A YOUTH LEADER SPECIAL PUBLICATION
When the Winds of Change are Blowing some People Build Walls. Others Build Windmills. chinese proverb
official infos
Why this book? ... >> example
VIDEO LADY
www.upworthy.com/ever-hear-about-the-lady-thatspilled-coffee-on-herself-at-mcdonalds-then-sued-formillions I just wish people had the minimum wits and courage to acknowledge that they don't know. And that their resistance to acknowleding their nonknowing turns from ignorance to dumbness, to bullying and harming kind, innocent people. If media, citizens, news anchors, talkshow clowns and the top of government ignore and distort the truth about a cup of spilled coffee, to the point of making the ridiculing and bullying of an old lady part of popular culture... what do they know, and what aggressive myths will they promote about more complicated issues? ON VITAL ISSUES I SEEK MY INFORMATION ELSEWHERE Not in mainstream media. Not on television. Not from business. Not from governments.
Eric Welcome
welcome
CONTENTS city map + add solutions with page number INTRODUCTION Welcome and Remix How to use this book Content maps
URBAN FOOD ABUNDANCE bla page bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
RURAL FOOD ABUNDANCE bla page bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
bla page bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
MEETING TRUSTWORTHY ALLIES UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL REPORTS bla bla bla
WORLD RENOWNED SCIENTIST STATEMENTS bla page bla bla bla
KIDS TAKING ACTION CLEANING UP THE FOOD CHAIN ABUNDANCE AT SCHOOL Birke Coral Anna Madi Rhia Xiuh Robyn Alicia
Alicia GBM Book Network Jamie Oliver (pink slime)
THESE ARE NOT FOR EATING bla bla bla bla bla Ocean Tippi Cow
A NON-KILLING DIET bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
Eric closing comments
APPENDIX
TAKING ACTION TO THE FULLEST Youth LeadeR Media YL Warriors, Clans & Tribes
further bites and snapshots from the food movements Colombia farmer riots fur peta
How to use this book
how to use
MAYBE NOT OR DIFFERENT INTRODUCTION A remix of an excellent article in Earth Island Journal: www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/can_danilo_atilano_feed_the_world United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, explains, "The problem is not yields or production per se; it is that conventional plantation agriculture, combined with a development model that prioritizes cheap exports over food crops, have pushed millions off their fields. The nearly one billion people who are hungry are in that situation primarily because they no longer have land to grow their own food or because they are too poor to buy food." SOUNDS FAMILIAR? In the USA, 1 in 4 kids go hungry, every day. 50% of the US' population lacks access to affordable, fresh, healthy food without pesticides and GMOs. And it is the same in your country. This can be changed! De Schutter emphasizes: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.” IF YOU LIVE IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT, you'll find plenty of solutions in this book. "Small-scale farmers using agroecology approaches can produce ample and accessible food for the world’s people. So, the question is not really if farmers like Atilano can feed the world. The question is whether eco-friendly, smallholder farmers like him will get the support they need to feed the world." YOU ARE PART OF THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE Picture the contest over the future of food and farming as a shifting battlefield with many players. On one side, agribusiness firms, some development agencies, technocrats, and academics like Robert Paarlberg, author of Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, continue to push the myth that only agribusiness plantations can feed the world. Their battle cry: Countries should shift fertile lands to “efficient” and “modern” large-scale export crop production, even if it means increasing food imports to feed their people. On the other side are policy experts like de Schutter and hundreds of millions of small farmers and consumers. Groups representing about 200 million small-scale farmers in 70 countries have united in La Via Campesina, a movement that promotes “food sovereignty,” by which they mean “defending small-scale farming, agroecology and local production.” They, in turn, are supported by thousands of community and consumer groups – such as the Slow Food movement, whose 1,300 chapters in 153
countries support small farmers, co-ops, and community-supported agriculture across the world. The outcome of this war over the future of food depends on two things: who wins the policy battles over food, and what personal food choices each of us makes on a daily basis. Food decisions made at billions of dinner tables each day have a huge impact on whether small farmers will feed the world. To use the phrase of the slow food movement, you – we – have a huge say in the future of food and farming by “voting with your fork.” There's more in that article, and I encourage you to read it, but I invite you to now step out of the "battlefield" and enter a land of solutions. De Shutter mentions only conventional small farmers as food producers, but recently, enormous urban food production methods have popped up! And this means that besides choosing, influencing, positively tipping the path of global food streams, you can start creating 50-80% of urban food needs locally! You haven't heard of it all these solutions? Well, that's what YL has set out to change! Because once we know about the solution, and can at last overcome the depressing situation, the Quest gets fun! You get to meet totally amazing people pioneering amazing solutions - true miracles! You will see that traditional farming methods are mixing with recent forms of innovation and discovery among the small farmer and social entrepreneur community. Plus you get the knowledge and tools to introduce this innovation for vibrant peopledriven economies around you, making people crazy happy! Feeding kids, changing school menues, and thus awaken people to food and saying YES to good food, because now they have felt it with all their senses, and know what to protect from obsolete, defunct approaches. After flipping through this book and watching some videos, your view of the world will have changed. You'll know stuff that matters. Things you didn't know existed, and wouldn't have thought you'd be able to do, and pass on to others. You'll be surprised where this Journey has taking you, once you are through. You cannot imagine. I couldn't when I set out to put it together. BEE THE CHANGE DIG IN!
So let's begin our learning journey WITH RACHEL
cover maybe with rachel, in action, TITLE like maybe her statement I have the right to know and choose what's in the food that I buy and am eating.
You may know Rachel from the We Day stage Her examples is a good reason to look back at what gave rise to We Day, Free The Children and Me To We, the greatest teen activist movement in history, yet. The day that Craig Kielburger learned of the story of Iqbal Masiq, and that millions of young children being sold and born into forced labour and slavery, he awoke to an unheard of, unbearable suffering in the world, so far tolerated by adults. He did not remain silent, and as he raised his voice, millions of people supported his cause, to end the suffering of children, neglected, abused and punished on a daily basis. But the problem that was evident to him and millions of people, was not considered a problem by people in other countries. His initiative was even rigidly opposed. Iqbal, the twelve year old was shot dead short after he returned to his village. Adults said that Craig's efforts were hopeless, his goal of liberating children, building schools was "impossible". Business people of India and Pakistan claimed that liberating kids would hurt the economy! They still do so, today, decades after this claim has been unveiled to be a myth, a lie for exploiting the
oder free the children image wikipedia mit craig
people, impoverishing entire communities. (link to Venkat Reddy interview) Craig and his friends of Free The Children, rose to overcome all obstacles ... and you know that today, millions of people have benefitted, they have achieved changes in policies and industry regulations! Craig's commitment has changed the educational landscape and learning culture across an entire nation! Today, 160,000 activist youth take monthly actions, build a new school, every week (900 to-date), a clinic every second week, build wells, spark alternative incomes, volunteer trips and many colaboration projects with 500 partner projects in 40 countries. Youth-led. Check out their work in these 3 amazing videos. WE DAY FREE THE CHILDREN Adopt-a-village partnerships TAKE ACTION CAMPS - Go Local Academies
image craig and marc wikipedia
You know that Craig's success story is a response to unspeakable suffering - the lack of drinking water, lack of food, lack of opportunity, liberty, love, historic wrongs, hunger, bullying, teen suicides, abroad, and at home. It's things that no one likes to hear of, that some even still dispute or blame the victims. Incredible. Fortunately, millions of youth, citizens, educators and school boards know - these youth know what needs doing, they do it, and it is good! Rachel is in the same situation. Like Craig, Rachel awakened to a cause that hardly anyone around her was aware of - not far away, but in her own country! She is awakening to worrying and disturbing facts that adults and policy-makers ignore, dispute, consider just fine, circulate myths and lie about, rigidly aggress dissenters - just like the child slave holding businesses of Pakistan and India - while seventy other countries have established basic regulations about this issue, where 90% of citizens agree it's common sense. So, what would you do? Rachel decides to speak up, so her generation has the same choice
as youth in half of the world's nations. Attention - the next pages show images of the "worrying suffering". They have been used on tv and in school presentations - so we can consider them safe enough to watch. Still, prepare yourself.
Rachel's journey began with a task for a school presentation. Thinking about possible topics, she came across the use of GMOs, - Genetically Modified Organisms - in foods ... and how they are connected to issues of food, toxic materials, health impacts, legal battles, legislation, scientist warnings, and civil uprising. This was ... an intriguing topic, and Rachel started to research the internet, view documentary films, and contact civil organizations and scientists...
An early disturbing fact was that scientific studies testing the effects of GMO food on rats led to massive cancer tumors. Their life expectancy was much reduced. They also showed organ changes, infertility and birth defects. Notably, these effects developed after 100 days of testing...
... while Health Canada only requires 90 days of testing... and that these studies can be made by the same industries producing and profiting from the sales of such products. The government of Canada does not ask for tests by independent scientists... and does not check for long-term health effects... At the same time, journalists who revealed that GMO producing companies are suppressing study results showing negative impacts, were ordered to stop their investigations, their show was cancelled after the media were threatened, and the journalists lost their job. LINK TO FOX NEWS VIDEO In Europe, courts ruled that GMO producing companies had been lying to the public and were responsible for farmers' illnesses. In Great Britain, scientists report being silenced and attacked in mainstream media for reporting of negative impacts by GMOs, such as genetically modified peas leading to lab animals' immune system breakdown ... like we know it from HIV Aids. (Whistleblower Award)
In Australia, farmers report negative impacts on GMO fed animals organ changes and inflammed stomachs. ADD VIDEO SCREEN Link to TEDx Talk (add image) Link to Moms Across America (add website) The claims about - higher yields - better resistance against insects - less pesticide use (toxic materials killing animals and plants) have shown to by myths. GMO Yields are dropping. Europe's non-GMO yields are higher. NonGMO yields in North America are higher. (LINK TO STUDY) (LINK TO STUDY) The most used pesticide, Roundup, by chemical company Monsanto, is also the most potent herbicide, killing practically everything, except the GMO plants. One of its key ingredients is Glyphosate. Glyphosate has been linked to birth defects, and horrible impacts on health. Campaigns for banning it are underway. Despite Roundup's intensity, already, resistent Superweeds and Bugs have developed, which means that harvests are threatened more than before. Monsanto have now asked US American government agencies for permission to pump even higher levels of Roundup on fields and crops, - and received permission. Many people are worried when they learn that former Monsanto staff now have influential positions in the US American government, and important agencies responsible for environmental and consumer protection. Also, former government executives are no Monsanto employees. This includes former staff of influential government agencies like the secret service.
IN INDIA hundreds of thousands of farmers, have committed suicide, because of bancruptcy linked to dropping yields and debts. Vandana Shiva, India's most prominent scientist, and member of the World Future Council, is an ardent advocate for seed safety, and very outspoken against Monsanto. The insertion of fish genes in healthy seeds, she calls not genius but pollution of healthy, lively seeds. Vandana Shiva in a PBS interview with Bill Moyers, America's most renowned journalist.
This horrible phenomenon had been around for twenty years, but has not been alleviated http://billmoyers.com/segment/vandana-shiva-on-the-problem-with since the introduction of GMO cotton in 2001, but rather intensified. GMO cotton has been aggressively advertized as a miracle crop, but required ever more expensive pesticides, and - contrary to proper farming, where farmers use part of the harvest for seeding - they had to buy new seeds every year, and prices were rising.
Navdanya is a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 17 states in India, helped set up 111 community seed banks across the country, trained over 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country. Navdanya has also set up a learning center, Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed / Earth University) on its biodiversity conservation and organic farm in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, North India, and is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change. Navdanya is a women centred movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity.
The issue of pesticides is far reaching. It affects costs and toxic residue in the plant. It also directly affects farmers' health. Small farmers spray these poisonous mixes by hand, are engulfed in clouds. Since the fields are close to their homes, the poison also runs into waterways... affecting the entire family. This is not a rare case, but the norm.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH2-9o59_n0 Monsanto's Roundup Ready, the most used pesticide, is extremly powerful. Only Monsanto's plants can resist, because they are designed for it. Everything else is killed.This is their "miracle solution". But - it also kills the microorganisms, bees and pollinators so essential to a healthy ecosystem. On top, the pesticides run off into waterways, killing animals and plants beyond the fields. But already, superweeds and superbugs are starting to occur! They are resistant to RR, and bring unprecedented problems to farmers. At least 40 million hectares are affected, alone in the U.S.A. GMO companies are now preparing even more poisonous weedkillers. But there's more: Roundup's main ingredient - Glyphosate - is being linked to birth defects and diseases. The internet and Monsanto executives are fabulating that it is not proven. But wait a minute. Let's look at some GMO soybean communities...
IN SOUTH AMERICA Agrotoxin use is huge, due to lax regulation and control. GMO giant Syngenta calls a region of 5 countries The United Republic of Soybeans. Like in India, fields are right next to homes. But in 'developed' South America, they spray you from the plane! Petrona Villasboa's 11-year-old son, Silvino Talavera, died after being sprayed with pesticides while riding his bicycle along a road between two fields of soya. (Photo: Glyn Thomas / FoE)
This is life for millions of people in the countryside: "Malvinas Argentinas is surrounded by soya plantations ... during the spraying season rainwater was often contaminated with Glyphosate, one reason for a rate of miscarriage 100 times the national average." "The doctors and scientists claim that babies are being born with crippling birth malformations and that in recent years the incidence of childhood cancer has soared. It is a phenomenon, they say, that has coincided with the introduction of Monsanto's seed." www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/03/201331 313434142322.html "Such horrendous impacts would find support by companies or the state," you may think. Well - not in the Republic of Soy. Meet Sofia. Her quest led to a global Environmental Award. Thirteen years ago, SofĂa Gatica gave birth to a daughter. Three days
later, the baby’s kidneys failed. The working-class mother of three was determined to find out what killed her child. She began talking to her neighbors in Ituzaingó, a working-class neighborhood of 6,000 in central Argentina surrounded by soy fields, and became alarmed at the prevalence of unexplained health problems plaguing her community. Gatica invited a group of neighbors to her home to discuss their experiences. With only a high school education and no organizing experience, Gatica co-founded the Mothers of Ituzaingó—a group of 16 mothers working together to put a stop to the indiscriminate agrochemical use that was poisoning their community. Gatica and the group of mothers began going door to door to conduct the first epidemiological study of the area and discovered the serious effects that pesticide spraying was having on the families in Ituzaingó. Sofia mapped the ilnesses. They found a 41x higher cancer rate of the national average, as well as high rates of neurological and respiratory diseases, birth defects, and infant mortality. Doctors suspect that many other cases go unreported. Together with the women, she started a stop spraying campaign.
"I started receiving phone calls threatening to kill my children. Then, a man put a gun to my head, telling me to stop messing with the soy. But I wasn't going to let them stop me." "Our studies found birth defects in animal embryos, exposed to low concentrations of glyphosate, the key ingredient of Roundup." Dr. Andres Carraso, Embryologist, University of Buenos Aires By protesting they changed the law. Now, they cannot spray within 2,500 meters of settlements. Their next goals are national bans for spraying of Glyphosate and Endosulfan. Argentina is the world’s third largest exporter of soybeans. Every year, the industry spreads over 50 million gallons of agro-toxins—namely glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s widely-used herbicide Roundup, and endosulfan—through aerial spraying over farmland. While Monsanto claims there is no risk to humans, a 2008 scientific study found that even at low concentrations, glyphosate causes the death of human embryonic, placental and umbilical cells. Endosulfan is a highly toxic pesticide that has been banned in 80 countries because
IT TOOK 10 YEARS for the responsibles to acknowledge this "in your face" problem with most horrendous imaginable impact! And still, the same problem exists throughout Argentina and South America - and Monsanto executives will bluntly tell you things like these substances are considered safe by your country's agencies and that no illness has ever been linked to glyphosates. IN EUROPE Monsanto has been sued over misleading advertizing. IN FRANCE Since Glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" and "toxic foraquatic organisms" by the European Union, courts ruled against Monsanto's advertising for Roundup that had presented it as biodegradable and as leaving the soil clean after use. IN GREAT BRITAIN Monsanto was condemned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making "confusing, misleading, unproven and wrong" claims about its products, and ruled that Monsanto had presented its opinions "as accepted fact" and had published "wrong" and "unproven" scientific claims. IN BRAZIL 5 million farmers are currently suing Monsanto for 7 billion dollars. IN THE USA the company produced ads saying that Roundup was "safer than table salt" and "practically nontoxic" to mammals, birds and fish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#False_advertising (Monsanto is certainly aware of its Wikipedia page and would make sure that any slightly false negative statement was corrected)
ISIS Open Letter from World Scientists to All Governments Concerning GMOs signed by 828 scientists from 84 different countries. www.isis.org.uk/list.php They explain very well how the simplistic approach of GMO companies is flawed, outdated and uncontrollable. www.mindfully.org/GE/Strohman-Safe-Food.htm More here: www.saynotogmos.org/scientists_speak.htm
In 2003, dozens of prominent scientists from seven countries, spanning the disciplines of agroecology, agronomy, biomathematics, botany, chemical medicine, ecology, histopathology, microbial ecology, molecular genetics, nutritional biochemistry, physiology, toxicology and virology, published
"The Case for a GM-free Sustainable World", an authoritative report, billed as "the strongest, most complete dossier of evidence" ever compiled on the problems and hazards of GM crops as well as the manifold benefits of sustainable agriculture, calling for a ban on GM crops to make way for all forms of sustainable agriculture. www.i-sis.org.uk/ispr-summary.php
The 2013 report "BAN GMOs NOW" shows decisive evidence on the unsustainability and destructiveness of conventional industrial agriculture, of which GM is the most extreme, and make absolutely NO contribution to feeding the people due to inability to deliver useful traits. - GM crops are still confined to 28 countries, with nearly 90 % planted in just five. - GM after thirty years(!) remains limited to two
traits in three major crops that are largely kept out of most of the world: corn, soy, cotton. We don't EAT that. Period! The radical failure of GMO crops is dramatically contrasted by massive proven successes of non-GM ecological farming: its productivity and resilience, environmental and health benefits, and in particular, its enormous potential for saving energy and carbon emissions in mitigating and adapting to climate change. - new wheat hybrids could increase yields by 30 %. - in Africa, Nerica rice varieties are up to four times as productive as traditional varieties with much shorter growing season, more protein, resist pests and diseases, thrive on poor soils, and withstand drought; also 30 varieties of drought-tolerant maize are boosting yield 20 to 30 % across 13 countries, climbing beans treble production in Central Africa, wheat varieties thriving on salty soils, plus a host of other wonders: blight-resistant potatoes, crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and essential nutrients.
