Urban Women Grow Food in Sacks

Danielle Nierenberg writing at Nourishing The Planet about Nairobi’s Kibera slums:

Anywhere from 700,000 to one million people live in what is likely the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. And despite the challenges people here face – lack of water and sanitation services, space and lack of land ownership are the big ones – they are thriving and living...We met a “self-help” group of female farmers in Kibera who are growing food for their families and selling the surplus to their neighbours. Such groups are present all over Kenya – giving youth, women and vulnerable people the opportunity to organize, share information and skills and ultimately improve their well-being while giving them a voice that otherwise would not be heard. The women we met were growing vegetables on what they call “vertical farms or gardens.” But instead of skyscrapers, these farms are in tall recycled sacks filled with soil, and the women grow crops in them on different levels by poking holes in the bags and mainly planting seeds and seedlings of spinach, kale, sweet pepper and spring onions...The women told us that more than 1,000 women in their neighborhood are growing food in a similar way...These small gardens could produce big benefits in terms of nutrition, food security and income. All the women told us that they saved money because they no longer had to buy vegetables from the markets or kiosks, and they claimed that the vegetables were fresh and tasted better because they were organically grown – but that sentiment also might come from the pride of growing something themselves...

COMMENT: It always amazes me what people can accomplish using a little help and a great deal of ingenuity.

Obama Eyes Western Land for National Monuments, Angering Some

More than a dozen pristine landscapes, wildlife habitats and scenic rivers in 11 Western states, some larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, are under consideration by the Obama administration to become America's newest National Monuments -- a decision the administration can make unilaterally without local input or congressional approval. According to internal Department of Interior documents leaked to a Utah congressman and obtained exclusively by Fox News, the mostly public lands include Arizona deserts, California mountains, Montana prairies, New Mexico forests, Washington islands and the Great Basins of Nevada and Colorado -- totaling more than 13 million acres. Sources say President Obama is likely to choose two or three sites from the list, depending on their size, conservation value and the development threat to each one's environment. Presidential use of the Antiquities Act is highly controversial because the White House, with the stroke of a pen, can lock up thousands of square miles of federal lands used for timber, ranching, mining and energy development without local input or congressional approval. The Act is generally interpreted to commemorate or protect a specific historical landmark, not prohibit development or deprive local communities of jobs and tax revenues. "Any federal action that could lead to limited access should be done in an open and public manner using extraordinary caution," said Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., upon seeing the leaked report. "The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling."...read more

My original post on these documents is here.

Two more monuments planned in Utah?

Rep. Rob Bishop says he has unearthed plans by the Obama administration to wield its power to designate multiple new national monuments in the West, including two that would snatch up thousands of acres in Utah. That revelation by the Utah Republican set off a firestorm of criticism Thursday from congressional and state leaders in the Beehive State -- although the Interior Department insists the document on which Bishop bases his allegation is simply a draft memo outlining lands that may, in the future, deserve protection. Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff says Secretary Ken Salazar asked the department's bureaus to identify areas that might be worth further study as possible management areas or spots for Congress to step in and designate as protected. "The preliminary internal discussion draft reflects some brainstorming discussions within [Bureau of Land Management], but no decisions have been made about which areas, if any, might merit more serious review and consideration," Barkoff said. "Secretary Salazar believes new designations and conservation initiatives work best when they build on local efforts to better manage places that are important to nearby communities." The seven-page document states that "further evaluations should be completed prior to any final decision," including gauging congressional and public support...read more

The West Wants Out of the Western Climate Initiative

The Western Climate Initiative’s cap and trade market may soon need to be renamed The Canada Climate Initiative. Until this week, the Western Climate Initiative boasted seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces who were working toward the launch of a regional cap and trade system on Jan 1, 2012. On Thursday, Arizona formally announced it was backing out of cap and trade. As the state with the fastest rate of emission growth -- 61% between 1990 and 2007 – many feared a body blow to Arizona’s economy if it tried to meet the initiative’s carbon reduction goals. The following morning neighbouring Utah indicated it might follow suit. By a 6 to 2 vote, its House Committee on Public Utilities and Technology passed a nonbinding resolution to urge Governor Gary Herbert to pull out of the Western Climate Initiative. Earlier in the week, the full Utah House voted resoundingly – 56 to 17 – to curb any carbon-curbing attempts by the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency. Specifically, the resolution “urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and with its ‘Endangerment Finding’ and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.” To date, only four of the 11 jurisdictions have adopted legislation that would allow them to participate in the cap-trade-market: California, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, with Manitoba appearing close to joining...read more

