You Are What You Eat

The invention and global spread of agriculture is one of the most profound events in the history of the earth.  It  dramatically altered the distribution and abundance of plants and animals as well as the fundamental bio-geochemical cycles that regulate the planet.  There is now evidence that it also changed the genetic makeup of humans.  Check out this NYT article that describes a recently published study that has for the first time linked human genomic changes (i.e. evolution) with agriculture: http://nyti.ms/1jgdzZC
The actual scientific paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature16152.html

The Least Deadliest Catch

Almost all the food that we consume is the product of domestication, cultivation, and husbandry.  The last great exception to this is seafood, much of which is still harvested directly from oceans, lakes and streams just like our hunter gatherer ancestors did.  Well, actually not very much like they did at all.  We now catch ocean and freshwater species on a scale and intensity that threatens  not only of the existence of the species we catch, but also the ecosystems of which they are part. One potential solution is to make our use of marine resources more like terrestrial food production, i.e. farming.  Of course, whether farming can help solve solutions or create new ones depends on the details of design and implementation. 

Check out this blog post by Liz Camuti of the American Society of Landscape Architects that describes the work of Greenwave: http://dirt.asla.org/2015/11/03/ocean-farm-wins-2015-buckminster-fuller-challenge/

They recently won the Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge.  Greenwave’s winning project was the “world’s first multi-species 3-D ocean farm". Do you think that this setup is a problem solver?

Down the old mill road

Perhaps no other crop exemplifies the commodification, industrialization,and globalization of agriculture more than wheat.  But the seeming growing desire to return to a more regional and diversified food system is even beginning to show up in this poster child commodity.  Check out this recent story from the NYT:

http://nyti.ms/1GM2AlL

It profiles the work of Dr. Stephen Jones, director of the Bread Lab, at the Washington State University campus in Mount Vernon, Wash.  It also provides a brief but fascinating history of wheat growing, milling, and bread making.

A prickly pale gray lawn

Lush green lawns are arguably as much a part of the iconic Southern California landscape as palm trees and swimming pools.  As the state suffers under a historic drought, the appeal of lawns may be waning.  Check out this article from the New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1LQRpF8

Crop Insurance

A part of the world's crop genetic diversity is stored in a network of collections.  We have one right here in Corvallis: a branch of the National Clonal Germplasm Repository.  http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=20-72-15-00

The focus of the Corvallis branch (from their website):

This unit was established to collect, maintain, distribute, evaluate, and document germplasm of hazelnut, strawberry, hop, mint, pear, currant, gooseberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry, and specialty temperate fruit and nut crops and their wild relatives.

Similar repositories exist around the world focusing on different crops.  They act very much like lending libraries.  They store the genetic diversity of crops partly as an archive, but also to make that diversity more accessible to researchers and plant breeders.

One important part of this network is the so called doomsday seed vault that is built into a mountain in Norway's high arctic.  The role of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to hold backup copies from the other germplasm repositories around the world in case something horrible happens to one of the nodes of the germplasm network.  The frigid and dry arctic location was chosen to make it less susceptible to day to day mishaps like power cuts.  Now, just ten years after the seed bank was established, they have had a request for a withdrawal.  The Syrian civil war has damaged the seed bank housed in Aleppo, and put the collection there in serious jeopardy.  The seed bank is relocating to Beirut, Lebanon and they want to restock the new location with seeds from the Svalbard vault.  Check out this Reuters story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/21/us-mideast-crisis-seeds-idUSKCN0RL1KA20150921

Diversify Your Diet

 
The world diet is increasingly dependent on a handful of staple crops such as wheat, rice and maize. Check out this recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/4001.abstract Just like investing all of your life savings in the stock of a single company, a homogeneous food portfolio has a number of risks. Can you think of reasons for why our global food supply is not very diverse? However, things are not just all rice and potatoes. Check out this BBC story about a new crop being developed as an alternative source for the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34464582

The dry economy

The severe drought in CA has significantly influenced its economy. There have been clear and profound negative impacts such as lost crops and the financial costs of forest fires. But the drought has also created some economic opportunities and spurred innovation. This series produced by the BBC radio program Global Business takes a look http://bbc.in/1K9jVA1. It is a two part series; you can navigate to the second part “A Tale of Two Farms” us the panel on the left side.

The shadow over...

Urban spaces are complex and dynamic ecosystems.  Managing these systems is no easy task, particularly given that so much of it involves managing complex human social interactions.  Check out this story about shade in cities from the Washington Post:

http://wapo.st/1E28BUe

More Water Talk

Another exploration of the water woes in CA.  This one from the Washington Post.


http://wapo.st/1aJRkrI

The Water in Our Food

In CA, Governor Brown's recent mandatory water use restrictions largely spared agriculture.  That  sparked a discussion about agriculture's use of water and its role in helping the state deal with the Big Dry.  There was a particularly lively discussion about the large amount of the State's water resources that go to growing almonds.  Check out this info-graphic from the LA Times that breaks down the water use for some of the state's crops.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-water-hungry-foods-20150406-story.html

You might also want to check out the fuller coverage on the drought that the LA times has compiled here:
http://www.latimes.com/local/drought/

The Big Dry

It has been dry in CA.  Several years of below average rainfall have been topped off this winter by record heat and the lowest  Sierra snow pack on record.  Faced with dwindling supplies, the Governor has ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in the state's history.

It might be tempting to see CA's plight as simply a cautionary tale about people living in an inherently arid climate.  But CA (as it has so often been) is a harbinger of a new reality that all or us will likely have to adjust too.  We increasingly live in a world where resources are limited, or where we will need to self-impose limits on how we use the planet if we want to sustain the earth's ecosystems for us and future generations.

Check out this interesting story from the New York Times about the new reality in CA:
http://nyti.ms/1DKkfab

City Bee

A study just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society London reports that urban landscapes provide important habitat and resources (such as flowers) for a wide diversity of pollinators in the UK.  Check out a news story about the research here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31359984

The ariticle itself is here:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1803/20142849

Social Capital

Although not directly related to this class, I found this story about the Indian based multinational corporation Tata very interesting. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31057308

The company places social responsibility and charity on an equal footing with profitability as goals for its business.  As the Tata example points out, this is not an entirely new idea.  Indeed, the structure and history of the Kaiser-Permanente health care conglomerate is perhaps an interesting comparison with the Tata group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente

Although, not entirely novel, there does seem to be an increased interest lately in exploring business models that are more socially responsible.  The social entrepreneurship movement, for instance, is an example.  I think these alternative business models and approaches dovetail nicely with changes in how we think about using resources and management the planet’s systems.

Boundaries People

In recent years a number of scientists have put forward the concept of "planetary boundaries".....the idea that there are safe operating ranges for the basic biophysical properties of the planet such as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  If we push the planet beyond those limits through our activities we risk our own well being.  A recent paper in Science argues that we have pushed the planet past four of its nine fundamental boundaries.  Check out  this article in the Washington Post that summarizes the concept and the new Science paper:


http://wapo.st/1xtzGLK


There is a link to the Science article in that story, unfortunately OSU doesn't seem to subscribe to the early preview edition of Science so you can only read the abstract for now.  You can read the full article in a week or so when it comes out in the normal edition.