The other reason is that resistance to GM crops and GMOs has been growing simultaneously worldwide as the failures and hazards are coming to light behind the corporate propaganda. GM crops are hardly grown in Europe even though the European Commission has given commercial approval for cultivation, showing every sign of caving in to the GM lobby. ... German Agriculture Ministry issued a revealing statement: “The
promises of GM industry have not come true for European agriculture, nor have they for the agriculture in developing and emerging economies.�
ANOTHER EXCELLENT REPORT http://earthopensource.org/index.php/executive-summary Check the right hand menu deconstructing any MYTH
Monsanto has been in the news simultaneously for its unapproved glyphosate tolerant GM wheat that has turned up in a farmer’s field in Oregon; and Japan and then South Korea suspended their wheat imports for fear of GM contamination, leading to a 4% drop in Monsanto’s shares [5]. The shipments were eventually cancelled, which could cost US farmers billions [6]. In fact 8 European Union countries have imposed outright bans on crops approved: Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria and Poland. Switzerland has had a moratorium on GM crops since 2008, which was set to end in 2013. Italy is the latest to ban cultivation of GM maize (MON 810) citing environmental concerns. In addition, regions and local administrations at every level in 37 European countries have declared themselves GMO-free. Within the heartland of GMOs the USA, the failures of GM crops and the problems created are most visible and acute. A new study reveals that the
US staple crop system has performed worse than nonGM Europe in yields, pesticide use, genetic diversity and resilience since GM crops were planted; with a dangerous downward trend in recent years. Meanwhile, a pitched battle is taking place to get GM crops out through GMO-labelling legislation that would unleash the power of consumers against the might of the biotech industry [14]. Close to 95 % of Americans support GM labelling. ... The US Green Party has called Monsanto “a top risk to public health and the environment,” and has urged a moratorium on GM food crops In November 2012, Peru imposed a 10 year ban on GMOs in the country, thanks to the effort of farmers from Parque de la Papa in Cusco, a community of 6 000 anxious to protect indigenous biodiversity especially of corn and potatoes on which their livelihood depends [16]. Kenya banned import of all GMOs with immediate effect. This followed a decision made by the
cabinet on the basis of “inadequate research done on GMOs and scientific evidence provided to prove the safety of the foods”. On 1 June 2013, the new administration in Venezuela announced a new law to protect farmers against GM seeds [18] On 22 July 2013, the Indian Supreme Court’s expert panel of scientists called for a ban on herbicide tolerant crops for India [19].
This is a dangerous situation for the future of food and farming, one that needs to be reversed as quickly as possible. GM agriculture is a recipe for disaster, as this report will make clear. It is also standing in the way of the shift to sustainable agriculture already taking place in local communities all over the world that can truly enable people to feed themselves in times of climate change. Please use this report, circulate it widely, and send it to your political representatives.
http://bit.ly/1fYxzw0 www.i-sis.org.uk/Ban_GMOs_Now_-_Special_ISIS_Report.php
And then - this one.
This report, co-authored by international scientists and researchers, reveals that industry’s own studies, including one commissioned by Monsanto, showed as long ago as the 1980s that Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate causes birth defects in laboratory animals. The pesticide industry and EU regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s-1990s that Roundup, the world's best selling herbicide, causes birth defects – but they failed to inform the public. Industry has known from its own studies since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses. Industry has known since 1993 that these effects also occur at lower and mid doses. The German government has known since at least 1998 that glyphosate causes malformations The EU Commission’s expert scientific review panel knew in 1999 that glyphosate causes malformations The EU Commission has known since 2002 that glyphosate causes malformations. This was the year it signed off on the current approval of glyphosate. But this information was not made public. On the contrary, the pesticide industry and Europe’s regulators have jointly misled the public with claims that glyphosate is safe. As a result, Roundup is used by home gardeners and local authorities on roadsides, in school grounds, and in other public areas, as well as in farmers’ fields. As recently as 2010, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, BVL, told the Commission there was "no evidence of
teratogenicity" (ability to cause birth defects) for glyphosate. BVL made this comment in its rebuttal of an independent scientific study by Argentine scientists which showed that Roundup and glyphosate cause birth defects in experimental animals at concentrations much lower than those used in agricultural spraying. The study was prompted by reports of high rates of birth defects and cancers in areas of South America growing genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soy, which is engineered to tolerate being sprayed liberally with glyphosate herbicide. In its rebuttal of the Argentine study, BVL cited as proof of glyphosate's safety the industry studies submitted for the Commission's 2002 approval of glyphosate (the approval that is currently in force in Europe). But the authors of the new report obtained the approval documents and found that contrary to BVL's claim, industry's own studies, conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, showed that glyphosate/Roundup causes birth defects in experimental animals. Published by Earth Open Source
Download the report - Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark? http://bit.ly/1fYmfA0 http://earthopensource.org
More than 60 nations have strict GMO product labelling laws. GMOs are practically not found in supermarkets. People don't want them. In the USA and Canada, however, 80% of the products on shelves contain GMO ingredients.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=guRoLtjnR4M Labelling enables us to decide which foods we consider safe, healthy and worthy to eat, and present to our loved ones, friends and customers. Labelling also enables us to direct our money to farmers and companies who we trust and wish to support and honour for their commitment and efforts they are taking to keep our most important environment and habitats safe and intact for today and future generations.
Rachel founded
Kids Right To Know Club Together with friends, she learns about food facts, they give presentations, and organize colourful marches, dressed up as the good, colourful animals, vegetables and fruits that give us life and are threatened by poisons and unsafe technologies. www.kidsrighttoknow.com
Kids Right To Know Marches gain a lot of public and media attention
She set up a website www.kidsrighttoknow.com
and a vibrant facebook stream documenting her activities campaigns, facts, studies and events around the globe
Whenever Rachel hears of a food related event, she joins with her Kids Right To Know group, gets speaking time on stage and on the biggest television channel of all - youtube! This is a great clip to get to know Rachel and Club activities: knowing about democracy and human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of choice, creating costumes, organizing marches, public speaking, baking gigantic, naturally yummy apple cakes for everyone to share, celebrating what we agree a good life is about. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WOyU7bGbz4
The colourful marches and Rachel's eloquent speeches capture the interest of news media. Television anchors are impressed by her straightforward explanation of genetically engineered foods, and enjoy having her as a studio guest. Here's GMO's explained: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HheOeHvWAWU For many Canadians and Americans, it is the first time they hear about GMOs. Whereas European media, for example, have been full of explanations for years, and citizens have formed a solid opinion, - for labelling.
On 25 May 2013, millions of citizens all over the planet organized local Marches Against Monsanto in a historic event. Never before in human history did people take the streets to protest against a single company, all over the planet, demanding sustainable policies, ethical science, transparency, human rights, and a switch to sustainable agriculture. Astounishingly, big media did not give much attention and space to the remarkable event of active citizenship for global food security. Some media even attacked it, blatantly discrediting the people's cause and motives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Against_Monsanto www.march-against-monsanto.com
When Rachel heard a well known Canadian television talk show host say "Monsanto should be considered a hero for feeding the world. Only idiotic people protest against Monsanto. I have an answer to those people. Stop eating. Then, we can get rid of them." Kevin O'Leary, Lang & O'Leary Exchange she decided that enough is enough. Rachel publicly responded to his 'idiotic statement' and challenged O'Leary, and CBC, for a "live" debate on next week's Lang & O'Leary Exchange. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFACv_G0OU
As her challenge spread on the internet, CBC accepted her challenge... Finally, on 31 July 2013, Rachel would tell O'Leary "that he is living in the past, and I am fighting for our future." www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFkyxXy8qW4
This debate would become a legend! O'Leary had well prepared, and brought forth arguments that hardly anyone would have expected. But it didn't turn out like he expected. By the end, the talk show hosts themselves consented to GMO labelling, that there had not been proper long-term studies, and stated that citizens are being used as lab rats. The video received more than 2 million views on youtube, and went viral around the globe. It sparked enthusiastic response from viewers and experts, invitations to speak at events and conferences, and demand by schools and school boards - not only from Canada, but the USA, from Europe and Australia! www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX_-Zoom9Uc
EDIT DETAILS It went different from what Rachel expected. From the start, she was presented with GMO myths, off-topic remarks and attacked as a person. But the talk also turned out sure different from what the talk show hosts expected: Rachel instantly deconstructed false claims about GMO benefits and safety with undisputable facts, never responded to the respectless attacks, but stayed solidly on her position of demanding ethical scientific testing, transparency, labelling and consumer choice. Rachel had expected to have just a handful of minutes. Briefly before the show, she was told, that the segment would be .... minutes. Rachel wondered whether she would actually have enough to say about her cause to fill this time. But she didn't have to. She was actually not given a real opportunity to talk about her position on GMOs. Instead, she was presented untrue claims about GMOs, and attacked for her position, in an attempt to discredit her as a person. but the debate showed many other things... viewers observed bullying, one-sided, stating false facts and pro's of GMOs that have long been debunked as false claims and myths, safety regulations and supposed studies that anyone recognizes as inappropriate, ... and which 13 year old Rachel instantly returned to be false ... but that the host actually spent half the show throwing allegations and accusations at Rachel for ... discrediting her as a person ... that she stayed admiringly on top of... (stuck to the simple, honourable position and demand for simple labelling and appropriate long-term scientific studies) ... that make this video a lesson reflecting precisely what's happening in society between pro GMO advocates and profiteers and the sound,
Busy as a Bee, Rachel is following invitations, speaking at the UNITED NATIONS Day of Peace, national food conferences, global GMO telesummits, and possibly - a school near you! She just got invited to play a role in a movie. It's hard to keep up with her! Follow her facebook stream for daily inspiration, information, campaigns, and supporting the movement. www.facebook.com/KidsRightToKnow?fref=ts
As this booklet is being edited, Rachel is speaking at the March Against Monsanto of October 2013, challenging the Minister of Health, for a live television debate with her and Thierry Vrain (a scientist and former pro-GMO advocate turned anti-GMO activist) about the health hazards of GMOs, reliable scientific testing of GMO crop long-term impacts on animal and human organisms and health. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMMITqBpClE
"THIS IS THE TIME FOR ACTION!" The people want labelling! 93% of participants in a New York Times telephone poll want GMO foods to be labelled. Half said they would not to buy genetically modified fruits or vegetables, 2/3's said they would not buy modified fish or meat. http://nyti.ms/1i4S5HO BUT THEY NEED TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE! Currently, 80-90% of foods in the USA contain genetically modified ingredients! Labelling will ONLY happen, if citizens push for the laws! In the USA, this is done by citizen propositions. If they win a majority, they become law!
I Prop 37 in California missed the margin by a few percent, due to millions worth of misleading advertizing by GMO corporations - but the case has sparked a nationwide citizen's movement, advancing propositions throughout the nation! The next one is Prop 522 in Washington state! Their website is highly informative. It offers explanation of GMO labelling relevance for farmers, citizens, for the state's major crops, apples, fish ... check it out! It is a perfect online learning environment. Also, the facebook stream is super informative! Website: http://yeson522.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/yeson522?fref=ts
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Do you know the basics about GMO labelling? Take the quiz: www.yesmagazine.org/planet/gmo-labeling-quiz
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What is the food industry doing? Flooding television and the internet with misleading ads, and - would you believe it? - breaking the law. SEATTLE– Attorney General Bob Ferguson today filed suit in Thurston County Superior Court alleging that the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) violated the state’s campaign disclosure laws. Ferguson alleges the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its contributors. The funds were spent to express opposition to Initiative 522, a measure requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods, seeds and seed products in Washington.
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The Grocery Manufacturers Association is a trade association, based in Washington DC, representing more than 300 food, beverage and consumer product companies. It is the biggest donor to the No on I-522 campaign. Full statement www.atg.wa.gov/pressrelease.aspx?id=31448#.UmF313Cux4R
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On the GMA's board are presidents of Coca Cola, Kellog's Nestlé, etc. List of illegal donors: http://bit.ly/1i4PRrY
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Huge GMO News Ocean Robbins is giving an overview of what's happening in an intense month. Ocean is co-founder of YES! Youth for Environmental Sanity, an exceptional youth leadership community. For a breathtaking impression of their work, view their video here: www.youth-leader.org/spark true to YES!' credo: "Giving all that we are, on behalf of everything we love," Ocean recently passed on leadership of YES! to Shilpa Jain, and has set out to bring sanity to the food system. Here's news from the Food Revolution Network, an 100,000 strong network of activist consumers.
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To read this article with many reference links included, go here www.huffingtonpost.com/ocean-robbins/huge-gmo-news_b_4129311.html It hasn't been a good week for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry.
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Just three days ago, Mexico banned genetically engineered corn. Citing the risk of imminent harm to the environment, a Mexican judge ruled that, effective immediately, no genetically engineered corn can be planted in the country. This means that companies like Monsanto will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country's borders.
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At the same time, the County Council for the island of Kauai passed a law that mandates farms to disclose pesticide use and the presence of genetically modified crops. The bill also requires a 500-foot buffer zone near medical facilities, schools and homes -- among other locations.
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And the big island of Hawaii County Council gave preliminary approval to a bill that prohibits open air cultivation, propagation, development or testing of genetically engineered crops or plants. The bill, which still needs further confirmation to become law, would also prohibit biotech companies from operating on the Big Island. But perhaps the biggest bombshell of all is now unfolding in Washington state. The mail-in ballot state's voters are already weighing in on Initiative 522, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Knowing full well that 93 percent of the American public supports GMO labeling, and that if one state passes it, many others are likely to follow, entrenched agribusiness interests are pulling out all the stops to try to squelch yet another state labeling effort. This time, however, things aren't going quite as planned. On Wednesday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Feguson filed a lawsuit against the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). The GMA, a lobby for the junk food industry, has been by far the largest donor to efforts to defeat the labeling initiative. The lawsuit alleges that the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its contributors. The source of the money has now been exposed, and it turns out to be Pepsico, Coca-Cola, NestleUSA, General Mills and a few other junk food companies. The lawsuit reveals that GMA leadership held a series of secret meetings to plot how to perpetrate a money laundering scheme and illegally hide member donations from Washington state voters, in direct violation of campaign disclosure laws.
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Unlike the junk food companies that feared consumer backlash, Monsanto hasn't even bothered to hide the more than $4 million the company has given to the "no" campaign. In fact, GMA, Monsanto and a handful of other corporate donors have now broken a state record by pouring more than $17 million into their effort to stop Washington's GMO labeling ballot initiative. Voting is already underway in Washington, and the final ballots will be cast on November 5. The "yes" side is ahead in the most recent polls, but supporters of the right to know fear that a barrage of heavily funded and misleading ads could sour voters to the initiative. They remember that just last year, California's Proposition 37 was well ahead in the polls until Monsanto and its allies spent more than $46 million on their campaign in the Golden State. All this label fighting and money laundering leads to some very significant questions. Why are Monsanto and the junk food industry willing to spend many tens of millions of dollars every year trying to keep you in the dark about your food? What doesn't big food want you to know? And what are they afraid might happen if you did? Monsanto tells us that their products are about the best thing to come along since sliced bread. For years they've been promising that GMOs would reduce pesticide use, increase yields, reduce water consumption, and offer foods that are more tasty and more nutritious. I wish they were right. But in the 20 years since GMO crops first came on the market, studies have found that they have led to higher pesticide use, and no meaningful improvement in flavor, nutrition, yield or water requirements. Instead, what they've created are plants that are engineered to withstand massive dosing of toxic herbicides, and plants that function as living pesticide factories. Monsanto's Bt. corn, for example, is actually registered with the EPA as a pesticide. With concern about GMOs growing fast, and with the public being pummeled with vast amounts of misinformation, there is a tremendous need for clear, accurate and reliable information about GMOs. In response, the 100,000+ member Food Revolution Network and the Institute for Responsible Technology are co-sponsoring a free online GMO Mini-Summit. From October 25-27, some of the top GMO experts on the planet will be providing insights and clear calls to action in this teleseminar that is also being broadcast without charge on the Internet. Monsanto probably isn't too happy about the prospect of tens of thousands of people getting informed and mobilized. But if you love life, safe food, and the truth, then you might want to check it out. And if you want to lend a hand to getting out the vote in the state of Washington, you can sign up to volunteer here. Nobody knows what's going to happen in Washington between now and November 5. But from Mexico, to Hawaii and to the 64 nations that already have GMO labeling, this tide just might be turning. Maybe we, the people, do get a say in what we know, and what we eat, after all. Ocean Robbins is co-author of Voices of the Food Revolution, and serves as adjunct professor for Chapman University and CEO and co-host (with best-selling author John Robbins) of the 100,000+ member Food Revolution Network. The GMO Mini-Summit starts October 25. Find out more here.
Besides, in October - A school textbook promoting GMO myths has been unveiled on social media! While pretending to be offering balanced views pro and contra GM foods, it produced ONLY pro-GMO claims, including the myth about achieving global food security. The storm of outrage on the publisher's facebook page made them apologize and announce a revised version. - Hundreds of Canadian federal scientists report that they had been asked to exclude or alter technical information in government documents for non-scientific reasons, and thousands say they had been prevented from responding to the media or public. - The prestigious World Food Prize has been given to executives of Monsanto and Syngenta. Wait a minute: "The World Food Prize is also sponsored by agricultural biotechnology companies: NestlĂŠ, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, DuPont Pioneer. In 2008 alone, Monsanto gave five millions of dollars to the World Food Prize. The prize is also sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation." Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Prize#Criticism Historically unprecedented revolt and criticism by the global scientific and civic community have followed! One response is on the next page. But the really big response is - an open letter signed by 91 scientists of world status, clearly stating that there is NO CONSENSUS (agreement) that GMOs were safe for consumption, or beneficial for raising harvests. They clearly state that many pro-GMO claims are FALSE, and many studies on pro-GMO websites are wrongly quoted. That's something! It discredits the World Food Prize laureates, award committee, and pro-GMO lobby groups to a degree that makes it difficult to believe that the false statements were based on lack of knowledge, but either result from utter ignorance of the world, professional incompetence in comprehending studies - or - that they are consciously telling lies. That's close to criminal. THIS STATEMENT is included later in the book. Such a statement has been hard to find, to-date. Usually, one had second hand information by journalists and activists. This comes from THE global authorities in the field. But - YOU SHALL MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND, and get an idea about these global experts, first. Whether *YOU* TRUST THEM. But before, I would like you to (a) learn more about successful food solutions (b) the amazing people behind them to develop your own expertise about food solutions and a sense for WHO to TRUST, so you can make up YOUR OWN MIND and INFORMED DECISIONS.
In honoring the seed biotechnology industry, this year’s World Food Prize — to many, the most prestigious prize in food and agriculture — betrays the award’s own mandate to emphasize “the importance of a nutritious and sustainable food supply for all people.” This statement is supported by the 81 Councillors of the World Future Council and Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award whose names appear below. For the full statement go to www.worldfuturecouncil.org/worldfoodprize2013.html#.UmVEsnCux4Q For a video response by Frances Moore-Lappé and Vandana Shiva, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozsYign5n2Y You can sense the surprise and outrage that the 2013 prize has caused even among these seasoned global leaders, who have seen a lot of bad and good things over the past fourty years.
Hundreds of federal scientists said in a survey that they had been asked to exclude or alter technical information in government documents for non-scientific reasons, and thousands said they had been prevented from responding to the media or public. The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which commissioned the survey from Environics Research "to gauge the scale and impact of 'muzzling' and political interference among federal scientists," released the results Monday at a news conference. PIPSC represents 60,000 public servants across the country, including 20,000 scientists, in federal departments and agencies, including scientists involved in food and consumer product safety and environmental monitoring. In all, the union sent invitations to participate in the survey to 15,398 federal scientists in June. A total of 4,069 responded. 24 per cent of respondents said they “sometimes” or “often” were asked to exclude or alter technical information in federal government documents for non-scientific reasons. Most often, the request came from their direct supervisors, followed by business or industry, other government departments, politically appointed staff and public interest advocates. 50 per cent of respondents said they were aware of “cases where the health and safety of Canadians" (or environmental sustainability) have been compromised because of political interference with their scientific work. 71 agreed that "our ability to develop policy law and programs that are based on scientific evidence and facts has been compromised by political interference." 81 per cent thought underfunding compromised those abilities. 48 per cent said they were aware of cases where their department or agency “has suppressed or declined to release information, and where this led to incomplete, inaccurate or misleading impressions.” 74 per cent of respondents thought the sharing of government science findings with the Canadian public has become too restricted. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT www.cbc.ca/news/technology/muzzling-of-federal-scientists-widespread-survey-suggests-1.2128859?cmp=fbtl
You see, these are turbulent times, and youth play a DECISIVE ROLE in tipping the trend in the direction they choose. Rachel invites you to join or found a KIDS RIGHT TO KNOW CLUB and promote the labelling and proper testing of genetically modified foods and MUCH MORE You'll be amazed what's possible. Everything from labelling GMOs to creating EDIBLE LANDSCAPES!
