Farming // Current

The Real Price of Farmed Salmon

Salmon aquaculture is devastating the world's oceans and an international coalition of scientists, Canadian First Nations and tourism operators have called for a global moratorium.

"We've seen a regional collapse of all sea life in the 20 years since the salmon farms moved in," said Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish Canadian First Nation in the province of British Columbia on Canada's west coast.

Scientific studies have linked sharp declines in wild salmon populations in British Columbia to disease and parasites originating in open-ocean salmon farms. Millions of non-native salmon have escaped ocean net-pens in Chile and have become an invasive species, transforming the ecology of local river systems.

There is little debate that salmon aquaculture is both unsustainable and environmentally destructive. Three or more kilogrammes of wild fish is needed to produce one kilo of farmed salmon. The ocean bottoms under and around the open-ocean net pens are usually devoid of any life, buried under the excrement of up to a million salmon overhead.

"Salmon farm 'shadows' can extend three or four kilometres depending on the current," said Wolfram Heise, director of the marine conservation programme at the Fundación Pumalin (Pumalin Project), a private conservation initiative in Chile.

These shadows are dead zones where there is nothing but mud and faeces along the bottom of the ocean. "Oxygen levels in the water are so depleted it sometimes forces the farms to move to new locations," Heise told IPS from Puerto Varas, located 1,000 kilometres south of Santiago.

Like land-based factory farms where far too many animals are being raised in confined quarters, heavy doses of antibiotic drugs and hormones are fed to the fish. Despite this, a potent virus swept through Chile's salmon farms last year and has cut production in half. Unable to stem the outbreak, the farms simply moved to new locations hundreds of kilometres away, abandoning their local employees and the contaminated waters and seabed.

On Canada's west coast scientists have connected the decline in wild salmon stocks to the region's 100-plus salmon farms. After publishing their research in the prestigious journal Science, marine biologists warned that one wild salmon species will be extinct by 2011 because of infestations of parasites that originate in salmon farms. More than 80 percent of the annual pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, 300 kms north of the city of Vancouver, has been killed by these parasites since 2001.

North America's northwest coast is home to several species of wild salmon that remain one of the natural wonders of the world and are a key part of the coastal ecosystem. After spending two or more years feeding in the open ocean, they return to their natal streams and rivers to spawn and die. Many species, including eagles, bears and wolves, feed on the dying or dead salmon. They also bring large quantities of salmon carcasses into forests, which decay, enriching the soil and feed many plants, including the region's giant red cedars and sitka spruce trees.Salmon aquaculture is devastating the world's oceans and an international coalition of scientists, Canadian First Nations and... more

jefftego
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2 responses

7 days ago

Hemp: North Dakota farmers head to Federal Appeals Court

The DEA, which has jurisdiction over drug scheduling decisions, does not recognize any difference between hemp and marijuana.... more

pokesmot
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4 days ago

Fines for bird poisoning set to be scrapped

The European Agricultural Council will decide whether to end the controversial link between the payment of Common Agricultural... more

GeoffNI
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5 days ago

Farming superpower Brazil spreads its know-how

Planaltino, Brazil - As a young soil scientist, Edson Lobato looked out at the vast savanna of central Brazil and imagined fields... more

bedeboop
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21 responses

6 days ago

Farm animals win big in election

"The party of the donkey may have prevailed on Tuesday, but the real animal victors may have been the farm animals of... more

ashcatash
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11 days ago

Fur Free Friday is November 28th!

Fur Free Friday And Juicy Couture Update Fur Free Friday is November 28, 2008 Juicy Couture Pledges to Go Fur-Free! So Does... more

animalia_libero
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12 days ago

Hot-air balloons are causing hens to explode

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steadward
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13 days ago

The Great American Detour

Vanguard producer Lauren Cerre zigzags from Los Angeles to New York on bus, stopping to talk to young Americans about national... more

LaurenCerre
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36 responses

20 days ago

Prisons go green, farm, recycle to save energy

LITTLEROCK, Wash. - Of all the things convicted murderer Robert Knowles has been called during his 13 years behind bars, recycler... more

itenerantsurf
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16 days ago

Red meat primes body for intestinal germ: study

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animalia_libero
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22 responses

