Extreme Tree Planting – Trees for Earth
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Trees — by Craig Mackintosh
Matt Kilby from Trees for Earth is committed to rehabilitating our landscapes by planting trees in habitats where tree removal was implemented in the past.
Matt focuses on establishing trees in a way where survival rates are paramount and functional landscapes are all important.
Here he takes us through how he plants into difficult areas, where special techniques and care is critical to ensure high rates of survival and successful landscape rehabilitation.
Further Reading:
Comments (0)Posted on: January 11, 2010
Growing Demand for Soybeans Threatens Amazon Rainforest
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation — by Earth Policy Institute
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
Some 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more U.S. cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest.
For close to two centuries after its introduction into the United States the soybean languished as a curiosity crop. Then during the 1950s, as Europe and Japan recovered from the war and as economic growth gathered momentum in the United States, the demand for meat, milk, and eggs climbed. But with little new grassland to support the expanding beef and dairy herds, farmers turned to grain to produce not only more beef and milk but also more pork, poultry, and eggs. World consumption of meat at 44 million tons in 1950 had already started the climb that would take it to 280 million tons in 2009, a sixfold rise.
Comments (0)Posted on: January 10, 2010
The Looming Food Crisis and the ‘Food 2030′ Report
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Peak Oil, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contamination — by Craig Mackintosh
It can’t go on like this….
Not long ago I was standing in a bookshop, minding my own business, when a book title leapt out in front of me. The book was "History’s Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them". It documents the sorry tales of dozens of people throughout history who, with the best of intentions, made some fascinatingly terrible choices.
Comments (1)Posted on: January 6, 2010
The Buffalo Commons
Biodiversity, General, Land, Rehabilitation — by Rhamis Kent
Here’s an idea that should be embraced and championed by all earth repair advocates: The Buffalo Commons.
The Buffalo Commons is a conceptual proposal to create a vast nature preserve by returning 139,000 square miles (360,000 km2) of the drier portion of the Great Plains to native prairie, and by reintroducing the buffalo, or American Bison, that once grazed the short grass prairie.
Comments (0)Posted on: January 2, 2010
Carbon Trading in Action
Biodiversity, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Craig Mackintosh
An ‘ethical travel agent’, the Independent tells us today, goes ethical, deciding that getting customers to pay a little extra to ‘offset’ their damage to the environment is really just a way to help people feel better about persevering with their destructive lifestyles – in other words, just a placebo, and one that’s particularly lucrative for the middlemen involved.
I thought I’d celebrate this news by sharing an interesting documentary about the practical results of industry-scale carbon ‘indulgences’ for the people involved on the ground. The film embedded at bottom was created by two groups of people separated by cultural differences and great distance and yet who are linked by the absurdities that result from inherently destructive industries trying to make themselves appear a little ‘less bad’ – by attempting to sweep their dirt under a mat that lies thousands of miles away.
Comments (0)Posted on: November 7, 2009
Are You Paying to Burn the Rainforest?
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Livestock — by George Monbiot
If you’re buying Brazilian beef, the answer is yes
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
For the past five years I have been at war with Farmers for Action. These are the neanderthals who have held up the traffic and blockaded the refineries in the hope of persuading the government to reduce the price of fuel. It doesn’t matter how often you explain that cheap fuel, which allows the supermarkets to buy from wherever the price of meat or grain is lowest, has destroyed British farming. They will stand in front of the cameras and make us watch as they cut their own throats.
But through gritted teeth I must admit that they have got something right. In January the caveman-in-chief, David Handley, warned that foot and mouth disease had not been eliminated from Brazil, and that imports of meat from that country risked bringing it back to Britain(1). The buyers brushed his warning aside. In the first half of this year, beef imports from Brazil to the UK rose by 70%, to 34,000 tonnes(2). Last week an outbreak was confirmed in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
You would, of course, expect British producers to throw as much mud as they can at cheap imports. You would expect them to question their competitors’ hygiene standards and social and environmental impacts, and Mr Handley has done all of these things. But, to my intense annoyance, he is on every count correct.
Comments (0)Posted on: October 14, 2009
A Man of a Thousand Trees
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Global Warming/Climate Change, Nurseries & Propogation, Trees — by Ecofilms
by Frank Gapinski
Recently whilst filming at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms near Canberra we spotted a lone figure in the barren landscape quietly digging a series of holes on a 2 kilometer stretch of swales that were designed by Geoff Lawton. Matt Kilby has been on the farm now for 12 months and in that time has developed a system of giving the trees he plants a successful start to life. Planting trees in heavily compacted soil is not easy as Matt will tell you, but it can be done if you follow some basic tips. In this video Matt explains the right way to plant a tree on a swale, especially if it’s located in a fairly inhospitable landscape and how to make sure that the trees you plant have a high success rate. The pink tree guards that Matt created are not cosmetic. They have a particular part to play in speeding plant growth as Matt explains.
