Re: Peace Seeds cannibals
Martha - By 'flyer' I assume you mean 'seed list'? Al Kapuler is a plant breeder, but not a marketer. Like you, it's a bare-bones world I'm not particularly comfortable with. If you need more information on plants, write and ask him. At $2.50 a packet, I'm going to buy a few and grow them out. Many of the varities speak for themselves: you'll find information on them by doing a search on the web. As far as the chickens go, a year ago I would have thought that you did the right thing by getting all your chickens from different farms at the same time and enclosing them in a house for a couple of days The books will tell you that you can create a new flock in this fashion, that individual birds lost their flock-sense when moved and they reform it in 48 hours with the birds they they are with at that time. Unfortunately, my recent move from VA proved this to not be true. I have barred rocks myself. I also received a 'donation' from the public schools of a bunch of white hens in May. These hens never joined the Virginia flock, escaping from the pen and living in th stables. For this move I gathered white and barred and held them in the hoophouse for several days. I didn't see any 'cannabilism,' but what has happened is that the white birds have moved out of the fenced in area again and have set up life with the goats!! If birds of either variety get mixed, all sorts of pecking takes place. I spoke to an experienced farm manager the other day who confirmed what I had witnessed. Her conclusion was that chickens will form themselves along breed lines. In her experience, roosters will not x-breeds, as well. Of course, this is not remotely the case with my birds, where I've even seen a rooster do-the-do with another rooster. Since I do have Rhodes Islands that come and go from both groups and a couple of Ana-whatevers that live with the white birds, I have to assume that a mixed flock is possible, but maybe not with Barred Rocks, a variety that I remain very disappointed in, as far as intelligence goes. Hopefully, someone will have insights into solving your problem.
Re: Peace Seeds cannibals
You know, I almost didn't get the barred rocks. I wasn't exactly shopping for that breed, and to me they had a 'mean eye'. I thought that I was being ridiculous. Now, 2 days later, I realize I should have gone with intuition (but when do we ever listen to ourselves?) What I'm hoping for is the buffs and the Ameraucanas will form some sort of bonding flock together and the 'intruders' later on will be the rocks. I'll have to keep them caged for a week and then try it again. (All but my poor pecked hen, who seems perfectly content roosting on top of the carrier in the kitchen, surrounded by cats.) If she lives, she's going to have socialization problems when she's reintroduced again. My roosters are half red leghorn and half ameraucana and all boy! I have a little banty rooster who was the old harem-master until the teenagers came on the scene. I don't think it's the males who are discrimating, I think it's probably the hens. My Red Leghorn hangs out with the young guys and I have one big yellow hen that does too. The rest (mottled black hens) live with the banty who is also a slate gray. When the teenagers try to corner a black one, she runs screaming back to her husband. Chickens are generally fun to have around until they start murdering each other.
FW: [globalnews] Sunday Denver Post, From panic to denial on water
Title: FW: [globalnews] Sunday Denver Post, From panic to denial on water From panic to denial on water: Reactions to crisis disparate in Four Corners states' plans By Michael Booth Denver Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 16, 2003 - The multiyear drought in the Four Corners states has brought sacrifice to some cities and recreation areas, and a mere shrug of the shoulders from others. Post / Shaun Stanley This buoy's warning goes for naught near Hite Marina, in the parched northern section of Lake Powell in southern Utah. Cities' disjointed responses to the region's drought have drawn criticism from some environmentalists. From Salt Lake City to Aurora, and Albuquerque to Phoenix, water managers and their constituencies react to the absence of snow with the full range from panic to denial. Some scramble to prop up reservoir levels at all costs; others argue the definition of reservoir is a bank of water that gets drawn to zero in dry times. Phoenix will exhaust its local reserves this summer. Yet Rocky Mountain snowmelt coming down the Colorado River means the largest city in the Southwest has no lawn-watering curbs. Well-soaked residents even plant a winter variety of seed over their dormant summer bluegrass to ensure green color all year. At half-full Lake Powell, the water playground for millions of Westerners, boaters this summer might want a taxi to get from the marina to the fast-receding Colorado River water. But the lucrative tourist season looms, and National Park Service officials contemplate blowing up a rock formation uncovered by the drought at the Arizona end so this summer's demanding boat traffic can avoid a 7-mile detour. The Southwestern approach to drought is definitely head-in-the-sand, said Owen Lammers of Utah-based environmental group