Information
for the following comes from "Peruvian Farmers
Move to End Terminator Seeds,"; by Sanjay Suri,
published October 11, 2005 by the Inter Press Service:
"A United Nations moratorium
at present blocks commercialization of terminator
seeds. But a group of countries led by Canada have
challenged the UN safety regulation."; New
discussions on the subject have been opened. One
of the strongest voices so far against lifting the
moratorium has come from Peru. "About 70 indigenous
leaders representing 26 Andean and Amazon communities
met in a mountain village"; in September under
the auspices of the Quechua-Aymara Association for
Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES). The
farmers not only pointed out how dependent small
farmers worldwide are on seeds from the harvest,
but "evaluated the evidence and assessed the
risks of terminator technology on land, spiritual
systems and on women, who are their seed keepers.";
Concerns were expressed about risks to Peru’s
"2,000 varieties of potato"; and about
the possibility of sterility being transferred to
other plant life. "The moratorium issue will
come up at a conference on biological diversity
to be held in Brazil in March.";
This information comes from "Rain
Forest Nations Seek Incentive to Conserve,"
by Miguel Bustillo, printed November 27, 2005, in
the Los Angeles Times:
A group of ten rain forest nations,
led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, suggests
"they be compensated for the benefits of green
areas." They made this proposal at a United
Nations conference on climate change. "Until
recently Michael Somare, the prime minister of Papua
New Guinea, felt that global economic forces were
pressuring him to cut down his country’s lush
tropical rain forest, the third-largest left in
the world." He believes the forests "should
be far more valuable to the world than hardwood
timber or coffee plantations. Forests serve as natural
air filters that suck up the greenhouse gases that
are causing global warming," and that "the
rest of the world is benefiting from this natural
wealth without sharing the cost. Under the Kyoto
pact, countries that slash greenhouse gas emissions
can profit by selling ‘pollution credits’
to countries that do not cut emissions enough. However,
there is no similar incentive to reward rain forest
preservation."
Two other items concern global warming:
From the U.K. Independent, November
15, 2005: "A catastrophic collapse in sea and
bird life numbers along America’s Northwest
Pacific seaboard is raising fears that global warming
is beginning to irreparably damage the health of
the oceans. Scientists say a dramatic rise in the
ocean temperature led to unprecedented deaths of
birds and fish this summer all along the coast from
central California to British Columbia. Normally,
winds blow south along the coast in spring and summer,
pushing warmer surface waters away from the shore
and allowing colder water that is rich in nutrients
to well up from the sea bottom feeding the phytoplankton.
These are eaten by zooplankton, tiny animals that
in turn feed fish, seabirds and marine mammals.
But this year the winds were extraordinarily weak
and the cold water did not well up in spring as
usual." The number of phytoplankton was about
one-quarter of its normal level and "record
numbers of dead seabirds washed up on beaches along
the coast. Tests showed the birds died of starvation."
A similar development is also taking place in the
North Sea.
From "Is
It Hot in Here?" by Lauran Neergaard, Associated
Press Writer, November 24, 2005: A major
new study by a team of European researchers reports
that "there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
today than at any point during the last 650,000
years." The team used ice core samples from
Antarctica which go back that many years. The ice
"encases tiny air bubbles formed when snowflakes
fell over hundreds of thousands of years. Extracting
the air allows a direct measurement of the atmosphere
at past points in time, to determine the naturally
fluctuating range. Today’s still rising level
of carbon dioxide already is 27 percent higher than
its peak during all those millennia," the lead
researcher stated. He added that the rise is occurring
at a speed that "is over a factor of a hundred
faster than anything we are seeing in the natural
cycles."
From "Doomsday
Vault to Avert World Famine" by Fred Pearce
in the January 12, 2006, edition of New Scientist: Next year, at the behest of crop scientists, the
Norwegian government is planning to build a $3 million
vault "deep inside a sandstone mountain lined
with permafrost on the Norwegian Arctic island of
Spitsbergen. The vault will have meter-thick walls
of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind
two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors."
It is "designed to hold around 2 million seeds,
representing all known varieties of the world’s
crops and is being built to safeguard the world’s
food supply against nuclear war, climate change,
terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the
ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. The vault’s
seed collection, made up of duplicates of those
already held at other seed banks, will represent
the products of some 10,000 years of plant breeding
by the world’s farmers. Though most are no
longer widely planted, the varieties contain vital
genetic traits still regularly used in plant breeding."
From the University
of Illinois: In Illinois, 76.1 percent of
stream pollution and 95.8 percent of inland lake
pollution "are due in some part to agricultural
sources, according to estimates by the Illinois
environmental Protection Agency. … Additionally,
agricultural chemicals represent major sources of
ground water quality problems."
From "Corn
Farmers Smile as Ethanol Prices Rise, but Experts
on Food Supplies Worry" by Matthew L. Wald,
in the January 16, 2006, edition of the New York
Times: "Some states are requiring that
ethanol be blended in small amounts with gasoline
to comply with anti-pollution laws. … Iowa
has 19 ethanol plants now and will have 27 by the
end of the year. … High oil prices are dragging
corn prices up with them, as the value of ethanol
is pushed up by the value of the fuel it replaces.
… The rising corn prices may be good news
for farmers, but they are worrying some food planners."
Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute said:
"We’re putting the supermarket in competition
with the corner filling station for the output of
the farm." The chief economist at the Department
of Agriculture said: "Nationwide, the use of
corn for energy could result in farmers’ planting
more of it and less wheat and cotton," then
pointed out "the United States is paying farmers
not to grow crops on 35 million acres, to prop up
the value of corn … and much of that land
could come back into production." Other experts
point out that most Iowa corn is used to feed farm
animals or make corn syrup; that corn remnants from
the ethanol plants are being used for animal feed;
and that corn products have been used for years
for non-food purposes. The director of the Food
Policy Research Institute said: "Even a small
shift could have big effects … because the
mouth of your car is a monster compared to your
family’s stomach needs." |