MODEL SOLUTIONS for Healthy Food Abundance for All
IN THE CITY Let's start with the Free Stuff, then citizen initiatives, schools, city farmers food entrepreneurs and integrated food & energy systems
Mission Statement HARVEST FOOD + FIGHT HUNGER + BUILD COMMUNITY Food Forward is a volunteer powered grassroots group of Angelenos who care about reconnecting to our food system and making change around urban hunger. They convene at properties that they have been invited to and harvest their excess fruits and vegetables, donating 100% to local food pantries across southern California. Combined, their numerous distribution partners provide food to over 40,000 clients a month across Southern California. Since forming in 2009, they have harvested hundreds of properties with 100% of what they pick going to feed the hungry. To see their total harvested poundage to date, see the counter on the home page! Visit their site for great info and an excellent video! http://foodforward.org/
How about a nice climb in the tree on your week-end?
I like the idea, the good company, and the excercise.
Good fun, good feel with plenty of nice people.
Getting ready to ship the treasure.
Off it goes, to lots of grateful destinations. Farmers donate leftover fruits at the end of the market day. "There's always something left over. All this would go to waste. It's a pleasure to know that the good food we produced on the fields with our hands is going to serve people who value it. I love their idea. It's a great group to volunteer with! With so much enthusiasm, helping hands and happy tree owners, huge amounts of good food are going to the ones who cannot afford them. They may be eating better than you do fresh, no chemicals... Is it time to start Food Forward in your place? It's easy. And you'll get your share!
VIDEOS Website: www.donatedontdump.org LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
VIDEOS LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
You see, there's more to agriculture than just eating the tiny grains. The other plant products serve as compost, energy source and more. Energy from crops, like biofuels, have been hyped a lot over the past decade, and very, very badly implemented - ignoring the warning voices saying that "using corn for biofuels will raise food prices, and it actually has a very bad efficiency. Even if we planted the entire planet with corn, it would not power our vehicle fleet. There exist more efficient energy plants and methods than open fields! One of them is this:
turns organic materials like hay and straw into coal - in just a few hours, using water, heat and pressure. I learned about it during a lunch table chat with the president of the german national network for hydrothermal carbonization at a reception at the President of Germany for the National Day for the Environment. He explained, that the process is a hundred years old, and students can experience it at some colleges. It has been rediscovered a few years ago as a potentially CO2-neutral and part of a diversified energy infrastructure - especially when coupled with the new agricultural method of hydroponics - growing foods in nutrient rich water basins. Here's the approach: You have containers performing the hydrothermal carbonization. The 'process water' is cleansed in rows of shallow water basins, running on multiple levels (vertical farming). At the same time, these basins are used for cultivating fast-growing lentils, which in turn can be used as input to the carbonization. Such energy centres poten-tially produce 10 to 100 times as much output as compared to a conventional outdoor hectare, or acre. The researchers estimate that such centres could generate an entire town's energy, by simply using leftovers from farming and forestry, without competing with conventional uses for compost etc. It would take 10 million Euros of investment. There is need for more research about the
cleansing, first, but the approach shows us that expensive and dirty 'old energy' is outdated, and solutions can pop up *fast*, not in a hundred years. Switch from thinking flat and superficial to deep, vertical and interconnected. We also briefly discussed the virtues of
TERRA PRETA a mix of dirt soil, ashes and compost, invented by an ancient civilization in the Amazon, can revitalize depleted soils and raise harvests up to 16 times! You can research about it online. We discussed that universities should not only play with it, but develop entrepreneurial development partnerships with regions in need - and that there is also need for it in Europe. He pointed out, though, that Terra Preta is not the easy fix as it is presented in enthusiastic development expert groups. It has been found to require very different mixes for different soils - or the 'miracle' won't happen - and much research is yet to be done in this field. I know good people supporting Terra Preta, and their websites. I do not remember ever seeing this important fact. I like very much that he said this. This gentleman's look at things is deep, complex and responsible. It makes me trust in what he says about hydrothermal carbonization, and I would like to see efforts at testing it for real.
But Food is more than eating. Food is also tied to COMMUNITY, PEACE, HEALTH and LOCAL ECONOMIES Public space, today, and our neighbourhoods are often dull, boring, not very awesome, nor is ur interaction with people out there. The Project for Public Spaces www.pps.org, a veteran in creating "City Districts We Love" has found that public farmers markets, nice cafes and eateries are among the best things you can do. Here's more for creating vibrant and thriving neighbourhoods, friendly streets, fun public life, and no worries about making a living. It comes with an incredible sense of empowerment and changing the rules WHO is actually DESIGNING the cities we live in.
As garden activist Donald Loggins sums it up, “One person, at the right place at the right time, set a whole bunch of stuff in motion.” The right time was 1973 and the right person was an artist named Liz Christy. She had a studio near the corner of Bowery and East Houston, in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Christy assembled some friends and some tools and hung a sheet on the empty, trashed lot's fence saying, optimistically, “Watch this plot of land be turned into a garden in 24 hours.” It took more like three months. “We thought it was kind of crazy,” recalls Loggins. “You did not want to go into this neighborhood. One time, when I was helping here, I heard gunshots. None of us envisioned we would be here 33 years from now.” After hauling out trash, piled six feet high, and leveling the gravel underneath, the impromptu landscapers trucked in soil. They marked out sixty raised beds and gathered horse droppings, from a nearby mounted police station, for use as fertilizer. They planted seedlings scavenged from a parks department giveaway. The neighbors, overwhelmingly African-American and Hispanic, were skeptical of a passel of Anglo kids in hippie clothes. But as they saw the Bowery Houston Community Farm Garden take shape, local teens pitched in. Within a few months, they were taking home armloads of tomatoes and cucumbers. Instead of moving out, people started moving in. Empty buildings became occupied. As the virtuous cycle gained momentum, the quality of life went up, and the former slum attracted more and more residents. City officials were less enthused, and made noises about clearing out the horticultural trespassers. But Christy, who worked part-time in public relations, took her case to the local media. After the New York Daily News ran an article and a photo spread on the garden, officials backed off. For a dollar a year, they leased the lot to Christy’s group, which had dubbed itself the Green Guerillas. The Daily News story exploded like one of Christy’s seed bombs, scattering her ideas across the five boroughs. Soon, she was working full-time, consulting with other neighborhood groups. One wildcat garden led to another, as they sprouted far beyond the Lower East Side. Even the city belatedly jumped on the bandwagon. Starting in 1978, a parks department program called Green Thumb offered plants, tools and horticultural expertise. It also offered dollar-a-year leases to community groups that wanted to cultivate vacant lots. As one garden led to another, the cycles of urban decay began to reverse themselves. The first urban oases bred community pride and stronger ties among neighbors, inspiring still more gardens. At the height of the movement, in the late 1980s, the city hosted more than 800 community gardens. A survey by Green Thumb found the gardeners were growing over $1 million worth of produce each year. If their rows were laid end-to-end, they would stretch 67 miles. The concept spread beyond the five boroughs. In 1976, a Brooklyn congressman persuaded the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support urban gardening with grants and technical assistance. The program eventually covered 22 other cities. New York gardeners joined those from smaller programs in other cities in 1979 to form the American Community Garden Association.
Video http://bit.ly/171MT8n Article http://bit.ly/171MOBu Green Guerillas www.greenguerillas.org Green Thumb NYC www.greenthumbnyc.org LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS
Did it begin the day that Pam, Mary and 60 citizens met to think about how to improve life in their town and fix the world? People didn't know each other, but by the end of the talk, the room exploded with excitement. Or did it start when Mary Clear tore down her garden wall and put up a sign, inviting passing citizens to come into her garden, serve themselves and take home fresh fruits and veggies as they pleased? It would take people six months to get it and dare pick fruits, but since then there's been no stopping Incredible Edible from spreading throughout town, around businesses, the police station, public and private lots, the riverbank, train station, schools - everywhere, and around the globe. Today, Todmorden has more than one hundred open lots. Artists are involved designing information for people who only recognize food in plastic containers - "when it looks like this, don't touch it, let it be" - "when it looks like this, pick it, take home, enjoy!" Former public land used as dog toilets have turned into landscapes growing fish, and orchard with bees. All schools of the town are involved. And all sorts of professionals and academics love getting involved. The project has a amazing cascading effects - the free, public food has raised awareness for good, local foods that half of local farmers say they have higher incomes now and have added great products to their offers. "The rules are rubbish. We never asked permission. The prisons of England are full. We just do it. We let the policemen put up the signs. It looks good!" More than 30 towns across England have started Incredible Edible programs, 200 global groups exist in the US, New Zealand, Hong Kong...! None of this demands money or bureaucracy. But you have to change your thinking. Stop planting prickly plants around businesses, but edible landscapes so that our kids walk past their foods every day, and everyone can get involved! We do not have many stories from England. You have to meet Pam and Mary, - incredibly lovely, funny English women - they are a lesson in leadership!
VIDEOS Pam Warhust TED Talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KmKoj4RSZw "Todmorden is a small town surviving in a supermarket culture. It lies in a steep valley with a micro-climate of rain, mist, and rain." Mary Clear's opening of her Peas & Love Talk in Poland www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUUJsb4V5aU#t=86 Great article on their blog, showing news journalists around town: http://bit.ly/1bvwu9G Another article: http://bit.ly/1bvv3s6 You find loads more videos and resources on their website Website: www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk The global network: http://incredibleediblenetwork.org.uk LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
Sandwiched between 15th Ave. S. and the play fields at the SW edge of Jefferson Park in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle are seven acres of lonely, sloping lawn that have sat idly in the hands of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for the better part of a century. At least until this spring, when the land that has only ever known the whirring steel of city mowers will begin a complete transformation into seven acres of edible landscape and community park space known as the Beacon Food Forest. The end goal is an urban oasis of public food: Visitors to the corner of 15th Ave S. and S. Dakota Street will be greeted by a literal forest — an entire acre will feature large chestnuts and walnuts in the overstory, full-sized fruit trees like big apples and mulberries in the understory, and berry shrubs, climbing vines, herbaceous plants, and vegetables closer to the ground. Further down the path an edible arboretum full of exotic looking persimmons, mulberries, Asian pears, and Chinese haws will surround a sheltered classroom for community workshops. Looking over the whole seven acres, you'll see playgrounds and kid space full of thornless mini edibles adjacent to community gardening plots, native plant areas, a big timber-frame gazebo and gathering space with people barbecuing, a recreational field, and food as far as you can see. The entire project will be built around the concept of permaculture — an ecological design system, philosophy, and set of ethics and principles used to create perennial, self-sustaining landscapes and settlements that build ecological knowledge and skills in communities. The concept of a food forest is a core concept of permaculture design derived from wild food ecosystems, where land often becomes forest if left to its own devices. In a food forest, everything from the tree canopy to the roots is edible or useful in some way. "If this is successful," explains Margarett Harrison, the lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest, "it is going to set such a precedent for the city of Seattle, and for the whole Northwest." She may be understating it. There is no other project of Beacon Food Forest's scale and design on public land in the United States — a forest of food, for the people, by the people.
VIDEO. Beacon Food Forest. http://vimeo.com/43583846 Wikipedia: A good summary at http://bit.ly/171L635 Website: http://beaconfoodforest.weebly.com LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Forget Chanel, Cartier and H&M, the buzz on Ginza — long Tokyo’s most glitzy shopping and entertainment district — is now all about . . . honeybees. That’s because more than 300,000 Western and Japanese honeybees are being kept there on the roof of the 11-story Pulp & Paper Building by members of the Ginza Honey Bee Project. Every morning, the bees take to the air from their wooden hives and disperse throughout the neighborhood in search of flowers from which they collect pollen and sugary nectar — returning later with the pollen collected in “baskets” on their hind legs and the nectar, from which they make honey, stored in a specialized extra stomach. This year already, the group has collected more than 760 kg of honey, so making a solid contribution to its production in a country where the shortage of bees and beekeepers is a serious concern, according to Atsuo Tanaka, co-founder of the three-year-old project. Ginza is an urban paradise for honeybees, Atsuo Tanaka says. “What really blew my mind was that, while honeybees are having difficulty surviving in the countryside (due to the prevalence of deadly mites there), Ginza is a surprisingly suitable environment,” he said. Surprisingly suitable? Even if Tokyo’s air is polluted with exhaust fumes? In fact, it’s not fumes but pesticides, said Iwate beekeeper Fujiwara, that is now the leading threat to honeybees. Also, as a bee’s life span is only about a month, he explained, whatever toxins they might get from the air don’t accumulate to any great extent in their bodies. “Honeybees only fly in the sky for a week to 10 days,” Fujiwara said. “They spend the rest of their lives cleaning their hives.” The fact that the population of Ginza’s bees keeps growing shows that they are healthier than bees in the countryside, where they have been dying in huge numbers in recent years, Fujiwara added. He suspects this is due to heavy use of pesticides in rice and vegetable farming in rural areas. Tanaka, for his part, says Ginza’s advantages include the proximity to the Imperial Palace, in and around which many different plants, flowers and trees provide bees with bountiful supplies of nectar — including cherry blossoms in spring and tulip trees’ greenish-yellow flowers in early summer. Moreover, horse chestnut trees along Ginza’s shopping streets, and the Japanese pagoda trees now flowering white in Yurakucho, also feed the bees well.
VIDEO. Bees on Tokyo rooftops http://bit.ly/171Jt5E Articles: http://bit.ly/1bvJImV and http://bit.ly/1bvKalg Website: www.gin-pachi.jp A Guide to Beekeeping (via Incredible Edible) www.fragrancex.com/fragrance-information/beekeeping-adults-kids.html
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VIDEOS 1 minute visit to a Green School interior! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChxnUhf9qBY Stephen's TEDx Manhattan Talk. Legend! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcSL2yN39JM website: www.greenbronxmachine.com facebook (super lush inspiration!) www.facebook.com/green.BX.machine?fref=ts LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
VIDEO award winning short film www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IbODJiEM5A television news report www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM LEARNING TIPS Visit their website, click around, explore Visit the Facts & Stats page. It's awesome. ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
VIDEO 2 min video http://vimeo.com/15997939 5min tour www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfScfxkmWw4 25min documentary www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5zP4WPgcqY Website: www.growingpower.org Article: http://bit.ly/1aFvkHO part 2: http://bit.ly/1aFvxup TAKE ACTION level 1 level 2: Start your own garden, or consider finding a community garden, or hooking up with a small local farm. level 3: This is the perfect school project, run by students only, with sponsors, or even local farming partners sharing input and revenue: Your capital are space, working hands, spirit, great media presence, and a fabulous investment in the future! If you are not allowed to compete "on the market", you can definitely feed your school from it! And that's something!
VIDEOS 2 min introduction: http://vimeo.com/13291391 26 min documentary: www.growingagreenerworld.com/rooftop-farm-new-york Getting started on a roof: http://vimeo.com/47337635 The fruits of your work: http://vimeo.com/40399899#at=155 website: www.brooklyngrangefarm.com article: http://bit.ly/19DNiu1 LEARNING TIPS View their videos. Browse their website's about, FAQ and photo gallery. They give you a good idea how this works! Share the research in your group. Discuss your discoveries. Your open questions are likely to be answered by your friends. ACTION TIPS Level 1: Dream up a concrete project. Choose a real roof near you, sketch plans for the installation, foods, research costs. Level 2: Start a rooftop garden / far. Invite local businesses to join the expedition. You are likely to find enthusiasts! Level 3: Invite citizens to celebrate fresh food dinners in your farm. Make sure to DOCUMENT all your steps, from first plans, planning party, farmer meetings, building, growing, harvest, selling, celebration with your friends, partners and guests! TIP: What else to do with fresh produce in the city? Start an awesome salsa company: http://vimeo.com/17968873 http://kck.st/19DQKEZ
VIDEO Mohamed Hage TEDx Talk www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSQm09twKEE Article: http://bit.ly/1gH9Y1E Website: http://lufa.com/ Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufa_Farms LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
SUMMARY COMMENTS :-) You see, there are plenty of solutions and untapped potentials in cities, sitting idle, bored and asking for smart change - from citizens to kids, teachers, entrepreneurs and mayors. Feeding a city district's population to a large percentage by good, local foods is no big deal! The other 10-30% of required luxury foods, like bananas, coffee, rice, can be added. That's okay. And by relieving the huge agricultural surfaces on the planet from 60% of the load caused by industrial farming, we also unleash cascading effects of ecosystem restoration, new, gentler businesses, empowered youth, holistic education close to nature and actually "doing things, with societal relevance". Can you imagine the learning dimensions experienced by Green Bronx Machinists? Wow. Wow! GOOD CHANGE IS SIMPLE These can be done in a million city districts around the globe. They don't require much financial investment, - just people, 'social capital,' and building on the awareness of problems. Do you see why so many innovators, and people with global horizons say NO to the old harmful ways? What else can you say, if you know what's really going on, when you know the people doing it? When you witness the positive ripple effects in the population? The same solid knowledge can build up in you: The solutions EXIST, and the people driving them seem like fun folks to be with. TRUSTWORTHY people. THE BEST NEWS is that these changemakers have learned it themselves, know what it takes to start it, as a youth, a citizen, a teacher, and are sharing their knowledge with a new genre of excellent media and resources. It begins with making this knowledge, vision and potentials widely available, to citizens, city councils, entrepreneurs, good policy-makers, administration and education. BEE THE CHANGE and YOUTHLEADER equip you with toos, methods and support to do this.
In 'Urban Abundance' you have learned about a lot of solutions that you knew nothing of, or never considered, but - what if Growing Power was in every district? - what if every school had a Green Machine? - what if every town and park were edible? Many of today's problems would shrink to small, or become obsolete. You have seen the trustworthy people doing it. THE SAME IS TRUE about Food Abundance in rural and food producing regions There is a lot of wrong assumptions around. Part ignorance of what's really happening of good and trustworthy sources, honourable people and expert groups. Part lies. You did not know about solutions, because of the way how information is processed in the unsustainable society. It's understandable, but not ok, and has to change
TIME TO LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENING OUT OF TOWN
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
Since this matter is a little further from your home and imagination, this chapter shows MODEL SOLUTIONS and GENERAL PRINCIPLES the 'science' behind the solutions
And then, we look at the perspectives of people who have spent a LIFE in these global environments documenting, refining and spreading model solutions in dozens of nations, with governments, and organizations representing millions of farmers. So, after the genius local changemakers, you'll get to know distinguished experts of global recognition and their UNITED NATIONS reports providing insights in the top level global expert community above and beyond petty bargains, distorted facts, fabricated myths or lies spread by special interest groups in the backward provinces of planet Earth. Trustworthy People. Respected by millions of farmers, Real, Honest People. Here come things that corporations don't do. And which they don't tell you about.
With 3 million people, this is one of Brazil's largest cities. Its Secretariat of Food Supply (SMAAB) has helped the city realize food as a Right of Citizenship, providing free, fresh healthy meals to school children, cutting malnutrition and infant mortality by as much as a 75%.