Living Rivers, which is sharply critical of how federal dams and what it calls greedy cities rearrange Western water flows. We're characterizing this as the Enron of water management. The government keeps saying lake levels will get better, and the reality is that things are going down, down, down. The wide variance in public water restrictions can deflate conservation efforts by prompting complaints of unfair treatment and downstream waste, water experts said. And even if downstream draws from the Colorado River are legal, they may injure streams or lakes in a way that everybody has to pay for in the future. The river that many of these states depend on is being overtaxed, so despite what your rights are, there are reasons here to be concerned, said Bart Miller, water projects director for Land and Water Fund of the Rockies. It strikes the average citizen as unfair or strange when others are using much, much more water. Cities with looser water policies defend the lack of rules as a benefit of well-secured supplies. All these decades of planning for water resources and storage have paid off, said Ken Kroski, spokesman for the Phoenix water supply, where the main reservoir for the perpetual boom city is down to 14 percent of capacity. As Aurora tells people they can't plant a single flower this spring, and Denver ponders a year-round shut-off of lawn sprinkling, Phoenix is still in Stage 1 of its drought plan, asking for voluntary 5 percent cutbacks in home water use with no rules for what days to water. Knowing there will be no water available from Arizona snowmelt or rain this summer, Phoenix is confident its share of Colorado River water coming down the cement channels of the Central Arizona Project will be more than enough for city lawns in 2003. Checking in with other cities shows just how disjointed Western water policy can be - while Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City watch their reservoirs drain, Albuquerque will switch from more predictable well water to a new reservoir system over the next three years. Santa Fe drivers can't drive through a car wash more than once a month. Tourists to the high- desert jewel won't get their hotel sheets changed until their fourth day. Currently in Albuquerque, when it's dry, we just pump more from the aquifer, Mayor Marty Chavez said. But we're depleting the aquifer. We can get away with it for a summer or two, but not in the long term. Realizing the underground supply may be used far faster than it is recharged by runoff, Albuquerque sought voluntary water savings last summer - of only 3 percent to 5 percent, a far cry from Denver's goal of cutting use from a normal year by 30 percent. Around the Four Corners, these cities and recreation areas hope for snow with varying degrees of fervency: Phoenix: Open taps in the desert Phoenix has some of the lowest water rates in the West, and the only mandatory cut in effect right now is a 5 percent slice from government use. A lot of people automatically and incorrectly associate the desert with no water, Kroski said. But the free-flow philosophy permeating Arizona does frustrate some
FW: [globalnews] Jimmy Breslin: Walking Along Streets of Peace
Title: FW: [globalnews] Jimmy Breslin: Walking Along Streets of Peace Published on Sunday, February 16, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday Walking Along Streets of Peace by Jimmy Breslin On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant. They were summer people in winter clothes. They were the largest and happiest crowd seen in this city maybe ever, outside of a war's end in 1945. There were fathers with children on their shoulders. There were mothers holding their young. There were kids walking alongside their parents. There were religious people everywhere. And so many were young. Young students, young married, young in a city that belonged to the dreams and love and laughter of youth. Do you want a life with thrills, years of exhilaration? Come to New York. Where yesterday they said they did not want war. They said it with their presence and with the most signs of my time in my city. The signs were against war, and against George W. Bush, who, for the first time, was being heralded as a man who lost the popular vote in this country by 500,000. Looking down Third Avenue and Second Avenue, as the crowds came up to try to get to the rear of the great crowd on First Avenue, and then peering as far down First Avenue as you could see, the size of throngs caused you to tell yourself, maybe a million. Whatever it was, out on the street it felt like a million, and it was glorious. A news photographer I know came along. I've been everyplace. I have to say a million. Because of the Police Department's reprehensible pens, the crowd was separated so that there was not one clear picture of an enormous group that would cause politicians here to faint. The crowd so frightening was made of people who mostly never had protested before, who were too young for the Vietnam protests and who cannot be classified under any of the old words, demonstrators or anti-war, because they are new and they are real. War may be a great favorite with a Texas Theocracy, with a president who speaks in the first person more than anybody we have had in