Arizona quits Western climate endeavor

Arizona will no longer participate in a groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouse-gas emissions across the West, a change in policy by Gov. Jan Brewer that will include a review of all the state's efforts to combat climate change. Brewer stopped short of pulling Arizona out of the multistate coalition that plans to regulate greenhouse gases starting in 2012. But she made it clear in an executive order that Arizona will not endorse the emission-control plan or any program that could raise costs for consumers and businesses. State officials said the policy shift was rooted in concerns that the controversial emissions plan would slow the state's economic recovery. Brewer says the state should focus less on regulations and more on renewable energy and investments by businesses that can create green jobs. The governor also ordered the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to take another look at stricter vehicle-emissions rules set to take effect in 2012. Automakers said the rules, based on those adopted by California, would raise the cost of a new car significantly. The governor's order is another blow to the Western Climate Initiative, a group of seven states and four Canadian provinces that joined forces in 2007 after growing impatient with the federal government to address climate change...read more

Critics of secret BLM meetings share diverse backgrounds

U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials have said that they only recently became aware of the desire by many local and state cooperating agencies to open land-use planning meetings to the public. But it cannot be a surprise to the BLM that there has been a wide and diverse range of critics who have long sought greater access to meetings and documents, as many have written to the agency and complained loudly to their elected officials. “We have been beating our heads against the wall with the BLM in the Pinedale area about public access to meetings and materials and documents that should be public,” said Steff Kessler, Wyoming program manager in Lander for The Wilderness Society. Kathleen Jachowski, executive director of the Worland-based Guardians of the Range rancher advocacy group, said BLM staffers had expressed concerns to her about unruly attendees causing cooperator meetings to “deteriorate into bedlam.” “I told them I expected my BLM folks to know how to handle those situations, have the courage to do so, and to not hide behind such an unprofessional barrier,” Jachowski wrote in an e-mail...read more

Wolf pack to be reduced

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has determined that four of the seven wolves in the Fishtrap Pack should be killed to reduce livestock depredation at McGinnis Meadows. The pack is believed to be responsible for killing a cow last month and then injuring a calf at a neighboring ranch two weeks ago. “This is atypical from what we’ve been seeing in the past,” said Kent Laudon, FWP wolf management specialist. Before the two recent incidences, the pack had been attributed to three confirmed livestock kills and one livestock injury since 2005, a relatively low number, according to Laudon. The Fishtrap Pack’s territory covers about 250 square miles roughly bordered by Silver Butte and Thompson River, Highway 2 and Fishtrap River. Shortly after the pack killed a Dexter cow at a small McGinnis Meadows ranch last month, a neighboring rancher reported wolves harassing his yearling calves, Laudon said...read more

Food needs 'dramatic' new path

An international panel of scientists writing in the Feb. 12 edition of the journal Science is urging world leaders to "dramatically alter their notions about sustainable agriculture to prevent a major starvation catastrophe" by the end of the century. Specifically, they are urging world leaders to "get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology," particularly crops that are genetically modified to produce greater yields in harsher conditions, and to base the regulation of such crops on the best-available science. "You're looking at a 20-30% decline in production yields in the next 50 years for major crops between the latitudes of southern California or Southern Europe to South Africa," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. He is a co-author of a Perspectives article in Science that urges food production experts, scientists and world leaders to "begin thinking in dramatically different ways to meet food needs in a significantly warmer world." "I grow increasingly concerned that we have not yet understood what it will take to feed a growing population on a warming planet," said lead author Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University. The authors advocate developing systems that have the potential to decrease the land, energy and fresh water needed for agriculture and at the same time reduce the pollution associated with agricultural chemicals and animal waste. Battisti noted that the so-called Green Revolution in agriculture in the 1970s produced a 2% increase in yields per year for 20 years, primarily through the development of new grain varieties and the use of fertilizer and irrigation. However, there is little, if any, new land available for farming, and "such yield increases cannot be sustained without further innovation," he pointed out...read more