How much does it cost to uphold the City's right of Food? 0.6% of the city's budget The investment brings huge profits in return. Less violence = less investment in police; that's a huge factor! Less fear and stress at home = more healthy families Better health = less healthcare costs Better education = better economy Vibrant public spaces = better community Good Governance = A City where Citizens and Government are One This project was started in 1993, when a party was elected which cared for the wellbeing of citizens. They involved citizens in decision-making about the investment of a part of the city's budget ("Participatory Budgeting"), which was extremely effective, since citizens are experts about the needs of their district. Another initiative is the Zero Hunger program. It has been so very successful, that in 2001, implementation of a Zero Hunger program started on national level throughout Brazil. Brazil met the Millenium Development Goal of ending extreme hunger 10 years before target date.
Article: www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/the-city-that-ended-hunger
Videos: History & facts of the program www.youtube.com/watch?v=fegBrwfHZ80 Zero Hunger, Brazil's Dream www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0D1gJjOLpU Brazil's Zero Hunger program, 3min40 video, with Brazil's minister for social development www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlExLpFZfwA Future Policy Award 5 min: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1YkjDFskjI 12 min clip: hwww.youtube.com/watch?v=YNU-aRu45Gs ____ Free Download of the ZERO HUNGER, a Brazilian Experience www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap339e/ap339e00.htm
*The people's well-being does not only depend on Gross National Product, an incredibly bugged and outdated concept for measuring a nation's economic prosperity. Going to war, for example, boosts military production and thus, your GNP. Government and media will tell you your country is doing exceptionally well, this year, - while kids and families are dying. Stupid! Stupid! That's your country's experts in government. Yes, yours, because every government uses this outdated and stupid approach. It is a symptom of illiteracy in both economy and governance. And a symptom of incredible ignorance, of not significantly moving in direction for a new, meaningful index.
Two states of India are following the example. Sikkim, in the Northeast, is working on going 100% organic by 2015. http://bit.ly/16i29bg Kerala, a water rich state in the South of India, works on going 100% organic by 2020. http://bit.ly/16i25Z2 Both state governments are motivated by the benefits of - land conservation - public health - healthy food for statewide sale and export - food sovereignity This wonderful move may be facilitated by the absence of national industrial food lobbies and powerful companies dominating government decision-making. In more industrialized nations, such a move seems impossible - even though science, public health, escalating health impacts, and the guiding principles of democracy and the most state's constitutional responsibility for safeguarding citizen's health, environmental integrity, the air and climate show that it is the only meaningful thing to do in the interest of all. It will happen, eventually. But it requires that a population decides to say NO that 30% of their children will die from cancer, another 30% from heart disease, diabetes etc., which are all linked to unhealthy habits and substances in food, air and water.
Gunter's Zero Emission Research Initiative, ZERI, has sparked creative thinking and off-spring projects around the globe over the past two decades. His book Blue Economy presents a selection of 100 model solutions, designed by the way the Planet works (Blue), not just a simplistic green tech approach. Among the solutions are: - compostable titanium steel from silk, while greening the desert with mulberry trees, creating jobs and crops at the same time. - replacing heart surgery with $25 plasters - using nature's nurses, maggots, in hospitals, reducing healing times and costs - generating electricity from firewood, in off-grid villages - harvesting water hyacinths, considered a pest in rivers, as raw material for furniture; instead of killing the river with herbicides One of the most amazing food solutions is combining Coffee and Musrhoom production. That's on the next page.
videos websites By the way, Gunter about GMO's: "I am not against GMOs. I am for the best solution. And GMOs are simply not the best solution. There exist much better ways, for the planet, and the people."
Chido grew up as an Aids orphan in Zimbabwe. When she learned about the potential of growing mush-rooms on coffee manure for doubling or tripling coffee farmers’ income, Chido turned into a passionate coffee fungi expert. Since, she has trained thousands of women in several countries, entered partnerships and released her own Chido’s Blend. Yet, Chido has only started! This simple great practice model shall become global standard to lift 50 million people out of poverty! It takes around $25,000 investment to help an entire region get started. A school can do that. This rocks!
Videos Article
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Rice is a very important crop, feeding a quarter of the global population. Global warming, the melting of Himalayan glaciers, and an ensuing loss of rich annual water supply pose a serious threat to Asia's major food source in the near future. Two priorities have emerged. a) The stabilization of healthy harvests b) No more pollution of rivers, aquifers and air through pesticides, industry exhause waters, erosion, deforestation, unsafe extraction methods in mining or gas fracking... Here come two model solutions - successful on large scale in two major rice cultivation regions: Vietnam, and the Philippines. Farming communities, ministries, global farming networks and the United Nations are reshifting focus on natural farming methods, coupled with people powered innovation.
Farmers have mastered growing a carefully considered mix of carp and tilapia in wet rice fields: the fish eat weeds, bugs and molluscs that carry pests; their waste acts as fertilizer; and they stir up sediments that also release nutrients that help the rice grow. This integrated system provides benefits that each component by itself would not be able to achieve, creating ‘more than the sum of its parts’. It has been sustained without the need for artificial inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Another feature of the rice-and-fish system is that it is more resilient to changes of conditions than either of the two components alone. For example, under normal conditions the expected harvest is rice and fish. However, if there is a drought or a flood, the fish can be transferred to a pond or river and there is still the chance of a harvest of fish. If water supply is normal but the fish die for whatever reason, there is still a rice harvest. In contrast, monocultural systems face a greater risk of failure under increasingly variable, and extreme, climatic conditions. The rice-and-fish practice has been proven over generations, spread from farmer to farmer, without the need for government agricultural extension (advisory) services or civil society organizations. The components—that is, the particular species of rice and fish—and the technology—the irrigation system—were both familiar to farmers, as were the economic and environmental risks and benefits. By contrast, so-called ‘improved’ farming systems—with unfamiliar trees, crops or technologies— quite often fail. For example, if a visiting technician sees that it makes sense to grow even familiar plants along the land’s contours, there might be good reasons why the farmer hasn’t done so already. One of the most important lessons to be drawn from the traditional rice-and-fish farmers of northwestern Viet Nam is similar to that from complex agroforestry systems: that future agricultural systems should not just provide a single product, such as rice, but be designed to produce a range of integrated services, such as rice, fish, pest control, nutrient recycling, fodder, clean water, carbon stock and landscape beauty.
Full article: http://bit.ly/1cSUdVk
Danilo Atilano leads us onto the moist soil from which his waist-high stalks of rice grow. It is four o’clock in the afternoon. He has selected this time to meet because this is when “the vegetation is wet with dew and comes alive with insects.” In Hollywood, spiders star in horror movies; in Atilano’s rice field, they are “friends” doing good deeds like eating larvae of “bad” stem borers. We point with concern to bright red snail eggs on the soil. Atilano shrugs them off. Snails are pests during planting, he explains, because they eat young rice-shoots. Close to harvest, they become weed-eating friends. 2 million farmers around the world, including Atilano, have switched from chemical to organic methods. As we walk through his hectare of neat, nearly mature, green rice stalks, he says proudly: “It is all zero-chem,” the local term for organic. He tells us about the traditional seeds he has planted. With chemical agriculture, farmers must buy new hybrid seeds each planting season, a costly proposition. The traditional seeds Atilano and other organic farmers in his area use are saved from the previous harvest or are “in-bred” locally to work best in local soils and ecosystems. Atilano complains that, over the years, the government’s agricultural agents have distributed free hybrid seeds and focused seminars and trainings on chemical agriculture rather than supporting zero-chem farming. Organic farming’s simple economics prompted Atilano to make the switch from chemical agriculture eight years ago. He calculates that once he shifted to zero-chem farming, his costs fell from about $400 each plantingto-harvest cycle to roughly $160, while his yields dipped only slightly. Bottom line: he earns much more money. Each of the more than two-dozen organic farming families we speak with in the Philippines similarly reports lower costs. Later, when we ask Atilano and other local organic farmers to respond to allegations that they cannot deliver the higher yields required to feed a growing and hungry world, they recount with disdain the 1960s and 1970s, when the new hybrid rice varieties ushered in the so-called “green revolution.” Initially, most say, expensive seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation often produced increased yields. But productivity fell over the years as soils became compacted and depleted of nutrients. Faced with the high costs of inputs, farmers took on debt or decreased pesticide and fertilizer use, reducing yields further. As debts grew, some had to sell their cherished land. Numbers support the anecdotal evidence we have been gathering. “Organic rice yields of those who have been practicing already for [three to five] years now ranges from 100 to 130 sacks a hectare, which is higher than hybrid rice yields,” Philippine Development Assistance Programme Director Jerry Pacturan reports. “The national average for hybrid rice is only about 80 to 100 sacks a hectare.” Back at their farm, Romeo Madis tells us his health improved with the switch to zero-chem. “I compare my body to the rice,” he says. Other farmers we interview also speak of health problems – from “yellowish skin” to dizziness to stomach ailments – that disappeared after the switch. Many farmers were aware the chemical inputs were affecting their health, but kept using them because they did not feel they had an alternative. As one woman farmer explains: “All the while [using chemical agriculture], I understood the health effects. We were committing suicide.” Many organic farmers we meet are diversifying their crop, which not only helps them be more self-sufficient food-wise, but is also good for soil fertility. Alongside the organic rice paddies, families grow fruit trees (mango, jackfruit, papaya) and vegetables (string beans, green leafy vegetables, squash). Small fishponds border some of the rice fields, providing a safe source of protein. (Chemical agriculture leaches toxins into fishponds that would bio-accumulate up the food chain.) After spending time with Atilano and his fellow organic farmers, we are convinced that they can grow ample food to feed their families and communities. But what about feeding the rest of the world? Could small-scale, organic farms grow enough to ensure everyone on this planet had access to adequate food? A December 2010 study by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, provides the most authoritative answer. According to de Schutter, “Recent [agroecology] projects conducted
in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years.” De Schutter’s study and a comprehensive “State of the World 2011” report on the future of food by the Worldwatch Institute present substantial empirical evidence, across many crops and countries, of major increases in yields for farmers practicing “agroecology.” Agroecology extends the “zero-chem” label to a broader category of ecosystemfriendly, locally adapted agricultural systems, including agro-forestry and techniques like crop rotation, topsoil management, and watershed restoration. In addition to increasing yields, the UN and Worldwatch experts conclude that agroecology can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase farmers’ incomes, which in turn reduces hunger. De Schutter’s findings reinforce what US food expert Frances Moore Lappé has been arguing for decades: We already grow more than enough food to feed the world’s people. The problem is not yields or production per se; it is that conventional plantation agriculture, combined with a development model that prioritizes cheap exports over food crops, have pushed millions off their fields. The nearly one billion people who are hungry are in that situation primarily because they no longer have land to grow their own food or because they are too poor to buy food. De Schutter emphasizes: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.” Small-scale farmers using agroecology approaches can produce ample and accessible food for the world’s people. So, the question is not really if farmers like Atilano can feed the world. The question is whether eco-friendly, smallholder farmers like him will get the support they need to feed the world. This is indeed what is happening in the Philippines: The agriculture ministry, long a position for agribusiness allies, is currently headed by Proceso Alcala, a strong proponent of organic agriculture. Within a year of his appointment in mid-2010 – just months after we had walked through Atilano’s fields – we learned that the Philippine agriculture department had stopped subsidizing chemical fertilizers and was steering public funds into community-based seed banks for traditional rice varieties. Alcala, we heard, was hiring community-based farmer-scientists and gearing up for an “eat healthy” campaign championing brown rice and other healthy foods.
Full article: http://bit.ly/H3dZQu
- Fertilizer trees improve the health of soils and boost crop yields. - Fruit trees provide alternative sources of nutrition. - Fodder trees improve smallholder livestock production. - Timber and fuelwood trees provide shelter and energy. - Medicinal trees combat disease. - Trees can produce gums, resins or latex products. Growing trees on farms helps reduce erosion, provide land cover and shade, improve water infiltration, store carbon and increase biodiversity.
The World Agroforestry Centre is an independent non-profit research organization that focuses on how incorporating trees into agricultural landscapes can reduce poverty, improve productivity and achieve environmental sustainability. Our research is organized around six global research priorities: - Quality trees, - On-farm productivity - Marketing and extension - Land health - Climate change - Environmental services The World Agroforestry Centre, also known as ICRAF has its global headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and operates five regional offices located in Brazil, Cameroon, India, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi. They conduct research in eighteen other countries around the developing world. Their funding comes from governments, private foundations, international organizations and regional development banks. Their work is conducted with partners from a range of scientific and development institutions. They are part of the alliance of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres dedicated to generating and applying the best available knowledge to stimulate agricultural growth, raise farmers’ incomes, and protect the environment. For more information, visit their website www.worldagroforestry.org More stories: http://blog.worldagroforestry.org/index.php/about-us Land tenure and agroforestry at the heart of a sustainable future Earth: http://bit.ly/H3fvSI Video about AF in Northern Vietnam: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbVux3XjBV4#t=279
In 1954, Ajaan Thanawm’s family – along with about fifty other families – migrated from the impoverished Khorat Plateau of Northeast Thailand to Nakhon Sawan province to stake a claim on newly opened forest land. They found dense jungle with seemingly infinite resources – trees, good soil, fish, and wildlife such as wild boar, tigers and elephants. The newcomers cleared a small portion of the land for crop production, and cut trees for house construction and firewood. “It was easy to find food here,” recalls Thanawm. “There were many edible plants and vegetables growing wild near our houses. The fish in the streams were easy to catch.” With abundance at hand and a cooperative spirit in the village, life was good. Things started to change in the 1960s. Farmers were encouraged to modernize and grow cash crops such as rice, maize, jute, and cassava for export. An Agricultural Credit Bank was established to provide them loans for hybrid seed, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and farm equipment. Thanawm and other farmers in the region switched from diversified traditional agriculture to monocropping cash crops with heavy use of chemicals. They cut more forest to expand their farmland and sold the timber as a bonus. The farmers, who never had so much money in their pockets before, used the money from loans, farm earnings, and timber sales to buy electronic appliances, motorcycles, and other modern merchandise. After an initial flush of quick cash, crop prices began to decline because so many farmers were growing the same thing. Matters became worse when droughts came and the crops started to fail. Unable to keep up with the payments on their loans to the Agricultural Bank, farmers fell prey to opportunistic informal money lenders who charged as much as 10 percent interest per month. People began to go deeper into debt. This was the beginning of a downward spiral. Desperate to make good on their debts, villagers
eventually cut the last remnants of forest to expand their fields. By that time, there were virtually no trees left on the hillsides. People say that it became hotter and drier. Soil fertility declined because mechanized plowing led farmers to get rid of their draft animals such as water buffalo, which had been a source of animal manure for the fields. Extensive monoculture of cash crops on fields from which all remaining trees were removed was accompanied by increasing application of chemical fertilizers to compensate for the loss of natural soil fertility. Soil erosion increased, along with crop vulnerability to dry spells, since the capacity of the hardened soil to retain moisture had declined. Rainwater just ran off the fields. Farmers struggled to compensate for depleted soil fertility by applying more and more chemicals, which only increased production costs and debt even further. Streams that provided crop irrigation during the dry season were drying up. The villagers depleted emergency supplies of food gathered from forests, fish were poisoned by toxic agrochemicals, and wildlife virtually disappeared. And some of the farmers lost their lands to foreclosures due to failure to pay off loans. Eventually, their fertilizer, pesticide, and farm equipment costs were so high, and their crop harvests so low, that the farmers were not earning enough money to buy food for the family. People began looking for work in the cities, and families were split up. “Unlike in the past when people really cared for one another, everyone was now worried about their own fields and their own family’s problems,” says Thanawm. “For the first time ever, we began to have psychological and social problems. There was little trust and less cooperation.” Migration in search of urban jobs led to the disintegration of communities; villages increasingly became populated by the young and elderly. Juvenile delinquency, previously unheard of, emerged as communities were rapidly torn from their traditional social norms.
In a relatively few years, Thanawm and his village had gone from near Eden-like abundance and comfort to a hardscrabble existence typified by hunger, poverty and social disintegration. But fortunately the story does not end there. Thanawm and his fellow villagers made some key changes which reversed the downward spiral. It began in 1986, when a team from the non-profit organization Save the Children was sent to Khao Din village by the Thai government. By that time, the district had become one of the nation’s poorest. Rather than simply distributing aid from donors, the Save the Children team awakened villagers’ awareness about the source of their predicament. Through long and at times arduous discussions, villagers recognized that they were primarily responsible for bringing about their own problems, because of decisions they had made on how to use and manage their local resources. This “awakening” created tremendous inspiration and confidence that they could, similarly, come up with their own solutions. “It was amazing! People were lighting up like light bulbs!” says Save the Children staff member Andrew Mittelman. “Remembering what the land and local natural resources were like when they arrived, villagers kept saying: ‘My God, what have we done? We never thought this could happen. We couldn’t imagine this place of abundance would become a desert.’” This collective awareness prompted the villagers to consider what they could do to change the situation.
See the amazing cascading effects below!
How did they do it? Find out here! Full story. http://bit.ly/H3fG0 Video: http://ecotippingpoints.org/video/thailand/index.html
This solution is extremely precious and important to spread across entire India, because: India has experienced hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides, due to escalating rates of bancruptcy and intoxication by chemical pesticides. The problem has existed for decades, but has been intensified by aggressively advertized genetically engineered seeds and expensive, highly toxic pesticides. The promised miracles failed. The region is called India's 'Suicide Belt', and the problem persists, today. The village of Punukula has invented a method of using local plants like neem and garlic as natural pesticides, involving birds in insect control, and more - the results are spectacular: - yields are rising - people are healthy - no investment in expensive chemical pesticides and hospital treatments for their families - incomes are rising - farmers buy additional lands, employ workers - children can go to school - communities and women feel empowered - communities invest in tree planting and more The Eco Tipping Points Project has been documenting this outstanding solution over years, with - video - photos - interviews and their enlightening ETP-graphics, showing the interdependencies and cascading negative, or positive effects of using and letting go of chemical pesticides in cotton farming. The approach is simple, and beautiful. View the video for memorable impressions.
Video www.ecotippingpoints.org/video/india/index.html Article http://bit.ly/168Cu83
Ensuring rich yields without expensive, toxic substances. That's BIG. India's cotton farm are not the only example. There are countless more, and many of them are documented with rich, illustrated examples on the BIOVISION website. Biovision is founded by Dr. Hans Rudolf Herren. He is a wonderful example of a new generation of global experts colaborating with people across many disciplines, continents and crops over decades. These people have earned the respect of millions of farmers, organizations, governments and the United Nations.