decades -- I'm sick and tired of waiting -- and who calls on God to bless the country as if no other people made in the image and likeness of God are alive on earth. Only the sour people could permit innocent people to be scared as close to death as you could do it. Get duct tape! her government told Kristin, a friend of mine who lives in Washington. So she went out and got duct tape, which usually is mentioned in stories about bank robbers using it to bound and gag clerks. Kristin taped the windows and door of her children's room. She then said she was ready for a gas attack. She failed to realize that the attack would leave her kids as orphans. The crowd yesterday was herded into a mile of pens, like the Omaha stockyards. This was for security. The reason for security was security. On our streets of beauty yesterday, gladness was in the place of arrogance and meanness. The sole conflict I found, when I arrived at 66th Street and First Avenue, the closest I could get to the stage at 51th Street, a young woman named Leslie Meenan was holding the hand of a girl who said her name was, as I spelled it, Camilla. She was 8. You're spelling it wrong, she said. Only one l.' You don't know how to spell your own name, I said. Yes, I do. You don't. She's right, a woman said. Her name was Cara McCarthy and she was from Bushwick, in Brooklyn. She teaches at PS 145. Just ahead was Bob Stratton, who held his daughter, Fia, age 3. He said he was from Park Slope and he was in computer development. And now as you walked along the edge of one of these pens, here was a line of Catholic protests and then a group of schoolteachers and then everything seemed to be Jane Burcaw, in a good, warm and fashionable hat holding a sign that said, No War. I made it last night, she said. Where do you live? Bethlehem. I work at the Moravian Theological Seminary. I got here at 10:30. I would've been much earlier if I had to. The number of police and vehicles was unconscionable in this area, blocks away from the stage. The people were beautiful and the overload of police was irritating and deprived people of their rights. Somewhere far downtown from where I was standing, they had police horses on Second Avenue and people there to protest were behind the endless metal pens and somewhere the cattle turned human and people were arrested. The mayor of this city and the police commissioner had been spreading fear in this city for many days. Their claims were infuriating. We know there is something coming but we can't tell you. If they knew it was coming and the people who were doing it knew it was coming, then what are you keeping a secret for? Bet me that they had the same kind of rumor that Colin Powell tried to sell
Re: Peace Seeds cannibals
I'm wondering if anyone feeds their chickens bought chicken feed and if so what. I saw a beautiful flock of mixed breeds which I couldn't identify when I was in Moscow, Idaho, staying at a farm which markets on the Farmers Market and at the Coop. They have to get their certified organic feed from Canada through relatives there--They use 16% Layer Mash from In Season Farms, 27831 Huntington Road, Aldergrove, B.C. V4X1B6, as well as green stuff from kitchen and greenhouses. They complained that their rooster was too rough and they wanted to get another, but the hens were plump and I couldn't see any holes in their feathers. They looked great. They get $3.00/dozen for their eggs. I'm real interested in feeding regimes. Also in the availability of organic feed and its relative cost compared to conventional feed. Merla [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... Chickens: I needed to get a new start (my 5 hens are ancient), so Saturday was 'chicken day'. I bought a mixed flock, from 2 different sources. (4 each, Ameraucanas, Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks)...
Re: Ramial Wood Chips, Paramagnetic Rock and Organizing the Work on the Weed Project
Steve, you're so nice to spend the time to do this. I will ponder. I can't imagine finding enough ramial wood chips in this land of fir, larch, pine, cedar hemlock. They cut the softwood and leave the hardwood--birch, alder, cottonwood and others. I just wanted to establish the benefits of hardwood chips. What I was looking at wood chips for was for a special area which is parking for The Falls, a place where you climb down stepping stones from the road level to a very turbulent rapids-like falls that goes into a pool. People often stop there and look and also fish. The edge of the parking area is a rampant common tansy bed. The Weed Supervisor has made noises about having a dump truck load of cedar chips put there. What I actually wanted to do was divide the area into at least two parts--one cedar and one ramial wood chips and watch it long term for growing something instead of tansy. I thought that the cedar area wouldn't grow anything at all and that the ramial chips would also kill the tansy, but would encourage mycorrhizal fungi and eventually grow local native forest plants, etc. This comparison might be valuable. I'm trying to teach the Weed Committee and our world here to think in terms of a forest community--plants and soil biota rather than only in terms of the absence of 'noxious' weeds mentality that leaves bare