19 days ago

Farm- to -school programs grow students' appreciation for locally grown food

Nearly half of the children in the U.S. who attend private and public schools participate in the NSLP, a federally assisted meal program that dates back to 1946. While the NSLP does provide a low-cost (and in some cases, free) means of delivering lunch through subsidies to schools, the program has been widely criticized in recent years for contributing to America's obesity epidemic. According to the Sustainable Table, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about the problems with our food supply, our children are not meeting the RDA of vitamins and nutrients under the current NSLP guidelines. Couple that with the skyrocketing price of food, which extends beyond the family table to the school cafeterias as well. Forced to consider lower-priced alternatives to fresh foods, many schools have no alternative but to rely on the cheaper, less healthy fare. A number of districts across the country are taking matters into their own hands and breaking the mold. Instead of doling out sodium and fat-laden chicken nuggets for lunch, they are opting to assist local farmers and provide healthier, locally grown foods to students.

Eating and Learning: Models of Success

In the small community of Glen Lake, Michigan the farm-to-school program gives local schools an opportunity to sample tasty, healthy meals grown with as many locally grown products as possible. Not only is this a great opportunity for the children to develop an appreciation for locally grown food, studies show that children who are fed healthier, more nutrient rich foods are better learners. Michigan's program is a prime example of how school districts can assist local growers and simultaneously teach students about the health and economic benefits of consuming local produce.

Schools in Berkeley, California, have become a national model for how to make schools more sustainable. The Edible Schoolyard Project at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School takes the farm-to-school concept one step further: the students use their school's organic garden as a learning tool. Students learn about planting and harvesting, cooking and eating, and biology, ecology, nutrition and sustainability. This program has become so successful that many schools around the country now have their own gardens. The National Gardening Association (http://www.kidsgardening.org/School/sea...) has a list of thousands of school gardens nationwide.

Students at the Louisa May Alcott elementary school in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood savor daily lunches dished up by local chef, Greg Christian. Christian runs the nonprofit Organic School Project, through which he donates half of his time and salary to a grand mission: seeing that Chicago students eat better. Nearby schools will be added to the OLP, with further plans to build teaching gardens at each school.

There is more good news: The National Farm to School program, a national network of community-based food systems that assist farmers and improve student health, estimates that more than 2,000 Farm to School Programs are currently underway in the U.S., with more than 8,700 schools actively participating.
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A great way to ensure your child's health while in school, and to also help keep the environment cleaner while developing their sense of stewardship.Nearly half of the children in the U.S. who attend private and public schools participate in the NSLP, a federally assisted meal... more

JanforGore
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13 responses

20 days ago

Canada's Obama Donkey

\While a federal election looms in his native Canada, farmer Norman Collier is far more interested in seeing Barack Obama make... more

JesseMorgan
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10 responses

21 days ago

The Price of Rice

The price of rice has doubled in the past year in Asia giving rise to what some have coined "the Asian Food Crisis." A... more

Future_America
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0 responses

22 days ago

Biotech snake oil: a quack cure for hunger

Commercialized GM crops are confined to soybeans, corn, cotton and canola. Soybeans and corn predominate, and are used mainly to feed animals or fuel cars in rich nations. For instance, Argentina and Brazil export the great majority of their soybeans as livestock feed, mainly to Europe and Japan, while more than three fourths of the U.S. corn crop is either fed to animals or used to generate ethanol for automobiles. Expanding soybean monocultures in South America are displacing small farmers, who grow food crops for local consumption, and thus contribute to food insecurity, especially in Argentina and Paraguay. The only other commercial GM crops are papaya and squash, both grown on miniscule acreage.

Most revealing, however, is what the biotech industry has engineered these crops for. Hype and promises of future innovations notwithstanding, there is not a single commercial GM crop with increased yield, drought-tolerance, salt-tolerance, enhanced nutrition or other attractive-sounding traits touted by the industry. Disease-resistant GM crops are practically non-existent.

We have yet to see genetically modified food that is cheaper, more nutritious or tastes better, says Hope Shand, research director for the Ontario-based ETC Group. Biotech seeds have not been shown to be scientifically or socially useful.