Posted on: October 1, 2009
Monsanto Runs Into Wall. Yes!!
Biodiversity, Consumerism, GMOs, Health & Disease, News — by Craig Mackintosh
 Say NO to Monsanto, GMOs, and the patenting of life |
The frustration about this company – Monsanto – and others like it has been running higher and higher over the last few years. (The free flow of information on the internet is a wonderful thing in this regard – corporate-bought media is no longer our only news option….) I think it may well be the most hated corporation on the web and on popular user-driven sites like Digg and Reddit. I would personally take great pleasure in seeing their buildings worldwide bulldozed and their fields razed – leaving behind only stone statue memorials that celebrate the greed and stupidity of man.
Today, however, I can share a beacon of hope. Read on!
Comments (0)Posted on: June 27, 2009
What You Need to Know
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contamination — by Craig Mackintosh
Duration: 1:27:31
Posted on: June 8, 2009
Blue Desert
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Fish, Food Shortages — by George Monbiot
Why is no one brave enough to stand up to the fishing industry?
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
I live a few miles from Cardigan Bay. Whenever I can get away, I take my kayak down to the beach and launch it through the waves. Often I take a handline with me, in the hope of catching some mackeral or pollock. On the water, sometimes five kilometres from the coast, surrounded by gannets and shearwaters, I feel closer to nature than at any other time.
Cardigan Bay, Wales
Posted on: June 2, 2009
The 11th Hour
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Peak Oil, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contamination — by Craig Mackintosh
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Posted on: April 23, 2009
Obama’s Organic Example Sets Cat Amongst Corporate Pigeons
Biodiversity, Developments, GMOs, News, Soil Erosion & Contamination — by Craig Mackintosh
Recently I shared how Michelle Obama was planning to plant a garden on the White House lawn – thrilling the many people that lobbied for them to do exactly that. Later we learned that, as we dearly hoped, the garden would be organic.
On top of this, the First Lady also named chef Sam Kass to head the White House Food Initiative. Mr Kass happens to have a good understanding of what we and our children should be ingesting. This is all great press for chemical-free agriculture and food.
But…
Comments (0)Posted on: April 17, 2009
The Global Spread of GMO Crops
Biodiversity, GMOs, Health & Disease — by Peter Montague
By Peter Montague of Rachel’s Democracy & Health News
Felix Ballarin spent 15 years of his life developing a special organically-grown variety of red corn. It would bring a high price on the market because local chicken farmers said the red color lent a rosy hue to the meat and eggs from their corn-fed chickens. But when the corn emerged from the ground last year, yellow kernels were mixed with the red. Government officials later confirmed with DNA tests that Mr. Ballarin’s crop had become contaminated with a genetically modified (GMO) strain of corn.
Posted on: April 16, 2009
The Food Crisis Spurs Gene Patenting Race
Biodiversity, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Craig Mackintosh
Big Biotech is gearing up to substantially increase their market share in the face of a global food and climate crisis — in hopes of cashing in on desperation. The patenting office has never been so busy.
Do you remember the pulitzer prize-winning photo that shocked the world back in 1994? You know, that macabre shot of an emaciated child struggling hopelessly towards a feeding station a kilometre away, with a vulture waiting patiently, and wistfully, behind. With that single image, the photographer, Kevin Carter, brought the Sudan famine into stark relief for an astonished public.
Well-framed images can evoke sympathy and outrage, so I am thus left almost desperately wondering how to frame what I see happening with the current international food crisis — as sympathy and outrage are needed now like never before.
Comments (0)Posted on: March 30, 2009
India Suicides: I Want My Father Back
Biodiversity, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease — by Craig Mackintosh
We’ve made mention of the social and environmental costs of monocultures and genetically modified crops often. Amongst these has been many mentions of a humanitarian disaster occuring on a daily basis in India, where thousands of farmers have been committing suicide as a result of failed harvests — the failed harvests being the result of failed promises from the likes of Monsanto. The following documentary, produced in India, by Indians, paints the clearest picture of this situation that I’ve yet seen. In addition, the documentary compares the failure of those sucked into input-intensive industrialised agriculture with the success of those who have reverted to organic methods.
Part I: Duration 00:38:00 (drag slider to the 30 second mark to skip an awful beep!)
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