disturbed soil that will be even more weedy. We are going to do a weed education project with 4-H with a cash prize for the group that hands in the best weed herbarium. I'm trying to get them to have an alternate project on the soil food web. I probably wouldn't buy plant starts. I like to grow starts myself and I'm always transplanting 'weeds' from our garden to the road right-of-way, a mile and a half down the hill from our place where they have become a small native ornamental garden around a 'NO SPRAY' sign. I have $923 left in the cost-share grant this year. I have gathered native grass seeds from our meadow and looked into buying some mixed native grass seed which I would probably germinate in flats and plant out, especially since Idaho fescue is a spotty, slow germinator. Clover is a great germinator and drought survivor. In thinking about a county-wide, cost-effective IPM weed control strategy, I'm thinking about the addition of clover, microorganisms, micronutrients (on a gross scale--you can't test the soil every mile), then a very thick stand of low growing grass that won't need mowing at all and maybe sow some yarrow and Rocky Mountain penstemon seeds (They came up wild on my private right-of-way patch when I pulled out the knapweed over a long period of time. Now I have a strong stand of penstemon.) Our original vision statement said wildflowers, but this is so hard that I'm willing to settle just for grass, but I still dream of having wildflowers that come up all season. We are testing 20% vinegar this year and had good luck with urea on hawkweed. In the fall we laid out a test plot in a thick solid knapweed stand and hand dug up all the knapweed except the little rosettes and sprayed Bruce Tainio's micronutrients from a soil test + his microorganisms (very expensive) + his enzymes, then sowed clover seeds in that. It was late, but it was warmer a much longer time than usual after that. We had some snow, then rain. I'm very interested in how this looks this spring. It should be very dramatic. Our flame weeding is done with our own weed torch which is just a metal tube with a butterfly valve at the handle hooked to a propane tank in a back pack. It set tansy back, but didn't kill it all. Your DeWitt Sunbelt Weed Barrier sounds too expensive. The newspaper under the hardwood chips sounds excellent. Steve, I'm not above digging weeds in rainy weather. We do have to get rid of the weeds. This road and the whole area is glacial till. We have wind blown laos coming off western grain fields in eastern Washington. This was a forest next to an agricultural area. There used to be a railroad in here to take logs out, long, long ago. There were only several pioneering families living here with a short road. Now it's an 8-mile road that gets more primitive the farther in you go with 300 families. At the beginning are four ranches, then a bridge over a river, a wonderful store with laundromat and showers, followed by houses close to and facing the road, then we have private roads off the feeder road and people mostly living off road, but still some on the road. One old family that owns a whole section of land on the road are pro-chemical and they sprayed 2,4-D on their right-of-way, so we are truly IPM. We have three miles where the county ditched several years ago but didn't reseed. It's just sand with a few weeds starting. It's mostly open to the sun, but the couple of miles has forest right up to the road and is shady--bare on one side and with various mixtures of moss, kinnickinnick (bearberry), native grass mixed with tansy, knapweed,
chicken feed
My own chickens eat my horse pellets like everything else around here. Expensive but nonmedicated. These new ones were on a (medicated) grow mash and hen scratch. I bought chopped corn and tried to get unmedicated grower feed. I ended up having to get game bird starter and paid a whopping $10.80 for it. (at least twice what the medicated stuff costs.) (Turkeys and game birds can't handle the additives they put in regular chicken feeds.) Someone was explaining that at the mill itself (talking about dog foods), they add preservatives so they don't have to list it as an ingredient on each bag. And, to get it bagged without chemicals, takes a separate process and milling system so they have to (yeah, right) charge more for it. Muenster Feeds here in Tx is organic, and they were talking about how tough it was to get a mill to process their different blends of feeds so they ended up milling it themselves. Purina and Acco and the other name brands figure if someone is persistent enough to want organic grains in their livestock feeds, they must be willing to pay triple for it. I don't like these feeds because everything comes out of a central mill and by the time the local feed stores get it, it's already old. My local mill puts a date stamp on each bag so I see exactly when it was filled and sewed shut. I don't know about the rest of the feeds, but the horse pellets are rarely over 2 - 3 days old by the time I have to use them. I've even had to wait at the dock while the mill was finishing a run, now that's fresh! At least in season, my hens get very organic, high protein grasshoppers added to their diet, plus the exercise to go catch them themselves.