“The conversation on food and nutrition security needs to move away from costly silver bullets to affordable, realistic and tested solutions that are inclusive, link farmers’ knowledge with sustainable innovations and reconnect the consumers with the producers.” REFERENCE LINKS FOR HANS HERREN www.millennium-institute.org www.infonet-biovision.org www.biovision.ch/en/home www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ovvImg/-1/recipesForOrganicPesticides www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ct/229/recipesForOrganicPesticides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rudolf_Herren
Hans Herren's life's work in the field of global agriculture is a wonderful example of how scientists learn together, with and from agricultural model solutions around the globe, transfer solutions, cooperate with the people, then share and accumulate knowledge from hundreds of places around the globe in UNITED NATIONS reports, and give directions for successful, safe, healthy agriculture that ensures livelihoods for the people producing the food, rich biodiversity, multiple crops and agroecology, strengthen ecosystems' resilience against pests and climate change, and higher yields through diversified crops. Such kind of people are entrusted with responsibility for major UNITED NATIONS programs that operate above and beyond the petty, egoistic interests of a handful of lobbyists that have never seen anything but toxic chemical agriculture. You can imagine that the conversations at the UN are also intense, but a HAVEN OF PEACE for meaningful dialogue and trustworthy information, beyond the provincial claour and false claims. The Swiss agronomist/entomologist Dr Hans R. Herren is one of the world’s leading experts on biological pest control and sustainable agriculture. When a new pest threatened the cassava root in Africa, he designed and implemented a successful biological control programme that has been credited with saving millions of lives. Later, Herren was the co-chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), endorsed by 59 countries. Today, Herren is helping farmers in Africa to combat hunger, poverty and disease through ecologically sound agriculture with his Swiss-based Biovision Foundation. With his theoretical and practical work, Herren has proven that an agriculture anchored in agro-ecological principles can nourish a world with a growing population and changing needs.
Career Hans R. Herren was born on 30 November 1947. As a child he experienced the negative impacts of introducing herbicides and pesticides on his father’s farm in Switzerland. He graduated in entomology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich) and took a PhD in biological pest control in 1977 which was followed by two years of post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1979-94, Herren worked at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, first as Director of its Biological Control Programme, then from 1992 as Director of its Plant Health Management Division. During this time, he worked on biological pest control programmes for the cassava mealy bug, cassava green mites and the mango mealy bug as well as integrated pest management programmes for other pests of cowpeas and maize. He also founded the Biological Control Centre for Africa in Cotonu, Benin.
From 1994-2005, Herren was Director-General of the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe). Under his leadership, the Centre developed the 4-H paradigm (the integration of Human, Animal, Plant and Environmental Health into a single framework for research and development), the Push-Pull method to fight the stem borer and the striga weed, which constitute a big threat to small-scale farmers growing maize in Africa. From 1994 to 2005 Herren was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Insect Science and its Application. Herren is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).
Saving millions of lives with the world’s biggest biological pest-control programme Cassava was imported to Africa from South America in the 16th century and is currently being grown in around 40 African countries. Up until the 1970s it had very few enemies or pests
in Africa, evolving to one of the continent’s main staple crops, making up a great part of daily nutrition for about 200 million Africans. In the 1970s, however, the mealy bug was accidentally imported to the African continent and, as a pest of the cassava root, expanded rapidly across Africa, threatening the survival of millions of people. The spraying of pesticides, initiated by the affected governments, did not prove to be successful and if expanded across the continent would have had dire consequences both on people and the environment, while not providing a lasting solution to the problem. Herren was hired by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), based in Nigeria, to develop an alternative approach. To this end, he developed the Africa-wide Biological Control Programme, built up an international coalition and secured the funding to fight the cassava mealy bug by natural means. With the help of this worldwide network, the natural enemy of the mealy bug, a parasitic wasp, was identified in Paraguay. After further research, Herren began rearing the wasp first under quarantine conditions while testing for safety and efficacy. Once it had been ascertained that the wasp would not turn itself into a problem for the African agroecosystem, he began one of the biggest release campaigns in human history. Some 1.6 million wasps were released between 1982 and 1993, from a specially equipped low-flying airplane as well as on the ground, in 24 countries in the cassava belt, from Senegal to Angola. The programme re-created the natural balance between the mealy bug and its natural enemy, thus ensuring a sustainable and long-term solu-
tion of the mealy bug problem. It has been estimated by the World Food Prize that the programme saved the lives of 20 million people. According to Right Livelihood Award Laureate (1993) Vandana Shiva, “there has never been a programme with as high an impact on food and nutrition security in such a short, effective, socially and environmentally sound way”.
Co-Chairing the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) In 2004, Herren became Co-Chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Like the IPCC in the field of climate science, the IAASTD was an intergovernmental process, under the co-sponsorship of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO. It evaluated the relevance, quality and effectiveness of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology with respect to meeting development and sustainability goals of reducing hunger and poverty, improving nutrition, health and rural livelihoods, and facilitating social and environmental sustainability. The results were agreed by 400 scientists and endorsed by 59 governments at a plenary meeting in Johannesburg in 2008 and published in a report series “Agriculture at a Crossroads” in 2009. The report emphasises the need for higher productivity and more equal distribution of agricultural products and recommends organic ag-
riculture and agro-ecological practices as the way forward that will ensure the long-term productivity of the soil and a multifunctional agriculture. The report argues the urgency of putting this new paradigm in place without further delay and that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option because the current agricultural systems, based on exploitation of non-renewable natural resources and external inputs, endanger global food production in the medium and long term. The report also emphasises the need to bring farmers, and in particular women, into the research and extension cycle. However, ‘developed’ countries have since shown little willingness to implement the IAASTD report’s findings, which Herren attributes to the report’s critical position on trade liberalisation for agricultural products, and its doubts on the potential of genetic engineering to solve the key problems of hunger and poverty. The problem, says Herren, is “the vested interests of a few corporations and large farmers that work against the only sensible solutions”. Even though the IAASTD secretariat has now been dissolved, Herren, together with his Biovision Foundation and an alliance of over 140 international NGOs, is advocating for the implementation of the report’s results – a subject on which he has given more than 250 speeches. Herren’s goal is that the FAO, with the support of the Committee on World Food Security (CSF),
should get a mandate to implement the IAASTD findings. He lobbies for the establishment of a permanent body to regularly review agricultural science, knowledge and technology for development and aims to build up a strong alliance on the policy level pushing for sustainable agriculture.
Biovision Foundation In 1998, Herren founded the Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development with the mission to combat hunger and poverty at their roots and to disseminate ecological methods that sustainably improve living conditions in Africa. Today, Biovision has almost thirty projects in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda) and Switzerland. Its budget of around CHF 7 million is financed by over 35,000 donors: individuals, foundations, Swiss state bodies and businesses. Biovision works on the ground in Eastern Africa to improve small-scale farmers’ livelihoods by transmitting scientifically-based knowledge and methods of ecological farming. At the core of these projects is the Farmer Communication Programme, which disseminates vital information to smallholders. It uses different channels such as a farmers’ newspaper (over 240,000 farmers reached), a radio show (up to four million listeners every week), an internet platform (www.infonetbiovision.org with over 30,000 hits a month) and
The neem tree has over 100 compounds with pesticidal properties. The best known is azadirachtin. This substance is found in all parts of the tree, but it is much more concentrated in the fruit, especially in the seeds. Neem is unique among plants with pesticidal properties since it has so many different effects on pests. It acts as a broad-spectrum repellent, insect growth regulator (it causes deformities in the insects' offspring) and insect poison. It discourages feeding by making plants unpalatable to insects or suppresses the insect's appetite (anti-feedant effect); if they still attack, it inhibits their ability to moult and lay eggs. Unlike most botanical insecticides, neem also has a somewhat "systemic" effect. This means that plants can take up neem extracts through their roots and leaves, spreading the material throughout the plant tissues. For this reason neem can help control pests like leafminers, which feed within leaves and are normally not affected by sprays that only cover the outer parts of the plant.
Farmers and scientists have also observed a certain preventive effect of neem oil or seed extract against plant diseases such as mildews and rusts. Neem products are effective against a wide range of pests; about 400 species of crop pests are known to be affected by neem extracts. In spite of its broad-spectrum action, neem products generally, would not harm natural enemies (like wasps, ladybird beetles, spiders, etc.). This is explained by the special mode of action of neem compounds, and by the feeding behaviour of natural enemies as well as the relatively low contact effect of neem products. The degree of effects on natural enemies is largely dependent on the type of formulation, and time, frequency and methods of applications. ... www.infonet-biovision.org http://bit.ly/1chtSRg
SMS services to effectively communicate ecological methods to farmers all over East Africa. In addition, Biovision works on advocacy projects with the goal to change policies and raise awareness among consumers and the broad public. These projects advocate a general shift in paradigm in international agricultural policies by implementing the IAASTD report and inform Swiss consumers about the ecological and social impact of their consumption patterns.
Other roles Since 2005, Herren has been president of the Millennium Institute in Washington D.C., which helps decision makers understand the interconnectedness between economic, social, environmental factors, and issues of peace and security. The institute offers a variety of tools and advisory services to governments and the private sector that enable holistic long-term planning, while taking into account the existing environmental, social and economic boundaries. Herren has won a number of awards, including the World Food Prize (1995), the One World Award from Rapunzel (2010) and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement from the University of Southern California (2003). Herren lives in Washington D.C., Rome, and California where he has a vineyard he is managing according to organic agriculture principles. He is a citizen of Switzerland.
Hand is also a Right Livelihood Award laureate - which is an outstanding seal of quality. You will hear a more about the RLA a little later. Hans Herren is very present in leading UN environments, and he is also a Right Livelihood Award laureate. The RLA is another grand seal of quality and TRUST. TRUST - in the personal integrity - the interdisciplinary knowledge - the 100% commitment to the well-being of people and planet - the credibility among millions of noncommercial farmers and groups - the recognition in most renowned scientific, global institutions is the most important thing for YOU to make an informed decision. So you don't base your real life and the future of the planet on the nasty broth of opinions that you get over a spilled coffee by mainstream media, tv, companies, politicians, and "public opinion". Page 5.
Like many islands, Apo Island has experienced a breakdown of local fish stocks since industrial tools have facilitated "overfishing". Needless to say, coastal fishing village economies break down completely, when they lose fish. And so does people's spirit. Depression and violence follow up. Apo Islanders got lucky when an outsider suggested creating a sanctuary. At first, people were reluctant to the idea, because they were not used to collective stewardship and re-arranging the parts of coastline traditionally allocated to certain families. The families at the sanctuary would have suffered economically. But soon enough, the pioneering families, observed rising fish populations. The approach is simple, and beautiful. View the video for memorable impressions.
Hawaii's region of Wai‘anae was a self-sufficient region that produced adequate amounts of food for its people while managing its land and water resources sustainably... before Captain Cook's arrival sparked colonization, decimation of the population and dispossession of lands. Things were made worse, when Hawaii's native government was overthrown by U.S. American sugar growers and businessmen in 1893, and the illegal annexation of Hawaii, by the USA, in 1898. In the decades that followed, the teaching of Hawaiian language was forbidden, and the people concentrated on minor parts of the islands allocated to "the natives", much like the useless reservation lands in North America. Just a decade later, the 2,000 acres allocated at Wai'anae, were reduced by 1,700 acres!, to be used as a military base and military target practice to this day, and as a dumpsite for military waste off the coast, leading to radioactive depleted uranium contamination, besides other. Hawai‘i’s Food Security Task Force listed Wai‘anae as the state’s most “food insecure” area, with about 33% of households lacking the “ability to acquire food that is safe and nutritious in a socially acceptable way.” This is due not only to the absence of gardens but also to poverty, which stands at over 20% in the Wai‘anae District. There are few employment opportunities, and a large homeless population. One newspaper article characterized the coast as “16 miles of ramshackle tents packed with scores of bedraggled kids, women, men, mutts and their remaining worldly possessions.” A poor diet leads to poor health, and Hawaiians suffer the highest rates of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes in the state. Wai‘anae’s isolated and rural geographic location mirrors the considerable political, economic, social, and cultural barriers facing their ‘ohana (families), especially for youth. Over the years, Wai‘anae residents have witnessed the gradual overdevelopment of scarce resources such as land and water, the negatives of urbanization, and the resulting disconnection of native Hawaiian ‘opio (youth) and their families from the ‘aina (land) that had once nurtured a strong and cohesive culture. Wai‘anae youth struggle to achieve their socio-economic goals. Despite these odds, Wai‘anae residents still maintain a rural vision, a willingness to perpetuate their community’s ‘country’ values and to offer hope and validation to our ‘opio of their personal and cultural identities. It starting to bear fruits! A remarkable positive tip has begun with a citizen driven Wai‘anae Community Re-Development Corporation (WCRC), guided by five principle values: 1. Ea (sovereignty): To build on individual and community assets to create new local jobs and local businesses, increasing our capacity to be self-sufficient; 2. Kako‘o (support): To provide diverse experiences and opportunities, which mentor, educate and employ, where creativity and expression are nurtured; 3. Kokua (help): To promote diverse cooperative approaches to work and business that build community connections; ‘4. Ohana (family): to work with the entire ‘ohana for optimum individual, family and community health; and 5. Ho‘omalu (make peace): To encourage and live by Hawaiian values building a peaceful community.
The core of their work is to reconnect the young generation to the land, and experiences of leadership, empowerment, food, health, self-development and stewardship of the land. Hawaiian students whose curriculum includes hands-on outdoor activities and cultural learning are able to reconnect to the land. They are more engaged at school and less likely to drop out. The income and scholarships provided by MA‘O give them opportunities that might otherwise not be available. According to Bushley, MA‘O’s true strength derives from its focus on youth empowerment, which has created a ripple effect in the community, promoting an awareness of a need for broader self-sufficiency and local empowerment. Although Gary and Kukui [Maunakea-Forth] serve as the inspiration, the youth are the engine that drive MA‘O’s vision for a healthier, more cohesive and more secure community. “I’ve learned so much here, and not just about farming. I’ve learned about nutrition, being part of a team of workers and, when I’m in the field picking, what real peace of mind is.” - Rachelle Carson, college intern “I’d hate to imagine what my life would be if I hadn’t of joined ‘Ai Pohaku in 7th grade. It has given me the opportunity to travel and help other people build lo‘i (taro patches). I can’t explain how it makes me feel, like when I work in the lo‘i it just feels right, like this is what I’m supposed to be doing, this is where I’m supposed to be.” - Tashja Tong, LCC student “I never thought I’d be a farmer. But since joining MA‘O, my perspective on agriculture has totally changed. Being an organic farmer is one of the most important jobs in our community and I take pride in training to be one for a career.” - Manny Miles, Farm Manager Apprentice READ THE FULL STORY at http://ecotippingpoints.org/our-stories/indepth/usa-hawaii-mao-organic-farm-empower-youth.html MA'O farm website: http://maoorganicfarms.org
INTERMISSION HOW DO WE MAKE DECISIONS FOR THE PLANET?
WHOSE COUNSEL DO WE TRUST?
HOW DO WE HARMONIZE GLOBAL COOPERATION ON BIG AND SMALL ON GLOBAL AND LOCAL LEVELS?
This is an important matter. When enough people stared saying NO to a few kings, making wars at will for their ego leading entire populations into destruction and threatening the collapse of civilization the LEAGUE OF NATIONS was formed, and soon evolved into the UNITED NATIONS with a mandate to ensure WORLD PEACE So, let's look a little a the UNITED NATIONS
PEACE includes justice, self-determination, inner and outer peace, inner and outer abundance for all. And, of course, intact, thriving ecological environments that we inhabit. ORIGINALLY, the League of Nations was founded after World War 1, because (secret) agreements between nations had led to a sudden chain reaction of nations entering the war, originally declared between Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia. The League of Nations was to be the first official platform for nations to meet regularly, and officially discuss their issues, openly. That's big! I meant that nations that did not want escalations like war to arise from a few powerful persons!* private issues (power interests, pride etc), could publicly bring up the issues and unfolding conflicts, so that they be dealt with in public. This could lead to embarassment, spark a debate, and become visible to the people via media - thus leading to moderation. * Note: It is never a 'nation', millions of citizens deciding to go to war. It's always a small clique of people, driven by dishonourable motives.
It was the first time that the dominant colonial nations created such a thing. The League failed to avoid World War 2. But an open platform do can only do so much. It cannot avoid extreme bullies to lie to the people and ignore all common sense rules of human behaviour. We see this every day in parliaments. We'll get there, when the people begin to really evolve from subjects in monarchies to active democratic citizens. After World War 2, with more powerful nations on the global map, like the Soviet Union, the USA, and China, a new platform was formed. The UNITED NATIONS. In those days, only a few topics were in the focus of attention - mainly warfare. The big UN institution from then, the Security Council, served to moderate an escalation of the war between the big military powers, the Soviet Union, the USA, Great Britain, France and China. That Security Council hasn't changed much, since those big nations want to keep decisions in their own hands - a deficit of democracy in the UN - which is subject to constant criticism, but difficult to change. BUT: with new global issues arising, new platforms and programs have been created in the UNITED NATIONS. This is where things get INTERESTING, because these institutions are created in a more open and colaborative way.
These new platforms include the United Nations Development Programm UNDP, United Nations Environmental Program UNEP, an organization for EDUCATION, UNESCO the World Health Organization, WHO the World Trade Organization WTO the International Labour Organization ILO and others Again, any such program is made up of people. As you can imagine, the WTO is a platform dominated by the forces of old, unsustainable business, super rich corporations and their home turf governments. And they ignore the globally agreed guidelines of other UN programs. Also, because these programs are not interconnected, nor is there a powerful framework for enforcing regulations, nor laws for actually calling these behaviours a clearcut crime. Things are gradually changing. They can change faster, if a billion citizens at last get involved.
These programs were first, of course, also dominated by ideas born in the context of European thinking, incl the USA. That's natural, because the world was still in the (post) colonial era, full of racism etc, but also - the entire idea of such institutions, academia and science originates in universities. And there have been very few non-white people at university before the Sixties. It has taken half a century for universities and graduates to spread on relevant scale all over the world. And since then, the weight of voices from all over the planet has grown. Further, over the past half century, everyone in the UN, has been learning from each other, and from "the people in developing countries". This means, that many originally well-intended but stupid "white people" development approaches have since evolved, merged etc - into a global cooperative community of innovation, which is doing pretty awesome things, today - as you will see later in this book.
Are the UN full of superheroes? Well, the UN are just an administration. Like your city councils. Office people. Where are the heroes? The "innovators", the "people"? The geniuses? The one's doing the real stuff in the field? Like the folks in this book? They are from civil society. Non-governmental organizations. They are the grand drivers of innovation, driven by passion, honour, and full-time commitment. Hundreds of thousands of organizations have sprung up all over the planet since the Nineties. They had NO place in the UN. Just like they don't in your local city council. But in the year 2000, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UNITED NATIONS (born in Ghana) announced that for 50 years, government and business have been failing to achieve the mandate (purpose and mission) of the UN, peace and prosperity for all. He announced that civil society, the FREE-THINKING RESPONSIBLE REBELS are indispensable partners for achieving positive change, peace, development and prosperity.
So, time moves slow. The UN are a reflection of the evolution of civilization... and it is some years behind, because innovation first needs to be proven. VIVIL SOCOETY ORGANIZATIONS were hardly operational before the time of the internet. Can you imagine replacing today's no-cost emails with expensive, slow paper letters? Communicating by fax machines? Finding and ordering printed reports? And no alternative media, no social media, but only the main newspapers? How awful and disempowering! This book would not only be available in print from libraries. You would never find it, and I could not even find the information, the stories, or contact the people featured. There would be no videos. The INTERNET has sparked incredible communication and cooperation, since the mid-Nineties. Then, since around 2008, google, youtube and wordpress, cheap webdesign have finally made the internet really useful ... as a direct bridge of interactive communication and cooperation between the experts, rebels, innovators, etc in the UNITED NATIONS, and YOU. If the people start sharing more than funny cat videos. Which are important, of course. And I mean it!
Can't the UN make sure that the solutions be implemented? The UN are only an administration. With some expert programs. They are not a King. They cannot tell and dictate nations what to do. Some UN organizations, like the World Trade Organizations WTO, are behaving opposite to the guidelines of UNEP, UNDP, ILO and others ... still creating unfair trade, environmental destruction, incredible human suffering. Because it all depends on whether the people in there are driven by greed, hate, love, care ... and whether they have any knowledge and understanding of complex sustainability innovation and abundance. Do you? I'll repeat: Only now, for the first time in history, a direct bridge of interactive communication and cooperation between the grand experts, innovators, etc around the UNITED NATIONS and beyond, and YOU - is becoming possible.