The industry's own figures reveal that GM crops incorporate one or both of just two traits; herbicide tolerance and insect resistance. Insect-resistant cotton and corn produce their own built-in insecticide to protect against certain, but far from all, insect pests. Herbicide-tolerant crops are engineered to withstand direct application of an herbicide to kill nearby weeds. These crops predominate, with 82 percent of global biotech crop acreage.

Herbicide-tolerant crops (mainly soybeans) are popular with larger farmers because they simplify and reduce labor needs for weed control. They have thus helped facilitate the worldwide trend of consolidating farmland into fewer, ever bigger farms, like Argentina's huge soybean plantations. According to a 2004 study by Charles Benbrook, former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, herbicide-tolerant crops have also led to a substantial increase in pesticide use. Benbrook's study found that adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops in the United States increased weed-killer use by 138 million pounds from 1996 to 2004 (while insect-resistant crops reduced insecticide use by just 16 million pounds over the same period).

The vast majority of herbicide-tolerant crops are Monsanto 's Roundup Ready varieties, tolerant to the herbicide glyphosate, which is sold under the brand-name Roundup. The dramatic rise in glyphosate use associated with Roundup Ready crops has spawned an epidemic of glyphosate-resistant weeds, just as bacteria evolve resistance to an overused antibiotic. Farmers respond to resistant weeds by upping the dose of glyphosate and by using greater quantities of other herbicides, such as the probable carcinogen 2,4-D (a component of Agent Orange) and the endocrine-disrupting weed killer atrazine, recently banned in the European Union. Glyphosate-resistant weeds and rising herbicide use are becoming serious problems in the United States, Argentina and Brazil.

Commercialized GM crops are confined to soybeans, corn, cotton and canola. Soybeans and corn predominate, and are used mainly to... more

JanforGore
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7 responses

24 days ago

Australia bans word 'drought' as too upsetting for farmers

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TravG73
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25 days ago

Urban Farmers Almanac: Predictions of plenty in times of need

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Greenpointer
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4 responses

25 days ago

Farmed & Dangerous Alert

Groups Join Together in Exposing Problems With Farmed Salmon & Call on Supermarkets to Change "Sea lice has the... more

julesrs007
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26 days ago

Biofuels forcing farmers off land

The drive to expand biofuels production is creating new pressures on land and food rights all over the world. This process is most advanced in Latin America, where national and international companies are increasing the production of sugarcane, palm oil, jatropha and other crops to take advantage of high prices and high expectations for markets in the United States and Europe. In many cases, smallholder farmers are being driven off their lands and fragile ecosystems are threatened.

In Guatemala, the area under cultivation for sugarcane increased more than 155 percent over the last five years. Land used for African palm for biodiesel production tripled in the same period. Guatemala, a small country with high rates of poverty, is becoming one of the world’s leading producers of ethanol for export.

Unfortunately, this shift to fuel crops makes life even harder for many local farmers. ActionAid Guatemala has documented how the push for biofuels has increased land concentration (when small-scale farmers are pressured to sell their lands, often because they don’t get the credit or other resources they need to grow crops), and re-concentration, (when plantation owners sell their lands and displace the farm workers who live there). These practices threaten rural livelihoods, food security and local environments.

Similar processes are unfolding in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and many other countries across the Americas. The expansion of biofuel production is driven by efforts to find alternative fuel sources at a time of rising oil prices. US and European renewable fuels standards mandate dramatic increases in the use of ethanol and biodiesel over the next few years. The expectation that the US and EU will increase biofuel imports to meet those targets is driving prices and investment up throughout South America.

ActionAid met with representatives of family-farm, environmental, development and policy organizations in Guatemala to share experiences and find ways to work together to confront these problems. The groups agree that small-scale production of biofuels crops for local use might have a place in a sustainable mix of crops for food and energy sovereignty. But the current push for large-scale production to meet export demand must be reined in because fuel production is displacing food.

ActionAid believes that the US and EU should reconsider their biofuels targets that are pushing food prices up and farmers off their lands. We will be working with our partners in the Americas, and in similar initiatives in other regions, to call on our governments to reconsider the rush to fuel crops.

Write to your Member of Congress to insist that they reconsider the impact of biofuels targets and subsidies on food security and rural livelihoods. The drive to expand biofuels production is creating new pressures on land and food rights all over the world. This process is most... more

goldenways
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30 responses

26 days ago

Organic farming 'could feed Africa'

Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades, according to a major study from the United Nations to be presented today.