FW: [globalnews] How catastrophe threatens the 12 millionchildren of Iraq
Title: FW: [globalnews] How catastrophe threatens the 12 million children of Iraq http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=377622 Vulnerable but ignored: how catastrophe threatens the 12 million children of Iraq By Leonard Doyle Foreign Editor 12 February 2003 They come from above, from the air, and will kill us and destroy us. I can explain to you that we fear this every day and every night. - Shelma (Five years old) It is not Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, but Iraq's 12 million children who will be most vulnerable to the massive use of force that the US plans to unleash against their country in the coming months. With or without UN Security Council backing, the looming war on Iraq will have immediate and devastating consequences for the country's children, more vulnerable now than before the 1991 Gulf War. A team of international investigators - including two of the world's foremost psychologists - have conducted the first pre-conflict field research with children and concluded that Iraqi children are already suffering significant psychological harm from the threat of war. The team was welcomed into the homes of more than 100 Iraqi families where they found the overwhelming message to be one of fear and the thought of being killed. Many live in a news void, with little information concerning the heightened threat of war. I think every hour that something bad will happen to me said Hadeel, aged 13. Assem, five, and one of the youngest interviewed, said: They have guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much. But it is the fear expressed by the majority of the children that most shocked the team. In a breaking voice 13-year old Hind told them: I feel fear every day that we might all die, but where shall I go if I am left alone? When and if a massive bombardment and invasion comes, the investigators predict the consequences will be so dire that the plight of Iraqi children must be given more priority when Britain and the US consider the alternatives to war. Because there is only one month's supply of food in the country and the overwhelming majority depend on rations distributed by the Baghdad regime, the chaos of war could tip a population of malnourished children into starvation. And once American and British bombs start falling on President Saddam's power stations, the country's main water treatment plants will fail causing the rivers to become contaminated with sewage. Millions of Iraqis rely on river water to irrigate crops and prepare food. Drinking or even washing dishes in such contaminated water will make an already vulnerable population liable to deadly diseases ranging from E-coli to typhoid. Before 1990, Iraq's health care system was the pride of the Middle East and was described by the World Health Organisation as first class. The ensuing Gulf War and sanctions have crippled the healthcare system causing death rates of children under five to double over the past decade with 70 per cent of deaths caused by easily avoidable bowel diseases and respiratory infections. Despite grave concerns at the highest levels, UN agencies are unable to prepare for an emergency that has yet to happen without being accused of clearing the way for war. The World Food Programme is preparing to feed up to one million Iraqis for at least three months, but once the shooting starts it will have to pull out its expatriate staff. Iraq's civilian population of 22 million is particularly vulnerable. Some 16 million - half of them children - are totally dependent on monthly government-distributed food rations. The last 12 years of sanctions and corruption within the regime mean that few if any families have stockpiles of food to get them through a war of any length. The World Food Programme supplies basic foodstuffs, but deliveries are left to the Iraqi government and a bombing campaign that destroys bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers will stop distribution in its tracks. The report of the international study team, published by the charity Warchild, warns that there will be a humanitarian disaster if war breaks out. Children, already weakened and vulnerable because of sanctions are at grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma. The experts expect casualties among children to be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands. The team concludes a new war would be catastrophic for Iraq's children. 12 February 2003 21:10 --- If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. - Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948
FW: [globalnews] Monsanto Meltdown
Title: FW: [globalnews] Monsanto Meltdown RENSE.COM Monsanto Meltdown Excerpted from the BioDemocracy News #42 of the Organic Consumers Association 2-11-3 Despite heavy advertising and PR greenwash, despite a cozy relationship with the White House, Monsanto's image, profits, and credibility have plunged. Its aggressive bullying on Frankenfoods, its patents on the Terminator gene, its attempt to buy out seed companies and monopolize seed stocks, and its persecution of hundreds of North American farmers for the crime of seed-saving, has made Monsanto one of the most hated corporations on Earth. Monsanto will likely soon be broken up, with its parts sold off to the highest bidder. The New York Times reported 1/14/03, that With its stock price low, Monsanto is considered a takeover target. by investment banks. and could be bought and sold off in pieces. On December 19, Monsanto shocked the biotech industry by forcing the resignation of its CEO, Hendrik Verfaillie, a 26-year veteran with the company. The sudden move came as Monsanto reported losses of $1.75 billion for the first three quarters of 2002, despite cutbacks, including layoffs for 700 employees. Monsanto's stock has fallen nearly 50% since January 2001. But Monsanto is not the only Gene Giant downsizing. Last year, biotech giant Syngenta closed down its plant genome lab in San Diego, terminated its controversial research partnership with the University of California in Berkeley, pulled out of its planned collaboration with the Indira Gandhi rice research institute in India, and canceled its contract with the John Innes Center in the UK. Major transnational corporations in the food and life sciences sector are unlikely to shed any tears over Monsanto's demise. It's no secret on Wall Street that Monsanto, in its present form, has become a major liability for transnational food corporations and the biotech/pharmaceutical giants, who are much more concerned with the potential for hundreds of billions of dollars in sales from biotech drugs, nutraceutical foods, and nanotechnology, than the declining fortunes of agbiotech crops, whose total sales in 2002 were $4.25 billion. One of the major reasons for Monsanto's decline, besides the growing worldwide opposition to its GE crops, is the growing resistance of weeds to Monsanto's flagship product, Roundup herbicide. Roundup, up until now the top-selling weed killer in the world, making up 50% of Monsanto's sales and 70% of their profits, has recently begun to lose its effectiveness against major crop weeds such as mare's-tail, waterhemp, and ryegrass. GE Roundup-resistant soybeans presently account for more than 75% of all the soybeans planted in the United States and Argentina, as well as the majority of rapeseed or canola in Canada. According to a recent report by Syngenta, herbicide-resistant superweeds will soon reduce the economic value of farmland on which Roundup Ready soybeans are grown by 17%. Forty-six percent of farmers surveyed in Syngenta's study said that weed resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, is now their top concern. www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/roundup011403.cfm According to industry experts, Monsanto has no alternative in the pipeline once glyphosate starts to fail. Syngenta, which also sells herbicides containing glyphosate, has criticized Monsanto for encouraging its customers to overuse the relatively cheap herbicide, as well as for not warning farmers to avoid mono-cropping, growing the same Roundup Ready crops, year after year, on the same plots of land. Leading scientific critics such as Dr. Michael Hansen and Dr. Charles Benbrook have warned for years that weeds would inevitably develop resistance to GMOs. The reason for this is that GE herbicide-resistant plant varieties are designed to be able to survive heavy doses of the companies' broad-spectrum weed killers, which in turn cause resistant strains of these weeds to survive and eventually predominate. Similar warnings have been leveled at the use of Bt-spliced crops, which are engineered to express high doses of a soil bacteria called Bt. Now that Bt crops such as cotton and corn have been commercialized on millions of acres, major insect pests such as bollworms, bud worms, beetles, and corn borers are also expected to become resistant to Bt over the next 5-10 years. The shaky bottom line for agbiotech is that almost 100% of all Frankencrops today, the so-called first generation GE crops, are either herbicide-resistant or Bt-spliced. Once these genetically engineered traits lose their effectiveness, which is now happening, the first generation of biotech crops will be dead, period. Here's a toast to the speedy breakup and demise of Monsanto and the other Gene Giants. RIP. In future issues of BioDemocracy News we'll look at the so-called second, third, and fourth generation of Frankenfoods and crops, including the absolutely
FW: [globalnews] Ganges, Bengal Delta arsenic crisis: 36 milliondrinking contaminated water, 150 million at risk
Title: FW: [globalnews] Ganges, Bengal Delta arsenic crisis: 36 million drinking contaminated water, 150 million at risk Asia's arsenic crisis deepens Another Indian state succumbs to well water poisoning. 15 February 2003 TOM CLARKE http://www.nature.com/nsu/030210/030210-14.html New cases of arsenic poisoning in India's Ganges Basin suggest that a crisis in the sub-continent could extend much farther than previously thought1. Untold numbers of the region's 449 million residents could be exposed to dangerous levels of the element in their drinking water. In the mid-1990s it emerged that arsenic has contaminated well water in parts of the Bengal Delta. This is the coastal floodplain of numerous rivers, including the Ganges and is shared by Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. The latest surveys estimate that around 36 million people in the Bengal Delta are drinking contaminated water, and 150 million are at risk. The new finding suggests that the Bengal Delta may be only the tip of the iceberg, says epidemiologist Dipankar Chakraborti of Jadavpur University in Kolkata. He is calling for urgent region-wide water-well analysis. The arsenic problem intensified during a period of long neglect. Our earlier mistakes must not be repeated, he says Calling cards Tipped-off to a spate of cancer deaths and skin lesions in the village of Semria Ojha Patti in the Indian state of Bihar, Chakraborti's team sampled wells in the village. Half contain five times the accepted safe limit of arsenic; 1 in 5 wells have 30 times the safe level. Many villagers are suffering from the classic skin lesions and neurological problems of arsenic poisoning. Preliminary evidence also suggests that mothers who have drunk from contaminated wells have unusually high