Much of the information is on the internet, and some great media projects serve the purpose to spread this information. But there is still need for evolving the mix of formats, tools and services - enabling humanity to find it, and - feel a sense of empowerment to take action in replicating these solutions IT DOESN'T MAKE A TANGIBLE DIFFERENCE IF PEOPLE JUST "KNOW". This is the time for ACTION, and YL is pioneering novel ways for making it happen. For sure, Youth-LeadeR is the first medium making the great knowledge of Humanity accessible and applicable by youth and teachers in schools all over the planet - along with tips, support services, community, and fun factor for replicating them. So, if you want to see that happen - keep exploring. This is a gem, and there's more to find!
Important part of this Quest is to introduce you to some grand Allies for you to CREATE THE WORLD OF ABUNDANCE that your Heart is yearning for. You have got to know a bunch of HEROES leading model solutions. They were invisible to you, just a short time ago. I guess that you have gained a pretty convincing impression that they stand for quality and can be trusted to a fair degree. There are two more grand Allies The UNITED NATIONS and INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENTISTS The following pages shall give you - impressions of the standpoint in the UN about farming and food production that is good for humanity and - orientation on seals of outstanding quality among the scientific changemaker community. Some of them you have already met.
the UN
"This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers." "The world currently already produces sufficient calories per head to feed a global population of 12-14 billion." The problem is that a large portion of it is wasted on excessive meat production and inefficient biofuels. THE 20th CENTURY INDUSTRY APPROACH DOES NOT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY This includes conventional industrial farming, its derivative, GMO cultivation and strategies for developing countries to specialize in the production and export of 'lucrative' cash crops through monocultures for an international market. All this has aggravated the environmental crisis of agriculture and reduced agricultural resilience. "The two global environmental limits that have already been crossed (nitrogen contamination of soils and waters and biodiversity loss) were caused by agriculture." "We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agro-ecological system that provides quite a number of public goods and services, e.g. water, soil, landscape, energy, biodiversity, and recreation." "More than 60 international experts have contributed their views to a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and the most suitable strategic approaches for dealing holistically with the inter-related problems of hunger and poverty, rural livelihoods, social and gender inequity, poor health and nutrition, and climate change and environmental sustainability." http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=666
Let's look at one of the programs based on the UN experience THE UNITED NATIONS ZERO HUNGER CHALLENGE Former Brazilian Minister JosĂŠ Graziano da Silva who has experienced Brazil's ZERO HUNGER Program and the achievements of ending hunger in Belo Horizonte, is now Director General of the UNITED NATIONS' Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO. He has co-edited the book Zero Hunger. A Brazilian Experience, that you can download for free from the FAO website www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap339e/ap339e00.htm In an interview on a visit to Bangladesh, he responds to questions about the approach and success of the ZERO HUNGER program - "There is no need for hunger" - "It is simple. It's not like sending a man to the moon." - "It's cheap. People know, food is cheap, on the local level" - "Involve citizens and local business. Government alone cannot do it. The hungry people are invisible. You cannot find them." www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg2Ml7drxr4 A memorable moment around the program's kick-off, was when the newly elected President, Luiz InĂĄcio Lula da Silva, took his ministers on a tour through favelas (slums) of the country. This triggered a lasting impression. There is no reason to sanctify Brazil or its policymakers, since there has been a lot of corruption in that government, and there are ahorribly unsustainable things happening in Brazil. But this is one good model solution to learn from and replicate.
100% access to adequate food all year round Enabling all people to access the food they need at all times through nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems, marketing, decent and productive employment, a social protection floor, targeted safety nets and food assistance; boosting food supply from local producers; through open, fair and well-functioning markets and trade policies at local, regional and international level, preventing excessive food price volatility.
Zero stunted children less than 2 years Ensuring universal access to nutritious food in the 1000-day window of opportunity between the start of pregnancy and a child’s second birthday, supported by nutritionsensitive health care, water, sanitation, education and specific nutrition interventions, coupled with initiatives that enable empowerment of women, as encouraged within the Movement for Scaling Up Nutrition.
All food systems are sustainable Ensuring that all farmers, agribusinesses, cooperatives, governments, unions and civil society establish standards for sustainability; verifying their observance and being accountable for them; encouraging and rewarding universal adoption of sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture practices; pursuing cross-sectoral policy coherence (encompassing energy, land use, water and climate); implementing responsible governance of land, fisheries and forests.
100% increase in smallholder productivity and income Reducing rural poverty and improving wellbeing through encouraging decent work, and increasing smallholders’ income; empowering women, small farmers, fishers, pastoralists, young people, farmer organizations, indigenous people and their communities; supporting agricultural research and innovation; improving land tenure, access to assets and to natural resources, making sure that all investments in agriculture and value chains are responsible and accountable; developing multidimensional indicators for people’s resilience and wellbeing.
Zero loss or waste of food Minimizing food losses during storage and transport, and waste of food by retailers and consumers; empowering consumer choice through appropriate labeling; commitments by producers, retailers and consumers within all nations; achieving progress through financial incentives, collective pledges, locally-relevant technologies and changed behavior.
YOUR COUNTRY HAS WORK TO DO. CATCH UP!
Some policymakers and business representatives are not content with the UN Reports' statements. It's the ones who have been in the business for fifty years, producing a situation of 30% of their clients dying from cancer, 30% sick with heart disease and 30% with diabetes, 1 in 4 children going hungry every day, and 40% of food wasted, going directly from farm to landfill - and the first young generation with a lower life expectancy than their parents. It's not a very impressive record of good governance, food sovereignity, quality or avantgarde approaches. The same businesses are rigidly opposing the labelling of GMO foods (link list of companies, incl breaking the law (link) and spreading false and misleading information in order to influence citizens to vote against labelling (link info costs etc). This year's World Food Prize celebrates three top executives of gmo-companies ... the prize is sponsored by the same companies ... and the official statement repeatedly mentions the achievements of the 'Green Revolution', of gmo-products rising harvests for millions of small farmers. 'Multiplying harvests' is mentioned four times in the one page statement. Well, wait a minute.
You know, that the 'Green Revolution', based on industrialized monocultures and high pesticide use has led to a negative tipping point for millions of farmers in cotton, rice, etc, and that those millions are now prospering in yields, health, incomes from switching to simple, organic, agri-ecological methods. You know that UN reports show that small farmers produce higher yields per acre / hectar, compared to industrial monocultures, and that these farmers have many positive effects on the environment, from biodiversity to community and local economy, as opposed to heavily land-degrading industrial monoculture. So, when such false claims are being made around the world's most recognized (supposedly) scientific prizes, the planetary top strata of SCIENTISTS will NOT leave such a claim unanswered. Because it undermines the integrity of science, the state of knowledge, and - the safety of humanity. Here it comes.
A statement about Genetically Modified Organisms signed by a growing number of the world's most highly recognized scientists and developers in the fields of food, health and ecology, not sitting in a lab of a handful of companies, but working with hundreds of organizations and governments. They know the studies. They are the ones who have conducted them! They have experience with countless applications in the field, including those that work. Not only do they say that there is NO CONSENSUS ON GMO-SAFETY OR BENEFITS but they also state that the positive claims about gmos are FALSE and that studies quoted by pro-gmo websites are FALSELY quoted, giving a wrong impression and that in fact, many studies have shown negative health impacts on animals, and potentially humans. Now, that's big, when it comes from high level scientists, and quotes all the studies and sources. THERE YOU GO:
There is no scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified foods and crops, according to a statement released today by an international group of more than 90 scientists, academics and physicians. The statement comes in response to recent claims from the GM industry and some scientists, journalists, and commentators that there is a “scientific consensus” that GM foods and crops were generally found safe for human and animal health and the environment. The statement calls these claims "false" and “misleading”, adding, “This claimed consensus on GMO safety does not exist.” Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, chairperson of the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), states: "Such claims may place human and environmental health at undue risk and create an atmosphere of complacency," “The statement draws attention to the diversity of opinion over GMOs in the scientific community and the often contradictory or inconclusive findings of studies on GMO safety. These include > toxic effects on laboratory animals fed GM foods > increased pesticide use from GM crop cultivation, and the > unexpected impacts of Bt insecticidal crops on beneficial and non-target organisms"
In spite of this nuanced and complex picture, a group of likeminded people makes sweeping claims that GM crops and foods are safe. In reality, many unanswered questions remain and in some cases there is serious cause for concern.
1. There is no consensus on GM food safety ... Rigorous studies investigating the safety of GM crops and foods would normally involve animal feeding studies in which one group of animals is fed GM food and another group is fed an equivalent non-GM diet. Independent studies of this type are rare, but when such studies have been performed, some have revealed toxic effects or signs of toxicity in the GM-fed animals.
2. There are no epidemiological studies investigating potential effects of GM food consumption on human health ... Therefore, claims that GM foods are safe for human health based on the experience of North American populations have no scientific basis.
3. Claims that scientific and governmental bodies endorse GMO safety are exaggerated or inaccurate ... Claims that there is a consensus among scientific and governmental bodies that GM foods are safe, or that they are no more risky than non-GM foods, are false.
4. EU research project does not provide reliable evidence of GM food safety ... the report based on this project, “A Decade of EU-Funded GMO Research”, presents no data that could provide such evidence, from long-term feeding studies in animals. ... Indeed, ... all found differences in the GM-fed animals, which in some cases were statistically significant; and none concluded on the safety of the GM food tested, let alone on the safety of GM foods in general.
5. List of several hundred studies does not show GM food safety A frequently cited claim published on an Internet website that several hundred studies “document the general safety and nutritional wholesomeness of GM foods and feeds”[30] is misleading. Examination of the studies listed reveals that many do not provide evidence of GM food safety and, in fact, some provide evidence of a lack of safety. For example: ... Among the animal feeding studies and reviews of such studies in the list, a substantial number found toxic effects and signs of toxicity in GM-fed animals compared with controls.[33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] Concerns raised by these studies have not been satisfactorily addressed and the claim that the body of research shows a consensus over the safety of GM crops and foods is false and irresponsible. Many of the studies were conducted over short periods compared with the animal’s total lifespan and cannot detect long-term health effects.[39] [40]
We conclude that these studies, taken as a whole, are misrepresented on the Internet website as they do not “document the general safety and nutritional wholesomeness of GM foods and feeds”. Rather, some of the studies give serious cause for concern and should be followed up by more detailed investigations over an extended period of time.
6. There is no consensus on the environmental risks of GM crops ... Some reviews and individual studies have associated them with increased herbicide use,[49] [50] the rapid spread of herbicide-resistant weeds,[51] and adverse health effects in human and animal populations exposed to Roundup, the herbicide used on the majority of GM crops.
7. International agreements show widespread recognition of risks posed by GM foods and crops The Cartagena Protocol and the UN's Codex Alimentarius ... would never have been negotiated, and the implementation processes elaborating how such safety assessments should be conducted would not currently be happening, without widespread international recognition of the risks posed by GM crops and foods and the unresolved state of existing scientific understanding.
Conclusion In the scope of this document, we can only highlight a few examples to illustrate that the totality of scientific research outcomes in the field of GM crop safety is nuanced, complex, often contradictory or inconclusive, confounded by researchers’ choices, assumptions, and funding sources, and in general, has raised more questions than it has currently answered. Whether to continue and expand the introduction of GM crops and foods into the human food and animal feed supply, and whether the identified risks are acceptable or not, are decisions that involve socioeconomic considerations beyond the scope of a narrow scientific debate and the currently unresolved biosafety research agendas. These decisions must therefore involve the broader society. They should, however, be supported by strong scientific evidence on the long-term safety of GM crops and foods for human and animal health and the environment, obtained in a manner that is honest, ethical, rigorous, independent, transparent, and sufficiently diversified to compensate for bias.
Decisions on the future of our food and agriculture should not be based on misleading and misrepresentative claims that a “scientific consensus” exists on GMO safety. FULL STATEMENT AND REFERENCE LINKS
www.ensser.org/increasing-public-information/no-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety PRESS RELEASE www.ensser.org/media/0513
SUMMARY CHAPTER. So... that's something. If you respect the ways that the findings and statements about a sound way for human, sustainable food production are shaped, then your personal views about how a good agricultural system looks like are now be grounded and backed up by the most advanced knowledge, and respected authorities in the history of humanity on Planet Earth. When fantastic claims are made by profit groups, you know what's true, happening and said by trustworthy people. When honest people seek trustworthy, solid information, the you have a pretty good resource at hand to share, so people can form an opinion based on facts and trustworthy sources. And of course, you can TAKE ACTION, like KIDS ARE DOING who have no doubt that THEY KNOW what's right.
“Pure food is a human right.” Yes. Why should seven billion people get sick from polluted foods, just because a few people want to get rich on it? Birke fearlessly speaks up about ‘What’s wrong with our food system?’ in his wildly popular TEDx Talk, and also demonstrates the solution: At 14 years of age, he is a sustainable, organic farmer in training! And he shares his learning journey with young people around the world! His book ‘Birke on the Farm’ follows Birke from curious third-grader to full-blown activist. Of course, it is a special, unique book. The solutions for a peaceful world of healthy foods in abundance exist. All of us simply need to learn a handful of basics, and vote for reclaiming these beautiful ways. For global good food!
Links www.birkeonthefarm.com/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Id9caYw-Y Teaching Tips channel a learning environment Take Action tips level 1 level 2 level 3
Coral is helping other children become healthier by educating them about the ingredients in the food that many people eat every day. Do you have doubts that kids can tell what’s good to eat? Then it’s time to view Coralganics videos: Chick-fil-A’s loo-king fresh six months later? That’s creepy. So are the ingredients. Get ready to view Coral telling off Dr. Mehmet Oz for nonsensical statements in Time magazine about processed canned foods being no different from fresh organic foods, and pediatricians for recommending Flintstones vitamins. This unschooled 8 year old is not your ordinary peer, but you can do the simple things she does: Read labels, browse studies about health impacts, tell differences in taste and feeling well, lame and awful a while after eating stuff, meet local farmers Coralganics is on facebook & youtube! Subscribe!
links TEACHING TIPS channel a learning environment ACTION TIPS level 1 level 2 level 3
Today, 1 in 3 US American kids will develop diabetes in their life. Among Afro-American and Latino children, it is even 1 in 2. The same is true for other diseases like heart diease, certain cancers. One in 2 or 3 Americans. Doctors see people in their twenties, without teeth, because they have only been drinking soda their entire life. Other teens need braces to support their bodyweight, because their bones and muscles are no longer able to. At the same time, classroom materials are full of sponsored books and tools from Oreo cookies, Mc Donald's Pepsi, and school are trying to win prizes from Coca Cola, even if it would mean buying 55,000 cans to even be eligible. This is a GLOBAL problem. This is not only shocking, but it can be prevented. View Anna's TEDx Talk about how parents, youth and citizens are banning advertizing, fast food and advertizing from school grounds and television! It works! It works, since all the laws are in place.
The food industry responds to complaints that it is not their but parents' duty to raise their children to be healthy. I could not agree more, Anna says - and that's why I say to all of them: So stop telling my child what to like and what to eat, because my child, and no child is any of your business! The Real Food Media Project is a project of Anna Lappé and Corporate Accountability International. Anna is world known for her work with her mum, Frances Moore-Lappé, a Right Livelihood Award laureate www.rightlivelihood.org/moore_lappe.html, a world renowned expert on food issues, explaining how lack of food is largely a lack of democracy. In response to the need for telling the real story of our food, debunking persistent myths about sustainable food and farming, through compelling media, they have allied to create a new online information center, and grassroots events. Here you’ll find great movies taking on some of the biggest myths about sustainable food, resources to host events, screen the movies, and more. Mythbusting video No.1 takes on the myth that we need industrial agriculture to feed the world and showcases the power of sustainable agriculture to address the root causes of hunger in a world of plenty. Mythbusting video No.2 debunks the myth that Junk Food is what we crave, uncovers food marketing and advertising tactics that target children.
Each mythbusting movie is grounded in the best science and research out there, so be sure to check out the companion reading guide and annotated transcript—with citations and sources for every assertion you hear. All the materials on the website are Creative Commons – free and open to use.
Videos: Industrial/Sustainable Farming explained www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOWL-EpxIX0 Misleading Advertizing unveiled www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWOcP-bXuO8 TEDx Manhattan Talk www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bop3D7-dDM Website: http://foodmyths.org Resource Guide: An excellent piece, putting the myths into perspective, with quotes from industry, farmers, scientists and data from decades of studies on industrial farming and sustainable agriculture, with definitions. All in easy language. http://foodmyths.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Hunger_CompanionGuide_FINAL1.pdf UNITED NATIONS' FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) announces cooperation with Via Campesina (a thriving global network of sustainable farmers) www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ifH3Wokxs LEARNING TIPS Use their website as an Online Learning Environment View the videos and Q&A in the Myth Busters section ACTION TIPS Screen their movies at your next party, fundraiser, or community event; Download the companion reading guide and print out the infographics; Host an event or bring Anna to your community; online or onsite. Get moved by the food heroes on the website and share your own success stories!
Madi and Rhiannon were preparing for their Girl Scout Bronze Award, when they discovered a shocking fact. And it was right in time for their favorite treat: Girl Scout cookies! The 11 year old friends were researching the endangered Orang Utan and found that the production of palm oil contributes to the destruction of the Orang Utans' rainforest habitat. They decided that contributing to such environmental destruction contradicted everything that Girl Scouts stand for, and asked Girl Scouts to clean up their product. Rainforest Action Network > Palm Oil in 10 photos: http://bit.ly/1c8SA26 “We were asked by the local forestry department to assist in the rescue of some orangutans found in a palm plantation area in Ketapang while the land clearing was taking place.� In a powerful online campaign, they mobilized over 70,000 people and generated such broad media coverage that Girl Scouts USA adopted a sustainable palm oil policy for their products as a result. This is a step in the right direction but the girls are not done yet. Madi and Rhia have spoken at the United Nations and many other places. Together with the Philadelphia Zoo, they have developed a Rainforest Badge program for children. The resource is free to use by other zoos around the globe, too. On their visit to palm oil plantations in South America, they discovered another horrible reality, dramatically different from the photos of clean farms that people believe to be representative of the industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The girls experienced tremendous violence, people abuse, barbed wire, they were even shot at! The workers asked them to please tell the world about their suffering. Since no one reports. Madi and Rhiannon are working to start a movement demanding responsible palm oil sources to ensure the protection of the forests, animals, and people of Southeast Asia, South America and Africa. Join them on the Quest!
