Global Warming Moves Costa Rica Coffee Land Higher
Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:22pm EDT  By John McPhaul

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rican coffee farmers are facing threats from climate change but the rising temperatures are also expanding high-altitude regions where the country’s most prized beans are grown.

Human emissions of greenhouse gases could cause the earth’s surface temperature to rise anywhere between one and six degrees Celsius (1.8 and 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 100 years, according to the United Nations, forcing growers of all crops to adapt to new weather conditions.

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Biofuel Use ‘Iincreasing Poverty’ 
 
Palm oil is one of the biofuel crops stirring controversy
The replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more than 30 million people worldwide into poverty, an aid agency report says.

Oxfam says so-called green policies in developed countries are contributing to the world’s soaring food prices, which hit the poor hardest.

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“If we have bad crops, it’s going to be a wild ride,” said the
Agriculture Department’s chief economist, Joseph Glauber. “There’s
just no cushion.”

“China also faces trouble: the agriculture ministry issued an urgent
notice to wheat and rice farmers in southern China on Sunday, telling
them to harvest as much of their crop as possible immediately in the
face of unseasonable torrential rains expected to rake the region for
the next 10 days.”

“”We can’t snap our fingers and make high yields,” said Emerson D.
Nafziger, a professor of agronomic extension at the University of
Illinois. “We still depend on the weather.”
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New York Times
June 10, 2008

Worries Mount as Farmers Push for Big Harvest
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/business/10planting.html?hp
By DAVID STREITFELD and KEITH BRADSHER

GRIFFIN, Ind. - In a year when global harvests need to be excellent
to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting
that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear
disaster.

American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain,
while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.

“The planting has gotten off to a poor start,” said Bill Nelson, a
Wachovia grains analyst. “The anxiety level is increasing.”

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“Drought doesn’t usually get much attention in
concerns over melting icecaps, rising sea levels,
toxic UV rays and poisonous air. But … Fagan’s
The Great Warming examines what’s known as the
Medieval Warming Period (MWP), a sort of trial
run for the present.”
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Toronto Star
June 8, 2008

History, climate change destined to be repeated
The Medieval Warming Period provoked massive social and historical convulsions

Hans Werner
————————–
The Great Warming:
Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
by Brian Fagan
Bloomsbury,
282 pages, $29.95
————————-

Brian Fagan, the leading authority on the
interaction of climate and human society, has
noticed that there’s a little detail that tends
to get lost in all the dire predictions of global
warming. Fagan is professor emeritus of
anthropology at the University of California and
editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology,
and has something like 21 books to his credit,
including Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and
the Discovery of the New World. His latest, The
Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and
Fall of Civilizations, is about drought caused by
climate change.

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http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18046

The vegetation anomaly shown in the image indicates troubles for
Iraq’s agricultural and natural systems, and shows that the damage
includes other areas of the region.

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Rising food prices could put brakes on biofuel
PHILIP BRASHER
Published: 06.06.2008

Americans griping about the higher cost of food might want to take a look at what’s happening in places such as Kenya or Sri Lanka.

Food prices in those countries rose 25 percent during the past year, more than four times the inflation U.S. consumers saw, according to a new report by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. In Botswana, food prices are up 18 percent.

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Rainwater-harvesting expert Brad Lancaster says community and conservation are keys to desert living

By MARI HERRERAS email the Weekly
Sustainably Yours-Brad Lancaster

Brad Lancaster is not wild about the word “green.”

“The term ‘green’ doesn’t cut it, especially the way it is being marketed,” Lancaster says as he drives back to Tucson after teaching several weeks of rainwater-harvesting workshops in New Mexico while also promoting the two volumes of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. “This idea that we can buy our way green is bogus. We need to be asking ourselves: What are we trying to do, and how are we trying to live?”

Lancaster answers these questions in his books; the most recent volume focuses on how to use earthworks to harvest rainwater. A third volume is due out next year. Overall, Lancaster’s books teach desert-dwellers new ways to look at conserving water, while at the same time growing food-producing gardens, using solar energy and taking advantage of gray water from the shower or washing machine.

