than expected production in 2003-04,” official sources said. A senior official in MINFAL said that keeping in view the recent thaw in Pak-India ties, the government was all set to allow import of wheat from India that was hitherto banned. Wheat importers are constantly demanding of the government to allow wheat import from India as it would be acquired from the neighbouring state at very low rates as compared to the other countries due to inflated international prices.
Point Source

During the last 32 years since Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971 production of rice, the main staple food, has exceeded 19 million tons per year, whereas it was only about 8 million tons in 1971. In spite of the fact that population has increased steadily, the availability of rice today for every man, woman and child is nearly one pound per day according to the data provided by the Bureau of Statistics in 1999. This is indeed a remarkable achievement. Besides this, it is encouraging to note that food production is growing at a greater pace than the population. Even wheat the second major food grain used as staple is gaining popularity and its domestic production is reaching 2 million tons per year. Net availability of meat, fish, milk, egg and pulses has increased from 1994-95 to 1997-98, which is reflected in their increase in per capita consumption.

This advancement in agriculture and increase in productivity can be attributed to production of hybrid seeds, application of proper fertilizer, use of safe insecticide and pesticide, farm mechanisation, water and soil management and above all the will of the people. Bangladeshis have been in the forefront to receive the benefit of the cutting edge of technology. Development of agricultural colleges and universities, research institutes and extension services deserve mention in the success of Green Revolution in this small country of about 57000 square miles with 120 million people.

Apart from the technological advancement, Bangladeshis deserve special credit for developing the capability of disaster management. Taking precaution against natural calamities has become a part of life. The high frequency of floods and cyclones has taught the people to be prepared for handling such disasters to avoid famine and death. Management of food grain storage and distribution during the times of natural disasters has been given top priority by the government that has set an example of cooperation between the private and public sector including the armed services. It is, therefore, expected that Bangladesh will keep the food production and distribution as a major priority. With this assumption one can be optimistic about the outlook for food grain availability and price stabilisation even if some import has to take place during times of need.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

“I think that if a product on the supermarket shelf has a label, ‘Proudly brought to you by the international pirates plundering the toothfish of the Southern Ocean’, it wouldn’t sell terribly well. Conversely, if the label said, ‘This comes from a sustainable fishery’, that does have an impact.”
More than a decade ago Dr Keith Sainsbury recognised for the first time the destructive impact of trawling, in this case on the seabed of the North-West Shelf. His work, described in the 2004 Japan Prize citation as “the most scientifically rigorous demonstration”, was central to controls on trawling the shelf. Nets were not forbidden, but held to a level that was sustainable for the seabed.
Many of the world’s wild fisheries have reached their upper limits, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The journal Nature reported that the world had lost more than 90 per cent of all large predator fish – cod, marlin, bluefin tuna and others – to fishing. “We learned from our mistakes on land that managing human uses one at a time is not the way to develop a sustainable marine ecosystem,” Sainsbury said. Instead his prize came for work on using feedback from an ecosystem itself to decide how it should be managed as a whole. It is this problem-solving that has won Dr Sainsbury the 2004 Japan Prize, worth $625,000, for food production based on ecosystem concepts. The prize is considered the highest in the field of ecology and sustainable development.
Point Source

Land cleared for planting as world demand rockets
The dry, yellowing fields stretch out to the horizon, past shiny new silos, their polished tin gleaming in the noon sunshine. Beside freshly hoed fields stand new tractors and ploughs. This is the Amazon, a vast lung producing 20% of the earth’s oxygen, and home to 30% of all plant and animal species. It is so immense that it would swallow Europe in full and three more Englands besides. The rainforest is shrinking at a rate that is staggering environmentalists. Around 25,000 sq km (10,000 sq miles) disappeared last year – an area about the size of Belgium. Huge swaths of the land are being transformed not only by illegal logging companies and cattle ranchers, but also by a newer invader, the soya bean. For many the extraordinary expansion of this bean – used not only for its oil and food for humans but also as feed for cattle – is the new front in the battle for the Amazon.
Cargill, the US food giant, has spotted the potential and built a vast soya terminal on a river bank in the town. The company is being challenged by the Brazilian government’s environment agency, which is concerned that the terminal was built without an environmental impact report; but the evidence points to an escalation in development all around.
Cristovan Sena, a government forestry engineer, said: “Native primary forest is being destroyed at a much faster rate than was achieved by the loggers. In our region we will soon see the irreversible substitution of the rainforest by a landscape of grains… Saying that growers will respect the 20% limit is nonsense. You just have to look at what is being done now to see they don’t respect legal reserves.” The soya growers are following the loggers into land that was forested, and there have been cases of small farmers suffering threats or actual violence when they refuse to sell.
Point Source

