Clipmarks | Socratoad's Agriculture, etc collection

Pond Scum for a Cleaner Tomorrow

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:34:47 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Pond Scum for a Cleaner Tomorrow

The water-choking stuff could be the key to reversing climate change

Duckweed: Could this green stuff be the key to a cleaner tomorrow? Photo by Noël Zia Lee (CC Licensed)

Most recently, the aquatic plant duckweed has gained attention after being targeted as a possible source of biofuel (not unlike that other pond-choking stuff). But that's just one of the potential applications scientists at the five allied institutions have been uncovering. Thanks to its high nutritional value, duckweed holds promise as a livestock feed, one that's more sustainable due to its ability replenish itself relatively easily (duckweed creates biomass faster than any other flowering plant). It's also being tapped as a means to extract nitrogen and phosphate pollutants from sewage and agricultural wastewater.

The History of Rice

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:24:26 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: Spready through wet monsoon asia through the "technology" of the rice paddy.

Spread to Europe by the Moorish conquest of Spain.

When did it reach Italy?

How did it spread in Central Asia?

Clip Source: www.answers.com

rice

As a main source of nourishment for over half the world's population, rice is by far one of the most important commercial food crops.

When and where the domestication of rice took place is not specifically known, but new archaeological evidence points to an area along the Yangtze River in central China and dates back as far as 11,000 years.

t wasn't until the development of puddling and transplanting of the rice plant that the spread of rice as an agricultural crop really began. Practiced in the wetlands of China, the concept of the rice paddy was adopted by Southeast Asia in roughly 2000 B.C.

To the West, rice was also an early important crop in India and Sri Lanka, dating as far back as 2500 B.C. and 1000 B.C. respectively.

The spread to Europe, Africa, and America occurred more slowly, first with the Moor's invasion of Spain in 700 A.D. and then later to the New World during the age of exploration and colonialism.

Eco-ruin 'felled early society'

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:48:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

One of Western Europe's earliest known urban societies may have sown the seeds of its own downfall, a study suggests

Mystery surrounded the fall of the Bronze Age Argaric people in south-east Spain - Europe's driest area.

Data suggests the early civilisation exhausted precious natural resources, helping bring about its own ruin.

The study provides early evidence for cultural collapse caused - at least in part - by humans meddling with the environment, say researchers.

It could also provide lessons for modern populations living in water-stressed regions.

The findings were based on pollen preserved in a peat deposit located in the mountains of eastern Andalucia, Spain.

Fallen civilisation

Sediment cores were drilled from peat deposits

By studying the abundances of different pollen types - along with other indicators - preserved in sedimentary deposits, researchers can reconstruct what kind of vegetation covered the area in ancient times.

Tags: society, civilization, natural resources, ecology, cultural collapse

Not (entirely) USDA-approved

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:16:05 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Depressing but necessary reading.

Clip Source: gristmill.grist.org

Not (entirely) USDA-approved

Food production and retailing have gotten so squarely under the heel of a few corporations that even the USDA is raising an eyebrow.

At the top, the agency teems with PR flacks for the agribusiness giants. But that doesn't mean there aren't competent researchers among the rank and file. One of them, Steven W. Martinez, has issued a useful report (PDF) on consolidation in the food industry.

On page 21, a chart reveals that in 1972, the four largest milk processors controlled 17 percent of the market. By 2002, that figure had risen to 42 percent. And as the market consolidated, the few companies who controlled it quietly shuttered processing plants, concentrating production in ever-larger facilities.

It's no wonder that over that same period in the United States, small-scale, grass-based milk production for nearby markets essentially disappeared -- and that mass-scale, confinement dairy farming, reliant on corn, antibiotics, and hormones, took its place.

Tags: usda, food production, agribusiness giants