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Interesting to note how much foreign journalists address ecosystem health/biodiversity as well as water/food security-sovereignty issues-vs. how little U.S. journalists say about them.

ASW

… 85 percent of the land area in Turkey is
“highly vulnerable to desertification.”

“We should assume our responsibility to reduce
our carbon footprint and kick the habit. It is
the only way out.”
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This person-like many foreign journalists-says alot about food security & ecosystem
protectection…unlike U.S. journalists-who generally say very little about those subjects
Today’s Zaman
June 5, 2008

Op-Ed

Kick the CO2 habit: toward a low- carbon economy
by MAHMOOD AYUB*
<http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=143867&bolum=109>

It has already begun. The chain reaction of
events related to climate change affects us all.
More than ever, extreme weather conditions are
causing severe natural disasters.

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“The Japanese beetle, as the name suggests, is a relatively recent
arrival in Illinois soybean fields. It is causing considerable damage
now but this study suggests that its ability to inflict damage will
only increase over time.”
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Public release date: 24-Mar-2008
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Contact: Diana Yates
diya@uiuc.edu
217-333-5802

Insects take a bigger bite out of plants in a higher CO2 world

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming rate, and
new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down as CO2
goes up. Elevated CO2 impairs a key component of the plant’s defenses
against leaf-eating insects, according to the report.

The University of Illinois study appears this week online in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have significantly
increased carbon dioxide levels since the late 18th century, said
plant biology professor and department head Evan DeLucia, an author
of the study.

“Currently, CO2 in the atmosphere is about 380 parts per million,”
DeLucia said. “At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution it was
280 parts per million, and it had been there for at least 600,000
years - probably several million years before that.”

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Call to action
International Day of Action January 26 2008

Join Via Campesina and other organizations worldwide in demanding Food Sovereignty and an end to the corporate control of our food system by global agribusiness

On January 26 self-organized groups from all around the world will take creative action in their community. This will manifest in many ways, from nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience, street theater, convergences, teach-ins and other activities and events. Grassroots movements around the world are making their voices heard and saying “Another World is Possible” in coordination with the World Social Forum.

In solidarity with global farmer’s movement Via Campesina who has called for action on this day, Rainforest Action Network, Rising Tide North America, and the Student Trade Justice Campaign are calling for individuals and grassroots groups to take action to demand food sovereignty by rejecting the industrialized food system controlled by international institutions and global agribusinesses and promoting the transition to sustainable, small-scale, decentralized local food systems.

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News From Via Campesina:

Sustainable Agriculture as a Way of Struggling Against Climate Change
11/12/2007

Members of La Via Campesina from Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia, Norway, Canada, Mozambique and Brazil visited the Jatiluwih village in Bali to see rice cultivation in terraces and to analyze ways to practice peasant farming with local producers.

The meeting aims to exchange experiences between peasants, in order to take advantage of the presence of farmers from 20 countries in Indonesia who are taking part in the parallel activities to the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP 13).

La Vía Campesina had participated in a march on Saturday in the region of Kuta, in Bali, to demand climate justice and responsible measures of the industrialized countries governments to tackle climate change. Real World Radio was there and interviewed a member of La Via CampesinaCelso Rivero, who is also state leader of the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in the west of Parana.

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“Bees are such great environmental samplers. When they go out and forage, they go almost two miles away from the hive. That’s a very large area, about 2,500 acres, and the same size as the grid elements of a lot of climate ecosystem models,” Esaias said.

“If we’re headed into rougher weather, as it appears we are, we’ll have more difficulties with our bees,” Mussen said. “It won’t matter if you’re a backyard beekeeper or someone with 10,000 colonies.”
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Washington Post
Monday, September 10, 2007; A05

Weather May Account for Reduced Honey Crop
By Jane Black

That the 2007 honey crop has been disappointing won’t surprise anyone who has picked up the newspaper in recent months. Since early spring, colony collapse disorder (CCD), a disease that causes honeybees to suddenly, mysteriously disappear from their hives, has made headlinesaround the world. Without honeybees to pollinate, experts warn that one-third of the food supply — from apples and peaches to cucumbers and squash — is at risk.

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