Backers of meat labeling law hail court ruling

A federal court ruling from eastern Washington earlier this month could shore up the legal foundation under country of origin meat labeling, or COOL, which faces a challenge from Mexico and Canada at the World Trade Organization. That's the opinion of the cattle industry group R-Calf and Sen. Tim Johnson, a longtime COOL proponent. However, a meat industry spokesman insisted the ruling from the Washington Easterday Ranches case has no effect on the WTO complaint against COOL. "It's a completely separate legal process," National Meat Association spokesman Jeremy Russell said. Johnson and other proponents got COOL into the 2008 federal farm bill after more than a decade of trying. Opponents have tried to circumvent COOL since it was implemented in March 2009 and almost immediately challenged its legality. While COOL requires meat sold in the U.S. to be labeled as to its source, a loophole allows packers to affix a multicountry of origin label, such as listing meat as a product of Canada and the U.S, according to Bill Bullard of Billings, Mont., the CEO of R-Calf. Also, packers "provided labeling so small you about need a pair of magnifying glasses to read it," he said...read more

Buying organic to save planet? Not so fast

For food, the carbon footprint measures the GHG emitted due to the energy consumed for production, storage and transportation processes. This includes the rations livestock eat, emissions from fertilizer manufacture and application and livestock digestion, use of tractors and refining processes, as well as transportation from the farm to the supermarket. The massive amount of energy that can go into food production should make the carbon footprint an influential factor in consumers' buying decisions. Since the temperature of the Earth is steadily increasing, the organic versus conventional dilemma is going to similarly increase. Extensive research spanning both the nutritional content and environmental implications of organic versus conventional product provides an answer to which product is better. Conventional farming methods produce the best balance between environmental friendliness and nutritional health for a number of reasons. Conventional farming methods produce food that is equally nutritious to food produced by organic methods (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2008). Nutritional studies that span the food pyramid have shown no success in claiming one or the other to be nutritiously superior. In addition, conventional methods are more energy efficient than organic methods, and the result is a lower carbon footprint for conventional foods...read more

Aussie winemaker rattled by donation backlash

A major Australian wine exporter facing a backlash in the United States for donating to a key animal rights group says it will take its support elsewhere in the future. The $100,000 donation by Yellow Tail Wines to the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) animal rescue program has prompted a flurry of angry online postings in the US calling for people to boycott the wine. The HSUS describes itself as the United States' largest and most effective animal protection organisation and it sponsors workshops that teach people how to lobby for animal protection laws. In response to the donation, a page called Yellow Fail has been set up on the Facebook social networking site and has attracted more than 3,000 fans. A rancher from South Dakota has posted an online video of himself pouring the wine onto the snow in front of his cattle and urging others to do the same...read more

I've embedded the rancher's video Yellow Tail Is Now Yellow Fail below. Please note every time I've tried to play it I get an error please try back later message. Can't help but wonder if it's been disabled by You Tube, but in case this is a temporary situation here it is.

Song Of The Day #243

Billy Walker's 1962 recording of Charlie's Shoes and the George Jones-Melba Montgomery duet Flame In My Heart are Ranch Radio's 60's offerings today.

For the Walker tune see his 20 track CD Columbia Hits.

The Jones-Montgomery duet is on their 20 track CD Vintage Collections which has become rare.

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer to step down in July

The U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer has resigned to join a consultancy group as an adviser, the U.N. climate secretariat said on Thursday, two months after a disappointing Copenhagen summit. De Boer will step down on July 1 to join KPMG, the U.N. framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) said in a statement. He has led the agency since 2006. "It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," de Boer said in the statement...read more

Texas challenges EPA's global warming findings

Texas on Tuesday became the first state to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that gases blamed for global warming threaten public health. Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials said the federal finding is based on flawed science and would harm the state's economy. The EPA issued the finding two months ago in an attempt to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Such rules would have a profound impact on Texas, which pumps more carbon dioxide into the air than any other state because of its scores of coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities. “The EPA's misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ,” Perry said in a statement. “This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas' freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”...read more