Dickson Despommier’s hydroponic metropolis would squeeze sprawling farmland into skyscrapers, feed millions, and cool the Earth. Nearly 41 percent of Earth’s land is now used for agriculture, yet we’re on the brink of vast population growth, from 6.7 billion people today to an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050, with the majority living in cities. The only way to make room for enough carbon-sequestering trees to reverse global warming, Despommier argues, is to change the way we farm. Radically. Despommier envisions blocks of vertical farms in the world’s biggest cities, each structure 30 stories high, providing enough food and water for 50,000 people a year, with no waste.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan yesterday said that malnutrition and famine were one of the most serious problems of the current era that should be urgently addressed.
The world has enough food for everyone but despite this, inadequate nourishment and famine still continue to affect one out of seven people in the world, Erdoğan said at a ceremony here for the inauguration of the Central Asia regional office of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Turkey and FAO decided to support agricultural projects in Central Asia by means of the (Ankara) office, he said. We know that today 850 million people in the world are suffering from malnutrition. Most of them live in rural areas of the least developed or developing countries.
Point Source

Beijing will start a daily report mechanism on food safety during the “Good Luck Beijing” International tournaments officially to kick off on Aug 8, a test run for a food safety monitoring system designed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Sources with the Beijing Municipal Food Safety Office said that Beijing is going to share this system with all other cities hosting the Olympic Games including Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang, Qingdao and Qinhuangdao.
The system will monitor 10 types of information including production, processing, sale and cooking of food.
Point Source

Norway’s revived electric carmaker, now called “Think Global,” is raising more capital with the goal of producing 10,000 cars a year by 2009. Now Jan-Olaf Willums, chief executive of Think Global, appears to have some solid investors behind him. The firm started rolling again earlier this year, with a line-up including retailing tycoon Stein-Erik Hagen, hotel developer Petter Stordalen and shipping heir Petter Sundt. The goal is to be the world’s leading electric carmaker. Willums said Think needs to produce 10,000 cars a year to be profitable, and will likely make some of the cars overseas. “England, the US, Switzerland and the Netherlands are possible production sites,” he said.
Point Source

Phenolics or Polyphenols are the structural ‘backbone’ for most of the antioxidants found in plants. Plants construct complex phenolic compounds that serve a variety of functions as defense mechanisms and through interactions with other organisms. They may function to protect the plant from insects, diseases, and environmental stress. Phenolics also determine certain desirable plant properties such as flavor and palatability. Some phenols are germicidal and are used in formulating disinfectants. Others possess estrogenic or endocrine disrupting activity.

The phenol-formaldehyde resins, developed commercially between 1905 and 1910, were the first truly synthetic polymers and have found wide usage. They are characterized by low cost, dimensional stability, high strength, and resistance to aging. Various thermosetting resins, obtained by the reaction of phenols with simple aldehyde additives, are used to make molded products, coatings and adhesives.

Items can be cast from syrupy intermediates or molded from solid resins. Laminated products can be produced by impregnating fiber, cloth, wood, and other materials with the resin. An important type of phenolic resin product is rigid foam. Cured phenolic plastics are rigid, hard, and resistant to chemicals (except strong alkali) and to heat. Phenolic resins can be used for making precisely molded articles, such as machine parts. They are useful for manufacturing strong and durable laminated boards, or for impregnating fabrics, wood, and paper. Phenolic resins are also widely used as adhesives, as the binder for grinding wheels, as thermal insulation panels, as ion-exchange resins, and in paints and varnishes.

Natural phenol is a colorless to pink solid or thick liquid with a characteristic sweet tar like odor. It is highly soluble in water, alcohol, chloroform, ether, glycerol, carbon disulphide, petrolatum, volatile and fixed oils, and aqueous alkali hydroxides. It is almost insoluble in petroleum ether. It has a boiling point of 181.8(°C), a melting point of 40.9 (°C), and a flash point of 78.9(°C).

Phenol has proven useful as a general disinfectant, as a reagent in chemical analysis and for the manufacture of artificial resins, medical and industrial organic compounds and dyes. It is also used in the manufacture of fertilizers, explosives, paints and paint removers, drugs, pharmaceuticals, textiles and coke. It is produced in large volume, mostly as an intermediate in the production of other chemicals.

The largest single use of phenol is as an intermediate in the production of phenolic resins, which are low-cost, versatile, thermoset resins used in the plywood adhesive, construction, automotive, and appliance industries. It is also used as an intermediate in the production of caprolactam, which is used to make nylon and other synthetic fibres, and bisphenol A, which is used to make epoxy and other resins.

Phenol is found naturally in animal wastes and decomposing organic material. Phenol is a common component of oil refinery wastes. It is also produced in the conversion of coal into gaseous or liquid fuels and in the production of metallurgical coke from coal. It may enter the environment from oil refinery discharges, coal conversion plants, municipal waste treatment plant discharges, or spills.

Consumer products which may contain Phenol include agricultural chemicals, disinfectants, general antibacterials and antiseptics, household hard surface cleaners (liquid), lubricating oils, automotive chemicals, paint and varnish removers, pharmaceutical preparations, synthetic resin and rubber adhesives, wood office work surfaces (modular systems).