rates of miscarriage and premature delivery - another of arsenic's calling cards. The situation in Semria Ojha Patti is alarmingly similar to that of the villages in West Bengal and Bangladesh where, as in Bihar, hand-pump wells have been dug to provide drinking water that is free of waterborne diseases. Unfortunately the wells tap into natural accumulations of arsenic swept down from the Himalayas and deposited in the silty aquifers of the Ganges Basin. Bihar is 500 kilometres west of the Bengal Delta and is geologically akin to much of the Ganges Basin. Arsenic-rich deposits could cover much of the Basin, stretching across the foot of the Himalayas from New Delhi to the Bay of Bengal. Countless rural villages with hand-pump wells could be affected, warns Chakraborti. Last year, arsenic-contaminated groundwater was reported in Nepal, some 200 kilometres to the north of Semria Ojha Patti, and there are unconfirmed reports of arsenic in the water in Chandigarh, north of New Delhi. Only comprehensive surveys will reveal the extent of the problem. Unfortunately there is a general lack of awareness of the symptoms of arsenic poisoning - residents of Semria Ojha Patti were being treated for skin disorders. The best treatment for chronic arsenic poisoning is removing the source. Arsenic-laden sediments are patchy, so relocating wells around a village can ameliorate the problem. Delta watch What seems to be emerging is that the correct geological conditions for arsenic release into groundwater occur widely in delta areas, says geochemist Andrew Meharg of the University of Aberdeen, UK. The new finding suggests that similar arsenic contamination in Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan could also be more widespread, suggests Meharg. Wherever people look, they seem to find arsenic elevation in these deltaic aquifers, he says. References Chakraborti, D. et al. Arsenic groundwater contamination in middle Ganga Plain, Bihar, India: A future danger?. Environmental Health Perspectives, published online, doi:10.1289/ehp.5966 (2003). |Article|
FW: [globalnews] Largest Oil Spill in the World
Title: FW: [globalnews] Largest Oil Spill in the World From: Alice Friedemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat Feb 15, 2003 2:47 pm Subject: Largest Oil Spill in the World I had a disturbing experience at Cape Canaveral National Sea Shore last month. I drove to the north end of the park, and walked south along the beach towards the enormous towers of the Kennedy Space Center, 11 miles away. On the left, the sparkling blue water was punctuated with the tall white plumes of pelicans dive-bombing the waves. On the right was Mosquito lagoon, one of the most beautiful places in Florida. I'd come to find Sea Beans. These are beautiful exotic seeds of tropical plants from all over the world, with names like Hog-plum, Hamburger Bean, and Moonflower (http://www.seabean.com/guide/index.htm). But what I found was plastic trash. Miles and miles of soda bottles, plastic bags, milk jugs, plastic spoons, and the like. At the Ponce Inlet Marine Science Center, the docent was sure most of it came from party boats and cruises offshore. Case solved - cruise ships have been caught dumping their shit, literally, into the pristine waters of Alaska. Not surprising to find out they're throwing trash overboard as well. My career as trash detective would have ended then if I hadn't seen an ad in the paper for a lecture on How plastic trash finds its way into the ocean. The problem turns out to be huge -- the plastic in the ocean could be considered the largest oil spill in the world. Between California and Asia there's ten million square miles of plastic swirling in the slow rotation of the north pacific gyre, an area larger than Africa. A huge mountain of air, heated over the equator, creates the currents as it moves north. The garbage on this marine merry-go-round spends 12 years completing one circle. About half of the plastic made is close to the specific gravity of water, and the half that sinks easily rises again when storms mix the water up. There's so much plastic in the Pacific gyre, that six times as much plastic as zooplankton by weight was found there (Marine Pollution Bulletin). Outside the gyres, the concentration is almost half that amount still awfully high. Like diamonds, plastics are forever. Plastic doesn't biodegrade. It takes even longer for the sun to break apart a piece of plastic in the ocean than on land, because the water cools the plastic down. Although it gets broken into smaller and smaller pieces, it reaches a point where the molecular weight and tight chemical bonds prevent any organism from breaking it down further. Plastic facts - One hundred billion pounds of pre-production plastic resin pellets are produced every year in the US to create consumer plastics. - These pellets, also known as nurdles, look just like fish eggs, and are the most common plastic object found in the ocean. Clearly many of them are escaping the production process. - Only 3.3% of plastic is recycled, because reheating plastic reduces its flexibility. Sixty-three pounds of plastic per person ends up in landfills in the United States. - Because plastic is lighter than sand, it may be eroding beaches - Plastic concentrates chemicals and pollutants up to one million times their concentration in the surrounding sea water. Many of these chemicals are endocrine disruptors. So how are plastics getting into the ocean? About 20% comes from activities at sea, especially when some of the 100 million containers shipped every year get knocked off in storms. The remaining 80% comes from the land. Alice Friedemann, Oakland CA Sources: Lecture and material from the lecture given by Charles Moore, Berkeley