Virginia challenges U.S. greenhouse gas curbs

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) on Tuesday filed paperwork attacking the legal underpinnings of an Obama administration effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, joining a crowd of political conservatives and business groups with similar objections. Cuccinelli sent a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to reconsider its finding in December that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health by contributing to climate change. That finding is a legal trigger, which would allow the EPA to regulate those gases under the Clean Air Act, the same way it regulates the pollutants that cause smog. Rutgers University law professor Craig Oren said it could be a difficult effort. For it to succeed, Oren said it could require proving that the EPA willfully disregarded available science, its own rules or precedent. "You have to show EPA was arbitrary," he said. "I give them less than 50-50" odds...read more

BLM looks to Audubon to map sage grouse habitat

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is looking to the Audubon Society to map sage grouse habitat across the 11 states where the bird is found. Sage grouse have been losing their sagebrush habitat for decades and now face possible listing under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to announce a listing decision next week. BLM officials expect to award a contract for mapping sage grouse habitat to the Audubon Society, saying Audubon already works with the state agencies that compile habitat data. Existing maps show the chicken-sized bird inhabiting large portions of Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, Oregon and Idaho, and smaller areas in Colorado, Utah, California, Washington and the Dakotas...read more

Judge overturns W.Va. Rainbow Family convictions

A federal judge has overturned the nearly 5-year-old illegal assembly convictions of eight members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light, ruling a magistrate’s makeshift courtroom in the Monongahela National Forest inadvertently denied the defendants the ability to effectively appeal. U.S. District Judge Robert Maxwell said it’s clear U.S. Magistrate John Kaull “was sincerely trying to help” by holding onsite hearings in the summer of 2005, sparing the itinerant campers the need to hitchhike 70 miles to a federal courtroom in Elkins. But the lack of a transcriptionist and decent sound recording produced an incomplete record of what transpired, and that “had the unintended effect of denying each of the defendant’s right to a meaningful appeal,” Maxwell ruled last week. “The court simply cannot imagine a case where a better argument could be made that counsel’s ability to identify issues for their clients’ appeals was significantly prejudiced,” he wrote...read more

Industry loses lawsuit over Alaska forest logging

A federal judge has thrown out an industry lawsuit that could have led to more logging and road building in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest federal forest. U.S. District Judge John Bates Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a timber group and an organization of Southeast Alaska civic and business leaders. The Southeast Conference and Alaska Forest Association had challenged a 2008 management plan for the Tongass developed by the Bush administration. Environmental groups hailed the ruling as a small victory, saying the judge had prevented what they consider a bad forest plan from becoming even worse. Those groups say the Bush plan does not do enough to protect old-growth reserves and sites that are sacred to Alaska Native tribes. At more than 26,000 square miles, the Tongass is about the same size as West Virginia and is often labeled the "crown jewel" in the national forest system...read more

Oregon environmental group comes out against Wyden old growth bill

An eastern Oregon environmental group said today it opposes a compromise bill intended to limit old growth logging and increase thinning in national forests east of the Cascades. The La Grande-based Hells Canyon Preservation Council said in an 11-page letter to Sen. Ron Wyden that though his bill would result in positive changes to federal forest management on the dry side of Oregon, parts of the the legislation run counter to that goal. The bill is the result of months of negotiations between a handful of environmental groups and timber industry representatives...read more

Request to clean up Four Corners timely

A collection of environmentally minded organizations led by the National Parks Conservation Association has petitioned two federal cabinet departments to declare northwest New Mexico's Four Corners Power Plant to be in violation of the Clean Air Act and thereby force it to be cleaned up. It is an effort that should be joined by area governments, greens and business interests. Whether driven by concern for nature, the local economy or sales-tax revenue, clean air is in all of our interests. The petitioners include Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the San Juan Citizens Alliance, the Center for Biological Diversity, Dooda Desert Rock, Diné CARE, WildEarth Guardians and the Grand Canyon Trust. They should be joined, however, by anyone with a concern for Southwest Colorado's economic health. This is not only an environmental issue. The petition was directed at the Department of Interior, which oversees the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service. Together, those agencies are responsible for most of America's public lands. The focus of the request was on protecting the national parks, forests and monuments affected by pollution from the Four Corners plant. The petitioners say records kept by the plant's operator, Arizona Public Service, show the Four Corners plant - one of the largest coal-fired plants in the country - is also the largest source of air pollution in New Mexico...read more