New evidence suggests that organic practices – derided by some as a Western lifestyle fad – are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa's small farmers who remain among the poorest people on earth. The head of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report "indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed".

The "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s – when the production of food caught and surpassed the needs of the global population for the first time – largely bypassed Africa. Whereas each person today has 25 per cent more food on average than they did in 1960, in Africa they have 10 per cent less.

A combination of increasing population, decreasing rainfall and soil fertility and a surge in food prices has left Africa uniquely vulnerable to famine. Climate change is expected to make a bad situation worse by increasing the frequency of droughts and floods.

It has been conventional wisdom among African governments that modern, mechanised agriculture was needed to close the gap but efforts in this direction have had little impact on food poverty and done nothing to create a sustainable approach. Now, the global food crisis has led to renewed calls for a massive modernisation of agriculture on the hungriest continent on the planet, with calls to push ahead with genetically modified crops and large industrial farms to avoid potentially disastrous starvation.

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The research conducted by the UN Environment Programme suggests that organic, small-scale farming can deliver the increased yields which were thought to be the preserve of industrial farming, without the environmental and social damage which that form of agriculture brings with it.

An analysis of 114 projects in 24 African countries found that yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used. That increase in yield jumped to 128 per cent in east Africa.

"Organic farming can often lead to polarised views," said Mr Steiner, a former economist. "With some viewing it as a saviour and others as a niche product or something of a luxury... this report suggests it could make a serious contribution to tackling poverty and food insecurity."

The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming. It also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought. And the research highlighted the role that learning organic practices could have in improving local education. Backers of GM foods insist that a technological fix is needed to feed the world. But this form of agriculture requires cash to buy the patented seeds and herbicides – both at record high prices currently – needed to grow GM crops.

Regional farming experts have long called for "good farming", rather than exclusively GM or organic. Better seeds, crop rotation, irrigation and access to markets all help farmers. Organic certification in countries such as the UK and Australia still presents an insurmountable barrier to most African exporters, the report points out. It calls for greater access to markets so farmers can get the best prices for their products.
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Let's REALLY feed the people and give the power back to the farmers. GMOs are not the solution. Giving farmers the tools they need to grow natural food and the mechanisms to get them is.Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades,... more

JanforGore
added this

8 responses

27 days ago

Organic farming 'could feed Africa'

Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades, according to a major study from the United Nations to be presented today.

New evidence suggests that organic practices – derided by some as a Western lifestyle fad – are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa's small farmers who remain among the poorest people on earth. The head of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report "indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed".

The "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s – when the production of food caught and surpassed the needs of the global population for the first time – largely bypassed Africa. Whereas each person today has 25 per cent more food on average than they did in 1960, in Africa they have 10 per cent less.

A combination of increasing population, decreasing rainfall and soil fertility and a surge in food prices has left Africa uniquely vulnerable to famine. Climate change is expected to make a bad situation worse by increasing the frequency of droughts and floods.

It has been conventional wisdom among African governments that modern, mechanised agriculture was needed to close the gap but efforts in this direction have had little impact on food poverty and done nothing to create a sustainable approach. Now, the global food crisis has led to renewed calls for a massive modernisation of agriculture on the hungriest continent on the planet, with calls to push ahead with genetically modified crops and large industrial farms to avoid potentially disastrous starvation.

Last month the UK's former chief scientist Sir David King said anti-scientific attitudes among Western NGOs and the UN were responsible for holding back a much-needed green revolution in Africa. "The problem is that the Western world's move toward organic farming – a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food – and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across the whole of Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences," he said.

The research conducted by the UN Environment Programme suggests that organic, small-scale farming can deliver the increased yields which were thought to be the preserve of industrial farming, without the environmental and social damage which that form of agriculture brings with it.

An analysis of 114 projects in 24 African countries found that yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used. That increase in yield jumped to 128 per cent in east Africa.

"Organic farming can often lead to polarised views," said Mr Steiner, a former economist. "With some viewing it as a saviour and others as a niche product or something of a luxury... this report suggests it could make a serious contribution to tackling poverty and food insecurity."

***************CONTINUESOrganic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades,... more