Public Library 11 Feb 2003 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Marine-Debris-Panel30oct02.htm http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Synthetic-Sea-Moore.htm\ http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Algalita-Ocean-Plastic22oct02.htm And many of the links at: http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/ocean.htm U.S. News World Report 4 NOV 2002 Trashing the Oceans by Thomas An armada of plastic rides the waves, and sea creatures are suffering http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Trashing-Oceans- Plastic4nov02.htm At Taco Bell on Main Street in Ventura, Calif., you can take out the chalupa of your choice--Baja, Nacho Cheese, or Supreme, with ground beef, chicken, or steak. But it will always come in a small plastic shopping bag. The bags arrive preprinted from a factory in Asia-- usually. One brilliant summer morning in 2000, the small private research vessel Alguita discovered a 10-mile-wide flotilla of the disposable sacks, an estimated 6 million of them destined for Taco Bells around the country, bobbing more than 1,000 miles west of the Ventura store. We were out in the middle of the Pacific, where you would think the ocean would be pristine, recalls the Alguita's captain, Charles Moore. And instead, we get the Exxon Valdez of plastic-bag spills. Most plastic bags end up in
Re: chicken feed
Martha - Sometimes it is not productive to fill in the blanks without checking the facts. Besides the outright expense of organic grains at this point in time, your organic feeds are more expensive because they are (if milled by a reputable source) more nutritionally dense than your commercial factory feeds. Why? Because companies like Purina fill the bag with BY_PRODUCTS. When you hear that, you probably think that they are talking about dried and ground dead horse, or something. That may be in there, and that's probably a bonus (in chicken feed), but there are a lot of dead nutrients that show up on your content label but are meaningless to your poultry. These are things like bakery wastes. Empty calories that bulk up the bags. Organic feed, on the other hand, should be nothing but milled whole grains. (Break my heart, someone.) This means that you should be getting 3x the nutrition for your birds from a bag of organic chicken feed from a reputable source. Most serious natural bird farmers in this area also use Fertrell's Poultry Balancer. I don't know Fertrell sells on your side of the Mississippi, though. -Allan
Update on cannibals / goat news / questions for seed starting
I've never been overly concerned about my chicken feed. They eat probably better than any other critter here. I'll see about Muenster's poultry rations, though. I DID solve the problem about my (new arrivals) cannibal pullets. A friend wanted 2 - 3 new hens, and has an established flock. no young birds recently. By the time I'd talked to her about her buying them, the rocs had already killed off one of their own. She didn't LOOK like she should have died. They plucked out vent feathers. the one I have in the house is in a lot worse shape, and taking it quite cheerfully. Ameraucana, placid but obviously, TOUGH birds. They're so lovely, I'd like a whole flock of them. The lady I got them (the rocks) from kept talking about how muddy and awful her back pens were, and how muddy the chickens were going to be when I got them. Now, I'm wondering if when one died, she didn't just leave it and they learned to eat them because of that. I had wanted a couple of guineas again just for the noise factor. I don't like them, but it's something else for the fillies to acclimate to, besides, they're death to grasshoppers. So, I ended up hauling the (now 3) Barred Rocks for 2 guinea hens. I paid $5 each for these pullets. They killed one and I pretty much gave the other 3 away. I could have saved myself a lot of work and just tossed $20 out the truck window. But the lesson learned was so enormous, I can't say it was actually money wasted. GOATS: Yesterday, Fiona gave birth to twins, and this morning, Mocha had triplets! (We're talking about dairy goats, Oberhasli at that.) Fiona has a doe kid (tentatively named Finesse) and Mocha has a black doe kid, I still need an M name for her. The rest are boys. I usually don't keep the buck kids unless I have them presold. Mocha's larger one is so nice (and she's an 8*milker doe), I may hold him over in case someone needs an excellent sire replacement. So, it's been a busy and productive weekend around the farmstead. I'm about to (belatedly) start tomato seeds into flats. What would be the first good moonsign day for it? What does everyone use for seed starting? What type of medium and what kind of containers? I have a lot of old terra cotta pots I like to use, and I also have been trying newspaper 'pots' this year, too. What works, and what would you try/avoid?
Re: BD and steam
Hi Ross, There is another company in Australia (Adelaide) marketing a steam weeder especially for under vines called 'Vaporjet'. They also have photos of a modified version for [vegetables?] asparagus that a grower made himself. The company's name is 'travohtec', PO Box 2162, Port Adelaide Business Centre, SA 5015; ph 08-8347 7499; fax 08-8347 7599; email [EMAIL PROTECTED]; contact person: Chris Travers 0407 976 033. Christiane
biosolids
Someone had just posted an inquiry for info on use of biosolids (organic residuals from wastewater treatment). The URL below is to an article that just appeared locally on the use of biosolids in urban environments to reduce "bioavailability" of lead in soils. http://admin.urel.washington.edu/uweek/archives/issue/uweek_story_small.asp?id=899 ___Barry Lia \ [EMAIL PROTECTED] \ Seattle WA
