Unlocking Personal Potential

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” — Jesus (MT 17:20)




A bicycle powered knife-sharpening machine

Peter Kahugu of Banana Hill just outside Nairobi makes a living using his bicycle. He has modified his bicycle with a belt, a set of tensioning pulleys and a grinding stone to make it a knife-sharpening machine. By kicking the bike up onto its stand and engaging a gearing system, he is able to use “leg-horsepower” to drive a grinding wheel and sharpen knives while “on the move”. Peter has been at this for 2 years now and he makes about Kshs 500 ( app. 10 US$) a day by riding his mobile workshop from client to client sharpening all their knives as he goes. The grinding stone he uses has lasted an astounding 2 years and he has had to replace his drive belt a couple of times but that is as simple as cutting up a long strip of rubber from an old car or bicycle tire inner tube.
See Peter In Action




Going Past Food Quantity to Food Quality

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




Yuppie Chow?

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




A Good Thing?

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




Starvation In Malawi

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




Darfur, Saving Itself

The people of Ain Siro are among the 1 million who are “out of reach” of aid agencies — people who we automatically assume must be facing starvation because we are not feeding them. But in North Darfur, at least, there is no starvation. Much is needed — medicines, schoolbooks, decent wells — but people are cultivating millet, rebuilding their herds after the devastation of 2003-04 and, when rains permit, gathering wild grasses and fruits to supplement their diet.
AEVIA Reveals the Source




Turning Farming Sideways

The vertical farm’s power would come from solar panels and wind spires on the roof. Its circular (cylindrical) design uses the space most efficiently, allowing maximum light into the center. The city’s wastewater would be filtered and sterilized, then used for irrigation, and rainwater would also be collected and used to clean pollutants off the building’s outside surface. An electronic crop picker would monitor fruits and vegetables, using color detection to check for ripeness, and an electronic feeder would direct programmed amounts of water and light to crops according to a set schedule. Crops could grow both up (like corn) and down (like hanging tomatoes), maximizing space.


Tooling Up for Hydroponics




Desert-to-Food Programme. . . Another Revolution in Agriculture

In a unique collaboration between Nigerian and Israeli companies as well as governments of both countries, the desert region of the north would be transformed into habitable and cultivable farm lands through afforestation. The idea is to reclaim the desert for productive use and assist to create abundant food production through gradual planned technological advancement.
AEVIA Reveals the Source




Bamboo flowering threatens famine in Assam’s North Cachar

The cricket ball-sized flowers have sprouted along entire lengths of bamboo stalks to produce a huge volume of seeds that attract thousands of rats, which feed on them as they are very nutritious, say agriculture and forest experts.
And the flowers are threatening to create a famine, a phenomenon the district has witnessed every 50 years due to the cyclical flowering. Previous recorded famines were in 1862, 1911 and 1958-62.
Agricultural experts said the marauding army of rats, which multiply quickly, eventually turn to paddy, potato plants and grain in granaries, leading to famine or ‘mautam’, the name given to the phenomenon in Mizoram which literally means “death of bamboo”.AEVIA Reveals the Source