These two are among the most powerful speakers I have ever experienced. They are 100% outspoken and make zero compromise on what's right and wrong. Rhiannon is now stepping into entering a path in International Relations, Madi into Environmental Conservation. If you walk a little in their shoes, learning about the truth that they have found out, this powerful Earth Warrior spirit may also start flowing in you. Be ready to act on it. This is what the Earth needs. And you will benefit. Video www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCEbUFl11tw Website http://projectorangs.org A massive YL Interview for Change www.youth-leader.org/interviews Borneo and Sumatra are two of the most bio-diverse regions of the world, yet they have the longest list of endangered species. This list includes the magnificent orangutan. These two South-East Asian islands are extremely rich in life, containing around 20,000 flowering plant species, 3,000 tree species, 300,000 animal species and thousands more being discovered each year. Despite this amazing biodiversity and delicate web of species, an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for the production of one vegetable oil. That's 6 football fields destroyed each minute. This vegetable oil is called palm oil, and is found in hundreds of the everyday products, from baked goods and confectionery, to cosmetics and cleaning agents... many of which you buy in your weekly shopping. Due to the large international demand for palm oil, palm oil plantations are rapidly replacing the rainforest habitat of the critically endangered Orang Utan - one of the only three species of Great Apes - besides the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla; with over 90% of their habitat already destroyed in the last 20 years. They are very kind and harmless. The cruelties committed
to them are unimaginable. The next page shows an image that is almost unbearable to watch. it represents how their world is destroyed. There are various methods that are undertaken when it comes to deforestation for the development of palm oil, but typically, the process is as follows; the Indonesian or Malaysian Government will first sell the land to wealthy foreigners owning palm oil companies and issue them a palm oil concession. The forest is logged of all its precious hardwood timber, which can include; teak, ironwood, ebony, mahogany, sandalwood and over 70 other valuable species. The remaining trees, shrubs and debris are then set fire to. The land is cleared and flattened using heavy machinery to make way for rows and rows of oil palms. Indigenous locals are often employed by the plantation owners, usually the people who have been displaced from the land to create the plantation, where they plant and maintain the oil palm trees under very risky, dangerous conditions, using many unsafe chemicals, all for very little pay. A very important thing to remember is that the oil palm plantation will only last for approximately 20 to 50 years before then the soil is completely drained
of its vital nutrients and the palm trees too matured to produce palm fruit, which is why palm oil is very much a short-term commodity, and not a long-term sustainable solution. The areas of South-East Asia where this devastation occurs is often orangutan habitat; however orangutans are not the only species being heavily impacted by the palm oil industry. There are many other unique animal species at threat of extinction due to palm oil, such as the: Sumatran Tiger, Asian Rhinoceros, Sumatran Rhinoceros, Sun Bear, Pygmy Elephant, Clouded Leopard and Proboscis Monkey. Orangutans are some of our closest relatives, sharing approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. Orangutan means 'Person of the jungle' in the Indonesian language. It is estimated that 6 to 12 of these 'jungle people' are killed each day for palm oil. These gentle creatures are either killed in the deforestation process, when they wander into a palm oil plantation looking for food, or in the illegal pet trade after they've been captured and kept as pets in extremely poor conditions and provided with extremely poor nutrition. Orangutans are considered to be pests by the palm oil industry. In the deforestation process, orangutans are often run over by logging machinery, beaten to death, buried alive or set on fire. Orangutans that wander into palm oil plantations are considered to be agricultural pest, because they have the potential to damage oil palm crops. In order to get rid of them, a bounty is often put on the orangutan's head. If a female orangutan is found carrying a baby, the mother will be killed and the baby taken and kept as a pet, or sold on the illegal pet trade and in some cases shipped overseas, often within Asia, or sometimes countries like the United States. These gentle, inquisitive animals are also captured
and used in the entertainment industry, where they are locked away and beaten in Asian tourist parks and circuses in order to learn tricks for human entertainment and live lives of humiliation and exploitation. They can also be used in films and tevevision adverts all over the world. In some cases, the absolute unthinkable is done to female orangutans - they are captured and used in Indonesian brothels as prostitutes; where they are tied down and raped on a daily basis. It's absolutely sick, but if humans do this to tens of thousands of children age 8 to 12, what do you think they will do to animals? Government data has shown that over 50,000 orangutans have already died as a result of deforestation due to palm oil in the last two decades. Experts say that if this pattern of destruction and exploitation continues, these intelligent acrobats of the jungle will be extinct in the wild within 3 to 12 years (as early as 2016). It is also thought that most of their jungle habitat will be completely gone within the next 20 years. There is only a 1 chromosome difference between orangutans and humans. They are the largest treedwelling mammal on the planet and with their amazing intellect, have the ability to reason and think; along with almost all other human feelings and emotions. They can undo bolts, screws, knots and even pick locks. An orangutan named Chentek, at Atlanta Zoo in the US, was taught American sign language as an infant and has a vocabulary of over 500 words! These bright, fellow-apes also have their own culture. Leif Cocks, an orangutan keeper at Perth Zoo, and founder & president of the Australian Orangutan Project, says: "Many people believe that the most intelligent great apes are chimpanzees, the bonobo
and then the gorillas, this may be because these species are more similar to humans, genetically. I have never come across an experienced ape keeper who has worked closely with all great ape species and does not agree that orangutans are by far the most intelligent." The following are two aphorisms often stated by primate keepers: "Give a screwdriver to a chimpanzee and it will throw it at another chimpanzee. Give a screwdriver to a gorilla and it will use it to scratch itself. Give a screwdriver to an orangutan and it will escape!" "Give ten problems to a chimpanzee and it will solve six of the problems in 30 minutes and never solve the other four. Give ten problems to an orangutan and it will take one week, but will solve all ten problems." Orangutans are also a vital part of the rainforest ecosystem in South-East Asia. They are a keystone species. For example, orangutans help spread many tree seeds; many of which can only germinate once they have passed through the gut of an orangutan. These beautiful apes are vital in order to preserve the delicate ecosystems of Borneo and Sumatra and maintain the rich bio-diversity of Fauna and Flora in these dense jungles. Orangutans cannot live without the rainforest, the forest cannot live without them.
LEARNING TIPS Ecocide on enormous scale: Deforestation on Borneo. 6 soccer fields burnt down every minute. http://bit.ly/1hi40Vj Rainforest turned http://bit.ly/1hi49Ie into http://bit.ly/1hi47jE Go through these links. Share research among your group. Deforestation, Orang Utan extinction. www.saynotopalmoil.com Palm Oil image gallery. www.saynotopalmoil.com/images.php Detecting palm oils. www.saynotopalmoil.com/palm-oil.php What to do. www.saynotopalmoil.com/how-to-help.php View videos www.saynotopalmoil.com/videos.php SHARE YOUR FEELINGS. Decide whether you want this to be in the world or not. Decide what lies at the core of the problem, and how it can be changed. Are you the change? ACTION TIPS Join all campaigns imaginable. Follow Madi and Rhiannon's facebook page and upcoming actions for human rights protection in the palm oil industry. > Earn the Rainforest Badge and promote it to local zoos. Create exhibits with many visual impressions, as part of your Learning Exercise. Consider local actions. Then, get serious: > Switch to killing-free candy: What does it take to end unsustainable palm oils? They are in soft stuff with long shelf life. Like candy and processed foods. Can we drop sweet junk food like Nutella, peanut butter and candy bars, and shift to making them ourselves? Yes. It's fun, produces great skills, and cleans you off a lot of bad stuff. > Set up a fundraising partner program with (a) Orang Utan sanctuaries, (b) Orangutan rescue programs and clinics, (c) Orang Rainforest protection programs, and (d) join these programs as volunteer. Find out more about Dr. BirutĂŠ Mary Galdikas, the world's first and most amazing Orangutan researcher. She started on them, at a time that Jane Goodall and Dianne Fossey started on Chimpanzees and Gorillas. www.orangutan.org
Imagine your drinking water being so polluted that you get cancer & infertility from drinking it. That's already happening Are you aware that 100,000 chemicals are being poured into our water systems, and they are not well tested on effects on you that Fracking creates a mix of cancers causing chemicals that cannot even be cleaned? And that this dirt is entering water systems in Fracking regions? Here are solutions.
Robyn is not the only student who has seen films documenting how bad practices in business and politics have led to water pollution, soaring prices, and very bad health effects, even in her water rich country of Canada. But Robyn has turned her shock into action! She joined a powerful coalition of experts and citizens who have crafted a solution to safeguard water aquifers, rivers, and provide abundant clean water for generations to come.
Everyone on Planet Earth, listen up! At 13 years of age, Robyn is their youngest speaker asking town councils to become ‘Blue Communities’ by passing legislation that water services stay public, banning bottled water, and making clean water a human right. Hold your seat: Robyn has already made a dozen cities turn Blue! Among them, her home city of Kingston, then Ajax, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls , Clarington, Welland, Thorold... Her aim? That entire Canada turn Blue! Robyn is now training kids and teens like you to protect their water for the future. Her website is growing as a learning resource for water unites at schools across Canada. Join the Water Warriors, and achieve what people considered 'impossible'!
HOW BLUE COMMUNITIES BEGAN When the Council of Canadians and CUPE first created the Blue Communities Project they weren’t sure how to convince cash-strapped municipalities to come on board. How would they get local government who faced federal and provincial restrictions forcing them to consider privatization when seeking funding for infrastructure projects to stand up to private forprofit water and sanitation services or ban bottled water in public facilities? In 2011, when Burnaby became the first Blue Community, they were thrilled. Then, the City of Vancouver followed! This led to Victoria becoming Blue and the Union of BC municipalities passing
a resolution encouraging others throughout the province to follow. With the support of community activists like Kingston’s 14-yearold Robyn Hamlyn, there have been a number of Blue Communities throughout Ontario and British Columbia. Blue Communities now start appearing in other Canadians and in Europe. On September 18,
the City of Bern was designated the first Blue Community outside of Canada. In addition to promoting public water and water as a human right, Bern passed a resolution promoting solidarity and support for communities efforts to provide safe drinking water in other countries. The city is working to develop a partnership with a community in Northern Vietnam. http://bit.ly/1boVKxX
Video. Robyn telling her story. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfns_PyqXO0 A massive YL Interview for Change www.youth-leader.org/interviews Website www.thewaterwarriors.ca The 'Blue Communities' Resolution, Council of Canadians www.canadians.org/bluecommunities www.canadians.org/content/booklet-blue-communities-project-guide LEARNING TIPS View videos and films about water issues www.thewaterwarriors.ca/Videos View Die Chemiefalle, The Chemo Trap (german) www.hanischdoerfer.de/chemiefalle.htm www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOPHzvE9sz4 ACTION TIPS
Xiuhtezcatl is a familiar name in all parts of the globe. At 6 years of age, he took a mic and explained to people that every living thing is sacred. This awareness safely guides us to transform all harmful practices - and live as true "Earth Guardians". Xiuhtezcatl and friends rally to stop pesticide use in parks, Fracking, GMO's, but just demanding doesn't change things. We all have to learn the solutions and apply them. And boy, they do! Xiuh and friends were devastated when they heard that the Boulder city council approved fracking in their community. They have friends who suffer from nose bleeds and pains because the air is so polluted from nearby fracking wells, and cancer causing fumes. Their performance of "What the Frack!" as part of a school presentation about impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or "Fracking" - based on facts by the same companies practicing it, experts, and government agencies - sparked enthusiastic response from students calling for a ban of fracking in their town of Boulder, and vicious outleash from parents involved in the oil and gas industry - to a point of setting up fake email accounts, attacks and demand for firing teachers! In return, national news media asked why the oil industry is bullying 9 and 12 year olds, PBS came into town to film them. And - to grand surprise - the town council declared a two year moratorium on fracking! But that's just one step! Recent massive rainfalls in this dry state of Colorado caused unspeakable havoc, made fracking sites collapse and the supposedly safe open air reservoirs with the obscenely toxic residues spill over into rivers and lakes! Fracking is not a safe technology, nor a well regulated industry. It is in fact an unprecedented threat to our future water supply - and it is global! Fracking companies are rushing all over the planet, even causing earthquakes! France just banned it, citizen initiatives are stopping their government from fracking their regions, but some governments keep betraying their citizens' and children's future by ignoring the facts and dangers! Earth Guardian clubs are thriving. From the US to Brazil, to Australia and Africa, kids join, learn and act to create the world they deserve! A new lifestyle, gatherings, plantings, Hip Hop jams, and right now, with youth from every state, they are suing the US government for not protecting their future, singing in one of their songs "Live As If Our Future Matters". Will you start the next EG Club?
Videos Xiuh about Earth Guardians Xiuh about Climate Change in Colorado Press Conference Arise Festival Voice of Youth jamming at the UN Powershift Youth Conference demonstration Music www.youth-leader.org/music Article Interview Website www.earthguardians.org Facebook 50 Ways of Sustainable Lifestyle LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS
ASK YOURSELF: Why are fracking industry workers, families and even children put under a "LIFELONG GAG," meaning that in their entire life, they must never speak about their work, their agreements, the compensations received for severe negative health impacts and accidents destroying their land with extreme chemical waste, a greater financial loss than the dollars they got paid for leasing the land to the frackers. Why are the workers not even allowed to call 911 in case of a life threatening accident? Why - in case of work related sickness - are even forbidden, for their entire life, to tell doctors what kind of chemicals they have been exposed to? How will they get medical help? Like around GMOs, the reiterated industry claims about univesal safety, clean technology, that "hundreds of statements about accidents and environmental pollution by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA are not correct", and climate proof are myths and untrue - but it's hard to find and detect the truth, and have trustworthy sources given the enormous advertizing campaigns.The industry is even handing out colouring books to school chldren explaining Fracking as a wonderful thing. HERE YOU ARE: CBS News reports 7 min of goldrush celebration, followed by 7 min of nationwide breakdowns, leakage, fracking tower explosions, dead farm animals, people lighting their tap water ON FIRE, people getting sick from taking a shower are not isolated cases, they happen nationwide - but there is no law against it: the "Halliburton Loophole" liberates the gas industry from liability for water and air contamination. If you think something's wrong in government, you are not alone. www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7054210n The roadmovie style documentary GASLAND shows more on the matter. www.gaslandthemovie.com. Trailer and film are online. Matt Damon stars in a movie showing dirty fracking industry tricks www.participantmedia.com/pm-films/promised-land BUT THE BIGGEST FACT REPORTS and MUST-READ have been compiled by Canada's high level civic network, the Council of Canadians, around Maude Barlow, a global icon for citizen rights, ethical science and consumer protection. Read them here: IT'S JUST A FEW PAGES. YOU HAVE TO KNOW! www.canadians.org/water/documents/fracking/myths-facts-0212.pdf www.canadians.org/sites/default/files/publications/fracking-climate-change.pdf www.canadians.org/content/factsheet-free-trade-fracking-out-future Massive info on overclaims, and about negative impacts www.canadians.org/content/reports-fracking-ontario-energy-board-oeb www.canadians.org/fracking Guess what - with all this information and reports on major television channels... most people still fanatically praise fracking and ridicule opponents, officials, activists and victims. Like over a Coffee Spill. See page 5.
As I contemplate the impacts that Fracking is having across the globe, the success and the losses - I realize the only way to stop this destructive act of extracting resources from our precious Earth is by building and uniting a stronger movement around the globe. The people who know what is happening must unite, and must educate and inspire other's to join our movement by showing them what truly is at stake. Only when we get the masses out on the front lines will we have a chance to conquer this beast that threatens the very fabric of our future and those to follow. When I was in Pennsylvania and saw some of what has happened to their state, the rivers that have been poisoned the land that has been destroyed and the fight that continues on, I felt deeply saddened by the ignorance of the human race. Their fight has been strong in Pennsylvania, with some success, but with more destruction as the industry continues to drill on. We are drilling our way to a place of no return as our planet continues to warm and climate extremes become more and more common. Fracking is not a safe bridge away from fossil fuels! Robert F. Kennedy just came out and said again that natural gas is a catastrophe! When will the corporations promoting this harmful extraction wake up and realize that we the children are more important then their profits? Xiuhtezcatl
Alicia is a bright girl who loves everything about gardening. From planting the tiny seeds to watering she loves observing the gems ripen in their favorite mix of sunshine and shadow, picking, plucking, preparing a delicious treat on the perfect day - yay! - and giving back to butterflies, bugs’n’bees. Also a passionate cook, when Alicia applied her 1st grader reading skills to food labels, life became more complicated: Selling a mix of white sugar, palm oils and genetically modified organisms didn’t feel good, even if it was Girl Scout cookies. "GMOs can make bugs' tummies explode. That can’t be good!" As a Girl Scout, she feels strongly about nature, animals, food and the ideals that she is learning from the Girl Scout Law. Alicia associated the second to last line with what she's been doing.
I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout. Clearly, proudly selling cookies containing GMOs ... she couldn't do this. So she wrote to Girl Scouts to take GMOs out, and started an online petitions. A few months on, her petition for making Girl Scout cookies GMO free has passed 10,000 signatures! She has been to rallies, and met with well known consumer rights campaigners. But as a passionate cook and garden lover, Alicia does more that just protest:
She is creating a GMO free recipe book for kids, and wants all sales to benefit bringing healthy foods into schools. She also sits down with her school principal to discuss healthy school lunches. After all, they have a school garden to feed themselves! You should follow her examples!
Video http://on-msn.com/HnFvrj http://bit.ly/HnFrYS Facebook http://on.fb.me/HnEjV8 Website: https://rickyrosie.wordpress.com/
approach. This is an unacceptable violation of these organization's societal position and purpose. http://huff.to/HnCV4N ACTION TIPS
Maya is a Girl Guide of Canada, running a Get GMOs out of our Cookies campaign in her country. Her petition has passed 25,000 signatures, already! Girl Guide Canada's response is a splendid example of facts evasion, and business illiteracy. GG cookies business manager Dave Pause seriously dares fool the public by saying " “It would triple the cost of our cookies." Repeat triple the cost! Not even organic cookies are thrice as expensive! Not only do Girl Scouts and Girl Guides use ingredients polluted with controversy, but rainforest destruction, unfair trade, and possibly causing cancer, autism, diabetes or birth defects. Replacing these ingredients would be no big deal, and the organizations' millions of members and fans - subscribing to ideals of eco-literacy, healthy nature, and civic responsibility - would certainly support a child and nature supportive
Can you imagine the power of tens of thousands of Girl Scouts and Guides saying "I won't sell GMO cookies. Scientists and consumer protection groups they may not be safe at all. I want them to be free from harm, a true role model product, no less than I am supposed to be, so I can be proud of them, and make a good impact on our society, and the nature that we have borrowed from our own children." This is a chance for turning two national mega institutions into progressive, forward leading role models - like Girl Scouts used to be in their past one hundred years. It will only come from YOU! You have seen how successful Madison and Rhiannon have been. Join their petitions, and pass on the message in your schools, communities and GS / GG groups! GS campaign USA: http://chn.ge/HnEuzI GG campaign Canada: http://chn.ge/HnEaB3
Healthy Kids
MYTH: We cannot afford to feed our kids healthy, organic menues. FACT: This book shows how schools in New York City achieve offering healthy, fresh, organic meals on a budget. MYTH: Only few schools, with very special conditions, can afford good, healthy meals for their students. FACT: This New York based organization is doing simply awesome, amazing, multi-faceted stuff in AXZ number of schools across AHCGS states. MYTH: Schools lack time to include school gardening. FACT: GBM, and Katie's Krops show that it works formally across the curriculum, and informally. MYTH: The kids are not interested in gardening FACT: >>> See Katie's student peers' enthusiasm, MYTH: We have no meaningful reason to grow vegetables in our school garden. FACT: >>> See GBM's rising grades, learning dimensions, life skills, eco-literacy, see Katie's Krops impacts on local community, and Katie becoming the youngest Clinton Global Initiative laureate for a reason.
I received a cabbage seedling from a third grade program with Bonnie Plants in 2008. I planted my seedling in the garden in the corner of my house. Every day I would come out with the watering can and water it. I would fertilize the cabbage and weed around it. My family and I watched it grow massively in size. When my cabbage was fully grown it weighed in at an amazing 40 pounds! I knew my cabbage was special and it needed to find a special home. My mom contacted Fields to Families a local organization that helps farmers get crops to organizations that feed the hungry to see where I could donate my cabbage. They recommended we give my cabbage to Tri County Family Ministries, a local soup kitchen. In May of 2008 we brought my cabbage to Tri County Family Ministries. When I walked in I saw a huge line of people waiting for what might be the only meal they would have that day. The people who worked there and who were eating there were so friendly and nice. As I served my cabbage to the guests and they thanked me for helping to feed them I knew I could and I should do more to help. That day at Tri County Family Ministries my dream was born. My dream is that there are no hungry people. I asked my school to help and they donated a huge plot of land for a garden.
Video http://on-msn.com/HnJqoe
The whole school kindergarten to 12th grade is helping and the harvest is donated to feed the hungry people. But I didn’t stop there either. I contacted Fields to Families and asked them if they could help. Their board of directors said ‘Yes’ and I now have a Master Gardener, Ms. Lisa, to work with. But I am not stopping there. I want more people to get involved, more people to help in the fight against hunger. Growing vegetables is fun and it so great to help people. If I can do it anyone can. It doesn’t take a huge garden just a pot on your front porch with one vegetable plant can make a difference. If people (I hope lots of kids too) could grow even one vegetable plant and donate the harvest to a local soup kitchen we could make a huge difference in the fight against hunger. I have 60 vegetable gardens, now, and so many wonderful people are helping me make my dream come true. The wonderful people at Bonnie Plants have donated so many seedlings to my gardens. I couldn't do it without them! With the help of my family and friends I have started Katie’s Krops. My hope is that Katie’s Krops will inspire lots of others to help in the fight against hunger.
Website http://katieskrops.com.
There is no reason for
School menues at Martha's school in Great Britain
Photos send to her by students from Japan & Israel Rice, Simmered Chicken and Konjak with Miso. Deep Fried Chicken, Boiled Japanese Mustard Spinach, and Milk. The Mustard Spinach is grown locally. Food-o-meter- 8/10 Health rating- 8/10 Bites- unknown Courses- Rice, 3 sides Price- JPY234yen (Approx. US$2.9 1.8 ) Pieces of hair- 0
'Falafel, which is ground down chickpeas and fava beans, with pita chips and yoghurt and cucumber sauce, with green leaves and onion. It was a really good food and I always enjoy it. We also get dessert (I could not take a picture as you only get it when you have finished all your first course) which we are able to take with us. This day I had a kichlach which is a type of cookie. Through the day we also have 2 snacks, for which we are allowed to get as much fruit or salad as we like."
I love Ziva's colourful plate. Every other plate I have seen is white. The pretty plate and place mat make the food look so much nicer and I bet it tastes great. I like colour!
NeverSeconds is a blog created and run by Scottish schoolgirl Martha Payne. On it, she logs her thoughts and experiences of eating school meals at her primary school in Lochgilphead.
the school dining hall. It's a good thing to do, to change your mind, and I've certainly done that."
Launched on 30 April 2012 as a school writing project with assistance from Martha's father David, the blog is written under the pseudonym "VEG" (Veritas Ex Gustu – truth from tasting), with the subtitle "One primary school pupil's daily dose of school dinners". Much like a restaurant review, it features daily entries on the £2 school meal that Martha/ "VEG" has chosen that day, her thoughts on the food and its quality, a count of the number of hairs, a health rating, a picture, and marks out of 10 based on a "Food-o-Meter".
The ban was later cited as a "classic example of local government failing to grasp the power of social media." As a result of the controversy, Martha's Just Giving total rose to more than £40,000 by the afternoon of 15 June, and to £65,000 the following day. By July it stood at £110,412. In late November 2012 it was over £123,000 ($210,000). Martha was shocked, and decided to put it to good use:
Nine-year-old Martha's first full entry on 8 May 2012 featured a picture of a slice of pizza and a single potato croquette, alongside some sweetcorn and a cupcake for desert. Her written comment was;
“The good thing about this blog is Dad understands why I am hungry when I get home. Today he made a Banana Loaf, shame I don't like bananas, see I am not perfect!” The blog hit local and then national headlines, after gaining support from chef and school meals campaigner Jamie Oliver, who tweeted; "Shocking but inspirational blog. Keep going, big love from Jamie x." The blog gained 3 million hits by 15 Jun 2012. Martha also began featuring pictures of school dinners sent to her by children in Germany, Japan, Spain, Taiwan and the United States. The resultant traffic generated media interest, with Martha as a guest on BBC Radio 4's You and Yours and later becoming the subject of an edition of Radio 4's The Food Programme. After NeverSeconds went viral, Martha's father met with the school council, which announced that all students would be allowed unlimited servings of fruit, vegetables and bread. On 14 June, Martha was removed from her Mathematics class, taken to the headteacher's office, and told that she could no longer take photographs of her food inside the dining hall. In response, Martha wrote an entry entitled "Goodbye", explaining the council's decision, followed by a commentary from her father. On 15 June, following a storm of protest on the internet, the council issued a press release defending the decision. However, after the intervention of local Scottish National Party MSP and Education Secretary Mike Russell, council leader Roddy McCuish told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme:
"There's no place for censorship in Argyll and Bute Council. I've just instructed senior officials to immediately withdraw the ban on pictures from
As Martha learned more about school meals in other parts of the world, and thought about how great it must be to enjoy Japanese school meals, she also found out that in some countries, school lunch can mean the only meal per day. And as you can imagine, she decided to help, partnered with Mary's Meals, and invited blog followers to donate. Inspired and grateful for this 9 year old's achievements, for Scottish school kids, people contributed considerable amounts of money - helping schools feed 10,000 school children in Malawi through the year. See Martha's visit to a school in the video below. Martha has also published a book about her story. The profits also benefit Malawi school kids. And kids around the world, in Brazil, the US, and Japan, are inspired to join her quest, and building kitchens in Malawi, too! LINKS Video http://bit.ly/Hj1X5A and http://bit.ly/Hj23Ky Blog http://neverseconds.blogspot.de Wikipedia http://bit.ly/HiUNyi Article http://bit.ly/Hj5Lnv and http://bit.ly/HiT1NG Book: http://amzn.to/HiUPX1 LEARNING TIPS > Browse Martha's blog, view her VIDEO (a) Share your honest views about your school food. (b) What have you learned and discovered new about the children at Malawi? ACTION TIPS > Document your school meals and share your photos and comments on our website / facebook page > Make food at your school so GOOD that you like it, your parents like it, and local chefs like it. Period. > Dare investigating what "tastes good" to you, so far, but may be junk and flavouring, but no real food. It can shorten your life span, seriously. TIP: Be brave and embark on Social Experiments tasting other diets, at the end of this book. > Want to support Mary's Kitchens in Malawi?
Your favourite tv chef is also an activist - because he cannot stand seeing school children being forced to eat yukky and junky school meals. Even if they know about good food, it's difficult for kids to eat properly, if the canteen offers just junk. The same is true for summer camps. Jamie made a lot of waves with a campaign in England, showing what ugly igredients are in chicken fritters and stuff that people eat on a daily basis. Just the trash, which real butchers and chefs throw away, and would never dare put on restaurants plates. On top, Jamie gave kitchen ladies a little training of how to nicely arrange foods on plates and buffets - raising kids' appetite - and the kids started digging in! The eye is involved in eating, as we know very well from restaurants and recipe books. If we serve kids trash in trashy ways for the twelve years shaping their lives, how can we possibly expect them to ever become food literate, eat well, qualify as inhabitants and parents of a sustainable society? In England, Jamie's good example made a sig-
nificant difference. It turned out to be easy to serve yummy meals. But Jamie has been facing very tough moments, facing the "old" ways. In the USA, known for the worst health statistics on Earth (simply because it's furthers down the path of 'industrialized lifestyle') he has faced heavy opposition... what happens, if you confront people who have never seen "real food" telling them that their ways are suboptimal? The results are tough. But here, it must be said, that the approach of the changemakers in this book is different from his. They simply create the good model, without lecturing people about bad stuff. Their approach is not centered on "problems and fears", but the "good, fun and awesome". THIS is the more advanced, and more successful approach of changing things. Also, Jamie's kitchen has a lot of meat. A truly awesome, sustainable civilization, a 'no-killing culture' also has a 'no-harming' diet. Still, his initiative is a big lesson, showing things that we are unaware of, and shocked to see. It's YOUR DECISION what to DO ABOUT IT.
Videos: TED Talk "Teach every child about food" http://bit.ly/17lu6VH Food Revolution: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaIbvmcpSEk Article: http://bit.ly/17lrZRS Website: www.jamieoliver.com and http://bit.ly/17lsTxF Recipes: http://bit.ly/17lsYRU LEARNING TIPS ACTION TIPS
This stuff is filling, it has (artificial) "flavour". Still, it is no Real Food. What happens if you eat only this, every day of the year for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Here's one of the most ugly, disgusting things that Jamie has ever come across.
Pink Slime also called "lean, finely textured beef" in your supermarket. is those parts of the beef that butchers throw away, that are not rated fit for human consumption, also because of its contamination with germs. Jamie explains to parents and students what industry does to turn it into a cheap "thinner" of meat products permitted to make up to 15% in your supermarket and fast food menues, be they burgers, tacos etc, and it is in 70% of American beef products. Including school menues, of course. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshlnRWnf30 The ABC News video shows the person responsible for granting this permission. After quitting USDA, she got a position at the company producing pink slime, earning millions of dollars. Article and video http://abcn.ws/1chCLKN and http://abcn.ws/1chCh7f If you enjoy Jamie's experiment, here are two more Chicken Nugget Experiment www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMbWn6ClxM Ice Cream and Candy www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrSdPWV5Tjo
If you decide to eat that, it's your choice. I say, this is not for eating. And there is more.
Rhino Horn
"Tiger’s penis, Rhino Horn, Bear Gallbladder, Shark Fin, Seal Penis. What do these parts of endangered animals have in common? They are all parts of animals that are slaughtered around the world because in Chinese culture it is believed that ingesting these animal parts will improve the potency of the Chinese male" http://bit.ly/17lyLXG
www.stoprhinopoaching.com
Tiger Penis
"Tiger’s penis, Rhino Horn, Bear Gallbladder, Shark Fin, Seal Penis. What do these parts of endangered animals have in common? They are all parts of animals that are slaughtered around the world because in Chinese culture it is believed that ingesting these animal parts will improve the potency of the Chinese male" http://bit.ly/17lyLXG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_penis http://bit.ly/17lyLXG http://bit.ly/17lysfG www.tigerhomes.org/animal/poaching.cfm http://bit.ly/17lyvIi http://bit.ly/17lyUKR
RPIX.COM
Tortured Bull "Grotesque Spanish bull-burning festival where baying crowd straps flaming wooden horns to terrified animal. . . in the name of entertainment" The sickening Joy of the Bull - or Toro Jubilo festival - is one of the 'cultural' highlights of the entertainment calendar for residents in the Medieval village of Medinaceli, in the province of Soria, north east of Madrid." Members of the public are seen jumping into the ring and taunting the bull - adding to its terror and confusion. Gasping for air, the bull finally reaches a state of exhaustion after nearly 45 minutes of torment and is soon dragged out the ring by villagers to be butchered. The men in the grey uniforms are awarded pieces of meat from the animal for their 'bravery'.
http://dailym.ai/1c8T8VM
http://oceanramsey.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HkeGcj24K0 www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24LR0BeILQ www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRiQDJsrXI
Manta Rays
just for their gills for bogus medicine myths practitioners say that fish / ray gills are nowhere in the TCM literature, and have no effect http://bit.ly/1c8VHXU + http://bit.ly/1c8VO5J www.mantarayofhope.com http://bit.ly/1ckxqCq + http://bit.ly/1ckxpOW www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVMDl8Qt_Vc www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4vDbJpN5SA www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRiQDJsrXI
While swimming with Great Whites is a thrilling and inspiring experience, my interaction with sharks is absolutely driven by my greater goal to advocate shark conservation. Many people fear sharks and have unfortunately only seen them portrayed on TV and in films as mindless man-eating machines. In truth, sharks are intelligent, calculated, and generally very cautious about approaching humans. More importantly, sharks play a vital role in maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem and are being overfished to the point of extinction. As the Sengalese environmentalist Baba Dioum said,
“In the end people will only protect what they love, and only love what they understand.�
Growing up surfing and diving in Hawaii and San Diego, I’ve shared the water with sharks my entire life. I’m a professional scuba instructor, advanced free diver and surfer, and an avid swimmer. I went to college for marine biology and worked as an aquarist and curator with sharks and rays at 3 different marine parks. At home on Oahu, I regularly dive to photograph sharks. I feel extremely fortunate that some of the greatest moments of my life have been diving with Great Whites. It’s difficult to express the incredible joy and breathtaking emotion experienced locking eyes with a Great White. Watching the sharks acknowledge and observe me while I peacefully allow them to swim towards me and the experience as they accept my touch. I hope that by sharing my experiences with sharks, I might inspire others to take action and help protect these amazing creatures before it’s too late. TURNING THE TIDE Today, many shark species are on the brink of extinction. Scientists estimate that over the past 50 years, 90% of the world’s shark population has disappeared. We believe that in capturing and exhibiting images of sharks and humans interacting peacefully and intimately, we can help change the way people think about sharks. In doing so, we hope to promote sharks as they really are: amazing, beautiful, and important animals that need to be protected.
Sharkbites are accidents, when sharks mistake humans as seals. This is why they usually test bite, then release, do not kill, nor eat people. Crocodiles do. Just respect them, like you respect dogs or lions. If you approach with love, they trust, and some will even play! www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMMU6sJhnFM http://oceanramsey.com
Watch Sharkwater, sensational and acclaimed documentary, making respected friends with the animal we have been taught to fear the most all our lives - finding out they are among the most gentle, attentive, beautiful, and the most important steward of our oceans, which our all survival depends upon - for our ATMOSPHERE, and uncovering a billion dollar mafia, pillaging marine parks, pocketing governments, and persecuting the courageous people protecting our world's oceans. www.sharkwater.com
100 MILLION EVERY YEAR just for their fins, for stupid shark fin soup
SHARKS NEED YOUR HELP, NOW http://bit.ly/1ckzgmP
www.sharkwater.com www.seashepherd.org www.sharkangels.com www.antisharkfinning.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFnN112L40c
Please join and start campaigns to rapidly protect manta rays and sharks, whales and dolphins in support of soft, responsible tourism, of proper research, up to date EDUCATION, and establishing laws making their fishing, fun sport killing, poaching, transport, sales and consumption strictly illegal. YOU CAN BE PART OF THIS.
Life on Earth is a Miracle, isn't it? Are you making friends with the wild and free?
Here's your next Teacher. Meet Tippi. These are WILD ANIMALS living in the Bush of Namibia. Tippi's parents are wildlife photographers, and while they were doing their job, Tippi grew up, and did what kids do. She made friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippi_Degr%C3%A9 www.xihalife.com/bbs/photos/coolphotos/1139.htm http://vimeo.com/42887133 www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrZ6dRbIljc www.tippi.org
There's a beautiful scene in the film when Tippi is being asked how she does it - how is she accepted with so much trust by these animals? Sternly, and slightly impatient, she responds "Just be nice. Do not fear, do not have bad intentions. it's natural. They are like us. Just be honest. And careful. One has to pay attention. Some that are not so nice." We only use screenshots on the earlier page, because we haven't been able to reach Tippi, or her parents, to receive permission to use her original photographs.
Anyway, - you should get the book, and make it a gift to children. Every child on Earth should have it. It is the greatest, and fundamental lesson for achieving peace and sustainability on Earth. Inside of us. And outside us. Ocean offers you the same lesson. No sense of DIFFERENCE = Love = No fear = No Violence. You don't have to begin cuddling with sharks and leopards. You cannot. Your mind is full of inherited fears and myths. Take it easy. There EXIST many animals around you, that you can practice with. And they need you and everyone on Earth to BE MORE TIPPI.
http://bit.ly/1c9z4Tb www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUkHkyy4uqw
Life for animals in China www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE56fAD3HyE Indonesia www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FssedtU8t8 India www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE9DlnqZxkU USA www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzS8p727gvM Everywhere www.youtube.com/watch?v=moloe-Sdxw8 when the Royal family comes for fun http://dailym.ai/1c9Aj4X
Would You like to live without causing harm, suffering and death, just to keep your body moving? YOU CAN It's already happening for millions, and they are living in Bliss! Even science has caught up: "IT IS POSSIBLE." YAY!
A non-killing Diet
I love animals. I could not bear cutting them open to eat them. So, I decided to no more close my eyes to others slaughtering them, hurting them in those gross conditions, and buying those heinous lies. I could not bear any longer knowing that animals are tortured in insane ways, for their milk, to make cheese, for their feathers and fur. Also, I wanted to quit the dirt inside meat. Antibiotics, oils, remains from lab animals and road kill mixed into cow and chicken pellet food, and residue from sewage plants (poop). yo. Bah! First, I didn't trust any of the farm industry any more. But now, I just don't want any animal held in dull captivity or killed, no matter how nice the farmer. My question was
How Can I Get Out Of That Cycle of Violence, Pain and Guilt?
A big deal was to get rid of the MYTH "You need to eat meat 'n eggs 'n stuff to be STRONG."
This myth was gone THE MOMENT I MET ATHLETES not eating meat, no cheese, no milk, and not taking any funky supplements. Just real food. There's plents of them, including some "strongest men of the world". Check these out >>
Vegan athlete couple Antoniette Pacheco and Frank Medrano. Almost too much to watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFPsvF3UOdo
Science, by the way, have taken a long time to catch up. But seeing such people, they couldn't ignore it any longer. So, they checked and found out it's of course true. Note: They still show you obsolete food pyramids and plates at school, doctors and tv. THAT EDUCATION AND MEDIA AND MEDICINE SYSTEM IS VERY FAR BEHIND. Observe it, the next time you see their coffee spill nonsense and force SCHOOL CHILDREN to eat (the cheapest!) trashy meat and egg and milk by pretending it was the national nutritional guidelines for a healthy diet. Next page - is what the science says.
Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Abstract It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets,
including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence- based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and
result in positive maternal and infant health
outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a
lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.
Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels,
lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a
Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals. The variability of dietary practices among vegetarians makes individual assessment of dietary adequacy essential. In addition to assessing dietary adequacy, food and nutrition professionals can also play key roles in educating vegetarians about sources of specific nutrients, food purchase and preparation, and dietary modifications to meet their needs.
www.eatright.org www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
The next big deal was
WHAT am I going to eat? Leafs of salad, carrots and potatoes were unbearably boring, and sad looking on my plate. MY SAVIOUR was the thousands of years old CULTURE and CUISINE of India, Orient, Asia & the old Americas with incredible spices, fruits and vegetables THAT WILL KEEP ME BUSY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE TO EXPLORE, LEARN AND INDULGE IN. Sweets? Have you ever tasted some HARE KRISHNA meals. Man, those sweets will be the first divine treats in your life! DONE!
I still was attached to that occasional CHEESE. Milk had been off the menu really fast. It was clogging my stomach. When I started yoga and acro yoga, my back pains went away, my body became all YUMMY, and I was more into chai than coffee. VEGAN & RAW FOOD I didn't like what I saw first, because it was so much health, alarm and mental driven. I am NOT into those ill-looking people. But then, I came across Surdham, and since then, it's COMPLETE LIBERATION, YUM and JOYFUL LIFE POWER The costs? Not more than before. I guess, even cheaper. Say, it's the same. The special stuff lasts for long. And one eats different.